Show Notes

• P90X – a game changer in the fitness industry
• The 3 things that cause people to not succeed when it comes to fitness
• The college class that changed everything
• Training A-list celebrities
• “Work out 5-6 days a week until you die”
• What to do if you don’t have time to workout
• “I like being bad at things”
• The importance of yoga
• When you don’t feel motivated
• Ramsay Hunt syndrome
• Consistency and curiosity
• Tony’s purpose in life

Connect With Tony Horton

✩ Website: https://mypowerlife.com/
✩ Website: https://www.tonyhortonlife.com/
✩ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonyshorton/
✩ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tony_Horton
✩ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtg-WxwloE0cwFeIea7ckqw

Additional Resources

Book: The Big Picture: 11 Laws That Will Change Your Life

Summary

Tony Horton has been at the forefront of the fitness industry for decades. He is the wildly popular creator of the most successful fitness program in America, P90X. He is also a motivational speaker, celebrity trainer, and the author of three bestselling books. Tony discusses the success of P90X, and what we can all do to stay healthy and fit for the rest of our lives!

Full Transcript

Brian  

Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. Tony Horton has been at the forefront of the fitness industry for decades. He’s created revolutionary programs that have helped improve the lives of millions of people around the world, including the wildly popular and most successful fitness program in America:  P90X. Tony has also trained ageless celebrities, including Tom Petty, Billy Idol, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Nicks, helping them perform at their very best while touring. In addition to fitness training, Tony is a motivational speaker and the best selling author of three books, “Bring It,” “Crush It” and “The Big Picture:  11 Laws That Will Change Your Life.” Tony is extremely passionate about maximizing fitness performance and optimizing wellness. It’s a pleasure to have him on the show today. Welcome, Tony and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Tony  

Brian, it is an absolute pleasure. Hopefully, there’ll be a nugget or two that I may disseminate and help people learn and grow and transform a little bit.

Brian  

I have no doubt there’s going to be a nugget or two and probably several. Tony, fitness programs obviously weren’t new when P90X was introduced but that program became a worldwide phenomenon. I remember a time – and I actually still have my copy; I haven’t done it in a while but I think this was about 2007 or so – around that time, you literally couldn’t turn the television on and flip through channels without seeing an infomercial for P90X. Did you know as you were creating the program that it would be such a game changer in the fitness industry and end up impacting millions of people?

Tony  

I think no more than the team from Florida right now has won three games in a row and they’re seeded eighth…it’s just like one of these things, where if you’re really passionate about what you’re doing and you love what you’re doing. Also for us, we were trying to think outside of the box, we wished that we knew what the normal infomercial type workouts were. We also knew that the vast majority of them were pretty worthless, the companies that were creating those infomercials were really more about coming up with some gadget to make a few bucks and, of course, it would die on the vine as soon as it came out. We thought, well, you know what, there’s a whole lot of people out there that are getting bamboozled by these fake workout concepts, why don’t we give them the real deal and see if we can find a way to convince people to sign on to something as difficult as P90X was. Here’s the thing about P90X; we knew that if we made it for the hardcore types – the Type A types – they [would] probably see it and sign on, and many of them did almost right away but a lot of folks were very skeptical because they were scared of it. But over time the word of mouth got out. We also emphasized that there were other options. There were three cast members behind me. We gave them an intense version and a modified version. I don’t know how many millions of copies later, it’s gone anywhere from five to 11 million thus far. But yeah, no idea. We thought, oh, sell a couple hundred thousand and it will break even and it’ll be a fun project.

Brian  

Tony, looking back on it, what is it about the program that caused P90X to be so effective in helping people to achieve their fitness goals? Because obviously the marketing was great, but you wouldn’t have been able to sell – whether the number is 5 million or even if it was a million – you wouldn’t be able to sell that many unless it was a super effective program. What was it that caught that made P90X different?

Tony  

Well, I think was multiple things. I don’t think it was just one thing by any means. One of them was the fact that we created a ton of variety; we called this thing “muscle confusion,” which was just a made up term. Jack Lalanne had a concept early on called “periodization” training and they were similar but not the same. I always felt that you want to fight against the three things that cause people to not succeed when it comes to their fitness. First of all, it’s boredom. Obviously, people get burnout and they don’t want to keep doing whatever they’re doing, probably because it’s only one or two things over and over again. Of course, there are the injuries that occur; maybe a lot of folks training too hard or just their form is bad or they weren’t getting good cueing. They weren’t getting good advice from whoever they were listening to when it came to doing what they were doing. After a while, people would get some early results and then they would stop seeing results and then they would quit doing that – plateauing. So the injuries, the boredom and the plateaus were the nemesis for most folks. I tried to create something through variety that amounted to like 12 different workouts; so you’re doing Pilates and core synergistics and upper [inaudible] and chest and back and shoulders, arms, and yoga. The yoga was an hour and a half; people skip that one. But I just knew based on all the clients that I’ve been training…you went down that list; the Billy Idol, Tom Petty, Annie Lennox and Bruce Springsteen’s of the world. There was a lot of pressure on me in those days – when I was training those folks – from their management saying, hey, look, there are a lot of trainers to pick from, you’ve got a little bit of time here, obviously, these celebrities want to like you and they also want to see results in a relatively quick period of time. So I always knew from my own personal training experience and my level of curiosity…I was curious about yoga, I was curious about balancing and speed and agility, not just weightlifting, not just yoga or just cardio or martial arts. I knew that if I mixed it up, I was avoiding those three things I spoke about and I also was going to get great results. It was happening with my clients and all I had to do is recreate that in your home, in your living room, in your basement, in your garage, or wherever you happen to do it. That just required a pull-up bar, some dumbbells and bands, maybe a mat, you didn’t even need a bench. So that was one thing and the other thing too was obviously the media was critical. We had a filmmaker shoot those workouts, we had a filmmaker do those infomercials. We had a guy by the name of Ned Farr with a completely different perspective on how to get the word out to people. It wasn’t the usual T and A stuff that you would see to try to sell fitness. Obviously, we made it about before and after pictures, that was important; that people wanted to look different. But we also talked a lot about how they would be as human beings, beyond longevity, really beyond the aesthetics, beyond your ego, and more about just who you would be as a human being – what you’re physically, mentally and emotionally capable of doing if you did something that had this much variety, this much intensity or lack thereof, if that’s what you wanted. Then there were the cast members. I hired people that were in my test group, people that I got to know over many months. There were a lot of people that were in that who were people I had rapport with. I think the icing on the cake was that I delivered fitness differently than anybody prior or since. I was a street performer, I was a pantomime, I took multiple acting classes, I was a part of Second City, Los Angeles – I was doing stand up comedy. So I was working on all these…I don’t know what you call them, like, artistic, rhetorical ways of transcending the fitness as opposed to just being sort of a rudimentary, dull, boring, boot camp guy or something. It was all those things combined that stood out. Nobody else was doing anything like any of that. I think that was reason number one, two, three, four and five.

