The Taylor Lautner Workout Routine – “New Moon” Star Gets In Awesome Shape For Movie

Taylor Lautner is said to sport one of the best physiques in Hollywood today and what’s even more impressive is the fact that Taylor was able to build the 30 pounds of muscle, that morphed him into his role of “Jacob Black” in the Twilight series New Moon, in under a year. There’s also been lots of buzz to go along with it all seeing that “Taylor Lautner Workout” is one of the most searched for celebrity workout keywords on the net.
Now it’s not to say that you can’t achieve similar results with an effective workout program and a dialed in diet but when you get down to it Taylor was/is a young guy with raging hormones and with higher testosterone levels they’ll ever be in his life. He was also new to weight training in general making him extremely responsive to any weight training he would have done (they’re called newbie gains). Top that with a personal cook, nutritionist, personal trainer and good ol’ hard work and you get what you see here:

So What Is The Taylor Lautner Workout Routine All About? And How Did He Do it?

In his new found aim to go from scrawny to brawny for his new role, Taylor decided to enlist the help of Jordan Yuam. Personal trainer and owner of Jordan’s Virtual Fit Club.

According to Men’s Health and Jordan Yuam here are some of the principles that helped Taylor Lautner achieve his dramatic transformation:

• Pushing the limits – If you want to start building muscle you’ve got to start getting used to lifting heavier weights. Jordan Yuam made Lautner lift weights that were 40% heavier than his regular 10 rep max. For example if you bench press 160lbs for ten reps then you should strive to lift 225 and with the aid of a spotter lower the weight very slowly (My bit: Not the best idea and not necessary unless you’re a more advanced lifter). These are called negatives. This kind of training (slow negatives) is very taxing and it’s recommended that you limit it to 2-3 sets of 5 reps every 2nd week.

• Vary your training volume – As it was said your body’s got to get used to lifting heavier weights to start packing on some more muscle but going heavier isn’t always the best idea. If you really want to make more progress you should regularly vary your repetition count and the weights you use. This is to make sure that your body doesn’t get accustomed to a particular weight to the point that you stop progressing. (My bit: I don’t believe this applies in all situations). The more you make your muscles adapt to different stimuli the more they grow.(My bit: In my opinion you should keep the rep range no higher than 12 and keep bumping up the weight until you can no longer bump it up. Then work on increasing your reps back up to 12, then back to bumping up the weight and so on and so forth. Constantly “changing it up” only helps in certain circumstances but for the vast majority of people the protocol I just outlined should work best….moving on…).

• Create more tension – In  Taylor Lautner’s workout routine free weights were highly favored but they have some drawbacks such as the fact the tension isn’t constant throughout the full ROM or range of motion. That’s why Jordan often hooked large rubber bands to barbells or dumbells Taylor lifted and anchored them to the ground so that they would create tension through the full ROM (range of motion). This makes the muscles work harder due to the increased tension and thus muscle growth is accelerated.

• Cuting back on cardio – Taylor cut back on his cardio almost completely while bulking up. For your average naturally skinny, hard gaining male, heavy cardio can great diminish one’s ability to gain muscle (My bit: for those who struggle to gain weight “no matter how much they eat” cardio should be relegated to walking. For everyone else it’s fine so long as your not doing long cardio workouts and your not doing them too often [there's more effective cardio methods then that]).

• Don’t overwork your ab muscles – Abs are usually the cornerstone of a great physique so lots of guys tend to work their abs as often as they can. Unfortunately, that’s why lots of guys don’t sport abs like Taylor’s. Abs like other body parts or muscles have to rest following a tough workout and just as other muscles on your body constantly working them is counterproductive and just leads to over training. Jordan Yuam had Lautner work his midsection thrice weekly with various exercises that worked his entire core area. One of Taylor’s favorite ab workouts was a superset of hanging leg raises and reverse crunches,  stopping and holding the movement at peak contraction for 7-10 secs between each rep.

• Make time to recover – What you eat and how you exercise are only 2/3′s of the equation. The other 1/3 is adequate rest. Without it your liable to over train, slowing down your progress or even bringing it down to a screeching halt. Taylor made sure to take off every 3rd day and he never exercised more than 5 days a week.

My Personal Opinion On The Taylor Lautner Workout Routine

Well it’s not really Taylor Lautner’s workout that we have it’s more like the principles that his trainer applied to him to help him achieve his goals, but yeah I actually agree with the majority of what’s been said. Most of them are solid principles that will definitely help. Unfortunately while principles are great they’re nothing without structure. For a more structured routine that’s highly effective check out my post on Visual Impact Muscle Building.