Josh Todd of Buckcherry is an unlikely interview for Men's Health. I pretty much think of him as the coverboy for Men's Unhealth. Not that that's a bad thing just how it is. Turns out I'm way off and Josh actually wakes up in the morning. Yep, and then he does push ups! Here's JT on working out, performing, and all those drugs:
We know you're into boxing, but do you box before you hit the stage for a show?
Well, I train when I'm home, but I don't box before I get on stage. I just get warmed up. I like to get myself breathing a little hard before I start to sing, because I want to open up my lungs. Every morning, I do a series of 160 pushups, 38 at a time. I do ab work, and then some sort of cardio, usually jumping rope, shadow boxing, or working focus pads.
You do sets of 38? That's a weird number.
Oh, yeah. I do sets of 38. It just came to that. Halfway through, at about 25, I started doing military pushups, where I'm alternating lifting up my right leg going down, lifting up my left leg going down. There's a ton of different ways you can do pushups, they work all different types of your body. Pushups are great.
You mentioned opening up your lungs before a show. How exactly do you do that?
Before I go on stage, I do this thing I call my "five minutes of power." I listen to a playlist and start doing a lot of cardio and shadowboxing. Then I calm down for a sec and I start singing, and then I go on stage and knock it out. If you've ever seen Buckcherry, it's very physically demanding for me, and I have to really pace myself. I make sure when I get up, I'm just really ready to go physically, like five, 10 minutes before I walk on stage.
Do you ever do more traditional gym workouts? Do you lift weights, run on a treadmill, things like that?
I don't lift weights because I travel all the time, and it's just a beating to fucking find a gym. I lift my own bodyweight, pushups, situps, pull-ups, and, man, I'm fucking cut just because you can get ripped with a six-dollar jump rope, and use the ground to completely chisel your body. Or sometimes I'll just go to a public park, find the pull-ups bars and do pull-ups and tricep dips. A big part of my workout is timing. I don't ever stop doing something more than 30 seconds.
After being on stage for a few hours under the lights, how does your body feel? Do you lose weight? How do you recover from that?
I do lose a little bit of weight when I get on the road, just from the sweating. What I do is take a supplement, just some chloride tablets to replenish and keep me hydrated after I get off stage. I'll drink a couple bottles of water and then I'll have a Gatorade, and then I take my supplements, and make sure I'm hydrated. All during the day I'm drinking water like constantly to make sure I'm completely hydrated and don't cramp up or do anything weird.
It's rare that the frontman of a rock band could be so into fitness. There's so much temptation with drinking, drugs, and girls - how do you manage to avoid the overindulgences of the road?
I haven't had a drink or a drug in over 13 years, so that part of my life has a really great foundation. That's the reason why working out is such a big part of my life. It's my meditation.
Innnnteresting.
