Exercise Scientist Criticizes Henry Cavills Hollywood Workout BOSROX

An exercise scientist has criticized Henry Cavill’s Hollywood workout and it wasn’t great.

Who is this exercise scientist? Dr. Mike Israetel, PhD in Sports Physiology and co-founder of Renaissance Periodization, is a well-respected professor in the bodybuilding community. He doesn’t just talk about workouts and fitness tips, he often dives deep into health and nutrition.

As is used to him, he likes to tease and make jokes throughout the video. And this time he was taking a closer look at Henry Cavill’s workout. Which? Well, we have to say that he’s one we’ve covered here at BOSROX before.

Henry Cavills training The Witcher

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In a video from Mens Health and together with his strength trainer Dave Rienzi, Henry Cavill revealed a little bit about The Witcher’s training. As the video progressed, Mike Israetel criticized what he saw.

Exercise scientist criticizes Henry Cavills’ Hollywood workout

The first exercise criticized is the Romanian deadlift for tensing the glutes and hamstrings. While it’s a great exercise for this, Israetel says there are other movements like leg curls and lunges that could do just as much hypertrophy without straining the muscle so much that you can work out more often.

Source: Anastase Maragos on Unsplash

Next comes hyperextension, two exercises for the hamstrings. Some redundancy here, but whatever, says Israetel, complementing the fact that this motion will reduce your overall risk of injury if you’re a stunt performer.

Cavill says he uses a cable machine to train his obliques because he needs to use a real weighted sword during some fight scenes. Israetel says it’s best to use a dumbbell for this, to train progressively against gravity. Using a cable machine with this boggles the fucking imagination, she says.

There are other exercises that Israetel talks about but ultimately gives a score of 7 out of 10. The deduction points come from unnecessary complexity and sometimes just plain poor exercise choice with the whole static holding situation.

Watch the full video below.

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How many times a week should you exercise?

So how many times a week should you exercise? As expected, the answer is simply not a direct number. This is because people seek different results when they train and this alone can already differ the response for one person and another.

The more you train, the more your muscles grow. This is true, up to a point. However, there is something called junk volume training where once you reach a certain point, the more you lift the worse it becomes for hypertrophy.

So in the end, it’s all about training volume. If you have time to train 5, 6, or even 7 days a week, you can break your training into specific muscle groups chest and back one day, legs another day, and shoulders, arms, and abs the next day, take a day off, and repeat. If you can only train three times a week, with one rest day in between, then train your entire body during each session.

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However, if you can only train once a week, you will still get some results, but they will be far less than people who train three times a week according to several studies.

In one particular study, participants performed exactly the same amount of exercise. One group did it all in one giant session, while the other group did the moves spread over three days, the latter group saw an 8% increase in lean body mass while the 1x/week group gained L 1% of lean body mass.

If you hit the gym three times a week, but only train a different specific muscle group each day, you’re actually only training each muscle group once a week, which isn’t optimal for muscle growth.

Training more often, between 4 and 7 times a week, can provide additional recovery benefits when structured correctly. You can go to the gym every day, as long as you allow 48-72 hours of rest to recover from your last workout. This is where the brotherly mindset comes from, where you can focus a workout session entirely on one muscle and hit the gym the next day because you’re training a different part of your body that’s well-rested.

You can also try different ways to divide up your workout. It can be an upper body workout routine, a bro split, or a full body workout. It depends on how much time you have available, just make sure you train the same muscle group more than once a week to get results faster.

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So how many times a week should you exercise? At least 3, if you want to see faster results. It depends on how much time you have, and from there, you can choose what type of exercise routine works best for you.

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