Kit Connor recently went viral after fitness model and YouTuber Nathaniel Massiah shared a photo of them working out together. The Heartstopper actor was shirtless with his muscular physique on full display, prompting speculation that he has been transforming his body in anticipation of being cast in a Marvel movie.
Massiah has since released a video of their training session—a push workout focusing on chest, shoulders and triceps—where Connor speaks about his exercise routine and his reasons for getting in shape.
“I normally train with dumbbells, so I haven’t trained bench press in a while,” he says, starting the session with an empty barbell in order to focus on achieving correct form before loading up the weight.
“There’s gonna be a lot of angry fans if I was to injure Kit today,” jokes Massiah. “So obviously I’m going to make sure that it’s all good.”
Throughout the rest of the workout, which includes shoulder press machine, dumbbell flys, and standing cable curls, explains the approach he usually takes to his regular workouts.
“I generally do 3 sets of 12 for most things, maybe 4 sets,” he says. “I used to do push/pull/legs, but I would do legs like once a week… And then I decided to change to shoulders and arms, chest and back, and then legs.”
He also revealed that one of the main reasons he started going to the gym was in order to help himself get into character for his most famous role: “When I got cast in Heartstopper, it’s based on a comic book, and the character I’m based on is like 6’2, very big… and I was shorter than I am now, and skinnier… When it got announced, there were some people on the internet going like ‘he’s a bit too skinny to play him.'”
“I started just doing pushups,” he added. “I was doing 200 pushups a day, and the only thing that was developing was my chest. So if you look at Heartstopper, there’s a couple of points where I’m wearing quite a tight shirt… the boobies were looking quite large, I was like ‘Yes!’ But then I started properly hitting the gym. It’s good, it’s good for your mental health, I think.”
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
