Getting your body to look like that of a superhero certainly isn’t easy work. Just ask Reacher star Alan Ritchson.

During a recent profile interview with GQ, the 41-year-old Ritchson detailed how his training for season one of the hit Prime Video series was so intense that it got to a point that he couldn’t breathe and needed surgery.

“There was only one way to get where I needed to be and that was hard work. I fucking wrecked my body, dude. It was too much. I didn’t have time to heal. I would strain something and I was like, ‘I don’t care! I’m working through it!’ I suffered the consequences,” Ritchson explained.

“I needed surgery. I couldn’t breathe well. I got a blood panel done and found out I had no testosterone left [because of overtraining]. My doctor was like, ‘You need to be on testosterone’. [Testosterone therapy] was a real gift because now I’m able to easily maintain that size,” he said.

Ritchson been an open advocate of using testosterone in recent months, as he previously discussed his experience with it in an interview with Men’s Health.

His commitment to the role has obviously been worth it as it’s helped elevate his profile to another level, as he’s now appearing in films like Fast X and is being fan-cast in roles in both the MCU and DCU. Similarly, Reacher, which recently concluded its second season, has already begun production on its third.

Prior to his star-making role in Reacher, Ritchson was known for his work in projects such as Blue Mountain State, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Black Mirror, and the DC shows Titans, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow.

Later this year, Ritchson has a role alongside Henry Cavill, Eiza Gonzalez, and Henry Golding in Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.