We Trained Like Superheroes For 30 Days

(upbeat music) - So for the next month, I'm going to train like the actors we see in superhero movies do. - I always wanted to train like Chris Evans. Something about his shoulders makes him so unique, that Dorito-shaped shoulder-to-waist ratio. -My favorite superhero on screen is definitely Black Widow. Big butt, toned abs, most of it is the legs. - When I look at these movie characters like Captain America, Thor, Superman, Batman. You rarely see Asian characters who are powerful and trustworthy. I feel like there isn't enough representation of Asian superhero figures. - Then let's train with a professional personal trainer.

He has

trained

many celebrities. He gave Chris Evans the superhero body. And now he's playing Captain America and he looks absolutely amazing. - I, as a Korean, really want to see if I have what it takes to pull off the superhero look. - I think I'm ready to look super muscular. - Hi, I'm Steve Zim and I'm the owner of A Tighter U Gym in Culver City, California. I've written three best-selling fitness books and I'm going to train Kelsey and Evan like your favorite

superheroes

. - You personally

trained

Chris Evans. You showed me a before and after photo, and his shoulders widened like 10 inches.

I want that ratio of dorito. (laughs) That's what they call it! - We are going to make a five-day-a-week plan. You are going to work with me for at least an hour with weights and then, depending on our body fat situation, how much cardio. With Kelsey, Kelsey is starting in a very good place. But we are talking about

superheroes

. His shoulders are turned forward. You have to have everything upright and looking great. And then the other part is we have to make sure she's tied. I don't want one arm bigger than the other. We need to make everything symmetrical.

On the back of the leg, we want to separate the hamstring from the glute. Really important for a woman to have that. It almost looks like a bow and arrow from his back to her leg. Evan is a lot like Chris when he started. Slim, in good shape and if you look at him, he looks fantastic. Let's take it from looking great to looking unreal. I created a program for him to round his shoulders, so that we can actually separate his shoulders from his arms. That will give us what he calls the dorito look. - It was very interesting to see all these numbers that represent my body.

Like my sweater size and my pants size, that's literally all I know about my body size. - I found out that Evan only had to do 20 minutes of cardio and I had to do essentially double or triple the cardio that he had to do. Women have more body fat than men. This is how we function in our bodies. - We use two products. We take them before our workout and then after our workout. They are basically proteins. It helps improve muscle fiber and melatonin helps you fall asleep. The deeper we sleep, the more growth hormone is naturally created in our system, helping us stay leaner and stronger.

This is what we do. I look at what we started with, I break it down. And then I create the exercise program that will make them appear in the movie. - The first week was just horrible. I woke up before the sun came up. - I never get up at six in the morning for anything. It was uhhh, it was just uh God. - Many of your exercises are very different from what I have been doing. There is a lot of turning, squeezing and hugging. Like the first day of training, he gave me a five-pound dumbbell.

He told me to do this exercise where I bring my arm back and twist it. I have never felt so weak in my life. - It's not about the weight. I don't care how much you're lifting. The weight is so secondary. It's technique, it's isolation and it's about not swinging the weights. It's about bringing the weights. - I was very surprised by the number of glute exercises there are. I had never really done anything for my butt. - The first week he had a lot of pain. - And it hurt every day. (laughs) And it was a different body part in the rotations. - My abs were screaming for help.

I couldn't take off my shirt because my shoulders hurt so much. - I couldn't climb the stairs to get to my desk. - The first week is always a big shock because your body doesn't know what is going to happen. - Yes, this is going to be more difficult than I thought. - When is my cheat day? - When you tell me we have four or five weeks to get you in shape, we don't have time for a cheat day. - I had to change my diet too, and I think that was what I struggled with the most. -The nutrition program I've put these guys on feeds the muscle and starves the fat.

The idea is that you have to get enough calories to fuel the muscle with the work you are doing. Make sure you don't eat sugar or a lot of fat-feeding carbs because we don't have time to do that. We just want to destroy these guys. -My friends wanted to go out to eat pizza, or they wanted to go out to eat pasta, and those are all things that I cannot allow. And I hate being the demanding person. - I ate approximately 7,000 Greek yogurts and 3,000 chicken breasts and salmon. - Now that I'm used to this diet, every time I eat something I can taste how much sugar or sodium something has. -We asked if we could eat In and Out, and he said we could basically just have a burger and lettuce. - Which is fine with me because that's what I eat anyway. - It didn't seem right to me, so I went out and ate cheese.

Just like my body, I can taste dairy. That was really eye-opening for me. Suddenly I had to think about every ingredient that went into everything I ate. And I realized that I had never seriously thought about what I was consuming before. - It's eight in the morning on Thanksgiving Day, sigh. At least there's no traffic. Over the weeks, I saw changes in my body. My biceps were showing a little bit, my abs were showing. - I remember the first time I asked my friend to take a photo of me and I noticed all those muscles in my back that had never been there before.

It was really cool to have these random muscles. -And I never realized that abs were so hard to get, like one mistake or a detour would make your abs disappear. - Good. (laughs) Boom. - It is becoming easier to wake up in the morning, managing food is becoming easier. The trick might be to simply like it, keep going until it becomes a habit. It's a little addictive to exercise. I see how that's a thing now. (techno music) The day of the last weigh-in, I honestly wasn't looking forward to being weighed again. I didn't want to judge myself and think, oh, I could have done better.

But I think the way Steve did it was really great, as it was more about progress and being proud of the work we did. - In fact, I was very excited to discover how much I changed. Kelsey and Steve were making all these faces after seeing the measurements. I thought: is that a good thing or a bad thing? - We'll start with Kelsey. We lift your shoulders. By having that, you might gain a little bit of width, but what that allows us to do is have a nice reduction. The chest, I imagined this. You were 34, you're still 34. - Yes, boobs are still boobs. -And the thighs were uneven.

You are now completely symmetrical in your legs. Symmetry, we did it. Weight, 123. Nine pounds lighter. But that's not what's important, it's body fat. And that's what makes the difference in appearance. 20.3, 6.2 percent less. That's crazy. - My result was much better than I expected. I was very excited and it was a big change. It was really great to know that all this hard work really paid off. - It's okay, Evan. Dorito part number one, you're close. You went to 48.5. 4.5 inches wider at the top. - Wow. - The chest finished at 39.25. Now here's something interesting. His waist started at 30.

I didn't think he had anywhere to go down. An inch and a half fell. - It's a dorito! - He created the V. We thought maybe there wasn't that much body fat to lose, but apparently that was the case. So his legs are symmetrical, but here come the biceps. Now it is at 1:75 p.m. Body fat ended up at 6.6. - Yes. - So you're telling me that I lost weight, but I gained a lot of muscle here and there. - Yes. - You lost all the fat and then gained all the muscle. - That is very interesting. - This was just a one month thing.

I don't have six-pack abs or giant biceps yet, but I think I'm off to a pretty good start on becoming bigger and better, and that's the point. - It really makes you feel alive to feel your body and know it. I still think I'm going to use a lot of this in my daily life in a less intense aspect. - I have a lot, a lot of respect for him. All the Hollywood stars, all the personal trainers. Your clients who are working very hard to achieve the body of their dreams. - Going through what they go through, even a small fraction, is absolutely crazy.

And all the pressure because people who look this way are going to see you on that date, no matter what happens. I take my hat off to those people who have that drive. - They don't wake up like that. They put in a lot of effort, time and energy. There is no way to cheat in your life. - Forget those infomercials, go out and exercise hard. Do it the right way. - Hello Evan! Wait, he's very close. - I'm going to eat it. - Well. (creaking) I'm proud of you. (laughter)