When individuals are learning how to build muscle they often end up looking for their favorite celebrity and trying to discover the type of workouts they do in the gym to achieve their physique. Today we'll be looking at one such celebrity, 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.
Take one look at The Rock leg workout and it'll become obvious that your results are not going to come cheap.
Over the course of the last fifteen months, Dwayne Johnson has undergone a complete body transformation, packing on a lot of muscle and shedding a considerable amount of fat in the process. This is largely thanks to a diet which sticks to the proven principles of hypertrophy and fat loss.
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.
* Box Squats - 5 sets of 25 repetitions.
* Leg Press - 4 sets of 25, 20, 18 and 16 repetitions followed by a burnout set of 25.
* Smith Machine Lunges - Four sets of sixteen reps. That's eight on each leg.
* Leg Curl - 4 sets of 12, 10, 8 and 6 repetitions with a burnout set of 12 at the end.
* And finally, the Standing Calf Raise rounds out the session with six sets of 16 repetitions followed by a burnout of 20 after the final 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 proven hypertrophy principles at play here which will ensure you also get sufficient tears in your muscle fibers to stimulate maximum growth in your lower body. They are the pyramid principle and the burnout principle.
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.
The Rock leg workout is a challenging affair because it sticks to the basics and cuts out the two things which often prevent people from training their legs with the same intensity as they train their upper body. Those two things are a lack of intensity and lack of challenge. By utilizing a minimal rest approach and adopting tactics such as burnouts you will find leg day as engaging as any other session.
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.
Take one look at The Rock leg workout and it'll become obvious that your results are not going to come cheap.
Over the course of the last fifteen months, Dwayne Johnson has undergone a complete body transformation, packing on a lot of muscle and shedding a considerable amount of fat in the process. This is largely thanks to a diet which sticks to the proven principles of hypertrophy and fat loss.
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.
* Box Squats - 5 sets of 25 repetitions.
* Leg Press - 4 sets of 25, 20, 18 and 16 repetitions followed by a burnout set of 25.
* Smith Machine Lunges - Four sets of sixteen reps. That's eight on each leg.
* Leg Curl - 4 sets of 12, 10, 8 and 6 repetitions with a burnout set of 12 at the end.
* And finally, the Standing Calf Raise rounds out the session with six sets of 16 repetitions followed by a burnout of 20 after the final 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 proven hypertrophy principles at play here which will ensure you also get sufficient tears in your muscle fibers to stimulate maximum growth in your lower body. They are the pyramid principle and the burnout principle.
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.
The Rock leg workout is a challenging affair because it sticks to the basics and cuts out the two things which often prevent people from training their legs with the same intensity as they train their upper body. Those two things are a lack of intensity and lack of challenge. By utilizing a minimal rest approach and adopting tactics such as burnouts you will find leg day as engaging as any other session.
About the Author:
Your next move: Learn how to build muscle with top personal trainer Russ Howe PTI. Today's session, the rock leg workout, is just one of many ready on his exclusive fitness site.