Brian  

I was going to ask you if that was revolutionary, if that was the first time that had happened. It’s hard for me to sort of reflect back on that time and know what came first. Obviously today, there are lots of classes where people are in studio, instructors are in studio whether it’s Peloton or fitness classes; everybody’s doing that but was that the first time with P90X where it – maybe this is in alignment with your acting background – where it was like a performance and it’s a fitness class, but it just seemed to me that it was a theatrical production as much as a fitness class, does that make sense?

Tony  

We had to follow a sequence, we had to do the workouts, I had to cue the movements for people at home who were staring at their shoes or not looking at the TV the entire time; I was always pretty good at cueing. A good trainer knows how to cue something so that if the person watching has their eyes closed, they can still figure it out. So you’re using multiple senses, you’re using your vision and your hearing then I added humor to it. You’ve got to credit my fearless leader at that time, a guy by the name of Carl Daikeler, who was a very good friend of mine who used to work out with me and we spent as much time laughing as we did training. We just made it really laid back but it was also very intense. So those two things can happen simultaneously, but no one had ever done that before. The way I trained at home, that’s the way I trained my clients; Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Idol, they enjoyed my company, they enjoyed the rapport that we used to have. These were brilliant musicians who were very smart, had great senses of humor. I was allowed to do that when I was first working for NordicTrack and some other early projects. I was very straightforward; Hi, everybody, Tony Horton here. We’re gonna work out now. Here we go. Let’s warm up, blah, blah, blah. You know? And then Carl and I spoke about it, he said, dude, you just be you; be you and if you…because I can get too big, too much, too silly. I mean, at one point they had to cut because they said hey, man, it’s P90X, it’s not P-Super-Silly-X so you don’t have to start pirouetting or doing too many silly things up there. And so we just found that happy medium and it’s funny. No one’s done anything close to it yet. Still, you’d think somebody would have written me off by now. But there’s a lot of skill there, there’s a lot of technique there that is sort of hard to duplicate, I think.

Brian  

Well, I know one of the things for me was I felt like – I don’t mean this to sound corny, like I knew you at that time or we were friends – but you were relatable, I thought. The other thing is, on one hand, you’re relatable on the other hand, you modeled something that was very attractive to me, like a goal that was definitely worth shooting for; your body and your abs, in particular. I mean, you’re not a meathead, you never have been. It’s not like Mr. Universe is up there showing me something that I know for me is never attainable. One of the things for me, I really thought like, hey, this is stuff that I can do and I like this guy. I mean, he’s a guy I can relate to. I like working out with him and I’m learning and growing and stretching myself physically in the process.

Tony  

Well, you’re not the first to say something very close to that. I think being relatable, a lot of it has to do with my early upbringing. My father was in the military, he was a tank commander and we moved a bunch of times because of that. Then when he left the army, he jumped around, we jumped from town to town because if you got different jobs, or promoted or something…we moved six times before fifth grade. So I was always forced to adapt to new schools and new neighborhoods and new friends and new everything. I had a speech impediment called cluttering; I would just talk so dang fast that the words would pile up on top of each other and a lot of that had to come from insecurity. I was a small kid, I wasn’t an athletic kid so I had to fight through all that stuff. If you look behind me, you can see most of these books are personal development books from Richard Carlson, Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil too, on and on. I went to a lot of seminars on how to just be a better human being, how to be a more present human being. In my mindfulness practices, yoga was a big game changer for me, just learning how to settle and learning how not to judge and learning to be in the moment. The acting classes, too, you’re seeing that on screen, it’s not an act; I know you say it’s a performance – and it is a performance – but I’m doing a hyper-version of myself really. I’m not having to try hard. When I do a workout down here tonight with friends, with no camera on me, I’m going to be the same guy you saw on P90X.

Brian  

I guess that goes along with what I said about being relatable; it comes naturally to you. I think your acting training probably does help you in front of a camera, whether you’re working out or doing commercials or anything like that, but you just seem to be naturally relatable.

Tony  

The acting training just gave me confidence. It’s interesting, the two things that people freak out about as much as anything is talking in front of a group of people or in front of a camera; their personality just disappears. I wasn’t very good at it initially either but like they say, the more you do, the better you get, and I just kept trying and trying because I just loved it. Even though I was just okay at the beginning, I thought, I like this; this is a great, cool way to make a living as opposed to driving all over the city of Angels from Malibu to Culver City to Hollywood and beat my car up for a few hundred bucks per person even though they were celebrities. I mean, the stories are incredible. This book I could write between the Billy Idol stories itself, the Shirley McClain – that story is just amazing. This was all before phones and the internet and all that kind of stuff so there’s almost no record of any of it. Boy, the memories are pretty crazy but when you’re hanging out with celebrities…then I went on tour with Tom Petty, I got Billy Idol ready for stuff and you’re hanging out with these folks and you go, oh, they’re world famous, they’re super talented, but they’re just normal, cool people. They’re just ambitious. They’re confident, ambitious people. And I thought, I could do that. So over time, I eventually got there.

Brian  

You mentioned something earlier that I wanted to go back to because it surprised me. You said you weren’t athletic as a kid. So how did you get into fitness yourself and then eventually leverage that into personal training training celebrities, as you talked about, and then eventually creating entire fitness programs?

