Def Leppard`s Phil Collen Pumps Up to Rock Harder Than Ever at 52

Heavy Metal
Def Leppard’s
Phil Collen Pumps
Up to Rock Harder
Than Ever at 52
D
ef Leppard. You know it—the
multiplatinum rock band that
has been a pre-eminent music
power for more than 30 years.
It’s one of only five bands in
history with two original studio albums
that have sold more than 10 million copies in the United States. Def Leppard
albums have sold some 65 million copies,
and the group is still one of the top touring bands in the world. Def Leppard is
legendary, and one reason for that is lead
guitarist and vocalist Phil Collen.
We all have our imaginary ideas of
what it’s like to be a rock star—the limousines, the parties, the hard living and
fast lifestyle. Phil Collen, however, has a
lifestyle that’s hard and fast in other ways.
Phil lives a life of health and fitness, lifting weights, eating healthfully and training in muay Thai kickboxing as if he were
always getting ready for a fight. Whether
126 JANUARY 2011 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com
Story and Photography
by Ian Sitren
www.ironmanmagazine.com \ JANUARY 2011 127
Phil lives a life of
health and fitness,
lifting weights, eating
healthfully and training
in muay Thai kickboxing
as if he were always
getting ready for a fight.
on tour or just at home, Phil trains
at least three times per day under
the watchful eye of French and
European champion muay Thai
kickboxer and trainer Jean Carrillo.
That’s right: Even on tour the training continues, with Jean traveling
along with the band—and the workouts are just as intense.
It was about 23 years ago that Phil
got the motivation to change his
life for the better. He was still liv-
ing the hard-rock
lifestyle then, with
alcohol being the
main curse along
with some of the
wrong chemical
additions—that is,
recreational drugs.
Booze was sending
Phil and his buddies into a dark
place. Days would start with
frozen vodka and continue
with beer and any other
hard liquor at hand. Blacking out was a normal part of
things, but it came to a point
where Phil knew it had to
stop. Then he got a sobering wake-up call. One of his
close friends, band member
Steve Clark, died from an
accidental combination of prescription drugs and alcohol in 1991.
Phil’s decision to give up drinking and live a healthful lifestyle was
accompanied by his decision to
become a vegetarian. He was always
put off by the idea of eating meat, he
says, so adopting a vegetarian diet
really worked for him.
Today Phil maintains very strict
control of his eating for a lot of
128 JANUARY 2011 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com
reasons. His regimen involves very
substantial workouts, and, when
he’s on tour, working around odd
schedules and living conditions.
Tour bus hours can be late and the
days very long. Phil will do what he
does at home and do his own cooking, being very careful about watching calories and eating typically six
meals per day. Cheating might be
the occasional Indian or Thai food,
but Phil says that as he gets older,
it’s harder to take off weight, so he’s
very careful about not gaining it.
Then there are the amazing
workouts. Phil is devoted to pounding at it no fewer than three times
per day—and I mean pounding.
At home you’ll find him in what’s
called “Phil’s Sweat Shop,” a garage
filled with gym equipment. I must
tell you, too, that Phil is a humble
Rock Hard
guy with none of the outward indications of his “star” status but one—
the new Aston Martin he backs out
of the garage to make more room.
Once the car is out of the way, watch
out. Along with the weightlifting
comes some serious kickboxing.
Reenter Jean Carrillo, who’s
fought and trained around the
world. He was in France’s Marine
Corps Special Forces and served in
the Security Forces in Africa with the
French Foreign Legion. He’s trained
military personnel and police and
continues to work with beginners,
amateurs, kids and professional
muay Thai and MMA fighters—all
the while modeling and teaching a
healthful lifestyle.
A workout day in “Phil’s Sweat
Shop” typically starts with pounding the weights. Like most of us, Phil
concentrates on certain bodyparts
at each day’s session, but he also
integrates his “pad work,” which has
him throwing high kicks—that is,
hard, full-on fight kicks—over and
over and over at the pads that Jean
holds. Put it this way:
You wouldn’t want
to be on the receiving end of one. It’s an
incredible cardio and
fat-burning regimen
that includes lots of
hard breathing and
sweat pouring off Phil.
So it’s weights,
pad work, heavy bag,
A workout day in
“Phil’s Sweat Shop”
typically starts with
pounding the weights.
130 JANUARY 2011 \ www.ironmanmagazine.com
pushups on the floor, abs—all fast
and hard. And that’s only one of the
day’s three workouts. The others
might consist of cycling or a changeup.
You can easily see why it takes six
meals per day to support that workout schedule, but you might wonder
how it would work with a vegetarian
diet, especially in terms of protein.
Phil gets a lot of his protein from
soy—like soy chicken, soy “meats”
and shakes. Nuts are another component, but as Phil says, most people slug down handfuls when they
should be eating only five or six.
Another mistake people make when
going vegetarian is eating a lot of
bread and cheese. Phil advises keeping it green and raw overall.
Can you imagine going on tour
with him—veggies, pushups, kickboxing and all? It’s a far cry from
the days when performing at a rock
concert meant sucking down whis-
So it’s weights, pad
work, heavy bag,
pushups on the floor,
abs—and all fast and
hard.
key or vodka and snorting a white
powder. Phil’s colleagues have embraced the fitness lifestyle too, although perhaps not as aggressively
as he has. Before going onstage,
He very often
will just sit
down and
plug in to the
systems in his
dining room
and roar away
on one of his
many guitars.
they often work out with pads or
maybe with towels, doing stretches
and arm training or even hitting the
floor for pushups. Phil says he has
more energy now than he had as a
kid, when he started playing in bands—and at 52
he certainly has more life
in front of him now than
he would had he gone in
the other direction.
Considering all the
workouts, his nutritional
schedule and Def Leppard, you’d think Phil
has enough going on,
but there’s plenty more.
For one thing, there’s his
love of guitars. He very
often will just sit down
and plug in to the systems
in his dining room and
roar away on one of his
many guitars. He’s worked
with Jackson Guitars and
Fender on his own designs, which he uses and
is very proud to have developed. He combines everything from heavy picks
and heavy strings with
his own special choice of
amplifiers and equipment
to make his work unique.
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Indeed, Phil is considered one of the
top rock guitarists ever.
Then there’s Phil’s other rock
group—Man-Raze. Formed with
his former bandmate from “Girl,”
bassist Simon Laffy, and drummer
Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols,
Man-Raze is recording and playing
live, has toured and will be touring
again.
Def Leppard goes on tour again
in 2011, and “Hysteria” lives on,
delighting current and new generations. Phil says it’s because the
band has never broken up and has
remained true. Even after 65 million
albums sold and legendary status,
the band continues to record and do
new things too.
Much of Def Leppard is Phil Collen, a guy who lives a life of health
and fitness, a guy who leads by example and hopes to be doing more
soon to help people live their lives
in a healthful, fit way. One change
for Phil this year that makes it even
better: He got married to a wonderful woman, Helen, who is his equal
in talent—in her career and in her
desire to do better things for the
people around her.
Def Leppard has brought much to
the world. Now Phil Collen brings us
much more. IM