Tony Horton

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their

good wolf Y, thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Tony Horton, the master behind the best selling fitness series P ninety x, P ninty X two, ten Minute Trainer and his latest thirty Minute Dynamo P ninety x three. He also has a brand new X series prequel called P ninety Tony is a world class motivational speaker and author of the top selling books Bring It, Crush It, and the incredibly motivating The Big Picture. Tony believes that real and lasting change can happen when we

commit to health is a lifestyle. And here's the interview with Tony Horton. Hi, Tony, Welcome to the show. Eric Pleasure, my man. I am excited to have you on. I appreciate you taking the time I have I have. I've jokingly talked before about having done your some of your workouts, and I've taken your name in vain a couple of times, but in the in the best of ways. As I've watched those workouts. Who wouldn't be the first, Eric, that's sure.

My ears are constantly ringing, I would imagine. So. Our show is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable of Two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred

and fear. And the grandson stops, and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well. I love that parable because it has a lot to do with some of the things that I used to struggle with when I was a wee lad. I used to feed all the wrong things, including my

stomach and um. I would feed my brain filled with with sadness and depression and anxiety and fear and uh, and I would use all the words that would really give those those types of things all the fuel it needed to sort of overwhelm me. Um. But obviously, the reason why I've been able to achieve the success that I have to this point is because at some point I was fortunate enough to find the right books and seminars and mentors to begin to feed feed the better

of the two. Um and uh. And now I just I just I just continue to make sure that I do that. And you know, the one thing is is that it's an ever changing world. Um. You know, my industry along with the other types of industries that help that help you help me grow and improve, whether it be social media or building website, or doing a YouTube

channel or a podcast, or or developing new programs. It's not like you can repeat the same techniques, practices and philosophies over and over and over again hoping they're gonna work out. You have to kind of constantly re educate yourself. So it's not like things haven't changed all that much.

The challenges are still there. It's just that I have to keep feeding, feeding the good wolf to be able to be able to get what I want to get out of life, so that there's more laughter and humor and patience and joy and altruism and happiness in my life. And and sometimes I think a lot of people who struggle, who are feeding the you know, feeding the negative, are really into some degree just don't have the right information yet. Now,

obviously some people can change easier than others. They get the intel and they're good to go and they just make that degrees shift. But others kind of need to hammer over the head or they need, you know, a different form of rhetoric um to be able to create the change that they want to change. Know, sometimes folks, you know, they need the tough love. Sometimes people need um more understanding and more patients and a more gentle approach.

And it really depends on the individual. So you know, it really comes down to what books, seminars, friends, family, co workers, and mentors, teachers and coaches you have in your life. And if you've got the kind that that resonate with you, that makes you feel good to help you learn better, then you're good to go. But if if you've got the wrong ones, then you're gonna really feel bad because you think, Wow, here are some people that are on some level I respect, but I'm not.

I'm not getting better. It feels like I what they're what they're saying makes sense, but it doesn't resonate with me.

And so that's that's the tricky part. Sometimes, you know, you can walk into a yoga class and you can hear all kinds of things about how great yoga is and how portant it is for balance and range emotion and inner peace and whatever, and you just get the wrong you walk into the wrong instructor and you get hurt or there there's nothing about it that seems like it should be yoga and it feels like something else, then chances are you never go to a yoga class again,

so you never get to have that great experience and so um. And then you know, most people would say forget it, I'm out, uh, and others would rarely say, oh, let me try to get in with somebody else, and let me try to get with somebody else, and and that's all important. So that that's what that means to me. I mean going to long winded answer, but it really does feel like if you you know, if you don't like the company you keep, it's time to it's time

to make new friends. People who are living large and taking charge and feeling good and exercising on a regular basis or eating great healthy food that have a sense of adventure, and you just got to search them out. And if they're not in your family, you don't have those kind of co workers, it feels aren't your friends. That's that's a big scary thing to do to start looking for new friends, especially when you're not in high school or college and you kind of settled into your lifestyle.