Tony  

Well, it was a weird, circuitous route, I would say, because when I grew up in the 60s and 70s, before I came out to California in 1980, everything was team sports. Tennis wasn’t a team sport, but it was still competing with another person. I was on the football team, but not good enough to play – ever. So I just got beat up during practice Monday through Thursday. I don’t know if that was fun. I used to come home every night black and blue, and my parents would go, why are you doing this? I didn’t want to be a quitter. Back in those days, my experience – and it’s still happening to this day with a lot of young kids and their coaches – coaches just really care about the best players on the team. They care about getting their name and picture in the paper and they care about the win and loss column. They’re not really driven to mold young athletes; nine times out of ten, you show up ready to go or you don’t, and that was it. I was this close to being okay, but I never had the right…my father was on the road with his job, he wasn’t able to help me even though he was a great athlete as a kid. My father was a natural athlete as a kid, I just wasn’t. In those early days I didn’t know what I was doing. I was really pretty clueless. The exercise part like, oh, you have to exercise to be better at the sports, I didn’t know those two things were even part of the same…whether there was some synergy there of any kind. I took a weightlifting class in college and I really, really liked the teacher; the guy was funny and he was smart, he was nice. He really held our hand throughout that entire semester because none of us knew what we were doing in there. Everybody who signed up for my weightlifting class, we were all scrawny or pudgy and we just wanted to not be scrawny or pudgy anymore – and none of us were at the end. I got an A in that class, I couldn’t wait to go to that class. Meeting him and training that way and discovering that and then, of course, two years later, I’m off to California, and I went, I’m going to join a gym, this is a better way to meet people. I just took a lot of those strategies and I kept learning more and I started going to yoga classes and started going to the track and a girlfriend of mine was going to Pilates; I’ll do that, I just started becoming more curious. Then I was training my boss over at 20th Century Fox where I was a production assistant, his name was Harlan Goodman. He was noticing my changes since when I started working for him because it started about the time I was working for him and over like the next four months. He’s like, holy smokes, look at you, can you show me how to do what you did? So he and I would go to a buddy’s garage and work out together before we both went to work. He lost 35-40 pounds. Then he was walking down the hall, then East End Management on Sunset Boulevard, there was Tom Petty and he was smoking a cigar and he said, oh my god, Harlan, you look fantastic. I’m going on tour and nobody likes a fat rocker, can you help me? So Harlan said call Tony Horton and the phone rang and my roommate picked it up and he told me it was Tom Petty. Of course I said that’s not possible that Tom Petty is calling so my roommate hung up on Tom Petty. He called back and he said, I think we got disconnected. Anyway, my roommate goes, dude, this sounds like Tom Petty. So I went to his house two days later, and I trained him for four months and I got him ready for this tour. He showed up on this tour ripped and strided and vascular and his voice was great and he was tearing the sleeves off his shirts on stage, shirtless…everybody was just like, what happened to Tom Petty. After he got done with that tour, the phone just rang off the hook and I was training in rock and roll for the next 15 years.

Brian  

That’s awesome. What a great story. Tony, it’s interesting to me, that was back in the 70s I guess?

Tony  

It was 80s. 80s, 90s. 

Brian  

80s. Okay, even 90s, so 30 plus years ago. It’s interesting to me – and interesting probably isn’t the right word, maybe disturbing is a better word – that at a time and place in history today, 30 years, 40 years later, where we know more about the importance of health and fitness, our country and maybe even our world, is arguably more out of shape and unhealthy than ever before. What’s the underlying problem and what can we do as a society to fix it? I mean, I know you’ve certainly done your part so nobody’s going to fault you for not trying, but we’ve still got such a long ways to go, don’t we?

Tony  

Yeah. Even the devotees out there that were dedicated to whether it was Power 90, which came before P90X, P90X2 or P90X3 or 22 Minute Hard Corps or my new program, The Power of 4, or my latest – I just shot Power Sync 60. I’m certainly giving people enough ammunition to be able to make some changes. The latest program, Power Sync 60, is designed specifically for women based on their cycles. A lot of research…at least from a gal that we were working with by the name of Dr. Mindy Pels has done the research. When she did P90X, she didn’t follow the schedule, she created her own schedule based on her cycle. She got much better results than a lot of her friends and other women because they were doing the same thing – the same days the guys are doing. Now I didn’t even know about that. I just knew that P90X took a lot longer for women to see results in general, than guys. And I would often say, well, you know, if you’re struggling and you don’t get it in the 90 days, do it for 120, or do it for more, but you’ve got to keep going and that worked for most women. So the thing is that – and I talked about this when I created P90X – there was no space, it wasn’t really even a website yet where you could go and say, here are Tony’s inside tricks on how to get fit, stay fit and live fit. A lot of it has to do with purpose, plan, account and accountability. And then I think, last but not least, which I’ve learned about only recently, is people’s life circumstances just get in their way even if they know what they need to do, when they eat, what they need to eat. The pandemic, for example, I mean, people went in either one of four directions when that thing hit. You need a purpose, you need a powerful, single purpose for why you’re doing what you’re doing. If it’s about your ego and it’s about your dress size and your inches and the scale, then you will ultimately fail. It’s just not sustainable. It’s too much about what you think other people think of you, as opposed to what you think of yourself and your own skin and among other people – that’s everything. Like, for me, if I don’t work out, I don’t feel good. I mean, it’s almost instantaneous. I read John Rateys book – it’s up on the shelf behind me – “Spark,” it talks about the effects of physical activity on your brain and how your brain functions and how that affects your emotions. So if you’re pumping oxygen into your temporal lobe, into your hippocampus, into something called your dentate gyrus, then you’re going to create what he calls Miracle-Gro for the brain; it’s brain derived neurotrophic factor, it literally changes your perspective and increases your energy and improves your sex drive, you sleep better, you’re a problem solver. You get that from fitness? Hell, you do. A perfect example of that; I was a C- student with a speech impediment, I was the biggest procrastinator, I was lazy, I was panicked, I was filled with anxiety, and exercising, eating right, became the foundation of who I am – who I was 30 years ago and still am. So if your purpose is about that…maybe there’s something that you really enjoy doing physically or something you’d like to try physically that you haven’t done:  you want to get on a mountain bike, you want to go skiing, you want to go surfing, you want to go on a bike tour in France or something. If you’re physically incapable, then your world shrinks down to nothing. That’s another really phenomenal purpose, I think. So the other thing is a plan. You have to figure out what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it and you have to tell the whole world that that’s priority one. My whole week – I work out in the morning Sundays, I work out in the afternoon Sundays, and nobody is allowed to schedule anything on those certain days at those certain hours so that window is always there for me. It never goes away and everybody knows it. If you have a really hectic job and you have kids, well then you have to move something, open up that window and that’s where you plug in your workouts. Those workouts have to happen five to seven days a week. It doesn’t mean you have to run a marathon seven days a week. Some workouts are mellow, some workouts are mindfulness. Maybe we’re just sitting there doing some breath work. Other workouts are going to be chest and back or a cardio class or martial arts class. It’s having that variety, you add that variety in because you see a lot of people working out three days a week, they get really frustrated, and they can’t figure out why they’re not getting results; try going to work three days a week, try to sleep three nights a week, try to eat three days a week, try to breathe every other day and skip the days in between. There are all these things that we do to survive on Earth, to just get by on Earth but if you want to thrive, you’ve got to…I say all the time, it’s just like everything else you already do to just get by:  you pay your bills, you go to work, you do that all the time – fitness is all the time when you slot it in. Then the last but not least, is accountability. People who live in Minnesota in the middle of January, who go down to their basement – it’s 45 degrees – and do workouts by themselves and then get up and feed their kids and go to work – they’re amazing human beings. The rest of us need to reach out to friends and family and co-workers and people online or something – that’s what Facebook and Instagram is for and other things are for as opposed to just being mean to people – reach out, look for help, maybe be part of a crew, a team, a tribe, as I say. When you’ve got your purpose and your plan and your accountability lined up, be prepared for the circumstances that are coming your way, because COVID is going to come or somebody’s going to pass away in your life or your girlfriend is going to break up with you; there are these traumatic things that happen to us. What do we do? We do the opposite of what we should do, we start eating too much, we start drinking too much, we start smoking weed, we start doing all these things that exaggerate the problem when all you had to do is go for a run and eat cleaner. By the way, I’m asking a lot from a lot of people but that’s the formula. Anything other than that, as far as I know, is problematic and often doesn’t work.

