Personal trainer with Yakima Valley roots helped prepare actor in ‘Avatar’ movies

YAKIMA – “Avatar: The Way of Water” has been one of the most anticipated movies of the last decade. Over the course of its five-year production, Joshua Murillo, a Yakima native and personal trainer in Hollywood, was enlisted to keep one of the movie’s main characters in shape during filming.

To get to that point, Murillo spent years reinventing himself and eventually turning one of his passions into a successful career that has him working with some of Hollywood’s biggest names, rising stars and everyone in between.

Murillo grew up in Yakima. He and his siblings participated in multiple sports like boxing and baseball and were encouraged to try their hardest. His father, David Murillo, also made a point of promoting exercise as a means of staying healthy regardless of the sports involved.

By the time Murillo left for college in Arizona, he had spent years learning about the importance of personal health and exercise. After earning a degree in sound engineering, he landed a job in Los Angeles with NBC working on sound for Olympics broadcasts.

When the NBC Sports production he worked on moved to Denver, Murillo was left freelancing in LA. It was then he started to find his passions for personal health overshadowed his passion for sound engineering.

“At the time I was training at a gym, and I realized I actually like being in the gym more than I liked sitting in a booth doing audio,” he said.

From there, Murillo became a personal trainer at his gym. Soon, he became the gym’s manager and started training stunt people.

“I started training guys and girls that were into stunt work for film and TV and I had a bit of a boxing background and I had played baseball for like 18 years,” Murillo said. “I played for Davis, I played for the Beetles and stuff. So I had this athletic background and the people I was working with said, ‘You should really do this.’ ”

Through his connections at the gym, Murillo began doing stunt work himself. His interests in strength training and conditioning continued to grow.

“When I took the leap to do stunts full time, I was still fascinated with strength and conditioning so I kept studying that stuff,” Murrillo said. “I just studied all the time. I was fascinated with how to get someone from A to B whether they’re trying to get strength, trying to increase their endurance or if they’re trying to lose a couple pounds or put on some muscle so they look better with their shirt on.”

Murillo said he came to be known in the stunt work community as someone familiar with training and with how to get people into specific shape for different stunts. Pretty soon, Murillo said, stunt coordinators started approaching him when they needed help getting stunt workers into shape.

“Eventually my name got passed around when they were looking for a trainer for one of the Avatar sequels, Murillo said. “I went through a bunch of interviews. I had to make sure I had a training program ready to go and to be able to tackle any problems. After we went through that process, everything felt like a right fit.”

Murrillo would be working with Jack Champion, an at-the-time 14-year-old actor who had worked on number of TV shows and movies, including a role in “Avengers: Endgame.”

While the Avatar series has come to be known for its advancements in Computer-Generated Imagery that brought the alien world of Pandora to life, Murillo was tasked with training the most prominently-featured human cast member.

The character of Spider, played by Champion, is a teenage boy who was raised by the Na’vi, Pandora’s native inhabitants whose men wear loincloths.

It would be Murillo’s job to keep Champion’s physique consistent over the course of three years of filming. Director James Cameron filmed “Way of the Water” along with the third and fourth Avatar sequels in the same run.

“The instructions I was given were he needed to look like a young Tarzan. They shot that movie over the course of a couple of years,” Murillo said. “Jim (Cameron) has talked about this. Because filming took so long, the kids they were shooting were getting older. One of the things we had to monitor was to make sure Jack remained lean but at the same time we had to be careful because if he put on too much muscle, he actually looked older.”

Murillo said he worked closely with Champion and his mother to make sure there was a healthy balance between how Champion was being asked to exercise and eat and normal teenage life.

Murillo said on top of his work with Champion, getting to be a part of the making of “The Way of Water” was an experience that could not be topped. On days when Champion’s time on set was short or when it was over, Murillo said he’d stick around and watch the other actors perform, and the crew putting everything together.

Since filming for “The Way of Water” wrapped in 2020, Murillo has gone on to work with high-profile studio executives, directors and a plethora of movie and television actors.

Murillo also started his own digital training program for those looking to get into shape from home. A link to the program can be found on his Instagram at joshinthegym.

Ultimately, Murillo says his work ethic and focus on health have gotten him to where he is today.

“The values I have really just come from my family, they come from Yakima to be honest. I think one of the things I picked up just growing up in Yakima is being able to work really really, really hard and being able to treat people really well. Those were some of my family’s major core values. Those were passed down from my grandmother. My parents operate that way, my sisters operate that way.”

Murillo said its his work ethic that reminds him most of home. On top of sports, he worked at a fruit stand and a fruit warehouse in the Yakima Valley. He said the people he worked with in the Yakima Valley taught him about the value of hard work.

“There is no way that you can succeed in Yakima without hard work and that’s just something I grew up around. I grew up around a lot of kind people who taught me these values and instilled in me a sense of honor for being from Yakima,” Murillo said.

Santiago Ochoa’s reporting for the Yakima Herald-Republic is possible with support from Report for America and community members through the Yakima Valley Community Fund.