Will Smith went viral earlier this year when he showed off the weight he had gained both while filming King Richard and subsequently during the pandemic, before then pledging to get as fit as he possibly could in just 20 weeks. His body transformation journey is the subject of a new YouTube series, Best Shape of My Life, the first episode of which began streaming today.
In a short extract from an upcoming episode of the show shared exclusively with Men’s Health, Smith speaks about the role that cardio has played in his weight loss journey, as well as the added accountability (and friendly competition) of having some of his oldest friends along for the ride. “I just feel like human beings excel more easily and more effectively in groups,” he says.
In the video, which you can watch above, Smith states that he has just been for a run at 3 o’clock in the morning. Which might seem extreme, but according to his trainer Aaron Ferguson, getting up super early for a job is a perfectly normal part of the actor’s daily routine. “Will’s a big fan of doing cardio first thing in the morning,” Ferguson said in the first episode of Best Shape of My Life. “So we’ll do some sunrise runs… When I say ‘some’, I mean every morning.”
Ferguson explains in the new clip that he issued a step challenge to Smith, which the actor alluded to in an earlier Instagram post where he vowed to hit his daily step count out of sheer spite. “My friend Aaron doesn’t think I can walk 10,000 steps a day,” he said. “Now, I gotta get to 20,000 steps on my Fitbit to make sure Aaron doesn’t walk again. Damn, that sounded cold-blooded. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I was gonna break his legs. But the way he’s jawing at me definitely means I’m gonna outwalk this joker. Not because it’s good for me, but to prove Aaron wrong. Yeah I’m petty like that!”
That pettiness, apparently, extends to racing his old friend DJ Jazzy Jeff around an entire island in the Bahamas. “Somebody said it was two and a half hours to jog the whole island,” Smith says in the clip. “And I was like, oh I can do it in less than that. And [Jeff] is like, well I can do it in less than that! And right off the plane, a challenge to run the whole island… He tapped out at 12 miles, and I ran 13.”
Check out the full episode on Smith’s YouTube channel for more when it goes live on Tuesday, November 9th at 12pm ET.
