Celebrity trainer Duffy Gaver had a unique challenge getting actor Chris Hemsworth into god-like shape for the new film “Thor.”
By the time Hemsworth met Gaver in the gym, the actor’s shoulder often had already gone through a workout. You try swinging Thor’s mighty hammer scene after scene without suffering muscle fatigue.
But Gaver isn’t a stranger to turning men into supermen. He previously transformed mild-mannered Tobey Maguire into the amazing Spider-Man for the 2002 film.
Gaver tells WWTW training Hemsworth meant going back to basics.
“It’s old school bodybuilding … with a lot more cross training,” Gaver says of his individualized approach. “There are a million gimmicky workout things in the workout industry. That’s not what’s called for for Chris.”
The physical trainer didn’t initially set out to help Hemsworth play the famous Norse god. Gaver heard through a stunt man pal working on the Michigan set of “Red Dawn” that Hemsworth, a co-star in the remake of the ’80s film, was struggling with his self-devised workout routine to prepare him to play Thor. Gaver was asked to flight out to Michigan and meet with the young actor.
“I got him headed in the right direction,” Gaver says.
Gaver instructed Hemsworth, whose favorite fitness cuisine was “bacon-wrapped shrimp,” to engage in “big pulling” movements and not build up his chest to comical proportions.
“You’ll look like a guy who goofs around in the gym,” he says, adding the classic Greco-Roman statues featured smaller chested figures with big shoulders and wide backs. “Building up his shoulders was a huge priority.”
Hemsworth did as he was told, leaving Gaver impressed with the actor’s enthusiasm. Not every celebrity client takes direction so easily.
“He’s not shy about hard work at all,” Gaver says of the actor soon to be known as Thor to millions of movie goers.
Bulking up Hemsworth did come with complications. The actor’s wardrobe had to be expanded as his body ballooned, and Gaver ended up working with Hemsworth’s stunt double to keep him up to speed with his doppelganger.
Gaver also consulted with the stunt trainers on the film to make sure they were working in tandem. If Hemsworth swung his Thor hammer on set for three hours straight, Gaver couldn’t rightly make the actor train that shoulder as hard as he normally might.
“You have to watch for possible injuries that may arise,” he says.
Gaver says he had six months to work with Hemsworth, but some film assignments are less forgiving.
“I’ve gotten the call, ‘I’m in trouble and I’ve got a week,’” he recalls.
Gaver knows Hemsworth won’t keep up his intense regimen now that “Thor” is wrapped and ready for the big screen. But some of his actor clients do stick to many of the habits he teaches them. Others, he says, shed his lessons like “a bad wardrobe.”
One regret he has about his celebrity lineup is that former client Topher Grace never got to reveal his ripped self as one of the villains in “Spider-Man 3.”
“He really worked out hard and got in really good shape. For whatever reason they didn’t utilize that to any degree,“ he says.
Gaver understands most people don’t have the time or the resources to take on their own superheroic workout routine. He just wants them to do something – anything – to keep moving.
The modern fitness industry is filled with experts insisting their workout is the best, and the other regimens are all wrong.
“It sets the general population with the idea that, ‘I don’t want to get it wrong, so I won’t do it.’” he says. Better to find a workout, any workout, that is a good fit for you.
“The worst thing you can do for your body is sit on your couch,” he says.
(Photo: Actor Chris Hemsworth hit the weights, according to the careful instruction of celebrity trainer Duffy Gaver, to bulk up for the role of the Norse God in “Thor.” Paramount Pictures)
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…Watching the movies I help to make.
I’m not going to say that’s hypocritical, because it isn’t, but it sure strikes me as ironic.
For a more recent examples, check out this chronological gallery of Conan covers (contains ’30s pulp magazine nudity). He doesn’t start looking like a bodybuilder until the late ’60s (then again, bodybuilders didn’t start looking like bodybuilders until the late ’60s).
I don’t think Greco-Roman art was necessarily concerned with what makes men attractive to women, though, if you know what I mean. Besides, dominant males in all the other hominid species (great apes, in other words) have big pecs, as a secondary sexual characteristic.
It’s probably more a both-and than an either-or, though.
Hey, *jic* , is the Howard biopic THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD any good? Thanks.
Up to this moment, I’d never heard of it.
I tend to skip over the pictures to get to the text, but I took a second look just now, and, uh, was Gaver actually saying Hemsworth’s pecs aren’t a significant factor in his figure? Look at that picture: the guy’s chest makes Miles “Pecs like melons” O’Keeffe look like Callista Flockhart!
No, he’s saying that he didn’t want him to “build up his chest to comical proportions [...] like a guy who goofs around in the gym”.