Chris Hemsworth’s trainer Luke Zocchi details the intense workouts he created to prep the actor for his “cheeky” semi-nude moment — and how you, too, can get muscles like the God of Thunder
It is no secret that Chris Hemsworth puts a lot of effort into his physique, especially when it comes to playing Thor.
In fact, for his latest onscreen appearance as the God of Thunder in Thor: Love and Thunder, the actor’s trainer and longtime friend Luke Zocchi said the actor is “the biggest Chris has ever been,” thanks to an extended amount of prep time along with an intense 12-week training regimen.
“Because of COVID and everything that was going on, we trained for that movie for like a year,” says Zocchi. It was all about bulking up and getting big.”
For anyone looking for their own superhero challenge, Hemsworth and Zocchi have launched Centr Power, a 12-week program that is modeled after the actor’s own regimen, via Hemsworth’s health and wellness app, Centr.
“Normally for the Marvel movies and Thor, we have a three-month prep,” says Zocchi, who is a childhood friend of Hemsworth’s. “And we slowly, progressively increase the training . That’s where the Centr Power program comes in. That advanced program is literally what I do with Chris [in preparation] for Thor — that’s how this whole program came about,” he says.
“The other cool thing with Centr Power is we’ve put a science-backed macronutrient calculator in there that gives you the most educated guess on where you should start with how many calories you should eat for building muscle. That’s a new addition to the app as well.”
Along with Hemsworth’s strength and size in Love and Thunder, the actor also decided to show off more skin than he ever has as Thor in a half-naked scene that shows Hemsworth sans clothing from the back. Inquiring minds had to know what Zocchi and the actor did to prep for that particularly “cheeky” scene.
“A lot of people ask me how much Chris dead lifts and how much he squats [with regard to glute workouts],” says Zocchi. “We actually don’t go super heavy with those movements, but we did do a lot of hip thrusts. We did a lot of work with different kinds of leg movers, like weighted curtsy lunges where you’re isolating the glutes.”
“We did a lot more stuff like split squats and we got a hip thrust machine where you literally sit in it. It’s called a Booty Builder, actually, and you sit in it and your legs sit higher, they’ve got a patent on the movement which is really cool. And it really activates the glutes. And you can load up pretty heavy [with weight] and you’re doing it in a safe manner. You’re not loading up the spine as much.”
Zocchi says he and Hemsworth were mostly focused on bulking up the actor’s upper body, with just one day of training dedicated to his lower body, “because you usually don’t really see Thor’s legs, but you do see a lot of him in this one,” the trainer adds with a laugh.
In addition to the intense training, Hemsworth ate roughly 4,500 calories a day to maintain his size during filming.
“He’d eat a 450-calorie meal every two hours,” says Zocchi. “I set a stopwatch and ran him food every two hours. And then when he was sick of food, normally after two or three meals, then I’m running him protein shakes. And then we’d start again, two or three meals, protein shake. And we try for 10 meals a day for the shoot. He just gets so sick of eating.”
It’s a challenge for Hemsworth. “It’s the food that he finds really hard [to keep up with] because he’s naturally a tall, skinnier kind of guy and to put that mass on, he just needs to get the calories in, which is crazy.”
“And then when we go back to normal life, he does a lot of intermittent fasting,” continues Zocchi. “So he doesn’t eat until like 12:00 p.m. and the amount of calories that he hasn’t eaten in that window, he naturally drops down to eating, I don’t even think he counts, but it has to be like two and a half to 3000. He’s dropping at least 1000 calories per day.”
Zocchi, who met Hemsworth in elementary school and lives “literally a five-minute drive from Chris” in their native Australia, also trains the actor’s wife Elsa Pataky who recently bulked up for her action-heavy role in the film Interceptor.
“I would train her exactly the same as Chris,” he says. “Literally every kind of movement and lift. I had her dead lifting. Chris didn’t do a heap of dead lifting, but I had her do a heavy dead lifts. I trained her basically very similar to Chris. And she actually did the Centr Power program as well. So basically how she looks [onscreen] is literally from just doing Centr Power.”
He continues: “Elsa is almost easier to train than Chris. Because whatever I’d tell her to do, she’ll just do it. Like, ‘Oh yeah. Cool.’ I’ll say, ‘You’re doing this, this and this.’ And it’s always just like, ‘Yep. All right.’ ”
“Sometimes Chris is like, ‘Nah, I’m not doing that.’ And then I just go, ‘Well, you don’t have to do it, but I’ll do it.’ And this is where I get Chris — I’ve said it before, the drill sergeant [approach] doesn’t work, like yelling at him. I just literally have to do it. And he’s got that competitive nature. And then he’ll obviously do more than me or beat me. I basically have to do it and then he does it.”
The Centr Power program can be done at the gym or at home using the Centr app, which offers a 7-day free trial, after which it’s $29/month or $10/month with a year-long subscription.
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