Rock'ing For 30 Days

Now I understand why The Rock lives in Florida.

I woke up this morning and went through my normal routine: make oatmeal, pack food, get dressed, brush my teeth, and head out. I’ve become a scripted robot in the mornings. Same exact routine that takes the same amount of time, every single day. As I learned today, I’m on auto-pilot to such a degree that apparently I don’t even look out the window.

As soon as I stepped outside, I realized it had started snowing. Leaving the house in the pitch dark, to hit the gym for more than 2 hours, and having to get there by walking through the snow is not a great way to start your day. At least it hadn’t accumulated yet. The day I have to trudge through the snow will be worse.

This photo doesn’t quite do the snow justice. But it wasn’t fun.

Stoking the Fire

For me, the hard part of working out is showing up. I’d much prefer to sleep in, or be lazy and not go at all. Once I make it there though, I am usually good about staying focused and pushing myself hard. Whenever I see people at the gym taking it easy, it always seems like a waste of time. People show up, then heavily lean on the rails while on the Stairmaster, lazily text while on the mat (or leg press machine as I saw last week!). In my mind, they already did the hard part. They got out of the house, and showed up. So why phone it in once you get there!?

Since I’ve committed myself to doing 50 minutes of cardio six times a week, I want to make sure I’m getting the most out of it. So I cranked up the intensity on the Elliptical. I maintained an average heart rate of 127 BPM. For comparison, the day before I averaged 116 BPM. I’m going to keep going at this hard, to make sure it’s worth the time I’m putting towards it.

TGIF

I’m looking forward to the weekend, mainly so I can get some extra sleep. The gym doesn’t open until 7am on Saturday, so I’ll wake up an hour later than I have all week. Then Sunday is my first rest day. Looking forward to catching up on some lost ZZZ’s.

Daily Stats

It felt good to start to get the cardio burning a bit hotter. The shoulder workout was great too. I haven’t done a concentrated shoulder workout in over a decade (I’m more of a full-body guy nowadays), so it was a fun change. And it makes you look all huge in the mirror while you work out (if you’re vain enough to care about such things, which of course I’m much too mature for.)

Yesterday I had the realization that the massive amount of food I’m eating is preventing the muscle soreness I expected from working out so hard. That led me to another realization this morning.

It wasn’t intentional, but looking back I haven’t been fully exerting myself the first few days. Knowing what lie ahead, I think I’ve held back a bit to make sure I had enough in the tank for the following day. Waking up with extremely sore legs then having to get on the elliptical would have been rough, so while I’ve been pushing myself, I don’t think I’ve been giving it my all.

With concerns about soreness now set aside, I’ve amped up the weight during training. And as today was a big beefy muscle group like my back, it was good timing. I lifted heavy the entire workout, and it felt good. Kicked my butt, but felt good.

Of course, proper form and injury prevention are still top priorities. Getting hurt could put an end to this whole crazy challenge, so I’ll keep it safe. But here’s to turning up the throwing around of heavy iron!

Cafeteria Volume, Prison Variety

I’m getting better and better at the food prep. Tonight in a little over an hour, I prepared 3 days worth of food. Eighteen meals total, weighing in at a total of about 30 lbs. I feel like I work at a zoo, just shoveling piles of food into the gorilla pen.

But while I’m perfecting the quantity of food, I have to work on the quality. All of the food I’m preparing is good, but it’s been prepared exactly the same way. I can’t do that for 30 days. For the next three days, I’m mixing up the chicken recipe, going with shredded chicken breast from the slow cooker instead of the seared cutlets. Eating out of bowls at work and not needing a knife and fork should also speed up the meal breaks. With that happening every two hours while working, that’s important. I still need to come up with something for the steak as well. Maybe a twist on carne asada. Shredded chicken bowls, carne asada. I’ll eventually just be running my own personal Chipotle.

