Former pro boxer Terry Claybon trained him

Apr 23, 2015 15:02 GMT  ·  By
Jake Gyllenhaal as boxing champ Billy “The Great” Hope in the upcoming release “Southpaw”
2 photos
   Jake Gyllenhaal as boxing champ Billy “The Great” Hope in the upcoming release “Southpaw”

The Academy showed Jake Gyllenhaal no love for his beautiful and terrifying performance in last year’s “Nightcrawler,” a movie that also taxed him physically because it saw him as his thinnest and most emaciated-looking.

In his next outing, “Southpaw,” Jake is more beefed up than he’s ever been, and that includes his appearance in “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.” He gained back all the weight he lost for “Nightcrawler” and then added about 15 pounds (6.8 kg) of pure muscle, in addition to learning to move like a boxer.

Trainer Terry Claybon speaks

All this required very hard work and sustained effort on Jake’s part. While other actors would have phoned it in, he wanted to be convincing on the big screen, as Junior Middleweight Champion Billy “The Great” Hope.

He trained with former professional boxer Terry Claybon, Claybon himself reveals in a new interview with Yahoo!, with preparations starting about 6 months before the actual production.

This ensured that he was in the best shape possible and with the proper training before shooting. Gyllenhaal previously said that he trained hard and shot all the fight scenes first, so he could relax in his routine afterwards.

Still, his commitment is impressive: every day, he worked out for 6 hours, Claybon says, 3 hours of boxing in the morning and then 3 in the evening, of “strengthening, conditioning and cardio.”

The grueling routine took its toll on Jake’s personal life, director Antoine Fuqua revealed in an older interview; because he basically lived at the gym, he broke up with his then-girlfriend, as they were no longer spending any time together.

Claybon says that, by the end of the training, Gyllenhaal wasn’t only able to move like a boxer would in the ring, but he was also able to do 2,000 situps, 1,000 in the morning and another thousand in the evening.

“Gradually we built up, day-by-day, to 2,000. It takes time to do that,” the trainer says. “I pushed Jake to the limit.”

Gyllenhaal was also put on a special diet and trained with real boxers, who were then also used in the film. Everything we see on the big screen in terms of fight scenes is real, except for the fist-to-face contact moment, Claybon stresses.

An amazing achievement but not without risks

In going from one extreme to another, Gyllenhaal is treading in the footsteps of another actor who doesn’t hesitate in going the extra mile to be as convincing as possible in front of a camera, Christian Bale.

Bale has long admitted that his transition from “The Machinist” to “Batman Begins,” similar to Gyllenhaal with these 2 films, took a serious toll on his health and that he never truly recovered from it. Of course, that didn’t exactly stop him from doing it later: see “The Fighter” and “American Hustle” for example.

Experts warn that these transformations, as much as the public and the Academy loves them, are dangerous because they put the body under considerable stress. If the transformations occurred over longer periods of time instead of just a few months, they would be less risky.

Here’s Jake’s. “Southpaw” will be out this summer, and also stars Rachel McAdams, Curtis Jackson (50 Cent), Forest Whitaker and Rita Ora.

Jake Gyllenhaal in Southpaw (2 Images)

Jake Gyllenhaal as boxing champ Billy “The Great” Hope in the upcoming release “Southpaw”
Jake Gyllenhaal trained for 6 months before production, for 6 hours daily
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