Dwayne Johnson's 7 Rules of Muscle & Success

WKRP Mixtape, How to Get Your Kids to Like Your Music AND Do You Have Enough Guy Friends?

Author

Stephen Perrine
October 07, 2025

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🚨 Welcome to this week’s issue of Generation Xcellent. I’m Stephen Perrine, New York Times bestselling author and former top editor at Men’s Health and Maxim. And like you, I’m doing all I can to survive the moshpit of midlife. Thanks for joining me on the journey! (And as always, our content is 100% Organic Intelligence—written by guys like us, for guys like us.)

Stephen Perrine

- FITNESS -

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Dwayne Johnson’s Midlife Muscle-Building Success Secrets

How the world’s highest-paid actor keeps getting stronger at 50+

By Jeff Stevenson

> Have you noticed that every playoff series and NFL Sunday showdown has been completely overrun with ads for The Smashing Machine, Dwayne Johnson’s dramatic turn as UFC animal Mark Kent? If so, you’ve probably wondered: How does this guy still look like that at 53? (If anything, he’s bigger now than he’s ever been!)

The answer is volume—both in training and in nutrition. Johnson, who tops Forbes’s list of highest paid actors, once claimed that he fed his muscles 52 ounces of cod a day for years. (Given his annual income of $88M, that works out to $1,692,320.77 per daily ounce of fish consumed.)

But over the last several years, Johnson’s diet has gotten a lot more balanced. Here’s a look at what Johnson eats daily, and the workout he uses to build those slabs of pec muscle. [Check out the world’s most extreme male physiques.]

THE EATING PLAN
You may have heard Michael Pollan’s advice of “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” That’s definitely not the Johnson way. If anything, it’s “eat food, as much as you can, mostly dead animals.” Johnson consumes a minimum of 5 meals a day, each balanced at 40-45% protein, 40-45% carbs and 15-20% fat. The volume of food (somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 calories a day) and the balance of each meal is designed not just to feed his muscles, but to prevent him from having to struggle with cravings.

“I never feel hungry,” Johnson once told Men’s Health. “That’s a key: Training and dieting down for a goal requires discipline, and you can often feel hungry.” Johnson’s workouts start at 5 am, on an empty stomach, so by the time breakfast rolls around, the man is practically starving. Here’s his in-training eating schedule:

1. First Breakfast: “Breakfast consists of eggs, a meat like bison, a complex carb like oatmeal, and fruit, usually either papaya or blueberries.” 

2. Second Breakfast: “My second meal, around 10 am, usually consists of a chicken breast, a complex carb like rice, and some greens.”

3. Lunch: Pretty much like above: Chicken or bison, rice, and greens.

4. Dinner: “Dinner is fish or chicken, a complex carb like sweet potatoes, and some greens.”

5. Bedtime Snack: Smoothie with casein powder, carbs, and greens.

You’ll notice the word greens over and over. That’s because a high volume of produce is linked to lower inflammation and improved muscle maintenance in older adults. So if you still think salads are for sissies, Mr. Johnson would like a word.

THE WORKOUT
Johnson’s complete workout is one of Hollywood’s biggest secrets. But we do know that trainer and stuntman Aaron Willamson, who helped prep Johnson for several films, created a somewhat traditional push/pull/legs program for the star. What’s exceptional is the volume of work Johnson’s doing: Each day is a series of 9 exercises, most of them 3 sets of 10 reps, all focused on the body part in question. Here’s Johnson’s chest-and-shoulders workout, for example:

1. Bodyweight push-ups: 3 x 10 reps
2. Incline hammer press: 3 X 10 reps
3. Weighted dips: 3 X 12-15 reps
4. Incline cable flys: 3 X 12-15 reps
5. Leaning 1-arm dumbbell lateral raise: 4 X 10 reps
6. Hammer shoulder press: 4 X 10-12 reps
7. Bus drivers: 3 X 12 reps
8. Hammer MTS triceps extension: 4 X 10-12 reps
9. Straight bar triceps push downs: 3 X 10-12 reps

We can’t guarantee that this plan will bring you $50M a movie. But at the very least, you should get strong enough to push Kevin Hart out of a helicopter.

