The Brothers Sun duo, Justin Chien and Sam Song Li share the training routines that keeps them in shape and feeling good – both for on set stunts and in life.
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00:00 That's 45 now?
00:01 No.
00:01 46?
00:02 47.
00:03 98!
00:04 99!
00:05 100!
00:06 Hey, Men's Health.
00:10 My name is Justin Chen and I play Charles Sun.
00:12 And I'm Sam Song Lee and I play Bruce Sun.
00:16 We are the brother Sun.
00:17 Today, we're going to work out for you guys.
00:19 [Music]
00:32 So, the Brother Sun is a gangster, dark comedy, family drama with some heavy action elements.
00:37 I play a Taiwanese gangster who, after his father is assassinated, has to go from Taipei to LA to protect my estranged brother and mother.
00:45 And at the same time, find out who's behind the assassination.
00:47 So, there's a lot of action in our show, which luckily I was prepared for because I come from an athletic background.
00:52 I started in cross country, rugby, and track, but I didn't have a consistent weightlifting program until I was in college.
00:58 Nowadays, I'm a lot more into jiu-jitsu.
01:00 I train about three to five times a week.
01:03 And all of those things really prepare me for the stunts in our show.
01:07 Similarly, I also did a lot of sports in high school and throughout college, but I'm very hot and cold with my workouts.
01:14 I go through phases where for about a year, I'm just like super into it.
01:17 And then, like if it's busy, I'll kind of drop it.
01:20 And throughout the filming of the show, I did not partake in any physical activities.
01:25 Made a lot more sense that way, but then shortly afterwards, I just was really inspired to take care of myself, you know, build my physique.
01:33 Big part of it was on you.
01:35 And then he got ripped.
01:36 [Laughter]
01:37 Try my best here. Try my best here.
01:38 Yeah, no, I feel like my transformation was pretty extreme.
01:42 I mean, I really was not taking care of my body in the sense that like I didn't have a workout routine.
01:47 You know, I didn't have the best diet, but you know, I tried my best to be as healthy as possible.
01:53 So, you know, I didn't have a six-pack at the time.
01:56 So, I remember drawing one for a video just to kind of cheat my way there.
02:01 And then afterwards, a year later, I ended up working really hard to get one.
02:05 Oh, yeah.
02:06 But we have a wonderful stunt team, and I was super thrilled to work with them.
02:12 And then I met with them, and they were like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Get away from us. You're overqualified.
02:16 You're not supposed to look like you know what you're doing."
02:20 So, they kind of put me in a corner to just watch.
02:22 But I did get a chance to do my own stunts.
02:24 I think they were very happy that I was capable of doing my own stunts and that I had an athletic background.
02:29 So, I think my favorite, though, is probably – it's got to be the Dino-Fly.
02:33 Yeah, that's a good one.
02:34 That is so crazy. I've never seen anything like that on TV before.
02:37 My favorite stunt scene in our show is probably the Episode 6 golf sequence.
02:43 It was inspired by "Old Boy."
02:45 It was a lot of long takes of crazy sequences, and I adjusted my training to match that.
02:51 So, I was doing a lot of 45-second bursts to try to match the length of what I thought the takes were going to be like.
02:56 So, today I was thinking of taking everyone through a typical full-body workout for myself.
03:00 I like to keep things simple.
03:02 I try to lift at least twice a week, sometimes maybe three times.
03:06 And then Sam and I are going to show you some of our favorite exercises.
03:09 All right, so normally with every workout I do, I like to start with my legs first.
03:13 So, I like to do a variation of a squat, lunge, or a hinged deadlift-type movement.
03:19 Today, we're going to be doing one of my favorites, also one of my least favorites, the Zurcher reverse lunge.
03:24 The way we set up is you want it just below your elbow, the crook of your elbow.
03:30 You're going to lift in, brace, come up, keep your upper back tight.
03:35 And I like to squeeze my glutes and core before I start each rep.
03:38 Brace.
03:42 Try to step as far back as you can.
03:46 So, imagine like you've got another person right here, and you're trying to take them down.
03:51 And that is the Zurcher reverse lunge.
03:54 All right, so now I'm going to show you one of my favorite exercises.
