Riddhi Rayekar ‧ Nutritionist & Health Coach
Riddhi is a certified nutritionist with more than a decade of experience of changing people's lives with nutrition and diet. She loves to help her clients achieve their personal goals.
Herschel Walker is a famous former professional soccer player and businessman renowned for his unique workout routine and diet. He also holds a reputation for his astounding skills in martial arts and bobsledding. His lean and muscular physique does not owe to lifting weights. Instead, he utilizes his body weight to accomplish his fitness goals.
As a young boy, Herschel Walker was short and bulky while also suffering from a speech impediment. In his childhood, students used to bully him for his unattractive outlook, leaving him physically conscious.
Soon after reaching middle school, Herschel Walker decided to change his life forever and break the chains of sorrow. He consulted his elder brother, who was a track coach, and learned that by regularly doing sit-ups, floor push-ups, and sprints, he could bring a change.
Following his brother’s advice, Herschel Walker turned the tides in his favor and became a successful sprinter and a part of his college football team.
About Herschel Walker
Born on March 3, 1962, in rural Johnson County in Georgia, Herschel Walker grew up with his six siblings. Little did he know that he had a speech impediment while having excessive body weight. However, he was eager to change his life for good.
Thanks to his elder brother, a track coach, Herschel Walker learned that he could shed off his extra fat with a few exercises and become flexible. True to his brother’s advice, Herschel Walker would consistently perform splints, floor push-ups, and sit-ups, hoping that things would change for him, and they did.
Within a short span, Herschel Walker transformed into a remarkable athlete with a lean body. Later, he joined his college’s football team, the Trojans, and steered his team to a grand victory at the state championship in 1979. After his college degree, Herschel Walker enrolled at the University of Georgia, where he began playing football and won the title of All American champion thrice.
Herschel Walker was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999 and is known for his athletic greatness. Soon after, he joined professional football and played many games for the Dallas Cowboys in USFL (United States Football League). He also played many games for Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants after signing for the NFL (National Football League) during his professional football career.
Walker was also known for his taekwondo skills, earning a 5th-degree black belt. He officially participated in the professional MMA arena and was able to grab 2 victories over his opponents.
Even today, many fitness experts symbolize Herschel Walker as a man of iron will for his achievements in the fitness and sports industry.
Current Stats
- Height: 6 feet 1 Inch
- Weight: 225 pounds
- Age: 58 years old
- Birthday: March 3, 1962
- Awards: 1979 Football State Championship – 1982 Maxwell Award, Heisman Trophy – 1999 College Football Hall of Fame
Herschel Walker’s Workout Routine
Achieving a lean body in today’s world is a challenge for many people, but for Herschel Walker, it was a piece of cake. Throughout his life, Walker has been focusing on becoming leaner and athletic through bodyweight workouts. It helps him stay fit and enables him to build muscles and keep the excess fat at bay.
Here are numerous bodyweight workouts included in Herschel Walker’s workout routine.
Push-Ups
As a young athlete, Walker has been training his body for years. Getting bullied at school, he realized that bodyweight training was an excellent way to achieve a toned physique. He performs 3,500 push-ups daily. However, he reduces it to 1500 reps when he’s all geared up for MMA training.
Apart from regular push-ups, Herschel Walker performs a range of push-up variations that he can tweak as per his liking. For instance, he tweaks his push-ups by only reaching halfway from the floor and repeating this practice an additional 150 times.
Once done, Walker would then settle himself for the more challenging push-up variations for another 10 to 20 reps. Although Walker does many variations, the feet elevated, hands closed under the chest, and one-handed push-ups are his personal favorite.
Walker usually ends his floor push-ups by doing the standard ones, relatively slower. Not to mention the 10 sets of handstand push-ups with short breaks that he does to achieve his daily target.
Sit-Ups
Sit-ups are one of those primary bodyweight exercises that Herschel Walker adopted from childhood. Initially, he had a hard time doing sit-ups and could only do just 10 sit-ups in one go. However, with time and consistency, he got better and eventually could do as many as 3000 reps in a single day. With time, Walker developed a passion for bodyweight workouts that he performs even today.
