Many men aspire to create a Wolverine (the guy from X-Men) or a Terminator-type body in the gym – wide shoulders, perfectly formed abs, lean muscle and strong, well defined biceps. It’s fair to say that being Wolverine for the day would be every man’s dream.
But how can you build such a dominant physique and what should your bicep workout look like? It’s not surprising that actors in such a role are normally assigned with a personal trainer to help them formulate the necessary training plan. But you can benefit from putting your own plan together by considering the first key element: introducing regular change and variation whilst maintaining a solid foundation of simple, well established techniques.
Dedication can result in the perfect body but this does not happen over night. For a role like Wolverine, it is not only about getting rock hard muscle but lean muscle. This can be achieved through frequent physical training and a tailored eating plan.
Lesson 1 for every Wolverine wannabee: To make sure you fit your training in around your busy schedule, aim for a morning gym workout. Studies have shown that those who leave training to the afternoon achieve much less intensity than those who work out in the morning.
Lesson 2: Building solid muscle can mean daily bicep workout sessions of up to 90 minutes, including warm-up and cardio sessions. Can you be this dedicated to the cause?
Lesson 3: Aim to begin every weights session with a ten minute cardio warm up. At the end of the session, finish with a 20 minute cardio routine including a swim or run.
The recommended bicep workout for solid, lean muscle should be based on big compound lifts with some twists. Within your own training plan, try to focus on some fundamental training principles targeting your core body. These core body moves can include deadlifts, presses and squats. As we mentioned earlier, the emphasis should be on using simple, well established bodybuilding techniques but include some variation as you go along. For example you can try to switch the angles on the bench, change the grip, tweak the tempo of the routine or weight and also change things like the time and frequency of breaks/rest. By mixing things up like this, the same workout can be carried out ten times over or more.
Lesson 4 on getting ripped like Wolverine: the importance of switching between muscle groups from one session to the next. For example, one day you might like to focus on the back and biceps, the next day you can switch to the triceps and chest – and so on.
Lesson 5: Use controlled overload in your bodybuilding workout. For example, perform one muscle exercise and push yourself to reach muscle failure by the end of the set, then immediately switch to a different, isolated exercise. So you might go from a barbell curl to a flye. It would be wise to have a partner help you push out those final moves on the second set as you reach burn out.
Lesson 6: Progressive overload – It is important to set some targets and increase the weight as you begin to progress. A usual step here is keeping a log of your progress so that your training plan can be tweaked as necessary.
Final lesson: At no point should you be over-training or missing out on sensible sleep! Aim for no less than 7 hours a night. It is important to use Jackman as inspiration rather than thinking you can create a body ripped like Wolverine overnight. But with the right bicep workout and by considering the lessons highlighted above, you may begin to see some results.