We Asked A Real-Life Personal Trainer: Which Superhero's Powers Offer The Best Workout?

Most superheroes are in peak physical condition, but which one gets the best workout whenever they use their powers? Spider-Man is rarely mentioned among the most powerful Marvel characters out there, but his abilities — from web-swinging to lifting vehicles to hand-to-hand combat — cater to a wide range of workout needs. That's why his powers are the best for getting swole, according to one expert we asked.

Andrew McKeown is a fitness maverick with a Master's Degree in Applied Performance Coaching. He began his career as a personal trainer and gym instructor before moving into sports science and professional soccer. As of this writing, he is the Physical Performance Lead for the San Diego Wave, a National Women's Soccer League team, and is heavily involved in overseeing the athletes' rehabilitation and return-to-play protocols. Before that, he was the Head Strength and Conditioning coach for the Houston Dash and Hamilton Academical W.F.C., as well as the Head of Performance at Celtic F.C. Women. In short, McKeown knows what he's talking about when it comes to workouts.

McKeown is also a superhero fanatic who grew up on a steady diet of "X-Men" and "Spider-Man" cartoons before becoming a serious comic book collector. Whenever he has free time, he can be found exploring the Marvel Unlimited app and seeking out omnibuses and hardcovers to spend his hard-earned money on. Between his professional background and superhero expertise, McKeown is more than qualified to answer this question. So, why did he choose Spider-Man as the hero whose powers produce the best workouts?

Spider-Man makes being a superhero look easy and fun, so it's easy to overlook the fact that using his powers often requires him to perform intense, full-body workouts. Let's start with something he does regularly: swinging through the city. This is essentially calisthenics, which are extremely difficult exercises to pull off, as they require using one's body weight as resistance. Be that as it may, they are extremely effective for building strength. As McKeown explains:

"The web-swinging is like the rings in gymnastics, albeit with some kind of ninja warrior twist when it's continuous. That sort of thing is great for general shoulder strength, core strength — basically whole-body strength."

Similarly, Spider-Man gets a great workout every time he uses his strength to take on the bad guys or help a citizen in need escape from a perilous situation. He is also prone to throwing some heavy objects around, which McKeown notes is great for strength and power training:

"Pressing a car overhead is your heavy barbell press. Throwing a truck at a giant rhinoceros is a heavy med[icine] ball throw. There's a bus toppled on top of a pile of rubble that an elderly citizen is trapped under? He's deadlifting it, so there's some heavy posterior chain work."

McKeown adds that Spider-Man gets a great workout every time he jumps around, as these exercises strengthen one's knees, quads, and tendons while building explosiveness. What's more, the fact Spider-Man jumps around continuously — often changing his patterns and directions — is complex plyometrics training, which is great for improving coordination, agility, and speed. Let's dig into this further.

Spider-Man's workouts can be pretty full-on and constant, which is great for improving cardiovascular health. However, his powers also enable him to perform effective body movement exercises that can improve agility. Spider-Man's long list of adversaries attack him with everything from robotic tentacles to volts of electricity, forcing our hero to do a lot of ducking and diving. Still, avoiding attacks and using his alertness can be a great workout in and of itself, according to McKeown:

"Lots of what he's doing is reactive and necessitated by avoiding contact — with fists, feet, projectiles — so there's agility work with high cognitive demand at play. There is lots of body-contortion to avoid that as well, so there is plenty of core rotation work."

Not only are Spider-Man's workouts physically effective, but they sharpen his mental skills. So, with that in mind, how can superhero fans go about implementing Spider-Man's training regime into their own workouts without having to swing from skyscrapers, fight people, or lift vehicles above their heads? It's simple — but it still requires hard work.

If you want to train like Spider-Man, calisthenics and general strength work should make up the bulk of your training sessions. Regarding the former, try some pull-ups, chin-ups, or their machine and band-assisted variations. For strength training, McKeown believes you can't go wrong with the tried-and-tested push and pull exercises athletes and gymgoers have been using for eons — bench presses, shoulder presses, and rows, to name some examples.

As previously mentioned, Spider-Man is a master of complex plyometric exercises, but we don't have to make these as complicated for ourselves. In fact, McKeown recommends sticking to tasks that you can perform at the gym — or even at home, if you have the space and basic equipment:

"You don't need to jump off and back onto buildings for plyometric work [...] Things like pogo jumps and variations thereof are great for building elastic qualities and tendon strength, or if we're looking at pure explosive output, we can do some loaded squat jumps. Box jump variations are great, too."

Likewise, upper-body plyometric routines, such as push-up variants and med ball work, are effective for having a Spidey-esque workout. However, McKeown notes that there are various upsides to adding these exercises to your sessions:

"They're great for priming the nervous system at the start of a workout, great for upper-body force-production, and great for general motor unit recruitment in place of explosive lower-body work when our fatigue is higher."

These are all great exercises to incorporate into your workout, but a true Spidey routine will require you to go further. With that in mind, let's take a look at some of the more neglected exercises that will get you closer to becoming a real-life Spider-Man.

Most of us aren't ever going to develop the ability to crawl up walls, but we can add more general crawling exercises to our training sessions. Getting comfortable at operating on the ground can benefit one's training as they boost core stability, but exercises of this ilk are generally quite neglected. That said, one of these crawling exercises is named after our friendly neighborhood superhero, so, really, it's imperative for a Spider-Man workout. Here's what McKeown had to say:

"There are push-up variations, for example, that are literally called Spider-Man push-ups, where it mimics the actions of bringing the knee to the opposite elbow each repetition, similar to the movement action of him crawling up walls. That can be used as an exercise in itself, and can be great as a general hypertrophy tool, much like a regular push-up, but doing it moving and throwing in things like log rolls, bear crawls, etc."

Elsewhere, McKeown believes that rotation work is a Spidey-esque exercise that often gets neglected by the general population. These exercises don't have to be complex or time-consuming, but they are very useful when it comes to improving one's movement, not to mention making the body feel good. 

"We're hopefully not trying to avoid fire hydrants or vehicles that are being thrown at us, and we probably won't need to be yanking on a spider's web attached to a group of bank robbers. But we can use things like cable rotations, med ball rotational throws, and even Paloff press variants."

If nothing else, rotation movements help our bodies become more flexible and nimble, and that's important. Still, maybe there will come a time where we'll need to avoid flying cars heading in our direction. You never know.