Dwayne Johnson has always looked like a superhero, but when it came to playing an actual superpowered person in Black Adam, The Rock took things to a whole new level. We saw lots of social media images of Johnson working out hard for the film, and now his trainer has talked specifics about what Johnson did to get even bigger than he usually is.
Dave Rienzi is the trainer for Dwayne Johnson as well as Henry Cavill, marking yet another important connection between the two DC stars, Dany Garcia, one of Johnson's business partners is also Cavill's agent. He recently spoke with GQ about the Black Adam workout that The Rock put himself through. Including not just where the focus of the exercise went, but what the goal of it all was.
The Black Adam training process was chest and triceps, back and biceps, shoulders, arms, then chest and back – one of those groups a day – but focused on getting lots of blood into the muscle as opposed to training really heavy. Day six is normally on Sunday, so there's a day off beforehand, and that'll be leg day.
When Dwayne Johnson began preparing to actually play Black Adam, after agreeing to the role years ago, it wasn’t simply about staying in shape. The Rock wanted to look every bit the superhero without any sort of help. This meant not simply doing more of the work he was already doing, but changing things up. It’s not just about building the muscles but doing it in a way that will make Black Adam look a certain way on camera.
Of course, in addition to the workouts, Dwayne Johnson needs to eat to build his body. Like with his workouts, we see a lot on social media about what The Rock eats, though that’s usually on his cheat days. But it turns out that The Rock ate even more during his normal workouts than he usually did…
For Black Adam we actually increased the food to seven meals a day, as we were really pushing his physique – trying to get the abs on point while getting those quads to really fly out and cap the shoulders. He was getting close to 500g of protein daily, and we’d add carbs and fats while looking to gain mass, cutting them when leaning out.
Needless to say, that’s an incredible amount of food for Johnson to consume, and eating seven meals is a lot for anybody, even if you have a workout that burns an incredible amount of calories every single day.
The good news for Dwayne Johnson is that the work appears to have been worth it. Black Adam has won the domestic box office for two weeks in a row, and fans are excited not only for him but for the return of Henry Cavill as Superman. It would seem that as a trainer Dave Rienzi has a lot more work ahead of him, with two clients that need to be kept in Superhero shape.