Brian  

That’s great information, I really appreciate you sharing that. I think one time you said workout five to six days a week until you die or something like that. So it’s not something you do just when you feel like it or something you do three days a week. Like you said, try eating just three days a week or try sleeping just three days a week. It’s that important for you but you’re saying it’s that important for everybody.

Tony  

If you want it to work, if you want to be successful, if you want to be happy. I mean, for me, it’s about happiness; I know that when I don’t work out for two days, all those good chemicals in my brain have gone away, they survive for anywhere from 18 to 24 hours. I don’t know what the exact number of hours are but by the end of your second day off all that norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, brain derived neurotrophic factor is not there anymore. So I always say, folks, if you’re not consistent, you’re going to end up with exercise bipolar disorder, you’re going to have those highs and you’re not using chemicals and drugs and food. You’re using good old oxygenated blood that is rushing into your brain. It’s amazing. Here’s what’s even more amazing about it; you control that, right you are. There are too many of us that are using sources outside of ourselves to try to bring short term moments of joy and pleasure and happiness that usually lead to long term problems and issues. I mean, nasty, disgusting, double cheese chimichanga and a big old cheese pizza covered in pepperoni certainly tell you it tastes pretty great while you’re eating it but there will be consequences down the road, whether it’s Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s or cancer, hypertension or diabetes, or whatever it’s going to be. So there’s that issue. I always say you’re the source, you are the ultimate source. Instead of maybe two cups of coffee in the morning to snap out of it, roll a yoga mat out and do ten minutes of yoga. Ten minutes of yoga is going to help you with your balance, is going to help you with your strength, is going to help you with your flexibility. It’s also through the breathing process, it’s a mindfulness practice at the same time. You don’t do that sitting at a coffee table, drinking coffee; they’re not even close. Anybody, whether they’re a fitness aficionado or they’re a complete neophyte, most people know the difference between doing the right thing or the wrong thing; like I say, a couple of cups of coffee in the morning or maybe a yoga practice that does X, Y, and Z. One takes effort, the other one doesn’t. The other one is the source outside of you, the one that takes some effort that’s you making a brilliant choice to start your day and improve your life and prevent disease and have more energy and sleep better, and blah, blah, blah, the list goes on and on and on and on.

Brian  

It’s all about choices. Tony, you mentioned ten minutes. One excuse I hear from a lot of people who don’t work out is they just don’t have the time. People are busier than ever. How do you respond to that?

Tony  

They don’t want to make the time. They have time. I can’t tell you how many people have seven kids that have made the time somehow, with a job. I’d like to introduce those people, like your friend Tracy Morals, you know Tracy, right? Tracy Morals is a perfect example. She has two careers, six kids and she manages somehow because it’s a priority, because it’s important, she understands, she makes her plan – this is what I’m going to do, when I’m going to do it. I have another 23 hours to do everything else. Obviously, eight are dedicated to sleeping. But a lot of it is…you know what it is? My answer is, it’s just poor planning and lack of desire. “I don’t have time” is poor planning and lack of desire, that’s really what it is. I don’t want to say they’re copping out, a lot of people are super busy. I, for one, for a couple of years I traveled six months out of the year, six months out of the year. I’m in airplanes, I’m in Europe, and I’m in Chile, and I’m all over the country but I find my 15-20 minutes. There’s a routine I do quite often when I’m too busy. I call it the warrior workout or the traveler’s workout. I do some push ups, as many as I can – some version – and then I’ll stand up – I bring a stopwatch with me, anybody can stick a stopwatch in their suitcase – and I’ll do one minute of something:  cardio jump, running in place, jumping jacks, martial arts, whatever it is. And then I’ll do 30 reps of abs/core and 30 reps of legs. So it’s upper body, cardio, core legs, and I can do those back to back to back with almost no time in between because they’re completely different physical modalities. One is upper body, then during the cardio my upper body is recovering, by the time I get to my abs I’m on the floor and my heart rates come down from the cardio. After that, from abs I get right into my legs and then I from legs, I go to upper body. So I’m working upper body and lower body at opposite ends of that little cycle. You can do three, four, five, six rounds and you can do different kinds of abs stuff, you can do different kinds of push-ups. I do some with my staggered hands and with wide hands, military push ups, some with my feet up on something. You’ve just got to be curious and you’ve just got to be creative. Good form matters as well but that doesn’t take much time to figure out how to do a push-up right.

Brian  

You’re specific when talking about push-ups and different forms of push-ups and also cardio, but how about core in legs? What do you do for legs? Lunges or squats?

Tony  

Well, plyometrics is the one way to turn up the volume a little bit. You’ve got lunges and you’ve got squats, you’ve got plyo squats, you’ve got curtsy lunges, you’ve got something called rock squats or pumper squats, there’s short range of motion, big range of motion. But when you add plyometrics to it, it’s like you can do a jumping lunge and you don’t sound like you’re trying to hit the ceiling or anything. Just get yourself a few centimeters or inch or two off the ground. I do these fighter stance plyo squats. I’m here in a fighter stance and I’ll go up and down and I’ll do a quarter turn. On that side I do something called Jack squats. Everybody knows what jumping jacks are; well, they’re basically jumping jacks with squats in there and they’re pretty brutal. What you’re doing is basically HIIT training, for example, like anytime you leave the earth…like think about jumping rope as opposed to going for a run. It’s harder to jump rope, which is kind of like plyometrics because you are leaving the ground over and over and over again. You’re not yet jumping high, you’re not trying to dunk a basketball or anything. But there’s more heart, lung, leg involvement that way. When you go for a jog it’s less pounding and you can go longer; swimming, there’s no pounding at all. That’s why swimming, biking, running, jogging, hiking, standard cardio 25, 30, 45, 50 minutes, how long you want to go, but plyometrics is usually a rep thing as opposed to a time thing. So when it comes to a lot of plyometric moves, by the time you get to the 30th rep, your heart rate is up, your lungs are burning, your legs are fried. Then you take some kind of a break before you go on to another one. The next one you go on to probably shouldn’t be a plyometric move, it should be something static or something isometric, because [if you] plyo and then plyo again and plyo, you’re just going to blow out your back and your knees. These are just things that I’ve learned over time. So when I do my warrior routine and I do six rounds, every push-up, every core move, every leg move, every cardio move is different from the one before; I never repeat anything. But if you don’t have the repertoire that I have, do the same push-up and cardio and abs, leg routine over and over again, because it beats the hell out of saying I don’t have any time.

