The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #223 - Tony Horton

TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Avalon: Hi, friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I am about to have. So, the backstory on today's conversation I was reached out to probably about a month ago from the team for two really incredible people, Dr. Mindy Pelz, who should be coming on the show later, probably next year, actually, along with Tony Horton, who, I just told him this, but he is a legend of all legends, the creator of the whole world of P90X if people are familiar. So, I was approached by them because they have an incredible new program that came out in September of 2023 called PowerSync 60. And of course, I was an immediate yes, no questions asked for this interview. I'm just so honored. My personal history and story about this is, I was definitely in the P90X world. It was a very defining moment of my high school years. And then I even carried those DVDs with me to college and did them in my college dorm, now that I think about it.

So, [chuckles] I was really excited about this. And then on top of that, I read well, Tony, I guess now it's been about a decade, but I read your most recent book that you wrote, which was The Big Picture: 11 Laws That Will Change Your Life. And friends, oh, my goodness, I got so excited reading that book because it talks about so much that I feel very strongly about what it takes to actually achieve things in life, how to find happiness and what the concept of that even is, the role of fun in your life, the role of scheduling and planning, I really want to talk about that. So many things that really resonated with me. And I learned so much about Tony himself, his colorful, fascinating stories and backgrounds. So, there are so many different directions that I think today's conversation could go. But I am just so excited, so honored. Tony, thank you so much for being here.

Tony Horton: Thank you. It's an absolute pleasure. And I like the way you said my name there for a second. Tony Horton. I don't know, it was hear my name that way, but yeah, I'm excited. We've set some real nice time and here for this conversation. And I'm looking forward to your questions and being able to disseminate in such a way so that your audience might learn a thing or two about my journey and what I've learned, and a lot of it about the book, The Big Picture and everything else from way back in the old days. The old days with Power 90, P90X, and now where we are with Power Nation. So, it's been a fun and amazing ride, I can't believe it. Sometimes I pinch myself and I think, “This is your life. How did you manage?” But so far, so good. 

Melanie Avalon: I love that so much. Actually, there was a part in the book you talked about, is it the word satori, your satori moment that resonated with me so much and just this idea, and you just evoked it right now, this idea of life is fun, and [laughs] then the forever gratitude for that. 

Tony Horton: Well, it should be. If it's not, then you better check in and see what you need to change. 

Melanie Avalon: To that point though, checking in and something needing to change, because just like with professions and job and things that people do clearly-- and you talk about this in the book that you have your purpose, you found your purpose, you live through that. I feel like with me, I found my purpose, and I live with that. And there are so many people who either haven't found their purpose or feel like they know their purpose, but they have to do the job they're doing to make things work or so it seems. So how do you feel about that? Like people finding their purpose? And I mean, should people literally quit their jobs if it's not fun to them? 

Tony Horton: Well, you need to pay your bills, [chuckles] you need to eat, you need shelter. These are the basic things that we need to do to survive on planet Earth or here in the US of A. And then sometimes your job and your purpose are not aligned. And maybe especially right away when you're first starting out, you're coming out of high school or college and you're off in the world, and then, “Oh, I'm not with mom and dad anymore.” Maybe you are and you don't want to be. [laughs] It's like, “Time to move out, son. You're 36 years old.” So somewhere in there, your purpose initially, if you have a job that's kind of a grind, should be a hobby. It should be something that you also enjoy that maybe you don't make a whole lot of money doing. And there's a perfect example. I don't know if I write about it in the book, but there's a story of a gentleman who loved bikes, all things bikes, street bikes, mountain bikes, ebikes. You know, he was just one of these people, but he had a job as an accountant, and he provided for his family, and he had a wife and a couple of kids. But every Saturday and Sunday, he was over at the bike shop, always asking his wife for permission, “Hey, honey, do you mind before we go to dinner, can I run over Tommy's bike shop and just go, whatever?”

So, the manager happened to notice that this guy was at his store all the time and became friendly with not only the manager, but also other employees. The manager said, “You're here so damn much, you want to work here on a Saturday or Sunday.” And so, oh, my God, that would be such a thrill, still being the accountant, still going to work, still doing that. He went back to his wife and his wife was very cool and said, “Hey, man, you love it and you might as well go over there and make a buck instead of just kind of loitering around bothering other customers.” And so, he started working on either Saturday or Sundays. And anyway, long story short, five years later, he owned the place. So, his raison d’etre, his reason for being, another term maybe that is always fun to use in a sentence, came true based on the fact that he didn't try to open up a bike shop right away. He just became part of the culture and part of the environment. And then an opportunity came where he worked for Saturdays and Sundays and then he got a job as the manager of the bike shop and he had to take a pay cut because he wasn't making as much money. And then the job-- place became available and he went and got financing and he owned the place. 

Another example is my friend Bobby Stevenson. So, Melanie, you might know Bobby and some people listening. Bobby was in P90X Chest and Back. And so, Bobby was a young, struggling actor. And it's not an easy thing to do. Everybody comes from all around the country, sometimes around the world to come to this place called Hollywood to make it. It's not an easy thing. He had many different jobs. He co-owned a clothing store with his mother for a while and there he was, folding clothes in between auditions, which was a little bit boring and not very inspiring. Then he got to know this casting director. Actually, the casting director was the first woman that ever cast me in a commercial, just sort of ironically. And then he worked for her and then he managed the casting office, and now he runs the casting office. So, he's got the employees and he runs it. He made some real changes, got better monitors, got better cameras, and made like the executive lounge where all the producers and directors hang out. It really tricked it out. So now he's just busy Monday through Friday, more busy than the owner prior. And he watches actors come and go and he sees what works and what doesn't work. And then he puts himself on camera for a lot of these different jobs and he books them because he knows what they're looking for. Because he sees the other actors coming through. And so that's how it has to be initially. I mean, I came out to California, I wanted to be an actor, and I did a little bit of modeling and I did acting. 

Melanie Avalon: You did miming. 

Tony Horton: Did some miming. If you want acting. Yeah. Well, that's because I had to eat. So, I would go down to the Santa Monica Pier or into Westwood in UCLA and throw my hat down, make about $15, $20, and then go to the local liquor store and buy Cheerios and yogurt and live on that three meals a day, but whatever. I was in California, man, and we're here, and we're surfing bro, and it's totally red, and it's not Connecticut. It's not Rhode Island. And a lot of people come here and they just turn right around because it's not what they want. For me, it was the antithesis of where I was, you know, the New Jersey, Connecticut, New York tri-state area. I still love going back, and I have still a lot of friends there, but that's just not my vibe anymore. I love it out here. So yeah, that was it. I was a handyman and I was a carpenter, I was a waiter, I was a bartender, I was a dishwasher. I had every job under the sun. Didn't really make much of a living as an actor. What was my purpose then? Survival.

And for a lot of people who are listening, their purpose right now is survival. So, get a hobby. My hobby happened to be going to the gym and meeting cool people that were exercising. And I wasn't making a penny doing it, but I really liked the way it made me feel. I liked the way it made me look. I met other cool people where I didn't have to go to a bar or a club at night to try to meet folks who were stoned or high. I was meeting people who were serious about their health and their wellness and their fitness. And then I started training my boss when I had a job as a PA, a production assistant, so basically a gopher. And I was all over town and I was whatever. I was feeding the cat and picking up scripts and making the coffee and doing whatever a PA would do. And at that time, my agent was telling, “Hey, you got to get in shape, because if you want to work in this town, you're looking a is little--" This is almost about a year after I came out and I was in survival mode, and I wasn't really exercising at all. I was just playing some hoop or something. 

And then I just said, “All right, I have an agent.” Oh, my God. I mean, people who go on Johnny Carson have agents. And if you Google Johnny Carson, he's sort of like the Jimmy Fallon of the 70s. My boss, Harlan Goodman was his name, still is said, “Jeez, can you help me?” And so, Harlan and I would use to work out before we both went to work over at 20th Century Fox, over at that lot. And then I helped him lose about 35, 40 pounds and he was walking through the hallway of East End Management one day, and Tom Petty was walking down the hall, and he looked at Harlan, and he known Harlan a whole time. This is my Tom Petty. Thank you very much. I'm here all week. And Tom said, “Holy crap. Harlan, you look fantastic.” And I'm going on tour and I'm fat. Nobody likes a fat rocker, man. Tom Petty called me up. My roommate picked up the phone. My roommate Bob said somebody pretending to be Tom Petty. I said, “Hang up the phone.” He did, oops. And then Tom called back and said, “Hey, I think we got disconnected.” And Bob said, “This sounds like the real Tom Petty.” And so, I grabbed the phone, I talked to him. He said, “Hey, Harlan Goodman gave me your phone number and I was at Tom's the next day and I trained him for four months before his first tour.” 

