Even the villain was impressed. “Whoa,” said Le Chiffre, the terrorist banker in Casino Royale, after Daniel Craig’s James Bond was strapped naked into a chair before the film’s excruciating torture scene. “You’ve taken good care of your body. Such a waste.”

You knew something had changed when Craig’s Bond walked out of the surf in the reboot of the Bond franchise two years ago in a blue and black La Perla swimsuit. Only this time it was Bond, not the Bond girl, who was showing off an incredible physique, and in one stroke men all over the world had one more reason to feel a bit inadequate.

Becoming James Bond — if such a thing were possible — starts with the man himself, a fine physical specimen in all but the later Roger Moore films; a killing machine by trade. My journey to try to be a bit more 007 starts with my gym, Bloor Street Boxing, where Trevor, the head trainer, tells me what I’d need to do to even hope to fit into those swim trunks.

“With someone like Daniel (Craig) he didn’t just start this the other day,” Trevor tells me. “It’s a long-term thing to get there. The first little bit will always be easier. That’s where a lot of people go wrong — they work out and lose a bunch of weight, but they don’t move on.” I need to sprint, not jog, for one — “With a lot of those stunts, he has to be more explosive” — and I need to avoid the weight machines in favour of the free weights, and exercises like dead lifts, squats and the overhead press.

He tells me that if I come in every other day and work out for a year, doing cardio all the while, I might come close to the Bond physique.

My next step is Rob Ferreira’s Krav Maga Toronto, where he lets me sit in on a lesson in the martial art developed by the Israeli army. Judo and karate were once the voguish Bond martial arts, but it’s more realistic to imagine Bond, an ex-special forces soldier, learning this far less elegant discipline. “It’s really basic,” Rob tells me. “Primal is a good way to describe it. They want you to address the immediate danger by any means necessary … Whatever the attack might be, a punch, a grab, a choke, a knife, a stick, a gun — whatever. It trains you to use your instincts.”

I spend most of the hour trying to escape a bear hug by trying to kick Pat, one of Rob’s trainers, in the groin — one of the “two heads” Krav Maga teaches you to target. I wake up the next morning almost unable to stand, but I have an appointment at Silverdale Gun Club, outside Beamsville, Ont., where Frank, a friend and a serving army officer, offers to show me how to handle a gun Bond style.

After a lecture on gun safety, Frank pulls out an AR-7, a compact little rifle that packs up into its own stock, and was featured in both From Russia With Love and Goldfinger. After a bit of coaching, I’m able to get a few shots on target, but then he moves me up to the sorts of weapons that Bond might pick up along his way — a 9 mm Yugoslav-made Tokarev and a 1911 Colt 45 A1.

They’re real handguns, and I’m hopeless with them; even shooting while sitting, or standing with both hands firmly wrapped around the grip, I’m barely hitting the bull’s-eye, but when I try shooting with one arm, the recoil sends my arm twitching; puddles in front of the target explode, and clods of mud kick into the air, splashing mud on the target that remains unmolested by any ordinance. I am off to a poor start on my journey to become James Bond.

– Read Metro’s Health feature on attaining the James Bond body.