Spartan King Leonidas: “This is where we hold them! This is where we fight! This is where they die!”
Captain: “On these shields, boys!”
Spartan King Leonidas: “Remember this day, men, for it will be yours for all time.”

From 7 years old, Spartan boys no longer lived at home, but were raised to be soldiers. Training was intense, but effective – there was no place on the battlefield for overweight warriors.

Aside from combat training, they learned to swim, run, jump, wrestle and box. Spartan warriors who exercised like that fought on the battlefield with incredible intensity, which made them superb warriors.

The actors in the movie “300″ were ripped, so you may be asking how they got these ordinary men in such superb shape for the movie. After the movie was released, an interview with the trainer who was assigned to get the actors from “300″ into peak shape revealed that he used a high-intensity workout with no rest period. The training for the movie for “300″ was as follows:

The 300 Workout Plan

25x Pull Ups
50x Deadlifts/135 pounds
50x Push-Ups
50x Box Jumps with 24-inch box
50x Floor Wipers/135 pounds (1 count; a floor wiper works the abdominals)
50x Kettlebell Cleans and Presses/36 pounds
25x Pull Ups
300 reps total; all done in less than 20 minutes. There was no rest between exercises!

The Science Behind the 300 workout plan

Talk about high-intensity training! So, is the 300 workout plan complete hype or could you expect similar gains in lean muscle mass and reduced body fat from this type of workout? This type of workout is the ultimate stimulator of a powerful anabolic hormone: growth hormone (GH).

There are several components in the workout that are critical for the stimulation of GH: high-intensity exercise, short to no rest periods and the usage of large muscle groups. You don’t have to follow the exact workout to get large increases in GH; however, this type of workout represents the pinnacle of high training intensity. [source: FitnessRx for Men]