It's very difficult. But you know, if you don't like where you live, then you've got to you've got to make a change. And and that's what I did. I just started going. I just started signing up for things, and I started reading books that that I had heard

about that it helped people. And I started exercising, eating better, And so I created a chemical change, not only as physiological one, but also a mental and emotional change as a result of of new behaviors that were you know, pumping ran effer and dopamine, serotonin, brain derived neurotropic factor, all these things that I didn't even know existed, that were happening inside of my brain. That we're changing my outlook about life, my willingness to sort of open up

to new things, new adventures. And that's what exercise me maybing like different for me. Yeah, there you go. It's definitely. It's it's interesting how different people resonate with different things. And it certainly would be nice if it was as easy as UM, you know, all of us just had to hear one thing one time and make the change, But obviously it takes it takes more for certain people

at at different points. You've written a new called The Big Picture, Eleven Laws that will Change your life, and UM, this book is based on a lot of the work that you've done before, but it's a little bit broader than just a book about fitness. And you say that there's a physical and mental and emotional component of each of your eleven laws, but that it's a good idea to start with the physical and each of them. Why do you recommend that, Well, you know, it's it's one

of the things that we control, you know. I mean it's same thing with our with food, that we control those two things. We control what we what we do physically, and there's a lot of things that are outside of the control to create a lot of our problems, you know. And so if you're if you're physically out of shape and you're nutritionally in big trouble, then you're just making life more complicated for yourself and um, and you don't have to. So why not go after the things that

you can control? Why not go after the physical and so the crazy thing, it's purely based on the on the on the science behind physical movement and what it does to the human brain. John Rady wrote a great book called Spark, and uh, you know, a lot of this is just right out straight out of John's book, and uh, you know, he's a Harvard professor and he's done a lot of study about the effects of physical activity on the human brain and how it changes your

outlooks purely by moving. And you know you're gonna have to run a half marathon or do a mud run, or or you know, do a p n I d X chest and back routine or a pliometric routine. But you do need to do something for about twenty minutes with a relative amount of intensity, so you get your heart rate up to pump blocks and into your brain so you get the so you get the brain chemicals. That literally creates something called neurogenesis inside of the brain.

It's it's it's molecules and proteins kind of vibrating and finding themselveselves inside of your brain. It's it's what most of us do when we're trying to do a cheek version of that through drugs and alcohol. Drugs and alcohol will will change your state immediately. You know, you do a couple of shots of tequila and your personality is different. Your outlook is different, you're you're the way you perceive a moment is different. You feel like you just feel good.

You feel like you're having a good time, but then you know there's you're sort of loading dopamine into your head um and then the next day reveals a completely different situation. Right, there's always a there's always a downside of that kind of behavior, But there is no downside with the chemical uh barrage that you get from exercise. It's just a healthier, cleaner, more natural version of getting it.

You don't get it in the huge quantities, you get it in just the right quantity, so the next day you don't feel like, you know, you've been run over by a train. And and and so you know, every single law in the book work together, you know, and

they can they work individually. But really it's a collection of different things that I think that you that people could do um and follow so that the struggle is diminished and the pleasure factor goes up, and the scent of adventure goes up, and and your state of happiness goes up, and you know, it basically turns this is for me. This is the reason why I wrote them.

It turned a sea mined student with a speech impeditent and a very negative outlook on life into somebody who was the opposite of that, and it happened through a better diet and regular movement. Um. And I know I've been that this stuff for thirty five years and I still believe in that today. And I've heard some amazing feedback.

I got a note on my on my website from a young kid whose mother was an alcoholic and having some real issues, you know what I mean, just stuck to drink in and and I mean, I don't know what level. I don't know. She's a functioning alcoholic, but she apparently was not a good mother. And uh, it was kind of embarrassing for this kid to have a mom who was, you know, drunk a lot of the time. And she read the book and she just stopped drinking

and started exercising, and he has a completely different mother. Now. I mean I never met this woman, you know, I never met him. All I got was this email that says, your book saved my mother's life. She's a completely different person. She's a motivator, she's a teacher, she's a great company. She doesn't want to drink at all anymore. Didn't have to go through a didn't have to go through counseling, didn't have to do any of those things. She got