And now all of a sudden, I'm a trainer, ooh. But I was still a carpenter, and I was still going to Vegas and doing these little funny shows, and I was a go-go dancer at Chippendale's for four months. I mean, I had every crazy gig you can imagine. But this training thing was really fun. And I still was auditioning and trying to get parts in movies and different things and still modeling here and there a little bit because I had the bod at that point. And then from Tom Petty, became Billy Idol, became Bruce Springsteen. Annie Lennox from Eurythmics, Stephen Stills from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I mean, there was a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, when everybody was in town, I'd wake up, I'd train a couple of clients at the crack of dawn in the dark, and then I'd go to Billy's house. Then from Billy's house, I'd go Tom Petty's house, from Tom Petty's house, I'd go to Annie Lennox's house. From Annie Lennox's, I'd go to Stephen Stills's house. And then after Stephen’s, I would train either Bruce Springsteen or his wife, Patti Scialfa. Not a bad gig, but I was still broke, [chuckles] my car would break down because I was driving all over the city. And I don't know if any of that answers your question, Melanie, but just kept going, sorry.

Melanie Avalon: No, I love it. Fun fact, I went to USC film and theater school and did the whole acting thing and all of that, so I feel you with everything. Do you still have the server nightmares? Because I still get those.

Tony Horton: The what nightmares? 

Melanie Avalon: Like the waiter nightmares.

Tony Horton: Oh, my God. Well, I don't have the waiter nightmares. I have the on stage or in a movie where I don't know my lines. I don't know my lines. It's funny because I did a movie this summer, this past summer, which I think is coming out in a month or less. I don't know. And it was the first time. I mean, I had little parts in little TV shows and little commercials where I had a line, I had monologues, and I was throughout the entire movie. [chuckles] Oh, my God, and I had nightmares of that forgetting my lines while the night before I had to get up and do these big scenes. But then somehow my synapse has clicked in, and I was able to pull it off. I haven't seen it yet. I did some ADR. People don't know what ADR is, it's when you go in there and you have to because the sound was sketchy or something or the wind was blowing or the microphone was crackling or something, you have to go into a studio and you have to match exactly what you said on screen in a voiceover booth and, like, one line, which is, “Hey, man, come on over here.” You have to do it like, “Hey, man, come on over here,” like, 30 times till it's right. And I saw the little pieces of the movie and I looked at it. I went, “Argh, yeah, you didn't suck, so that's good.” We'll see how it turns out though. 

Melanie Avalon: It's so funny. I've done it as well and it's way harder. You're like, “Oh, this is going to be easy.” I just say it like I said it, but it doesn't match. It does not match. [laughs] So funny. One of my good friends who was also an actress was in a lot of your videos. I asked her before--

Tony Horton: Yeah.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, Christie Seibert and she said she was in-- I'd have to check what she was in exactly. 

Tony Horton: That's a long time ago. I think we're talking Power 90 know.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, yeah. It was, yeah [laughs] it was a while ago. 

Tony Horton: I remember her. Yeah. Hopefully that wasn't rude or mean or anything hopefully. 

Melanie Avalon: No, no, no. She said, “You're like, the nicest, kindest, most amazing person and super fit.” And I was like, “That is the vibe I am getting from all the podcasts I listen to with him and all the things. And now here we are. 

Tony Horton: You can thank my mother. It's all my mother's handiwork mostly. And now my wife, my wife keeps me. I've gotten out of control and got that foot stomp under the table at a dinner. Okay. Yeah, right now I got a little bit too intense here.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, my goodness. Okay. So actually well, a question from all of that. So, at the time that you wrote the book, The Big Picture, well, A, you said that your purpose has changed throughout your life, and at the time of that writing, your purpose was to help other people find their purpose. I'm wondering is that still your purpose or has it evolved? 

Tony Horton: Well, it is. It's funny. And the one thing too that I think is important for your listeners is that you get to have more than one purpose. You don't have to have just one purpose. I think if you become too myopic about it sometimes and the thing that you're pursuing, whatever it is, whatever your raison d’etre is, the way you make money or your hobby, whatever it is, if it becomes just one thing, then sometimes you can get a little narrow minded and you'll often find yourself getting a little bit frustrated. I remember when I was an actor in acting classes, my acting teacher who was one of the most influential people in my life. His name was Darryl Hickman. Darryl Hickman was a child actor in the movie The Grapes of Wrath, think about that. So, I was in his class in the 80s and maybe early 90s, and he said, “I know you're all in here because you want to be actors and you love acting, and maybe you're in here for different reasons. If you're in here to be famous, well, that’s probably should be at the bottom of the rung, the bottom of the ladder. If you're here because you absolutely love it and it just lights your fire, then that's awesome.”

But truth be told, umm, the majority of you won't make a living doing this. It just isn't a thing, won't happen. You know what I mean? Maybe you'll get a commercial here and there, you get a small part, but you'll probably have to have another gig or another reason for being, another purpose. The short answer is yeah, because I'm on Tonal now. I have my own supplement line now called Power Life, and I was in Fargo about a month ago doing a keynote speech for some doctors there. And then I was also in Tampa, Florida, doing the same thing for about 500 in the room and about 800 online doctors there. I don't know why the doctors want to hear from me and I leave for Salt Lake City to do the same thing. It's more of an inspirational event for people who are just trying to find their reason for being, their purpose. 

So, yeah, 80% of what I do is to really help people understand that if you exercise regularly, regardless of what it is, and you're not trying to kill yourself, and you understand that all you have to do is your best and forget the rest. And if you eat healthier food and get away from the garbage, less fat, sugar, salt and chemicals, and more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean proteins, then you're building the foundation to have the purpose that you want. But if you're drunk a lot and you're way overweight, which means you're probably overwhelmed, you have such gross hormonal and chemical imbalances inside of your body due to lack of movement and poor diet, well, then your purpose is going to be 10 times harder to pursue. Because the one thing about exercise and I talk about this in the book and I talk about it every time I talk to anybody is you release norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, brain-derived neurotropic factor along with a host of other brain chemicals that get released in the proper way through physical movement because you're using oxygen.

Oxygenating the blood in your body and your lungs and your heart and your brain so that everything just works better. And you're not in your own way at that point. You can be more creative, you can be more thoughtful, you can be more patient. Not only you could be, but you would be because of the chemical releases inside of your head. It's miracle growth for the brain. And yeah, sure, you're going to function better, you're going to move better, you're going to age better. There're all these other things that happen and you're not going to look different in the first day of the workout. You might not even look different for the first 60 days of your workout, but what's happening to your mental and emotional state, which is really the operating systems that you need to be a functioning, happy, productive human being. What's the percentage of people who make a living standing there looking cute? Models, bodybuilders, that's it, that's it. [chuckles] 

The rest of us, we have to be making something or doing something or inspiring somebody. So, my purpose is to help other people use health and wellness and fitness and exercise and yoga and Pilates and martial arts and all of it, that variety thing. We'll maybe get a chance to talk about the variety thing and why variety works better than-- I mean, I have a good friend of mine, she's been on her Peloton religiously five days a week. Not much change because she's going round and round and round again expecting a different result from going round and round and round again. Now, her heart and lung wellness is good. She's building some strength in her legs, but it's is this, she doesn't look a whole lot different than she did when she started. So that's another category. But my purpose has shifted a little bit to more as Elmer Fudd would say, “More west and wewaxation.” I told my wife, I told Shawna, I said, “Hey, by the way, I just want you to know I'm semi-retired as of like 10 minutes ago.” She said, “Oh, that's funny. I just thought you were being lazy.” [chuckles] Yeah, call it what you want, but yeah, I just turned 65 and I can still ski. Like I'm-- well, I can ski better now than I could when I was in my 20s, 30s, 40s and even some of my 50s because I work at being pretty good at it.

