Tom Hardy is an English actor, screenwriter and producer who has become famous over the recent years for bulking up and slimming down to fit his roles in films such as Bronson where he portrays a very good street fighter, the dark knight rises where he portrays Batman’s arch nemesis Bane, a super villain and in warrior where he portrays a mixed martial arts fighter and ex-soldier.

At 5’9 he has weighed as heavy as 230 pounds and as light as 155 pounds. Tom hardy’s transformations are mind blowing and unlike other actors who put on fake skins on them to appear muscular, Hardy literally builds it all. The 38 years old British born hank credits his now amazing physique to a strict diet and a demanding training routine that he followed strictly assisted with his close friend, trainer and ex-marine cop Patrick Monroe aka P-Nut.

The proud father of two, a son from a previous relationship and another child with his current wife, the beautiful Charlotte Riley who enjoys parenthood is known to have been battling alcoholism and drug use in his mid to early 20’s and as of now has learnt from his past mistakes and is moving on quite well from how we see his body transformations over the years. “I used to have one foot in the future and one foot in the past worrying about what didn’t happen. Since I have started being in the present, the work has come. My focus now is being the best I can be.” He was quoted saying of his past life.

For his role as Tommy Conlon in Warrior, Hardy had to portray an ex-soldier who returns home to become a mixed martial arts fighter and in this case he had to bulk up a lot and put on some serious muscles chiefly in his monster traps to get the perfect look of a true brawler. He followed the routine during the films pre-production period where he gained around 28 pounds increasing his weight to 196 pounds in less than 3 months burgeoning his cardiovascular fitness to match that of a mixed martial arts fighter and got far leaner than before and he used this physique to portray Bane a lethal and notorious prisoner in his latest film the dark knight rises.

If you desire to unleash that “warrior” in you too, you can get it done with a workout and MMA training resembling that of Tom Hardy. If you watched warrior and loved his muscles between the pecs and lats, abs or his massive traps, you should be aware that they are not that hard to achieve.

All that is required is a usual bodybuilder workout and some martial arts training that you can carry out in a very short time. In Hardy’s case, he had very less time to prepare and he is living proof that anything is possible. He says “I had about 6 weeks prior to filming where we trained to gain weight.” His workout routine consisted of traditional weight training and martial arts training.

The Tom Hardy Workout

Tom Hardy followed a strict workout training routine that incorporates a technique known as “signaling” with his trainer P-Nut. P-Nut argues that this technique involves sending signals as much as possible to the muscles that you want to develop by spreading the work load over the course of the day.

For example, instead of doing about 100 press ups each morning to failure, you can divide the number to 10 every hour. Through this, you are doing the same amount of work spread over a longer period of time and your body adapts in the direction you point it in, “if you do things often enough, your body adapts for the task you set it, and you evolve” says P-Nut.

P-Nut would have Hardy train 4 times a day in the morning, lunch, a few hours before dinner and before bed and took up to 20 minutes per controlled session. He would perform the routines slowly and called for the use of light weights as well as relying on body weight and resistance where appropriate to increase its efficiency. P-Nut suggests that when starting out this kind of routine, begin with at least two sessions a day one in the morning and the other in the evening.

If you want to gain muscles quickly, it is important that you work out a little but often. If you want to try out this workout, you should consume a lot of proteins otherwise without proteins, you will starve your muscles and would not be able to rebuild up as faster as you want and therefore you might not get the results that you want.

We understand that a strong fighter includes in his daily training and workout a lot of running for cardio and rope jumping. To get that Tommy Conlon physique, Hardy’s daily workout and MMA training regimen included training at the fight club from 7am or 8am to 3pm or 4pm which included the following activities:

• Two hours of lifting weights.
• Two hours doing choreography.

“We arrived at the gym at 7am. We would have breakfast before we got there. Peanut butter on toast. Then we got in the joint, had or protein shakes and a gallon of water. Then stretching, warming up – skipping. Then we would go into kick boxing for two hours, two hours of pad work for elbows and knees, kicks and Muay thai. Then a couple of hours of Jiu Jitsu. And then choreography. Then we would do an evening session: a couple of hours in the gym. Variations of weights, hitting a different muscle group every day.” Tom Hardy on his training for warrior. He would do all this for six and sometimes all seven days of the week.

