Seth Rollins Always Has His Gym Bag Prepared for a Killer Workout
Seth Rollins has gone by many monikers, but CrossFit Jesus has to be one of the best. The WWE schedule is an unforgiven one and Rollins has been a workhorse in elevating himself to being one of the biggest draws for the company. You don’t get to that spot without a serious commitment to your body.
Ahead of his world heavyweight title against Finn Balor at SummerSlam 2023, The Visionary unpacked his gym bag for M + F to run through his favorites for training, which includes the WWE and C4 pre-workout to kickstart his weightlifting session. No workout is complete without some double-unders with his speed rope, and he also dived into the music that gets him through each session.
I don’t really see too many people utilizing this as a form of cardio anymore. I got to have a jump rope all the time. The nice thing about a jump rope is you ain’t got to run. You ain’t got to find a rower or you don’t have to do a treadmill. You can just get your cardio in from whipping it around and fry your shoulders if you do enough of them. I always got a jump rope to do double unders with all the time.
Fitness is a huge part of my life and fitness is what C4 does. Obviously, you can use the pre-workout drinks throughout your day. If you just need to kick in the butt to get going, but it’s primarily based for fitness and to get you going to get you ready for the gym to get you physically ready, but also to get you mentally ready. And so, I felt like when C4 approached me to be a part of the C4 family, I was very happy to join the C4 family because I definitely feel like our values align when it comes to fitness. And so I’m very happy to be a part of the family and I’m glad they’ve got me.
During my workouts, I do a lot of Olympic lifting with barbells. I can move to dumbbells if need be. I can do bodyweight stuff if need be. But a lot of my programming has barbells involved and if you are familiar with Olympic lifting, you will do what’s called a hook grip. So your thumb will be resting right against that barbell. I use it to tape my thumbs. If I’m not taping my thumbs, I’m going to shred my thumbs, especially if it’s hot, my hands are sweaty and I’m doing a high rep, light snatches, or light cleans. So the athletic tape — if I don’t have it and I’ve got cleans or snatches in my workout, all hell could break loose.
I always have a shaker with me and some sort of electrolyte or hydration mix.
It depends on what I’m feeling that day. If I’m feeling angry or mad, I’ll put on some Killswitch Engage, Ghost Inside, August Burns Red, and A Day to Remember. If I’m feeling bouncy, I’ll put on some State Champs, The Wonder Years, or Neck Deep. Sometimes, I’ll want to go in the way-back machine, and I’ll pop in a playlist from 1991 or ’96 Hits on Spotify. It just depends on what I’m feeling and what the vibe at the gym is. The music has to come to you.
If I had half an hour, I’m going to blast through two WODs, which are workouts of the day — metabolic conditioning usually. I’ll do them kind of back to back, with a short rest in between. Today, I did an EMOM to start my day, which is a nice way to break up your workouts. So every minute I would do 14 AbMat sit-ups and seven push-ups on dumbbells. So I did that every minute on the minute — 14 sit-ups and seven dumbbell push-ups for six minutes and I rested a little bit.
I did some bodybuilding after that and then I did another metabolic conditioning workout that was descending reps of 27, 21, 15, and 9. I did that with calories on a rower, dumbbell bench press, and toes to bar, which is an ab exercise. You can substitute toes to bar with v -ups or regular sit-ups. That took me roughly 15 minutes.
So you use six minutes and then 15 minutes with a little rest in between. You can blast that out in a half hour. You will get in a full sweat. You will have a chest pump. Your abs will be tight and sore. So you can get it all in in a half hour.
