By Jasu Diaz —
All that turning over money changers’s tables, all that snapping the whip through the Temple-turned-den of the thieves, requires a lot of muscle.
This is NOT an introduction to the soft-spoken and compassionate Jesus fans have come to love in the series The Chosen.
This is swole Jesus.
Jonathan Roumie became Jesus in the widely appreciated Dallas Jenkins series. While in the hearts and minds of fans, he was Jesus, the Catholic actor was actually ushering people to the real Jesus, the Spirit, in Heaven.
For Season 6, Roumie says he walked 10,000 steps a day — to keep in step with the Master who walked the height and width of Israel to preach.
He did pull-ups to failure, 3 sets of 10-15 single arm cable pulls to tone up lower lats.
“Reading the scripts for season 6 of The Chosen, it was clear that Jesus’s back was going to be heavily featured in a number of different episodes, both the crucifixion with the scourging,” Roumie says. “I needed to up my lat game.”
Add to the previous 3 sets of 10-15 dumbbell rows, chest supported dumbbell rows, incline dumbbell curl, then hammer curls.
At a simple gym in Texas where much of the filming was done, .Roumie contracted a trainer who gave him simple exercises he could do wherever he traveled to film.
Wanna be like Jesus? Pump iron.
Roumie has also improved his sleep as he’s aged.
“I’m somebody who’s definitely tried to burn the candle at both ends,” he says. “I’m going hard seven days a week. Sometimes that’s a 20-hour work day. For a lot of my life, sleep has suffered, and I haven’t put priority on it. As I’ve grown older, I’ve recognized that sleep is vital for my mental health.
Related content: Four months to pick David for House of David, two decades later comes Passion sequel, Nuremberg film deep-dives into origin of evil. Source: Men’s Health.
