Personal Trainer, Logan Hood
If you thought that women were the only ones to obsess over dieting; think again! Logan Hood is a personal trainer to the stars, including Jason Statham and the cast of 300, and knows how to make a man look good. But it comes at a price.
High-intensity work outs, including long-distance mountain runs, and a very strict diet enable Logan and his clients to achieve their muscly physiques. So if you want your man to get into shape, read on for some of Logan’s tried and tested methods, including “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it†and “If you’ve had the same habits for twenty years, it’s not going to work out very well for youâ€.
You worked with Jason Statham on his new film, Death Race, what did his training involve?
We had to get his diet straightened out first; that was probably the hardest thing that we had to accomplish. Then we did a lot of circuit training and some weight lifting, and in the first ten weeks we completed a run in the mountains once a week. So it was a pretty broad work-out, and we used every tool that we had.
So what food was Jason encouraged to eat, and what was he advised to avoid?
Well, he wasn’t so much advised, but demanded to avoid all refined carbohydrates. He wasn’t allowed to eat bread, pasta, rice or cereals, and his diet mainly involved eggs, meat, poultry, fish, vegetables and fruits. He also ate a little bit of dairy in the form of yoghurt, so he was eating natural foods really, and nothing packaged or processed. There was no alcohol or sugar, because we had to reduce his calorie in-take in the early stages.
It must be hard to tell people not to drink alcohol?
Yeah, it’s a ritualistic thing for some people. But my advice is to consider alcohol as a high-calorie carbohydrate, so drinking beer is usually not as good as having vodka on the rocks or a glass of red wine. You’re drinking for the alcohol, so there’s no reason to bulk it up with a lot of sugar.
What does your own personal work-out involve?
Well I try to practice what I preach, so it’s pretty much the same as the clients’. I don’t ask people to train in a fashion that I don’t train in myself, simply because I need to know that it’s working. So it mainly involves interval work, weight lifting and circuit training. The hard core stuff!
What factors must you consider when planning a work-out for someone, and for Jason Statham in particular?
Well if you’re constantly asking someone to do things that they’re not interested in or are excited about, they’re not going to stick to it. So I need to figure out what people like to do, but I also need to be aware of their weaknesses and exploit that.
People usually only like to train in the areas that they’re already strong in, which is what ultimately holds them back. A good work-out will focus on people’s weaknesses, but still enable them to enjoy it.
In Jason’s case, I could get him to do a large volume of work, as long as I kept changing the sets and repetitions. He would prefer to do twice as much work, as long as there was a lot of variety. Figuring out those tricks with each client is important.
What do you think about protein supplements?
I think that 90% of them are garbage! I always read ingredients, and like alcohol, if it’s got too many ingredients in it, it’s probably not good for you. A good protein supplement should probably have no more than five ingredients, but the good ones typically just have protein and glutamine.
I think that they work, but a lot of them have fake sugars in them, and I think that people should be trying to get protein out of their diets rather than protein shakes and bars.
Do you think that protein supplements should be as easily accessible to buy as they are?
I don’t necessarily think that they need to be regulated, but the food industry is out there to make money, and health isn’t necessarily a primary concern for them. So trainers and dieticians need to make people aware of how poorly they’re looking after themselves. It’s not because they’re lazy; it’s just that they lack the knowledge.
Have you got any insider tips in terms of exercise and diets, so that people can avoid using protein supplements?
The number one thing that I would say is to simply stop eating refined carbohydrates. It’s really simple to say, but is extremely hard to do once people realise what exactly refined carbohydrates are, and how prevalent they are.
If people can do that simple thing, within a week they would loose a couple of pounds. They’ll feel better, sleep better, and their work-outs will be better.
Alongside that, I would advise people to eat real food; if it doesn’t grow, or doesn’t have eyes, then don’t eat it! Also, if it has anything in it that you can’t pronounce, don’t eat it.
You also worked on the film 300, and the actors have a much bigger frame than Jason Statham does on Death Race. How do exercise regimes differ to achieve these different looks?
Jason was lean because his diet was so disciplined and he was training on a regular basis for an extended period of time. To achieve the buff look, you would have to focus a lot more on weight lifting than the interval and circuit work, and you’d certainly have to eat more.
Jason was on a calorie-restricted diet; he was on 2100 calories a day at one point, which is a little amount of food. If you’re trying to put on a lot of muscle, you’d need to eat a lot more, but that isn’t really the healthiest thing to do. It’s a body-building thing, and I have a lot of respect for the art of body-building, but I don’t necessarily think that the training is healthy for an average person.
Is it possible for the same person to progress from one look to another?
