Daniel Dae Kim on the Wellness Routine That Keeps Him Young

Known for roles in Lost, Hellboy and Avatar: The Last Airbender, Korean-born American actor Daniel Dae Kim’s physicality has always been front and center in his performances.

At 55, he’s recently signed on as co-captain of the Advil Pickleball Team alongside pickleball pro Hurricane Tyra Black. We caught up with Kim to talk about his lifelong love of paddle sports, keeping fit as he gets older, and how what he does after a workout is just as important as the exercise itself.

InsideHook: You shared a video of yourself working out and playing pickleball on Instagram. How long has pickleball been in your life?

Daniel Dae Kim: Paddle sports were big in my childhood. When pickleball first came along, I thought it was just mini-tennis…I was a bit dismissive of it, until I started seeing my son and my wife starting to play, and then I started seeing a lot of ex-tennis players move into pro pickleball. I realized it can get pretty intense. It is a real sport. I started to play, and I’ve been enjoying it.

How did you have to mix up your approach from playing something like tennis?

As a tennis player, I like to hit the ball hard. If you played pickleball like I played tennis, you’d be called a dinker. [Per Pickleball Kitchen: “A dink is a shot you use to make your opponent’s next shot unattackable.”] Dinking is good in pickleball, but it took me a while to get my mentality right about the importance of dinking.

As an actor and producer, is it difficult to fit pickleball sessions (or other recreation) in around your work?

Whenever I get free time I consider it a luxury. It’s either pickleball, or if I can squeeze in a round of golf, that’s great. But I might just go for a run. All of those things are fantastic. Pickleball is like tennis in that you need to find good partners. Sometimes they’re hard to find on short notice. I usually play with friends and family rather than any famous faces.

Since you mentioned running — are you a guy who trains for 5K PBs? Are you doing any marathons? How seriously do you take it?

I like running as part of a holistic exercise routine. I’ll do two to three miles per day. Or I’ll do it was a warm-up for a gym session, just to get the blood pumping. It’s really good just to reset my mind. If I’ve had a day where I’m a little bit stressed, it just takes a couple of miles to clear my head, and I find it very meditative. I don’t listen to anything; generally, I run to peace and quiet and a sense of nature. I don’t even take my phone with me. My days can get really full, and it’s important to give yourself the space to detach for a little while.

If running sometimes forms your warm-up, what does the main workout look like?

I actually had to learn to work out more efficiently because I’m always on the move. Traveling around, time can be in short supply and I never know when my next workout is going to come. As a result, I end up doing a full-body workout every time I can get into the gym. It means I’m sometimes in the gym for two hours, and it isn’t the most efficient way to build strength. But if I can only get in the gym once a week, I can’t just work one body part at a time, and another a week later.

My go-to is pull-ups. I was never good at them as a kid so I’m trying to compensate for my shortcomings as a child now. I like to do a bunch of sets: I’ll start with overhand, underhand and then side grip. I like to use bodyweight exercises because you can do them anywhere, and pull-ups work a lot of muscle groups.

I’ll also finish with core and lower back. And I make sure I get leg work in every session. It can be too easy to skip leg day.

We’re speaking on behalf of Advil, so what’s your relationship with recovery these days?

I’m focusing on it a lot more as I get older. When I was younger, I never needed to care about recovery. I’d get sore for a little while, then I’d be good. Nowadays I do have to think: How am I going to recover? How can I enhance recovery, and how can I be ready to go as quickly as possible?’

Living in Hawaii, I jump in the ocean for a while instead of doing ice plunges, but I do do a lot of stretching and I try to keep inflammation down as much as possible. That’s where red light therapy, creams and Advil come in. I actually had knee surgery a couple of years ago, so there’s one knee that I’m extra careful about. And as I get older, I find diet is more important too.

How strict are you with diet?

I did my first serious diet a few years ago, in preparation for Avatar: The Last Airbender. I wanted more definition, so I really did think about the amount of carbs I was intaking, when I was eating, when I was drinking. Now I also think about anti-inflammatory foods and sources of protein that are clean and reliable.

Is pickleball good for maintaining the ab definition?

All exercise works to keep your metabolism up. I think that’s the key. The more sedentary you are, the more your metabolic rate goes down. Your body stops working. Once you get into that rhythm of constantly moving, thinking, burning calories, then it makes it easier.