The Stunning Transformation Of TikTok Star Thoren Bradley
You know that guy on TikTok who chops wood with his shirt off, wielding an axe while whispering sweet nothings and salacious innuendos to tree stumps? Well, it turns out there's a lot more to him than just his viral videos. Splitting logs is only one part of Thoren Bradley's life, and it's not something he randomly started doing hoping it would result in internet fame. On the contrary, the California native started chopping wood long before he joined social media, and because of his rural lifestyle, it's one of his routine chores. So while breaking down wood one day, Bradley recorded a video for TikTok because he thought people would find it unique and interesting. "When I started splitting wood on TikTok, I'd never seen a splitting wood video on any social media platform," he said during a May 2022 appearance on "The Residency Podcast." "I just decided that, hey, you know what, this is something I can film that's super easy because it's already part of my day."
While Thoren Bradley's most recognized claim to fame is being the father of woodchopping TikTok, the social media star's multifaceted identity stretches far beyond his lumberjack image.
Thoren Bradley was born and raised in Northern California
Thoren Bradley was born and raised in a rural, remote part of California's Sierra Nevada Mountains near Yosemite, and he spent his childhood exploring the outdoors and developing a passion for movement. "I found my love with activity through things like adventuring through rivers and going fishing or jumping off rocks with my friends," the 33-year-old said on a November 2021 episode of "The Gainz Podcast."
As a teenager, Bradley was on his school soccer team and played a variety of other sports, but he found himself unable to connect with team sports in a fulfilling way. He discovered personal fitness in high school, but there wasn't an outfitted gym in his school or town. One of his teachers became privy to his interest in personal fitness and his lack of a facility to nurture and develop the hobby, so they made him a deal. If Bradley could secure donations for equipment, they would clear out an unused classroom and help him convert it into a gym. The TikTok star recalled, "That's where it was like: click, and it was like ... something's happening here where I'm just falling in love with this process."
When he was 13 years old, he lost his father
Tragedy struck Thoren Bradley's family when his father passed away in the early 2000s — Bradley was just 13 years old at the time. Though he rarely speaks about his dad publicly, Bradley shared that he was an arborist and a butcher in a March 2023 YouTube video. The internet personality said, "I do both of those things now, so I really take a lot of pride in this connection now that I have with the things that I do." During an interview with Elite Daily published the same month, Bradley recalled watching as his father felled trees and broke down wood as a means of both earning a living and heating his childhood home. The TikTok star told the outlet that he inherited his dad's arboring tools after he died and took up woodchopping himself to make money as a teenager.
While in college, Thoren Bradley supported himself with woodchopping jobs
Though his sights weren't set on college as a kid, Thoren Bradley attended The University of the Pacific to pursue a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in exercise physiology — and he was named student of the year while pursuing both degrees. The TikToker initially considered options like wildland firefighting and the Air Force, but his mom urged him to give college a chance. While he didn't think he was smart enough to succeed, her faith in him convinced him to enroll ["The Gainz Podcast" 12:32].
To pay for his tuition and living expenses, Bradley continued doing arboring work. "To pay my way through school, I was like, well I'm good at arboring, so I'll do that. I'll do manual labor for small jobs here and there just to be able to pay rent so I can get through this master's degree," he told "The Residency Podcast." It took him a little over four years to earn his undergrad degree because he had to work to pay for his credit hours, but when he finished, the university offered to cover his tuition for a master's if he worked as a graduate assistant.
Before his TikTok fame, he was a strength and conditioning coach
After getting his master's degree, Thoren Bradley began working as a strength and conditioning coach for an NCAA Division I university. He simultaneously pursued bodybuilding as a personal hobby, and when he joined Instagram in 2017, he began sharing fitness modeling content. In an October 2017 post, Bradley revealed his full-time job and explained his passion for helping student-athletes reach peak performance. In addition to helping athletes perform at high levels in their sports, Bradley also explained that he hoped to inspire the students to continue their fitness pursuits outside of college. "It's right in line with the way I perceive optimal fitness personally as well," he wrote. "Making them better athletes, but hopefully getting them some #knowledge and connection to the gym and life application."
Bradley doesn't only have experience in training collegiate athletes — he's also led tactical health and fitness training for the police force, SWAT teams, and corporate wellness retreats.
Thoren Bradley wrote several articles for a fitness publication in 2018
While working as an NCAA Division I strength and conditioning coach, Thoren Bradley became a published writer in the fitness landscape. In addition to being published in academia, he also wrote several articles for T Nation. Bradley produced a range of written content for the fitness publication in 2018, which helped him overcome his early insecurity of pursuing fitness modeling.
