At one stage or another, almost everybody who uses the gym has gone online in a bid to search out the workout program of their favorite celebrities. After all, if you're trying to learn how to build muscle you'll probably find it easier if your favorite movie star is teaching you, right? That's the theory many fitness enthusiasts have and one of the public figures who is usually at the forefront of this trend is wrestler and actor Dwayne Johnson.
While many celebrity fitness plans are gimmicks designed to sell dvd's, Dwayne Johnson is a figure who simply trains because he enjoys training. In today's article we are going to be paying special attention to the lower body routine he adopts in the gym.
Despite sticking to the proven basics, it would be foolish to assume The Rock leg workout is just going to be another ordinary gym session.
One of the reasons for this is that Dwayne Johnson has achieved an impressive transformation in the last year. While his workout routine is something which anybody can do, of course, those results have also been achieved because of a strict diet and putting proven hypertrophy principles in place before hitting the gym.
There are two things here which are usually lacking in lower body training sessions. Those are intensity and basic movements. While many people get caught up in looking for the next big development in exercise and science, such as performing split squats while suspended with a resistance band, this routine sticks to the old classic moves such as Squats and Leg Press. Intensity also becomes a huge focal point of the session, with as little as thirty seconds of rest between exercises to boost fat loss.
If you can get the right techniques in place the actual exercises can be kept relatively straight forward, as you can see below.
* Five sets of Box Squats, with 25 reps per set.
* Leg Press - Pyramid training with four sets of twenty five, twenty, eighteen and sixteen reps. Any remaining energy is then mopped up with a burnout set of twenty five repetitions.
* Four sets of Lunges performed on a Smith Machine, with eight repetitions per leg.
* The Lying Leg Curl machine gets four sets of pyramid training with reps of 12, 10, 8 and 6. Again, this is immediately followed up with a burnout set of a further twelve.
* Last but not least is the Standing Calf Raise. Six sets of sixteen followed by 20 reps as a burnout set.
To anybody who finds themselves constantly searching for the next big exercise to develop, this workout may look quite simple. This is a common mistake to make. While it certainly does stick to the basic movements, this actually works in your favor because those basics are still the optimal exercises for building a powerful lower body. Intensity is key here, keeping your rest periods as low as 30 seconds between sets will dramatically increase fat loss results.
Furthermore, there are two classic bodybuilding principles here which will ensure muscular hypertrophy is accelerated. Those are the pyramid and burnout principles.
The pyramid principle allows you to consistently increase the resistance level on every set performed by slightly lowering the target number of repetitions involved as your progress with an exercise.
This works quite well with the burnout principle. Burnout sets are designed to clear out any remaining energy in the targeted body part following the last set. They get their name from the feeling of burning generated in the tissue by taking it to absolute failure. To use this technique simply lower the weight after your final set and push out up to 25 repetitions at this lower resistance. The only rest between your final set ending and your burnout set beginning is the amount of time it takes you to lower the resistance.
While Dwayne Johnson has certainly accomplished some incredible results over the last year or so, his workout is incredibly basic. Yet one quick look at The Rock leg workout is enough to see where most people go wrong in the gym. Don't be fooled into thinking you can just perform the same exercises and experience the same results because the key factor in this plan is intensity. While you have probably performed every single exercise on this plan before, the real trick to getting results is the fact that legs are trained with the same intensity as upper body. As much as the probably don't like to admit it, this is something most men do not do.
While many celebrity fitness plans are gimmicks designed to sell dvd's, Dwayne Johnson is a figure who simply trains because he enjoys training. In today's article we are going to be paying special attention to the lower body routine he adopts in the gym.
Despite sticking to the proven basics, it would be foolish to assume The Rock leg workout is just going to be another ordinary gym session.
One of the reasons for this is that Dwayne Johnson has achieved an impressive transformation in the last year. While his workout routine is something which anybody can do, of course, those results have also been achieved because of a strict diet and putting proven hypertrophy principles in place before hitting the gym.
There are two things here which are usually lacking in lower body training sessions. Those are intensity and basic movements. While many people get caught up in looking for the next big development in exercise and science, such as performing split squats while suspended with a resistance band, this routine sticks to the old classic moves such as Squats and Leg Press. Intensity also becomes a huge focal point of the session, with as little as thirty seconds of rest between exercises to boost fat loss.
If you can get the right techniques in place the actual exercises can be kept relatively straight forward, as you can see below.
* Five sets of Box Squats, with 25 reps per set.
* Leg Press - Pyramid training with four sets of twenty five, twenty, eighteen and sixteen reps. Any remaining energy is then mopped up with a burnout set of twenty five repetitions.
* Four sets of Lunges performed on a Smith Machine, with eight repetitions per leg.
* The Lying Leg Curl machine gets four sets of pyramid training with reps of 12, 10, 8 and 6. Again, this is immediately followed up with a burnout set of a further twelve.
* Last but not least is the Standing Calf Raise. Six sets of sixteen followed by 20 reps as a burnout set.
To anybody who finds themselves constantly searching for the next big exercise to develop, this workout may look quite simple. This is a common mistake to make. While it certainly does stick to the basic movements, this actually works in your favor because those basics are still the optimal exercises for building a powerful lower body. Intensity is key here, keeping your rest periods as low as 30 seconds between sets will dramatically increase fat loss results.
Furthermore, there are two classic bodybuilding principles here which will ensure muscular hypertrophy is accelerated. Those are the pyramid and burnout principles.
The pyramid principle allows you to consistently increase the resistance level on every set performed by slightly lowering the target number of repetitions involved as your progress with an exercise.
This works quite well with the burnout principle. Burnout sets are designed to clear out any remaining energy in the targeted body part following the last set. They get their name from the feeling of burning generated in the tissue by taking it to absolute failure. To use this technique simply lower the weight after your final set and push out up to 25 repetitions at this lower resistance. The only rest between your final set ending and your burnout set beginning is the amount of time it takes you to lower the resistance.
While Dwayne Johnson has certainly accomplished some incredible results over the last year or so, his workout is incredibly basic. Yet one quick look at The Rock leg workout is enough to see where most people go wrong in the gym. Don't be fooled into thinking you can just perform the same exercises and experience the same results because the key factor in this plan is intensity. While you have probably performed every single exercise on this plan before, the real trick to getting results is the fact that legs are trained with the same intensity as upper body. As much as the probably don't like to admit it, this is something most men do not do.
About the Author:
Your next move: Discover how to build muscle with expert personal trainer Russ Howe PTI. Today's workout, the rock leg workout, is just one of many available on his free fitness site.
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