—Jeff Stevenson has written for Men’s Health, Maxim, and other classic men’s magazines.
🤯 ODDLY, “NEWSLETTER EDITOR” DIDN’T MAKE THE LIST

- FATHERHOOD -

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How to Get Your Kids to Like Your Music

Our resident teenager explains how to find the middle ground—and stop the battle over the car stereo.

By Zoe Giselle

>Every once in a while, my dad traps me in the car and insists on playing a song from the ‘80s or ‘90s that I’m “absolutely going to love.” Perhaps you have subjected your own children to such tortures. Chances are, it didn’t go well.

It’s not that classic rock isn’t great; there’s a reason why every teenager owns a Nirvana T-shirt. (If calling Nirvana “classic rock” hits a nerve, it’s probably just your sciatica.) But what kids my age like (and dislike) in music is pretty specific. If you’re going to try to get your teenager to listen to the songs you love, keep these tips in mind:

We like songs that are short and to the point. Maybe “November Rain” was the only song you could slow-dance to at junior prom without sacrificing your hetero high school status, but when my dad made me sit through the whole thing, I was bored by the :15 mark. I’m not saying my generation has a short attention span, but if you can’t condense the song into a TikTok, it’s just too long to hold our interest. Speaking of which,

We hate long, rambling intros. I get that “Two Step” is a banger, assuming you can wait for Dave Matthews and company to clear their throats. But can I just listen to the last 3 minutes? Same with “Money for Nothing.” There’s a reason why “Mr. Brightside” is a staple at every bar mitzvah and sweet 16, even though it’s more than 20 years old and barely SFW. It’s because the song starts at the beginning of the song. I like the Beatles more than the Stones for the same reason. What are the first words of “Elenor Rigby”? “Hey Jude”? “Here Comes the Sun”? See my point?

We hate long instrumental breaks. I understand that your generation was once enamored of something called “the drum solo.” I can’t imagine what that is, but please keep it away from me.

We like interesting vocals. One of the first “old” songs I fell in love with was “One Way or Another.” There’s no fat on that song, just Debbie Harry snarling to a simple bass line. I love The Cars hiccupping through “My Best Friend’s Girl.” I love the insane yelping on “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. II” and the weird whininess of Tom Petty. Today, we’re so bombarded by Autotune that everyone and everything sounds the same. Morgan Wallen was great until every other male country artist tweaked his voice to sound exactly like him. (Please don’t let that happen to Zach Bryan!)

And of course, we love Billy Joel, for all of the above reasons. It started for me with “Uptown Girl,” but I really fell in love with The Stranger, especially “Vienna.” Short, tight, to-the-point songs without a lot of stuffing, sung by a guy with a voice that’s so different it’s almost impossible to sing along to him.

Yes, there are a ton of songs I love from back when you were my age. It’s the same for most high schoolers. But you’re better off letting them discover the music on their own, because much of what appeals to you about classic rock isn’t what appeals to us.

Well, my dad did introduce me to one song with a longish intro that I loved. It’s a little newer, and your kid might not be ready for it, but I’ve found it to be very effective at chasing my mom out of my bedroom.

—Zoe Giselle is a high school senior in Connecticut.

What if you took every DJ break and voiceover recorded by Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) during the 4 seasons of WKRP in Cincinnati, added in the music they were supposedly spinning, and threw in some snippets of news and sports from Les Nessman? DJ Jon Nelson did just that, granting us 6 free hours of uninterrupted Gen X music, humor, nostalgia, and general audio bliss.

Ask Jen: The X-Rated Files
“How Can I Do ‘Sexy Talk’—and not Sound Goofy?”

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>Got a question about sex, marriage, dating, or whatever’s happening in your DMs? Ask Jen X. She’ll sort it out, no judgement. (Well, maybe a little.)

Q: My wife thinks we could spice things up in the bedroom if I would try talking “dirty.” But whenever I try I sound ridiculous—and wind up giggling like a middle-schooler in health class. How can I pull this off?”—Mike R., St. Louis, MO

A: The trick is to is to stop being the color commentator and just do the play-by-play. Think present tense, short sentences, and real observations. You’re narrating and encouraging, not performing Les Miz. “Come here,” “I’ve been thinking about you all day,” “I love the way you feel,” “Don’t stop,” “I’m not stopping.” Use her name like it’s contraband. Breathe between lines; silence is punctuation and your hands do most of the talking anyway.

