Hollywood’s most authentic action hero is still being taught a few lessons – by the world’s smartest trainers, by his hero Sylvester Stallone and, most importantly, by his own body

The best thing about talking to Jason Statham is that it’s exactly what you’d hope talking to Jason Statham would be like. The voice that makes gravel sound like sand. The almost poetically geezerish turn of phrase that led director Guy Richie, nearly two decades ago, to cast the former street trader in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, then promote him to the lead in Snatch. The only unexpected bonus is the chuckle.

Every detail of how you do an exercise is key to how you progress

This partly explains Statham’s enormous popularity, and audiences, whether cinemagoers or Men’s Health readers, want more of him, because what they see is what they get. Unlike the dodgy watches he used to flog, Statham is legit. Kosher. Proper.

Of course, a large part of this enduring appeal is down to the spectacular athleticism that has seen Statham triple-pike into the best seat at Hollywood’s action-hero table. Impressively knowledgeable and enthusiastic about his training, Statham can teach even professional fitness writers a thing or two.

Still Learning as He Goes

For the benefit of the reader, can you explain how we came to be photographing you in New Zealand? Sure. I was over there shooting a film for Warner Bros about a big shark [Meg]. I’m very excited about that. And the good fortune was I was able to get a great house there and set up a nice gym.

It looks a lot fancier than the set-up you had last time we spoke [for the June 2015 issue of MH]. Back then you’d been filming Mechanic: Resurrection in Thailand and training with barbells made out of old car axles… Ha! Yeah, this was a little bit more streamlined. I had a framework put together in the backyard, this sort of bar workout area where I could mount some gymnastic rings. I’ve been using rings as part of my training now for the past 12 months. If you can find a place to string them up, there’s so much benefit that can be had in terms of shoulder mobility and real, usable strength. I really like them because you’re always trying to learn a new skill, which makes things more interesting rather than just repeat, repeat, repeat. It’s such a difficult piece of apparatus to master. I’m getting better, but I need a bit more time in the saddle before I can show you pictures of the iron cross…

What kind of moves have you nailed? Well, luckily I have a bit of a gymnastic background from back in the day. So I can get an L-sit, I can get a handstand. But the things that are very beneficial are the muscle-ups and the rotations through the shoulder: hanging upside down, moving around and almost creating a kind of flow. You’re developing strength, but you’re also developing mobility at the same time. A lot of people throw around heavy weights but they don’t take the shoulder joint through its full range of motion, which is a key problem for most guys. That kind of training might be great for that one position, but the shoulder is a complex joint that requires a fair amount of maintenance. The rings are perfect for that.

Are you still training yourself? Yeah. Over the last couple of years I’ve started to look really closely at doing things correctly. When you’re on your own, you can do a lot of examination of your movements and how good or bad they are. There’s so much information on the internet now. You can acquire the knowledge to figure out exactly how to do the big lifts and other stuff correctly while avoiding injury. It’s been good. I’m really enjoying the studying and putting it into practice.

And you’re still training by feel rather than following a programme? It’s funny, I did so many years of set things: cardio this day, weights this day… Some people need structure, and to write everything down. For me, I’ve been there and done that, so I’m happy to make up my workouts depending on how I feel each day. I’ve learnt that the body is like an adaptation machine: whatever you throw at it, it finds a way to do that particular thing and you never make any more gains from that. Doing my own thing in the gym each day gives me variety. I’m always trying new things. And it’s a way for me to figure out how to fix those old ailments that I’ve gathered over the course of my silly career.

Plus you don’t have the peer pressure of the gym to put another plate on the bar and do yourself a mischief… There are benefits to both. Some of my better days were when someone was hanging over me and really pushing me. But that’s what I was trying to do at that time, and I can push myself in different areas now. A trainer sometimes comes with their own ideas and it’s hard for them to understand how I got all my fucking injury problems. By training yourself, you can be really responsive to how your body feels and adjust accordingly. It suits me at the moment. But who knows what I’ll be doing next year? Training’s part of my life and it’s always changing in some way.

Is there anything that you always do? I always train in the morning. I’ve always been a morning person, back from my days as a diver. When you train in the morning, you can never make the excuse that you ran out of time, or this meeting came up, or you couldn’t get back from work. Those things don’t apply. If training’s first on your list of things to do, it never gets compromised.

Do you have any guiding principles for how you put a session together? I tend to combine some kind of Olympic lift with gymnastic training. And it depends on the acuteness of that training. If I do heavy squats or deadlifts on the Monday, I’m not going to do anything like that again until Thursday or Friday. Recovery is a key issue that I’ve always overlooked. In my earlier years it was all about quantity and making sure you got tonnes done, even if you felt tired: just get in there and get it done.