Hollywood trainer wants to work with Farhan Akhtar

Hollywood trainer Ed Chow, who trained celebrities like Clive Owen and Lucas Till, says he would love to work with Farhan Akhtar, who has been training hard for his next film “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag”.

“I was really lucky to meet Aishwarya Rai when she was working on ‘The Last Legion’ with Colin Firth. There are actors like Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor and Sara Khan. And I’d like to work with Farhan Akhtar – I’ve seen some of his work and I really liked it,” Chow said in an e-mail interaction.

“Bhaag Milkha Bhaag” is a biopic on legendary athlete Milkha Singh and Farhan is currently undergoing special training for his lead role in the movie. Similarly American actress Lynn Collins had to go through a fixed regime for her role as Dejah Thoris in “John Carter”, releasing in India March 9.

“John Carter” is about a man who gets transported to Mars and gets caught between 12-foot-tall barbarians. Collins plays a princess and her role was quite physical with a lot of wirework, stunts and sword fights. So a lot of preparation was required from her end, says Chow.

“It was a three-month routine with a variety of one- to two-hour-long training sessions, five to six times per week. It comprised taekwondo, fight training, boxing and kick-boxing on pads and focus-mitts for cardio.

“We worked on ab-workouts and core to prepare Lynn for the wirework she needed to do for stunts, and free-weights and machines focussing on different parts of the body each session. We also did a lot of plyometrics to make her legs strong,” shared Chow.

The celebrity trainer says there was added focus on Collins’ muscles, which made his job tougher.

“(Her character) Dejah Thoris has a lot of tattoos on her body and they were painted on Lynn every day of filming. We needed the muscles to actually show through the tattoos; so we focussed on getting a lot of definition in her muscles,” he said.

According to Chow, Collins “was very focussed herself”.

“She worked out every day on her days off and most days on set as well. It wasn’t necessary as she had that down herself,” he said.

So what is it like training popular faces?

“They are great to train. Celebrities are very highly motivated, extremely focussed and extremely hardworking. They will work very, very hard to get what they need for a part,” he said.

What about a few general fitness tips for people who wish to get fit figures like celebrities?

“Fitness is actually about doing something regularly, every single week. It’s about making the time to do something – like an exercise or a sport that you enjoy.

“Diet is important too – eating healthy food, small portions many times a day rather than three big meals a day and keeping carbohydrates down. I do believe in satisfying food cravings but it needs to be in proportion. So if you have a sweet tooth, it’s okay to have a small piece of chocolate, but you can’t have a whole chocolate cake,” he said.