Daily Stats

Yesterday was Arms Day, so it was a much shorter, lower intensity workout than today. My heart rate was about the same, but today took longer. I was definitely huffing and puffing more, so it’s surprising that isn’t really reflected here. All told I burned a little more than an extra 100 calories compared to yesterday. Consider I’m consuming close to 5,000 calories, I’m running a daily surplus of around a 1,000 calories.

As we pass the milestone of the third day, it’s time to finally admit something to myself that I’ve been avoiding.

I hate my new Bluetooth headphones. Like, pure unadulterated hatred. I hadn’t listened to anything at the gym prior to this challenge so I just bought my current pair. I specifically got them because they wrap over your ear to stay in while moving around, such as when, for example, doing 50 minutes of cardio every morning. For some reason, they fit well and stay in place on my right ear, but continually fall out of my left, lazily laying on the bottom of my ear like they’re waiting for the bus. Because they almost fit but slip often, it’s sort of infuriating. I’ve been ignoring it at first, but finally snapped today. I just requested a return from Amazon, and ordered a new pair. Hopefully that will make the cardio more pleasant.

Tried to take a photo of my view. Turns out it’s so dark out all you see is me.

Finding Motivation in Very Different Places

Spending 2+ hours at the gym every day is giving me a lot of time to listen to podcasts. So far, I’ve been switching between episodes of The Moment which discusses the backgrounds and process of different creative people (musicians, screenwriters, etc) and Jocko Podcast, where retired Navy Seal Jocko Willink discusses leadership and discipline. They’re obviously extremely different, but have both been inspiring. The common theme they both have: do the work. Hearing a successful screenwriter talking about doing 85 revisions of a script before it sold, or having to figure out how to motivate a team to continue on a mission you might not agree with, both provide a good perspective on the need to sometimes just put your head down and grind through the task as hand. As I work on my launching my own business, it’s good to hear the common challenges people share.

I Expected To Be Sore. And Yet…

This is, by far, the most intense workout regiment I’ve ever followed. And yet, I haven’t had any real muscle soreness. Even after the insane Leg Day on Tuesday, still…nothing. It’s an odd feeling. Even my previous fitness routine, which I had done for months, left me feeling a tad sore and tight. But on this plan I’m haven’t had that experience. The only thing that could account for that is the diet.

So I did some research, and it turns out that this lack of soreness is likely due to all the protein (cod, steak, chicken, eggs) and high-glycemic carbs (white rice, potatoes) that I’ve been eating. For someone who is somewhat carb-phobic, I was concerned with how many carbs were part of this plan (white rice is pretty much the devil in my mind). But I’m starting to see how all of this fits together. I reached out to a nutritionist to get some thoughts about this and will share the response when/if I hear back.

Daily Stats

I’m doing the same exact cardio every day: 50 minutes on the elliptical and have used the same incline and intensity settings. It’s crazy to see how quickly my heart rate is adapting. The first day I spent about 20 minutes above 130BPM. Today I never cracked that. My calories burned are also dropping as a result. Time to dial up the intensity.

Today was a day I was worried about, as the training called for The Rock’s notorious Leg Day. It’s no joke. After doing 50 minutes on the elliptical, the weight training took me 84 minutes. That’s over two hours at the gym, the entire time asking my legs to work hard. Details of the legs routine are here, but overall, it involves 1261 reps total. This includes 625 calf raises. And unlike all the other workouts, this happens twice a week. It turns out The Rock likes Leg Day so much he repeats it each week on Saturdays, so he’s “not rushed” and “can take his time.” Sick bastard.

Recipe for legs like these: 2522 Reps every week.

Get Back in the Kitchen!

When I did all my food prep on Sunday afternoon, I made two days worth of food. Which meant that tonight it was time to cook again. As I purchased my 6lbs of cod, I decided to take a shortcut: the place where I buy my fish will steam whatever you buy there for free, so I took them up on that offer. Waiting 10 minutes for it to steam there saved me the entire baking process, and having to clean three pyrex baking dishes, so that was definitely a win.

