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, when he had food at all or wasn’t being fed lotus flower from a lonely nymph! Plus, 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’t have it so easy. At 55, the Academy Award-winning actor had to train hard and eat right to maintain the body of a hero worthy of a generation-spanning epic tale.
Throughout Christopher Nolan’s three-hour film adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, Damon’s world-weary fighter goes mostly sleeveless thanks to the costume design’s anti-swords-and-sandals approach. This means we’re getting plenty of arm and shoulder action, and guys of any age would be impressed by Damon’s lean, toned physique, even more so by his six-pack. It was Gabe Stump, 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.
Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
Related: 7 historical epics to watch before Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey
In fact, the goal wasn’t to just get jacked or ripped but to build a credible body that served the character. “[Odysseus] is not this buff super soldier, he’s more of a tactician,” said Dr. Stump, who has been working with Damon since 2022. A Marvel movie, this is not. “He’s got this grizzly beard, and he looks really lean. You can see he’s still strong. He’s got good definition everywhere, but he’s not packed on.” Yes, even Odysseus’s body was a topic broached with director Nolan before being brought back to Dr. Stump. From there, a plan was put in place.
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’s basement. “You’d be shocked at how crappy it is,” 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, using 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.
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All of which allows them to hit each muscle group twice per week while giving time for adequate recovery. 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.
Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
I took my learnings and set up a Matt Damon-esque task for myself: Could I get a body worthy of completing an Odyssey, or a Bodyssey?
I currently do HIIT training around three times a week, which is a pretty 50-50 mix of strength and cardio, but Dr. Stump stressed that strength training with progressive overload, i.e., adding weight as your muscles get stronger, was key, as is consistency and, crucially, allowing ample time for your body to recover, which includes plenty of rest.
Also, Damon benefits from having someone to prepare his meals in times like these. I regret to inform you, but you can’t out-train a bad diet.
I took the exercises he suggested and built myself an Odyssey-like program with an emphasis on standard functional movements: bicep curls, shoulder presses, chest from all angles, and squats and deadlifts on leg day. I got a Planet Fitness membership, only $15 a month, to add strength-only days to my workout, using an app to track weight, reps, and sets and trying to inch myself up gradually. As opposed to my beloved Barry’s HIIT class, taking time to focus on strength and push myself to failure, the point at which you cannot do even one more rep, was actually a shocking shift in my training. Not to brag, but I felt that I was in pretty good shape to start and already strong. I usually am the heaviest lifter in my group classes. But I would come away from these sessions sore. Like really sore. Some leg days I was wobbly while walking out of the gym.
I also found a big adjustment was mental, that I didn’t need to be dripping in sweat and out of breath to get a good workout. That 45 to 60 minutes of lifting is taxing in a different way.
Related: The one & done exercise that targets your entire body
I kept going back, hitting the same machines for a few weeks, and can I tell you something? People actually noticed! It took maybe only a week or two for friends to comment, in a totally polite way, that they thought my arms or chest looked stronger. Was this fortuitous timing that I have a beach vacation planned this week? Yes! Am I happy about all this? Yes! Will I continue to keep strength-only days as a core part of my routine? Also yes!
Reader, this is where I swoop in to deliver the bad news. Maybe not bad, but boring. There is no magic bullet to get you in Greek god shape in 14 days. Even in the age of GLP-1s, building muscle is not gonna happen through miracle or extreme measures. It’s about showing up consistently over time, lifting weights and progressively overloading, and resting to let the muscle rebuild itself. Talking to trainers like Dr. Stump is a reminder that despite all the buzzy TikTok influencers peddling “get fit by summer” programs or supplements, fitness is pretty straightforward and generally agreed upon by science. Burn more calories than you consume. Build muscle. Rest. Use good form to avoid injury, especially important as you age.
But most of all: Keep doing it, over and over and over. And over. And over once more. If you could work out really hard once or twice and get the body of your dreams, well, everyone would have that. That cold, hard truth is people with toned muscles did not get that way by accident. You’re usually looking at the result of years of boring old day-in, day-out work at play. In other words, it’s an Odyssey to get there.