Callum Turner isn't an actor who trains purely for aesthetics. A promising footballer in his teens, he has since built his body through activity for specific roles, such as an Olympic rower or air force major, rather than simply lifting weights to achieve a certain aesthetic.
The 36-year-old feared he might have missed his chance to put that athletic background to use on screen. It wasn't until 2023's The Boys in the Boat, in which he portrayed Olympic rower Joe Rantz, that he was finally able to undergo the kind of physical preparation he'd always hoped for as an actor.
Training Like an Athlete
'We all love a sports movie and an underdog story,' Turner told Radio Times. 'I've always wanted to do a sports movie. I was 31 when I got the part and I was running out of time, I was running out of sports to play.'
As such, he fully threw himself into becoming a rower. Turner spent five months learning the sport, understanding how to row as part of a team, and performing like a professional athlete. 'It's one of the most excruciating things I've ever done in my life – physically and emotionally. We trained for five months to get to a pretty decent level. All of the rowing in the film is us. It was important for us that we could achieve that and row as if we were Olympians,' he said.
'The first two months of that process before we started shooting, we'd row for four hours a day on the River Thames. It was a professional sports outfit. I remember getting back to my house and getting in the bath and I could barely move. But I knew I needed to recover so that I could get back in the boat the next day.'
Getting Military Ready
He adopted a similar mentality for 2024 series Masters of the Air. On that occasion, Turner needed to get in military shape to play a member of a heavy bomber unit during World War II. The ensemble cast, which also included Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan, underwent rigorous military training under the watchful eye of former marine Captain Dale Dye.
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Again, training wasn't as much about looking a certain way as performing optimally. With bodyweight and core strength imperative for operatives to pull themselves into and out of planes, Dye had the cast completing 90-minute sessions consisting of sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, dead hangs and star jumps. The importance of running wasn't overlooked either – Turner and Co. ran three miles a day – while caterpillar push-ups and atomic sit-ups focused on achieving a more coherent unit working in unison.
'It wasn’t about making them look great with their shirts off, but we wanted a certain dexterous physicality so that they could climb in and out of aircraft and manoeuvre themselves through constricted areas inside an aircraft fuselage. And to do that, we had to do two things; essentially, we had to limber them up and make them flexible,' Dye told GQ.
Ryan is a Senior Writer at Men’s Health UK with a passion for storytelling, health and fitness. Having graduated from Cardiff University in 2020, and later obtaining his NCTJ qualification, Ryan started his career as a Trainee News Writer for sports titles Golf Monthly, Cycling Weekly and Rugby World before progressing to Staff Writer and subsequently Senior Writer with football magazine FourFourTwo.
During his two-and-a-half years there he wrote news stories for the website and features for the magazine, while he also interviewed names such as Les Ferdinand, Ally McCoist, Jamie Redknapp and Antonio Rudiger, among many others. His standout memory, though, came when getting the opportunity to speak to then-Plymouth Argyle manager Steven Schumacher as the club won League One in 2023.
Having grown up a keen footballer and playing for his boyhood side until the age of 16, Ryan got the opportunity to represent Northern Ireland national futsal team eight times, scoring three goals against England, Scotland and Gibraltar. Now past his peak, Ryan prefers to mix weightlifting with running – he achieved a marathon PB of 3:31:49 at Manchester in April 2025, but credits the heat for failing to get below the coveted 3:30 mark…
You can follow Ryan on Instagram @ryan.dabbs or on X @ryandabbs_
