DANIEL MACPHERSON IS no stranger to hard yards. The actor and former triathlete competed at the IRONMAN World Championship at Kailua-Kona, in 2009, clocking a very respectable 10:25. He even won the LA Triathlon’s amateur division, a feat that would have allowed him to get a pro card if he wanted it.
MacPherson would turn his back on triathlon to focus on his acting career, a move that’s born fruit with a string of roles on big-budget US streaming shows like Strike Back, as well as seeing him garner good notices in local film productions, including Infini and The Osiris Child.
But it’s his new film, Beast, opposite Russell Crowe, who he previously worked with on the film Poker Face and TV series Land of Bad, that’s got everybody talking. Playing washed-up MMA fighter Patton ‘The General’ James, the film looks set to change the trajectory of MacPherson’s career.
The movie hits some familiar beats – a down-on-his-luck former champion fighter coming out of retirement is hardly breaking new narrative ground. But Beast packs a proverbial punch, with a gritty visual palette and some visceral combat scenes that certainly pass the eye test. As MacPherson says, bringing a level of authenticity to the fight sequences – superbly choreographed by actor and martial artist Bren Foster, who plays James’ opponent Xavier Grau – was key to audience buy-in.
“Everybody is so knowledgeable on martial arts and MMA these days, it’s in the palm of their hands 24/7,” MacPherson tells Men’s Health, as we chat in Sydney’s Australia Square on a breezy morning in March. “And so, we had to elevate the quality of those fights above what people can watch on a Sunday on their pay-per-view. That meant it had to be really technical, they had to be really impressive. Above all, it had to be brutal and visceral and fast and it had to be cool and it had to be right because otherwise everybody around the world would go, ‘Oh, that’s wrong’ or ‘that lock wouldn’t have held’. We live in an age of experts.”
MacPherson responded to the brief, grounding himself in combat sports, a process he describes as the fun part of his profession. “I love standing in front of something going, ‘How the hell am I going to do this?’ And learning.”
To wit, the first person MacPherson texted when preparing to play Patton James was former NRL- great-turned-boxer, Paul Gallen. “I was like, ‘Hey mate, have you got a good boxing coach for me?’” Gallen put him in touch with local Cronulla boxing coach Graham Shaw. “I wanted to learn all the martial arts separately, as well as I could, before I put them together into MMA,” MacPherson says. “So, I went and learned how to throw a punch properly and then I started jujitsu and then Muay Thai. And once I had an understanding of those individual martial arts, then I saw how they went together in a completely different sport in MMA.”
From there, MacPherson flew to Thailand twice to work out in training camps with seasoned pros. “Those were awesome in that there were no distractions,” he says. “Everybody there is there to train. There’s a great spiritual nature to Muay Thai and to mixed martial arts in Thailand, which I loved. Everybody was so forthcoming and so welcoming to go, ‘We want you to showcase our sport and our passion at the highest level’. That was the responsibility I took on.”
Of course, like any working male actor in Hollywood today, MacPherson has had to reconfigure his physique to suit the roles he takes on. He got down to 68kg to play a jockey in The Cup back in 2011, for example, but once he arrived in Hollywood in 2014, the former cardio king made a conscious decision to try and put on some size.
“Every audition I was going to in America was an FBI agent, ex-Navy SEAL, DEA agent, da, da, da,” he says. “So I realised that everything was being shot in a mid-shot and I needed some shoulders and a chest. I started working on that almost immediately and two years later I was cast as a Marine Special Forces soldier in Strike Back. Then I just kept training and kept building and those roles are still, generally, what I’m being put forward for. And you look around at the top-level guys in film and TV, they’ve all got great athleticism and physicality.”
Crucial to MacPherson’s upper body bulk was a new focus on his nutrition after he realised training alone could only take him so far. “What happened was I did my first season of Strike Back and I realised that I couldn’t train any harder,” he says. “All the success that had come in sport had been from training hard, outworking everybody, just being the fucking hardest you could be, and hoping that would overcome any natural talent deficit. And I realised through working with great nutritionists that I could actually train less and have better results and still have all the energy I needed on set. That was the next breakthrough for me in terms of how my body responded to things and how I could get bigger, smaller, leaner, whatever.”
For Beast, MacPherson was at 80-82 kg, but stresses that he was a “pretty lean 82”, attributing his formidable shape, in part, to the rigours of the filmmaking process. “Because I was on such a tight timeline I was trying to drop body fat, build muscle, learn martial arts and mentally retain the choreography on 2000 calories a day, while co-parenting a four-year-old and doing my cleaning, my washing, my meal prep.” He recalls leaving home at 6 am with four bags. “One was a bag of food, one was all my martial arts training gear, one was gym gear, one was all my work stuff, plus whatever Austin [his son] needed.”
He’d start the day with a high intensity workout, usually fasted, before jumping in the car and driving to Foster’s gym in Minchinbury, in Sydney’s west, where he’d train in martial arts for 4-5 hours. He’d then do weights in the evening.
When you see the way MacPherson wholly inhabits the character of Patton James, you’d to have to conclude the juice was worth the squeeze.
Here’s a breakdown of his workout and diet for the film. Use it to find your own version of beast mode.
Daniel MacPherson’s beast of a workout
Morning session – conditioning
Full-body session (fasted) with a HIIT calorie-burning focus:
- 15mins warm up – walk/jog/bike/row/ski erg
- 10 mins mobility focusing on shoulders and hips.
Workout 1
AMRAP 20
- 500m row
- 24kg KB swings x 20
- DB renegade row x 20
Rest 4 mins
- 16 min EMOM
- Front-racked KB squats
- 15 cal ski erg
- DB man makers – push up/row/snatch complex
- Burpees
- 100 core reps
- 5 mins cycle cool down.
Workout 2 (alternate session)
- 10 Mins warm up walk/jog/cycle
- 10 Min Mobility
- 10 – 1 ladder:
- Push press
- Burpee box jumps
- Single arm KB bent over row.
- Bike cals ( doubled)
- Standing dumbbell Arnold curl and press
- Ski Erg Cals doubled.
Rest 2 mins between each round. Optional – 200m run after each round
Afternoon: martial arts training session
Evening: weights session
Focus on aesthetic and shape. 45-60 mins
“Here I’d do my compound lifts or focus on body parts that were going to make a visual difference on screen, ” says MacPherson.
“In addition to deadlifts and squats, it was often shoulders with a focus on felt width, so a lot of lateral work. Back with a lot of trap work – rows, and HEAVY farmers carries. Chest with a focus on upper chest so a lot of incline work.”
5 sets, 2 warm up, 2 working, 1 hard.
“My magic number was 5. 5 sets working to a hard 5 reps.”
Abs session
100 reps a day minimum:
- Sit-ups with 20kg plate
- Hanging leg raises
- Weighted obliques
Daniel MacPherson's daily eating plan
MacPherson prioritised L glutamine and BCAAS before/intra workouts to preserve as much muscle as possible. Here’s his daily intake:
Breakfast
- 4 eggs and 2 scoops of whey protein, blended with baby spinach on a water base
- Greek yoghurt and berries
Meal 1
Chicken, greens and avocado, and berries
Meal 2
Protein shake, berries and some almond butter – and a big iced americano
Dinner
-
Steak and greens
-
Casein/whey shake before bed
Beast is in cinemas from April 23
