BRAD PITT’S TYLER DURDEN FIGHT CLUB WORKOUT

1999 was the year the iconic cult hit Fight Club, based on the book written by Chuck Palahniuk, hit theaters and would set the world upside down due to its controversial story line and intense violence scenes. Both Edward Norton’s and Brad Pitt’s acting performances were out of this world and guaranteed that the movie would end up being a big success. However, not only did the movie itself leave a massive impact on the world, a topic even more talked about than the movie itself was Brad Pitt’s amazing physique, which he sculpted to portray the intriguing character, Tyler Durden.

Brad displayed a physique that left us in awe. Women wanted to be with him, men wanted to be him. Brad had just the right amount of muscle mass on his frame and was chiseled to the bone. The thing that really made people’s jaw drop though were the perfect proportions his physique had. A mistake a lot of people make is that they try to add mass to their body wherever it may end up just for the sake of adding mass. This lack of proportion makes their body not look astonishing, despite of carrying a lot of muscle mass. Since the release of Fight Club in 1999, Brad Pitt’s physique has been considered to be pretty much the ideal male physique and has set the standard for what men should aim to train for.

Thanks to Brad, a big change arose in Hollywood regarding the new physique standards. Unlike the action heroes of the 80’s and early 90’s, Brad didn’t bring Tyler to life with an exaggerated, unnatural meat head physique. Instead, he brought us with a  physique that is achievable naturally for most guys. Instead of bringing excessive amounts of muscle bulk to the table, he showed us that the ideal male physique is perfectly in proportion with just the right amount of muscle mass targeted in the right areas and is characterized by a low body fat percentage.

In this article I will give you a workout routine and dietary guidelines inspired on the Brad Pitt Fight Club and Troy look so that you too can rock an amazing body.

DON’T LET THE GYM END UP OWNING YOU

In order to have to body similar to that of Tyler Durden, you don’t have to spend your life in the gym. His physique requires you to lift twice per week with a lower training volume, since you don’t need to add that much size to your frame.

A key aspect of Tyler’s physique is his low body fat percentage. Since you’ll spent a good amount of time in a calorie deficit, your recovery will be impaired if you train too frequently and with too much volume. Therefore, in order to build the amount of mass in the right areas, it only requires you to lift twice per week with each training being about 3 to 4 days a part.

What a lot of people don’t understand about building muscle and becoming stronger is that the time spent in the gym in meant to stimulate the muscles and the central nervous system for progress. The actual changes happen when you are recovering. You want to make sure that every time you hit the gym, you start your workouts fresh and are recovered from your previous session. While muscular recovery happens relatively fast, it’s the central nervous system’s recovery that a lot of people don’t take into account. Your CNS is the powerhouse of your body which is responsible for your muscle fiber recruitment and force output. If you don’t allow for proper CNS recovery, your workouts will suffer and you won’t be able to perform optimally.

Aside from the physical advantages of only training 2 days per week, it allows you to have plenty of time to work on other things such as your business or hobbies and spending quality time with the people who are important in your life. Fitness should improve your life and be a supplement to a fun life, not dominate it.

If you’re a slave to the gym and everything in your life revolves around the gym, what’s the point of being in amazing shape? Like Tyler said, the things you own end up owning you. Use the gym wisely, don’t fall into the trap of becoming a slave to it.

KEY EXERCISES

In order to stimulate muscle growth in all the right areas, which will create the perfect proportions to sculpt the ideal male physique similar to that of Tyler Durden, we have to focus on getting stronger by applying progressive overload on key exercises that will have the biggest impact on our body’s transformations. By focusing on a couple of key exercises, we will get the most bang for our buck in the least amount of time, which allows us to get away with training less an getting maximal results.

The exercises which will be most important to your physique transformation will be:

1 – Incline bench press
2 – Chin ups
3 – Split squat

The incline bench press will be responsible for sculpting a solid, rock hard chest with an emphasis on the upper chest area. Chin ups, will be responsible for building a strong, masculine back and rock hard biceps. This upper body combination of incline bench presses and chin ups will add muscle mass in all the right areas to create an athletic, dominant and masculine look.

For the lower body, squats are the king of lower body exercises and nothing comes remotely close to developing the lower body musculature than with good old squats. Since split squats put more emphasis on the tear drop muscle called the vastus lateral due to the stability aspect of split squats, it will be our exercise of choice. It’s a very athletic movement and will sculpt a pair of athletic legs to complement your upper body.

By centering your training around these 3 key movements, you will create an amazing looking, athletic body with all the right proportions and will get maximum results in the least amount of time.

TYLER DURDEN’S WORKOUT ROUTINE

Portraying the character of Tyler Durden, Pitt sported an extremely lean and mean physique. The workout will create the perfect harmonic proportions without adding excessive bulk to your physique. In fact, when you see Tyler in clothes, he actually looked fairly normal and even on the skinnier side. All the magic happens when the clothes go off.

You’ll add just the right amount of muscle mass in the right areas to create the lean, rock hard and dense look Brad created for Tyler’s role. This will be done by focusing on getting stronger on the key lifts in a lower rep range. Getting stronger in a lower rep range will create a more dense look due to the fact that the density of the myofibrils in the muscle will increase. The upper chest, lats and legs will be rock hard, yet not excessively bulky.

Other areas such as the upper back, shoulders and arms, will be hit with some higher rep work. First of all this will benefit the proper execution of the exercise, since otherwise it would be impractical. Imagine someone doing a 4 rep max on lateral raises… wouldn’t that be a sight… and a one way trip to snap city.

The second reason is that higher reps tend to cause more glycogen storage in the muscle and therefore will give the muscle a bigger look. This will help to make the area stand out from the rest and create the proportions that make Tyler’s physique look so fantastic.

You’ll perform this workout routine twice per week preferably 3-4 days a part, for example on Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday.

Without further a due, here’s the workout routine

Incline press 3×4-7
Chin up 3×4-7
Split squat 3×4-7
Skull crushers / bicep curls 3×8-12
Lateral raises / rear delt flyes 3×8-15
Hanging leg raises 3×8-15

When you finish a set of your key exercises, rest 3 minutes between your sets. This will ensure proper muscular and central nervous system recovery to execute the next set with optimal performance intensity.

Your accessory exercises are less stressful and fatiguing on the body and require only about 2 minutes of rest in order to get the most of the next set. In order to save time you can superset lateral raises and rear delt flyes and superset skull crushers with bicep curls. This means that the exercises are done back to back without any rest. After each superset, rest for 2 minutes before you hit the next set.

Strive to get stronger and to apply progressive overload, meaning that when you use a weight that you can initially lift for 4-5 reps, try to get 7 reps over time. Once you hit the top of the rep range, increase the weight and work your way up again. The same applies for your accessory exercises, yet within the prescribed rep range.