Gerard Butler boasted a supremely lean and muscular physique in the film 300. The months of filming were also paired up with grueling workouts geared toward making the cast look like a team of Spartan warriors with physiques that would stand alone in terms of definition and muscular development. If you would like to get in comparable shape, it will take quite a bit of planning and dedication, but it is by no means out of the question if you remain focused, and don’t deviate from your goals.

First off, if you are new to working out, the regimen presented here may be too much for you to handle. Instead, work on setting smaller, reachable goals for yourself, and after a bit of time, you might be able to handle this workout. Until then, don’t do anything that would be too drastic because it might cause you to lose motivation and wind up in a position worse off than when you started. For those of you who have a little more experience with working out, read on.
dietAs always, nutrition will play a key role in determining your success or failure with changing the way your body looks. Put poor fuel in a car, and the car won’t run right. Put poor fuel in your body, and your body won’t run properly, nor will it look good, no matter how much exercise you do.

First, you should be eating every two to three hours. Going more than four hours without a meal will put your body into starvation mode. With this sort of grueling workout, it is very easy to shut your body’s metabolism off due to lack of consistent nutrients. That would make the whole workout a complete waste of time, and would cause you to burn muscle, rather than keep it on.

So before even starting, do a little nutritional research, and then take a trip to the grocery store to purchase enough food to get you through a few days at a time. Stock up on skinless chicken breast, turkey breast or lean ground turkey, fish and eggs for your proteins, whole-grain bread, multigrain pasta, oats, potato/sweet potato, and brown rice for your complex carbohydrates, and canola or olive oil, avocado, almonds, flaxseed, and natural peanut butter for your healthy fats. Also, feel free to eat as many green vegetables as you’d like, whenever you’d like, while making sure to keep your water intake high to flush out your kidneys, and remove excess water weight which could be masking your definition.

The goal of this particular nutritional plan should be to make sure you are getting protein with every meal to maintain lean body mass, while making sure that you are getting enough complex carbohydrates to fuel you through these strenuous workouts, all while not overdoing it so that you can still drop body fat.

The 300 Workout Circuit
In 300, Gerard Butler was very lean, but not overly developed. This probably means that instead of doing heavy sets with long rest periods, his workout was geared toward circuit training, and possibly more calisthenics than a lot of heavy weights at low reps. Stimulating muscles with lighter weights and doing more reps would still allow glycogen breakdown, without making the body “skinny-fat” from doing all cardio with no resistance training.

Perform all of these exercises in quick succession. At the end of the circuit, rest 30 to 60 seconds -- just long enough for you to lower your heart rate -- and then repeat the circuit again. Do this whole circuit three to five times in a row. By the end of it, you should feel like you just warded off an entire Persian army by yourself.

Exercise 1
Pull-ups -- Until failure (if you cannot do pull-ups, use the assisted pull-up machine)
Firstly, pull-ups are usually done using the pronated (overhand) grip, meaning that the palms of your hands point away from you, with your thumbs pointing toward each other. With this in mind, stand under the pull-up bar, grasp it and relax your shoulders. Keep your arms straight and simply hang off the bar while keeping your body vertical, trying not to rock back and forth.

Pull your chest up toward the bar by bending your arms. The motion should be smooth. Pause for a moment before you start lowering yourself back down. Slowly begin straightening your arms and lowering yourself toward your starting position. Pause once you've lowered yourself completely to a hanging position, then repeat the exercise.

Next >>