that from my book. Holy smokes. I mean, you know, I'm not here to endorse my book as a means for you to stop drinking and taking drugs. But if you follow what it is, drinking and taking drugs just don't fit into the into the lesson loss. It's just virtually impossible. So you can read it and then you can kind of break it down in your head and say, well, this makes sense. Now I have to figure out a way to sort of stop doing what I was doing and begin to do what Tony tells me to do,

because you know, he was in a bad way. You know, I wasn't an alcoholic. I mean I I drank a lot, you know, when I didn't know better, because that's what everybody else was doing in the seventies and early eighties, right, And then I just thought, this doesn't serve me anymore. I can't do these things and be the person I want to be. So I just stopped. I just stopped,

and I haven't ever looked back. I've never had any cravings for for drugs or alcohol of any kind because it's just it just goes against the grain of everything I believe in. And so if you believe and what's in the book. You believe in those eleven laws, then you begin to make those physical and nutrition physical and nutritional changes that will automatically change you, just will change your outlook. It's just those two, don't you know. Those

two worlds can't co exist. And now all speaking of the show, back to the interview with Tony Horton, Let's talk about a couple of the love and the laws. The first one will be familiar to anybody who has watched any of your videos, and it's one that I love. I think it's such a succinct and powerful statement, which is do your best and forget the rest. Yeah. I just like any kind of a statement that rhymes. I don't know why me too. Muhammad Ali, you know what

I mean? That was something he used to be pretty good at. Um. Yeah, I mean when you break that down, everybody knows they're supposed to do their best, but what prevents them from doing their best is the fact that they're thinking about everything else. You know, they're comparing themselves to the past, they comparing themselves to other people. Um Uh, they're just judging it and the rest is the judgment that you attach to whatever public speaking, you know, achieving

a certain amount of success during a sports event. Uh, you know, hoping that you can do it many pull ups and push ups as you could do ten years ago when you were exercising on a regular basis when you were in high school. You know, there's all this noise in our head that prevents us from doing our best. And so if you understand that your best, even if you're somebody is in great shape and eating right, changes on a daily basis. It changes daily, forget about weekly, monthly,

It just changes all the time. And there are things that are out of our out of our control. I mean, there might be a certain amount of stress that you're dealing with, that's the rest. There might be a certain lack of sleep as a result of you know whatever. Uh, you had too much to eating and now you're not sleeping. Well, that's something else that's going to affect it. Things like barametric pressure, temperature in the room, um, bio rhythms uh uh,

you know, getting over a cold. There's just so many other things that affect our ability to be able to perform on a very high level. Sometimes Lebron James scores forty five points. Sometimes he doesn't, you know. Sometimes he wins games and sometimes the outright loses loses, you know, and that's just the nature. The very best in the world have their good days in bad but they show up, you know what I mean. Then you get into one of the other laws when it's you know about consistency.

Consistency is another one, or having a plan that's another one. They all kind of work together so that you know you're achieving the main goal, which is just doing your best in the moment, not judging what's happening, and being okay with the outcome and coming back the next day. So let's talk about that that law consistency reigns supreme. Give me some give me some examples of what you're talking about there. The more you do, the better you get.

The more you do, the better you get. So if you if you're struggling with pull ups and and p ninet x or X three only has pull ups once or twice in the week in that cycle, then you have to be creative and you have to figure out when you can create other opportunities to work on your pull ups. And for me, it's handstands. I love trying to work on handstands. I really don't. I'm not able to hold them consistently, partly because I don't. I don't

work on them enough. There's handstands aren't aren't involved in two of them my weekly workout. So I have to find some side time in the morning at the end of the day just to get upside down and see how along I can hold three or four handstands. Now I'm not consistent with that, and so that's the reason why I'm not getting better. You've got to be consistent with your diet. You've got to be consistent with your sleep.

You've got to be consistent with with all the other things that you need to do in your life so that you can survive. I mean, it's funny. We're really consistent with the types of things, um that we know that we have to do so that we can be a normal human being in this country. So we get a certain amount of sleep, hopefully enough to be able to function the next day. And most of us are probably short on that, you know. And that's another chapter.

