Resistance training

Doctor turned YouTuber · author of Feel-Good Productivity

Three weight sessions a week, programmed by a coach, as part of a goal to build muscle.

Neuroscientist · Huberman Lab

Alternates resistance training with endurance work weekly, and treats strength as non-negotiable.

Bodybuilding champion, actor, former governor · Arnold's Pump Club

Still trains every day at 78, and says the reason is the daily win rather than any finish line. Some days that win is a great workout; other days it is only that he showed up when he did not want to, and he calls himself addicted to it.

Founder · Blueprint longevity protocol

Weights three times a week sit inside a fixed six-hour weekly exercise block, tracked and adjusted like every other input.

Bodybuilder · Six-time Classic Physique Mr. Olympia

Lifting has been his job for a decade. Coming back after a six-week break in late 2024, he wrote that a dumbbell fly made him feel 20 years older and half as strong, so the plan was more time in the stretched position, slower negatives and maybe 2.5 to 5 percent more load each week. Jumping straight back to the heavy dumbbells, he says, is how you get injured.

Actor · Limitless and Centr

The Centr Power program is inspired by the training he does for Thor with trainer Luke Zocchi, and he says that a long time ago he would train all day and get nowhere. Zocchi's approach, in his telling, is to structure each workout to get the most out of a minimal amount of time.

Host · Modern Wisdom

Began lifting at eighteen, obsessed with gaining muscle, and has trained ever since. He now describes it as identity rather than discipline.

Footballer · Portugal captain and five-time Ballon d'Or winner

Admits on the Whoop podcast that he does not like going to the gym every day, nobody does, but that you have to do it. Discipline and consistency are the hardest part, in his telling, and he says he fights against his own mind to keep the routine going.

Retired Navy SEAL · Can't Hurt Me

The gym is the second block of the daily routine he described in 2019, after the run and before the stretching.

Actor and former WWE champion · The Rock

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.

Actor · Wolverine and The Greatest Showman

Progressive overload built around the classics: barbell bench, deadlifts, squats, weighted pull-ups, presses and dips, split by muscle group across the week, with supersets and circuits added to finish the muscles off. Form and smarter prep, he says, are why the later films came without the injuries of the first ones.

Author · Atomic Habits

141 workouts logged in a year of regular lifting, and training runs as the example throughout his work on how small habits compound.

Amazon and Blue Origin founder · Six-page memos and eight hours of sleep

On a good day he does about forty-five minutes of weightlifting, rotating a pull day, a push day and a leg day. Almost every day includes some lifting, and he says he can tell on the days he skips it because he feels less alert.

Natural bodybuilder · Science-based lifting

Lifting is his job and his hobby. He writes that he does not mind spending one to two hours a day in the gym. With his focus on bodybuilding for now, he keeps his power lifts ticking over by squatting and deadlifting once a week at high effort with relatively heavy loads.

Actor · Friends and The Morning Show

Every session with trainer Dani Coleman includes some form of weight or resistance work, she says, with heavier lifting on some days. Her reasoning is that muscle mass drops with age and bones depend on muscle to stay strong, so the strength share of her training has grown over the years.

Retired Navy SEAL officer · Jocko Podcast

Pull-ups, press-ups, dips, deadlifts and squats, first thing every morning: fixed infrastructure rather than something to be motivated for.

Nutrition scientist and powerlifter · Biolayne

Squats over 600 pounds and deadlifts over 700 as a masters powerlifter, and tells people that if their spinal cord works they can lift. His own back pain, he says, flares when he is stressed, and he has learned to adjust the movement rather than stop training.

Basketball player · NBA all-time leading scorer

Strength work has run through his whole career, he says, using many different machines and methods over the years. In 2021, when he became a Tonal investor and brand partner, he praised the machine for getting a full session done quickly with three kids competing for his time.

AI researcher · Lex Fridman Podcast

Lifts as part of a deliberately spartan daily routine built around training, work and reading.

Physician · The Dr. Hyman Show · author of Young Forever

Came to lifting around 60 after years of assuming tennis, biking and yoga counted. Now he runs a home program he can finish in half an hour, and says he feels fitter and stronger at 63 than he did at 40.

Actor and producer · The 2:30 a.m. daily routine

Has lifted at 4 a.m. five days a week for years, with Thursday as the heavier leg day. In his YouTube series, filmed at his house, a session runs from back squats, hip thrusts and Bulgarian split squats through curls, calf raises and ab work, and he calls it not a normal workout.

Olympic swimmer · Most decorated Olympian in history

Lifts weights three days a week, sixty to ninety minutes a session, as part of training six or seven days out of seven since retiring. He frames it as what lets him keep up with golf and have enough energy for the kids.

Physician · The Drive · author of Outlive

Strength training several times a week, on the framing that muscle and bone are assets you bank decades before you need them.

Biomedical scientist · FoundMyFitness

Thirty minutes of lifting three times a week with progressive loading, and she frames muscle mass as central to metabolic health and to aging well.

Entrepreneur · The Diary of a CEO

Physical training is directly upstream of how he performs at work, he says, and he trains with weights regularly.

Author · The Tim Ferriss Show

Once or twice a week is the whole lifting plan, on a minimum-effective-dose principle, and he frames it as injury prevention rather than performance.

Former NFL quarterback · The TB12 Method

Argues in his book that lifting heavy weights and moving fast at the same time is not sustainable for long-term performance, and that younger athletes who manage it are trading away durability. Heavy lifting, he writes, is at odds with keeping muscles pliable.