Zack Snyder, director of the new movie Rebel Moon, Army of the Dead, Justice League, and more, takes us through his Pasadena home gym and fridge, showing us the diet and fitness routine he uses to stay in shape.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 (knocking)
00:01 - Hey Zach, it's Men's Health.
00:02 - Men's Health, right?
00:05 (bell dings)
00:07 You guys wanna see my gym and my fridge.
00:14 Come on, come check it out.
00:15 (upbeat music)
00:19 (upbeat music)
00:21 All right, you can see the fridge is right over here.
00:34 - All right, let's take a look inside.
00:36 - So, glorious refrigerator.
00:40 This is where I keep my food.
00:42 - What staples do you keep stocked in your fridge?
00:44 - So the staples, the day to day,
00:47 egg whites, steak, chicken and broccoli.
00:50 Asparagus is normally an apple, green or red.
00:53 Everybody loves mango, especially in California.
00:55 Every now and then though, some food for the kids,
00:57 like this baked ziti will sneak in.
01:00 I don't get to eat that.
01:02 - What would we never see in your fridge?
01:04 - Olives, I'm not a huge fan of olives.
01:07 I like olive oil, love it.
01:09 I love olive trees.
01:10 See those beautiful trees there?
01:12 But olives themselves, just not.
01:15 - How has your diet changed over the years?
01:17 - You can't out train a bad diet.
01:20 We all have bad eating habits in our 20s and 30s
01:22 'cause our metabolisms are like blast furnaces
01:25 so we get away with murder.
01:26 As you get a little bit older,
01:28 you start to become self aware eventually
01:30 that shit's gonna stick.
01:34 My trainer will make a menu for me, chicken and broccoli.
01:36 Then dinner is steak, broccoli and asparagus.
01:41 What a surprise.
01:42 - What do you normally have for breakfast?
01:44 - My breakfast is a lot of egg whites.
01:45 I am very familiar and friend of egg whites.
01:48 I don't love them, but I do eat them quite a bit.
01:51 Right now I'm on a cycle with egg whites and one egg.
01:54 They're not quite as white egg white as normal.
01:58 I get some fruit.
01:59 I get mango for breakfast with my frittata.
02:03 And then every now and then I'll have a little oatmeal.
02:05 So I'll look and be like, oatmeal.
02:07 It's like kind of glorious when the oatmeal shows up.
02:10 - What's your snack strategy?
02:12 - Yeah, now I get a snack,
02:13 which is normally an apple, green or red.
02:16 Where I am right now, I get one of these.
02:19 Then at like 10 o'clock in the morning, I get two of them.
02:23 So it's a real huge treat for me.
02:25 - You're very dedicated to your meal plan,
02:27 but do you have any cheat days?
02:28 - Broccoli and chicken every day?
02:30 Yeah, right.
02:31 Because my wife will take me to a beautiful restaurant
02:34 and she's like, if you don't eat something here,
02:36 I will murder you.
02:37 And then I'm looking for a pasta.
02:40 I'm looking for carbonara really in the end.
02:43 Carbonara addict.
02:44 I've been chasing the dragon on carbonara
02:46 since I was in Rome shooting a commercial.
02:49 Had a carbonara, changed my life.
02:51 And I've been trying ever since to duplicate that.
02:54 It could be that I romanticize it in my mind
02:56 and the carbonara wasn't as good as I imagined,
02:59 but yeah, it's definitely, it's carbonara.
03:02 - Do you like spicy food?
03:04 - I do like spicy food, Mexican food, tacos.
03:07 My heat level is pretty high,
03:09 higher than the rest of the crew.
03:10 I'll cut up a jalapeno and put it in some,
03:12 in an omelet and everyone's like,
03:14 whoa, why did you ruin this?
03:15 And I'll be like, what do you mean?
03:16 It's amazing.
03:17 - Do you drink coffee?
03:19 - I do love coffee.
03:20 For breakfast, it has to be Pete's Major Dickinson's
03:23 and we've never got off that.
03:24 We've been on it for like 10 years.
