This Is 40

Bagging a third MH cover would be a milestone in any man’s life, but last year Joe Manganiello hit a more personal one: middle age. Here’s how Hollywood’s finest physique is negotiating the fast lane in a different gear.

- Jamie Millar

THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WHO, when they butt their heads against life’s ceilings, are content to go no further. Joe Manganiello is not so easily discouraged. Case in point: the actor literally raised the roof of his home gym.

“When we moved in, I met the contractors to figure out how much room I had to go up or down,” the Pittsburgh native explains from his adopted Los Angeles. “It turned out I could go up 30cm. Just enough for proper overhead presses.” Sensibly, he also had the floor rubberised. “You can snatch squat, you can drop your weights . . . You can do whatever you want.”

Provided what you want to do falls under the umbrella of “training like a beast”, then Manganiello’s home gym is a veritable pain cave.

“I’ve got the Rogue Monster Rig – you can do any lift you want off that,” he says, before listing his arsenal of metabolic weapons. “I’ve got a full set of dumbbells and kettlebells, a Concept2 rower, an assault bike . . . What else do I have?”