A few years back, I wrote a post (one that I thought was funny) about Superman coming to me for speed training because he was racing Flash.  It was a quick read that discussed how I put the Man of Steel through a workout and improved his time by a millionth of a second or something ridiculous like that.

With the new movie coming out, Man of Steel, it got me to thinking about Superman’s workout routine.  I mean does he naturally just stay buff like that?  Are all Kryptonians built like they spend hours in the gym or does Superman have to workout just to keep in somewhat decent looking shape?

If Superman did have a workout routine, it might look something like this.

Pump a lot of iron!

Superman’s warm-up is going to be a nice easy jog for about 2 or 3 minutes back and forth across the United States.  He probably covers a lot of ground when he runs, so this will be a nice, easy pace for him.

Once he is good and warmed up, we would hit his core by having him do some planks.  He’ll need some resistance to really test his core, so we’ll put a few cars on his back.  Even though he is the Man of Steel, something like a stability ball could throw him off so if he is able to hold the planks with the cars on his back will have him get on a couple of stability balls and see if that can fatigue him.

We’ll see if we can get 3 or 4 sets out of him where he is struggling after a few minutes.

Now we gotta make sure Superman’s legs are strong.  He can leap tall buildings with a single bound remember.  What we’ll do is have him do some overhead squats where Superman’s resistance will be a mountain.  He’ll just burrow underneath the mountain hoist it up overhead and do some sets of squats.

Superman has to do some push/pull movements to build that upper body of his.   For pushing movements, Superman can do a simple machine press where he has a pulley attachment set up to a couple of cruise ships.  They seem to be breaking down on the ocean so we might as well put them to good use.  He can then face the machine and do some rows to hit his back.  If it gets easy, he can grab both handles and do single arm movements.

Superman’s speed can set him apart.

How to maintain or possibly improve the speed of someone who is faster than a speeding bullet?  That is the trick.

I can’t really use the app I have set up on my Ipad to video tape him.  So, we have to get one of those real high powered video cameras to break down his running form and see if there are any mechanical issues we need to work on.

At that point, it is a combination of plyometrics and resistance runs.  With the plyometrics you could take him out to the desert and chain him to a big boulder.  You can then do vertical and horizontal plyometrics to improve his jumping.  You might have to add on more boulders for resistance since he is a pretty powerful dude.

Finally, I would then have him do some runs with those boulders.  Like I said, maybe in some barren wasteland so that the boulders don’t do damage.  But that would be hopefully enough resistance to keep him at peak speed.

Anyways, that would be one type of workout I would dream up for Superman.  I’d love to hear what type of exercises you would have the Man of Steel do for his workout.  Put your exercises in the comments box below and we’ll talk soon.

Photo courtesy of Cesar Mascarenhas on Flickr