But and so that's one number two. Geez, I'd better go to work if I want to have stuff and I want to be able to eat and I want to have shelter, and I want to be able to go out once in a while and go to a movie or go to dinner. You know. So obviously a job is super important to have, but you know, eating, breathing, work, Uh, these are this is standard fair that everybody. Most people, obviously most folks who aren't in real trouble maybe would not being able to find a job, or somebody who's

homeless or something. We're talking about the average person who at least has a job and and can feed themselves and have a car or have a form of transportation. But most of those folks are in survival mode. They're just in pure survival mode. There really isn't the level of joy and enthusiasm and adventure in their life that they that I think a lot of them would like

to have. So if you're consistent and you're willing to work hard to get better, because consistency, If you if I'm working out three days a week, that's not consistency. Even if you think working three days a week every week, consistency is gonna consistently, it's going to do something, it's not. It means that if you're taking four days off and the four days away from exercise and good diet are gonna certainly win over the three days that are on.

So consistency is more days on and off. And I'm even talking more than four days a week, so I'm talking about five and six days a week. I plan workouts seven days a week. I have a workout planned out seven days a week, and I know I'm not gonna hit it all seven days. I'm gonna miss three or four sometimes five in the course of a month. But if I have seven planned, my odds go way up. And so that way I could be consistent, not only miss maybe one or two at the most during the

course of a week. And then that means I'm gonna get about twenty two days in at the end of the month. I can get my twenty two to twenty five days into exercise in the course of a thirty day month average. I'm gonna see gains, They're gonna feel good. I'm gonna stay flexible and get more flexible. I'm gonna stay strong, My endurance is going to be great, and

the years they're gonna are gonna keep clicking by. But that level of consistency without judgment doing your best and forgetting arrest, well, it means that you're going to improve, and most people after the mid twenties do the opposite of that. They don't improve. They start to go in to decline because they're not generating enough new muscles and cells and tissue and ligaments and you know, stimulating the

blood in the oxtin and through fitness. They're just they're just going to work and they're just driving their car and going to the movies and haven't dinner, and then they posture starts to get bad, and then you know, and then there's the arteries around their their hearts start to you know, fill up with cholesterol, and then they're

vulnerable in there. Who knows as early as their late thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and seventies to Alzheimer's and Parkinsons and cancer and heart attack and high pertension, diabetes and blah blah blah. And why is there a healthcare crisis in this country. It's not because the guns, shot wounds, broken bones and car accidents. It's because we do not move and we

do not eat right. That is plain and simple. That is the number one reason why there's a healthcare crisis, and the two things that we can control, how we move and what we eat, would fix it in half a year if everybody signed on. That's it. I'm over. I'm part of the problem. I'm gonna do what Tony says. I'm not going to judge it. I'm just gonna do my best and forget the rest. And for the first month, I'm gonna walk around the block because before i would

just sit in my button watch TV. And I'm also going to be consistent with that. I'm gonna do that, not once or twice a week. I'm gonna do some kind of movement five to seven days a week, and then all of a sudden the healthcare crisis goes away. Yep. That's a great point you make there, which is about that, um. You know, I'm going to start by by walking around the block because that consistency is so important. You know. I always say a little bit of something is better

than a lot of nothing. So it's better to do something, um, than to continue to do nothing. And what you're pointing at there is it's okay to start smaller, start easier. We don't all have to start at at the same point. What's important is to start absolutely right. I think what happens to a lot of people and the reason why their greatest intentions in the world try not to be

a failed attempt. It is because they get caught up in some sort of a trend or some something that fits beyond their ability on their physical um uh ability. And so you know, your friends are all doing a spinning class or a soul soul cycle class, and you get in there and you're ten minutes thing. You feel like your hearts canna burst. You weren't ready, you know, I mean, so what do you? So? You have two options a be discouraged and not do anything, or be

try something else, or try something else. And it's really that simple. And so everybody else is like, hey man, why are you doing a ten minute workout that doesn't work? Well, it's beaten the living crap out of the zero minute workout that I used to do before. You're right, A whole lot of a little is beat the crap out of a whole lot of nothing. And so your only job is to say yes to something, and if it

