The 300 Workout: Can You Handle It?

The 300 Workout: For Super Fat loss
At the start of the movie 300, King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) heads out to lead the Battle of Thermopylae. In it, 300 Spartans fought to their death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army in 480 B.C.

How did the 300 get six-pack abs, whittled waist, and those rock-hard thighs? Could I ever look that buff and toned?

The Secret's Out

The now not-so-secret training regimen, discussed all over the Internet in messages complete with how-to videos, is called the 300 workout. It's the brainchild of Mark Twight, a self-taught exercise guru and former world-class mountain climber who apparently still clings to the "no pain, no gain" mantra.

At Gym Jones, his invitation-only, no-frills gym in downtown Salt Lake City, where he says there's no air conditioning, no mirrors, and no place comfortable to sit, his mission was to whip the 300 actors and stuntmen into warrior-fighting shape, most of them in eight to 10 weeks. Butler trained for 12 weeks. Twight warns that his Spartan workout is not for the faint-hearted, nor the out-of-shape.

Traditional exercise physiologists who took a look at the 300 workout for WebMD agree with him, and they caution that Twight is not certified as a trainer by conventional organizations.

The 300 Workout

The workout gets its name from the total number of repetitions. But those 300 reps weren't done daily, as some media accounts report, Twight says. Rather, the 300 workout was the finale of months of training, a kind of graduation test, after actors had weight lifted and trained with tools such as medicine balls and Kettlebells (cast iron weights with handles).
It's daunting, and includes these weight-training moves:

• 25 pull-ups
• 50 deadlifts at 135 pounds
• 50 push-ups
• 50 box jumps with a 24-inch box
• 50 "floor wipers" (a core and shoulders exercise at 135 pounds)
• 50 "clean and press" at 36 pounds (a weight-lifting exercise)
• 25 more pull-ups -- for a total of 300 reps

There's no rest between movements and the score is based on total time, Twight says.

The Regimen

The regimen was varied based on the person’s starting point, Twight says.  "Some days guys did high-intensity circuit training. Some days guys lifted very heavy loads for a few reps. Some days guys did a series of miniworkouts that added up to an 'interesting' total load and volume. Some days guys did hard interval training on the Concept II rowing machine." And some days, the exercisers were asked to train for balance by doing their tasks blindfolded.
"Some days were punishment days where our intent was to break guys physically and psychologically," Twight says.


Training for the actors required 90 minutes to two hours a day, five days a week, Twight says, plus the same amount of time fight training. Stuntmen trained 90 minutes to two hours, five days a week, and another four to six hours fight training, Twight says. Everyone was given just enough food to recover from the workout, he notes.

Exercise Physiologists Burst Our Bubble

Before you head out to see if you’re good enough to pass the 300 test, heed the caution from William J. Kraemer, PhD, professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. “This [program] was done for a stylistic effect, to look like a Spartan," he says. Forget about trying to do the graduation test right out of the box, he says. "The out-of-shape person who starts [the 300 graduation test] is going to be dead the first day. No one could do this without prior training. You have to progress."
Even if you start out slowly, Kraemer recommends proceeding with caution and checking in with your doctor first.

The breakdown of muscle fibers, for instance, may be severe enough to be toxic to the kidneys, he says. "If you have [heart problems] or are not screened, you could have a variety of exertional problems [with this workout], from serious tissue breakdown to heart attack to kidney problems," he says. "It's too extreme for the average person."
Walt Thompson, PhD, a professor of kinesiology and health at Georgia State University in Atlanta, agrees. "This kind of workout is for a very, very small subset of the population," he says.  "The person who could probably benefit from the Gym Jones workout is the person who already has a long and extensive 'career' in exercise. It's not for a beginner."