But I can go through Ninja courses and pegboards and climb 20-foot ropes upside down and do all these things that I don't think too many people my age can do because I love it, I enjoy it. Well, I don't know if I love it, but I love what it does for me. I love what it provides for me, as opposed to what I used to do is just go to the gym and lift some weights and get on the stationary bike for 45 minutes, which is what a lot of people are still doing. When a 50 plus year old person says, “How do I get more size?” I go, “What do you mean?” Like in my chest and my arms? I go, “Why do you need more size?” You're a grandfather. You're going to play, like, senior rugby. What are you doing? People are doing too many of the wrong things for the wrong reasons, when you should just really focus on maybe your flexibility and maybe your body's able to move well quicker or your balance. 

My friend Tracy Hennessy, who was in the original P90X test group, I ran into her in the pharmacy today, and she said, “Oh, yeah, how are you? My mom fell and broke her hip.” Yeah, she doesn't really work out, she's overweight, and now she's in the ICU. I hear that story like, three times a week, so I'm trying to avoid that. My purpose is to help other people obviously live longer, but have the quality of their life improve and then be able to go find their purpose. You know maybe if it's not their job. Oh, what's my purpose? I have enough money. I can go travel. So, when you go to Rome, are you going to see the Appian Way on your bike with a tour guide for four and a half hours or are you going to look at it out your window and take a picture of it? Well, if you're fit and you're healthy and you're agile and you're working on all the right things, then you get to be exactly where Caesar was, all right. You get to stand where he was and get on the Appian Way and do it. Or you take a picture from your car because you didn't take care of yourself. Two different experiences. Both get to go to Italy though, which is cool anyway.

Yeah. My purpose, 90% is doing what I'm doing. 10% is, “Oh, when's the next ski trip?” [chuckles] When are we going to Paris again? Oh, wait. Let's go to Jackson Hole. Yeah, I mean, I'll probably keep doing this until well into my 70s, but it'll become 90:10, 80:20, 50:50, 25:75, where I'm 75% of the time. Where is Tony now? I think he's in Hawaii. Where is he now? I think he's in Santiago, Chile. Where is he now? I love seeing the planet. I was at an event with these doctors and I said, “Raise your hand. You're all docs, you're all doing pretty well. You're here at this fancy convention, so that had to cost you a few bucks.” One of the 11 laws, obviously, is the three R's recharge, relax and recover. Not in that order, but-- “How many people travel a lot?” Maybe three quarters of the hands went in the air. And I said, “What about the rest of you?” Well, yeah, I go, “Wait, wait raise your hand up if you don't have a passport, don't have one.” And not a single hand went up. And I went, “I'll wait for the rest of you to tell the truth.” I'll turn this car around, unless you-- and then about 25 hands went in the air. And there's this one guy, “What's your name?” Zach. Zach, so, you've never been Tokyo, you've never been to Paris, you've never been to London? You've never been to all the places that I know and where I've been. I go, “Zach, stand up. Zach, stand up right now.” He's like, there're 500 doctors in the room, and he's one of them. Repeat after me I, Zach, fill in the last name, will go and get my passport before the end of November. No, I didn't hear you. Zach, say it again. We'll see if Zach went and got that passport. 

Melanie Avalon: Getting your passport is not an easy process I will say.

Tony Horton: It’s not easy to eat. It's not easy to have your purpose. Look, I'm a C minus student with a speech impediment who hated being uncomfortable, had the lowest pain threshold of any person in the world, loved to sleep in, loved to smoke weed, loved to drink beer, had some stint or two with other drugs that would have probably put me in jail if I was caught. And then my agent said, “You look like crap. Go exercise.” And then when I started exercising, I went, “I'm not going to do that.” Like I went, “I don't want to drink anymore.” I do have a hit once in a while on a joint, but very rarely. I told Shawna, “How many times we got high last year.” She said, “Twice.” I went, “Oh, yeah.” So, whatever. I find other ways to relax. I really do or other ways to sort of really be in the moment.

The one thing about an outside source, coffee even or whatever drug you're using or whatever pleasure you're into, it leads-- quite often, not always, it leads to a lot of short-term problems-- I'm sorry, long-term problems. How long does it actually take to work out and get results? 45 minutes, maybe you can go an hour and 15 minutes. You got another 23 hours to go live an amazing life because of the 1 hour where you did the right thing. 

Now, eating is different. You sit down and you eat. For some people, that's three to five times a day. So, it's a constant, never-ending battle of decisions that happen 365. But you either do those hard things or you don't live a subpar life, because most people are surviving just fine. A lot of people aren't like, you look at what's going on in the Middle East. I mean, it's like surviving is the hardest thing they do. For the rest of us, we got all these modern conveniences and we're still treating ourselves like shit. Like, “Oh, my God, man.” And TikTok, 25-year-olds are going to be 55 and then they're going to be gone. And it happens in a blink of an eye. And I understand that as a 65-year-old, so I don't have the time to screw up.

Like what's your cheat meal. I said, “I don't have cheat meals, I have cheat morsels,” [chuckles] a cheat morsel, like an entire meal where I eat a bunch of garbage and I feel like crap afterward and then I ugh, then I feel guilty. I don't want to feel like crap. I don't want to feel guilty. And I don't need the short-term pleasure for the headaches that it causes. Am I a robot? I don't know. Some people think so. But this comes from a guy who used to-- I would eat three bowls of Cocoa Krispies and put sugar on them in the morning and I would have fluffernuter sandwiches on Wonder Bread and Fritos and a Twinkie and a Devil Dog and an ice cream sandwich and chocolate milk for lunch. And I was eating poorly into my mid 20s and I realized, “Oh, I got to make that shift too. If I'm going to make the fitness shift, I have to make the dietary shift.” And now, oh, figure out how to make healthy food taste good. Get a spice rack, you're done. It's not that hard. Man did I go off there, Melanie? 

Melanie Avalon: [chuckles] No. I love it. No, I mean it's literally, theme not literally, that's one of my pet peeves because that word is often misused. Very few things are actually literally. 

Tony Horton: I abused that word quite a bit as well and a friend of mine, “Was it literal, Tony?” Was it my friend-- [crosstalk]

Melanie Avalon: It was actually. [laughs] I get excited when I actually get to literally use it literally but.

Tony Horton: Awww. I think you might have there. I don't know. 

Melanie Avalon: I think I just did. [chuckles] 

Tony Horton: You have to have the linguistic people, check you out.

Melanie Avalon: Well to not use that word. This show with biohacking, I mean, it really is about everything that you just encapsulated, which is doing the things so that you can turn your body into the vessel that it can carry you through the world and then you can do what you want to do. So, I'm all about it. I have a lot of questions from what you just said. One just a rapid-fire question. Would you want to live forever? 

Tony Horton: Hell, yeah. 

Melanie Avalon: Okay. I knew you were going to say that. I ask everybody that and people never say yes. And I wait for people to say yes. I knew you were going to say yes. 

Tony Horton: I'm your guy. I love it here. Can you imagine if I could heli-ski all the time for 10,000 years. I mean, that's enough. That’s enough for me. What if I could pet my dog Charlie, who is just this sweetest, most precious, wonderful little dog. I mean, I had dogs growing up and then I didn't have them out here because I thought they were a pain in the ass and they would pee and poop and I didn't have the time because I was a selfish single guy. I was selfish and single into my mid 50s and that worked for me. Then I met a gal that I courted for six years and she finally said, “You're going to put the ring on me or what?” I went on, “I don't think I can do better than you. So yeah.” And then she brought her dog. I'm like, “You're going to bring your dog?” Yeah, “What am I going to do, sell it? Of course, I'm going to bring my dog.” Okay, and now we have three.

Like, wow, I can evolve, I love learning and I love growing and I love making mistakes and I love falling down and I love the effort. I love the journey that's required to get back up and see if I can improve on things because I used to be the, “Oh, can't do that, quit, can't do that, quit.” I used to say, “Oh, I can.” And then one of the things I say in P90X is I presently struggle with, which is, okay, but now I just say I can't yet and for most things it turns out that way. I can't play professional football ever. [chuckles] That I can say, that's true, it's not going to happen. I can't play for the LA Lakers, I understand that.