Rather than confining himself to only one sport, Walker focused on developing his core by playing basketball. He prefers doing 3000 sit-ups daily, including both standard and hard variations. Among his favorite sit-up variations are the straight-legged, leg raises, bent-legged, and side crunches.
Pull-Ups
Pull-ups are one of the most physically demanding bodyweight exercises to date. Lifting your weight on a chin-up bar using your hands is not an easy task. Most fitness lovers struggle to do this exercise as it requires muscle strength and endurance. However, for Walker, this exercise wasn't challenging at all. Having trained his body for many years, Walker could easily do this exercise without breaking a sweat.
Walker could do 1500 pull-ups daily with multiple variations in his early days. Apart from the standard pull-up variation, Walker could easily do the palms facing away pull-ups and the palms facing toward pull-ups. He could also perform one-armed pull-ups with ease. But when all the other exercises became easy for him, Walker would tie a weight plate around his waist for each pull-up round.
Running
As an athlete, Walker believes that running is one of the best cardiovascular activities athletes can incorporate into their lifestyle. At a young age, Walker would run miles, most of which consisted of swift sprints.
At college, Walker liked to run – Sprinting up and down the hills, taking the incline of the hills as a personal challenge. He challenged himself by increasing resistance to his running. Some include wearing a weight vest, running while carrying dumbbells, and dragging a tire filled with weight via a weightlifting belt.
Standing at more than 6ft in height and weighing in at 225 pounds, Walker’s running skills are a testament to his sheer dedication and commitment to his fitness goals.
MMA Training
Apart from his track and football workouts, Walker had a thing for taekwondo. Growing up, he would dedicate an hour to MMA training, ending with a 5th-degree black belt in martial arts.
Herschel Walker was bullied as a boy, which drew him to taekwondo to protect himself from those bullies. Interestingly, his MMA training became an excellent way of promoting his athletic endeavors to the next level.
During his taekwondo training sessions, Walker learned about restraint, body control, hand-eye coordination, awareness, agility, balance, and knowledge of when to be defensive and offensive. He also discovered timing and body flexibility that paid off in his future accomplishments.
Swimming
Belonging to a rural residence, Walker didn’t have a pool. But over the years, he realized the benefits of pool exercises such as swimming. Like many other variations of the other exercises, Walker managed to develop his own underwater workout.
These aquatic exercises include the power claps and the altered breaststroke. Walker also performed many taekwondo maneuvers, such as kicks and punches underwater.
Herschel Walker would train underwater to maximize resistance rather than developing agility. He would try different ideas to increase the resistance and present a challenge to himself.
Other Exercises
Doing push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, running, and swimming were not the only exercises Walker chose for himself. Instead, he diversified his choice of training exercises, which ultimately gave his body more fuel. These include:
- Monkey bars
- Squat thrusts
- Rope climbing
- Stretching
- Jumping drills
- Jumping rope
- Dips – 1000 daily
- Squats – 1000 daily
- Lunges – 1000 daily
Although Walker’s workout routine is a perfect example of how to get your body into shape and build muscle mass and endurance, it’s not for everyone. However, it certainly helps you think out of the box and challenge yourself to create the best version of yourself.
Walker’s Workout Philosophy
Walker had impressive muscular strength despite not lifting weights in college. He was able to hoist an impressive 375 lbs in a bench press test, leaving his fellows and coach in shock.
Over the years, Herschel walker has always denied that he was gifted with a natural talent and set of abilities. However, his accomplishments force many people to believe that he has super-human traits.
It would be unfair to say that Herschel Walker was God-gifted, as he worked day and night for what he is capable of. In this section, we will discuss Walker’s workout philosophy that he adopted.
Increased Number Of Reps
Herschel Walker is among those few people who can perform thousands of push-ups and sit-ups in a single day. From childhood to now, Walker has done countless push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups. Although modern fitness experts do not recommend such a high number of reps to develop muscles, Walker discovered it to be effective.
If your body adapts to a particular exercise, making muscular gains through the same exercise gets difficult. However, Walker has found a way of developing muscles by integrating numerous exercises into his unique workout routine.
Diversity Of Bodyweight Workout
Besides pursuing his professional football career with the Dallas Cowboys, Walker indulged in as many sports as possible. He discovered various activities that could assist him in sustaining a toned body throughout his life. He enrolled himself in martial arts and MMA training along with track and field running.
