Jonathan Majors trained up to six hours a day, ate 6,100 calories daily for four sustained months, built a 340-pound bench press, and gained 21 pounds of lean muscle to play competitive bodybuilder Killian Maddox in Magazine Dreams. This is the full breakdown of the Jonathan Majors workout and diet that built that body, and exactly how you can train to build one like it.

JONATHAN MAJORS BIO

Jonathan Majors was born in Lompoc, California in 1989. He studied drama at Yale School of Drama, graduating in 2016. He broke out with a quietly powerful performance in The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) and followed it with Lovecraft Country (2020), Da 5 Bloods (2020), and The Harder They Fall (2021).

He became a household name when he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), bringing a physical presence to the role that set him apart from previous Marvel antagonists.

Magazine Dreams premiered at Sundance 2023 to massive critical acclaim. Majors plays Killian Maddox, an obsessive amateur bodybuilder whose life unravels around his compulsive pursuit of the perfect physique. The role demanded that Majors actually become a competitive-level bodybuilder. Not just look like one. Train like one, eat like one, and embody the psychological obsession completely. His performance drew early Oscar buzz.

The transformation involved gaining 21 pounds of lean muscle across an 18-month multi-role preparation period while simultaneously cutting body fat to as low as five percent. It is one of the most extreme and well-documented actor physique transformations on record.

Jonathan Majors' net worth is estimated at around $4 million.

HOW BIG IS JONATHAN MAJORS?

Jonathan Majors stands at 6 feet (183cm) and for Magazine Dreams weighed in at approximately 202 pounds (92kg). That is genuinely large for a lean physique at that height.

His chest measured 44 inches. His biceps measured 18 inches. His bench press reached 340 pounds. These are not actor numbers. These are the numbers of a competitive athlete.

His body fat during filming ran below 10 percent throughout, reaching as low as five percent in the most extreme scenes. At that level of conditioning on a 202-pound frame, you can see muscle striations and vascularity across the entire body.

He built those numbers by gaining 21 pounds of lean muscle across three separate role preparations while losing body fat at the same time. Five pounds for Kang the Conqueror. Ten pounds for Creed III. Six more pounds for Killian Maddox. Each build sharper than the last.

KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF JONATHAN MAJORS' PHYSIQUE

Enormous chest and shoulders for his frame

A 44-inch chest on a six-foot frame is competition bodybuilder territory. Combined with his shoulder width, the upper body presents as genuinely massive. This is the visual quality that makes him look dominant on screen.

18-inch arms with real density

Not measured at a pump. Measured at walking weight during training. At 18 inches with the level of leanness he maintained, the biceps and triceps show full separation and definition from every angle.

Full-body muscle density

He carries size across the entire body. Legs, back, neck, and traps are all developed in proportion to the chest and arms. The 340-pound bench press is the proof point for how much real strength underlies the visual.

Sub-10 percent body fat at 202 pounds

Maintaining that level of conditioning at that bodyweight over a sustained period requires elite dietary precision and training discipline. It is not achievable through casual preparation.

Moves like an athlete despite the mass

He carries the size with fluid movement and no stiffness. The training quality shows in how the muscle moves, not just in how it looks.

THE JONATHAN MAJORS WORKOUT ROUTINE FOR MAGAZINE DREAMS

Jonathan Majors trained up to six hours a day for Magazine Dreams. Two two-hour sessions during the shooting day, and a third session after wrap. His trainer Jason Best structured the programme around a bodybuilding-style body part split with heavy compound movements as the foundation.

Pull-ups and dips loaded with added weight were centrepiece exercises. Bench press worked up to 340 pounds. Romanian deadlifts, barbell rows, and overhead press were all done heavy with controlled eccentric phases and minimal rest between sets. Time under tension was a priority throughout.

Supersets and tri-sets maximised metabolic stress within each session. A cardio warm-up of ten to twenty minutes preceded every session, not for fat burning, but for blood flow and joint preparation given the extraordinary training volume.

The ETERNO programme modelled on this approach draws from the same principles of high-frequency, high-volume compound training with structured body part focus. The full framework is in the Beach Body Blueprint.

