What did he work, and when did he work it?
As questions go, they're not the most pressing to face a president, or, in the case of Barack Obama, a president-elect. But they're being raised just the same after a paparazzo snapped a shirtless, McConaughey-esque Obama taking a stroll this past weekend in Hawaii.
Make that a shirtless, "lean and chiseled" Obama.
"We only saw him from the front," says Men's Fitness editor in chief Roy Johnson, "but clearly he's been doing some crunches."
And more than that, fitness experts say.
"We haven't been in a gym with him...but I would imagine cardio is a regular part of his workout regimen," Johnson says.
An email today to Obama's presidential transition team seeking comment on the future White House occupant's exercise routine did not elicit a response. Apparently there's, like, real news happening and stuff.
When not preparing to cure a nation's ills or idly reading comics, Obama is known to be an occasional golfer, a regular on the treadmill and a handy guy to have around a pickup game of basketball, his old high school sport. Men's Health reported the 47-year-old father of two works out 45 minutes a day, alternating between weight and aerobic activities.
"He's not quite 'Obama Six-Packs,' " Johnson laughs, "but few of us have six-packs, but he clearly has definition in his torso."
Personal trainer Linda LaRue, who claims Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale among the devotees of her "crunchless" abs routine, offered the "lean and chiseled" comment to describe the Obama look. She thinks good genes can't be overlooked as a factor.
"Look at his pops," LaRue writes in an email. "Obama has the same body type genetics."
Another potential key to Obama's fitness, per LaRue: Obama's not-quite-ended smoking habit.
"Nicotine…revs up your metabolism, and is a known oral fixation instead of food," LaRue says.
No, that last regimen probably won't rate a recommendation from the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. (It doesn't rate one from LaRue, either.) But once he's sworn into office in January, Johnson says, Obama might rate consideration as the fittest president ever, topping the wood-chopping Ronald Reagan, the mountain-biking George W. Bush and all the grinding-it-out joggers, including Jimmy Carter and—no, really—Bill Clinton.
(The fishing and formidable-looking Vladimir Putin arguably is Obama's biggest competitor in the body politic, but Putin was president of Russia, not the United States, and therefore ineligible for the domestic title.)
"Based on what we know of his fitness," Johnson says of Obama, "he's certainly the most well-rounded."
That's well-rounded in the lean and chiseled sense, of course.