Plenty of actors go through intense physical transformations to prepare for an upcoming role, with the majority of stars who sign on to action-packed blockbusters hitting the gym for months before cameras start rolling to get into fighting shape, as Kumail Nanjiani will attest. However, Dwayne Johnson remains jacked all day, every day, and he’s been that way for decades.
The guy turns 50 years old next year and yet he’s bigger now than he ever was during his professional wrestling stint, and despite being one of the busiest names in Hollywood, he’s still famed for getting up at 4am to pump some iron before beginning his work day. It takes an incredible amount of dedication and commitment to stay in that kind of condition all year round, and in a new interview, Johnson’s personal strength and fitness coach Dave Rienzi explained why The Rock needs to remain at his peak.
“It’s extremely important. We hold his conditioning in a very tight window to allow him to be ‘scene ready’ at any moment. Keeping him at striking distance ensures that we never need to take drastic measures to obtain a certain look, or over-stress his body. The bottom line is that he always needs to be able to perform at his best on screen. The execution of his diet and training needs to be as nuanced and complimentary as possible to allow him to do that consistently.”
Given that Johnson tends to jump straight from one project into the next without barely taking a breather in between, it makes sense that he’d need to maintain his hulking physique, even during his downtime. He isn’t the type of person to tackle a Christian Bale in Vice or Jared Leto in Chapter 27 performance that’d require him to get deliberately out of shape, because it doesn’t suit his personal brand, although you’d imagine he’d love to give it a shot based on the sheer size of the cheat meals he regularly posts on social media.
Maybe one day Dwayne Johnson will take it a little easier, but seeing as he’s currently squeezing his hulking frame into the spandex of Black Adam’s costume to shoot the DCEU blockbuster, it isn’t going to happen any time soon.