During his appearance on "The Gainz Podcast," Bradley explained the self-consciousness he once felt about identifying as a fitness model and using social media to make a name for himself. "I apologized for so long to my friends, to my family, to the people around me," he began. "I was like, 'Look, I'm just doing this as a side gig, like I really am a strength and conditioning coach for a university.' ... And then it started to get to the point where it got serious on its own, and then I woke up one day and I'm like, what the f*** am I doing? I can tell people that I'm a fitness model — if I say I'm a fitness model, then it is what it is," Bradley asserted.
He started sharing videos during the COVID-19 pandemic
Like most of the world, Thoren Bradley stayed home from in-person work during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine. But while many professionals could continue working remotely, the nature of Bradley's work as a fitness coach for college athletes caused uncertainty that he would be able to keep his job. As he told Elite Daily, "I thought, 'Holy s***. I don't know that my job's going to be a job for much longer if athletes can't train or compete.' So, I started filming my lifestyle in 2020."
Bradley joined TikTok and began sharing a variety of content including fitness modeling, exercise demonstrations, recipes and nutrition tips, advice and philosophical musings, playful thirst traps, and general silly videos. But then, on June 7, 2020, Bradley shared his very first woodchopping video, and people loved it. While he continued posting the kind of content he was making before the success of this initial wood splitting clip, Bradley quickly began implementing more woodchopping and wilderness lifestyle content into his repertoire.
This ultimately became his niche due to the massive attention he garnered from sharing his rural Northern Californian roots. As of this writing, Bradley has amassed a staggering 10.1 million TikTok followers, and his Instagram audience has grown to 1.7 million.
In 2021, Thoren Bradley launched his own fitness app
As much as Thoren Bradley loves producing woodchopping content, his true passion is helping people with their health and fitness. So in May 2021, he leveraged his massive social media following to launch his own fitness app. During his appearance on "The Gainz Podcast," Bradley explained that an app builder contacted him to gauge his interest in partnering to create a more streamlined space for the exercise and nutrition content he was sharing online. Bradley accepted their proposal and created Ōhk, pronounced "oak." He explained, "[It's] like a play on words that oak firewood burns long and sustainable and ... you can heat your house for a long time with it. ... I want people to find something that just changes their life for the long term." Bradley added, "And also the oak firewood thing obviously is like, a crossover between my image and who just I am as a man."
Bradley left his job to pursue his array of social media and personal fitness endeavors full time when his digital income streams reached double his college sports trainer salary. "Now instead of helping Division I athletes just perform better on a field, I'm helping, you know, George lose 180 pounds in the next two years because he just wants to not have diabetes and live better," he said of Ōhk on "The Residency Podcast." In March 2023, Bradley rebranded the app Dōse.
He also launched a home improvement-themed Instagram with his real estate agent wife in 2021
Though Thoren Bradley is notoriously private about his wife Angelique — she's widely assumed to be his cameraperson for his TikTok and YouTube content, but neither she nor Thoren have confirmed this — the couple launched a home renovations Instagram account, @behindthebradleydoors, in August 2021.
Through this joint account, the pair gave followers behind-the-scenes peeks at their personal home updates, such as flooring installations and kitchen remodeling. The Bradleys' last post on the account was in January 2022, and a month prior, Angelique explained that she had slowed down on sharing updates because she was in the process of pursuing her second master's degree in interior design and architecture while simultaneously studying to become a licensed real estate agent.
In June 2022, she announced on her personal Instagram that she obtained her Realtor license and would be taking on clients in California's Tuolumne and Calaveras counties. She's since become a television host for the Travel Channel's American Dream program while continuing her real estate career. Angelique was formerly a special education teacher.
Thoren Bradley felt the full scope of his fame in 2022 when Doja Cat duetted one of his videos
While chatting with "The Residency Podcast," Thoren Bradley pointed out that he had gained a million followers on TikTok before he shared any woodchopping content — but he didn't feel the full scope of his internet fame until Doja Cat duetted one of his videos in February 2022. "The Doja Cat [stitch] was wild because one, I'm a fan ... I was very flattered by it," Bradley said.
He continued to confess that he was physically ill for two days because the weight of the attention from the celebrity's recognition was so overwhelming. Bradley added that he feared the unexpected interaction would inflate his ego, and he had to work through his feelings on the shout-out to maintain his humility. The TikTok star also told Elite Daily that after he first saw Doja Cat's video, he "immediately ran to the bathroom and threw up."
The same year, he used silly comments to make a statement about Roe v. Wade
In June 2022, Thoren Bradley shared a TikTok video joking about the "thirsty" comments followers leave him, including ones hilariously claiming they're pregnant from simply watching him split logs. In the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, Bradley left a message of his own in his comments section that read, "Let's say my video DID get somebody pregnant. It would be her choice to keep it or not." The response to the video was divisive, as abortion always is, but it was overwhelmingly positive.