03:25 Every time I try and switch it up,
03:27 my wife's like, whoa, whoa, what's up with the coffee?
03:28 Well, I just thought, no, no, no, no.
03:31 - What food do you hate?
03:32 - Oh, I hate that I like it so much, maybe.
03:34 It's ice cream, coffee ice cream,
03:36 any kind of good coffee ice cream.
03:37 I'll always get an affogato,
03:39 some vanilla ice cream and espresso.
03:41 That's pretty much my go-to apres meal.
03:44 Apres meal, is that how you say that?
03:45 Maybe.
03:46 - Do you ever cook?
03:47 - I cook breakfast, but it's for the kids.
03:50 Right now we're in a crepe mode.
03:51 My daughter wants a crepe pretty much every day.
03:54 So I have to make crepes and I can flip them in the pan,
03:58 which is pretty sweet.
03:59 Sometimes they go on the floor, the dogs eat them.
04:00 Today I did make waffles with a little whipped cream.
04:04 It's cool.
04:07 - Any supplements?
04:08 - Of course I take some D, I take some vitamin C.
04:11 I take a little bit of fish oil.
04:13 I do like these immunity boosts on set.
04:15 It's a real huge thing.
04:17 Like at our crafty, there's a bunch of these immunities.
04:20 That's elderberry, but so much ginger.
04:25 You just got ginger right out of town on that one,
04:28 which is great.
04:29 - How's the crafty table on one of your film sets?
04:32 - Debbie and I try and have healthy snacks
04:35 as much as we can.
04:36 We try not to have like soda.
04:38 There's a little bit in a stash somewhere,
04:40 people have it just 'cause they need it.
04:42 You know, we do our best.
04:43 - Do you ever follow the diets of any of your
04:45 superhero stars?
04:47 - Well, I like to train with the actors when we do a movie.
04:49 I like to get on whatever they're doing
04:51 so I understand how intense what they're going through is.
04:54 It's always been an interesting journey.
04:57 You know, like a lot of times they'll go on
04:58 a calorie restriction, you know, to really kind of cut.
05:01 I've made them mad, but you know, they, in the end,
05:05 they look good on film, so that's
05:06 probably the most important part of it.
05:08 A lot of times, because I'm directing a movie,
05:10 you don't want me like passing out in the middle of the,
05:14 so I try not to go too hard that way,
05:17 but when I'm off, like right now we're in editorial,
05:19 so, you know, I try to hit it kind of hard.
05:22 - Thanks for showing us your fridge.
05:23 Should we hit it hard to the gym?
05:25 - Look, there's Alessandro.
05:27 We call it the black box gym.
05:32 I've been training in here for about, what, what,
05:35 three years?
05:36 - Three years.
05:36 - About three years.
05:37 - Wow, looks like a movie set in here.
05:39 - To the inside, where we made it look like aged
05:41 and kind of like the inside of an old French basement.
05:44 - What's your typical workout routine?
05:49 - Today, I'm in here, like today's chest,
05:52 so it's high rep chest, it's bench,
05:55 incline, it's cable cross-overs.
05:57 That'd be one day, the next day back, same thing,
05:59 high rep, 15 reps, back to back.
06:01 This is our first week on it,
06:02 so we're on this for three weeks.
06:04 - Does your exercise routine change
06:05 when you're in production?
06:06 - Yeah, that's always hard.
06:07 I mean, on the movies, we don't train as much,
06:09 and maybe one day a week, mostly weekends,
06:12 but when I'm off of the shooting schedule,
06:14 every morning, we're just down here doing it.
06:17 - What's your favorite exercise?
06:18 - Anything for biceps and triceps.
06:21 I'm an arms person.
06:23 I like arm workout.
06:25 On my birthday, I normally like to train arms
06:27 as a gift to myself.
06:28 ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
06:32 - What's your least favorite exercise?
06:34 - Sometimes when I squat, I treat for my back,
06:37 so it makes me nervous, but you gotta squat,
06:39 so it kinda is what it is.
06:42 - What keeps you motivated?
