“One of the best elements of working for Marvel has been the gift of fitness,” says Scarlett Johansson. She had never been to a gym before playing Black Widow in the Avengers franchise: “I am stronger and more capable now than I was 10 years ago, which is really great to be able to say.”
Eric Johnson, who has been training Johansson since 2009, when they were getting ready for her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Iron Man 2, remembers her first rope climb. “She kneed me in the face and gave me a lovely bloody nose on the way up — she was rejoicing, and I was holding back tears, pouring blood,” he jokes.
Diet is, of course, a big part of the equation. Johansson found that time-restricted eating helped her maintain her energy levels for Endgame: if her last meal of the day was at 9 p.m., she wouldn’t eat again until at least 9 a.m. the next morning. The actor cuts carbs in the days before filming to enhance her cuts, which Johnson describes as “a little Hollywood magic.” Since having her child, Johansson has been focusing on her core, with the intention of one day mastering the feared Rocky move known as a dragonfly. Johansson’s competitive nature, according to the trainer, has proven to be a great motivator. Johnson laughs as he explains, “If I show her something I can do easily, she wants to try it.” “We complete a large number of sessions.”
Isn’t it true that variety is the spice of… gym workouts? According to Johnson, the answer is yes. He enjoys cycling Scarlett through a variety of options, cherry-picking his favorites from each. ‘A combination of athletic performance, foundational strength training, functional hypertrophy, and metabolic work,’ as he describes it.
To refresh your fitness vocabulary, ‘hypertrophy’ refers to exercising in a method that promotes the growth of new muscular tissue, whereas ‘metabolic work’ refers to demanding conditioning workouts that cause the body to exhaust fast.
Johnson notes, ‘I prefer to include diverse aspects from Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, kettlebells, bodybuilding, bodyweight, yoga, and conditioning exercises.’
