although lundgren has never competed as a professional bodybuilder, he has been closely associated with bodybuilding and fitness since his role as drago in the mid-1980s. bodybuilding.com said, "looking like a man in his 30s rather than his 50s, lundgren is the poster boy of precise nutrition, supplementation and exercise application that he has practiced for over 35 years." in an interview with them, he claimed to often train up to six days a week, usually one-hour sessions completed in the morning, saying that "it's just one hour a day, and then you can enjoy the other 23 hours". although he had begun lifting weights as a teenager, he cites co-star sylvester stallone as the man who got him into serious bodybuilding for a period in the 1980s after he arrived in the u.s. stallone had a lasting influence on his fitness regime and diet, ensuring that he ate a much higher percentage of protein and split his food intake between five or six smaller meals a day. lundgren has professed never to have been "super strong", saying that, "i'm too tall and my arms are long. i think back then ["rocky iv"] i was working with around 300 pounds on the bench and squat."