The journey through to the clearing often takes us through the most dense forest.

-Patrick “P-NuT” Monroe

Patrick “P-NuT” Monroe is Tom Hardy’s long-time friend and personal trainer. In addition to being a trainer,  P-NuT has been a U.S. Marine, a Rabbi, and has worked in the music industry.  He is a true renaissance man. We’d love to hear some of his stories.

“Pnut is an ex US-marine. He’s everything I always wanted to be. Completely other. A big 15st 10lb (100kg) black guy from The Bronx-with all kinds of stories to tell. He trained for 10 years to be a rabbi. He was in a wheelchair for three years. He’s done so much and he’s potentially a truly dangerous, fierce man. But he’s the softest guy I’ve ever met. Full of humanity. And humour. And tolerance. Everything that I really want to be!”
Tom Hardy, Men’s Health UK 2010

If we simply work on Being, there’s no need to pretend to be.

-P-NuT

Hardy credits P-NuT with not only his physical transformations, but with his mental stability too. “Counsel,” he says. “That’s what is so valuable to me. I can’t keep counsel with myself the wrong thing. I have to keep people nearby from whom I can learn.”

P-NuT was instrumental in the physical transformation Tom underwent to play prisoner Charles Bronson in 2009′s Bronson.  Tom had just completed his role as alcoholic muscular dystrophy sufferer Stuart, in the film “Stuart: A Life Backwards” and had only a few weeks to bulk up in order to portray the notorious inmate.

“When it came to conditioning my body for the role of Charles Bronson there was no official regime: I did very non-specific exercises such as press ups, push ups, abs work and resistance training with the help of my boy Pnut, who is 16 stone of pure muscle and also an ex-US Marine. Essentially I was using him as my machine; he was like a walking gym. My approach was to do a lot of repetitions in order to send messages to my muscles: this helps them start to grow in a way that you can’t make them in the gym. To achieve dense muscle, you need a specific kind of training. Also, to “become” Charlie Bronson I had to quickly put a lot of weight quickly on my forearms, chest and neck. By the time I’d finished, my legs looked like those of a stork in comparison to the top half of my body.”
Tom Hardy in an interview for Askmen.com

More on P-NuT’s work with Tom for Bronson and his training philosophy.
He worked with Patrick Monroe, a personal trainer in Kentish Town, north London, with whom he had become friends when working on the film Waz two years ago. Mr Monroe said: “We didn’t have a lot of time. The one thing we had going for us is that he had to look like a brawler, so the kind of size we had to put on had to symbolise the kind of exercise that you do in prison in a solitary environment.” Hardy, 31, ate a diet of about 4,000 calories a day and did a lot of resistance work using the floor and his own body weight. He spent three to four hours a day doing dips on chairs and push-ups with his feet elevated to different positions to vary the resistance. Mr Monroe, 39, said: “If you do normal push-ups, you are working the pectoral – the chest – muscles at an even level. The higher you lift your legs, the higher the area in the pecs you work.” He added a small amount of work with the kettlebell, a metal ball with a handle, to develop the shoulders. ”Eastern Europeans and Russians use it a lot and it’s become much more fashionable in the West,” he said. There was no particular diet apart from creatine, a supplement that feeds muscles. ”He needed to look like a brawler so we didn’t worry too much about how much fat there was. We just loaded up the calories – he barely had time to breathe, we were feeding his face full of food.” Hardy put on two and a half stone to reach around 14 stone for the part. Mr Monroe said the actor was naturally athletic, but added that anyone could train. ”It doesn’t take long to build muscle, it’s just most people do it incorrectly,” he said. In addition to stimulus and nutrition, the body needs rest. “You do your growing in your rest period.”
from The Daily Mail

Most recently, P-NuT helped Tom bulk up to play an MMA fighter in the upcoming film Warrior.

Hardy’s trainer, Pnut, has a simple but unorthodox method for bulking fast. “I call my philosophy ‘signalling’,” he says. “Throughout the day you need to send constant signals to your body, so that it adapts in the direction you point it in. It’s better to do 10 press-ups every hour than 100 in a single burst. If you do things often enough, your body adapts for the task you set it, and you evolve.” Pnut recommends performing these exercises four times a day – when you wake up, at lunchtime, when you get home from work and before bed. It should only take about 20 minutes, but don’t rush. Use light weights and move slowly through the exercises, concentrating on perfect form. Start by doing it in the morning and evening, and then gradually add the other sessions in. If you want to pile on muscle as soon as possible, you’re going to have to get used to working out little but often. “Remember,” says Pnut, “there are no shortcuts.”
P-NuT interviewed by Mens Health

When we bite off more than we can chew, we wind up spitting out the whole thing! Make the changes you need happen slowly.

- Patrick “P-NuT” Monroe