Luke Zocchi is not an easy man to pin down, though when you're Chris Hemsworth's personal trainer you're often required to travel to the ends of the earth in the name of helping get him into the right condition for whatever role comes up next. “He’ll read the description and come up with how he wants to look for the role,” explains Zocchi. “It’s almost more the look than performance. If he looks the part, we’ve done our job. It’s not like he’s competing as an athlete.”
In fact, when we finally sit down to talk, he has just returned from being on a remote island off the coast of Australia with Chris. No fantastical adventures getting filmed there, however: this time it was for Hemsworth's stint as a documentary host. His new show, Limitless, features the former Thor training to take on six very different but equally staggering challenges.
Zocchi played sports at school, but at about 16 he really got into boxing. From there he has wound up as one of Hemsworth's right-hand men and one of the central figures behind his app, Centr. As the fitness app hits a year old, there's a brand new programme being added – Centr 6 – which Zocchi is leading. “Centr 6 originated with Chris,” Zocchi explained. “In between roles we still train, he’ll be back home and he’ll be playing around with these ideas for six reps for different exercises and really liking it.”
Centr 6 is just this: six exercises, six reps of each, six laps of the whole thing. “Every Monday it was almost like a group training session at Chris’ house: Elsa [Pataky] was there, experienced people would go off with Chris and I’d take the others and it basically snowballed,” explained Zocchi. “The thing was, when I was group training, we were limited to what we could do. We simplified it a bit and brought it down to bodyweight and dumbbells.”
We asked Zocchi to talk us through a week in training Chris himself. “Monday through to Friday we focus on strength followed by hypertrophy – which is all about increasing the amount of time that a muscle is under tension to help gain as much muscle as possible,” explained Zocchi. “Typically, sessions run for a bit over an hour, with 40 minutes of weights and around 20 minutes of sled work.” Below he talks us through seven days in the world of a real life superhero.
Monday
Chris’ routine changes depending on his goals – whether that be getting ripped for a movie, cutting weight or just maintaining his body composition. If the time’s available we love to work a group session into his workouts – which is what Centr’s new programme, Centr 6, is all about – but at the moment we’re working towards a challenge that is going to push his body to the extreme, which means a pretty rigid workout schedule.
Monday is all about building chest strength: a typical routine includes chest presses, incline presses and cable flys. Then we’ll do sled pushes, which combines strength with cardio.
It’s key to keep the chest muscles stimulated in order to build upper-body strength, which is paramount for Chris’ film roles, both aesthetically and in terms of his ability to perform certain movements.
Tuesday
It’s back day! The strength session includes deadlifts, seated cable rows and pull-ups, followed by sled pulls. Exercising the back provides a strong muscular balance and while you may not see these muscles as much as others, the muscle group in your back is just as important, especially for your core. For Chris, his body is pushed to the absolute extreme. Working on his back gives him stability and without these exercises other muscle groups would fade.
Wednesday
On Wednesday it’s a swimming session in the morning to recover. Working solely on the upper body for the first two days of the week can be quite intense so a session in the pool is slightly less extreme, yet still stimulates some of the core muscle groups and builds up your endurance and cardiovascular fitness. Later in the afternoon, Chris will finish the day off with an arm session, carrying out some seated curls and dips to work on his biceps and triceps.
Thursday
After focussing on the upper body for the first few days of the week, Chris starts Thursday working out his lower body with squats and some lunges. Thursday is particularly fixed on strength work, followed by hypertrophy. Chris will do some work on his legs, with calf raises and leg presses, before finishing off with 20 minutes of sled drags. For roles such as Thor, Chris has to be extremely active and mobile on his feet, so he certainly can’t miss out on leg day!
Friday
To see the week out Chris will do further work on his strength and hypertrophy, predominantly targeting his shoulders. Lateral raises, rear flys and shoulder presses are all aspects of the workout, enhancing the deltoids and other muscle groups surrounding the shoulders.
Saturday
The weekend brings up a well-earned rest for Chris. While he won’t complete a full workout, Chris still likes to get active and if the weather and the waves are good enough, he will go out for a surf. To ensure he doesn’t put too much strain on his body, Chris will spend the afternoon having a stretching session.
Sunday
On Sunday Chris might look to go out for another surf, but, in the main, he spends Sunday relaxing. Resting is just as important as working out and overworking can do serious harm to the body. Chris spends his day chilling out and gearing himself up for yet another intense workout on Monday!
Luke Zocchi is one of the featured trainers on Centr 6, the new group workout programme available exclusively on Chris Hemsworth’s personalised digital health and fitness programme, Centr.
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