Brian  

You mentioned variety. I wanted to ask you about that because I know you’re big on variety, changing up routines, changing activities. You mentioned a whole bunch of different activities, including martial arts, which is something that typically isn’t brought into a fitness conversation. I don’t think this question is really for me, because that’s something that I personally struggle with. I’m a creature of habit so I like to run and I like to spin and I like to play squash and I like to lift. But if I run three miles, it’s the same three mile loop. If I run five miles, it’s out two and a half miles, back two and a half miles. If I spin, it’s a 45 minute spin. If I lift and do chest, it’s the same thing over and over again. What’s the downside to that? You’ve talked about it a little bit, but what’s the better approach? I think you’ve kind of answered the question already a little bit – that it gives us that variety and working the muscles differently, working our body differently, working our mind differently, ultimately, through that variety of either specific exercises or fitness activities. 

Tony  

Well, Brian, if you were to go back to the early days before you ran, before you lifted, before you did your bike work, it was all new to you. You remember that journey of learning those things initially. I never stopped doing that, I like being bad at things because I know that my body will respond more quickly and differently than it will if I keep doing the same stuff over and over and over again. It’s the same thing with P90X. With P90X we had three different versions that you could do because people were doing it over and over and over and over again. I would say, you might want to pick the bulk version or you might want to pick the lean version, you might want to mix it up or change the sequences of things a little bit. Your body responds to change. It will maintain with what you have, based on what you’re doing. But if you were to come into my house and get on my Ninja course, you would fail miserably. I’ve had guys here, bodybuilders and people who are pretty good at what they do – professional football players, ice hockey players, speed skaters – and they get annihilated here, and I’m 35 years older than them. I’m not patting myself on the back while I tell you how great I am. I’m just saying that because I have this large repertoire of different types of fitness. I have an advantage over other people who just keep focusing on the same things all the time. What I would say is stick to some of the stuff that you love. If you’re willing to try different things, dabble, like if you haven’t done a Pilates class, well then go do one, if you haven’t done yoga then go do it, if you haven’t been to a spinning class go try it. Maybe there’s a really good combat class or something in your neighborhood or CrossFit. A lot of CrossFit classes can be pretty gnarly because you’ve got to get the right coach who can read the room and not hurt people – that’s important. But your body just reacts to it. You also want to be long and strong. I think a lot of people who are doing cardio and lifting weights, it’s really good. It’s better than what most people are doing. Then work on your speed more. There are three things that we as adults – I don’t know how old you are, you’re probably about my age or younger – but you want to work on speed, you want to get on a track and you want to run not just that two miles one direction, two miles back, you want to run hundreds and two hundreds and four hundreds, completely. It’s basically high speed weightlifting for your butt and your legs and your core. You want to get into as much yoga as possible and different kinds of yoga:  Hatha, Ashtanga, Yin, Power. Because it’s that you want to be long and strong as you get older, not strong and vulnerable as you get older, because there’s a lot of people who are very fit, but they’ve been working in that same range of motion for years and years and years. Then they’re asked to go run from home base to first base in a softball game and both hamstrings go. What happened? I thought I was in shape. Well, you didn’t work on them hamstrings like you should have. So that’s really important. It is that speed and balance. Most people our age, as they get into their 70s and 80s, they fall off the curb, they break their hip, they’re in the ICU and two weeks later, everybody’s at their funeral. I have two slack-lines in my backyard, I have Bosu balls that I stand on. I do a lot of things that are irritating, frustrating and hard for me, but I do them anyway because if I fall off the curb, I’m going to do a cartwheel and then just jump in my car.

Brian  

It sounds like part of it is just moving outside your comfort zone.

Tony  

Exactly. I could have just said that, you’re right. Animal Flow is another one,  Capoeira , there’s Tabata stuff. There are so many things that are super beneficial. HIIT training, for example, there’s a thousand different ways to do HIIT training. Everybody’s like, let me do my bicep curls and then go to the drinking fountain and talk to my buddies and then go do another set of bicep curls. You’re going to have big biceps, but you’re walking around with your shirt off at the beach. Is that your job? I don’t know yet. I do bicep curls. Trust me. Tomorrow morning, two o’clock, Tuesday morning, I’m going to get after the bicep curls but it’s a once a week thing. I’ve got other things that are more about my athleticism. Do you want to work on your athleticism as opposed to your appearance? And then you have a more interesting life as well.

Brian  

You mentioned yoga, and I heard you proclaim once that yoga is the single most – let me make sure I get this right – yoga is the single most perfect thing you can do if you want to stay young and healthy. I thought that was a pretty bold statement and really a little surprising coming from you. Part of the reason that I’m asking about yoga – and I’m not proud of this; I’m confessing everything here in front of you – is I’ve never been able to get into yoga. I’ve tried it a few times, probably haven’t stuck with it as long as it takes to really get into it. But I’ve tried it a few times and it just hasn’t stuck. What am I missing and why is yoga so vital? I mean, you said it’s the single most important thing you can do if you want to stay young and healthy.

Tony  

I love that question, Brian, and by the way, I haven’t quite ever gotten into it either. I’m not going to lie to you, but the benefits are…and the reason why I said what I said is because there are so many things that are happening all at the same time in the privacy of your home, or you go to a class course, you can do it in your underwear on a mat, you don’t even need shoes; here’s the thing about yoga, there are dozens and dozens of different types of yoga that do different things. There are dozens and thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of different Yogis/teachers that have different techniques and methods. There’s this guy, Ish Moran, here in town for years and years and years, when COVID hit he moved on – I think he’s not in the same studio as he used to be – I went to his class every Saturday at 4pm. I didn’t miss it because there was just something about the way he did it, it was something about his flow. His flow only changed a little bit here and there and that’s exactly what I needed. It was 90 minutes and it completely changed me physically, mentally and emotionally. The way I felt at the end of that class was the antithesis of how I felt almost every time I walked in there. The one thing about yoga is it’s unlike a bike ride, it’s different than a five mile bike ride. Right on the strand down here in Santa Monica, that’s a flat bike ride; you’re outside, you’re in the wind and the sun and it’s great and your heart rate is up a little bit. But it’s the same bike ride, and it’s going to be doing the same thing for you and after a while, your body will adjust to it. And it’ll only benefit ever so slightly, especially as you’re getting older, as time keeps ticking by. But yoga, there’s a class that I take up in Malibu, it’s a bear. I’m soaking wet afterward and I’m pumped, like I just did a 30 set chest and back routine. So it’s that amount of variety, back to what I was saying. I said earlier about yoga, it’s the strength. There is obviously range of motion, flexibility, there’s the balance component, which is you’re in tree pose, or warrior three; there are all these different kinds of balance poses. If you intellectually understand the importance of speed, balanced range of motion, and also at the same time in the middle of that battle, that you have to be calm under pressure, it relates directly to your life. Here’s the thing that I tell people all the time and this is the light that goes off in their head; do you want to be better at the things you’re already doing as you get older? Yes, well then what you’re doing now to get there isn’t working. You add yoga and that will happen because yoga makes you more durable. Just in general, in life, going upstairs and reaching around grabbing the shampoo off the shelf in the shower, whatever you want to do it makes you less vulnerable to those types of everyday injuries and it makes you more durable and stronger and improves your range of motion and the quality of the look of your physique as you get older. I mean, my body doesn’t look a whole lot different than it did 35 years ago; my skin isn’t as good, a little crepey and my blue veins are popping out everywhere. But that’s just, I’m 65. I don’t know what 65 is supposed to feel like, but it feels pretty dang good compared to 15, 25, 35, 45. I’m better now than I was at 55. So, I don’t know what 75 and 85 is going to be like, but I was in Jackson Hole three times this season. I never skied harder, faster, scarier stuff that I did this last trip; there was effort, but not as much effort in the past and that’s not a sensation that most people can say they’ve ever are having as they get older – having the opposite sensation. But no time like the present to get going.

