Wrestling biopic Iron Claw released on HBO Max on Friday, May 10. As you might expect given his shredded physique in the film, Google searches for “Zac Efron Iron Claw workout” skyrocketed in the days that followed.
The already muscular actor packed on a further 15lb of brawn to play wrestler Kevin Von Erich. But for the vast majority of us, I believe Efron’s exploits shouldn’t be used as a yardstick.
“How hard was it to look like that? Were you miserable?” Efron was asked on The Kelly Clarkson Show. “A little bit,” he answers with a wry chuckle.
“[Obtaining Von Erich’s physique] was a singular focus for months. And your life goes out the window during prep,” he adds in an interview with Variety.
Most of us can’t commit this level of time or intensity to our training, nor should we sacrifice other important parts of our lives to do so. Even as someone who loves little more than lifting weights, I’ve found balancing exercise with socializing, family time and rest is the best way to keep my health and happiness at a premium.
Nevertheless, Efron’s dedication is impressive, and the resulting physique elevates the film - he’s playing a wrestler, who you'd expect to pour a lot of time into his training. Efron says his intense exercise regime also helped him access the mindset of the man he was portraying.
This regime involved “old-school bodybuilding and Olympic lifting”, as well as eating vast quantities of “pretty boring stuff” including “a lot of chicken, rice and veggies”. Beyond this he has been vague about the methods he used – perhaps purposefully, to prevent anyone emulating it after his negative experiences on the 2017 reboot of Baywatch.
Efron has been open about his overtraining and diuretic use in preparation for Baywatch, telling Men’s Health it led him to “develop insomnia” and “fall into a pretty bad depression”.
Through this, he tells Variety he “learned the hard way about not sacrificing real health for a look on camera” and “had the right questions to ask for [Iron Claw].”
I remember watching Baywatch, seeing Efron’s extremely lean physique and bookmarking it as a goal for my own training. I soon found out, as Efron himself says in his Men’s Health interview, “that’s not really attainable”.
This was reinforced by Chris Hemsworth’s long-time trainer Luke Zocchi when I spoke to him last year. Months before shooting movies like Thor, Zocchi knows the exact day crews will be capturing a shirt-off scene. How he prepares Hemsworth is comparable to “getting him ready for a bodybuilding show”.
“I will literally dehydrate Chris before the scene, the lighting is perfect, everything is [designed] for that moment, in that movie,” he explains. “Every time we do a shirt-off scene in a movie, Chris has probably eaten the best he could for a couple of weeks and we’ll literally go and get the worst, dirtiest food after it to celebrate.”
The fact that Thor’s peak physique isn’t even sustainable for the man who achieved it should tell you something: these looks aren’t made to last, and aspiring to them isn’t an achievable long-term goal.
This isn’t a new problem: the bodies shown in advertisements like Protein World’s controversial 2015 “Are you beach body ready” campaign and, perhaps most notably today, TikTok and Instagram reels, can also provide unrealistic expectations. For people just trying to move more and boost their fitness, it’s hard to see these images for what they are: professionals looking their best for a single moment in time.
This doesn’t mean you should avoid lifting weights, or any other form of exercise for that matter. In fact, I firmly believe it’s one of the best things you can do for your mental and physical health. You just need to look deeper than aesthetic goals, like matching Efron’s Iron Claw physique, to keep your motivation levels topped up.
I’m not a professional athlete or actor – far from it. If you’re reading this, it’s likely you aren’t either. The only purpose exercise needs to serve in our lives is to improve them.
Train for fitness, function, and fun. If you find a type of exercise you enjoy and it makes you feel good, keep at it. If it allows you to do things outside the gym like lift your child with ease, go on a walk with friends, or run for a bus without getting out of breath, all the better. And if it makes you miserable and you want to stop, that’s okay too.
