Chris Evan’s Captain America Workout

When Chris Evans took over the role of Captain America, he had to become the perfect soldier, the protector of liberty and the first Avenger. Here’s his Captain America workout to preparing for Civil War.

If you want to look like “The First Avenger” you’re going to have to totally transform your body by focusing on size, speed, and agility. The transformation of actor Chris Evans in the first Cap movie showed how he bulked up from puny World War II soldier into the Captain America body we all know.

[Tweet”We’re going to show you how to make a similar transformation by looking at the Chris Evans weight training regimen, as well as by providing our own expertise.”]

Why the need to look at the Chris Evans bodybuilding techniques?

Simple, to get the Captain America body type, you’ll have to do the Captain America workout. As long as you stick to our plan, you’ll be saving America with the rest of the Avengers in no time.

Chris Evans Body & Bulking Up

Chris Evans body type looks a lot different before he takes the “super soldier serum” and becomes Captain America. The difference is really quite startling. He goes from looking like someone who has never even heard of a gym to looking like a guy who practically lives at one.

Based on what we know of the Chris Evans Captain America workout routine, it seems as though he really did live at the gym. Every day during his Captain America workout, Evans would hit a different body part. On Saturday, he would rest. He told Train magazine that, “on Sunday, if there was something that needed extra work or wasn’t feeling particularly fatigued, I’d hit that too.”

We never said it’d be easy to get through a Chris Evans bodybuilding workout. But, if you want his physique you’ll have to really grind it out in the gym five or six days per week.

You’ll need to start lifting heavy with a low rep range. By lifting heavier than you’re used to, you’ll start breaking down your muscles more. This will let you see faster results, as well as bigger gains. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t try to max out or go past your max.

Why?

This can be a quick way to get injured. Instead, you’ll want to lift whatever is heavy for you somewhere in the three to five rep range for four or five sets.

Captain America Workout Plans To Consider

The most common variation of this is a simple 5×5 plan. That is 5 sets of 5 reps. When lifting like this, it is vital that you’re not sacrificing form for weight.

Why?

Poor form at high weights will end up restricting your progress. Worse yet, you could get injured and that’ll set you back to square one.

It may be good to start with a 3×5 or even 3×3 routine for the first week or two to make sure that your body won’t get fatigued on the last few reps and that you’re not compromising your form just so that you can lift heavy.

Another key to gaining muscle is to keep your push and pull muscles balanced. The best way is to work your muscles in pairs of pulling and pushing muscles. For example, when you work out your chest, you should also work out your back.

Why?

The main reason is that opposite muscles are usually the secondary muscle groups in compound movements.

This is vital because working out your back can aid your bench press, allowing for you to lift heavier weight and ultimately see greater results. Balancing out your muscles by working your front and back will let your stabilizing muscles take on more of the work during your lifts and will help you increase your strength.

Keep in mind that this method is not just limited to your chest. It can be used throughout your body with exercises such as front and back squats, as well as biceps curls and triceps extensions. Working out the front and back parts of muscle groups will let you see a greater increase in not just your overall strength, but in your body size as well.

You could do legs, chest/back and arms split over three days and then repeat that again during the week for maximum gains.

What About Cardio?

Since you’ll be bulking and not really focusing on cardio, an interesting way to get in some endurance training and a slight cardio workout while still lifting weights is to use circuit training. Circuits are a staple of most dedicated gym goer’s routines, and can let you really exhaust your muscles in a small amount of time.

They are a great way to get in and out of the gym quickly while still blasting your muscle groups to fatigue.

Circuits generally involve doing two or more exercises in a row without resting. While this can lead to fatigue quickly, it will be a surefire way to break down multiple muscle groups in one workout period while also giving you some added endurance training.

If cardio is important to you and something you want to still use in your training, then you should. But, when you do it in your routine could impact your lifts. Typically, gym goers start their workout with cardio before heading over to the weight room.

Many people ask cardio before or after weights?

While there’s nothing wrong with this, cardio is a great warm up, it can be harmful to your lifts and your quest for muscle gain.

Why?

It will make you tired and not allow you to put as much into your lifts as you want to. This will prevent you from doing the reps and weights that you’re capable of before becoming fatigued.

The best solution is to tone down your cardio warm up, maybe walk instead of run, or better yet, save it for after you lift. You will still get all of the benefits, but it won’t impact your lifts. This is an easy solution for people who are lifting heavy but still want to include cardio such as running, jogging or rowing into their daily visit to the gym.

Are You Battle Ready?

To really be like Captain America in everyday life, it would probably help if you knew how to fight. We’re not suggesting that you go out and challenge somebody to a fight, just that you know the basics in case the Avengers call on you. Something fairly simple, like hitting a heavy bag, will let you tune your muscle memory so that throwing a punch becomes natural and easy for your body to perform.

