John Cena Has Yet To Peak

At 38, he's still setting personal records in the gym. He's in a new movie, Sisters, in theatres. He's got an exciting new show on Fox. His hall of fame WWE career is still going strong. We went to Florida to watch John Cena train and might have found the secret to his success: He still pushes himself like a hungry up-and-comer.

- Shawn Donnelly

JOHN CENA is just getting warmed up. It’s 1:58 p.m. on a Friday. We’re outside Tampa, FL, inside Hard Nocks South, a private gym inside a converted warehouse. It’s surrounded by swampy terrain and hidden behind a stone wall and black gate. It’s out of the way, and that’s sort of the point. Only those who belong here know where it is.

Military flags adorn the walls. There are some mats, a few benches, a power rack or two, and a lot of weights. There’s a working bathroom, but the door is tricky.

Equinox, this ain’t. A few feet behind the warehouse, alligators roam in a pond. “You might see one,” says Rob MacIntyre, Cena’s best friend since high school in Massachusetts and now his personal trainer. (For what it’s worth, MacIntyre could be an M&F model in his own right. He speaks softly and carries a big, lean physique.)

It’s the day before Halloween. It’s also, incidentally, the day before a Taylor Swift concert in the nearby Buccaneers stadium. The same sort of massive coliseum Cena has helped WWE sell out countless times. Yet here he is with eight other people in a warehouse gym, his back resting on a bench, his enormous arms lifting a weight starved bar to heat up his muscles.