Jake Gyllenhall built significant muscle for his role in Prince of Persia which is a popular video game played on all kinds of platforms. In the movie he plays the fit and muscular Prince Dastan. Jake wasn’t huge or ripped before the casting for this movie so it took a couple of weeks to get him to the point where he is now.
We can all agree that he quickly transformed into an impressive physique and did it in a short span of time. He did it through intelligent and focused training as well as eating healthy balanced meals.
What made Jake Gyllenhaal’s workout routine so special for Prince of Persia? He used to be a thin dude, without any serious mass muscle going on. Today he’s ripped and lean with enough muscle to come on as an impressive man.
Jake Gyllhenhaal’s Workout For Prince of Persia was a lot of Parkour!? He was training as much as 2-3 times per day in order to build up a solid foundation of muscle to work with. He wanted to lose fat and build muscle during the months leading up to his role in the movie. If he would have continued this kind of training for a longer period of time he would have surely gone into overtraining mode.
The amazing thing is that Jake had to train Parkour, which is a french martial art of sorts, which is also known as “free running” in common terms. This is the kind of exercise that takes a lot of balance and strength. Parkour involves jumping, running and flipping on normal every day stuff like rooftops, park benches, beams, bridges and all kinds of fun stuff.
Initially Jake Gyllenhaal worked with the Parkour founder David. He was doing lots of work inside a gymnastics room before going out and hitting the concrete, so to speak. Since some of the stunts in the movie involved parkour look-alike moves it was good that he had a solid ground to work with. Jake Gyllenhaal actually performed many of the more dangerous stunts himself, which is a great thing for him, it shows confidence and that he was well conditioned for the Prince of Persia film.
Besides the fun Parkour stuff he also did high intensity workouts 2 times per day, including cardio and weight training.
In the mornings Jake would do hill sprints HIIT style and do some ab workouts at the top of the hill for about 30 minutes… Then at night he’d do his strength workout with regular exercises like pull-ups, push-ups, planks, shoulder and chest workouts, jumping etc.