Ask her in advance which words land and which are instant mood killers. (Retire “moist” unless you’re discussing cake.) If you crack up mid-stride, call it: “Okay, reset,” then touch and keep going. Laughter isn’t failure; it’s foreplay with outtakes. Prime the engine earlier, too: a 3 p.m. text that says, “Can’t stop thinking about you tonight” beats a midnight monologue delivered with a hamstring cramp.

- MASCULINITY -

Alamy

Do You Have Enough Guy Friends? Maybe!

The “crisis” in male friendship might be real. Or it might just be a matter of speaking your mind

By John Kenney

>My oldest friend, Bill, lives just outside of Boston. We met in high school. We traveled through Europe together after college. There’s isn’t much he doesn’t know about me. I haven’t seen him in ten months and have only exchanged a handful of text messages. My dear friend Eddie lives in Brooklyn, in the neighborhood where my family and I used to live in. Like Bill, Eddie is someone I love dearly, in whose company I feel fully myself. Like with Bill, when I spend time with him, I invariably feel better, happier, more alive. I’ve seen Eddie once since we moved, 20 miles away, two years ago.

These facts do not strike me as odd. My wife, however, reacts to them by looking at me like I am a stranger on the subway who just asked if he could touch her butt. (The answer to that question when I did ask her was no.)

A casual Google search shows a staggering number of stories on the crisis of male friendship. Where have all my deep male friendships gone? (NYTimes). Why a growing number of men say they are in a friendship recession. (PBS). Why are midlife men struggling to make and keep friends? (The Guardian).

Countless pieces offer easy answers. This isn’t one of them.

My wife has two sisters and five or six close friends with whom she keeps in close touch. Calls, drinks, dinners. They talk, listen with frightening intensity, make eye contact. They cry-laugh while saying, “I know!”

I get that men are emotionally different from women. Yet the men I know well are as deeply sensitive and emotionally intelligent as any woman I know.

It’s just that sometimes, those feelings are tricker to access.

The words don’t come out as easily, in my experience. There are gaps in the story they are trying to tell. The emotion is there, at the dinner table, over pints of beer, but it’s often never fully expressed. It’s a bit more frightened to show its face, harder to pin down, punctuated by a joke, by sarcasm, by a slow head nod, by a hope that maybe the awkward silence will fill in the gaps.

Maybe some guys speak as openly and emotionally honestly as women at an Oprah Book Club. God bless. That’s not me, and it’s not a lot of guys I know.

Words are hard. The ones that matter I mean. Naming the deeper stuff. Expressing that. What happens when you want more than the usual chit-chat? Those ineffable feeling so hard to capture and share when sitting across from a buddy you haven’t seen in a while. You revert to a language you share. Decades of behavior, of jokes, of looking back on “remember that time…” when maybe what you really want to say now is, “So I was wide awake at 3am last night again and I was kind of like freaking out about, I don’t know, like, how I’m suddenly 50 and the meaning of my life and why I do the job I do and how I don’t really have any money and I can’t shake this fear and mostly I’m just fucking lost. Anyway, how are you doing!?”

It’s hard to stand emotionally naked in front of someone, even a friend. The irony is that’s all your best friends want of you, so that they might do the same.

Mostly, embarrassingly, I think I am out of practice at being a person, at being a friend. Checking in with people, making plans to meet, making an effort. I’ve gotten too comfortable being alone. This is unwise at any age but especially as you get a little older. We think we have time.

As someone who recently published a novel about an obituary writer who, while mildly drunk, writes and accidentally publishes his own obituary, I sometimes wonder who will come to my funeral. (Because I’m fun that way.) The hero’s best friend in the book, a far wiser soul, tells him, “We’re all obituary writers. We write our life every day.”

What will we write? What are we writing?

Maybe a friend could help me.

—John Kenney is a New York Times best-selling author and longtime contributor to The New Yorker. His latest book is I See You’ve Called in Dead.

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