Brian  

You’ve sold me on yoga, how often should I practice?

Tony  

If you’re new to it, twice a week. Here’s the cool thing about yoga too; you go twice a week and I would do two different versions. Like if you went online, and you did two different sessions of my workouts – there’s the hour and a half one, the P90X which is a bear – but you just get in there and you don’t have to do the whole thing, like I’m going to stop at 45 minutes today, I’m not going to do the extra five minutes; just trickle in a little bit more of that. Or I have that one called Morning Yoga – I’ve got dozens online, dozens in one of my programs. Then the great thing about yoga is that once the asanas and the movements and the flexibility improve, for me personally, that sticks, unlike bicep strength, or cardiovascular endurance and things like that. That mobility, flexibility, range of motion stuff from yoga lasts a lot longer than other types of fitness. So you can, after about three or four months, narrow it down to once a week. I mean, for me, it’s every Friday at 8:30, every Friday morning I have a lot of people show up to my house to work out. I have as many as 20 show up for plyo on Wednesdays, tomorrow there’ll be five or six. But with yoga, I’m barely able to get one, sometimes two, because a lot of people are like you, there’s something about it that forces you to be present and to deal with what’s happening. Warrior one, warrior two…it’s like, can I just go for a friggin run? Can I just lift some heavy weights? It says a lot about about our society, you become a different person when you have a regular yoga practice, it changes you a little bit.

Brian  

I think that’s as good a reason as any to do it, it’s so different than everything else that we’re doing. When you look at that balance and just taking time, I get impatient with it and I’m not that good. But you’ve convinced me to go in again.

Tony  

Those two things are exactly what’s supposed to be happening when you’re starting in the yoga. Okay, oh, I’m impatient. What does that say? Hmm…maybe I should breathe instead of being impatient inside my head. Oh, I’m bad at it. That means think about how much growth there is, how much I can improve if I keep showing up. I mean, did you hop in your car at 16 and just start driving around town and they gave you a license just because you look…no. Let’s think about school; first grade, second grade, third grade, like you don’t go from first grade to grad school. There are all these steps in between and those steps are important, but nobody questions them. We just automatically do it. Some kids are really brilliant, they hop out of high school and go straight to…those AP kids – I was never one of those. But that’s the journey. I was terrible. I hated it. Now, I love it and now I’m pretty good at it because Tony said I should do it anyway.

Brian  

Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate that. I want to ask you about motivation, which is related to a lot of what we’ve talked about. I know that even for people who are super committed to fitness sometimes you just wake up and you don’t feel like going downstairs to the gym or heading out for a run. You’ve probably never encountered that yourself but you’ve certainly faced it with clients through the years and people that you’ve encountered. Why is it so hard some days to get motivated to work out? And what advice can you offer our listeners and viewers to help us push through those times? What do you do when you don’t like doing it, Tony?

Tony  

Well, the number one topic that everyone is affected by is stress and there’s physical, mental, and emotional stress and stress is a debilitater like no other. Usually with stress there’s a lot of either A – pain, or B – fatigue, so if you’re dealing with both pain and fatigue because of stress – physical, mental and emotional – there’s physical from whatever, there’s the emotional because of family or work or finances, or maybe it’s the humidity or the barometric pressure or the biorhythms. There are so many things that we can’t even see that affect our level of enthusiasm for something. So lack of motivation usually means there’s some kind of stress involved and there’s a lack of enthusiasm as a result of that stress. That point when you know, that you intuitively know, this is the last thing on earth I want to do even though I normally do it, what should I do? A –  beat myself up and judge it; which is what most people do, that’s their number one choice, beat myself up. How about we not do that anymore because we know it’s not productive at all. The other one is, accept the fact that you’re exhausted or you’re in some kind of physical, mental and emotional pain, and it’s absolutely okay to blow this workout off; blow it off, who cares? Go get in the bathtub, put in some Epsom salts if you have that; if you’re smart, you have that allocated time there. What [could you do,] maybe breath work, just lie in bed and do some breath work for half an hour. If you want to meditate, meditate, or if you want to go walk your dog, walk your dog, or if you want to crank up the Led Zeppelin or the Spandau Ballet, or whatever is your random musical band, pick a mindfulness practice instead because chances are, if you’re lacking motivation, you’re dealing with stress. And so what do you do to deal with stress; you do something mindful instead, and doing something mindful just requires you to be quiet and breathe and listen and not judge, be present, be in the moment, that kind of thing. That’s what it’s asking. Or the other one is alter what you’re going to do or shorten what you’re going to do. So if this routine is going to usually take an hour and 15 minutes, do a 20 minute version of it and see how you feel after the 20 minute mark; maybe you will stop at 20 minutes. Let’s say, for example, you’ve got a 24 set of shoulders and arms. All right, I’m going to do four sets of shoulders and then I’m going to decide whether I want to do four more. Then you’re going to go, no, I really don’t. And then you do four more sets of biceps, four more sets of triceps and then I’m out; give yourself alternatives. Sometimes it’s do zero. Sometimes it’s mindful – number two, and sometimes it’s alter, or fourth would be do something completely different, but still make it physical. Maybe it’s not going to be that hardcore weightlifting routine, maybe it’s just walking on a treadmill on an incline or something. Or of all the things – I know what I’m supposed to do today – of all the things…I don’t want to do that. Let me think, I mean, I know all these workout routines, I’ll do this one instead, it’s not as intense. But I’m still moving, I’m still breathing, I’m still taking in that oxygen, I’m still checking that box, and then there’s less guilt, there’s less judging, and there’s less being upset with the fact that you’re not motivated. Being not motivated is – especially if you’re somebody who’s dedicated typically – just saying that you’re not completely aware of some of the stuff that’s going on in your life and so you just need to make some changes.

