Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson works out six days a week and it’s safe to say that it shows. The hulking wrestler-turned-movie star frequently shares clips from his intense workouts at his home gym on social media, explaining the specific exercises and techniques he is deploying to build strength and size in certain muscle groups, from his giant quads to those boulder shoulders.
But it is not often that we see Johnson targeting his core. Back in 2021, in response to a question from one of his followers asking what was “wrong” with his abs, Johnson revealed that an old injury from his WWE career meant that he has had to adapt his core training, and that while that whole region of his body is still in great shape, he has not been able to sculpt the stereotypical six-pack.
“All these Instagram fitness models have these incredible six, eight, twelve, twenty-four pack stomachs… I got like a five and a half pack, sometimes a four and a half pack,” he said. “I tore, in a wrestling match, I tore the top of my quad off my pelvis. It went bang… And then what that did was it caused a chain reaction, and it tore my abdomen wall. So then I had to do triple-hernia emergency surgery of a tear, a tear, and a tear… So they’re not like perfect abs.”
In a new Instagram Reel, Johnson shared what a standard core workout looks like for him, with a focus on safely building strength and stability over aesthetics.
“I’m the last dude to give abdominal advice, but after I tore my abdomen wall during a wrestling match (fun pain) I had to really concentrate on ab exercises that strengthened my entire wall and core again,” he wrote. “Over the years I’ve found that a strong core/tight abdomen wall is super beneficial to your gains.”
It is important, when working your core, to remember to train it for its original function—flexion of the torso—as well as for how it looks. Johnson is absolutely correct that a strong core can boost your performance in other forms of sports and training, as well as help to provide functional fitness in everyday life.
But you’ve got to train smart. That means doing more than the occasional 8-minute workout that promises to shred your six-pack, or churning out hundreds of reps of the same exercise. Instead, challenge your abdominals and obliques with moves that can be loaded up to achieve hypertrophy.
“Don’t be afraid to load your abs,” says Men’s Health fitness director Ebenezer Samuel C.S.C.S., “because your abs needs to be strong so that you can squat better, so you can deadlift better, so you can hit all your other exercises better.”
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
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