The Hunger Games: Train Like Your Life Depended on it.

Photo Credit: Lionsgate via Teen.com

“The Hunger Games” movie release is quickly approaching (March 23). With a thrilling plot and a great cast like Jennifer Lawrence, Isabelle Fuhrman, and Liam Hemsworth, brother of Chris Hemsworth (Thor), this is likely to be one of the best movies of the year. In the movie, North America as we know it has been destroyed and is separated into 12 poor districts surrounding a wealthy Capitol. Contestants for The Hunger Games are chosen at random to represent their district in a live televised fight to the death. The last man, or woman, standing wins necessities and food to bring back to their district in addition to the benefit of simply staying alive. The fight takes place in an outdoor wooded area, so as you can imagine, all sorts of training is needed to survive.

Jennifer Lawrence has opened up about her training for the movie saying that she’s done a variety of things such as archery, rock and tree climbing, hand-to-hand combat, running, vaulting and of course yoga, all to stay “catlike” for the movie. With training like that, she definitely got a full-body workout while keeping a noticeably youthful exuberance when playing the part. If you have access to a variety of training options like she had, pursue them all the way! You’re workouts will become so diverse and so fun, you won’t even realize how tired they’ll make you until you’re finished. Go ahead and add some excitement to your weekly routine by pretending that your life depended on it. Funny thing about fitness though, your life kinda DOES rely on it!

Photo Credit: Murray Close- Lionsgate

Isabelle Fuhrman mentioned similar training in an interview with Next Movie, but added that she also did Parkour. If you don’t know, Parkour is a running style in which “free-runners” traverse through an environment quickly using the obstacles in their path as tools to reach their destination. In the movie world, parkour is often used in foot chase scenes, like jumping rooftop-to-rooftop, hopping fences, sliding under doors or trucks and many other things. Although she admits to not doing a whole lot of it, Fuhrman says the training was used primarily to reduce the risk of injury in the woods during filming.

As for Liam Hemsworth, not much is known about his training for the movie, according to an interview with Details Magazine, he eats burgers often, plays little golf, but is no stranger to surfing and being active. Meanwhile, Josh Hutcherson is rumored to have put on 15 pounds in three weeks prior to filming, according to Entertainment Weekly.