Bradley shared a video in response to the reaction in which he said, "If you are just now following my page because you recently learned about my opinion — no, not opinion, belief — in a woman's right to choose, then I actually owe you an apology — an apology that there was even an inkling or a doubt in your mind that I would feel any other way."
In the aftermath of his comments, The Independent approached Bradley to speak further about how he used his platform to share his beliefs on abortion. In his interview with the outlet, he revealed he lost 30,000 followers after unapologetically sharing his stance — but that he wasn't bothered by the loss because he has no interest in associating with people who don't support women's rights.
In 2022, Thoren Bradley also revealed how much he was making from his multiple income streams
Thoren Bradley got candid about his annual income for a feature Parade published in August 2022 about how much people in varying fields made for a living. Bradley revealed that his gross income was $150,000 from the combination of his arboring work and fitness influencing. During his conversation with "The Residency Podcast," he also disclosed that he was making $50,000 annually while working as a collegiate strength and conditioning coach.
Before he was making a steady income from his digital pursuits, Bradley was also selling cords of wood for a bit of extra money on the side. But since finding financial success, he told the podcast's co-hosts that he now donates the majority of the wood he splits to elderly people in the area and others who aren't able to cut firewood themselves and can't afford to buy a several-hundred-dollar cord.
"The other day," Bradley shared, "a video popped off and I was like, 'Damn, I made like 300 bucks on that video. I don't need the money for the wood now, [so] I'm gonna drive up to someone's house and ... drop it off on their driveway, leave it stacked and go.' Now it's kind of like this feed-forward mechanism."
Since amassing viral fame, Thoren Bradley regularly incorporates videos covering mental health and body image
Thoren Bradley has always used his social media platforms to speak out about mental health and body image, and his viral fame hasn't changed that one bit. Back in June 2018, Bradley shared a powerful photo on Instagram that was edited to show a solemn iteration of himself standing in front of a mirror and an overwrought version of himself screaming in distress in the mirror's reflection. In his caption, he wrote, "For years I've struggled or at least been living with anxiety. I could give a s*** who knows, in fact I would prefer that more people do. But it's not the mental health that needs fixing. You see, it's the way we view it that needs to change." He's reposted the photo many times and has leveraged his platform on TikTok to speak further on the importance of prioritizing mental health.
Additionally, Bradley is responsible with the way he speaks about body image and is candid about his own body image struggles. In March 2021, he wrote on Instagram, "I post a lot of pictures not in a gym, not flexed. But it's mainly for me. We always talk about how much looking at other people can mess up your body image. But if you're not careful. Posting yourself with the most incredible picture while full of blood and inside the gym, can mess up your body image too."
He advocated for psychedelics as treatment for mental health illnesses in 2022
Thoren Bradley spoke with David's Guide in May 2022, and during the interview, he revealed that he's pro-psychedelics when taken in moderation and under professional supervision when necessary. "Five milligrams of fast-acting edible THC and caffeine are great before a good workout," Bradley said. He added that he enjoys micro-dosing psilocybin when hanging out and playing music with his friends. The fitness expert shared that he's also intrigued by psychedelics as a potential treatment for certain mental illnesses.
In July 2020, the Dōse founder shared his opinion on CBD upon his Instagram audience's request for his thoughts on the matter. Bradley shared that he's long felt weary of using substances to alter his state of mind, but because he battles severe anxiety, he was open to trying CBD — and he's been pleased with the way it's helped him. He wrote, "I've found real comfort in this beautiful little life hack. CBD has almost no psychoactivity (and very low THC) ... What does it feel like?? I don't know ... kinda like the sun just peeked through the clouds and a Sublime song came on," Bradley explained. He added, "But I don't have to feel buzzed or high at all. It's helped. And I'm here for it."
Thoren Bradley addressed deforestation allegations in 2023
Despite regularly addressing deforestation allegations over the years, Thoren Bradley is still often accused of harming the environment through woodchopping. People assume he's felling trees and splitting wood in excess to make content, but he's been outspoken about how people living in his area, as well as other rural parts of the country, commonly use firewood to heat their homes. When asked about deforestation concerns during a March 2023 interview with GQ U.K., Bradley reasserted that he only fells dead, diseased, or otherwise threatening trees with conservation at the forefront of his mind. He told the outlet, "[I]f you see me splitting wood, it means I took the tree, and not only [in] an ethical way, but in a way that was permitted by our National Forest Service. And in a way that benefits our forests." He added, "I care a lot about my ecosystem."