Dolph Lundgren: Keeping strong as you age

My friend recently blogged about an upcoming movie that stars, amongst others, Dolph Lundgren.

One thing about Dolph Lundgren is that, as an action star, he was a lot of the real thing. He is a former Kyoukushin contact karate champion, he's a former bodyguard, and he's highly educated and well spoken on top of all of that.

More importantly to this blog, he keeps himself in excellent shape. Over on bodybuilding.com, they ran a two-part interview with him.

Part I

Part II

The real highlights of the interview are his workouts. He says:

"When you do a lot of filming it is a very tough schedule and you better watch out so you don't lose weight and get thinner. When I am filming I train with heavier weights and fewer reps. I do more squats, deadlifts and clean and jerks.

The workout is based on more basic training and compound movements. The duration for the workouts get shorter, about 45-60 minutes because this will help me put on much more muscle. At the moment I am doing a lot more sparring. I can do one hour of different karate styles with pads and that keeps me much thinner and leaner."

So right there you have the core of a great workout - squatting, deadlifting, and clean and jerks for strength, with heavy weights and low reps. Then it's sparring and pad work for cardio. Not a lot of the machines and isolation movements you saw in his role as Ivan Drago in Rocky V, it's simple, compound movements and hard sparring...and this is a man in his early 50s. He doesn't look it, and it's this kind of workout and work ethic that explains why.