In that steam cabinet? 6lbs of tasty cod.

I managed to cut down the 2 hours of prep I spent on Sunday to just over one hour. But the night still got away from me.

No Sleep for the Weary

It’s important to me that doing this for 30 days doesn’t take away from my time with my family, and every evening I feed my daughter, give her a bath, and read her a book before putting her to bed. Our evening routine takes about an hour. Which means by the time I got home, ate my sixth meal of the day, then put her to bed, it was close to 9pm. Food prep took a little over an hour, then I had to do all the dishes, make/eat my 10 egg-white omelette, then get ready for bed. By the time my head hit the pillow it was about 11:45pm. That left me a little more than 5 hours of sleep. That’s awful, and totally unsustainable. I’ll need to figure out how to juggle all of this better. I’m considering cooking up massive batches of food this weekend and vacuum-sealing them to freeze. If I could not have to worry about cooking any protein every two days, I’d be in good shape.

Daily Stats

Here are my stats for the day. I think I may need to revise my daily step goal of 10,000 steps, as I’ve been hitting it while still at the gym. Also crazy to see that the leg workout had my heart rate up at the same levels as the cardio. It’s some serious business.

I’m happy to report I made it through my first day of this 30-day challenge. I’ve decided to wake up at 5am to head to the gym throughout this month. The Rock wakes up at 4am, but he’s lucky enough to not have to work within the operating hours of New York Sports Club, which opens at 5:30am. In case there was any doubt about this, 5am is early. So far before even a hint of sunrise makes an appearance, I think it’s fair to consider 5am “the middle of the night.”

I’ve decided the best way to entertain myself during 50 minutes of cardio on the elliptical is by listening to podcasts. This morning I caught up on some past episodes of the The Moment with Brian Koppelman. There was an episode of The Moment a few months ago (11/9) with Jesse Itzler, who wrote Living with a Seal. That book was the inspiration for this 30-day challenge, so it seemed only fitting Koppelman would help me kick it off.

I did the Chest workout after the cardio, and it went well. These are old-school bodybuilding workouts, something I haven’t done in years. Feels a bit weird to move off of the full-body training I’ve been doing for the last two years or so. The workout was hard. I sweat so much I think I’m going to start bringing a different t-shirt to change into after the cardio.

Eating at the gym

In between cardio and weights is the first meal of the day. It’s awkward eating at the gym. I basically sit in a chair in the lobby area, and consume cod, eggs, and oatmeal. I am conscious as to whether the cod smells as people walk in. Thankfully I’m only there for 8 minutes or so.

I thought that eating then immediately working out would leave me nauseous, but it felt surprisingly good. I got through the workout, and was home, showered, and finished with my second meal by the time my daughter and wife woke up.

What’s that smell?

With this meal plan, I’m eating every two hours or so. On one hand it’s a bit disruptive to have to eat so often. On the other hand, it provides a sort of rhythm to the day. You plan out what to work on for the next two hours, and stay focused until it’s time to eat again. Having three or so solid two-hour blocks of productivity is much better than many other work days I’ve had.

However, I work in a co-working space, which is a big open floor plan. I got some looks as I prepared myself large plates of food three times throughout the day. One of those meals was cod, so I was also worried about the smell of heating up fish in the microwave. I can’t tell if it’s bothering people or if I’m paranoid. I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.

Daily Stats

(Not sure if I’ll post this everyday the entire month, but for starters, this should give you an idea of the kind of intensity this workout involves. It’s also depressing how little I move during the day.)

For the next 30 days, I’ve challenged myself to follow the same eating and training routine as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The details are here, but in short, this means 7 meals a day (~5000 calories), and 50 minutes of cardio followed by 60-90 minutes of weight training 6 days a week.

Is this physically possible for a normal person?