There're a lot of things like heli-skiing. I was scared to death. I thought for sure I was going to die landing in the helicopter in an avalanche. So, did the helicopter kill me or did the avalanche kill me? I don't know which. And then finally, after just getting tired of being so timid about it, my friend Dan Egan said, “Just come on this trip, you're going to be fine.” And I had skied with him for years and I trusted him. And you go through the helicopter crash protocol and the avalanche recovery protocol and that's in the morning, which takes about 3 hours and you just go, “Oh, my God, what am I doing here?” And that helicopter takes off and it lands and you put on your skis and you're floating on a cloud for 3000 feet and then it picks you up and repeats that over and over again with brand new fresh snow and you go, “Oooh, I get it now, what was I thinking.” [chuckles] 

So, it's all about exploration and curiosity and it takes about 10,000 years to be able to do all that. And by the way, if you're overweight and you're not well because of the food you're putting in your mouth and the dependency on all these meds that you probably don't need, then you're suffering from pain and fatigue almost every day for most of your life. And I do a whole seminar just on pain and fatigue and how to mitigate that or bring it down to zero. And there's foam rollers and there's theraguns and there's infrared saunas and there's cold plunges and there's all these devices and things that people are like, “Well, okay, I'm committed to my diet, and I'm working out for 45 minutes to an hour five to six days a week. Now I have to buy all this stuff.” And my answer is, yeah, maybe you need it if you can, A, afford it, and B, have the time for it. 

But maybe you should just drink less alcohol or none. That takes the inflammation way down. Because all this is anti-inflammatory stuff. Not only in your body and your joints and your bones, but in your brain. And if you want your brain and your body to function well, then you might want to cut out the hooch. You might want to drink more water, you might want to eat more plants, and you might want to get better quality sleep. And that is all very affordable and very doable, because you kind of do those things anyway. And then, like with me, I got the infrared sauna. I don't go in it because I don't need it. I got the cold plunge. I rarely go in it because I don't need it. I got the theragun, which I only use once in a while. The foam rolling has been beneficial, but I'm knocking on wood now, Melanie. In general, when I changed my diet, my knee and shoulder pain went away, ah, weird. So, a lot of it is just what you put in your gob and when you put better food in your gob and you take it-- I mean, I have my own supplement line that I created for myself based on what I needed because of the things I was going through after I was sick in 2017 with Ramsay Hunt syndrome and then later bilateral vestibular hypofunction. 

And then, yeah, the other day I had a shoulder thing, so I did the foam roller and it went away, and I drank more water that afternoon. I'm no anomaly. I'm not built out of anything special. I'm actually kind of a fragile little bunny man. I'm a bunny man, a fragile bunny man. But I do all the other things that I never used to do as a kid or in my teens or in my 20s or 30s. And a lot of it's just common sense. And you got a lot of that out of the book. Do your best, forget the rest, find your purpose, have a plan, variety is the spice of everything, consistency reigns supreme, crank up the intensity, love it or leave it, get real. These are all the chapters from the book and it's based on experiential stuff. If I do these 11 things along with the other 25 that I've learned since, will I live forever? I don't know, Melanie, but I'm shooting for 109. What about you? 

Melanie Avalon: I'm down. 

Tony Horton: You down for living forever. 

Melanie Avalon: Hm-hmm.

Tony Horton: But the only thing is you live forever, you see as many horrible things as you do wonderful things or wonderful things you experience. But the longer you live and if you're doing the right thing and you found your purpose and you make a decent living doing it, well, then maybe you get to like-- I have a ton-- You can't see him behind me. But I have a ton of personal development books, a lot of adventure books, a lot of mountain-climbing books and things like that, but a lot of personal development. And I've discovered that all the personal development stops being personal after a while. It should be. If you're following the rules of the road whether they're spiritual personal development or financial personal development or relationship personal development, whatever it is, then it ain't about you, nomo, uh-huh. It's about helping other people find their purpose.

And you're doing that with this, with your podcast, having me on and having others on and having us disseminate what we know so that other people will listen and hopefully begin to apply these techniques. Because again, I've stated it before, there's no way I should have turned out like this. My friends, when I was in my 40s, early 40s, “Oh, Horton, man. I don't know, man. He still lives in that apartment. He's been in that apartment for 21 and a half years. He's driving that crappy old car.” All my friends were in homes, bought their own homes, found wives, had kids. And I was still in that apartment, but to me, I was like, “Haa” and it would bother me. I'd get kind of depressed about it, thinking like, “When am I going to get my break?” And all that acting, the Darryl Hickman acting classes and the Ivor Francis acting classes and the what's his name? Brian Reise acting classes and the two years of doing standup comedy poorly and then being with Second City LA while they were here for a short time. I was just building the foundation of the guy that I could be on camera to help people exercise. Because most trainers, they're pretty good. They got their degrees in exercise science and kinesiology. But exercise is hard and it's painful, and it requires a time commitment, and there's a lot of trepidation about it and a lot of anxiety about it. And then you get a trainer who's really kind of just bland [snores] I'm out. So, I found a different way. 

Melanie Avalon: I've been so grateful because, like I said, like you, I was doing the-- well, film and theater and all of that, and I'm just so grateful that the timing of my life aligned with the really-- because I've been podcasting for about six years now. It just lined up so well that I was able to take agency and create my own content and build my own “brand.” But most importantly, what you just said, I get to just learn and talk to these amazing, incredible people that I would want to talk to and learn about and then share it with so many people. I'm really, really grateful for it. 

Tony Horton: It's awesome. I mean, congrats. It's just a phenomenal thing you're doing. 

Melanie Avalon: And the question I have for you from that, I feel like the timing of things with you because with all of the P90 stuff it was during this time when well, actually-- wait, so when you launched it, what year did you launch that?

Tony Horton: 2004. I think it was 2004. 

Melanie Avalon: Okay. Yeah. So that's basically when I was doing it. So, it was the creme de la creme time. 

Tony Horton: You were in elementary school. Where were you? 

Melanie Avalon: Middle school, yeah. [laughs]

Tony Horton: You were in college. And I was 46 years old when I did that program, which is--

Melanie Avalon: You look younger than 46 now. That blows my mind. 

Tony Horton: Yeah, there’s a little genetics in there. It's just walking the walk, man. I saw an old friend of mine I hadn't seen, I'm not even going to say male or female because they might be listening, but it was a shocker. It was a shocker to see this person was very together and quite attractive and a lot of hardship. Life is hard sometimes, but whenever I had a tough time, when one of my parents passed away or something really horrible happened to me I just-- like COVID, for example, when COVID hit, I trained harder. I didn't miss any days. I was cleaner. Hey, things are going really south here. So, then what am I going to do? Abuse myself and make it worse like this is common sense says no. I was on Sanjay Gupta's podcast and he said his wife came up with different categories. There were hunks, chunks, monks and drunks. And I went, “Well, yeah, the drunks, oh, oh COVID, I'm going to drink myself to death. Oh, I'm going to eat myself to death.” Those were the chunks. And the monks, they never left the house. They had their mask on in bed, they were just totally paranoid. And the hunks were the ones that did the opposite of everybody else. And he labeled me a hunk, so that was cool. And I said, “As long as you didn't call me a punk.” He went, “Oh, why? What's punk?” People who think COVID is a common cold, those are punks. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, my goodness, that's so amazing. Well, question, I have so many questions from that. I'm wondering, okay, so, yeah, what I was going to say about the 2004. So that was like the perfect time because that was like the time of the DVDs and people could-- because I had the DVDs and I put them in and I would do it and then rinse and repeat. And that worked really well. Now we're in a time of overwhelming content all the time and Instagram and TikTok and all of that. And it's that confabulated with the health at every size movement and all of that. So, I'm curious, and I'm sure you've had this question a lot, but if it was you then, but now, do you think it would have looked really different? And I know you're making new programs because we'll definitely need to talk about your new program. But I'm just wondering, what do you think about the world now with all of the content and especially the health at every size and almost like this anti-fitness movement in a way, because we need to accept ourselves is the messaging. 

