Interview: Pro Wrestling Legend Adam Copeland Talks Acting Career, PurePlank Board

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to pro wrestling legend and actor Adam Copeland. The “Rated-R Superstar” spoke about his new PurePlank exercise board, how it helped him return from retirement, and his current acting career.

“Sick of crunches and situps? So were World Champion wrestlers Jay Reso & Adam Copeland when they came up with the PurePlank board and app. The two pros put their heads together to think of the best way to keep fit while living their best life out of the ring. Planking provides a total core workout in as little as 3 minutes per day, preparing you for peak athleticism, boosting mood, and building muscle seamlessly,” says the official description. “Crunches, situps, and traditional core exercise only work out abdominal muscles. While there is nothing wrong with these workouts, they aren’t the most exciting or efficient core routines you can mix into your daily routine. When it comes to a full-core training routine, nothing beats planks. PurePlank helps anyone write their core comeback story using the power of planking.”

Tyler Treese: You have this PurePlank core trainer out. Talk me through what kind of motivated you to make this product. I saw it was very beginner-friendly, and comfort was a focus.

Adam Copeland: What really kicked everything off was just the idea that I need to be around for my little girls, and being an older dad, that’s important, right? So, I realized through the toddler phase, where you just kind of eat their leftovers, and maybe you didn’t get into the gym that day, and just all of that stuff starts to catch up, right? Before I know it, I’m rocking a dad bud, right? I’m getting tired going up the stairs, and I keep throwing my back out. I thought, “Okay, well, I need to get back into to healthier shape.”

I really just started thinking about planking because, in the past, that’s something that has always helped my lower back and helped strengthen everything. It is kind of like the building block to moving to the next stage and all of those things. I’ve consistently done it over the years, but I realized I needed to do it more consistently going forward as I get older. So I started doing it again, and little by little, the back pain started to go away, and my knees started feeling better. I’m starting to get strong. I’m starting to get abs back. All of that stuff.

I went down to Jay’s, to Christian’s, and he noticed. He was like, “What’s the deal, man?” And I just said, “Planking.” Just started there. It didn’t seem too insurmountable. It seemed doable and easy enough. If I can’t take two to five minutes outta my day to do that, then what am I doing?

So, he’d never tried them, and he goes, “Come on, planks?” So I said, “Just do it, man. Try for 30.” And by 20, he was starting to shake. I think that was kind of shocking to him. But then he took it to the next phase. He was like, “There’s gotta be a way to make this more comfortable.” Because it was hurting our elbows, our shoulders, wrists. We’re all banged up, right? We’re pro wrestlers. We looked at other products and didn’t really find any.

So we thought, what if we created our own? We’ve done a lot of things together. We’ve never created or invented a product. So I got some paper out, got a sharpie out, and I started drawing, and we’d bat around ideas and, and kind of created it from that drawing. It went through a few mutations to get to where we got it to. But that’s where it all started, really; it was just to try and come up with a more comfortable way to keep proper form for planking.

When you spot a need for something, that’s the perfect reason to create something. Can you talk a little bit about the permutations? How was it kind of iterating upon and coming up with the final design for what we have now?

You can come up with ideas, but then the logistics of that and the possibilities of that and the products and can we get this, can we get that? Those were all things that I don’t know about. So we got partners who know what they’re doing, and then we started going, “Right, this can be a thing.” Then any change had to be approved by him and I, because we had to try it. We had to feel it, see it.

What was really interesting with this current injury that I have is I didn’t have to stop planking. I equate the reason that I didn’t have to stop is I was using my board. So with those handles that we came up with, it kept my balance where it needed to be. Well, I had one leg and a splint up in the air, but I was still able to plank.

I think more than anything, it helped us as two 50-year-olds get in the best shape of our lives and really was kind of the impetus, or at least the spark, to getting both of our comebacks off the ground. Between the two of us who retired for 16 years, we were both able to come back in, I think, the best shape we’ve ever been in. That was the starting point, really. Fast forward, gosh, six years later, and here we are, and we have a product in hand, and it seems to be helping people too, which is what you want, you know? We knew that in watching women try and battle back and get their body back after pregnancy or from a c-section or guys [who] got a really bad back or bad knees, we thought this could help those people get back into shape or stay in shape and hopefully strengthen their core.

How rewarding is that seeing people actually use this product and it helping change their lives? You hear stories from DDP and other people in the space, and they get such gratitude from really helping others.

I think gratitude, right? The fact that someone would put their money down and try this thing based off of me and Jay saying, “Hey, give this a shot. This could help you.” That’s awesome. Getting feedback, and we want good and bad, right? So that we can perfect this thing.It’s great to see.

I love getting pictures of drenched boards, just covered in sweat. I’m like, “Right, awesome. That person has taken the time today to make themselves better.” That’s great. That’s just a fun thing to be a part of and very rewarding. It’s also one of those things that if you had told me that it was on my bingo card to one day come up with a fitness device with my best friend, I wouldn’t have thought that.