The short answer is, we’ll see. The longer answer is it depends on what you consider normal. I’m a husband and dad, and sit at a desk all day. But before starting this, I already worked out several times a week. You couldn’t go from being a couch potato to doing this training program. It won’t be easy, but I feel confident about being able to handle the fitness part.

Oddly enough, the eating seems like a bigger challenge. Seven daily meals is a fair amount of food (about 10lbs a day). This diet was designed to fuel The Rock, who is 6’5″ and 260 lbs. That’s impressively huge. But I’m 6’3″ and, starting out, 206lbs. So I’m not a small guy. I definitely have never eaten this much on a regular basis. We’ll see how my body adjusts to eating like this.

Why do this at all?

In December, I read Jesse Itzler’s Living with a Seal, where he invited a Navy Seal to come live and train with him for 31 days. In his words, this is why he decided to do it:

I felt like I was drifting on autopilot in my life. Wake up, go to work, go to the gym — repeat. I wanted to shake things up. I wanted to get better.

That resonated with me. I’m a creature of habit and find myself easily falling into the same routines. I entered 2016 knowing I wanted to find a 30 day challenge to push myself and change things up.

In mid-2015, when I had read about The Rock’s eating and training schedule, I was in awe. Here is a guy who has a packed schedule and works intensely hard. Yet he maintains the discipline to make the time to stick to this program. It’s easy to write it off to being a rich movie star and having the personal trainers and private chefs. While a chef might make the food prep easier, there is no shortcut to doing the work. The Rock famously wakes up at 4am every day to get his training done before his day even starts. Unlike other actors, who might spend a few months bulking up for a role, for The Rock his physique and success are inextricably linked. There is no slacking off or taking breaks. He has had to stick to this plan as he builds his career.

I admire that level of discipline. And want to see if I can do it myself, if only for a month. This isn’t about the physical results a schedule like this might deliver. I have no grand plans to become huge or bulk up like The Rock. This is about testing whether I have the will and discipline to spend a month walking in the shoes of “the hardest worker in the room.”

Follow Me As I Succeed or Fail

I’ll be blogging throughout this 30 Day Challenge, sharing details of the experience and some of the hard data along the way (I’ll be wearing a Fitbit the whole time). If you want to follow my progress or see it break me, keep an eye on this blog.

Starting on February 1, 2016, I will be following the same training and eating plan as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The details of this program were assembled from a few different articles, most notably his recent features in Muscle and Fitness magazine. Additional details have also been shared by The Rock on his Instagram account.

Overall, the plan involves 7 meals a day (~5000 calories), and 50 minutes of cardio followed by 60-90 minutes of weight training 6 days a week.

Eating like The Rock

Meal 1 – 10 oz cod, 2 whole eggs, 2 cups oatmeal
Meal 2 – 8 oz cod, 12 oz sweet potato, 1 cup veggies
Meal 3 – 8 oz chicken, 2 cups white rice, 1 cup veggies
Meal 4 – 8 oz cod, 2 cups rice, 1 cup veggies, 1 tbsp fish oil
Meal 5 – 8 oz steak, 12 oz baked potato, spinach salad
Meal 6 – 10 oz cod, 2 cups rice, salad
Meal 7 – 30 grams casein protein, 10 egg-white omelet, 1 cup veggies (onions, peppers, mushrooms), 1 tbsp fish oil
View the nutritional details.

Training like The Rock

Monday – 50 minutes elliptical, Chest Workout
Tuesday – 50 minutes elliptical, Legs Workout
Wednesday – 50 minutes elliptical, Arms Workout
Thursday – 50 minutes elliptical, Back Workout
Friday – 50 minutes elliptical, Shoulders Workout
Saturday – 50 minutes elliptical, Legs Workout (repeat)
Sunday – Rest

Workout Details

Chest Workout

Legs Workout

Arms And Abs Workout

Back Workout

Shoulders Workout

Nutritional Breakdown

Credit to FiveThirtyEight for crunching these numbers.