50 Cent’s trainer, Jay Cardiello, highlights the approach he uses with celebrity clients: “We focus on sleep, nutrition, hydration, and setting up strategies to decrease stress or handle stress.”
Sleep to Recover
“Many people don’t realize that sleep not only has effects on your eating but also shifts your hormones. When I first got with 50, he was sleeping two to three hours a night. I was like, ‘Dude, you can’t recover. That’s why you’re not hitting goals.’ Now he sleeps six to eight, hopefully.”
Don’t Diet
“I don’t believe in diets. Food is a habit, not the root cause. With 50, we focus on non-inflammatory foods, including tart cherry juice, natural melatonin, broccoli, and spinach.”
Change the Environment
“Set your shoes and clothes out the night before if you are going to work out in the morning. And your protein shake should be premade. If you can’t find your sneakers or you’re looking for something, that disrupts the pattern or the focus that you want to implement. Preparation is success. Success doesn’t happen at the gym, it happens way before you get there.”
See the Future
“Whenever I’m coaching I do a lot of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which is about anchoring in and focusing on the future self. For example, with 50, his goal when shooting for M&F is focusing on how he’s going to feel the following morning when he gets up. So we’re connected with a current self and the future self. It’s not about training harder; it’s about training your psyche.”
Use Mental Imagery
“Create a goal, figure out why you want it, what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it, and then give yourself a time frame. People don’t usually know their purpose. That’s why there are 155,000 self-help books on Amazon right now.”
TIPS TO TRAIN LIKE 50 CENT
Cardiello uses an “application over aesthetics” approach with 50.
Car Driver
“Doing plate push-outs simulates actions used in fight scenes. With car drivers, keep the elbows bent a little as you turn the weight.”
Pullup
“50 likes ‘the wheel.’ He pulls himself up, making a big circle. Besides that, we avoid regular pullups and do chin-ups. I don’t want that type of stretch on his shoulder.”
Sandbell Slam
“These work your posterior chain, and training with closed-chain exercises means you’re treating your body like an athlete.”
Rollout
“We do rollouts at the end of our workouts because it’s such a strong core move. And 50 needs his core strong throughout the whole day.”
For Touchdown workout, put back and heels against wall with hands in palms-forward “touchdown” pose. Keep tri’s parallel with floor and elbows bent 90 degrees.