You mentioned your injury, you fractured your tibia a couple of months ago. How is recovery coming along?

Good, good. Again, what was kind of great about [PurePlank] is I didn’t have to stop doing that portion of my training. I feel like sometimes with surgery, it’s easy to get outta shape, especially with a leg injury, because you’re kind of sitting there, you’re lying there, your legs are up. But that didn’t happen this time, which was great.

In terms of recovery, yesterday was three months since the surgery. I’m back walking. Everyday life doesn’t affect me at all. I got in the ring the other day just to feel kind of where it’s at, and there are still areas where I need to strengthen and get the flexibility and the range of motion back because the range of motion with what we do is so important. If your foot is locked into only coming up this far, that could be a problem. So now I’m just at the stage where it’s getting my mobility back and then getting the strength and explosivity back.

Your wrestling career was so legendary, but this past decade, ever since you had to retire the first time, we’ve really seen you grow as an actor as well. It might just be a work ethic thing, but how has wrestling helped you as an actor?

I think more than anything, what wrestling builds in you is work ethic. Like you said, it, it’s one of those jobs where if you don’t got work ethic, chances are you’re just gonna be just another guy or just another girl. You gotta have some work ethic in order to pull this off, especially at the highest level you can. I think that is what I pulled from wrestling.

Now, I get to a trailer and there’s food waiting for me with clothes that I have to wear on hangers. You kidding me? What do I got to complain about? I didn’t have to drive a rental car 300 miles after getting thrown around by a seven-foot, 500-pound guy. Yeah, I’ll take this all day.

But also just from the aspect of being able to work on the fly. Wrestlers, everything we do is on the fly. You gotta be able to adapt. You need to be able to change course, you need to be able to ad-lib, [there’s] a lot of plates you have to keep in the air. So when you get on a set where you’ll have multiple takes and a director wants to do something completely different. Yeah. Okay. Got it. It’s that easy because of the 30-plus years of training that was happening, unbeknownst to me, until I got onto sets and realized, “Oh, that’s a massive tool that maybe if you didn’t come from live theater, you wouldn’t necessarily have.”

It’s really cool also to see the growth of wrestlers in film because, in the past, it would be kind of like stunt casting or just be only action movies, but we’re seeing John Cena and Dave Bautista doing a lot of roles that are very far removed from that and really showing range. So it’s great that we’re actually seeing you taken seriously, doing great roles like in Percy Jackson where you’re Ares, the God of War. What’s been most rewarding about that role?

Just honestly seeing kids’ reactions. That has been so much fun. Having entire families come up to me and say that it’s like appointment watching for their family. The fact that I can sit down with my girls, my wife, and we all watch it together. Even if I wasn’t in the show, we’d be watching it because it’s a really good show. I’m massively proud to be a part of a franchise like that in a world that is so important to so many people. And also what, what the character of Percy brings to the table. ADHD, dyslexic, those are all things that hadn’t really seen in a lot of books, especially when Percy came out. I think that that empowers a lot of people who watch, and to be involved in anything like that is rewarding and fun too.

I love the character of Ares. I think he’s such a… you hate him, but you also kind of like him. That’s really fun to find the humorous beats within the character while he is this pretty caustic God. Just fun. I feel like with each gig that I’ve gotten, I’m trying to grow with each of them and learn new things from each of them. There’s a sense of confidence that is built with each role.

I think Vikings really helped with that too. Just because it was a period piece, it was a drama, it was accents, it was a lot of different challenges. So, yeah, I’ve had a blast dipping my toes and then also realizing what I learned from acting in those years that I was retired that I was able to bring back to wrestling with me has been really fun too.

One cool thing about Percy is you also get to act with all these young actors who are obviously so passionate. I assume it’s very similar to AEW since they have so many young talents as well. How is that experience? I assume it’s reinvigorating to be working around such passionate, talented young actors and that keeps your fire going as well?

Yeah, but I’m one of those people, I don’t need to look to other people for incentive. I got all the incentive right here that I need. I’m on a Disney show at 50 years old and seeing the scale of the production and everything, it’s like, man, if I need a kick in the ass after looking at all of this, then I should probably go home. It’s great working with them, though, because they have never-ending energy and you do feed off of that. Especially at one o’clock in the morning, and I gotta hop on a jet to go make a pay-per-view or something. Then I’m sharing a scene with Walker [Scobell], and he’s just like amped up, ready to go. But it’s super fun.

You had this great MadTV appearance many years ago, it’s a Korean soap opera parody with Bobby Lee. How was it doing that sketch? It’s just great.

We had a blast. What was great about it too is day of, me and Bobby were just riffing with each other going, “Oh, what if we did that? What if we did that?” It was very fun to experiment and just go completely over the top because that’s the world I come from. It’s over the top. So fitting into that was super fun. I had a lot of fun that day.