Reacher: Alan Ritchson Says Gaining Weight For The Role Was Like A ‘Full-Time Job’ – Looper

“Reacher” isn’t the first project that required Alan Ritchson to hit the gym religiously. The actor previously played collegiate football star Thad Castle in “Blue Mountain State,” District 1 tribute Gloss in “The Hunter Games: Catching Fire,” and Hawk in “Titans.” However, Jack Reacher proved to be an entirely different ball game.

Ritchson spoke to Men’s Journal about preparing his body for the role, saying that he always keeps his body in shape because of the roles he’s landed in the past. However, healthy for him was sitting comfortably at 205 pounds, but “Reacher” needed him to reach a new level of fitness. “I was grinding it out five days a week for the eight months that we had to prep,” he told the magazine. That meant working out multiple times a day and eating 4,500 calories daily, something that most mere mortals couldn’t imagine having to do.

Ritchson also had to train for “Reacher” while filming another project. To make a bad situation worse, he had to do all of this during the pandemic, saying, “The rules were very strict in Canada, so there was no chance of getting out to train anywhere else.” To compensate, he built a home gym in his dining room, exercised by himself, and managed to go from 205 to 235 in preparation for “Reacher,” an unbelievably impressive accomplishment.