As a competitive athlete and fitness model, Florian Munteanu is accustomed to hard training. But training to play Ivan Drago‘s son inCreed II presented new challenges. To prepare to play Viktor Drago, Munteanu was placed on a comprehensive program by his trainer and friend, Sandro Wolfinger. It consisted of five gym workouts per week, plus three to four cardio/sport-specific sessions.
“We try to make the cardio workouts very multifaceted,” Wolfinger says. “We obviously had to put more time into the boxing workouts and also the choreography for the movie scenes. We also did a lot of HIIT workouts, swimming, treadmill running, and sprint training.”
The mental aspect was key as well. “Much more important than the kind of split and the type of sports training was the psychological part,” Wolfinger says. “I’ve known him for a decade. I know how to push him to his absolute limit in every single workout.”
For diet, Wolfinger focused on adjusting carbohydrates while keeping protein intake high.
“The first weeks, we built up more muscle weight by eating more carbs in the form of mashed potatoes, pasta, and oatmeal,” Wolfinger says. “The last five weeks before the shooting, we reduced carbs to shred down.”
Mostly, when it came to diet, Wolfinger was there to keep his friend from momentary temptations. “To be honest, it’s really easy to shine as his personal coach, because he has amazing genetics and is really adaptive,” he says. “What’s harder is to be his nutritionist because of his love for pizza. But as you can see looking at his body, we nailed that, too.”
Go for It
The following workout is the type of demanding, total-body routine that Munteanu employed to train for Creed II. To try it yourself, start with a dynamic warmup, then perform the below moves. Be sure to do the boxing work at full speed. Oh, and prepare to sweat—a lot.
