If you want to look like The Rock, you have to train like The Rock.
And looking at his hulking frame, it doesn’t look like he lark about in the gym.
Earlier this week, we brought you The 54 People You’ll Find in Every Single Irish Gym.
Now, we’re setting our sights very, very high. SportsJOE mined the WWE star’s Instagram to get some insight into how he trains.
What we found was pretty hardcore. Here’s nine videos to show you what you’re up against…
Chest
Here’s Johnson training some serious chest for his role in his new film Central Intelligence.
Check out the striations on that chest plate. He’s got near-perfect form on the cable cross-overs.
He brings his arms right back to stretch out the muscle fibres and then contracts hard to bring his hands down to the front of his body.
We’re not sure about the choice of workout music, but whatever you’re into Dwayne. That’s a serious Hollywood chest.
Traps
Traps, trapezius, Christmas shopping bag muscles – whatever you want to call them, The Rock has them in spades.
That’s because he hits his dumbbell shrugs hard.
This diamond shape muscle sits atop your shoulders and runs from the base of your skull part way down the centre of your back.
Pull your shoulders up and squeeze the muscle at the top and huge traps will be yours (eventually).
Maybe leave the jokes to us, Mr Johnson.
Back
Ahh, the bent-over barbell row. It’s arguably the king of upper back exercises, as demonstrated expertly here by The Rock.
This move is great for building up your lats and your traps.
You can really pile the weight onto the barbell – if your grips strength isn’t up to it, use straps to bind your hands to the bar if you have to.
Here’s Johnson casually repping out on 315lbs.
For the aficionados among you, he’s opted for the supinated (under-hand grip) – but you can go pronated (over-hand) or mixed grip to get a slightly workout on the muscles.
Lats
Everyone wants those super-wide Bruce Lee-style ‘wings’, and The Rock is no different.
He’s got some serious lats – and this is probably why. He is hitting the single-arm dumbbell row with a set of 140lb weights.
And he’s not messing about.
Make sure you’re hitting a full range of motion – getting the stretch at the bottom – and contracting those lats at the top.
Don’t cheat your lats out of those gains by pulling the weight with your arms, you rascals.
Shoulders
Here’s Johnson smashing some delts on the Hammer Strength plate-loaded shoulder press machine, naturally.
This will work the front and lateral delts. You astute lot will probably notice he’s not locking out at the top of the movement.
That’s to stop his triceps getting in on the action and stealing the thunder of those impressive shoulders.
This way it keeps constant tension on the delts.
You can have a cheeky pause at the bottom of the rep too, if you’re hard like our Dwayne.
Abs
If you want to turn that family pack into a rippling six pack, then get doing your ab training done.
The best way is to bolt some ab exercises on the end of another workout.
The Rock is hitting a huge superset here going straight from 25-30 reps of rope crunches to 25-30 reps on leg raises.
Repeat four times or until your body screams ‘No more!’
Legs
Do you think The Rock got that big by skipping leg day? Nope.
So dig in, harsh it out and get ready for some gains.
Johnson is attacking the leg press machine like a savage here.
Three sets of 50 reps… with a triple drop set on the final set. Yup, a triple drop set – so drop your weight, go again, and again, and again.
Your quads are slow twitch muscles so they can take some real punishment. But as the Rock says, the leg press is designed to burn.
SportsJOE has never even seen anyone tackle the hack squat machine on one leg.
So we’re bloody impressed. These single-leg hack squat machine lunges look particularly unpleasant.
Or ‘The Muthaf*ckas’ as The Rock Calls them.
However, unilateral exercises (one leg) make your individual muscles work harder and they give you a stronger and more balanced physique.
Do you want to look like the Rock, or not?
Triceps
If you want bigger arms, you should hit your triceps – they’re twice the size of your biceps.
And if you want to hit your triceps one of the best exercises you can do is the tricep dip.
It will head all three heads of your tricep muscle.
Here’s the Rock showing how its done….nice and slow.
You can just use your own bodyweight, or if you’re a tough guy then slam some weight on and dip to your heart’s content.
Oh, by the way, if you want to look like the Rock, don’t forget to eat like the Rock.