Brian  

So all those choices that you talked about require discipline and really honoring the commitment to health and vitality – doing something different or not doing as much of something. I mean, we’ve all heard stories about the hardest part of the run is getting your shoes on and taking that step outside. And a lot of times what happens is when – I know for me when I don’t particularly feel like doing it – I go outside and start running and sometimes those are the best runs. If you don’t give yourself the opportunity to sort of work through that temporary questioning about whether you really want to do it or not you really rob yourself of an opportunity. But I like what you talked about doing something different, whether it’s breath work, or sitting in a bath or again, for me, I look at that as just honoring that time and  that space and that commitment to health and vitality.

Tony  

Absolutely. It’s still part of the same process, it’s different, that’s all.

Brian  

Tony, I wanted to ask you…you had – this was a while back now – you had a health scare back in 2017 that dramatically altered your life for a time, anyway. Are you willing to share with us what happened?  I’m curious about how that impacted your approach to health both in the short run – I think I know the answer to that in the short run – but also how that changed your perspective on health and fitness and maybe renewed your commitment to health and vitality.

Tony  

October 2017, I was dealing with a lot of stressful things. My life was moving along pretty smoothly up till this point, the Beachbody life that was created for me. I mean, I was in the same apartment for 21 and a half years and then I was able to buy a home and then another home. Here’s one thing about fame and fortune; it multiplies your stress levels by a lot. I grew up middle class and I came out here and I was broke all the time and always borrowing money. I had odd jobs from doing mime at the pier to making furniture out of two by fours, to go-go dancing, or whatever it was; I had every job in the world. I was out in California and it was smooth and it was easy and I was broke. I had no possessions and I wasn’t stressed out at all. I was a little freaked out about am I going to be able to pay my rent this month, am I going to be able to feed myself and pay my rent. That was it. Am I going to meet a nice girl? That was all I thought about in those early days. And then oh, no, no, I’m a celebrity fitness trainer, okay, there’s more responsibility here. I’m still living in that same little apartment but now I can pay my bills, I can go on a ski trip. That was a great run. And then of course, I’m going to take some acting classes, and I’m going to do some other things and try that and then slowly but surely – like that frog in the frying pan analogy – where you got the frying pan going, it’s hot as heck, you throw a frog in there, bang, they understand that that is a very stressful situation, they jump out right away. But the rumor is, if you put a frog in there and turn the heat up very slowly, it just cooks itself, because it has no idea how much heat and pressure it’s on. And that was happening to me in 2017; Beachbody and I couldn’t come to an agreement. So here was this amazing journey and apparently it was coming to an end and I was mad. I was mad at them a lot and I’m still getting over it. But things have turned out really well since so I’m over it now. Then my client of 32 years, Tom Petty, passes away the same day some friends of mine were at that Vegas shooting. I just felt like, oh my god, I’m not going to work for Beachbody anymore, my client of 32 years is dead, friends of mine are in Vegas dodging bullets at a concert, like this world is friggin nuts. I just couldn’t deal with it very well. I was getting angry and I was short tempered and people were like, man, Horton. I go, do you understand what’s going on with me right here? I ended up with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, which is basically shingles in your brain. You can’t see it now but there were blisters inside my ear, I didn’t know what it was. At first I thought I was having a stroke. So with every passing hour, with every passing day, I didn’t know what was going on. The shingles were eating away at the nerves inside of my brain so my sight and my smell and my taste and my balance were getting destroyed. I could smell secondhand smoke that wasn’t there. I couldn’t taste anything. My vision was completely like this, I couldn’t look left and right without getting nauseous and I couldn’t walk in a straight line. I didn’t know what was going on. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…they tried, they couldn’t really put me back to get back together again because they said nerves are weird. I had Bell’s Palsy – which is a great look. Our senator, what’s her name up there, she’s got it, Justin Bieber has it. One in 100,000 people who get shingles get this, so lucky me, not a lot of folks do. Your face is paralyzed, you can’t walk, you can’t eat, you can’t work out, you can’t drive, you can’t do anything. All you do is lie in bed and hope that one day it all goes away – there’s no cure for it. There are certain things you can do for nausea but a lot of people who get Ramsay Hunt, they have Bell’s Palsy the rest of their life. Thank god mine went away after about a month. The only thing that got me through it was this book here, “Full Catastrophe Living” by Jon Kabat-Zinn – that’s a thick book, man, but I reference it all the time. You can even see here where there are some…couple pages there, let me go back to that. Because sometimes nerves don’t repair. For about three months – three months is a long time to be really, really, really, really sick – I was just miserable. I would just put my head in my wife’s lap and weep, 25 pounds, weak as a kitten. I tried to walk on a treadmill for a minute and I had to lay down for four hours after that, it was just too much, and I had to throw up immediately afterwards. It was hard. To that point, with all the fame and the fortune, like a lot of people in my situation who didn’t grow up that way, because there’s no handbook for it, I pissed away so much money early on, to me it was like, wow, and then I had to get a financial advisor and I had to invest my money. I couldn’t buy fancy cars, because what the hell do you need them for anyway? These are all early lessons, but with it came a lot of stress and strain. I have a lot of young friends right now, they’re like, man, your life must be a dream. No, no, it’s ten times harder than it was when I was broke. So get ready if that’s what you want. But then you go, oh, well, what do I do? Do I give it all up? Do I downsize? Some people do. I like my lifestyle, I just had to figure out a new way to be comfortable in it. So I meditate or do breath work every day, morning and night and that’s what brought me back around. Every window where I could exercise I would, where I felt like I could do something because I had the knowledge before I got sick, so that didn’t go away. That was my way to come back around again. And you know, here it is…that’s 6 years ago, holy cow, I still have little bouts once in a while if I’m tired, if I’m not hydrated, if I’m not getting the right nutrients, if there’s some stress that I’m not dealing with that comes out of nowhere, I can feel this kick in again. Where I go, uh oh.

Brian  

Are you able to switch gears when that happens? First of all, I can’t imagine that at all and I’m sorry that happened to you. It had to have been even more difficult for somebody like you, who not only is so active, so physically fit, and physically active, but also whose livelihood and career revolves around health and fitness. To be in that state even for a short time that had to be very difficult. When you mentioned the – I’ll call them episodes that happen – now are you able to recognize when that’s happening? (Tony: Yeah, oh yeah.) Taper and adjust? How do you respond to that?

