IMPACT: Jason: You are in great shape for the film, what advice would you give for people, what would be your top tip for training, recovery and nutrition?
Statham: I’m in and amongst people who have been a lot fitter and more in shape than myself, so down the list I’ll answer the question because I’ve trained a little bit myself. It's having the focus and dedication and restraint against eating the wrong foods. Its a state of mind really. If you can be good with your diet that's the first point... the rest comes easy. The exercise and commitment and having a good environment will take you to a certain level. Obviously if you are looking to achieve great things like some of the Olympians, I can’t answer that because I never quite made it but I am sure Arnold can enlighten us on how to take it to an extreme level...
Stallone: Mine is going lighter and more scientific and using the equipment they are actually using with olympians today and plyometrics and actually its more fun than just an iron game. Arnold is more an expert in ground and pound and really going old school.
Schwarzenegger: I do the curls first now and I do the squats last, laughs. I think that Sly always used a much more scientific way of training and if I remember it was always what was the latest method and what is the latest findings. He’s right, I come much more from the old school and I believe in reps and doing it for an hour every day and I do the same exercise as I did 50 years ago and they still work and I eat the same diet as I did fifty years ago and it still works and I have a great time. I’m addicted to exercising and I have to do something every day. I do some cardiovascular training here in London... its been fun because they have the Boris bikes so we go bicycle riding and sightseeing at the same time! Exercise has always been part of my life and watching what you eat. Its tougher as you get older, your metabolism slows down and your muscles don’t respond in the same way when you do action scenes and fight scenes or running around takes longer to recuperate. But so what? It doesn’t matter, its not like we don’t get paid for it and its not like we don’t have a good time and its not like we are not passionate about what we are doing, its all terrific.
No matter what age you are we have a great time, we had a great time working with all of the action stars. it was the first time I worked with Jason and it was terrific working with him, he’s such a talented actor and so believable on the screen I am happy about that.
Adkins: I was picking the brains of Arnold. I got to train with Arnold and Jean Claude, but for me,at the young age of 36, I am starting to feel the joints starting to go and I am starting to re-evaluate the approach and go the more scientific approach... but to me, as long as you train hard you are going to get results.
Stallone: Scott is by far one of the one percent in the world in what he does, its extraordinary. I wish we would have used him more because he has starred in films on his own he has an amazing body and amazing musculature and the coordination is just staggering. He is a really amazing talent.
IMPACT: Scott, with a film like Expendables 2, coming onto the set working with guys like this did you feel pressure?
Adkins: For sure, I was nervous. I am nervous in the presence of them now. I played a similar character before, I did a film called Undisputed 2 and 3 and the character I played was a Russian MMA fighter who was very intense. its an underground movie and you’d have to seek it out. So for the Expendables 2 I took what I did for that character and because we were in Eastern Europe it made sense to make the character FROM Eastern Europe...and try to bring that intensity to the part of Hector. Hopefully, I have got the audience to love to hate me because that’s what you want from a good villain and we have the end fight, me and Jason, so I think its what fans expected.
IMPACT: Sly and Arnold, you guys practically invented this genre, but did you have a role model for this specific kind of genre?
Stallone: Growing up I, of course, admired... the first time I saw Hercules Unchained because I was very thin, I was an adolescent, I had no direction and the usual insecurities but from that point on I had a real male role model. Of course patterning yourself after Hercules is a difficult thing when you are skinny. I was drawn to heroes like Kirk Douglas in the Vikings, that primarily was it.
When Arnold and I got into the action genre there really wasn’t an action genre. There’d be car chases and maybe a fist fight but the actual genre was something that grew up around us and we were pretty instrumental in it, but unwareingly so, it just happened.
Schwarzenegger: I remember when I was 15 years old and I got to the age where physical strength, being athletic and looking like a He-Man meant a lot to me. I also watched Hercules movies. One guy in particular, Reg Park, who was a British body builder, became Mr. Universe very young and won it a second and a third time. He was my idol, I read everything about Reg Park and followed his footsteps and trained like him and if he can make it I can make it. It was a blueprint of how to win the championships and how to make it. Here’s the training laid out and how to get into movies and become a Mr. Universe and make Hercules movies and this was the route I was going to go. He was an idol and terrific motivating factor for me who gave me a vision of how to get there. There were American stars, Kirk Douglas but also John Wayne movies were very heroic to me. It was that age and was very inspirational. I took it further than most kids who said ‘I am going to work out a little bit’.
I said: ‘I am going to win the championships, I’m going to get into the movies and make millions of dollars like Reg Park, I’m going to get into the gym business and have the same life he has...'
IMPACT: Arnold, you have had such a varied career with acting, bodybuilding, politics. What has life taught you?
Schwarzenegger: I think that most of my lessons learnt are from sports. That’s why I alway emphasise to young kids to get involved in sports. Thats where you learn about discipline, there’s where you learn about ‘never listen to no’, or its impossible or you can’t make it, because you can!
I’ve heard all my life that it's impossible or you can’t make it and you will fail and I didn’t listen to that and I made it! You also learn how to get up when you fail or you fall. As you go through life you lean that you cannot be successful in everything, I remember as a weightlifter, I tried to lift the 500 pounds on the bench press and I failed. But, one day at the German championships in powerlifting I bench-pressed the 500 pounds, after failing for ten times. In politics if we tried to do a policy and we failed five or six times, the press asked don’t you realise that after people say no five or six times its over?
I would say that in lifting I failed so many times and then...I did it... and you learn never to give up. You have to have vision, no matter what you do in live you have to first have vision to see your goal, you have to believe in it and you have to chase it and then you have fun chasing it. If you have no goal, if you have no vision... you have nothing.