Tony Horton: I was going to try to do a joke and give you, like, a two-word answer. Here's my joke answer. I do the same thing and all the competition is terrible and healthy at every size is stupid but that's not nuanced at all. And we live in a nuanced, very multi gray world. So, there would be things that I would change about P90X, but we would have had other avenues in which to get it out to the world. P90X was king for quite some time. It didn't compete with anything. So, there were aerobics workouts and martial arts workouts and there were, like, bodybuilding workouts. But my thing was the whole muscle confusion thing. It's like, of course, Arnold comes on and says, “I'll do my Arnold. There's no such thing as muscle confusion. It's stupid doesn't work.” I go, “Yeah, because it's a made-up term.” We made it up. We made it up because Billy Idol, when I trained Billy Idol, used to call me muscle Confucius. That was his thing. And so, the CEO of Beachbody went, “Oh, that's funny. Why don't we just call it muscle confusion?” Because that's kind of what it is. Even though it's not a real thing. We're just keeping people from plateauing by stimulating different body parts in different ways so that they're avoiding the boredom, injuries and plateaus that comes from doing just the elliptical over and over again. 

You can do yoga. Yoga is amazing because it is balance and strength and flexibility and mindfulness all at once. But don't plan on being able to run faster. Don't think you're going to get up a mountain on your bike very well. Don't think you're going to be able to pull yourself over a wall or do a push-up or a pull-up. Ain't going to happen. So, my whole idea was to make sure we gave-- I would have had 24 workouts, which is what I have in the Power of 4, a brand-new program on Power Nation. It's 24, which I figured like that's enough. That way we can create multiple calendars and multiple sequences. And the weird thing is that people were doing P90X.

This event that I did in Tampa last week. I've been doing P90X since it came out in 2004, but I've done it 37 times. Really? You should stop, you should stop that, you should stop that. You look great. But oh, my God. I mean, how many times can you hear me say back up like a pterodactyl, gah, I mean, come on, how many times you want to hear Phil say or me having you say, “Don't smash your face or whatever?” I mean, I don't know. They fall into these patterns and I still get residuals, so I guess that's okay. But I think the idea here is and the reason why I would probably take about eight moves out of P90X that I think could be injurious. Is that a word injurious? for certain people. Like the dive bomber push-ups, those aren't ideal for a lot of people who have shoulder mobility issues and a couple of others. But the variety thing, which still like where's the program out now? Show me the program out now that has martial arts and has Pilates and has [00:42:05 [unintelligible] and shoulders and arms and back and chest and legs and plyo. They all stick to their guns and do their one thing and then the boredoms and the injuries and the plateaus kick in. 

There're a lot of people who graduated from insanity, which blew out a bunch of knees because it was legs every day, which is like, okay, whatever. It was great for some people. Some people got the best shape of their lives because they were in their 20s and they were athletes. Everybody else was like, “Holy smokes.” Same thing with P90X. If you pushed too hard and you lifted too heavy and you did too many reps and you weren't listening to your body, you got hurt doing that too. And they would graduate from those two programs and go on to CrossFit and other super competitive. Now, there's nothing with CrossFit. I've done CrossFit classes and had an absolute blast and really pushed the envelope. But I'm in this business, so I knew where to back down, I knew where to back off. I went to a guy who wanted me to do get-ups with 80-pound sandbags and I did one round of it and I went, “Yeah, I'm going to 40s, dude.” But apparently nobody used to talk back at this coach and I did because I didn't care. I cared more about my getting out of there unscathed and everybody else was in there, didn't care how badly this guy beat them up. 

So, ask for what you need. Don't be pushed into something that could hurt you. And a lot of people just have to speak up and they don't, so that would stay the same. But as far as how the industry has changed, I think if it's working, if you're tracking what's happening and you're getting the success that you want in a relatively reasonable period of time, then keep doing what you're doing. But too many people are doing stuff because everybody else is doing that stuff and they bounce from one diet to one program after another, after another searching for the Holy Grail, because one category of folks, like, they're disappointed that they haven't lost 25 pounds, and they look amazing in three weeks, or there's the other category of people who are doing something for six months and see very little change and are broken all the time and go, “Oh,” and then they just jump right back into it again when you were supposed to stop doing that, stop doing that and do something else.

So that over the course of-- I mean, no matter what it is that you do, whether it's diet or exercise, within three weeks, you should see improvement in your physique, in your energy, in your flexibility, in your strength, in your digestive system, in your brain function, in the quality of your sleep, in your love life. These things should change. I mean, I'm talking maybe for some incrementally, but if you're not paying attention and you just wrote about it, you're just doing it because that's what you did in high school or that's what your friends are doing and you're not seeing the results and you're broken all the time and tired all the time, then you're eating the wrong stuff. You're taking the wrong supplements. You're hanging out with the wrong people. But we treat diet and exercise like religion and it's not that not even close. It's not even close. So that's what I would say about what I would do now. And by the way, I feel bad for the people who have fallen prey to the healthy for what was the term you used that was so--

Melanie Avalon: Health at every size.

Tony Horton: Because they're getting duped, they're getting duped, I think. Nobody has to be ripped. Nobody has to be shredded. Nobody has to look like a supermodel. Nobody has to look like a professional or collegiate or Olympic athlete. But if you're 75 to 100 pounds overweight, everything is just plain harder for you. It's just harder for you but if you're an endomorph, if you know the difference between ectomorph and endomorph and a mesomorph. Ectomorph for skinny people, marathon runners, ectomorph, they had two skinny parents. They made a skinny kid. But I've seen a lot of ectomorphs turn into endomorphs because of just lack of movement, bad diet. But you can't turn an endomorph into an ectomorph. That's crazy hard unless you're starving yourself or you're a bulimic or something. And that’s we all know how unhealthy that can be. 

So, you can be a big person who's not and be pretty damn healthy. But my friend Jeremy Yost, who lost 180 pounds, likes being really 180 pounds lighter because he can do more, all right. So, for me, that movement is all about feeling okay with I got to be gentle here being okay with the fact that you're a certain size, and that's fine, but you're still probably going to die younger than you should. And you're still going to have a really difficult time when both escalators are out at the airport and you got to go up three of them to get to the third floor. And all there are is-- The only thing in front of you is a big, long ass staircase, and you got two carry-ons to get up that thing. You're the one who doesn't get to get on the bike on the Appian Way. You just don't get to have that experience. You just don't. You can't join all those funky people doing a 10K. Maybe you can, maybe you can. You don't care about your time. You're out there, you're having a good time, you're with friends, and that's fine. Maybe I'm wrong about that one. But there's probably certain things that certain people can do that are overweight.

 And if they're happy and they're healthy and they're not taking a bunch of meds and they're sleeping pretty well, then, damn, go stay where you are, yeah. I just want more and more people say, “Hey, man, enjoy the journey.” For some people, it's the 90 days. For some people, it's a year and a half. Jeremy had to do Power 90 three times, so that's nine months, and they had to do P90X. I'm sorry. He did Power 90 three times nine months, and he did P90X three times, nine more months, and he lost 180 pounds. And when he watched these workouts, he would just march in place because he couldn't do anything he was seeing. He also had a fused right ankle. My friend Kathy McDonald, who was a Beachbody aficionado and loved my program, she was a mom, older kids, and she lost 125 pounds. And that was her journey. That was Jeremy's journey. Other people want to be able to eat what they want and not move so much and tell the world they're healthy when maybe they are, maybe they're not too.

Melanie Avalon: I just think it's so crazy that it's almost like if you lose weight, the messaging is that you weren't accepting your weight before, like in metabolic syndrome. So, there're five factors for that. There's blood pressure, high blood sugar, cholesterol issues. I forget what they all are, but the one is excess visceral fat. And all of those markers, you wouldn't say if [chuckles] your blood pressure went down. You wouldn't say, “Oh, you weren't accepting your high blood pressure before.” [chuckles] But with the fat one, I think it's a really problematic that it's got tied into this I don't even know how to say it, this morality thing. So that's very empowering. 

Tony Horton: Just because you lost the weight doesn't mean you can't accept where you were. 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, exactly. I think you should love yourself at every size. 

Tony Horton: It's like, “Yeah, I'm not at work yet. I'm here. But when I go to work, I don't accept where I was, which was home.” It's part of your journey, part of your journey and it's all how you look at it and it's all how you explain it to people. Yeah, I was struggling early on and I didn't like the way I struggled, so I made some changes. And so, it's been a cool journey going from where I was and where I am now, that, I think, is a more interesting path, a more productive path, a happier path than coming up with new language to make where you are, which is maybe not so healthy, okay.

