A young woman in a black jacket embraces a person in a red-and-black Spider-Man suit on a city sidewalk.
JOJO WHILDEN, CTMG, Inc./Sony Pictures Entertainment via Reuters Connect/JOJO WHILDEN, CTMG, Inc./Sony Pictures Entertainment
TV + Movies

Tom Holland’s Spider-Man Body Took Ten Years to Build

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The gap between Tom Holland’s 2016 Spider-Man and the one on screens now has guys online talking about “physique inflation.” Trainers say his kind of change is within reach for most men who put in a decade of consistent work.

A young man in a red and black Spider-Man suit leans against a workbench in a red-lit workshop, looking to the side.
Peter Parker suited up in a dimly lit workshop scene from a Spider-Man film — a look at the physique Holland has developed across nearly a decade in the role. Photo by Jay Maidment / Sony Pictures via Reuters Connect.

Jason Walsh, who trained Brie Larson for “Captain Marvel,” Bradley Cooper for “American Sniper” and Pedro Pascal for “The Fantastic Four,” says Holland’s build comes down to consistent hard work over time, with outcomes swinging on age, stress and how well someone takes care of themselves.

Sam Bartlett, an exercise scientist and founder of the New York fitness center Exis, lays out the mechanics: lift at least every 72 hours, eat in a caloric surplus so the body has energy to build muscle, and hit a gram of protein per pound of lean body mass.

The moment driving the reaction is a bathhouse scene where Peter meets Florence Pugh’s Yelena, the new Black Widow. She tells him to strip so she can confirm he isn’t hiding weapons, and he complies but keeps the Spider-Man mask on the whole time, which she reads as a sign of how lonely he must be.

Tom Holland and Marisa Tomei at the Spider-Man: Brand New Day UK premiere at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square in London
At London’s Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on July 29, 2026, Tom Holland and Marisa Tomei appear together for the UK premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Photo by Tim P. Whitby / Getty Images.

Holland told Men’s Health last year he wanted to add enough muscle that the suit’s padding and CGI wouldn’t be necessary, and told Entertainment Weekly he tried the old Hollywood dehydration trick for that shirtless beat, cutting water the day before to make the muscles pop, which mostly just made him “really grumpy” without changing much on screen.

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A young woman in a black jacket embraces a person in a red and black Spider-Man suit on a city sidewalk.
Spider-Man holds MJ close on a New York City street in a scene from “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” Photo by Jojo Whilden / Sony Pictures Entertainment via Reuters.

His own routine is a ladder: 1 pull-up, 2 dips, 3 press-ups, 4 sit-ups, 5 squats, climbing up to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, then back down to 1. Both trainers figure he does far more than that on top of it, and neither worked with him directly.

Trainer Jason Walsh at the Men's Fitness Game Changers event in West Hollywood, 2015
At the Men’s Fitness Game Changers event in West Hollywood on September 24, 2015, celebrity trainer Jason Walsh made an appearance. Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images.

“Physique inflation” is the idea that a body considered impressive a few years ago no longer clears the bar, so men keep chasing bigger. Bartlett has watched that pull play out over 15 years in the industry, with clients now splitting between longevity and pure aesthetics, the aesthetics crowd most often naming Christian Bale in “American Psycho” as the goal.

His warning is that the fittest-looking bodies rarely test as the healthiest. “The people who are the healthiest and fittest tend to look middle of the road,” Bartlett says, “a little bit less lean, a little bit less muscular, but they’re able to do everything, and they do it forever.”

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