Daniel Craig in Casino Royale.
When Daniel Craig emerged from the sea in his first James Bond film Casino Royale, the actor we knew had been replaced by a lean, muscular killing machine who made the previous 007s look touchingly vulnerable by comparison.
Now Simon Waterson, the celebrity personal trainer and former marine who built the uber-Bond, has created a fitness programme for the rest of us. The 10-Week Intelligent Fitness Challenge is a time-efficient, easy-to-follow plan that can transform any of us into physical specimens fit to defend the world from evil – and look better on the beach.
Waterson – who also trained Tom Hiddleston, Chris Pratt and Star Wars’ John Boyega – says we can all fulfil our physical potential. The key is not to attempt to be Daniel Craig or Tom Hiddleston in terms of fitness, but to use them as motivating role models.
“You cannot be another person because you haven’t got their genetics, but you might be able to look or feel or perform even better than they can,” he says. “Use them as inspiring stories to be the best version of yourself.”
The core of Waterson’s approach is to mix short bursts of cardiovascular exercise with resistance training, in a ratio of five strength moves to two minutes of cardio. The method, he says, which is based on his training in the military, is hugely versatile.
“All my clients come to me with the same challenge: when they travel, they may not have access to the same facilities they have at home. But you can apply the 5:2 approach anywhere.”
Age is no barrier to developing an assassin-worthy body, he says. When Daniel Craig filmed Casino Royal he was in his thirties, and now at 55 he still looks good.
“The principal difference between a young client and a more mature athlete is recovery time,” says Waterson. “But the principles stay the same – the process just takes a little bit longer. It’s never over.”
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When Waterson works with an actor, his philosophy is to create a body that enables them to play the part with total conviction - making Craig look like a powerful killer, for example.
His advice for the rest of us is to focus on daily activity and not obsess over aesthetics. “When I was in the military no one cared about how you looked, it was all about what you were capable of,” he says. “Get up, do something at whatever level and the appearance will take care of itself.”
He suggests avoiding very specific numerical goals for weight loss or muscle gain and instead dedicating yourself to his programme knowing that 10 weeks is sufficient time to create a change. (But bear in mind that it took Craig about six months to achieve his Casino Royale look.)
Resistance training builds muscle and Waterson’s system incorporates strength exercises from the start. The goal is to prompt the body to react and adapt – by lifting barbells and dumbbells as well as your own body weight, you will trigger strength and muscle growth.
“Craig’s workouts were a blend of powerlifting moves – lifting an extremely heavy weight that builds a foundation of muscle – and compound exercises that require a greater degree of athleticism,” says Waterson. “The strength sessions were twice a week, the other days were more agility-focused.”
Waterson recommends using a wide variety of exercises for each body part to ensure your system is always shocked into making adaptations: changing the placement of your hands and the angle of your body, and using a variety of surfaces. These twists on a theme ensure you are always adapting to fresh muscle-creating stimulation.
Building strength without risking injury is central to Waterson’s programme. He assesses every exercise for the reward it brings against the risk it entails. His work with actors on a tight shooting schedule has taught him valuable lessons about avoiding injury. He didn’t, for example, use many of the classic powerlifting exercises when working with Craig.
“I’m always conscious of the risk-to-reward ratio,” he says. “So rather than a massive deadlift (pulling a barbell up from the floor), it might be more beneficial to have a bent-over, single-arm row (one arm on a bench, the other pulling a weight up to the side of the body). Getting a huge weight up and down off the floor is quite a difficult thing to do and quite a difficult thing to teach. It’s a very high-risk exercise.”
The programme never asks the average person to take on technically demanding and possibly damaging exercises.
While a traditional bodybuilding workout would focus on very specific areas – biceps or shoulders, for example – and isolate those muscles with exercises, Craig used compound moves such as squats, which engage most of the body in a single movement. This ensured he was able to run, jump and fight while still building a muscular look.
“In the opening scene of Casino Royale he had to jump over a sandpit, on a roof, through a car, then sprint, climb over a fence and up a crane… so I tried to mimic the scene with an assault course.”
For most of us, being able to bound up the stairs or racing to catch our train is the closest we’ll get to vaulting away from a psychopath. Try incorporating the jumping and leaping moves Waterson suggests into his 10-week challenge workouts. Embracing these plyometric, dynamic exercises builds athleticism in even the most sedentary people.
It’s possible to make huge advances in your strength and general fitness using nothing more than your own body. Weights have their benefits but do not underestimate the power of simply battling gravity, Waterson says.
“You’re never going to beat bodyweight exercises – do varied push-ups: very wide, then very narrow ones, mountain climber push-ups (pushing alternating knees across the body as you perform each up and down movement), and Spiderman push-ups (lifting alternate knees high to the shoulder as you push yourself up and down – resembling the superhero scaling a wall). That would cover triceps, chest, core and shoulders.”
He suggests the same approach with pull-ups and squats: “Try a number of grips: wide grip, shoulder-width grip, underarm grip. And similarly with squats: have a weight on the front, weight on the back.”
Having built strength prior to shooting, the job for Craig was then to strip away some body fat and reveal the muscle beneath. If you want to look lean and uncover your new muscle development, you can follow a similar calorie-deficit approach.
Craig limited alcohol to one night a week and was allowed a day for less healthy foods when in Bond mode. He was given a diet of protein, carbohydrates and healthy fats. From Monday to Friday each day was themed – red meat, white meat, fish, vegan… and the weekends were carbohydrate-loading: pasta, rice, and so on.
In his challenge, Waterson recommends we all try to theme our food days in the same way. Craig also tried adopting a “rainbow” menu – including as much colour variety as possible in the vegetables on our plates – and cut back on refined carbohydrates.
“You have to manage your own expectations,” says Waterson. “I get actors asking to look like other actors they’ve seen. I didn’t personally look like Daniel Craig, fitness-wise, after all our training – I have different genetics. I’d have had to work a lot harder.”
On the day of the famous swimming scene, Waterson knew he and Craig had done something very special.
“I said, ‘Don’t show anyone, keep your T-shirt on, let’s not let anyone know how this could work out’. I remember walking on the beach with him on the first day and everyone’s mouths just falling open. He worked incredibly hard for that shot. It changed everyone’s outlook on Daniel playing the character – they knew this guy was properly serious.”
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