In advance of the new season, Kevin breaks down a crucial character's workout routine from The Last of Us Part 2 and explores what it takes to build real apocalypse-ready strength. From weight training to combat skills, he analyzes how a survivor would need to train to fight off zombies and endure the harsh world of The Last of Us. Plus, a look at the real-life athlete behind one of the game’s most jacked characters.
In advance of the new season, Kevin breaks down a crucial character's workout routine from The Last of Us Part 2 and explores what it takes to build real apocalypse-ready strength. From weight training to combat skills, he analyzes how a survivor would need to train to fight off zombies and endure the harsh world of The Last of Us. Plus, a look at the real-life athlete behind one of the game’s most jacked characters.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hello listeners, I hope everyone is doing well this week. As everyone knows, I am doing an MA in Philosophy. It’s not always easy on the mind. It forces us to challenge beliefs we hold about the nature of reality, whether there are things like universal concepts of right and wrong and so on. Therefore, it’s good to have a strategy for some escape from these ideas. So, playing sports or meeting friends. Sometimes, I play some videogames to just escape my own mind. This past month, I have been playing a game called ‘The Last of Us Part 2’. Even if you don’t play any games, you may be familiar with ‘The Last of Us’ because it spawned an award winning show, which is just about to release its second season, based on the very game I have been playing.
As I have been playing the game, it has become apparent that firstly, I empathise more with the antagonist and secondly, that she, a character called Abby Anderson is extremely jacked. She has very strong arms and shoulders. In a kind of ‘Easter egg’ for players of the game, there is a gym room that you can walk through at one point and as you walk around, there is a clipboard with Abby’s workout routine on it. Of course, there are now a ton of people doing this workout hoping to get Abby’s arms and shoulders. So, I thought it would be fun to see if you could follow this routine and get a jacked upper body also.
So lets dive into my analysis of Abby’s training plan from ‘The Last of Us’.
Abby’s routine for the first month you can see on the clipboard is:
Monday: Upper Body
Tuesday: rest
Wednesday: Jogging
Thursday: Full Body
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Yoga
Sunday: Rest
In the second month it switches to
Monday: Full Body
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Lower Body
Thursday: Weights
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Yoga
Sunday: Rest
So, it looks like Abby does a mixture of full body training and is either doing upper body or lower body and is jogging for cardio or doing no cardio at all. There is also no description of the exercises she does on upper body/ lower body or weights day. Therefore, I would have to do a lot of work on this program to make it into one that would work and is just better.
Spoiler alert here is that everyone following a variation of Abby’s routine will NOT get Abby’s physique. I didn’t know this until I did some research and found out the actually the physique given to Abby is based on someone that really exists. Someone that I actually know and that I actually trained alongside several days a week. Her name is Coleen Fotsch and she was a sponsored athlete at a fitness education company I worked for in Arizona. She was a professional CrossFit Games athlete and prior to this was a swimmer. This swimming background is where Coleen got her shoulders from and her arms really came from lifting heavy and doing a ton of volume on things like pull ups. I can also assure you she did not take 3 rest days a week and often trained double sessions a day.
So, no mater what the clipboard says the in game training for Abby looks like, it literally couldn’t be further from the truth. That being said, I do think one could make inroads into that kind of physique without double sessions a day and following a modified version of the workout. So lets give it a go.
The first thing to say is that although it would work well for building muscle, body building routines wouldn’t have been what Abby was doing. She spent her days out patrolling, looking for ‘infected’ zombie-like creatures. She rucked, she climbed, she crawled, she carried a loaded backpack and several weapons. So Abby had to be STRONG. Although the people doing the program are doing it to ‘look’ like Abby, she was doing it for function and not looks. Therefore, a program building absolute strength and some baseline aerobic fitness (for all the long hikes and running from infected) is the way to go. SO, lets have a look at the program again in that light.
Monday in month one was ‘upper body’. The biggest loads you can move in an upper body movement are performed in the bench press. So we have to include this. I would also add in some standing press (also called military press) on the second month, instead of the bench press because the bench may be seen as less functional. Both of these will also grow the triceps and deltoids and I would add in work on the opposing muscle groups here to balance things out to avoid injury. So some pull ups (if you can do them) since Abby did a lot of climbing, but you could do lat pull downs instead. I would also do some bicep work to balance out the triceps and some upper back, like rows, face pulls and shrugs.
On Tuesday, instead of rest, I would have her do some martial arts. The game is not peaceful, its centred on combat. There is combat with the infected and with other human factions. Abby has to know how to fight and maintain that skill. It’s also great cardio. Some striking like boxing or Muay Thai and some kind of grappling art, judo, wrestling or BJJ.
Wednesday was a jogging day, I would say here just do whatever cardio you find enjoyable. Jogging is fine, but so is rucking or if you want, you can do some rowing.
Thursday I would have as a rest day
Friday would be deadlift day, with a focus on heavy low rep pulling from the floor, with a lot of glute and hamstring accessory work. This will switch to a squat day with quad accessory work on the second month.
Saturday can stay as yoga day because one has to get into a more relaxed parasympathetic state after fighting zombies all week. It’s not healthy for anyone to be stressed out in perpetuity and will affect those gains!
So, there you have it. My version of how to get jacked like Abby Anderson. Bear in mind that I don’t think this is an optimal routine, I tried to stick closely to what the in-game training looked like. I also know, as I said in the episode that Abby was based on the physique of someone I know and I am very familiar with her daily training. But I am also aware that probably no one listening to this show has the energy or time to do twice a day training sessions or the ability to cram in the necessary calories to fuel such an endeavour. It’s also the case that Coleen Fotsch had wide and strong shoulders prior to even starting CrossFit, from a swimming background and that neither her sport (Crossfit) nor the workout plan in the game reflect a preexisting physique. That being said it was still fun for me to find out that hers was the body type iIn mind for the character and it was fun thinking about what training could fit into the workout plan that could respect the plan but also the intent of the lived life of the character.
I hope everyone has a great week and if you want to send me an email, then please do so on getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com.
Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, the director of podcasts Brannan Goetschius and Davina Tomlin. I’m your host, Kevin Don. If you have a question for me, leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104 or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com. For more information about the show, visit quickanddirtytips.com, or check out the shownotes in your podcast app