doesn't work, you say yes to something else. And that doesn't work, you say something, you say yes to something else and you just keep saying yes. I mean the fact that whatever you've tried maybe didn't resonate with you, was too hard, overwhelmed, you got you injured. That just means that you picked the wrong thing. It doesn't mean you're a failure. It doesn't mean you don't try again. I mean, that's just crazy. And that's that's all I'm

telling people to do. So I had P n I D X X two UM, and I also had tim and a trainer, and I have power and I have P ninety and I have power nine D. I mean, I've created enough programs. And let's say you're a Tony Horton fan and you like my stuff. It's not like you don't, not like you don't have options. You've got

tons of options. And so um, if walking around the block and maybe getting off the donuts just so I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna need everything except for the donuts thing that I'm hooked onto, you know, five or six a day, or maybe I'll go from five cups of coffee down to three. You know, these aren't massive changes, and we're not telling people that. You know, we need you to quit smoking, go vegan and do p nin d X six days a week for the next two years.

You know, we just we just overwhelm ourselves with techniques that are beyond us and we don't have to. I didn't start that way. I went to the Remember the first time I went to the gym when I was moved out to California, and I hadn't really been in the gym. I mean, I've played tennis and golf, and I skied and I and I would do push ups in my basement, but I didn't really know about all

these machines and all these classes. And I remember the first time going in there and just following somebody I you know, somebody I met, and he goes out righting through this routine and I went into the locker room and threw up because I didn't I didn't know his pace, I didn't know I couldn't lift his weight in here. I am. I'm lucky. I didn't, you know, tear the laborom in my shoulder or jack my lower back or something. I just I was working too fast and too furious

for the state of fitness I was in. And I went into the locker room and threw up, And so I was, you know, wise enough to come back and say, hey, let's not do that again. Let's can we slow things down and let's let's wait and and ease our way into it. And he was a cool guy and he said, yeah, sure, absolutely, I'm so sorry about that. And that's why when you look at my programs, there's there's three versions. There's three

gears that you can put your body through. There's you know, there's a extreme gear and the modified gear in the

one in between. And so if you're smart enough and you're not trying to compete with the people who've been through the program, you know, three times through test groups and are you know athletes and you just you know, you're a mother of four who's thirty five years old, hasn't worked out since high school, and you used to not use the modified version of whatever exercise I'm showing you. You're gonna be fine. You're not gonna go into your bathroom and throw up and you're gonna come back and

want to do it the next day. So yep, that's that, you know, forgetting the rest part is all that comparisitting around everybody else is how I should be. Just be mellow. I mean, I might at a conversation with my sister the other day. She said, yeah, I just can't run anymore.

I know, And I said, I know you're fifty, but you know, if you don't run consistently enough so that your body is used to the pounding, you know, you a you probably want to switch out your shoes because I know you're running the same shoes all the time. So just switch the shoes out, created a new cushion, try to keep off the sidewalk in the cement and run on run on grass, and go to a track and just don't run as far or as fast as

you used to. You can't compare you'll run today having not run in three years or consistently in the last three years, to how you and three years ago. It just it just doesn't make sense. You know. I'vemb We're running at the ful A track for on and off for a couple of years, and only just now two years in and my feeling like I've got the technique and the stride and the stamina and the endurance to be able to get through these track workouts without feeling

like both my hand strings are going to explode. It's just taking it slow and taking it easy and not comparing myself to everybody else who's there. I'm just doing my best forgetting my rent, forgetting the rest, and showing up to that track consistently without being attached to whatever

outcome I hope happens. That's just you know, I mean, you know, you know, if you've got some kind of belligerent coach who's screaming and yelling at you in the football team, you're gonna end up in one of three places. You're gonna end up on the first string, second string, or the special teams, not based on your on your on your fitness, or your athleticism, based on what the where the coach thinks you should go, based on your performance,

you know, during practice. And that why I end I ended up on the practice squad because my coaches, you know, they would find the best athletes, the best coach once prior to our arrival at the high school level. And you know, I just I just came in too late. I wasn't very big, I wasn't terribly athletic, and it's it's a miracle that I've made the team. I rarely I think I played five downs an entire season. Um,

