Michael B. Jordan in Creed III / MGM
Michael B. Jordan is on a fitness journey. When preparing for a jacked role like Donnie Creed in Creed III, he cranks up the workout and diet intensity. The rest of the time, he takes a little different approach. The 36-year-old actor/director recently spoke with People about his training and diet in the downtime between acting roles. He never really takes a break. Interestingly, he may workout even more often, but differently, when he’s not preparing to go shirtless onscreen. Here are the highlights of Michael B. Jordan’s interview about the “cruising phases” of his lifelong fitness journey.
MICHAEL B. JORDON ON THE PRESSURE TO STAY IN SHAPE
“For me it’s always been the fear of failure. The fear of showing up and being on set and not being in shape. Because a lot of people if they don’t meet their goals, nobody knows about it. For me, if I don’t meet my goals, that’s gonna be a poster on Sunset that says, ‘Mike didn’t meet his f**king goals.’ So I think the pressure of having to be seen by the world and immortalized and, you know, the internet is always there. I think it kind of keeps pressure on me.”
MICHAEL B. JORDAN ON EATING FREQUENTLY
“I love food,” Michael B. Jordan says. But he finds that eating small meals throughout the day satisfies his hunger without putting on fat.
“Eating consistently is something that I found really helps change your body. Dieting, intermittent fasting, there’s different approaches to it. But for me, I kind of look at it as your body’s like a fire. Every so often you gotta keep throwing logs on a fire to keep burning that off. And the logs, that’s the food that you eat. So you’re constantly eating and you’re burning it off, and eventually your body will start to burn off the fat that’s been stored up. So, that’s kind of been my approach to how I stay in shape.”
MICHAEL B. JORDAN FITNESS ANYTIME ROUTINE
Typically, Michael B. Jordan begins each day with fasted cardio (cardio on an empty stomach after sleeping) before breakfast and then does his weight-training workout. But his workouts have grown more flexible between roles.
“As I’ve become a little bit more selective on the roles that I do, my downtime has increased a little bit more. I think I’m starting to redefine—finding a healthy balance of just breaking a sweat.”
He’s trying to drink more water, avoid late-night eating, and workout at least once daily, sometimes with mini-workouts throughout the day.
“At one point I was doing probably 300 pushups and 200 sit-ups throughout the day. So at the end of the day, I gotta at least hit my number and that kind of keeps you tight: a baseline fitness. If you just kind of hit those things and not let yourself get too far gone, you’re good. When you rebound and you let yourself go too far, then it’s like the mountain that you gotta climb is that much steeper instead of just touching up along the way.”
For more on brief workouts throughout the day, check out: Exercise Snacks: Bite-Sized Workouts for Busy People
MICHAEL B. JORDAN’S WORKOUT COMPETITIONS
Michael B. Jordan involves his friends in his fitness journey, sometimes in friendly competitions.
“We bet a lot on anything. So we’ll bet pushups. You know, if you lose a bet you’ll owe however many pushups and stuff like that. Something went viral years ago when [Black Panther costar Lupita Nyong’o] made me do push-ups out in public. That was because of a bet I lost. And we’ve been keeping that up for a really long time. So that’s something that we kind of do just to bring a little competition into it. It’s the simple things. Whoever wants to put in some hard work, I go pretty hard when it comes to working out so my friends know I’m always down. They know I’m in the gym at a certain time. If you guys wanna show up, show up. I’m down for whatever.”
For much more on Jordan’s fitness plan, check out: Michael B. Jordan Workout & Diet Tips
