Lenny Kravitz’s Abs Still Don’t Make Sense. The Discipline Behind Them Is Even Wilder.

How the 62-year-old musician carves his rock-star abs and is stretching strength and healthspan and “hotspan.”

EVEN AT REST and in the dim light of the Tmpl gym in midtown Manhattan, what may be the most famous abs on the planet stand out. They form a supple six-pack clearly defined under Lenny Kravitz’s mesh tank as the iconic rocker warms up with some pullups. He’s wearing Deadly Doll sweatpants, black Nike Cortez sneakers, and vintage wrap sunglasses, and it looks effortless as he smoothly lifts and lowers his lithe 5’9″, 153-pound frame. Other gymgoers, uniformly clad in athleisure garb, gawk as if an alien or supe has dropped in from another dimension. Over the course of a two-hour, mostly upper-body session, the six-pack will morph into an eight-pack during dumbbell lunges as Kravitz’s core activates. Later, during a series of ab-burning leg raises, it will briefly pop as a 10-pack.

Of course, the resting aspect of a resting six-pack belies the intense activity that goes into forging a resting six-pack. So many reps, over so many years, banged out relentlessly. So many croissants, glasses of red wine, and French fries ghosted. It’s the opposite of effortless. Kravitz is keenly aware of this dichotomy between what you see and what it takes to get it, and in a post-workout interview, after removing his sunglasses, he shares his fitness origin story.

His maternal grandfather, Albert Roker, made him do chores as a kid and taught him this lesson about creating anything important. Roker told him: “ ‘You must build on a strong foundation. If the foundation ain’t strong, the house is going to fall down. It all starts with the part you can’t see—the hard work, the patience, the discipline.’ ” Kravitz extends that metaphor: “Fitness is the house; discipline is the foundation. It’s the work you do when no one is watching. It’s figuring out how you’re going to squeeze in a workout no matter what else you have going on that day or night.”

And Kravitz has had a lot going on. He’s sold more than 50 million records, made 12 studio albums, established a successful design firm, and been touring for the past four decades. “The mid 90s is when I really began training, although I was already very health conscious, but I hadn’t put the two together yet,” he says. “Most people I knew in the rock and roll world were not taking care of themselves in that way but Mick Jagger was a big influence on me. We were on holiday together once in the Bahamas and I watched how disciplined he was about his training and nutrition and realized that this was a major part of his formula.”

Just over 10 years ago, on the cusp of turning 50, Kravitz says he felt bloated and out of sorts and moved into the Miami home/gym of his longtime trainer and close friend Dodd Romero. He stayed for “five or six months” and dedicated himself to training, describing it as a “hardcore boot camp.” He reveled in the grueling gym workouts and windy bike rides. He found that regular doses of fitness and achieving his daily goals helped lift his funk.

It led to a Lennaissance of sorts. “Lenny was in better shape at 50 than he was at 40 or even 30,” says Romero. “Now, at 62, he’s in better shape than he was at 50.” The two FaceTime constantly, with Romero evolving Kravitz’s programming and workouts depending on what he sees. During this workout at Tmpl, Kravitz FaceTimes with Romero repeatedly for everything from exercise order to rep counts to form checks. Romero obliges, despite the fact that he’s in Los Angeles, mid-session with another client, Ryan Seacrest. (Seacrest doesn’t seem to mind and enjoys the fitness cross-pollination).

After this workout, Kravitz, who is in the midst of a two-year world tour, will jet off to California for some gigs and then Europe for a summer full of concerts. Plus, he’s working on a new album set to drop early next year. We crunched the numbers to better understand how the math of Kravitz’s fitness adds up.

1

Kravitz has had one trainer, Romero, for almost 30 years. It’s a relationship that has outlasted many others in his life, and during our interview, Kravitz refers to Romero, who is 62, as a brother. Romero has helped him through physical injuries to his back and rotator cuff, using healing exercises and prehab moves to avoid the surgery doctors recommended. Through the pandemic years, they worked out virtually almost daily. He’s the guy Kravitz FaceTimes at 2 a.m. if he’s in Tokyo or Brisbane or Paris and wants to train. “We call it a dance,” says Romero. “We dance well together. He’ll show me a quick video of a hotel gym, and then we rock ’n’ roll.” There’s a deep level of trust, especially regarding Kravitz’s body. “Yeah, 100 percent,” Kravitz says. “Dodd has a gift—the way I make music is the way he works on bodies. He can just look at you like a computer and see the slightest things that are off. Like, ‘You ate some chips last night, didn’t you?’ I hate to say it, but he’s always right.”

