When I sat down with Matt Damon's personal trainer to talk about his workout routine for The Odyssey, I wasn't sure how much Gabe Stump, DPT, would reveal.
After all, people would (and do) pay a lot of money to look as lean and jacked as Damon does right now. So I was pleasantly surprised when Stump took me through the details of his workout plan for the actor, whom he's been working with for the last four years.
As a trainer, I'm very familiar with upper-body workouts. Like Damon, I try to get two upper sessions into my weekly routine. Armed with Stump's secrets, I tried Damon's workout plan for myself, and here's what happened.
What is the upper-body workout?
“In an ideal week...We’d do two upper and two lower days, then we’d have a cardio or metabolic day...If we couldn’t get five sessions in, we’d have two full-body days,” Stump reveals when I ask what a typical week looks like. Though, in Hollywood, that can change with a click of the fingers.
On the uppers, they'd hit exercises like the dumbbell bench (press), supported rows, pull-ups, pull-downs, horizontal and vertical press. Lastly, they'd round out with isolation work, like biceps, triceps, flys, reverse flys.
"In a day, we’d be looking at eight movements, mostly staying in that 8-12 range, although sometimes we’d go up to 15. Sometimes we’d go as low as 5-6 (reps) for strength work," Stump tells me.
When I ask how close to failure he had Damon lifting, he tells me they try to keep "two to three reps in reserve."
“I didn’t really want to burn him out on any given workout," he says. Which makes sense, as Stump shares recovery as a key factor, ensuring Damon could get the most from each workout rather than start from a place of fatigue.
After all, you essentially break down muscle fibers through exercise and build them up bigger and stronger through ample rest and protein.
"In a day, we’d be looking at eight movements, mostly staying in that 8-12 range, although sometimes we’d go up to 15. Sometimes we’d go as low as 5-6 (reps) for strength work."
Stump also explains they had pretty basic equipment in Damon's home gym to work with, and on location, it could be even less. For that reason, he stuck to equipment like a trap bar, heavy dumbbells and even some calisthenics.
Finally, I ask what piece of actionable advice any gym-goer should take forward when training toward a fitness goal, and I'm told that something should be repeatable and consistent, meaning 20 minutes three times a week is better than 60 minutes every two weeks. He also encourages those efforts to be close to failure so that you're lifting with maybe two or three reps in reserve.
With this advice in mind, here's an upper-body workout I created for hypertrophy (muscle growth) based on his strength program:
- Superset 1: Dumbbell bench press & diamond push-ups
- Superset 2: Overhead dumbbell press & inverted row
- Superset 3: Supported pull-ups & cable pull-downs
- Superset 4: Biceps curls & triceps dips
- 8-12 reps, 3-4 sets, twice per week.
Here's what happened when I tried it
I've managed to hit this workout twice since programming it based on Stump's workout routine for Damon in the five-month lead-up to filming. I programmed to lift weights close to failure, which I already know how to do for each exercise because I'm familiar with all of them, and I kept rest short between 30 and 60 seconds.
Supersetting is an effective and efficient way to program if you're short on time, as you perform the two exercises back-to-back without rest; this allowed me to work my muscles harder without necessarily needing to lift heavier, as I kept my muscles under tension for longer.
If you're unsure what weight you should be lifting, I highly recommend testing your one-rep max, which is the most you can lift for an exercise for one rep. From here, you can work out what weights you'd need to lift based on a 70-80% (roughly) effort, meaning you have a couple of reps left in reserve, but no more.
It takes some trial and error, but it's well worth doing if you really want to push yourself.
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This was a really nice, well-rounded upper-body resistance program that uses basic compound exercises, working toward failure without overdoing it on the reps or sets. For most people, you probably wouldn't need as many exercises as eight; six would be enough. And given I went heavy with my weights, I stuck with eight reps.
I liked rounding out with the isolation work on my biceps and triceps. If you're short on time, you could remove a superset or the isolation work, given the routine naturally works the biceps during pulling movements and triceps during pushing movements. That said, if you've seen Damon's arms in the movie, you might decide to stick with those curls and dips.
In one session, you're hitting your back and biceps, chest and triceps, while the standing and inverted work will also make your core work hard to stabilize your body during movement.
I came out of this workout sweaty, fully worked and feeling it all over my upper body, with no stone left unturned (or no muscle left untouched, in this case). And yes, those DOMS were full on for the next few days.
I'm a big fan of simple routines, progressively overloaded and functional (pushing and pulling), without being too fancy or overcomplicated. If you fancy giving it a try, let us know how you get on in the comments.
Of course, just a few sessions won't be making a physical difference to my body just yet, but let's see how that changes in a few months!
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