How Tom Holland Built His Spider-Man Physique: The 1,500-Rep "Ladder" and the Mistakes He Owned Up To

This video looks at how Holland built his Spider-Man physique, drawing on his own words and his trainers' routines. In the second half, the creator lays out how busy adults can work the same exercises into their daily lives, based on an official position stand and research papers.

Holland first played Spider-Man in 2016's Captain America: Civil War. Through 2026's Spider-Man: Brand New Day, he has held the role for 10 years. According to the video, Brand New Day earned about $360 million in North America over its opening weekend, overtaking Avengers: Endgame for the biggest debut of all time.

The creator traces Holland's roots to dance. His talent for dance was spotted as a child, and he played the lead in the London stage production of Billy Elliot. On that stage, he picked up gymnastics and acrobatics. For a hero who climbs the walls of buildings and flies through the air, agility was his first weapon, the creator explains.

According to the creator, Spider-Man suits often contain padding. In summer 2025, Holland told the UK edition of Men's Health that suits in movies like these usually have padding, and that CGI is even added to make the padding's movement look natural. He went on to say that he wanted to build enough muscle that he wouldn't need padding or CGI. Not looking strong because he's wearing the suit, but filling the suit with what's inside it. That, the creator sums up, is the body Holland has been aiming for after 10 years in the role.

According to Holland, what changed his thinking was appearing in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Seeing Nolan's approach of shooting things for real and relying on CGI as little as possible, he reconsidered how he trained. At the same time, he admitted that while he wanted to add muscle, he also wanted his abs a bit more defined—he wanted an eight-pack.

Here the creator brings up a scene from 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming: the moment when Tony Stark takes the suit away from Peter and tells him that if he's nothing without the suit, he shouldn't have it. Ten years later, the creator reads, Holland is trying to answer those words with his body.

Different trainers have been involved in shaping Holland's physique for each film. Preparation for 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home was handled by London trainer George Ashwell. They started working together on rebuilding after an injury, and Ashwell later also oversaw Holland's weight loss and gain for the film Cherry.

Preparation for 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home was handled by Duffy Gaver. He is a trainer who has built actors' physiques in Hollywood, having worked on Brad Pitt for Troy and Chris Hemsworth for Thor. Looking back on that time, Holland said he got into insane shape and was really fit. At the same time, he admitted he didn't enjoy Gaver's military-style intensity. The 1,500-rep routine from the opening was also designed by Gaver.

The creator frames it this way: from a teenager whose weapon was agility to a body that fills the suit from the inside, Spider-Man's physique changed little by little with each new trainer.

Holland has described the ladder routine Gaver designed for No Way Home as follows. Round one is 1 pull-up, 2 dips, 3 push-ups, 4 sit-ups and 5 squats. From there you climb up to round ten, which ends with 10 pull-ups, 20 dips, 30 push-ups, 40 sit-ups and 50 squats. Then you come back down to round one. He called it "an insane workout." Counted up, that's 100 pull-ups alone, 500 squats, and 1,500 reps in total. He did this every Monday morning with a training partner in about an hour. He reportedly also did high-intensity interval training (HIIT) almost every day.

His go-to when short on time is the CrossFit workout "Cindy." One round is 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 squats, and the challenge is to complete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes. According to Holland, his personal best is around 27 rounds, which works out to 135 pull-ups alone. He also said he always wears a weighted vest when training—"that's all there is to it."

His current training for getting even bigger is reportedly a combination of body weight, a weighted vest and weight training. The creator explains that Holland, who had used his own body weight as his weapon, has been adding weight on top of that.

Holland has done as many of his own stunts as he's been allowed. Stunt coordinator George Cottle has worked with him since Homecoming and also worked on Nolan's The Odyssey. On the first day of shooting with the giant IMAX cameras, Holland was anxious because filming kept stopping. As the story goes, Cottle reassured him by explaining that it was because the film in the camera only lasted three minutes. On The Odyssey, he also took on swordplay, something he hadn't done in the Marvel films.

On the other hand, in September 2025 it was reported that he suffered a mild concussion while filming a stunt for Brand New Day, and that production was temporarily halted. He was reported to be expected back on set within a few days. The creator notes that performing with your own body comes with risks, but says that even so, Holland has chosen not to rely on padding.

While preparing for Brand New Day, Holland tried cutting water—a method of sharply reducing the body's water content before filming to make the muscles look more defined. But he recalls that it didn't work for him at all; it just made him really thirsty and irritable.

Further, for his role in the 2021 film Cherry, he reportedly once cut down to under 500 kcal a day to drop weight quickly. On this too, he recalls that it wasn't worth it and could cause fairly serious health problems down the line. The creator urges viewers never to copy it, since these are methods Spider-Man himself says he won't use again.

Holland has also said that getting results is 80% diet and 20% training. To keep his body big, he has to stay constantly mindful of eating, and when he's not in a bulking phase, he sometimes ends up skipping lunch.

Finally, the creator introduces ways to work this routine into everyday life. The exercises are the same five Holland actually did: pull-ups, dips, push-ups, sit-ups and squats. However, the creator thinks 1,500 reps in one session is a volume meant for building a body for filming, and that keeping it up every week while working a job is honestly difficult. So, keeping the exercises the same, the creator organized the volume and frequency based on the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)'s official position stand, revised in 2026, and research papers on strength training.

The position stand recommends training the major muscle groups at least twice a week, and suggests around 10 sets per muscle per week as a guideline for those who want to build muscle. From here on, the creator has applied these standards and papers to different levels.

• Beginner: twice a week, 4 sets per muscle per week. This is the amount presented in a review paper as the minimum for people short on time
• Intermediate: around 10 sets per week, in line with the position stand's guideline
• Advanced: the stage of increasing beyond that

Applied to the ladder, beginners cap the peak at round five and go up and down, then raise the peak as they get used to it. This is the creator's own suggestion, and the good thing about the ladder, the creator says, is that you can keep the same routine and adjust only the volume to suit yourself.

As for adding load, the video also introduced a study—a different method from the weighted vest Holland wore—finding that push-ups with added resistance from elastic bands increased strength about as much as the bench press. Adding weight once you're used to body weight follows the same order Holland did, the creator says. However, since squats are the only leg exercise in Holland's routine, the creator also recommends adding load with barbell squats if you can get to a gym.

The creator closed the video by framing the approach of building a body that doesn't rely on the suit, starting from your own body weight, as a Spider-Man method that busy adults can easily adopt too. The next video will reportedly cover how Chris Hemsworth, another of Gaver's clients, built his physique.