That was the brief Rohit Shetty gave to help achieve Devgn's tough-as-nails look in 'Singham'

To achieve his beefy look in Rohit Shetty's Singham, Ajay Devgn worked on looking "manly". Says the director, "We've tried to achieve for AJ the physique of a man who could bash up 20 people, if he so wished. It's not a six-pack look. Anybody can achieve that with injections and steroids.

The manliness has to come through as he plays a tough cop who is from a village on the Maharashtra-Goa border. It is a raw action film filled with hand-to-hand combat scenes, something one rarely gets to see in movies in this day and age of high-tech gadgetry. Ajay's trainer Prashant Sawant is putting him through the paces."

Adds Prashant, "We trained for three months. Ajay plays a very tough cop. He needed to look the part by losing weight, developing more cuts on his body and appear more lean and muscular.

After training daily for a hour and a half, I oversaw his diet and made sure he maintained a high-protein low-carb diet every three hours. I then had him do a rigorous combination of weights and circuit super sets that incorporated all techniques including pushups and pull-ups."

Ask the trainer if it took time for Ajay to build this physique and pat comes the reply, "It didn't take him much time, Ajay has a great body and he has always been a fitness freak. It's not difficult for him to maintain it."