Andrew Ravens
CM Punk has explained what prompted the noticeable physical transformation he arrived at WrestleMania 42 with, revealing on Stephanie McMahon’s What’s Your Story podcast that the process began just six weeks before the event after seeing Chad Gable’s social media posts about his own training program.
Punk said he contacted trainer Jay Ferruggia — who works with pro athletes and several WWE wrestlers, including Gable — and gave him a tight timeline to work with. The goal was not a specific weight or aesthetic target but simply to look visibly different walking into the biggest show of the year.
“Six weeks before WrestleMania — and I can’t really tell you what set it in motion. I know I would always see Chad Gable posting his workouts and it’s programmed by Jay Ferruggia and all this other stuff,” Punk said. “And I was just motivated to go into WrestleMania looking physically different, looking like, ‘Oh, wow, okay, he really busted his ass.’ That was my only goal. It wasn’t a weight. It wasn’t a, ‘I need a six pack. I need to do this, whatever.’ I called up Jay and he was like, ‘I wish you would have got to me sooner, man. We only got six weeks.’ He’s like, ‘But if you listen to me and you do what I say and you eat what I tell you to eat.’ He’s like, ‘I think we can do some damage.’ And we did some damage.”
Punk traced the motivation back to his original WWE tryout, when he felt his body would be the one thing the company could use as a reason to say no. “I think I showed up in Mania — I didn’t say I was in the best shape of my career because I will always look back at like when I was 26 and I originally tried to get the job in the first place. Because my idea back then was, they’re going to say, ‘Look at his body.’ That’s the one negative they can say. So I really busted my ass so they couldn’t say no.”
The program involved Punk sending Ferruggia a mirror selfie every morning along with his weight and temperature. Ferruggia would respond with daily macros — protein, carbs, and fat targets — adjusted based on where Punk’s body was at that day. Punk said he had counted calories before but had never actually weighed his food until working with Ferruggia.
