June 8, 2026
• Last updated: June 9, 2026
I’ve always been interested in how famous men worked out. We’ve broken down Steve McQueen’s routine and Bruce Lee’s workouts, but that question has been rattling around in my head ever since.
So I recently decided to email Beau to see if he remembered what his dad’s daily workout looked like.
To my pleasant surprise, Beau wrote back immediately with something even better than I had expected. Instead of sending me a general description of Louis’ workouts, he sent me scans of his dad’s typed weekly to-do lists with completed items struck through in red pencil. On these weekly agendas, Louis included his workouts for the week.
The ones he sent span from 1968 to 1983, and they cover a lot more than exercise. A single week might include blocking out the first chapter of a novel, answering all his mail, reviewing his Chinese and French, reading to his kids by the fire, and teaching them how to fall and box correctly. It was inspiring to see that the young autodidact in
<p>Louis kept training because he wasn’t done creating his art yet, and he wanted a body that would hold up long enough to continue honing his craft and putting his work into the world.