03:57 It's pretty simple. It's just a pull-up.
03:59 Now, the reason why I love the pull-up is because there was one time, like a year ago, when I first started working out,
04:05 there was a sort of like a fair, like an expo, a fitness expo I went to, and they had a pull-up competition.
04:12 And I thought I could do pretty well.
04:14 So, I tried it, and I couldn't even do six pull-ups. I did five.
04:18 It was so embarrassing.
04:20 And since that day, I promised myself that I'm going to be able to do ten pull-ups every single day.
04:25 So, up to this day, I do ten pull-ups every single day just to make sure I can do those pull-ups.
04:31 All right, here we go.
04:35 Now, I usually just go pretty simple, or if I'm feeling like I want to save some time and, you know, get a little bit of abs going too,
04:42 I tend to just kind of activate those abs and--
04:46 Nice.
04:47 That one's a hard one.
04:49 Yeah, let's get it.
04:52 Nice.
04:54 There you go.
04:57 Yep.
04:58 I try my best to go, you know, as low as I can and kind of hang.
05:05 Sweet.
05:07 Your turn.
05:18 That's 45 now?
05:19 No.
05:20 46?
05:21 47.
05:22 48.
05:24 48.
05:25 48.
05:26 49.
05:27 49.
05:28 50.
05:29 50.
05:30 50.
05:31 50.
05:32 50.
05:33 50.
05:34 50.
05:35 50.
05:36 50.
05:37 50.
05:38 All right, so this next exercise is a landmine rotation.
05:39 I like this one a lot because in stunts and in jujitsu, there's a lot of rotation, a lot of awkward movements that your body's put into.
05:40 So, this really strengthens your obliques and a lot of those rotational muscles and just gets your core to really fire well.
05:42 So, the way you set it up is you bring it up, and then I alternate between rotating my feet and not.
05:49 So, sometimes I'll go just like this, and then you can play around with the distance that you are from the bar.
05:55 And sometimes I will rotate my feet and drive a little bit from the legs.
06:00 So, yeah, that's kind of how it goes.
06:07 I didn't have as much time to work out while we were filming, and I was trying to maintain as strict of a diet as I could.
06:11 The hardest thing was going off salt for like three or four days.
06:14 That completely took the joy out of eating food, which for me is a big part of my happiness.
06:19 But I wanted to give everything that I had for the times that I had to take my shirt off.
06:25 Didn't you gain like five, ten pounds right after because you wanted to go right back to bulking?
06:29 Yeah, so I mean, for those shirtless scenes, I'm at my lightest and most depleted.
06:34 So, I knew we had some big fight scenes coming up.
06:36 So, yeah, you're right.
06:37 So, I definitely tried to put back on more weight and more muscle.
06:40 So, when I started working out last year, I didn't have anything.
06:44 I didn't have a gym membership.
06:45 I didn't have, you know, a bench press.
06:47 So, I started off doing push-ups, and I had a set of dumbbells.
06:51 And so, the exercise I'm going to show you right now is a push-up to renegade row.
06:56 So, we start with just a regular push-up with the dumbbells.
06:59 So, we go down, and then we come back up, and then go right into a row.
07:06 And the goal is to just keep your body as straight as possible.
07:13 These are really good.
07:14 There's also a variation called the man-maker where you add a clean into a shoulder press,
07:19 and then you drop back down to do the push-up.
07:21 What do you mean? So, you finish, and then you come back up, and you--
07:25 Yep.
07:26 Ooh.
07:27 Yeah, and try to do it like a little more explosively, like pop it up to your shoulders.
07:30 Okay, I'll try that.
07:31 Yeah, let's go.
07:33 Go down?
07:34 Yep, row.
07:35 Row.
07:36 Pop up to your feet close to the dumbbells, and then pull.
07:39 Yep, there you-- Yes, there you go. Nice.
07:42 Oh, my goodness.
07:44 Thank you, Men's Health, for joining us on our workout today.
07:46 Remember, doing something is always better than doing nothing, and that consistency is key.
07:50 And make sure to catch us on The Brother Son, streaming exclusively on Netflix.
07:55 [grunts]
07:57 [laughs]
07:58 Yeah.
07:59 (upbeat music)
08:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]