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Oct 27

UFC Legend and Expendables Star Randy Couture Shared His Workout and Diet – menshealth.com

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Randy Couture has been a badass for decadesin fact, hes been four different kinds of badass. Hes been an Army sergeant, an All-American (and Olympic alternate) wrestler at Oklahoma State, a UFC champion and Hall of Famer, and now, in his fourth act, hes been an onscreen action hero for a decade since last leaving the octagon.

Now 58, Couture isnt slowing down: Hes filming The Expendables 4, his fourth go-round in the franchise as Toll Road, a munitions expert in the Stallone-led crew of action standouts. And hes still found time to open (and train at) his own chain of gyms, Xtreme Couture. He talked to Men's Health about training there, how his workouts have evolved over the years, and introducing costar Terry Crews to intermittent fasting.

(This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.)

I mean, it's been amazing. I got this job because of him, because he's such a fan of boxing and MMA. When he called me to his office to talk about the first project, he could have easily left me by the wayside. They originally were pulling me in to step up and play [the character] Hale Caesar, which was written for Wesley Snipes, but couldn't play the role at that time. And then they ended up getting Terry Crews. So he could have easily just left me out of it.

Then he wrote [my character,] Toll Road, in after the discussion in his office. So I felt honored that he thought enough of me to keep me in the script and in the movie. And obviously, its like having a golden goose: It just keeps laying eggs! Its amazing.

Weve still got a lot to shoot. I was in London for three weeks, and then had a couple weeks off, so I came home. I go back over the first of November to finish a whole bunch of action sequences and stuff like that down in Bulgaria and Greece.

Every time I get one of these scripts when I read it, Im like, I dont how how the hell were going to do half of this stuff. Its unbelievable movie magic, but we always figure out how to make it look real and make it look right. Its kind of like getting the band back togetherits such a great group of guys to work with, and fun to be around. And weve added a few new faces to this one: Scott Waugh, the director, and 50 Cent, Megan Fox, Andy Garcia, and Tony Jaa, whos an amazing martial artist.

[For my character,] Im always supposed to have been the explosives expert, and none of the other three films did we blow anything up. So finally, in the fourth one, Im getting to use some of those skills. I dont want to give anything away, but were definitely going to be blowing some shit up in this one.

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The biggest thing is learning to train smart. I was certainly guilty, in my [college] wrestling days of overtraining, not accounting for rest and recovery, especially going into competitions. I was one of those big guys that the coaches used as an examplethat's what hard work looks like. I didn't realize until I made that transition from wrestling to fighting that there were so many times in my wrestling career that I was woefully overtrained. And because fighting was a 25-minute match versus a six-minute wrestling match, I had to obviously temper what I was doing and how I was doing it to fit that circumstance.

That was when I realized Id been way overtraining, going into the NCAA finals or the Olympic trials and then not achieving or not getting the result that I wanted or that I thought I was capable of. And in examining some of that, I realized that I was doing too much, and not giving my body time to recover. I think people fail to realize that rest time is just as important as the hard work that you're putting in on the mat or in the gym.

I think it's even more pertinent now because Im 58 years old. I have to train smarter! I can't do a lot of the stuff I did before. The body just doesn't seem to recover as quickly. Im in great shape for 58 years old, but I'm certainly nowhere near wrestling or fight shape. That was a whole different animal.

But you cant walk onto a set with a guy like Stallone eating bonbons and watching TV all the time. He kind of sets the bar there at 75, and hes still ripped and still in amazing shape. The camera doesnt lie. You gotta put your best foot forward and try and be Toll Road, a mercenary that is used to combat and physicality and all those things.

So I do a lot more bodyweight exercises, a lot more micro circuits. Im not throwing any heavy weights around. Its counterproductive.

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Yesterday, I did two small micro circuits in the gym. Each was five stations, done four times. I do 10 reps at each exercise, except for the abs, where I do 15. Adjust your weight so its not easy to get through the 10 reps for four sets. Over time, youre obviously trying to continually push that weight up so Im pushing more weight in the same amount of time.

The first circuit was Russian Twists, then flip the Bosu ball over and do pushups on the Bosu. Then pull-ups, squats in the squat rack, and then some pommel curls [preacher curls].

The second circuit was flat bench press, skull crushers, farmers walk with lunges, a body saw, and a bent-over row. I dont rest between sets. I try to get through it as quickly as I can, because now Im engaging not just my anaerobic capacity, but my aerobic capacity.

