Dwayne Johnson
Actor and former WWE champion · The Rock
Third-generation pro wrestler who became one of Hollywood's highest-paid actors, and the founder of ZOA Energy, Project Rock and Teremana. Training sits under all of it: he lifts in a private gym he calls the Iron Paradise, a 40,000-pound version of which travels to his film sets, eats the same measured meals for months at a stretch and posts the Sunday cheat meal that breaks the pattern. He has spoken openly about depression, therapy and asking friends for help.
- Entries
- 24
- Does
- 18
- Recommends
- 2
- Discusses
- 4
Supplements
4 supplements in this stack
- SupplementDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Protein powder
Describing his 22-week Hercules diet to TRAIN in 2016, he listed one protein shake a day, drunk after training, alongside glutamine and branched chain amino acids. Whole food did most of the work: egg whites, filet, chicken, fish, oatmeal and rice, all weighed and measured.
Source: TRAIN: Dwayne Johnson On Why Nutrition Is The Key To BulkingView item: Protein powderOn record from 18 of 62 tracked people: 13 do it, 3 recommend it, 2 have discussed it - SupplementDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Caffeine
Not a coffee drinker, by his own account. His caffeine arrives first thing in the morning and again before training, both from his own energy drink brand rather than from a cup.
Source: Screen Rant: Dwayne Johnson Interview, ZOA Energy and Black AdamView item: CaffeineOn record from 14 of 62 tracked people: 10 do it, 1 recommends it, 3 have discussed it - SupplementDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Multivitamin
Part of his daily regime during the Hercules prep, in his words a multitude of multivitamins, taken with glucosamine and chondroitin for joints that had been through college football and a WWE career. That was 2014; he has not detailed the current list.
Source: TRAIN: Dwayne Johnson On Why Nutrition Is The Key To BulkingView item: MultivitaminOn record from 6 of 62 tracked people: 5 do it, 1 recommends it - SupplementDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
ZOA Energy
His own company, co-founded in 2021. He told Screen Rant a can of ZOA is his morning coffee, since he does not drink coffee, that ZOA+ is his pre-workout and that he has more through the day. He is a founder talking about his product, so read it that way.
Source: Screen Rant: Dwayne Johnson Interview, ZOA Energy and Black AdamVisit zoaenergy.com (opens in a new tab)On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 does it
Gear
2 pieces of gear in this stack
- GearDoes it$$$Expensive: Several hundred dollars and up.
Home gym
Trains in a private gym he calls the Iron Paradise, and confirmed to Oprah that a 40,000-pound mobile version travels with him to film sets. He calls the gym his anchor and the place he finds solitude. To Esquire, via Men's Health, he added that his gyms are hot, sweaty and dirty and rarely have a bathroom, which is his explanation for the water bottles.
Source: WW: Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour with Dwayne Johnson, full transcriptView item: Home gymOn record from 7 of 62 tracked people: 5 do it, 2 recommend it - GearDoes it$$$Mid: Roughly $50 to $500, or up to $50/month.
Project Rock training gear
This is his own brand. He trained for Black Adam in the Project Rock 5 shoe and said lacing them up gets him ready to run through a wall; Men's Health photographed him at home in the line's black muscle tee. Under Armour made the range until 2026, when the partnership ended.
Source: Under Armour Stories: Project Rock is Raising the BarVisit projectrock.com (opens in a new tab)On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 does it
Books
1 book in this stack
- BookRecommends$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
The Rock Says...
His own book, out in 2000. He was the WWF's biggest draw at the time, and roughly a third of it is written in the third person, as The Rock character. Complex revisited it in 2015 and did not rate it, calling it a rushed product of the WWE memoir boom that followed Mick Foley's bestseller. Complex mined it anyway, for the pre-Hollywood stories.
Source: Complex: What We Learned from Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson's 2000 Autobiography 'The Rock Says...'View item: The Rock Says...On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it
Protocols
4 entriesStructured routines and practices with a defined method.
Lifting is the fixed point of his day and has been since childhood. He told Men's Health in 2022 that he now trains shorter but gets more from it, listens to his body, and stopped worrying about ego and the weight on the bar once he hit 40. The gym, he says, became his best friend during his bouts of depression, though he adds that it helps rather than fixes anything.
Source: Men's Health: Dwayne Johnson December 2022 cover interviewSix meals a day. All built the same way. Eggs, bison, oatmeal and fruit at breakfast, then chicken breast with rice and greens, then fish or chicken with sweet potato at dinner. Men's Health puts the protein share at 40 to 45 percent of his macros, with a nutritionist and chef team doing the math so he never feels hungry while dieting for a role.
Source: Men's Health: Dwayne Johnson December 2022 cover interviewOnce the children are in bed he gets a window of about two quiet hours in which, he says, he does most of his thinking and can follow a thought from start to finish, then goes to sleep with some clarity. It is not a formal routine, and he adds, half joking, that tequila helps too.
Source: Men's Health: Dwayne Johnson December 2022 cover interviewExperience taught him to listen to his body, he says, and to tell the pain you can work through from the pain that means stop. He turned 40. Since then he has trained around old wrestling injuries instead of chasing weight on the bar, and he warns that grinding through a long shoot breaks the body down at any age.
Source: Men's Health: Dwayne Johnson December 2022 cover interview
Habits
13 entriesRecurring behaviors recorded in public statements.
Talks about coming back to gratitude as an anchoring foundation after his father's death, and about raising his daughters to say what the family is grateful for, especially while they are young. He also describes mana, the Polynesian idea of spirit and power, as bound up with feeling grateful.
