Jennifer Garner’s fitness preparations for Deadpool & Wolverine look both exhaustive and exhausting but they’re impressive to boot. The 52-year-old actor has reprised her role as Elektra Natchios in the box office smash, using a varied exercise regime to get “Marvel fit” in time for filming. A recent Instagram reel reveals she committed to daily sessions with trainer Beth Nicely , as well as boxing three times per week and taking regular Peloton classes with instructor Becs Gentry .
Alongside this, the star also found time for fight practice, stability work, plyometric exercises, boxing, running, swimming, strength training and more. “Other than trying to convince my kids’ pre-school buddies that I was secretly a ninja, I hadn’t picked up Elektra’s sais since 2004; I was fit, but not Marvel fit,” she writes. “we had a superhero summer over here, twirling sais in the backyard and laughing at our sore, old bodies.
” There are impressive athletic displays aplenty in the short clip, but as a fitness writer one thing stood out above all others: Garner’s consistent use of multiplanar training. In layman’s terms, this simply means moving in a range of ways. The body operates in three planes of motion; sagittal (up, down, forwards and backwards, loosely speaking), frontal (side-to-side) and transverse (rotational) and Garner’s training contains a healthy dose of all three, which makes sense for someone readying themselves for intense fight scenes.
But most exercises sit predominantly in the sagittal plane – think squats, lunges, deadlifts and bench presses, which all involve lifting weights up and down. Everyday life often requires us to shift and twist our limbs in a range of ways, from side-stepping a stranger on the pavement to twisting around to grab something off a supermarket shelf. Multiplanar training prepares you for these actions by building a strong, functional and mobile body, increasing the resilience of your muscles and joints to reduce injury risk.
If you want to give it a go for yourself, try completing the lower-body workout below. After all, if multiplanar training can help Garner get Marvel fit, chances are it can benefit you too. As with any new exercise style, make sure you warm up and go at a pace that suits you.
With multiplanar training, alignment is important so if you can, try these exercises in front of a mirror to check your form and be aware of putting too much pressure on your joints. Starting with a weight that feels manageable and a resistance band that feels comfortable is your best route in, then you can gradually work with more weight and resistance. We can’t all be superheroes, but we can give their workouts a good go and Garner’s mix of exercise styles shows just how impactful a slick and varied training schedule can be.
.
