First Dates' Fred Sirieix Explains How He Builds His Body
Fred Sirieix isn’t your typical Men’s Health man. Known more for his charm than his chiselled six pack, who knew that underneath that alluring French accent and easy style lay a lean, mean fighting machine?
Before Sirieix became the nations’ favourite maître d', he was working with his boxing coach – former British and European boxing champion, Clinton Mckenzie. Back in the day the two would happily hit lumps out of each other, and while his television career has put paid to that, he still trains at the same spit and sawdust boxing gym and still works out to the point where his lungs are screaming for oxygen because, as he puts it, “you can’t get fitter if you don’t go to the limit.”
“When I’m in the boxing gym, pad work is my favourite exercise because it’s about pushing myself to the limit, working on attack and working on defence,” he adds.
Due to Sirieix’s television career, he has to travel, a lot – most recently for the ITV chefs-on-tour series Gordon, Gino and Fred: Road Trip.
But his fitness hasn't suffered. While on the road, Sirieix has developed a training regimen that keeps his body lean and his mind sane. He begins every day with 300, yes, you read that right, 300 press-ups, breaking them up by doing them EMOM style – that's 30 press-ups every minute for 10 minutes. After that, he moves onto bodyweight squats, which he does while holding 2kg hand weights, completing 30 every minute for 5 minutes.
To finish, Sirieix shadow boxes with his hand weights. To mimic a real fight, he does this in three-minute rounds before taking a minute's rest to recover. “It’s a great exercise for me because if I’m stuck in a hotel room with only two or three square metres to exercise I can still do some cardio,” he says.
And that’s pretty much it. Nothing complicated, and nothing that takes too much kit or fancy equipment. Even the hand weights aren’t absolutely necessary. All it really takes is a can-do attitude, and anyone who’s seen Sirieix prepping and pepping-up hapless romantics on First Dates knows he had that in spades – even before he took his top off.
Sign up to the Men's Health newsletter and kickstart your home body plan. Make positive steps to become healthier and mentally strong with all the best fitness, muscle-building and nutrition advice delivered to your inbox.
For effective home workouts, uplifting stories, easy recipes and advice you can trust, subscribe to Men's Health UK.
You Might Also Like
