Celebrity Workouts Under The Microscope - The Rock

Celebrity workouts are one of the most commonly searched for items in the fitness industry. The majority of gym members and fitness enthusiasts trying to learn how to build muscle have, at some point in their lives, been influenced by seeing their favorite personality or movie star build a great physique. One such personality is Dwayne Johnson.

This trend has grown in popularity over the last ten years and, naturally, many celebrities have caught onto the fact that there is a good business opportunity here. This is why you'll often find personalities regularly releasing fitness dvd's which cash in on the 'next big thing' in fitness. As you'll discover, however, the superior workouts tend to come from those who purely train because they enjoy training.

Take one look at The Rock leg workout and it'll become obvious that your results are not going to come cheap.

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.

The workout plan itself looks quite simple on paper.

* 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.

* Smith Machine Lunges - Four sets of sixteen reps. That's eight on each 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.

* 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.

One of the biggest mistakes to make, of course, is to look at a session on paper and presume it's going to be very easy because it doesn't incorporate any new, ground-breaking techniques. In fact you have probably performed all of the exercises before. The thing most people overlook, however, is the intensity level. With just 30 seconds of rest after each set you will be pushed hard.

As well as the fat loss benefits of keeping down your rest periods, you will also notice two old principles of hypertrophy are at play here. Those are the pyramid technique and burnout sets.

A technique which is nowhere near as commonly used as it used to be, the pyramid system is designed to help you hit each different fiber in the targeted muscle. It does this by gradually lowering the repetitions in each set, allowing you to add more resistance every time you finish a set.

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 it sticks to the basics, The Rock leg workout is by no means basic in it's execution. It shows that the trick to building the body your trying to achieve lies not in the exercises you perform but in the way you perform them. If most men are honest with the gym they'll admit that they don't hit their lower body with the same intensity they show when training the 'ego muscles', such as chest and biceps. Losing that bad habit is key to making the most of your potential on lower body workouts like this.