Exercises

The daily workout routines Hardy did were as follows:

• Push-ups (press-ups).
• Dips.
• Shoulder flies.
• The bridge.
• Abdominal workout.

Push-ups (Press-ups)

This included different variations of push-ups on each set so as to hit all the major upper muscles. The first set of ten press-ups is done with hands under shoulders, a second set with the forefingers and thumb forming a diamond shape, the third shape with the hands wider than the shoulder length and lastly, while resting on clenched fists.

All these sound easy but can be quite challenging to do them but you should try them out to get that perfect Tommy Conlon strong punch.

Dips

This kind of exercise requires you to sit on the ground with your legs straight in front of you while your back is against a chair or a bench. This is can easily be done at home. Position your hands behind you on the seat of the chair such that your fingers points towards your body.

The bridges

Hardy did a similar rendition of this kind of exercise in preparation for Bronson. It is a difficult kind of exercise but if training for MMA competitions, its results are quite impressive as it builds back flexibility, core strength and an even powerful neck. This exercise can be done in two ways: the regular bridge exercise requires you to move your hips upwards towards the ceiling while the yoga bridge exercise requires you to extend the rib cage closer to your front body.

When doing the bridges, keep in mind that in the first step, all your weight should go through your hands and toes and not on the head. After the first step, hold your hands close to the head and slowly let your bodyweight on your head and toes. From this step, if the bridge position is easy on your head and you can stay that way for a while, let your training partner hand you a small barbell which you can do some bench press reps with.

Only a few of these exercises requires the use of equipment or machines other than just a bench or chair and some dumbbells therefore you can easily employ these simple Tom Hardy workout techniques on your own at home or even outdoors.

Diet plan and supplements

Before starting his fitness routine, Tom Hardy’s diet plan was terrible starting by a sandwich for breakfast and drinking too much coffee which is not a good habit. To add on to it, he would eat a big meal before going to bed which is not good for metabolism. His trainer P-Nut is a strict man when it comes to diet and he helped Hardy change his unhealthy diet plan so that he could gain those muscles.

To get in good shape, Hardy was required to have a good and balanced diet with proteins being given the special priority since its essential in muscle building. When preparing for his role in warrior, Hardy followed a carb depletion diet which are diets that restrict consumption of either all dietary carbohydrates or certain kinds of carbohydrates. This kind of diet depletes the body stores of glucose after which the body starts to burn fat. It also provides the body with all the required nutrients to build up muscles.

His daily diet consisted of five to six meals composed of mainly protein, a lot of chicken, rice and vegetables and little of anything else and in total, he would consume up to 4000 calories a day. He also drank a lot of protein shakes and milk to add on the muscles. Hardy has described he also consumed a considerable amount of junk food such as pizza, coca cola and Haagen-dazs occasionally as he had to add weight in any way possible even though this is not recommended.

“Drink as much milk as you can. Get yourself some whole milk and drink glasses in between meals, as many as you can. Drink your calories whenever possible, it’s so much easier. Make shakes with ice-cream, milk, peanut butter. Eat pizza as often as you can. Just make sure you are always eating something or drinking milk.” He was quoted saying.

Through this diet, Hardy added about 15 pounds in just 7 weeks and he developed the svelte look of a kick boxer, but in the rise of the dark knight, his diet was a little different as he was not required to look as lean as in warrior. While it is an effective diet, it can become very difficult to keep up with the diet while following such a torturous workout routine.

One can confuse Tom Hardy for a bodybuilder but he is simply an actor with the same motivation of a bodybuilder. Building muscles is not simple at all. First of all it requires the guts and power but more importantly, motivation and dedication towards exercise is very essential for your body to grow. Hardy is a great actor who has a great dedication to physical role and should be highly respected.

Watch this video from Youtube with Tom Hardy about his preparations for Warrior film, special workout secrets.