Exclusive: How and Where Broadway Stars Are Working Out and Building Strength

Performing eight shows a week is an incredibly demanding job for even the most experienced Broadway performer. Not only is it crucial to keep your voice in tip-top shape, but staying healthy and strong is of the utmost importance. 

Alongside voice lessons and dance classes, many actors are turning to fitness companies that specifically prepare them for a life and career on stage. 

“I looked around and saw that the industry didn’t know how to train, quite frankly,” Built for the Stage founder Joe Rosko, a former actor who was also an athlete throughout his childhood, exclusively tells BroadwayWorld. 

“They grow up as drama kids,” he says. “Then they find themselves in this physically demanding profession, and they have no idea how to train. Most of them I would see doing random fitness boutique classes or YouTube videos, but not training like a true athlete on a linear progression.”

Built for the Stage and BroadwayBuilding are two fitness programs designed specifically for performers — partly because they’re created by performers themselves. 

“It started out as a desire to help people,” says BroadwayBuilding founder and actor Kevin Hack, adding that he wanted to provide “a place of education and sustainability in an ever-changing industry.” 

“I wanted to coach actors because I literally am [one],” he says. “I know the challenges that people are facing.” 

Both Hack and Rosko point out that many actors are not working out in ways that truly benefit their bodies — and they often don’t zero in on what’s needed for them to sustain eight shows a week while meeting the demands of the role they’re playing. 

When it came to prepping someone like Tony Award winner Ali Louis Bourzgui, who can be seen hanging upside down as the vampire David in The Lost Boys, Rosko says, “One thing we had him doing was working his grip strength, obviously, and overhead shoulder mobility.” 

“A lot of his programming was built around that,” Rosko explains. “Even if we were doing, let’s say legs, I was having him hold heavy dumbbells while doing step-ups or walking lunges.” 

Both companies emphasize the importance of nutrition and take a personalized approach when it comes to their clientele. 

“The way that I look at BroadwayBuilding is kind of like fitness therapy,” says Hack. “We develop an entire education curriculum that’s going to be nutrition-based and training-based. We essentially give you everything to do — the roadmap, what to do throughout the week — and then you meet with your coach for 20 to 30 minutes a week, just going over data, supporting whatever direction you want to go in.” 

At BroadwayBuilding, Hack explains, he and his fellow trainers (who are all also working actors) “develop a strategy” for clients to execute on their own, and they reassess and examine progress during routine check-ins. Plus, the trainers are always available to answer questions, and Hack has built a digital library of “over 200 exercises” to demonstrate how each movement is done properly. 

Built for the Stage works similarly. A program is tailor-made for the client and uploaded to an app with written and visual instructions on how to do each exercise. Users record their progress, and they debrief with their trainer to ensure they will see the results they hope to achieve. With clients represented in more than 20 current Broadway shows — in addition to the West End and stages around the world — Rosko also works with a select few in person, depending on a show’s demands. 

Both stress that the programs are made for everybody, including some people who have rarely set foot inside a gym. 

“What I’ve built becomes almost like a tour guide, if you will, to guide you around the gym,” says Rosko. “It’s always cool to have clients say how they’re not intimidated anymore to use machines or be amongst strangers and not feel nervous if they’re being judged. And then that transfers over to your confidence in life — and walking into an audition space and walking onto the stage.”

When it comes to BroadwayBuilding, “If someone’s brand new to the gym, terrified of the gym, never stepped a foot in the gym before, sweats in a 50-foot radius of a gym, this is going to work for you,” Hack says. “If you’re a completely advanced person in the gym, this is going to work for you. We meet you exactly where you’re at.” 

While there are plenty of workout programs in New York City — and others that have catered to actors over the years, including Mark Fisher Fitness, which was sold in 2024, and Broadway Bodies, which appears to have ceased operations — Hack and Rosko keep growing their theatrical client base, and the results speak for themselves. 

Hack says that people who have gone through the BroadwayBuilding program feel a sense of “freedom,” adding that they now know “how to eat for their goals” and “how to train for their goals.” 

Rosko says his clients experience the same, adding that it’s “always awesome to see” how performers are “growing strength and transferring it onto the stage.” 

While seeing results is exciting, both Rosko and Hack emphasize that fitness — in any profession or stage of life — should remain top of mind. As Rosko says, “It should not be before and after, but before and always.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of BroadwayBuilding, Built for the Stage