GERARD BUTLER’S BATTLE WORK-OUT

Gerard Butler plays Beowulf, out to slay Grendel, and he talked about the mentality of his character. Keywords: Phantom Of The Opera, Therese Raquin.

It’s been a week since 300 opened and the Spartan film continues to win the box office battle. The worldwide total to date is 91 million and climbing. Gerard Butler can sit back and relax now that all the hard work is done but he’ll never forget the sacrifices he made to transform his body into a Spartan king.

Butler recalls how the film’s trainer made him suffer.

“The Spartan workout was the Mark Twight suicide workout. The thing was he concocted a whole bunch of torturous methods, you know, ‘how can I really make these guys suffer and then suffer more.’ We used a lot of kind of primitive ways of working out with kettle bells and running around with weights rather than pumping them. But you do, bang, bang, bang and do circuits and circuits and be competitive and just kind of build up points over days so that was intense. And then I would also train with my own guy. I would finish that and go to the gym and train with my own trainer and then train with all the stunt guys so it was often a six hour day work out for me.”

Butler usually goes away to some foreign locale to unwind from his projects. He went to Bali after completing Phantom of The Opera but for 300 his break required a lot more rest.

“I think I went to bed for a month, that’s where I went. And then I woke up and had some hot fudge sundaes. I did, I got really into my desserts again.”

For more on Mark Twight’s training regime you can visit gymjones.com.