Then [after the circuits] I get on the treadmill with a 40-pound vest. I walk at no elevation for five minutes to warm up. Then I crank up the elevation to five degrees and walk for five minutes. Then five minutes at 6 degrees, five minutes at 7 degrees, and you go all the way upsome treadmills will go all the way up to 15, but some stop at 12 degrees. Just do five minutes at each increment going up; it ends up being about a 30-minute walk.

I still do that circuit sometimes. The nice thing is that nowadays, every single hotel has a small gym in it, and usually theyve got just about everything you need for thata barbell or dumbbells. And you can bang out that circuit in 30-40 minutes.

[Ed: The moves are a bent-over row, military press, upright row, spilt squat, good morning, back squat with push press, and Romanian deadlift.] Its 8 reps of each [including 8 on each leg for the split squat] for six rounds, resting 60 seconds between rounds.

When I was retiring from fighting back in 2011, I could eat pretty much whatever I wanted. I was training five or six days per week, twice a day most days, so I could get away with whatever and it wasnt going to affect me. I always still tried to put good fuel and good food in the body, in the vehicle youre trying to drive.

But when I retired, I knew I wasn't going to be able to train the way I was used to training when I was fighting and wrestling, and I had to change my eating habits. So I started doing intermittent fasting, and I was kind of doing it by accidentjust by being so busy. And then I started actually reading and studying some of the stuff that was being put out about it, and and it really suited me very well. So I picked my six-hour window to eatmine's usually from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Ill have a light lunch, you know, a late lunch, and then Ill eat a regular dinner before 8 o'clock and then I'm done eating solid food until the next day at 2 o'clock. And that eliminates some calories from my week.

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Yeah. I usually train in the morning sometime between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. because that's kind of the dead period at the gym. So I can go into Xtreme Couture [his Las Vegas gym]. and Ive almost got the place to myself over those kind of that lunch hours. The morning classes are really packed, the afternoon and evening classes are really packed, and then there's kind of a light load for the gym in the middle of the day.

He picked it up from me when we were working on Expendables 2. We were at the Kempinski [hotel] in Bulgaria, and he was one of the guys Id see in the gym almost every day. Wed work a 12-hour shift, and get off set and go straight to the hotel, straight to the gymget your workout in, get your meal in, and youre going to bed. The next day, wash, repeat, do the same thing again. And he was one of the guys I would see in the hotel gym almost every day.

I was watching him throw some huge weights around, I mean, hes just in phenomenal shape. And we just started talking about what we were doingthe treadmill stuff I was talking about with a weight vest. We started sharing some ideas, and I was talking about the intermittent fasting, and he said, Oh man, Im going to try that, and I think thats where he picked it up.

I feel very fortunate that both times I made a significant transition like thatlike when I left the Army in 1988, I was already signed to go to Oklahoma State and start my college career, so I didnt have to worry about, Well, who am I? And when I walked away from fighting in 2011, I had already been acting for quite a long time, so why not now focus all my energy and my competitive spirit there?

You know, you walk away from that uniformwhether it was my board shorts and my fight gloves, or that football uniform or that hockey uniform. When you walk away from the those BDUs, that Army uniformthat's a huge piece of who you are. And in a lot of ways, you're doing amazing things, things that very few people on the planet can actually do. That makes you a very special person, and a lot of people want to say, especially with our vets, Oh, that guy's messed up. Hes been in combat. Hes broken.

That guys not broken. You couldnt do half the shit hes done. First of all, youre not broke. Wear those scars with pride, the ones on the inside and the ones on the outside. Ballplayers struggle with the same transition. And this is what [MVP founders] Nate Boyer and Jay Glazer recognized.

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I felt blessed that my transitions were pretty smooth, there wasn't any struggle. A lot of guys struggle in in finding who they are now without all that support, without those guys, that locker room, that platoon, that squad. And so, trying to give them that locker room back, that squad back. We all speak that same language. We all joined, took that oath, or were in that elite status for a long long time. So finding that new purpose, figuring out who you are, how you could go back and be of service again or get involved.

And a lot of times that's just connecting with guys that speak the same language and understand where you're at. I know whatever you're struggling with, there's somebody in that circle at an MVP meeting that has been there and that got through it and can tell you how he got through it.

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UFC Legend and Expendables Star Randy Couture Shared His Workout and Diet - menshealth.com

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