Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is known for training hard everywhere he goes, to the point that he has a fully-equipped gym in each of his homes and travels with his own portable “Iron Paradise” while filming on-location. So it stands to reason that he’s spending his downtime in quarantine working out to an unprecedented degree, even for him—after all, as soon as lockdown ends, he’s heading straight back to work filming the upcoming Netflix blockbuster Red Notice and DC movie Black Adam. He’s going to need to be in the best shape of his life.
“I promised myself that when we did get put on lockdown that I was going to train my ass off, harder than I’d ever trained before and try to raise my own personal bar in terms of intensity,” Johnson said in a recent Q&A on Instagram. “I have enough rage that I need to work out, anyway, so I’m working out extremely hard!”
He added, though, that he won’t be sharing any training videos for the duration of the shutdown—but not because he wants to guard his workout secrets. Instead, Johnson said that he’s hesitant to share footage from his recent sessions because he’s well-aware that most people don’t have access to any type of gym at all. “I don’t take any of this for granted, I’ve been a lucky son of a bitch for years to have my own gym,” he said. “It would make me feel like an asshole if I was like, ‘hey guys, what an amazing workout, look at this gym, phenomenal, how are your workouts coming along?’ I’m not gonna do it, I’ll let other celebrities do that shit, it’s not my style.”
“When the ban is lifted, and gyms start opening up around the world, then I will start showing my workouts,” he continued. “The bottom line is, I cannot wait for all of you to get back in the gym and find your anchor and tap into your mana.”
Johnson did, however, share how he breaks down his training throughout the week. Here’s the split:
Johnson starts the week by working big body parts (chest, back), then follows that with two “lighter” days during which he trains smaller muscle groups, allowing his body to recover from those major lifts. Then, he hits more big work.
“Those bigger muscle groups drive more caloric expenditure and also require more time to recover, which is why he then hits arms and shoulders, smaller muscle groups that won’t tax him as much,” explains Men’s Health fitness director Ebenezer Samuel C.S.C.S. “Then he bounces back with two hard workouts; chest and back together, and legs.”
The Rock’s approach to training his shoulders is a sensible one too, leading with rear delts instead of prioritizing the more common anterior shoulder with moves like shoulder presses. “Normally, most guys gravitate to shoulder presses as their first shoulder day exercise—but that’s an anterior (front shoulder) move, and our everyday life pushes us into a lot of anterior imbalance to start,” says Samuel. “Dwayne starts with rear delts, so he’s opening with posterior chain work that’s going to help rebalance his shoulders and help pull them joint back into the socket. Then he follows with lateral shoulder work and ends with the front shoulder work. It’s an underrated way to build a pair of shoulders that’s strong, and also aesthetically balanced, since we could all use more rear delt work.”
Johnson also trains his core and his calves multiple days a week, and this is something that can be easily incorporated into your own workout program. “You can train core and calves regularly because your core and calves are high-endurance muscles that are essentially always on,” says Samuel. “Your core and calves have to be active for you to stand, and every single step you take, walking anywhere, involves a calf contraction as means of propulsion. So you can load those muscles regularly, train them daily if you want.”
Additionally, Johnson emphasizes the importance of stretching every day before and after a workout, a habit that everybody should be adopting, as its value cannot be overstated.
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