David Chokachi, the actor who played lifeguard Cody Madison on “Baywatch” nearly 30 years ago, is training for his next physical test in Malibu: a 5k “ruck” at Zuma Beach while carrying a 45-pound weighted backpack.
The event, the 3rd annual Malibu Moves race, will also serve as a qualifying exercise for Chokachi’s local community fire brigade. At 58, he says he’s in better shape than he was during the original run of “Baywatch.”
“It’s an awesome day,” Chokachi told Fox News Digital of the race. “I’ve never lived in a place where there’s such a real presence of community like Malibu, and the people … they go out of their way to help each other. I love being of service.”
Chokachi returned to “Baywatch” nearly three decades after his first appearance and said he wanted to “make a statement” with his physical condition. He trained twice a day for six months before filming began.
“And I showed up on set and when it was time to take my shirt off … we were shooting a rescue and people were just like, ‘Oh my God. Dude, what have you … how old are you?'” he recalled. “They just, they can’t believe it.”
A 3:30 a.m. routine
Chokachi’s fitness regimen centers on an unusual wake-up schedule. “I’m up at 3:30 in the morning every day and ready to go. My body’s like, ‘It’s time to go,’ and everybody thinks I’m insane, but it’s my dream window of time, I love it,” he said.
He credits neuroscientist Andrew Huberman’s approach to health and former Navy SEAL DJ Shipley’s mindset coaching as influences. Shipley, he said, built a program around “stacking micro wins” — small daily actions recognized as accomplishments.
“The easiest win you can do in a day is get up early, like, really early — I mean it doesn’t have to be 3:30, but if you’re getting up before other people are, and you’re being productive, subconsciously you start to — your brain starts going, your body starts going, ‘I am a badass,’ you know? And it works, I’m telling you,” Chokachi said.
His morning routine includes an ice plunge and sauna session. “I have an ice plunge and a sauna, and that’s usually how I start my day,” he said. “That alone burns a lot of … brown fat, which is the fat we want to get rid of at the fastest rate by being cold, and ice plunge is really good … it’s a positive stressor on your brain.”
According to the National Institutes of Health, brown fat does help the body generate heat by burning calories when exposed to cold, though research has not established cold plunges as an effective weight-loss method.
Leaner now than during the original run
“Baywatch” first aired in 1989 and ran for a decade, followed by two seasons of “Baywatch: Hawaii.” The series became the most widely viewed television show in the world, drawing an estimated weekly audience of more than 1.1 billion viewers across 142 countries in 1996, according to Guinness World Records.
Chokachi said his build has changed since those days. “I have a leaner fitness,” he said. “I used to just bang weights and run back then, so I was a little beefier. And now I live like … I don’t go out, I don’t party … I’m not obsessed about diet, but I don’t drink or do anything.”
He added that the discipline has carried over into his acting. “I’m not that diligent, but I do do everything in a day that has gotten me to where I’m at now. And the crazy thing is, it not only helped my fitness level, I feel like I’m doing the best work as an actor I’ve ever done in 30 years of being an actor, which is wild.”
Service beyond the screen
Outside of acting and training, Chokachi volunteers with his local fire brigade and with Wings of Rescue, an organization that helps transport dogs at risk of euthanasia due to shelter overcrowding.
“I want to maximize my time on this planet,” he said. “I want to make this planet a better place than it was when I’m gone. I want my daughter to learn from what I’m doing.”
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