Search icon

Fitness & Health

26th Oct 2015

This is how ‘Britain’s Hardest Prisoner’ Charles Bronson stays in shape behind bars

Ben Kenyon

When you have the tag as ‘Britain’s Hardest Prisoner’, you can imagine the pressure to stay in shape.

Despite serving life in prison for kidnap and robbery, Charles Bronson has always maintained a muscular physique, even in solitary confinement.

In 2002, he wrote a book called ‘Solitary Fitness’ after spending 20 years cooped up on his own.

But the 62-year-old, immortalised by Tom Hardy in the film Bronson, had let himself go in recent times, according to his fiancée Lorraine Etherington in the Mirror. She says munching on chocolate bars saw his weight and body fat balloon up to 18st.

But Bronson, notorious for attacking prison guards, has been getting back in shape with new training regime.

And it’s a little different, to say the least.

tom hardy animated GIF

Bronson tightened up his diet, purely eating one main meal of 18 egg whites plus a bowl of soup and eight pints of water throughout the day, dropping 4st.

He has also been doing 2,000 press-ups daily as part of his new fitness regime.

Lorraine says his prison diet saw him lose too much weight, so he’s been trying to pack on some size again.

“As he says himself, he lost a bit too much weight – and then regained about two stone in muscle and bulk,” she said.

If 2,000 press-ups and a sh*t load of eggs isn’t your thing, you could maybe start with something a little lighter from his book.

Begin Day 1 with 10 of each on press-ups, sit-ups, squats, squat-thrusts, burpees, star jumps and step-ups, and then keep bumping up the numbers until on Day 23 you’re doing them to exhaustion.