Joe Manganiello Workout and Diet

Finishing off this week’s focus on the workout and diet routines of HBO’s True Blood stars – today we’ll talk about Joe Manganiello who plays the lean and muscular werewolf Alcide Herveaux. (You can find posts on Ryan Kwanten, Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin here.) Joe Manganiello is a big guy. For real. The actor is 6ft 5in tall and before training for True Blood weighed in at 240lbs. After 3 months of intense training with Ron Mathews, Manganiello was able to drop 20lbs of fat while adding inches of muscle to his shoulders, arms, and chest. If you want to know how to workout like Joe Manganiello, then keep reading!

Joe Manganiello Workout – “Sheer Pain”

“When you’re really cut, you look bigger on film. When you’re bigger but a little less cut, you just look fat.”

Trainer Ron Mathews took Manganiello straight into an intensive Metabolic Resistance training program to strip off fat while still stimulating muscle growth. Instead of doing slow workouts, Mathews had Joe Manganiello doing very fast paced supersets which kept his heart rate at around 160 beats per minute for his entire 50-60min workout. Mathews says for maximum fat burning and muscle building results – you need to focus on intensity and speed over weight lifted.

“The pace is more important than the weight, but as you get more endurance in that 30-to 40-minute range, you can keep the weight heavier for longer. Increasing that endurance translates into better definition with size.”

Joe Manganiello’s workout schedule broke down into the following (6 days per week) -

• Mornings – 45 minutes of steady state cardio (jogging, biking, or swimming) on an empty stomach.
• Noon – 50-60minutes of fast-paced Metabolic Resistance training.

Manganiello switched between three different weight lifting workouts -

• Chest and legs – Monday/Thursday
• Shoulders and biceps – Tuesday/Friday
• Back and triceps – Wednesday/Saturday

How it works:

Each Metabolic resistance workout can be broken down into four supersets (superset A, B,C, and D) of three exercises each. Each superset is basically a circuit of three exercises – two are traditional weightlifting exercises like bench press or squats (done for 10-15 reps each), while the third is a high intensity fat burning exercise like jump lunges (which is done for a set amount of time – 10 to 40 seconds.) You do each exercise in a superset back to back without rest four times through (resting briefly at the end of each circuit) and then move on to the next superset, until all four supersets are done. This should take around 40-50 minutes.

Here’s an example Chest/Legs workout:

SUPERSET A
Squat 8-12 reps
Bench Press  8-12 reps
Lateral Bounding 10-40 seconds

SUPERSET B
Lunge  8-12 reps
Dumbell Flye  8-12 reps
Step-up Jump 10-40 seconds

SUPERSET C
Single Leg Romanian Deadlift  8-12 reps
Plyometric Push-up  8-12 reps
Lunge Jump  10-40 seconds

SUPERSET D
Leg Extension 8-12 reps
Cable Flye 8-12 reps
Traveling Push-up  10-40 seconds

“I’m 220 pounds on the nose,” says Manganiello. “Funny thing is, everyone keeps saying, ‘How much weight did you lose? You look so much thinner!’ But all my measurements have gone up. My waist is two inches smaller, but my shoulders, arms, and chest have all gone up. That’s how I know it’s working.”

Joe Manganiello Diet

In order to get lean, Joe Manganiello had to cut carbs (reduces daily calories and forces your body to burn fat stores and not sugar from food for energy) and increase lean proteins (eating more protein helps you feel full longer and burn more calories in digestion – along with providing the building block for building/maintaining muscle) like chicken, fish, and steak. For the most part, Manganiello only at carbs in the morning for breakfast – usually a bowl of oatmeal or yogurt with granola.

Here’s how a day of eating usually broke down -

Breakfast (mid morning):
Plain, old fashioned oatmeal and a protein shake (or try and egg white omelette with mixed vegetables.)

Lunch:
2 roasted skinless chicken breasts
1 sweet potato
1/2c corn

Mid afternoon snack:
Protein shake with bananas and creatine (or try a few almonds and some bufflao jerky.)

Early dinner:
4-6oz steak (or tiliapia)
1/2c carrots or asparagus (or try a side of mushrooms)
Large green salad with small portion of light dressing

Evening snack:
1 roasted skinless chicken breast
1/2c green beans (or roasted brocolli, cauliflower)

Breaking your daily diet down into multiple smaller meals is a popular way of losing fat while maintaining muscle. In the 1990′s many people ate this way because they believed that many small daily meals would boost the metabolism. Unfortunately, current research is starting to debunk the “multiple small meals to burn more fat” myth – however – this is still one of the most effective ways to lose fat fast.

Eating multiple small meals allows you to eat less while avoiding extreme hunger – especially if you do as Joe Manganiello does and keep your protein quantities high. The less hungry you feel, the easier it is to stick to your diet. If you’d like more information on how to eat like this to burn fat and reveal your six pack, then I recommend you check out a quality source like Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. This fat loss plan was developed specifically for bodybuilders who must get single digit lean pre-contest without sacrificing any muscle mass. (While eating smaller low calorie meals isn’t rocket science, you do want to make sure you are eating the right combination of foods and nutrients or you will risk losing muscle mass while dieting.)

How to Workout like Joe Manganiello

Ideally, you would want to go with a good progressive multi-phase muscle building program for maximum results. Look for a program like Adonis Index or Visual Impact which will take you from full body mass building workouts to an advanced point where you will use body part split routines to sculpt individual muscles and balance out your proportions for maximum impact.

Here is an Adonis Index "After" picture from the most recent body transformation contest.

Another option is to look into a concurrent fat burning/muscle building program like Tom Venuto’s Holy Grail (which starts you out doing morning cardio, body part split routines just like Joe Manganiello.) While Holy Grail comes with a variety of specific diet and exercise programs – this program also explains the “how’s and why’s” of creating your own fat burning/muscle building diet and workout program – which makes it ideal for anyone who is more advanced. Burning fat while building muscle simultaneously is tricky and does require that you understand the “rules.” Tom lays everything out in simple language so you are able to get started right away.

Finally, for those want to use fast paced Metabolic Resistance training routines to build fat and burn muscle in a lot less time than a traditional workout- then check out this post I put together on everything you need to know to do metabolic resistance training and high intensity interval cardio.

Thanks for stopping by! On your way out check out Ryan Kwanten’s workout as well as Visual Impact or Holy Grail!