Sharat Saxena went under the knife for six hours on Friday and came out cracking jokes about the gym.

The 76-year-old actor, one of Hindi cinema's most familiar faces from the era when villains needed real muscle, posted an Instagram montage documenting his lumbar spine surgery at Bombay Hospital. The first slide showed him flat on a hospital bed, the caption reading simply, "Surgery done." What followed was Saxena walking out with his family, then raising a glass with them at what looked like a small celebration.

His caption for the whole set didn't waste words either: "6 hour spine surgery- done CAN'T KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN."

In one of the photos, glass in hand, he wrote about what comes next. "Party today, gym tomorrow." Vintage Saxena, basically. The man built a career out of looking like he could bench-press a small car, and evidently plans to keep looking the part.

He also addressed the actual point of the surgery, which was clearly more than cosmetic. Saxena said he wouldn't need to survive on soup anymore, a small but telling detail about how limited his diet and mobility had become before the procedure. And then the line that's doing the rounds online: "No more walking with the stick."

Before he went in for the operation, Saxena had already given fans a preview, sharing a picture of himself getting a standing MRI with the caption "Standing mri before lumbar spine surgery at Bombay Hospital." So this wasn't a surprise diagnosis. He'd clearly been dealing with the spine issue for a while, and the surgery had been planned.

Saxena's run in the industry goes back more than five decades, starting with the Amitabh Bachchan film Benaam. Since then he's shown up in over 250 films across Hindi and other languages, including Mr. India, Tridev, Ghayal, Khiladi, Ghulam, Gupt: The Hidden Truth, Phir Hera Pheri, Baghban, Fanaa, Krrish and Bajrangi Bhaijaan. For a big chunk of that career, as he's said before, he was cast purely for his build. In an old interaction with Rediff, he recalled being the guy who got beaten up first in Kaala Patthar so that Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor and Shatrughan Sinha could each establish themselves as heroes in turn. "I was a punching bag of the film," he said, "and that was the story of my life for the first 35 years of my career."

No word yet on when he'll be back on set, or whether the gym line was a joke or a genuine plan for the week ahead. Given the man's history, don't bet against it.