ETERNO'S MAGAZINE DREAMS WORKOUT SCHEDULE

WORKOUT A (MONDAY)

• Incline Machine Press: 2 sets x 6-8, 8-10 reps
• Flat Dumbbell Press: 1 set x 8-12 reps
• Chest Supported T-Bar Row: 2 sets x 6-8, 8-10 reps
• Single-Arm Overhead Dumbbell Extensions: 2 sets x 8-10, 10-12 reps
• Bayesian Cable Curl: 2 sets x 6-8, 8-10 reps
• Lying Cable Cuff Lateral Raise: 2 sets x 10-12, 12-15 reps

WORKOUT B (WEDNESDAY)

• Smith Machine Bulgarian Split Squat: 2 sets x 6-8, 8-10 reps
• Seated Leg Curl: 2 sets x 6-8, 8-10 reps
• Leg Extensions: 2 sets x 8-12 reps
• Leg Press Calf Raise: 2 sets x 8-10, 10-12 reps
• Neck Curls: 3 sets x 15-20 reps

WORKOUT C (FRIDAY)

• Lat Pulldown Machine: 2 sets x 6-8, 8-10 reps
• Machine Shoulder Press: 2 sets x 6-8, 8-10 reps
• Single-Arm Pulldown: 1 set x 8-12 reps
• Double Rope Triceps Extension: 2 sets x 8-10, 10-12 reps
• Single-Arm Dumbbell Hammer Curl: 2 sets x 6-8, 8-10 reps
• Single-Arm Reverse Cable Fly: 2 sets x 10-12, 12-15 reps

WORKOUT D (SUNDAY)

• Barbell Romanian Deadlift: 2 sets x 8-10, 10-12 reps
• Sissy Squats: 2 sets x 8-12 reps
• Lying Leg Curl: 2 sets x 8-10, 10-12 reps
• Barbell Shrug: 2 sets x 8-10, 10-12 reps
• Leg Press Calf Raise: 2 sets x 8-10, 10-12 reps
• Neck Curls: 3 sets x 15-20 reps

NEXT: The Michael B Jordan Workout for His Lean, Powerful Body in 'Sinners'

MAGAZINE DREAMS WORKOUT NOTES

Four days, upper and lower split. Monday and Friday target upper body from different angles. Wednesday and Sunday focus on legs and the posterior chain with neck work for structural balance.

Monday leads with chest pressing and back rowing in the same session. The Incline Machine Press and Chest Supported T-Bar Row pairing ensures both push and pull patterns are trained with maximum output before moving into arm isolation. Friday leads with pulling movements: lat pulldown first, then shoulder pressing, then triceps and biceps and rear delts.

Wednesday's Bulgarian split squat is the most demanding single-leg exercise in the programme. It builds leg strength and size faster than most bilateral movements because each leg works independently. Neck curls at the end of both leg sessions build the trap and neck thickness that makes the overall physique look complete rather than unfinished at the top.

Rep ranges sit between six and twenty. Compound movements run heavy. Isolation work goes higher. Progressive overload across every session is the only path to the kind of mass Majors built.

At six hours of daily training volume, Majors was operating at a level no amateur lifter should attempt. This programme brings the principles and the training quality, not the volume. Four sessions per week trained hard and consistently will produce real results.

THE JONATHAN MAJORS DIET

Jonathan Majors ate 6,100 calories per day for four sustained months to build the mass he needed for Magazine Dreams. Six to seven meals per day to hit that number without overwhelming any single eating window.

His protein sources were chicken, turkey, bison, and elk. High-quality animal proteins with clean macro profiles. No processed food. No alcohol. No deviation during the four-month peak phase. Protein intake matched his bodyweight in pounds: approximately 200 grams per day at 202 pounds. That is the competitive bodybuilding standard, and he followed it with the same precision he brought to every other element of the preparation.

Carbohydrates came almost entirely from rice. Clean, fast to prepare, easy to portion, and timed around his twice-daily training sessions to fuel the output. No random carb choices. Just rice, prepared in bulk, consumed strategically.

The 6,100-calorie target is not a number most people should replicate. It is a number that explains how he built 21 pounds of lean muscle while keeping his body fat below 10 percent across a sustained period. Extraordinary training volume demands extraordinary caloric support.

For most readers, the relevant principle is this: eat enough protein to support the muscle you are building, eat enough carbohydrates to fuel your training sessions, and eliminate the processed food that works against both. You do not need 6,100 calories. You need to eat consistently at your own target.

The full nutrition framework built around these principles is in the Beach Body Blueprint.