- Strength and conditioning coach Dave Rienzi said three tips from The Rock’s workouts can boost your gains.
- Negative or eccentric repetitions increase the tension during the exercise to build more strength and muscle.
- Exercises like earthquake barbell presses and barbell hip thrusts can also help maximize strength.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s strength coach shared three key tips for maximizing your strength in the gym, which Rock himself said he includes in his training.
Strength and conditioning coach Dave Rienzi, who co-founded the ZOA energy drink brand with Johnson, shared the advice on June 22 instagram post.
The tips include specific exercises and techniques you can add to your current workout to gain muscle and build overall strength and fitness, such as negative reps and stability training.
Negative reps can boost muscle development
Rienzi’s number one tip is to include negative reps, the part of an exercise that involves lengthening muscle or losing weight.
Also called eccentric exercise, negatives create a lot of tension in the muscle, which is great for gaining strength and muscle size. Negatives are usually done at a slower pace, like a count of three, to further increase the tension.
Examples include the lowering portion of a leg press, squat, or bench press, or bringing the weight back to the starting position in a shoulder press or bicep curl.
Rienzi recommends slowing down your reps to about four seconds and using the technique for two to three exercises per workout for best results.
Negatives can also help you work on more challenging exercises and variations and also build strength, with bodyweight exercises like push-ups, especially as a beginner, experts previously told Insider. By concentrating on eccentric exercise, you can build muscles for movements like pull-ups, even if you can’t do anything even.
Stability training creates more resistance for better gains
Rienzi’s second tip is to work on stability exercises, particularly for the upper body.
His example is a seismic barbell bench press. Unlike a traditional barbell, which uses weight plates that slide over the bar for safe and even weight, the quake bar is loaded by hanging weights at each end.
The result is that the weights jerk during exercise, creating additional resistance from multiple directions and forcing your body to work harder to control the movement. Research suggests that exercise can activate more muscles and help increase your gains.
Posterior chain exercises can build big muscles in the lower body
Rienzi’s third and final tip is to include exercises like barbell hip thrusts and reverse hyperextensions, which work the posterior chain, including the glutes, hamstrings, and lower back. As one of the largest muscle groups in the body, the posterior chain is key to generating explosive power.
Heavy compound exercises that exercise several muscles at the same time are an efficient way to build muscle and strength, without spending long hours in the gym.
Targeting each muscle group twice a week is enough for gainsexperts previously told Insider.
