Terrence Howard discusses his intense workouts with Darrell Foster for the motion picture “PRIDE”.
Q: What kind of training did you do for the role?
TH: The question is what kind of training didn’t I do. (Laughs) I mean it felt like I was training to be an astronaut or something because I spent anywhere from 3,500 to 4,000 yards a day of swimming. To put that in perspective, it’s 25 yards across the pool, so you’re talking about 150 to 200 laps a day. Your shoulders are dead tired. Your spirit is tired. You hate water. You’re all wrinkled up like you’re 95 years old. It was hard and then on top of that, I still had to work with this guy named Darrell Foster who’s Will Smith’s trainer, and Darrell trained Sugar Ray Leonard so he demanded an hour of lifting and at least 45 minutes of running every day. No matter what time we started running – at 5AM and we ran another 3 miles every evening if we got off at 12 o’clock at night. There was no going to bed. ‘I don’t care if you’ve got a 5AM wake-up call. We have to put the time in.’ And if you missed the time today, you had to put the time in tomorrow. So who wants to have to run 10 miles tomorrow? But he would make you do it. He would make you do it, but he would run with you and lift with you.
* This excerpt is from: http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_11478.html and is an interview with Terrence Howard