Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, already one of the swolest leading men in Hollywood, gained even more muscle last year while preparing to make his superhero debut in DC’s Black Adam. It was a process that he described as one of the hardest physical undertakings of his career to date, but he has also taken away some insight into smart training, as evidenced by his latest leg day.
“Absolutely brutal leg training today but, always grateful to put the work in and do my best to raise my personal bar,” he wrote in the caption of a new Instagram post, before giving a detailed rundown of everything he does to build and maintain strength in those massive quads—and explaining that for him, the most effective workouts aren’t necessarily always about how much weight he’s lifting, but rather the technique with which he’s doing it.
The actor starts out with a 30-minute warmup, consisting of stretching and foam rolling, core work, and a series of activation exercises including leg extensions, leg curls, glute abductions and single leg glute drives.
Then it’s time for giant sets, all in the 15 to 20 rep range, performed a total of 5 times. For Johnson, that usually means a compound pressing movement like the leg press, along with barbell and Pit Shark squat variations. “Slow, intense, controlled reps with multi second negatives – increasing weight every set,” he said. He finishes the workout with walking chain lunges, a staple in his leg day regimen, supersetted with slowed-down Romanian deadlifts with a 1-second pause at the bottom of each rep.
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Johnson has spoken before about the value of slowed, controlled negative reps, sharing a number of workout videos in which he demonstrates his eccentric contraction, switching out the heavy weights and focusing instead on getting the most out of each repetition by increasing time under tension.
“You’ll see the weight I use is never an insanely heavy amount,” Johnson wrote, explaining that training safely is a huge priority following several injuries and surgeries. “I’ve learned it’s not how much weight we use, but rather the quality of the reps and mind/muscle connection that matters most,” he continued. “Truth is, over the years I’ve actually learned to train HARDER. But, in order to train harder, I had to learn how to train SMARTER.”
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