Melanie Avalon: Well, as far as actually making those changes, I mentioned this earlier, but a part of your book that made me light up, I was so excited to read it was your chapter and section on scheduling and planning. Do you still use a physical planner? 

Tony Horton: No, no. I did for oh, my God, forever and ever and ever. I had a big desk calendar on my desk, I have a phone, I have a laptop, and I have a desktop. But then again, I guess I do. So, I have an assistant now. And I've told my assistant, actually, you know what? I guess I technically do because I could stare at it right now. On my calendar, it just says, “Workout.” Doesn't say the exact thing anymore, but it says, for example, Sundays from 09:00 to 01:00 is blocked out. Mondays is blocked out from 05:30 to 06:40 basically.

Melanie Avalon: AM? 

Tony Horton: AM. No. What did I say? Sorry, I need to eat something. I'm having a [unintelligible 00:51:01].

Melanie Avalon: No, I'm just thinking how early that is. That's like when I go to bed. Not really, but almost. [chuckles] I'm a night owl. 

Tony Horton: Well. No, wait, let me get this right. Monday nights, from 05:30 to 06:30 PM, sorry, I said AM, is my cardio workout. Tuesday is my AM 08:00 to 09:15, weightlifting, body weight stuff. And then Wednesday, which is tonight, I'll have I don't know how many people have said yes, I invite 40 people because it's plyometrics and I absolutely despise it. But I understand if I want to heli-ski and ski powder and keep up with youngsters. I have to do this routine. So, I don't love the workout, but I love what it does. So, there's different kinds of love. And I think I talk about that in the book, law number seven. And so Thursday, back in the morning, 08:00 or 08:30, depending on other people's schedule. And then Friday is yoga, religiously, every, same-- But I move it up at 9 o’clock because the people that can come get to sleep in, which is nice. And then Saturday is my day off or I go for a run. I go for a light run, like 6.3 miles run here in my neighborhood. So, I do schedule six to seven days a week. And my accountability, which I talk about in the book too, comes from inviting other people to be there and join me. 

I flew all day I mean going LA to Tampa, and it's pouring rain, it's crazy, it's awful, so I can't run outside, and it was getting dark anyway, and I didn't know the neighborhood. I didn't want to just run off and get lost and I forgot my earbuds. So now I'm in the gym and I'm not going to do plyo by myself on a Wednesday night in Tampa after being in a plane all day. Don't have it in me. And the only place I would do that is probably in my room and I'm worried about people downstairs because it's plyo. So, thump, thump, thump that would make them happy. So, I get on the treadmill for an hour without music, miserable. Say it with Melanie, miserable. Miserable. But when I was off that treadmill, when that hour was up, man just, the feeling was sensational. And that's what I needed to do to be able to perform in front of, whatever, 450 and 500 doctors the next morning, to be up on stage and be sharp and be with it and be on it and be funny and do all my bits. I do impressions of Tom Petty, I do impressions of Bruce Springsteen, I'm up there doing plyo, I'm doing sun salutations, and then I'm making them get up and jump around, count and say, silly shit. But if I hadn't done that run the night before and that run had nothing to do with what I was hoping that my appearance would look like in the mirror the next morning.

It had everything to do with the quality of my sleep and the quality of my brain function in front of other people the other day. And that's a message that I cannot pound into the ground enough and that's what exercise does. Those are the benefits today. The benefits kick in about 10 to 15 minutes into what you're doing, and then they last for 23 hours. And if you take one or two days off, you end up with exercise, bipolar disorder, all right. All those beautiful brain chemicals that go away. And so then like, “Oh, damn.” And then your desire to get back at it again kind of withers. The more you do, the better you get, and the more enthusiasm you have for it. The less you do, the harder it is and the more complicated your life becomes. Like, I think I'm going to sleep only four nights this week. I think I'm going to only pay my bills in January, August, and November. I'm going to skip eating for a couple of days because I want to save money. So, your life goes to crap and a hand cart when you don't do the regular stuff that you always do to survive. I'm talking about doing the things that we need to do to thrive, so that we have the desire to want to live forever even though I know I won't. But what I can physically do now, I couldn't do 10 years ago in my 50s, certainly couldn't do it in my 40s. I was fit when I was doing P90X but I wasn't climbing 20-foot ropes upside down. [chuckles] I wasn't going through a ninja course like I was on the moon like I can now. It's freakish and fun. 

Long learning curve though, very long. Pegboard, terrible, terrible, terrible. Finally, okay, marginal year and a half later, good. But people don't have that kind of patience. I do now because when I didn't my life was teeny and small and hideous. [laughs] Now I like, “Oh, I suck at this, yoga.” First time I went to yoga I'm in downward dog and I'm going to flop sweat in the first three and a half minutes. Like, how do you straighten your arms? My armpits are going to explode, my shoulders are screaming, how come my legs are shaking and down dog. But I could bench 250, so, either you learn these lessons or you don't. But if you're open to them, life is but a dream. 

Melanie Avalon: Well, something I've been really curious about for I mean I think about this a lot and I'm thinking about it even more talking to you now because it sounds like so like you and I, we both love life. We have similar goals with longevity. We like doing these things, these lifestyle things, sleep, movement, diet that make us feel well. And all of that said, I still don't identify as a “exercise person.” I like movement and I want to stay active and I don't like being sedentary and I do like a CAROL Bike workout and EMSculpt which is kind of like biohacking exercise. So, all of that to say, I've always wondered, do some people like “exercise and other people don't like exercise and why?” And why do some people like certain types of exercise and not other types? And last little question for that. Say that one person really, really gets high and likes walking on the treadmill or running on the treadmill for an hour without any variety and they would rather not do a shorter workout or the same amount of workout with variety. So, one might be physically better for them, but if they enjoy the other one more, should they do that instead? I'm just haunted by this question of like, “Is it genetic?” Why? And do you like exercise and working out.

Tony Horton: Sometimes, sometimes. Most of the time, no.

Melanie Avalon: See that's interesting. 

Tony Horton: Yeah. Like when I go for a run. It's like, “Oh, my God, I can't believe this.” And in the first 15 to 20 minutes of the run is awful, and I'm not running very fast, and I feel like 100-year-old man, but I have that voice in the back of my head that says, “You have to do this.” The struggle is part of it. The lack of enjoyment is just something you have to look past because the benefits supersede your lack of enthusiasm for what you're doing. Like Sundays, I enjoy Sundays on the days where I feel really strong and I don't have any real issues and physical issues, like whatever, aches and pains and things where I can really perform at a high level in front of a bunch of guys that are all younger than me, that I enjoy. I love that competitive stuff. And then my Tuesday, Thursday morning routines, which are sort of upper body hypertrophy stuff and body weight stuff, I enjoy that because I'm with a bunch of lads, my fellow lads, Tony Curran, who's a Scottish actor who's absolutely out of his mind and hilarious, and then my friend Stephen Clark, who's this big shot Hollywood entertainment attorney who's just the funniest guy in the world for what his status is and the clients that he handles, he's a big goofball and a fun guy to be with. 

And then I work out with the Lawrence brothers. I don't see Joey as much, but I certainly see Andy and Mattie a lot. And then Bobby Stevenson from P90X, he's there. Scott Fifer Scissors from P90X. So, I surround myself with people that make the experience more enjoyable. And there's also sort of a gentle little competitive thing like Stephen will go, “Oh, what weight do you have there at 30s? That's weird because I had 35s.” Give me the 35s. And of course, I don't do stupid things that are going to hurt me, but that I enjoy. Being in Tampa, knowing that it's plyo day and not doing the plyo and running on a treadmill without my earbuds on, miserable. But like I say in Law of Seven, “Love it or leave it,” there are certain things that you just enjoy. If you do a mud run or a 5K, like, if you're super competitive and all uptight about it and you want to win or you want to cut a certain place or ba, da, da, da… you want to beat your friends, well, then you're just a bonehead, relax already. You're out here with like-minded people having some fun. 

