The INSIDER Summary:
- Alison Brie is starring in "GLOW," a movie about wrestlers in the 1980s.
- She's 5'3".
- She did a bunch of insane workouts to get in the right shape for the role.
At 5'3", Alison Brie seems like the last person who could play a convincing professional wrestler, but her trainer is here to tell you she's the real deal.
For Brie's new show, Netflix's "GLOW" (available June 23), the funny actress busted her butt for months with trainer Jason Walsh to not just look the part, but also to actually withstand the rigors of playing one of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.
"Alison did all her stunts," Walsh recently told Business Insider. "I'll tell you right now, I've worked with a lot of people and she's a little bad a--."
In "GLOW," Brie stars as Ruth Wilder, a struggling actress who gets invited to audition along with 12 other women for the professional wrestling promotion Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (G.L.O.W.), which was indeed a real promotion started in the '80s.
Walsh, who's worked with everyone from Emily Blunt on "Edge of Tomorrow" to Matt Damon for "Jason Bourne," put together a workout plan for Brie that was a mix of cardio and strength training four days a week (often with a workout in the morning and afternoon each day) so her body could take the abuse.
"Alison would be jumping off ropes and landing on people and flipping. I wanted to get her resilient so she didn't run the risk of injury," Walsh said. "The science of training has really shifted the past decade to that more than glamour muscles."
Walsh did this through two different workout methods of his creation: Rise Movement, which is one-on-one strength training, and Rise Nation, a cardio class in which clients use a VersaClimber.
Here's a glimpse at the exercises Walsh put Brie through:
