> UNLEASHED < BY JOHN PLUMMER Some people succeed in sport, others in films but it takes a person of exceptional talent to do both! Meet Silvio Simac, actor, bodybuilder and world champion martial artist! > He is one of the best looking men you will ever look at, he has one of the most perfect physiques you could ever imagine and he is one of the toughest fighters you could ever encounter. Oh, and he gets to work alongside beautiful women in the film industry. Meet Silvio Simac, actor, bodybuilder, world champion martial artist and perhaps the man more likely to make you jealous than anyone else. Simac, 31, is that rarest of commodities: a British martial arts film star. At a smouldering six feet tall and a power-packed 97 kg, it doesn’t take long to appreciate why he gets the auditions. Witness a few rapid-fire kicks and you understand why he lands the parts. Since appearing in his first film in 2000, he has worked alongside the likes of martial arts superstar Jet Li, WWE star Rob van Dam and mainstream British actor Bob Hoskins, as well as having trained with Lennox Lewis. Before you hurl the magazine at the squat rack in a rage at how unfair life can be, it’s worth knowing that although Simac’s face is God-given, his physique and fighting skills aren’t. That just-walked-in-from-another-planet look is the product of a dedication to fitness that has fluctuated from brutal to insane over the best part of two decades. His physical prowess first became apparent as a boy in Croatia. “My PE teacher contacted my parents because I was good at power sports like sprinting, long jump and shot put,” he recalls. “I held a few school records and he told them I had ability. But we moved to England soon after that when I was 12.” When he arrived on these shores Simac discovered the man who personified everything he wanted to be. “Like most boys who grew up in the 1970s I was inspired by Bruce Lee,” he says. “He single-handedly created a new genre of action films, opening the door for Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger who followed in his footsteps. When you’re a kid the first thing you appreciate is strength because it is part of our primal instincts to do so. That’s what first drew me to him: he had an amazing physique.” Simac started weight training at the age of 13 to look like Lee and at 15 he began tae kwon do so he could fight like him. Within two-and-a-half years he had earned his black belt, a remarkably speedy achievement. “I’m a very extreme person,” he explains. “I either do something extremely well or not at all. When I set my mind on something, I give it 100 per cent.” Such intensity concerned his parents. “They are both academics and they were worried that my studies would suffer,” he says. He agreed to compromise - not by easing up but by waking up at 5.30am to make sure he had time to fit studying and training into his day. “I was fanatical,” he admits. “I have pictures of me training barefoot in the snow when I was 16. I did lots of crazy things like that. Back then protein shakes tasted disgusting, but I would force one down me when I woke up before training. Then I would cycle to college and when I got there I would do the splits between two chairs while my muscles were still warm.” Having achieved his black belt, he began setting bigger goals and soon he won the first of 14 British titles in WTF tae kwon do. While still in his teens, he started teaching the sport. “Teaching has given me more motivation to become good than anything else,” he says. “One of the reasons I decided to get into films was because it offers the chance to inspire more people. If I teach a class of 37 I’m only reaching out to 37 people but if I appear in a film I can influence a lot more.” Simac won four European titles and eventually became world champion in 1999 before retiring from the competitive side of the sport. “It got to the point where I felt I was trying to meet other people’s expectations rather than my own,” he says. Winning a world title seemed a good time to quit and he began to think about kicking for cash instead of medals by trying his luck in films. But while many people dream of a career on the silver screen few actually do it. Simac admits he had plenty of doubts to begin with. “Subconsciously I always wanted to do it but I didn’t have the confidence,” he says. Luckily, he didn’t have to wait long for his break. “Someone said they knew a film management company that was looking for martial artists,” he says. “So I signed with them and five weeks later I had a contract.” Not any old contract either: this one took him to Thailand for three months to shoot the martial art flick Black Mask 2 in 2000 with WWE star Rob van Dam. When he arrived in Thailand he was only supposed to walk on screen, throw a few fancy kicks and depart. But he pulled the producer to one side to show him that he could seriously fight and suddenly his role was upgraded to playing the sidekick to the main villain. “It was the best experience of my life,” he says. “It changed me completely. I fell in love with the industry completely and I was still buzzing three months afterwards.” In the blink of an eye he had gone from working at the students’ union at Thames Valley University to international film star. After returning to England he exploded on to British TV screens as one of the stars of BBC2’s Masters of Combat programme. “It was like a martial arts version of Gladiators,” he says. His early success prompted him to attend drama classes, which helped him to continue to pick up work. He kicked ass in Lexx, a Canadian science fiction series filmed in the Caribbean and broadcast on Five in the UK before further film roles followed in The Purifiers, Team 1, Square Circle and Unleashed, which was shot in Paris. When we met, he was preparing to fly to Bulgaria for a sequel to the Wesley Snipes film Undisputed. Few genres of film have flourished like the martial arts movie in recent years but fighting on screen is nothing like fighting in real life. “It’s about spectacular kicks and making your punches and kicks much larger,” he says. “You don’t punch straight on screen, you swing your punches from a long way behind your body. You exaggerate everything, including your reaction. The reaction to a kick is what sells it more than anything else.” Simac says the discipline instilled by bodybuilding and martial arts has played a major role in his success. “You learn to push yourself to discover what the body is capable of and that helps you overcome other hurdles in your life,” he says. Unfortunately not all martial artists share Simac’s love of lifting, preferring to harbour old-fashioned beliefs. “A lot of them think big muscles will slow you down,” he says. “But look at sprinters - they are massive. Look at gymnasts - they are big guys. Are they slow? If you are more powerful your kicks are more powerful. It’s like comparing a three-litre car to a one-litre car.” The mental aspect of training also helps him survive what is a ruthless profession. “Success is not just about having the right look,” he says. “ It’s about determination and how many doors you knock on, and being in the right place at the right time. You have to sell yourself. Getting contracts can be a lengthy, painful process and you aren’t guaranteed anything until you sign. Having an extreme personality means I do it properly. If you are half-hearted about it, don’t bother.” The rewards can be lucrative - he earns up to $1,000 a day - but work isn’t on tap. “You could go without employment for three or four months, but when it comes the money is good,” says Simac. “But remember that you have to train intensely for six or seven weeks before taking on a role and that can interfere with other commitments.” When he isn’t working on set Simac is often found whipping his butt into shape at Olympian Fitness in Hayes, Middlesex, UK, where even among the better developed physiques he stands out. “I would like to see myself as the person who bridges the gap between martial arts and bodybuilding,” he says. TRAINING Like many martial artists, Simac believes you have to take the mental aspect of training as seriously as the physical side, even when it comes to working out. “The first part of getting in shape is mental,” he says. “Too many people lack the motivation to train effectively. When I go into the gym I am there to train, nothing else. I am like a machine. Too many people train for years and their body doesn’t change whatsoever. It’s not that they are doing anything wrong, it’s that they don’t want it badly enough. Everything starts with a thought so be positive and identify your goals.” In a typical week, Simac practises martial arts four times and weight trains four times. He also does a weekly plyometrics session and is obsessive enough about stretching to admit to doing it in bed. He varies his gym schedule to keep it interesting but this was his routine when we met. On Monday, he trains chest and triceps, but not before a 20-minute run between 13 to 16 kilometres per hour on the treadmill to warm up, followed by 15 minutes of stretching. He begins with four sets of incline dumbbell presses in the six to 12 rep range, using up to 45 kg in each hand. Four sets of six to 12 reps is his rule, although it varies on certain exercises, and he often finishes each exercise with a drop set, which means doing the set to failure then immediately lightening the load and carrying on until you get to the point where even the lightest weight fatigues the muscle. After incline dumbbell presses he switches to cable crossovers, decline dumbbell bench press and dips. For triceps he does just three sets of two exercises, choosing between either rope or bar pressdowns and overhead dumbbell pullovers. Simac’s arms are arguably his strongest feature but he hardly trains them. “As a kid I did lots of biceps curls and triceps extensions because they were the only exercises I knew, which probably explains why my arms grew,” he says. “These days I do very little for arms, particularly biceps, which I only train every two weeks.” On Tuesday, he trains shoulders. His schedule consists of one exercise each for front, side and rear deltoids. He starts with dumbbell flyes for side delts followed by front lateral raises. Then it’s the big one - dumbbell presses, which are the main compound movement for building overall shoulder mass. As with chest, Simac prefers dumbbells to barbells. “You can control the movement better so it improves your core stability,” he says. He completes his shoulder blast with rear lateral raises, which he performs lying facedown on a bench. “I always finish with rear delts,” he says. “I like to pump it out to exhaustion and sometimes do some push-ups as well.” Wednesday begins with 60-minutes of cardio, followed by a plyometrics session. He describes plyometrics as ‘bridging the gap between strength and speed’. The sessions, which involve exercises such as frog leaps, vertical jumps and clap press-ups, are designed to cultivate the explosiveness that is necessary in martial arts by stretching the muscle then contracting it. Simac trains his back on Thursdays with T-bar rows, lat pulldowns and cable rows. Again, he works in the four sets of six to 12 rep range, finishing each exercise with a drop set. “Because I train for speed and explosiveness I lift the weight fast and lower it slowly,” he says. Leg training is left until Friday. “I leave my legs until the end of the week so they have time to recover over the weekend,” he says. Because he spends so much time kicking, he doesn’t destroy his legs like many bodybuilders do because he doesn’t want them to get too big and heavy to pick up, or too sore for his martial arts training. But his workout isn’t that easy: he does four sets of six to eight reps of Smith machine squats, using up to 150 kg. Then he performs leg extensions, hamstring curls and leg presses. Simac, who is sponsored by Maximuscle, is equally passionate about nutrition. He eats seven or eight small meals a day, making sure he takes plenty of protein to build his muscles. Preparing so many meals, on top of his gym work and martial arts training is tough - but then looking this good doesn’t come easy! M&F

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