Tony  

I can a little bit, sometimes, but on a one to ten scale, when I was sick, I was a 10, I was a 12. It was as difficult as anything anybody could go through and then it tapered off over the months and years to go from a ten to a seven, to a five and then in the 4 range, which is where I’ve lived for a couple of years. I can still function, but I couldn’t stand on one foot, I couldn’t get on my slack-line – I would fly right off of it, every time I did, it would just get worse again. It’s like vertigo, but it’s called bilateral vestibular hypofunction which has a lot to do with my proprioceptive skills which are diminished tremendously, like a 90 year old. When it happens, I’ll breathe or I’ll calm down or all lay down or I’ll drink a bunch of water, whatever it takes. It’s also an energy zapper. It’s also hooked up with the Epstein Barr Virus, which apparently I had. But I did a lot of blood work and I changed my diet tremendously and that has helped me. My inflammation in general is down in my gut and my joints. I don’t have knee pain anymore. I’m a vegan, which is amazing because I love meat, fish and chicken as much as anybody, I grew up on it. I’m not pious about it. I’m not myopic about it. I’m in Jackson Hole and oh, elk medallions, medium rare, I’ll take that, I’ll eat that or a wild salmon. Why would I turn that down? Shawna made some chicken about two weeks ago and it was just juicy and insane. And I had this vegan soup and what did I do, I chopped up the chicken and I put it in the vegan soup. So I don’t get all pious about it – not it’s just my way or the highway and everybody should be like me – that’s just ridiculous. But in general, to keep the inflammation down, to keep the vestibular issues down, the veganism and the meditation and breath work, dealing with my stress and letting things roll off my back more and keeping my expectations down from people who I used to just expect more out of. I’m just more chill than I think I’ve ever been but I still train like a maniac, like it’s the last day on earth.

Brian  

I was going to ask you about that because looking at you, you said you’re in your mid 60s, but it seems like you’re in the best shape of your life. I see what you’re doing, I read about what you’re doing and you’re very active, certainly seem to be more active than ever. How, in your mid 60s, are you able to sustain such a high level of fitness and health?

Tony  

I think it’s like learning how to read, I’ve just done it for so long. And the variety is still there, the consistency is still there, the curiosity is still there. I’m still working on those weaknesses as much as my strengths. Like we talked about getting out of that rut of doing the same things over and over again. This ninja course workout that I did yesterday, I couldn’t do that. Before I had the ninja course I couldn’t do that, before I had ropes in the backyard I couldn’t climb ropes. But the more you do, the better you get and I always do my best and forget the rest – these are silly, those expressions that I came up with but it worked for me and I apply it to everybody. My recovery process is much greater than it used to be, before it used to be just yoga, Epsom salt baths, naps and a decent night’s sleep. For most folks, that will cover it. Now I do cold plunges, hot saunas, compression blow up pants, foam rolling, all of it. At my age you’ve got to always be on that kind of thing and taking days off when I need them. Those options I told you about, like some days I say, I’m not doing it today. Either you feel it or you don’t feel it and like okay, I’m going to go for a walk tonight. No, I’m going to do nothing or I’ll go to bed earlier; the magic of sleep, people have no idea. Most people who think they’re insane are just sleep deprived. I mean, like people who say why is my life crazy? Because you didn’t sleep that extra hour that you needed. If you learn anything about the circadian cycle, what’s going on while you’re lying in that bed, like the rapid eye movement and the deep sleep and the cycles and how long they last and how important they are for your waking hours. It’s not like you go to bed and go, I can’t wait to get this thing over with so I can get up and kill myself again the next day. Right now I have a cold, I went to bed early, and I scheduled stuff then I slept in. I’ve been doing nine hour sleep nights and even with a cold I’m still energized, I’m not wiped out, I can still have this conversation with you. I still feel clear and sharp, as opposed to sometimes like, why am I not saying words good – because I’m tired, that’s why. Because I stayed up too late and I got up too early. That’s another thing that you can control, you can control that. You know that you can tell you when to go to bed, and you can tell you when to get up based on your work and everything the next day. That and water; everybody’s drinking soda pop still and Mountain Dew and too much booze. I haven’t had alcohol in 30 years, I don’t even know…that’s not even on the list. Our diet too, I think my diet, my vegan diet – and I have my own supplement line – I have my own that was custom made for me when I was coming out of my illness. There are ingredients in there that everybody can use, high doses of magnesium and Sunfiber and probiotics and prebiotics and HMB and high doses of vitamin D3 and servings of vegetables and all the things that we don’t get enough of, so we have all these ailments and issues and diseases. It’s grown out of the ground and I’ve just put a lot of it in powder form that you mix with water and drink in conjunction with my vegan diet. Every year to 15 months I used to have to go to this fancy orthopedic doctor and he would put these two little pipes in my knees and he would spin my blood and then he put that in my knees and they put in something called Synvisc or Orthovisc which is a lubricant – for ten years in a row. Then I went vegan – I haven’t been there in five years. I don’t know, inflammation will find places to go, so if you find methods in which to mitigate that…I don’t know. What’s weird is like, okay, I’m 65, but is the wheel is going to come off at 66 or 67? I hope not. So far, so good.

Brian  

You’ve packed so much information into this episode. I know our listeners and viewers really appreciate it. I think just about everything somebody needs is contained in the information that you’ve provided so I really appreciate that. Tony, looking back on your career and the impact you’ve had on the fitness industry, what legacy do you hope to leave behind?

Tony  

Well, my purpose has always been to try to help other people find theirs, through fitness and decent eating, and maybe supplements and mindfulness. Like my new program The Power of Four is about, it’s about diet, it’s about exercise, it’s about eating the right foods. It’s for things that I try to do on a regular basis that have allowed me to be who I still am and just helping more and more people get there. A lot of people have, I haven’t hit everybody yet, obviously. But I’d like to hit a couple of million more maybe. Because what exercise and a decent diet does is it gives you a much more interesting, fulfilling, happier life in the end. It’s not about your six pack or your abs – a little bit, I mean, I like those things too – but that’s not the main objective, the main objective is just to improve all aspects of your life, have that and be an example to others. I can’t tell you how many people who I’ve never met in my life, who have told me that they did it, then their dad did it or their friend did it and they never saw the infomercial, they’ve had that effect on the people around them. So that’s pretty cool. So that’s, I guess, that’s my legacy; helping other people find out who they really are if they’re healthy and they’re fit and they’re taking care of themselves.

Brian  

You’ve done that for millions of people already and I have no doubt that you’ll do it for many, many more people. Tony, thanks for being on the show today. This has been great. It’s great to see you again and I appreciate everything that you’ve shared today about how to live a fit, healthy and vital life.

Tony  

Thank you, Brian. Appreciate you having me. I really enjoyed myself. That was fun.

Brian  

Thanks for tuning into LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with P90X creator, Tony Horton, on social media and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.