Is it possible, but the changes don’t happen quickly, and you need to really focus on changing the diet and method of training, and stick to that for quite some time. Typically, the physical changes happen a lot more slowly than people are willing to tolerate, so they don’t stick with it.
What’s the best way to encourage people to stick to their exercise regimes and diets then?
It’s different for every person, but actors and actresses are paid to look a certain a way, and that’s their motivation.
Personally, I like to encourage people to think about performance goals rather than cosmetic goals. So instead of thinking ‘I want a lot of muscle’, people should think ‘I want to be able to lift more weights’. It should be an objective goal rather than a subjective perception. And when people get to the point where they can lift more weights, the chances are that they’ll have more muscle too.
So after a good work-out, what’s the best recovery food?
I’m a firm believer in a recovery drink called Recover Right, which is 160 calories. 75% of that is carbohydrates, and 25% is protein, so it has a specific ratio and there’s no sugar in it. And then within an hour of people finishing their work-out, they should have a good, healthy meal containing carbohydrates, fats and proteins.
Finally, as metabolic rate slows down with age, are there any ways to keep it fired up all day long?
Having high intensity work-outs usually helps metabolic rate, but with every year that you get older, you need to pay attention to how your diet is affecting your body. At thirty, you can’t eat the same things that you ate when you were twenty, so a re-evaluation of habits is important. If you’ve had the same habits for twenty years, it’s not going to work out very well for you.
Death Race is released on DVD on 2 February
By Kay Taylor
If you thought that women were the only ones to obsess over dieting; think again! Logan Hood is a personal trainer to the stars, including Jason Statham and the cast of 300, and knows how to make a man look good. But it comes at a price.
High-intensity work outs, including long-distance mountain runs, and a very strict diet enable Logan and his clients to achieve their muscly physiques. So if you want your man to get into shape, read on for some of Logan’s tried and tested methods, including “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it†and “If you’ve had the same habits for twenty years, it’s not going to work out very well for youâ€.
You worked with Jason Statham on his new film, Death Race, what did his training involve?
We had to get his diet straightened out first; that was probably the hardest thing that we had to accomplish. Then we did a lot of circuit training and some weight lifting, and in the first ten weeks we completed a run in the mountains once a week. So it was a pretty broad work-out, and we used every tool that we had.
So what food was Jason encouraged to eat, and what was he advised to avoid?
Well, he wasn’t so much advised, but demanded to avoid all refined carbohydrates. He wasn’t allowed to eat bread, pasta, rice or cereals, and his diet mainly involved eggs, meat, poultry, fish, vegetables and fruits. He also ate a little bit of dairy in the form of yoghurt, so he was eating natural foods really, and nothing packaged or processed. There was no alcohol or sugar, because we had to reduce his calorie in-take in the early stages.
It must be hard to tell people not to drink alcohol?
Yeah, it’s a ritualistic thing for some people. But my advice is to consider alcohol as a high-calorie carbohydrate, so drinking beer is usually not as good as having vodka on the rocks or a glass of red wine. You’re drinking for the alcohol, so there’s no reason to bulk it up with a lot of sugar.
What does your own personal work-out involve?
Well I try to practice what I preach, so it’s pretty much the same as the clients’. I don’t ask people to train in a fashion that I don’t train in myself, simply because I need to know that it’s working. So it mainly involves interval work, weight lifting and circuit training. The hard core stuff!
What factors must you consider when planning a work-out for someone, and for Jason Statham in particular?
Well if you’re constantly asking someone to do things that they’re not interested in or are excited about, they’re not going to stick to it. So I need to figure out what people like to do, but I also need to be aware of their weaknesses and exploit that.
People usually only like to train in the areas that they’re already strong in, which is what ultimately holds them back. A good work-out will focus on people’s weaknesses, but still enable them to enjoy it.
In Jason’s case, I could get him to do a large volume of work, as long as I kept changing the sets and repetitions. He would prefer to do twice as much work, as long as there was a lot of variety. Figuring out those tricks with each client is important.
What do you think about protein supplements?
I think that 90% of them are garbage! I always read ingredients, and like alcohol, if it’s got too many ingredients in it, it’s probably not good for you. A good protein supplement should probably have no more than five ingredients, but the good ones typically just have protein and glutamine.
I think that they work, but a lot of them have fake sugars in them, and I think that people should be trying to get protein out of their diets rather than protein shakes and bars.
Do you think that protein supplements should be as easily accessible to buy as they are?
I don’t necessarily think that they need to be regulated, but the food industry is out there to make money, and health isn’t necessarily a primary concern for them. So trainers and dieticians need to make people aware of how poorly they’re looking after themselves. It’s not because they’re lazy; it’s just that they lack the knowledge.