Jason Statham’s Mechanic Resurrection Workout — Older and Wiser

It’s often been said that we spend the first half of our workout life learning how to push harder, and the second half of our workout life learning how to back off and do just enough.

Jason Statham’s workout program just grew up.

Statham has been known for crushing workouts at 110% like his character in Crank.

Recently though, Statham told Men’s Health UK about how he’s started listening to his body about workouts, working on mobility, and how he stopped doing one-rep-maxes.

Listening to His Body

Statham said that “staying injury free” is his main concern.  Essentially, he can’t afford to get injured and take a lot of time off from working out.

In the past he’d hit the weights and reps he was supposed to.  And more was always better.  Now he prides himself on being smarter.  He works on one thing until it’s pretty rocked, then he works on something else.

And how he feels day to day determines how hard and what he works on.

Statham told Men’s Health UK that he’s been reading a lot of stuff by  Kelly Starrett, who’s well known for Mobility WOD and that he loves Kelly’s book, Becoming a Supple Leopard.  A big priority for Statham lately has been taking care of his shoulders and hips.  He starts all of his workouts, daily, with mobility work.

Better Movement, Not Task Completion

From Becoming a Supple Leopard:

The third problem with our current thinking is that it continues to be based on a model that prioritizes task completion above everything else.

It’s a sort of one-or-zero, task-done-or-not, weight-lifted-or-not, distance-swam-or-not, mentality. This is like saying: “I deadlifted 500-pounds, but I herniated a disk,” or “I finished a marathon, but now I have plantar fasciitis and wore a hole in my knee.”

Imagine this sort of ethic spilling over into the other aspects of your life: “Hey, I made you some toast! But I burned down the house.”

—Kelly Starrett

Statham said that he used to hit one-rep-maxes with form going out the window.  Now he’s about getting the movements right.  He still works very, very hard, but not at the expense of form.

Jason Statham went from banging out whatever the day’s tasks were, to listening to his body, working on something to get stronger and better, and then stopping before form came apart.

Jason Statham feels like by working on his movement, and by listening to his body, he gets an extra 10-15% out of his workouts.

Mobility Work

Since Statham is taking most of his cues, mobility wise, from Kelly Starrett, lets take a look at what Kelly says about mobility in his book:

One of the coolest parts of Starrett’s approach to mobility is to focus all mobility work on movements you want to do: If you’re working on squat mobility, then your mobility work should be done in shapes you make when squatting.

And mobility work is likewise task oriented.  If you’re working on mobility for squatting, after you do your mobility work, then squatting should have more efficient motion and have better range of motion, that session.

Your mobility work should be about getting better at the starting position and ending position of each movement.

Starrett recommends working on three or less mobility positions each session, and spending 2 minutes with each mobilization.

Most of the mobility work in the Becoming a Supple Leopard is:

• Foam rolling
• Lacrosse ball work
• Banded distractions
• Voodoo Floss movement
• Contrast/relax stretching

Of Course, What His Workouts Actually Like

1. Mobility Work
2. Martial Arts and Boxing
3. Strength and Conditioning

His strength training is about gymnastics movements and olympic lifts.  He pieces out the olympic lifts and works on cleans, deadlifts, overhead squats.  He works on muscle ups instead of pull-ups.  It’s about movements that have require technique, skill, and strength.

His favorite workout tools:

1. Gymnastic Rings
2. Barbell
3. Kettlebells
4. Parallettes

The Takeaway

In our 20’s most of us can just smash workouts and go again.  As we get older, we find we need to put more focus into working smarter, being smart about going to the limit on workout intensity, and making sure we get our mobility work in.

15 minutes of mobility work each day can be all we need to move better, feel better, and get more out of our workouts.

Really cool to see Jason Statham is upgrading his workouts to keep in action hero shape for the long term.

Mechanic: Resurrection stars Jason Statham, Jessica Alba, Tommy Lee Jones, Natalie Burn and Michelle Yeoh, and will be released on August 26, 2016.

by Josh Hillis