Joe Rogan Tells Rob Lowe How to Get "Marvel Jacked"

Before Joe Rogan hosted one of the most popular podcasts on the internet, the TV personality made a lot of his living calling MMA matches for the UFC. So it's probably nos urprise that when the conversation between Rogan and other actors turns toward the kind of heavy physical training that is sometimes demanded to get big, splashy roles like the lead parts in a superhero movie, Rogan has quite a bit of advice. That's the door that The West Wing and Parks and Recreation star Rob Lowe opened for Rogan during an appearance on Literally! With Rob Lowe this week, and Rogan gave him an exhaustive and frank rundown of what he would need to do to follow his fellow Brat Pack-era star, Robert Downey, Jr., into superhero success.

If you have heard actors like Kumail Nanjiani or Zachary Levi talk about the discipline and diet that's involved in transforming from an everyday guy into a superhero, it won't be much of a surprise. In his usual way, Rogan is brings a blunt honesty to the conversation that may leave some more casual listeners a little wiser as to just how much work goes into bulking up for Marvel and DC projects.

"The first thing you would want to do, is get your hormone levels checked by a doctor and find out where you're naturally, because ou don't want ot ruin your body," Rogan advised, after Lowe asked him how Rogan would get him into Marvel shape. "The second thing I'd have to say is, you have to change your diet. You really want to be bulked up -- like you wanted to be Captain America -- you really have to change your diet. You've got cut out all your sugar, because you want to lose all the fat. You've got to cut out most of the bread and pasta, and just eat leafy green vegetables and meat, that's what I would say. The next thing you have to do is get a real trainer -- like a serious person with a degree in kinesiology, and someone who really understands how to train a person correctly. Get them to see where your body's at currently -- like get you to perform plyometrics, get you to perform deadlifts, get you to perform kettlebell cleans and presses. They've got to see what your body is capable of doing right now. Then they'd have to look at your bone structure. Some people have small hands, and small bones, and no matter what they do they're never going to get big; they just have that exomorphic frame. And so then, once they've assessed all those things, what they would want to do is raise your testosterone, and raise your growth hormone. Now, for a guy like you, who's in his fifties, you would have to get on stuff. You'd have to get on testosterone replacement therapy, you would have to get on human growth hormone, they'd probably want to put you on peptides so you can heal quicker, and they would want to make sure that you didn't do anything that was detrimental to the development of muscle tissue and of growth. So anything like drinking alcohol, or eating cake and sugar, cut all that s--t out. If you have six months to get jacked, it's not like 'Oh, we'll just put him on steroids.' That's not good enough. You have to make sure that you maximize all the progress and minimize all the detrimental things that you could be doing ot your body. Cut out all the soda, drink nothing but water, cut out all the bulls--t. That's what you have to do."

You can catch new episodes of Literally! With Rob Lowe, one of a number of podcasts on Conan O'Brien's Team Coco Podcast Network, on Thursday mornings.