Mark Zuckerberg wants you to know about his workouts

For Zuckerberg, who has absorbed a number of metaphorical body blows in recent years, including an election meddling scandal, a ghost town metaverse and widespread layoffs, it’s perhaps an eye-opening time to start fighting back.

Mr. Zuckerberg, of course, isn’t the first tech titan to add significant amounts of muscle. Jeff Bezos, the founder and chairman of Amazon, in his 50s, developed remarkable biceps, linebacker shoulders, and impressive vascularity. But some of Zuckerberg’s friends say the new regime isn’t exactly a surprise.

Though Zuckerberg entered the popular imagination as an indoor cat, the millennial archenemy who mocks the burly Harvard regatta princes, the 39-year-old has been engaged in physical activity for much of his life. He captained his high school fencing team and became an avid runner in the 2010s.

According to Lessin, Zuckerberg is going through phases with new sports, including roller hockey and surfing, a pastime immortalized in an image of the mogul afloat in Hawaii, an ominous mask of sunscreen on his face.

“He sees them as super fun side quests,” Lessin said.

With a reputation for being competitive, Zuckerberg is the “big physical instigator” among his group of friends, Lessin said, often proposing physical challenges. “We’ve been on trips where he’s like, ‘I’ll give you a run up that mountain.'” And on Rogan’s podcast, Zuckerberg said that he had successfully encouraged many of his friends to train in Brazilian Jujitsu with him.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr. Zuckerberg has a passion for benchmarking. In April, he posted a photo of a stopwatch that seemed to confirm that he had run five kilometers in less than 20 minutes. And while many commenters were skeptical of his time on the Murph Challenge, Zuckerberg clarified that he had made a special version, easier but still painful, in which the exercises are done in circuits.

Also performing a modified version of the Murph challenge: Two of Mr. Zuckerberg’s three daughters. She posted a photo of the girls mid-push, in the middle of a “(weightless) Murph room,” a clarification that the boys were not wearing body armor.