it was a great lesson. For me, it taught me how not to train people, because that doesn't get the best out of people. That just categorizes folks based on you know, some arbitrary thing um. And and that's why I do it differently. That's why I wrote the book. What lesson? Do you think it has taken you the longest to learn in your life? Oh? This question, Gen, It's back not to freak out, not to freak out

about things. You know. I and my father's son, My father was God bless him, you know, he would he would really let things spin him around, you know what I mean. And I just need to let things move in in uh, in a very organic natural way, and be okay with the outcome. And I'm not talking about the physical so much that the fitness thing I have down, But I'm talking about building businesses, or dealing with with certain personalities, or being involved and maybe a project that

seems to sort of overwhelm me. Um, and just making sure that I'm prepared for things more. That's a less than. I still need to learn to be a better listener, to be more patient, and and to be okay with reality, you know. I mean, that's why that's in the book, Reality is that thing that's actually happening to you as opposed to your your convoluted perception of it, you know. And so what is actually happening you know, Well, what's happening right now? You and I are on a call

right Eric, and we're having a conversation. So it's up to me to just listen to the question, be as authentic and honest as I can be and uh and not trying to enhance it or perform or or being anything other than I am, you know. I mean, if you have my fitness DVDs, you know, I'm a bit of a fitness clown. I'm a little bit animated, but I have more than one gear, you know, I mean, I and in this conversation with you is a more serious one based on my experiences, my beliefs, and what's

in the book. And so UM, I think a lot of people are you know, there's the person that we are and the person that we want to be. Quite often, and it's very rare that the person that you are is the person that you want to be. And so the eleven laws that will change your life from the big picture are desig mind to um bring those two things together so that the person that you want to be, uh is the person that you are uh to everyone around you, you know, and instead of the smoke and

mirrors version of you. You know, I can't tell how many people that you look at them on the surface and you think, man, they really got their act together. But we get a little bit of investigation, you learn that, man, their life is chaos. They're out of control. Uh. It's going bad at work. Their relationship with their wife, her husband is bad. Their kids hate them. Um, they're eating and drinking in the ways they shouldn't be. There's no

exercise in their life whatsoever. Man, when you're on the surface, they seem great. So you know that they don't want to be that shadow version of themselves. They want to be the person uh you know that they've always wanted to be. They want to have their act together. They want to feel good. They want to they want to have, you know, some hobby that really inspires and excites them. They want to have a great relationship with their spouse.

They want to be able to relate to their kids on the level so that their kids are more of their friends and than than their enemy, you know, And eisier. Either's that all takes work, It all takes effort, It all takes uh, you know, re educating yourself. Um and quite often, you know, most of us just stop learning after high school and college and we take all these you know, thoughts that are aging. Our thoughts and concepts and philosophies are aging as quickly as our you know,

our our mind and our body. And you know, there's new phones out to keep your old wanting to figure out. You know, you can get a smartphone, you get to keep the foot phone, but flotphone is going to work for you very well, and you're not gonna be able to communicate and do the things everybody else is doing, um, you know. And so either buy the new phone and

figure it out, or you live in the past. And it's that way with diets, that way with exercises, that way with with everything you know and the world's evolving it. If you're not willing to evolve with it, then you are going to be at two extreme levels as to who you are, the person you are and when you want to be and will never come together unless you're going to learn you better, how to grow and how to change excellent well Tony, thanks so much for taking

the time to talk with us today. IVE really enjoyed the conversation and I enjoyed the new book, and I appreciate you being willing to do this again. Well, Eric, my pleasure. I know we had some technical difficulties, yes, but the first time we chatted, all my answers were wrong. Put them all up, no truth in any of them. Um, I would hide the kite. No, you're not kidding. That would have been fun. But now I don't think that was an interview. But no, I'm glad we're able to

redo it. And uh and I hope folks enjoy I enjoy talking with you. I like your questions. Quite often you get sort of the same, you know, ten questions all the time, and you had some really unique one make me think, you know, you keep me on my toes and that's a good thing. All right. Well, thanks so much, Tony, I appreciate it. Have a great afternoon too, Eric, Bye bye. M You can learn more about Tony Horton and this podcast at one you feed dot net slash Horton