In This Series
- Introduction
- THE WORKOUT
The character: Toll Road.
Background: A mercenary with a troubled past, Road is one of the veterans of the team.
Speciality: He's the demolitions expert.
Weapon of choice: Fists - he's a bit tasty.
Weaknesses: As the college-educated intellectual of the team, Road can be a touch introspective - not an advantage in a gunfight.
The actor: Randy Couture.
Five-time UFC champ and Hall of Famer Couture might be better known for his Greco-Roman wrestling and recently putting boxer James Toney's lights out than his method acting, but he's put in respectable cameos in David Mamet's Redbelt and a full-length turn in The Scorpion King 2. Stallone wrote the part specifically for him.
The trainer: Jake Bonacci.
After getting a master's degree in exercise physiology, Bonacci went into MMA conditioning, volunteering at the Xtreme Couture gym in Las Vegas until Couture himself picked him up as a trainer. They've been working together since Couture fought Gabriel Gonzaga at UFC 74 in 2007.
STAY BALANCED
'Randy works a lot on his footwork and balance, so he'll do a lot of work on agility ladders and movement drills,' says Bonacci. 'We'll also change moves to emphasise balance - for instance, he might do a shoulder press while standing on one leg. We'll also work a lot of Olympic lifting, because it addresses a lot of qualities you need - balance, power and explosiveness. I'm also big on lateral moves - lunges for the legs and med ball throws for the core.'
A LITTLE VANITY
'My job is to get Randy in the best possible shape to fight, so we didn't change much during The Expendables. We will do a bit of vanity work when we're not in fight camp, though - direct work on the biceps or whatever.'
FIGHTING CONDITION
'About five weeks from a fight, we'll start to focus more on conditioning. A lot of it comes from fight-specific training, but we'll also do a lot of sprinting, rowing and work on the Airdyne bike, which gets harder to pedal as you go faster. We'll work five-minute rounds in the build-up to a fight, rather than making them longer, I'll work on getting the rest periods down. By the end of camp I'll try to get Randy resting for 35 seconds between rounds, so that when he gets a whole minute during a fight it seems like forever.'
REDUCE ACID LEVELS
'Nutritionally, the main thing he does is avoid too much red meat, sugar and dairy. They make your system more acidic, which makes it harder to recover from the volume of training he does.'
You'll find one of Couture's workouts on the right. And we've also got the inside track on how Sylvester Stallone got in shape for the movie. Click his name to have a look.