Source: WW: Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour with Dwayne Johnson, full transcriptTwo hours alone before anyone else is up. He calls it one of his two daily anchors, alongside training. He uses the window to think, get some work done and plan the day, and says that once he has that time banked a 10, 12 or 14 hour day on set is manageable.
Source: Variety: Dwayne Johnson on His Rock-Solid Empire and Walk of Fame HonorUp before the sun, by his own account the only regimented part of his routine. He told Variety in 2017 he sleeps three to five hours and will trade two of them for quiet time before the household wakes.
Source: Variety: Dwayne Johnson on His Rock-Solid Empire and Walk of Fame HonorPublished an Iron Paradise Airwaves playlist on Spotify in 2018, Metallica to Nicki Minaj, captioned as the beats that motivate him through the grind. It launched alongside a headphones collaboration with Under Armour and JBL, so there was a product to sell at the same time.
Source: Billboard: Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Launches New Workout-Friendly Headphones, Spotify PlaylistCounts macros in what he calls a very specific way, though he is candid that a strength coach, a nutritionist and a lead chef work out the numbers and he simply sees results when they adjust them. The magazine lists the rest of the split as roughly 40 to 50 percent carbs and 15 to 20 percent fat.
Source: Men's Health: Dwayne Johnson December 2022 cover interviewWhen a third depressive stretch arrived around 2017 he recognized it and, in his words, leaned on friends, telling them he was feeling wobbly and seeing gray instead of blue. He credits that to having learned what it was; in college and after his divorce he had no name for it and kept quiet.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter: Dwayne Johnson Says He's Had Multiple Bouts of DepressionTold Oprah that therapy helped him through depression, and that the two lessons were that he is not alone in mental struggle and that he has to talk about his fears rather than hold them in. He says he is now not only fine with getting it out but sometimes enjoys doing so in public.
Source: WW: Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour with Dwayne Johnson, full transcriptCalls himself a creature of habit who eats the same thing for days, weeks and months, and describes the result as consistent, boring and extremely disciplined. He traces it to his father, who taught him at five to eat to nourish the body rather than please the tongue.
Source: Men's Health: Dwayne Johnson December 2022 cover interviewYears ago he stopped saying he has to train, or do anything he cares about, and started saying he gets to. He calls it a big psychological shift in how he handles the daily grind and has urged his followers to try the same swap.
Source: Men's Health: Dwayne Johnson Shares the Secret to His SuccessSunday is cheat meal day. By 2018 CNBC could catalog the Instagram posts: plates of sushi at 1 a.m., chocolate chip banana pancakes with syrup and peanut butter, cookies with peanut butter, a turkey sub and brownies. He has said he makes his cheat meals epic because everyone works hard and only lives once, and he tells followers not to cheat themselves.
Source: CNBC: Check out Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson's epic 1 a.m. 'cheat meal'Sums up the Project Rock ethos as the daily challenge of doing hard things, however small, and the inner peace of knowing that through hard work you are a little better today than yesterday. He says the aim is to help everyone, athletes and everyday people alike, get better through training. That is a founder describing his own brand.
Source: Sports Illustrated: Dwayne Johnson on Project Rock's Future After Leaving Under ArmourVariety reported in 2017 that he meditates during his quiet early hours, though he did not describe a practice. On Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour he named meditation, alongside hiking, biking and yoga, as one of the anchors he suggests people find for themselves; the gym is his.
Source: WW: Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour with Dwayne Johnson, full transcriptSays he usually stays pretty hydrated, enough that he needs the bathroom a couple of times in every workout, which is his explanation for the infamous bottles in his gym videos. He gave no daily figure in that interview, so the gallon counts that circulate online remain unconfirmed.
Source: Men's Health: The Rock Explains Why He Pees in Water Bottles During His Workouts
In their own words
Checked word for word against the linked source
“The only thing that’s regimented is I have to wake up before the sun gets up, and I have my two hours alone when no one else is up and the house is quiet, … I often sacrifice two hours of sleep just so I can have the quiet two hours that I need before the whole house wakes up, including the animals.”
Variety: Dwayne Johnson on His Rock-Solid Empire and Walk of Fame Honor (opens in a new tab) · 13 Dec 2017 “the gym for me, and this physical activity for me, is my anchor. … It is my balance. … It just allows me to block out the noise and clear my head.”
WW: Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour with Dwayne Johnson, full transcript (opens in a new tab) · 27 Jan 2020 “Therapy really helped me. … I need to talk about this. I need to talk about my issues. My fears. My depression. And it will be okay.”
WW: Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour with Dwayne Johnson, full transcript (opens in a new tab) · 27 Jan 2020 On Talk therapy
“I am a real creature of habit. I usually eat the same thing every day for days and weeks and months. It’s very consistent. It’s very boring. It’s also extremely disciplined.”
Men's Health: Dwayne Johnson December 2022 cover interview (opens in a new tab) · 16 Nov 2022 “The truth is, all jokes aside, ZOA is part of my daily ritual. In the morning, I drink it. It's my coffee; I'm not a coffee drinker. I also take a ZOA+ Plus as my pre-workout, and I'll have ZOA throughout the day.”
Screen Rant: Dwayne Johnson Interview, ZOA Energy and Black Adam (opens in a new tab) · 30 Jul 2022 On ZOA Energy
Stack notes are paraphrased. Anything in quotation marks is a short excerpt copied from the transcript it links to. Not medical advice. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by anyone listed. How this works.