06:43 - The thing that keeps me mostly motivated
06:45 is probably just that I'm old, I'm an old fart,
06:46 and so, you know, you gotta train.
06:49 Making movies is pretty taxing.
06:51 I do a lot of handheld,
06:52 so those are the things that motivate me.
06:54 - What do you consider an intense workout?
06:57 - Literally, there's an aspect of our training program
07:00 called intense, as heavy as you can do four reps,
07:04 and then strip the weight without,
07:06 and then do six right on top of it,
07:08 and so it is intense, and we did no rest.
07:11 You just go choom, choom, choom, choom, choom, choom.
07:13 At the end, Alessandro's always like,
07:14 "That was intense," and that's how I know
07:17 that it was intense.
07:18 - What's your morning routine?
07:19 - Really, my morning morning routine is I get up early
07:21 around 4.30, 5, and then I kinda have a quiet house
07:26 for a little while, and then I cook breakfast,
07:28 take the kids to school, and then come train.
07:30 And then every now and then, I have to train
07:31 before I take the kids to school,
07:33 so then it requires me to get up before I cook breakfast,
07:35 so that's when it's an early, early.
07:37 5.30 in the morning's my least favorite time to work out.
07:39 If it was up to me, I would train like 11.
07:41 Trained at my office, I had an office gym
07:43 over at Warner Brothers, and there we trained,
07:46 I got 11, it was like a lunchtime workout,
07:48 and it was great, 'cause I felt awake and ready,
07:51 and sometimes clear your head in the middle of the day,
07:53 and it really worked great for that.
07:55 - Do you love working out?
07:56 - I found a lot of camaraderie in the gym,
07:58 and I found a lot of family, and the ritual,
08:01 those are the things I really love about working out.
08:04 If you get some result from it,
08:05 then that's what it's good to me.
08:06 - Which one of your actors would you love to work out with?
08:09 - I trained with Mamo quite a bit when we were in England,
08:11 'cause he was always in this gym that we built.
08:14 He was in there quite a bit, so.
08:16 And Henry, I trained with a little bit, but not as much,
08:18 so it'd be fun to train with Henry.
08:20 - What other types of training do you do?
08:22 - I play badminton, and I play pickleball.
08:24 We built a pickleball court upstairs,
08:26 and we've been hitting the pickleball around,
08:28 which is fun, and you can actually get
08:31 a pretty good sweat on playing pickleball.
08:33 You may not believe it, but it's true.
08:35 And badminton I play is, you know, legit hard.
08:40 - Hope your badminton training has prepared you
08:41 for our rapid fire questions.
08:43 - Rapid fire, let's go.
08:47 - Workout time, 7 a.m. or 7 p.m.?
08:50 - 7 a.m.
08:51 - Squat or deadlift?
08:52 - Ooh, both.
08:53 - Favorite song on your workout playlist?
08:55 - Jose Feliciano, "California Dreamin'."
08:57 - Crossfit, yay or nay?
08:59 - Nay.
09:00 - Pull-ups or chin-ups?
09:01 - Pull-ups.
09:02 - Dumbbells or kettlebells?
09:04 - Dumbbells.
09:05 - Run on the treadmill or in the great outdoors?
09:07 - Don't really run.
09:08 - Cardio or weights?
09:09 - Weights.
09:10 - Big legs or big arms?
09:12 - Big legs, probably.
09:14 - Biggest compliment, jacked, ripped, swole, or cut?
09:17 - Don't say ripped, 'cause Alessandro would say,
09:20 "Maybe you're okay for the beach, but not ripped."
09:22 - If you could work out with anyone in the world,
09:24 dead or alive, who would it be?
09:26 - Oh, Arnold.
09:27 - Or Serge Nubre, maybe.
09:29 All right, guys, that was fun.
09:32 I'm actually gonna finish my workout,
09:34 so I'm gonna have to ask you to leave.
09:35 I'm sorry, but it is what it is.
09:38 Cheers.
09:38 [upbeat music]
09:41 (upbeat music)