Theoretically, when you're doing a mud run or a spartan race, you're reaching out and helping other people get over these obstacles and stuff, which is you're creating that community and that camaraderie, which is gold. Maybe it is genetics for some people, but think about where I was mentally about it and where I am mentally about it now. I went from, don't like it, don't want to do it, can't do it, not very fit, this is physically just awful. But then I learned along the way, this is critical for the quality of your life till the day you die. Without it, you're less of a human being than you want to be. With it, you're a better human being than you ever thought you could be. So duh. That part, I love, the actual set of 50 push-ups. I'm not in love with that. But anybody can change if they have a particular strategy or objective about what it is they want or what they want to achieve. A lot of people in my early state don't ever get to the state I'm in now because they didn't cut themselves a break along the way. They put too much pressure on themselves. They had too much expectation. Their expectations were way too high and too unrealistic. They were hanging out with the wrong people. They were doing the wrong routines. They were eating the wrong food. Their whole sleep thing was out of whack. They were taking meds that made it hard for them to sleep well or recover properly. But either you thrive or you survive. If you want to thrive, guys everybody listening to this right now, I could ask them all, do you want to just continue to survive or do you want to thrive? 

If you want to thrive, you have to stumble and fall and figure it out and ask questions and fail and have little moments of glory and more moments of blah, blah, blah. But that's the journey. That's what's cool. Then when you've kind of semi arrive, you've lost the weight, and you're a little bit fitter. Now you can go do stuff and you can have more cheat morsels because your metabolism was working better than it was before, when it was impossible to digest food and you had leaky gut and leaky brain and irritable bowel syndrome, and it was leading to stroke and hypertension and type 2 diabetes and heart attack and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, which is coming. It's coming unless you decide whether you want to change or not, if you're okay with the process of going from survival to thriving. There's a time frame in there, and for some people it's short because they're younger and they're fit and they have high pain threshold, and all their friends are rock climbers and mountain climbers and heli skiers and professional Olympic soccer players. 

You're home. You're 42. You got three kids. One got a tattoo on his kneecap of a bunny and you don't know why, and you got to solve that problem. Your husband came home, and he's pissed off because his boss was a jerk, and now you got to go down the basement and oh, in the basement, it's where the gym is, and it's dark and it’s cementy down there, there're no freaking windows, and it's cold because you live in Minnesota and it's February, ugh. Because it really depends on what you focus on. I met a girl. Her name was Kathy as well. I met her at a shoot, a P90X shoot and she was there. She was one of about two or three people who had done P90X. And we flew them in to Hollywood ta ta ta… and we mixed them in with other fitness models, people who do this who look pretty for a living.  And were going to shoot this workout and then were going to interview-- the other ones were just-- they were just background fodder for the three people that mattered and people who actually earned it.

Kathy came up to me and I saw she was no more than 5’3”, 5’4”, and she too did Power 90. And her husband, she was a legal secretary and she would get up in the morning, she would go down in her basement. I use that because that's what she actually did. And then she would make breakfast for her husband and herself, and they both go off to work, and he had the car, and she took a bus to go to work. And so again, her husband was like, “Oh, you're doing another one of these fitness things. Why do you waste your time? You just are who you are. Look at your parents. Look at your grandparents.” She got no support from the person who was in bed with next to her and in her house and the man she married, none. 

So, she said, “screw you and did it three times.” When she started Power 90, could not do a single push-up on her knees, couldn't do one.” At the end of Power 90, she could. So, then she did P90X, bought P90X she said, “It felt like I was starting all over again.” Pull-ups. This guy wants me to do pull-ups. So here, think about it. I'm not there except for the DVDs. Her husband's being-- excuse my friend, he’s a douchebag. And now, I'm standing next to a woman who looks like a professional rock climber. Okay. She is striated and vascular. She's got a 20 pack. [laughs] It's crazy. And she was 5’3” and she lost 100 pounds. The before picture was a completely different human being. Like, not even close, day and night, and on the set, I watched her do 10 pull-ups in front of me. Ding, ding, ding. Perfect, clean all the way down, all the way up, freakish, on her own with a husband that didn't support her. Like, did she love exercise? Probably not. And at some point, along the way, there was probably some stuff that she loved, which was who she was as a human being because of it. Despite the noise and the physical anguish that it took to go from where she was to where she ended up when I met her. So yeah, if you want to be 80 pounds overweight and say, “Hey, man, it's a lifestyle,” go right ahead, do your thing. 

Melanie Avalon: Well, speaking of her and women, your new program, PowerSync 60, tailored towards women. 

Tony Horton: The ladies, also the men. There's a calendar for men and the men will like it as well. But this was-- I'll let you ask the question. Is there a question? I was going to go right into it.

Melanie Avalon: So, it's from women and men, but there is a focus that takes into account women's hormones and such. 

Tony Horton: Absolutely right. So, Dr. Mindy Pelz, who I didn't know from Adam or Eve, somebody said, “Hey, there's a great gal. She's written a bunch of books. Her latest book is called Fast Like a Girl. She's sort of into fasting,” and I had played with fasting a little bit, but not to any great degree, you know intermittent fasting, like stop eating at 09:00 at night and don't eat till noon the next day. That was the extent of my fasting before I met her. So, she did one of my masterminds. It was a late-night thing and we had a bunch of people on the call, and I got to know her through that. I mean, we had a short conversation prior, kind of like the one that you and I had before we started talking here for people. And I went, “Well, this girl is fascinating, she's amazing, gal/woman, sorry. And then we got talking about how she did P90X. So, she did P90X so many times. And she said, I noticed that based on my research and the science and everything that I've learned is that the routines themselves were great. I just couldn't do them in the order that you presented them, because that was, to me, more of a male calendar, not one for females. 

So, I moved yoga to whatever this day, and I just rearranged it because she explained to me that whether you're menopausal, premenopausal, postmenopausal, perimenopausal, women, their hormonal fluctuations are ideal. Certain hormones, when they're peaking on certain days, need specific attention with the workouts. Also, diet obviously is a part of it too, but I wasn't part of that process so much and so when we created these routines. I said, “Hey, look, I'm going to do an upper body, a core one, one of them is called butt and gut. another one's called hit me up, everybody hears high-intensity interval training. They think they hear the word intensity. It's intense if you want it to be, but there's also a power down version and a power up version. And also, what I did with this program is I put in stop options, because what happens to a lot of gals, even if they're doing the right workout on the right day based on their flow or lack thereof, or no more, maybe they're in their postmenopausal. Then even on those days where they're supposed to do a specific workout, Mindy would add nuances like, “Okay, here's your upper body routine, but it's your first three weeks. I want you to stop at the first stop option unless you feel X, Y and Z. You can go to the second stop option if you want, if you feel like you have the energy.” 

And so, women have completely different calendars plural than the men have with their calendar, and they also have the power up, P90X was modify/intensify, here it's power up, power down. We just use the different terminology for the same thing. So, it's like, “Oh, okay, so it's this workout seems kind of intense. Oh, I get to stop here. Oh, I get to use the power down version.” And so just like with P90X, I had cast members. Typically, there was a couple of times where there were four in the workout. Most of them had three or two, someone had two, and you would see two or three or four people doing an exercise and doing it in different ways. So, you had options, and you also had the option to stop at the first stop option, which sometimes was 15 minutes in. And I just say, “Hey, first stop option, if you're good to go, then keep hanging with us because we're going to keep going. But fast forward to the cooldown and maybe this is where you're done.” And so, we had two test groups. We had one with about 110, another one with about 90 gals, and just you're sitting on Zoom calls and you're just watching these women in tears saying, “I've tried everything. Nothing worked. This is the first one.” And a lot of them were fans of Dr. Mindy and now they have a Dr. Mindy endorsed workout program along with a calendar that's specific for their needs and a diet program that works for them too.

And there's also a very strong mindfulness component. There're two breath work routines in there that are mixed in with everything else, which didn't even exist when P90X came out. Like, if I was going to change P90X, I would have added that component, but I didn't really know about it then. And that's it. I mean, that's it in a nutshell. Men are liking it too. We get men on the calls and they're like, “Hey, man, I like the men's calendar. It feels like P90X all over again.” But with some of the same cast members, new cast members, a lot of new fun, goofy moves, some new Tony Horton jokes. [chuckles] And yes, it's a very, very cool thing. I mean you think about serendipity or luck or kismet or whatever you want to call it. But just being in that call with her and she said, “I don't know about three quarters of the way through the call.” She said, “If I've wanted to create a fitness program in conjunction with what I've learned when it comes to how women should train, and there's only one person I wanted to do it with and it was you,” meaning me. And I was like, “What?” And I thought, “Ah, this will take two years.” And we had a conversation and within six months, it was shot and done, and amazing. It never happens that way. It never happens. 