Walker had realized that by diversifying his workout routine, he could enhance his stability and mobility and develop an ideal physique to perform any task effectively.
Thinking Out Of The Box
Unlike modern fitness professionals worldwide who follow a specific workout routine, Walker was always keen on experimenting with new exercises. He would often challenge himself with various challenging training exercises such as assisted pull-ups, leg raises, handstand push-ups, one-arm pull-ups, and pool exercises.
Walker believes that by following a flexible approach, he can achieve his fitness goals in a better way, which he did. Most people misjudge him as a weight room warrior, but Herschel Walker has never been into weightlifting.
Rest Days Are Worthless Days
Herschel Walker’s philosophy about rest days is quite unique and contradicts most fitness experts' opinions. Modern fitness professionals suggest that any form of exercise should be adopted with some time dedicated to body rest.
As muscles rupture with intense training, they need time and nutrition to recover. However, for Walker, every day was an exercise day. He believed that doing a workout every day would ensure he stayed on a progressive course.
Amazingly, people still believe that Herschel Walker has hardly missed his workout since he was a teenager.
Herschel Walker’s Diet
Herschel Walker is among those few athletes with excellent body strength, physique, and agility. Despite his fitness and sports industry successes, his philosophy and diet have remained a controversial topic for many fitness professionals.
Walker has been following an unorthodox diet for ages. While fitness experts believe in eating a nutritious breakfast, Walker doesn’t have breakfast or lunch. Instead, he only eats one meal a day, i.e., dinner.
Similarly, in the modern world, it is a common practice for people to count the nutrients in the food they eat. On the contrary, Walker believes that there is no need to calculate the macros of your food. He says that the healthy farmers he lived with during his teenage years never counted macros.
In addition, Herschel Walker doesn’t eat red meat. He claims that he hasn’t consumed red meat for decades. Although most people think that Walker is a vegetarian, he does eat chicken as an occasional treat.
Herschel Walker’s single meal that he consumes daily includes soup, salads, and bread. He alleges that his nutrition is inspired by his family members, who were healthy and lived long lives.
Herschel Walker’s Diet Specifics
The following are some details regarding Herschel Walker’s diet.
Dinner
Walker only consumes a single meal daily at around 8 to 9 PM. Most people would think that it’s too late to have dinner at that time. Walker argues that he adopted the habit of eating late from his early days when he was in college.
Fluids
Herschel Walker believes in drinking a lot of water throughout the day. He sometimes opts for juices to make sure he stays hydrated in summers. He says that these fluids help him stay satiated until dinner. Walker also drinks soup, which is a part of his dinner.
Foods to Eat
Keeping Walker’s dietary choices in perspective, here are some foods that Walker encourages to eat.
- Fruits
- Soup
- Barley vegetables
- Bread
- Chicken
- Bread
- Fruit juice
Foods to Avoid
These are some foods that Walker believes shouldn’t be a part of our diet. These include:
- Red meat
- Fast food
- Alcohol
- Refined sugars
- Chemical additives
- Processed meat
Although most nutritionists think that Walker’s dietary choices aren’t worth following, Walker claims he has been on the same diet for more than 20 years. Since he has a toned and muscular physique, he denies admitting what modern nutritionists have to say.
Supplements
Without a doubt, Walker is inspired by the natural lifestyle of the late 20th century. Keeping this in view, it can be inferred that Walker does not depend on supplements. However, if you wish to achieve a physique like Walker, you’d probably require supplements and nutrition.
By increasing your protein intake through proteins shakes and supplements, you can put yourself on the road towards achieving a lean body like Walker. Some added vitamins can also do wonders to your body. But it would be ideal if you let your body determine what works for it and what doesn’t.
Bottom Line
Herschel Walker’s workout routine is among the most extreme and unconventional training you can witness. Although Walker claims to develop his muscular physique with thousands of reps of body weight exercises every day, it might not work for you. Not only is it extremely demanding physically, but it also takes a lot of willpower.
Walker has worked his body to survive on fewer nutrients and developed muscles over many years. His workout routine and philosophy suggest that a body weight workout can also help build muscles effectively. However, you need to be patient and consistent until you see the results.
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