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The set and repetition schemes Romero programs for Kravitz’s workouts are much wider than the three sets of 10 to 12 reps most people do. That’s because they’re using a wide weight range and Kravitz trains to nourish ligament health and preserve muscle mass. In general, he’ll train five or six times per week, with each 45- to 60-minute workout focusing on two or three body parts targeted with 8 to 10 main exercises. For instance, if Kravitz is doing dumbbell curls, he might start with 10 pounds. The first set of 55 reps serves as a warmup that gets his blood flowing. Then he increases the weight so that it’s challenging for the rep count. The final set, he’ll curl 40-pound dumbbells for five reps. “I’m not looking to be big or bulky,” Kravitz says. “I want a very narrow silhouette, more like Spider-Man meets Bruce Lee, you know what I mean? Bruce Lee looked good in clothes. He’s bad—a thin, cool guy who obviously had muscle tone and who moved and flowed really gracefully.”

336

In between his main sets of exercise, Kravitz usually doesn’t rest. He often does core work, typically two or three sets of 21 reps of a variety of moves, such as hanging leg raises, planks, and all kinds of crunches. That means every workout, Kravitz does around 336 reps (sometimes he’ll do more) that polish what Romero calls his “jewels,” his 6- to 10-pack. “That’s his bread and butter,” Romero says. “Lenny wears his shirts and his jackets open where you can see all those jewels. It’s an important body part for him.” Kravitz’s abs are so high-fidelity that social posts can attract haters and there’s even a Reddit thread that asks, “Is Lenny Kravitz a natty?” It bugs him, a little. “All this is natural: no peptides, no human growth hormone, no testosterone,” he says, quickly adding, “There’s nothing wrong if people want to do those things. But there’s an alternative. You can do it naturally with exercise and food. Is it harder? Yes. Does it take more work? Yes. But that’s how I choose to do it, and it’s 100 percent attainable.”

28

Kravitz is famous for working out in leather pants or jeans, and while it might seem like a style flex, there’s actually a more practical reason. “I perform onstage in leather, denim, whatever, so those are the pants I wear to train,” he says. “It also means I can fit in a workout anytime, anywhere.” Kravitz doesn’t track his fitness with Whoop or an Apple watch. Instead he uses a basic, but powerful, metric: his waist size. Specifically, whether he can fit into 28-inch pants. “I can gauge everything by how I’m in my pants,” he says. “Like, if my pants are a little tight, I know I’m getting outta’ shape. My friend Denzel Washington gave me this phrase, ‘The pants don’t lie, the pants don’t lie.’ ” About those legs: They’re the one body part of Kravitz’s that you don’t often see. When asked if he’s insecure about any aspect of his body, he says, “Not right now, and I don’t mean that to sound like I’m into myself, but I’ve put in the work and I feel really good. But I gotta fill out my legs a little bit.” It’s something Romero is aware of and targeting with more lunges and deadlifts. He jokes that he might steal a trick from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s playbook: “One summer Arnold cut all his sweatpants off at the knees so he could see his weak calves.”

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Zero refers to the number of calories Kravitz typically consumes before 3 or 4 p.m. every day. “It’s not because I’m trying to intermittent fast; it’s just the way I am,” he says. “I can’t get up and, like, eat.” His diet is very low carb, mostly vegan and raw, but he does eat eggs these days. “Typically, I’ll start with an egg white omelet with a lot of vegetables,” Kravitz says. “Then a protein shake, and later I’ll have a salad.” His preferred shake features Fiction protein powder (from sprouted rice, algae, peas), dates, greens, and avocado. He also drinks a lot of water and takes Perfect Amino, a supplement with branched-chain amino acids, which help with muscle health. Romero says Kravitz has fine-tuned his diet discipline. “He used to splurge calorie-wise on Taco Bell, fried chicken, pizza,” he says. “Those days are very rare now, maybe once a year.” In terms of a cheat meal, Kravitz says he doesn’t really have anything specific, but if he is stepping out on his diet, it’s carbs—“bread, croissants, pasta.”

1964

Hotspan is a new wellness concept that refers to the years someone maintains their attractiveness, vitality, and sexual desirability. When told that he’s stretching it and making it really hard for the rest of us, Kravitz laughs. “Age is a funny thing. I don’t look at it as a number,” he says. “I look at age as time on earth. What you do with that time, what’s the result of how you choose to live?” He continues his riff with an analogy about the 1964 Ford Mustang, the iconic pony car from what also happens to be his birth year: “You can have a 1964 Mustang that looks like it came off the line yesterday. It’s gleaming, with an engine that purrs. You can also have one that’s rusted, dented, beat up, and doesn’t work. Same car, same year, but a very different outcome as a result of how you maintained it. It sounds silly the way I’m simplifying it, but that’s how it is to me.” Spoiler alert: Kravitz doesn’t plan on slowing down. “You realize as you keep spending time on the planet that aging is not how you thought it would be. We’re going forward in time, but at the same time, we’re going back in time, because now I’m in better shape than I was 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Ten years from now, I will be in better shape than I am now.”

Photographs: Jonny Marlow
Location: TMPL Clubs & BathS, NY
Creative Director: Jamie Prokell
Visual Director: Sally Berman
Video Executive Producer: Dorenna Newton
Video Producer: Janie Booth
Video DP: Cory VanderPloeg
Video Editor: Kyle Orozovich

This story appears in the Summer 2026 issue of Men’s Health.

Via: Men’s Health