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Devale Ellis has a lot to celebrate these days. Within 24 hours of its release, his latest film, Meet Me Next Christmas, shot to No. 1 on Netflix. As a former NFL wide receiver, Ellis has traded in touchdowns for leading roles, proving that the transition from the field to the screen isn’t as big a leap as it might seem. “I wanted to captivate people since I was 5,” Ellis says with undeniable passion. “And here I am, at 40, with two No. 1 shows [Sistas, Zatima] and a hit movie.”

But for Devale Ellis, this success is far from overnight. His career is a result of a never-ending drive to “build a legacy, not to be defined by my greatness, but by the masses I inspire to be greater than myself,” he shares. Growing up in Brooklyn, he didn’t have many paths to pursue his love for performance arts.

“Back in the ’90s, you didn’t see a lot of young black men doing theater or acting,” he recalls, so he leaned on sports. “Sports was a means to an end for me.” Football was a bridge out of Brooklyn and into college. It led him to the NFL, where he spent time with the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions. But football was never the final goal: Acting was always his first love. “Sports gave me the foundation I needed to learn discipline and pretty much made me the man I am today, but it wasn’t my end goal. Art was always my end goal and I utilized sports to get this,” he shares.

The stamina Ellis built through sports came in handy in acting too. It’s a different kind of endurance, but reps matter in both. Whether you’re perfecting a route or preparing for a role, it’s repetition that gets you there, as he puts it: “As a professional athlete, you learn early that it takes a 1,000 reps to beco*e muscle memory, which means I have to do the same thing over and over and over again before I can beco*e a master at it.” So for Ellis, every new acting project is yet another rep that helps him master the craft.

Devale Ellis Is Training for a New, Long-term Position

As for his training, it’s evolved. “Now, I train for life,” he explains. His workouts prioritize functional strength, hip mobility, and explosive power—the same principles that kept him performing at peak levels during his life as an NFL player. Plus, weighted jumps, hand cleans, and deadlifts are still on for leg day. The goal, however, has shifted from physical power to aesthetic finesse. “Fit dad” has beco*e a familiar term he hears a lot.

He says he’s at a point in his life where the aesthetic is more important than how much he can bench press. “I have to get leaner, so I’ve changed my diet, I’ve changed even the way I lift. I do a lot more high-intensity, co*pound, fully functional lifts. I’ve got down to about 190 pounds, and my body fat is down to about 5%. I’m trying to get it to about 3%,” he explains, knowing that all that may have to change depending on a role.

And, one practice is key to achieving that goal: his morning fasted high-incline sprints cardio. “It’s a non-negotiable for me because it gets my heart moving, it gets my brain moving, I get a sweat in,” he adds with excitement.

Most of his other workouts are not done alone. His family remains the core of his journey, and they’re not just cheering from the sidelines. Ellis has crafted a life where family time and fitness overlap. “We train like elite athletes five days a week,” he says, adding they work on hip mobility, explosive power, ground contact, and core strength. For Ellis, workouts with his wife Khadeen and their four sons have “beco*e a part of the fabric of who we are as a family.” Plus, keeping up with his four boys for the next couple of decades is a motivation for him to stay in shape.

Recovery is another non-negotiable for Ellis, both physically and mentally. He swears by sleep, clocking seven to eight hours a night no matter how late he goes to bed. “I prioritize sleep,” he emphasizes, and pairs it with morning meditation to center his mental and emotional fitness too. “It’s quiet, I have no distractions,” he adds. He uses that time to keep himself focused on what his tasks are so that he wouldn’t lose himself outside of that. To help his muscles recover, he relies on an e-stim machine, a scraper, and cold plunges.

Success Is All in the Devale Ellis Family

His family, his team and as he puts it his “village” around him are no strangers to the public either. Ellis frequently shares about their life on social media to his 2.4 million followers. His co*mitment to family and real talk shines through his and his wife’s podcast Dead Ass with K&E, which he admits “has beco*e a form of therapy” as he continues to learn things about her he didn’t know, even after more than 20 years of being together. “We have those revelations live, and then we work on them together.”

Devale Ellis is just getting started. He’s got more films lined up, a book in the works dedicated to his sons, and a co-producer credit on a Broadway production of Othello starring Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal in early 2025.

Showing up physically and mentally is important to him because that’s how he sets a standard for his boys. “It feels good to test my body and my will and see what my body can do because that’s an example for my kids,” Ellis reflects. And if his boys can look at him and think, “if Dad can do it, so can I,” then every step of his journey has been worth it.