Pedro Pascal thought it was age. The real reason was this

Hi there,

Today I want to celebrate one of my favorite people, Pedro Pascal, and share some things you can learn from his experience with training.

Believe it or not, like the rest of us Pedro is getting older.

He's a major heartthrob. He's also 51 years old.

Pedro had a tough time filming the stunts on Gladiator II. He tore his psoas. He sustained a shoulder injury. Perhaps worse, he figured the injuries came down to age (and a reluctant feeling that this was just how it was going to be from now on).

Unlike a 25 year old, the injuries also weren't healing properly. He'd been dealing with them for months. There were aches that kept flaring up, angles he couldn't load any more and workouts he was having to back off.

He was supposed to be getting himself ready for Mandalorian, which meant six-day shoot weeks, harness work and fight choreography.

His body wouldn't cooperate.

If you're past 35, maybe you've started thinking the same thing about your own body. You notice you've stopped doing an exercise you used to love. Or you've started avoiding certain yoga poses because they just don't feel quite right. Or you now no longer expect to bench what you were benching five years ago.

Stop! I'm here to tell you it's not just due to age. It's not inevitable. And you can expect more from yourself. And when Pedro got back in the gym with me, that's what I told him.

We weren't going to train him like a body builder or to look like He-Man. The target was different. The target was a strong, and capable 51-year-old man who could move easily. That's a different (but related) job that requires a different program.

We started by not directly addressing the injuries… And no, that's not a typo. I'll repeat:

I didn't try to fix the injuries directly.

Instead, we started with the basics: walking, getting his glutes firing again and some core work.

Simple primal patterns your body should be able to do well. He wasn't bench pressing. Building muscle wasn't the goal.

Then we focused on diet. We used it to take some weight off and lean him out (and no surprises, RISE311 was a big part of that journey). Getting lighter helps take load off the joints. His posture started fixing itself.

Remember, the key goal was to be functional, resilient and move with confidence. So, here are the three big takeaways from Pedro's training (and what we'd recommend changing for yourself after 40):

First, mobility matters more than muscle. After 40, the win isn't always "just more muscle". It's keeping your joints moving and your movement clean. More muscle on a stiff body is just more weight your joints have to carry around.

Second, get the foundation right before the muscle. Without a foundation, you can go as hard as you want on the bench or squats. You may gain more muscle immediately, but it's still going to fall apart in the end. It only takes one misstep and your back goes out from the imbalance in your body.

Third, pain isn't always where you think it is. Your back, your hip, your knee, your neck. Sometimes none of those are the real cause of the problem. The issue is elsewhere (and often that elsewhere is coming up from the foot). In fact, your foot and the movement pattern of the foot cause so many issues – that next week we're going to go into detail here. And give you some diagnostic exercises you can use to check whether you have any immediate causes of concern you can address.

For Pedro, putting the foundational work in changed the game.

Nothing was fixed overnight. But with careful persistence, his back had stopped hurting, his shoulder had healed and he'd stopped having to back off from sessions halfway through.

He even wore a sleeveless shirt on the red carpet in Cannes. People couldn't stop commenting online and in the press about how great his arms looked.

That's because once you set the foundation, the rest can follow. Including building muscle more effortlessly.

Now, we all love external validation. But I think an even bigger shift happened during this time. The question he brought into the gym changed. He stopped asking "what's wrong with me?" and started asking "what else am I capable of?"

And that's a key shift. If any of this sounds familiar, then as I said, you're going to love next week.

I'm going to send you a test you can do in about ten seconds. It tells you whether your foot is doing what it's supposed to. And whether the back, hip or shoulder you thought was the issue is actually a symptom rather than the cause.

This is where we start with all the people I train. I've never really spoken about it before. Why? Because for most magazines or reporters, they feel it's not sexy. But given you're on our list here, I know you're looking for the right information versus any magical thinking. Even better, once you've done the test – I'll give you a few tips so you can go and start fixing it (the same things I had Pedro do when he first came back to me). Until then.

Stay healthy,

Jason
RISE311

P.S. If you haven't seen the new Mandalorian & Grogu trailer, watch it before next week. The Pedro you see in it is a long way from the man who walked into my gym after Gladiator. As we said above, getting lean was a big part of the initial phase of training. And RISE311 was a large part of that. Pedro was on 2 shakes a day to help supplement his training. And ALWAYS had a shake after he'd finished in the gym to help with his recovery. Remember, it's not just the amount of protein that matters. It's that magical 3g of leucine threshold that must be hit. Of course, if you're drinking RISE311 then every serving gets you there.

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