When it comes to working out, fitness actually is a bonus for Michael Rufino. He does what he does to manage the pain — to take "the curse" off the damage he's done to his body is the way he describes it.

Over the past 10 years, he's broken his neck and a collarbone, separated a shoulder, torn an ACL in a knee, wrenched a cervical disc, fractured his pelvis and torn both an achilles tendon and a hamstring.

All of it was work-related. Few jobs, really, can produce that much suffering, but the 38-year-old Rufino has one that nearly guarantees it: He's a professional stuntman.

Chances are good that you've seen him blown up, thrown out of a building or set on fire.

"Whether it is into walls or onto the ground, I am always getting thrown into some immovable object," Rufino said.

If you caught Jodie Foster's recent film "The Brave One," in which Rufino played the stunt double for Naveen Andrews, you watched thugs beat the stuffing out of him. It was a two-minute scene that took a month to shoot.

"What motivates me is I have all these injuries, and if I don't keep the activity level up, then my body and those injuries will come up and I will be laid out for three weeks," he said. "I'll have pain just getting out of bed."

To keep himself whole, or close to it, Rufino combines kickboxing, sprinting, plyometrics — the art of explosive movement — weight lifting and capoeira, a martial art that blends Brazilian fighting techniques and dance. He surfs, too, but mostly for his sanity.

Capoeira is especially helpful in that it teaches Rufino to know where his body is while spinning through the air, he said.

"It has a lot of gymnastic-acrobatic movements," he said. "It is important for me in stunts because I have to know where I am in space if you are falling out of a building. Now there are a lot of military war films with a lot of explosions. There are a lot of bodies being thrown."

It also helps Rufino do a convincing job of acting.

"Visually, we have to know what the director wants on camera," he said. "But it hurts quite a bit, and we have to sell that it looks very painful."

Usually, Rufino splits the workouts into two 30-minute sessions a day, but not because that's the key to some secret of success.

It just makes it easier for the Waimanalo father of two to get his children to and from school or get to the grocery store when his wife can't. It also helps him juggle the responsibilities of his other job.

See, Rufino leads a kind of double life.

The Clark Kent to his stuntman is his career as a physical therapist. As the co-owner of Physical Impact Hawai'i in Kailua, Rufino spends a lot of time helping people rehabilitate from injuries he knows from experience.

Rufino is his best, worst example.

"For me, it's interesting being a physical therapist and being a stuntman," he said. "I would never tell anyone to do what I do, from a physical therapy standpoint. You are going to kill yourself."

He got into the stunt profession by accident.

Rufino was doing graduate work in physical therapy in New Zealand and coaching football in the mid-1990s. When he gave a friend a ride to a stuntman audition, the coordinators accepted him as well. The jobs he got helped pay for his graduate degree.

This year, he worked on "Tropic Thunder," "Iron Man," "The Brave One" and on ABC TV's "Lost."

Rufino loves stunt work. But even possessing what he considers a high threshold "for bumps and bruises," he knows a stable future lies in a workout regime that keeps him as fit as possible.

"I want to be somebody who can play with his kids," he said. "That's why I do this. I won't even be able to move in 10 years if I don't have that lifestyle."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.