We love hearing from you about the different body breakdowns you want us to feature. In recent weeks, we’ve given you workouts for how to get a body like insane athletes such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Russell Westbrook and movie studs like the guys from Black Panther. You have been asking for this next body breakdown for a long time. We heard you; so today we’re doing a body breakdown for the lean, athletic and shredded Brad Pitt. We’re going to focus on the physique he had in the movies Fight Club and Snatch. In those movies specifically, Brad had the kind of body that looks good and feels good as well. Let’s get to it!

Getting Started

Don’t worry if you’re not as lean as Brad Pitt was when he started or if you feel like you have more of a fitness journey ahead of you than he did. That’s ok; we are going to take you to that physique no matter where you are right now.

Let’s talk about where Brad Pitt was at in terms of fitness when he started his training regimen for these two movies. When Brad started his training, he was 5’11” tall and weighed around 167 pounds. In Fight Club he got down to about 166 pounds and in Snatch he had a little more weight on his body and was closer to 8% body fat and looked a little bulkier.

This guy was naturally an ectomorph, in other words he was a skinny guy who had a hard time gaining weight. Even though he did lose body fat during his preparation for these movie roles, he was mainly focusing on gaining dense muscle. This type of muscle gave him that ninja look where he has a low body fat percentage and shredded muscles that are really defined.

Brad Pitt Workout

Brad was working out 5-6 days a week and was doing a very consistent routine. He split up his workout to focus on a singular body part for each day of the week. For the most part, he focused on doing a higher number of reps and a lower number of sets. For the following body breakdown workout, Brad did 3 sets of 15 repetitions for each exercise and you should do the same.

Monday: Chest day

Brad warmed up for his workout by doing push-ups. We recommend doing 3 sets of 25 repetitions each. Don’t worry if you can’t do normal push-ups. You can do push-ups from your knees at the beginning, just make sure to use proper form and push yourself to do all 25.

Workout:

• Bench press

• Incline bench press

• Chest flys

Tuesday: Back Day

Warm up with 3 sets of pull-ups and do 5 repetitions for each set.If you can’t do pull-ups, it’s all good; do negative pull-ups instead. Gradually start to work your way up to normal pull-ups as you start getting stronger.

Workout:

• Seated Rows

• Lat Pullldown

• T-Bar Rows

Wednesday: Shoulder Day

Brad had very sculpted deltoids thanks to the work he put in on shoulder days in particular. Start by warming up with either push up or pull-ups.

Workout:

• Military Press

• Arnold Press

• Side Raises

• Front Raises

Thursday: Biceps and Triceps

• Curl machine or just normal dumbbell bicep curls

• EZ bar curls

• Hammer curls

• Tricep extensions

Friday: Cardio day

Brad would do 65-75% of all out effort on his cardio days. You want to push yourself into the mid to mid-high intensity for your cardio days. If you don’t like doing treadmill work, you don’t have to get on a treadmill ever again for the rest of your life. Instead, jump rope is a great cardio tool that we find really fun and helps to build up endurance and shed body fat. You can replace Brad’s treadmill cardio with jump rope for this workout day. If you need some HIIT jump rope cardio workouts, check out our free 4-week challenge.

Saturdays and Sundays

Like we mentioned, Brad was a hard gainer, meaning he really had a hard time putting on weight. For him to gain that muscle mass and not lose weight, he decided not to work out on Saturdays and Sundays. Instead he focused on recovery, getting a lot of sleep and eating the right foods.

If you’re someone who is just like Brad Pitt, then you can do exactly what he did on the weekends. We’re not all hard gainers or naturally skinny like Brad is so if you know you have a little more body fat than Brad, you should incorporate more jump rope exercises on the weekends. Do at least two days of high intensity interval training workouts each week.

Brad Pitt’s Nutrition Regimen

We know it would be awesome if we could give you a list of exactly what Brad Pitt ate so you could get the same body he has. We can’t do that, but what we can do is suggest some foods that he talked about eating in past interviews. . If you look up what Brad Pitt was eating during his training, you’ll find a lot of the normal foods bodybuilders eat. He was eating things like brown rice, chicken, fish, vegetables, protein shakes, Greek yogurt and cottage cheese. You can definitely eat those foods, but you don’t have to be limited to ONLY those foods. The reason we say this is because if you feel restricted to only those foods, especially if you don’t like them, you may decide to not even try to transform your body like he did. We really believe that your nutrition can be an enjoyable process.

Meal Frequency

Now let’s talk a little bit about the timing of your eating. Since he was a hard gainer, Brad Pitt was eating as much as possible and basically had some food every 2-3 hours. So he was eating a lot of food and his regimen looked like this:

• Breakfast

• Mid-morning snack

• Lunch

• Pre-workout snack

• Post workout protein shake

• Dinner

• Mid-evening snack

A lot of the research out there shows that it doesn’t really matter how often you eat, but the most important thing is that you are maintaining an anabolic state throughout the day. You want to make sure you get the right amount of calories and macronutrients you need every day. Our Nutrition Calculator can help you calculate these numbers and then you can use an app like My Fitness Pal to make sure you hit those numbers consistently. If you want a little more information on how this all works, check out our tutorial that goes in depth teaching you how to get the body you want by eating the right amount of calories and macronutrients.

Intermittent Fasting

We know a lot of you live busy lives and don’t necessarily have the time or desire to eat 6 or 7 times per day. So instead, you can do something even better, and it’s called intermittent fasting which is basically just timing your eating into two windows – a fed state and an unfed state. We eat two giant meals, lunch and dinner, every day and skip breakfast and snacks throughout the day. We fast for 16 hours, starting at about 8pm and ending the next day at noon. Then, we feast within an 8-hour window typically from noon to about 8pm. In the morning, instead of eating anything, we just consume branch chain amino acids. These BCAA allow you to maintain an anabolic state so you don’t have to worry about losing any muscle. Instead, you can continue to burn body fat, maintain the muscle you already have and push your first meal to the middle of the day.

Brad Pitt Workout Recap:

*3 sets of 15 reps for every single exercise

Day 1 – Chest:

• Bench press

• Incline bench press

• Chest flys

Day 2 – Back:

• Seated Rows

• Lat Pullldown

• T-Bar Rows

Day 3 – Shoulders:

• Military Press

• Arnold Press

• Side Raises

• Front Raises

Day 4 – Biceps and Triceps

• Curl machine or just normal dumbbell bicep curls

• EZ bar curls

• Hammer curls

• Tricep extensions

Day 5 – Cardio

• Running, biking, hinkin, HIIT jump rope or similar activity

Day 6/7 – Rest

• Take the weekend as rest days if you are naturally lean.

• If not, add in at least one more day of HIIT jump rope workouts or another form of cardio.

Brad Pitt Nutrition Recap:

• Eat the right amount of food and macronutrients

• Use intermittent fasting to speed up your fat loss and make mealtimes easier

• Eat healthy foods, but make sure to also eat foods you enjoy

Do The Thing

If you eat the right amount of food and commit yourself to this workout program, you’ll get the body you want. Set aside 30 minutes, 5 times per week and push yourself when you’re doing these workouts. If you put the time and effort in, you’ll transform your body and are capable of doing anything you want. Get lean and live an awesome life.

We’ll leave you with some words of advice from the lean, athletic man himself: “People do it everyday. They talk to themselves. They see themselves as they’d like to be.  They don’t have the courage you have to just run with it. The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after we have lost everything that we are free to do anything.”

#dothething