{"id":560514,"date":"2026-07-21T09:46:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T09:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/560514\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T09:46:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T09:46:17","slug":"the-bodyssey-how-matt-damon-got-in-greek-statue-shape-for-the-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/560514\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bodyssey: How Matt Damon Got in Greek-Statue Shape for \u2018The Odyssey\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Odysseus was sort of lucky, if you think about it. Tossed out, wandering at sea for a decade, he was forced to eat the now trendy Mediterranean diet<\/a>\u2014when he had food at all or wasn\u2019t being fed lotus flower from a lonely nymph!\u2014plus he got plenty of cardio by fighting off monsters or countless warriors. It all gave him a chiseled body worthy of being memorialized as Greek statuary for eons to come. Matt Damon, on the other hand, doesn\u2019t have it so easy. At 55, the Academy Award\u2013winning actor had to train hard and eat right to maintain the body of a hero worthy of a generation-spanning epic tale.<\/p>\n

Throughout Christopher Nolan\u2019s three-hour film adaptation of Homer\u2019s The Odyssey, Damon\u2019s world-weary fighter goes mostly sleeveless thanks to the costume design\u2019s anti-swords-and-sandals approach<\/a>. This means we\u2019re getting plenty of arm and shoulder action, and guys of any age would be impressed by Damon\u2019s lean, toned physique (even more so by his six-pack). It was Gabe Stump<\/a>, DPT, who helped the actor get into fighting shape (pun intended) for the role. Well, get into is maybe an overreach, as Dr. Stump notes that Damon had the wind in his sails and started from a great foundation; to get him ready for the grueling 91-day shoot, it was more about fine-tuning and modulation.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Matt Damon is Odysseus in THE ODYSSEY, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.Melinda Sue Gordon\/Universal Pictures<\/p>\n

In fact, the goal wasn\u2019t to just get jacked or ripped but to build a credible body that served the character. \u201c[Odysseus] is not this buff super soldier\u2014he\u2019s more of a tactician,\u201d said Dr. Stump, who has been working with Damon since 2022. A Marvel movie, this is not. \u201cHe\u2019s got this grizzly beard, and he looks really lean. You can see he\u2019s still strong. He\u2019s got good definition everywhere, but he\u2019s not packed on.\u201d Yes, even Odysseus\u2019s body was a topic broached with director Nolan, before being brought back to Dr. Stump. From there, a plan was put in place.<\/p>\n

In the five months leading up to the shoot, Dr. Stump and Damon had a goal of dropping 10 pounds of fat while retaining muscle, with the actor starting around 180 pounds and ending around 165 pounds. They worked together four to five days a week at a modest home gym in the actor\u2019s basement. \u201cYou\u2019d be shocked at how crappy it is,\u201d Dr. Stump said, noting it consists of just the essentials: dumbbells, a cable pull-down machine, and a barbell. Together, they focused intensely on strength training in a traditional upper-lower split\u2014using Mondays and Thursdays for upper body, Tuesdays and Fridays for legs, and Wednesdays for cardio and\/or metabolic work like incline walking in a weighted vest.<\/a> All of which allows them to hit each muscle group twice per week while giving time for adequate recovery.<\/p>\n

Overall, Dr. Stump programmed for 8 to 10 sets per muscle group per week and particularly focused on the chest. (He adds that the chest was a slightly harder muscle to build for the actor compared to his shoulders and arms.) Specifically, that meant bench presses in a horizontal and incline position, plus chest flies to target the muscle from all angles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Odysseus was sort of lucky, if you think about it. Tossed out, wandering at sea for a decade,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,1348,499,61,60,1184],"class_list":["post-560514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-exercise","tag-fitness","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}