If you’re not even sure how to do that, join a class or two at your gym that focus on boxing, kickboxing or some form of MMA. This will be a great opportunity to learn something new, as well as get an insane cardio routine that will definitely kick your ass.

There’s a reason most fighters you see on TV (besides Kimbo Slice) are shredded. Fighting and training for a fight are some of the most high-intensity workouts you can perform. A self-defense class like Krav Maga will teach you how to defend yourself from multiple enemies at once, probably the most important part of being Captain America.

Chris Evans Diet

The good news for you and your new diet is that you’re on a bulk! This means you won’t need to strictly eat salad and grilled chicken every day because you’re training for a Captain America body. By now you’ve probably heard the phrase “diet is everything” more frequently referenced when people are trying to shed some pounds for beach season. The same principle holds true for packing on muscle mass. The two most popular ways to go about gaining new muscle are variations of the same concept, bulking.

Some people swear by clean bulking while others prefer dirty bulking. Clean bulking is the safer route. Why? You’ll only be eating up to 500 calories over your maintenance diet threshold.

Dirty bulking can cause some gym goers to add too much extra fat, as they will be eating at least 500 calories more than their maintenance threshold. This means that they can consume as much as they want of whatever they want. The tricky part is finding a balance of eating everything in sight while keeping the fat off. If you’re not careful you’ll gain too much fat and begin losing your physique.

Typically, dirty bulking requires a serious cut at the end of a cycle. This means that you’ll need to go from eating whatever, whenever, to a strict low carb and high protein diet. This sudden change can wreak havoc on your metabolism and is much easier said than done. That being said, this is the quickest way to add extra weight. Like we said before, clean bulking is the safer route as you’ll only gradually add on mass, and will see a steady increase in your muscle growth.

Eating extra can be just as hard for many people as eating less. You’ll need to eat, eat and eat some more to smash your maintenance caloric threshold. Generally, whatever you need to maintain your current size will leave you full at the end of the day, so you’re going to need to eat well past the point where you feel full.

One of the better tricks for doing this is to change your meal pattern from the three large meals per day to six medium-sized meals per day.

What To Eat

You’ll want to choose meals that are high in protein so that you can constantly stimulate muscle growth. This will be vital if you are working out every day since your muscles will continuously be broken down and in need of repair. Foods such as lean beef, tuna, skinless chicken breasts and cottage cheese will provide you with lots of protein and enough variation that you won’t get sick of eating them.

Eating these proteins, along with a healthy dose of complex carbs will let you smash your caloric threshold while avoiding fats. If you’re on a clean bulk, these foods will be a staple of your diet.

Also, as long as you like spicy foods, hot sauce will become not just your favorite condiment, but also your best friend. It’ll help spice up all of your meals, with little to no added fat or calories.

If you’re on a dirty bulk, you can eat these foods too, or go eat as many Big Macs as you want. It doesn’t matter to your program. Remember, you’re after Chris Evans weight and doing the Captain America workout to get it. And, you’ll need fuel.

Supplement Your Diet And Exercise

Supplements by themselves won’t let you get large and in charge with a Chris Evans body. You can’t just take whey or BCAAs and sit on the couch and expect to be the next Mr. Olympia or have a Captain America body. That being said, supplements can do just what their name says and help supplement your workout and diet.

A simple whey protein will aid in repairing your muscles after a workout, granting them better recovery periods and allowing for better growth. While many people are familiar with whey and other types of protein like casein, not as many recognize the effects of BCAAs.

Branch chain amino acids can help protect muscles from breaking down and can increase muscle protein synthesis. This helps your muscles grow without deteriorating as much after a workout, meaning you’ll experience better recovery and, ideally, larger muscles.

Perhaps the most notorious and frightening supplement to many is creatine. For whatever reason, creatine seems to have a bad reputation among uninformed gym goers. But, the fact is that if you’re trying to add size and promote muscle growth, creatine works and it works very well.

The best Creatine helps your body produce energy and this lets you train harder, faster and stronger. Much like doing cardio after your workout, having more energy for your lifts will let you put up more weight and make it so that you’re not fatigued as easily. This will lead to a more in-depth workout and will let you break down your muscles more than normal.

In addition to more energy, creatine will let you pack on the pounds fast by absorbing water into your muscle cells. This process not only lets your muscles get swole but also increases protein synthesis, letting your muscles rebuild faster and transforming your physique into a Captain America body in no time at all.

Conclusion

If you want a Captain America body, you need to be prepared to do a Captain America workout. Chris Evans weight training is not for everyone. But, it is an integral component to his physique, so you’ll need to stick to the program to get these types of results. Doing so will ensure you’re ready to battle Iron Man.

Are you up for it?

By Mark Rubino