Melanie Avalon: That two clarification questions. So, when she first talked about the days of the week, is it the literal days of the week, or is it individual based on the person and what the proceeding and the order of what they're doing for them or is it literally some days of the week are better? 

Tony Horton: There's a pretty extensive questionnaire about where you are in your cycle or lack of. And a lot of women are following a moon calendar, which you know, if you know anything about women's cycles, a lot of them are in conjunction with the moon calendar. Then there's postmenopausal. Those gals have, I think, just start on day one, kind of like the men do. But I wish Mindy was here to kind of get into the weeds. But I think I know what you're asking. Everybody starts on a Monday pretty much. Monday would be day one for everybody, but maybe the guy’s Monday would be plyometrics. The women's Monday would be a breath work day for some, and then for others, it would be maybe the stretch workout. So yeah, I guess the best way to answer that is that there're some questions that ask about where you are in your cycle or lack thereof and your age and other things. And so, I don't know. Does that answer it? I hope so. 

Melanie Avalon: It does, yes. When she comes on the show, I’m making notes to ask her about this. 

Tony Horton: Yeah. Yeah, Tony was a little confused. The guy who's all testosterone did the best he could to explain your philosophy on it.

Melanie Avalon: Well, the second question is, what is the role of intuition when it comes to especially with women? How do they know if they're actually burnt out or overdoing it or if they're just being lazy?

Tony Horton: Pain and fatigue. If you're exhausted and you're super sore, then that tells you a lot about how you might have abused yourself or didn't hydrate or drank too much or didn't get proper sleep or you know, I think, get real in law 8, I do a little 24-hour test where how am I supposed to know how I'm supposed to feel when I at night? Good God. Don't know who that is. 

Melanie Avalon: Was that a real phone? Was that like a landline? 

Tony Horton: Yeah, it was a landline. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, my goodness. Wow. 

Tony Horton: Yeah, because I live up in the hills and the cell service up here stinks. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, yeah. I have a friend who lives up in the hills and we do phones on-- we do calls on his landline because [laughs] for the same reason, okay.

Tony Horton: I know I have, like, 14. I have two numbers on the landline, one for me, one for my wife, and then I have my cell phone. She has her cell phone in. 

Melanie Avalon: I want a landline. I'm jealous. 

Tony Horton: Yeah, man. Old school, like, put it on a speaker, I can hear it great. But in the middle of a call like this, I can't do much about it. But what was the question, Melanie? 

Melanie Avalon: The intuition, but I think you answered it's the pain or fatigue. 

Tony Horton: If you're in the middle of something and it's new, and there's a learning curve, like, there's some movement that you've never done before or there's a pace that you haven't done before, or you're not quite sure what weight to use or band to use if you're doing a resistance thing, then I would always caution on the, take a more mellower approach. So don't go in. I mean, some people who are like, “I've been doing your programs forever. I'm a pretty good athlete.” Some people can just-- but if you're new to fitness or you haven't exercised in a while, then just back off. Just back off by a little bit. Because some people’s mind and their bodies are not linked up very well, and they're either under training or overtraining. And a lot of times that's just experiential. That just takes some time. But I always say, “Be the tortoise, not the hare.” These old-fashioned expressions mean a lot.

I know when I walk into the gym, sometimes I just got a swagger. I just got a swagger, and I feel good. And I slept like a million dollars the night before. And a lot of it is stress. If you're dealing with a lot of mental and emotional stress, then chances are while you're doing your workout, you're vulnerable to getting hurt or overdoing it, even though maybe whatever it is that you are doing seems the same as the workout before for that particular workout. But you don't always wake up in the exact same mood, you don't always wake up with the exact same flexibility, you don't always wake up with the exact level of high-quality sleep. And so especially you have those AM workouts, when your body's a little bit stiff. That's why we always have a lot of warm ups and cooldowns for all my workouts, just to get people prepped. There was a philosophy with a certain company that I work for and I think we all know who it is that just started cutting them out. I started shortening all the warm ups and cooldowns. None of them look like the early P90X ones where we spent a lot of time getting our bodies ready. 

We're not tigers in the forest just sitting there waiting to jump on our prey and run at 65 miles an hour. We're human beings, we have stressors that affect our physical, mental, and emotional state. And so, if you can be attuned to them and you are in tune with them, then you can maybe go for it. But if the exercise thing is new to you, especially if you're changing your diet and you're trying to get a decent night's sleep before you do it, then I would just back off, just back off a little bit. And if you feel like, “Oh, that wasn't-- I should go harder next time.” The more you do, the better you get at everything, especially this.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. Well, a super random personal question to end on. 

Tony Horton: Ah-oh.

Melanie Avalon: [chuckles] Just super random. But speaking of new, because you talk in the book about new haters and blockers and I really recommend listeners get the book because it's very--

Tony Horton: I do too. That's a great idea, Melanie. 

Melanie Avalon: [chuckles] Go get it now. The Big Picture: 11 Laws That Will Change Your Life. They will change your life. In the section about the new haters, you talk about people who are resistant to change and new things and how to deal with that. I'm just super curious. Has there been anything recently where you have found yourself being a new hater? Like where you felt that moment of resistance because there's always so much new coming out. 

Tony Horton: Yeah. And do you remember what the term I used for the opposite of a-- 

Melanie Avalon: Of a new haters or blockers or seekers? 

Tony Horton: --Well, not blockers and not new haters, but-- 

Melanie Avalon: Seekers. 

Tony Horton: Seekers. So, I was never a seeker. You can go from a blocker and a new hater and become a seeker. You just have to decide if the glass is half full, half empty thing. Really, I'm just finding, I just came up with new terms that says the same thing. But if you notice that your life is stagnant, and you notice that you're unhappy, and you notice that you're depressed, and you notice that you're sad, and you notice that you're out of shape, and you notice that you're tired, and you notice that you have aches and pains, these are things that can-- like you can notice those things. The frog and the frying pan thing. And if you turn on the frying pan and you throw the frog in and it's hot, it jumps right out. But if you put it in the frying pan and you very slowly turn it up, over time, it just cooks itself. And that's the state that a lot of us are in. They're used to the pain and the fatigue and the sadness and the depression and they don't see solutions. All they see are problems.

And so, when something new comes along and they're not really a seeker anyway, then it just becomes a burden. And then they shut it off, and then they tune it out, and then they're right back where they were. And that was me. To me, it took books from Eckhart Tolle and Gary Zukav and Richard Carlson and Deepak Chopra, and Tony Robbins. Like a lot of those books were silly, in places they didn't really resonate. Another one is Keith Ellis' book, The Magic Lamp. I was not a happy dude. I mean, I was beat up all the time at school. I was a terrible student. We moved six times before fifth grade. I was afraid of my own shadow kind of guy, but I could easily recognize that my life sucked.

And there was no source, there were no human sources around me where I was getting any intel. And so I think, Your Erroneous Zones was my first book, and then, Looking Out for # 1, was my second personal development book. And then I got into the whole Gary Zukav thing for a while, which was-- he was combining personal development with science and stuff. And so, it was like I had to read the same paragraph 50 times before I knew what the hell he was saying. But things started to resonate, and I went, “Oh, okay, you got to open up the door and go through. Oh, falling down and failing is awesome.” It just makes for a better journey, “Oh, okay, do your best.” Like Don Miguel Ruiz' book, The Four Agreements, classic. It's 146 pages, unbelievable, beautiful.

Melanie Avalon: It's so short and so epic. 

Tony Horton: Yeah. And the Do Your Best Chapter was basically about doing your best, was ignoring your best changes from day to day, pay attention to what's actually happening while it's happening, and don't judge the journey along the way because your best is showing up. I mean, Woody Allen said “80% of life is showing up.” And so, I just started like, “Okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to be horrible.” And by the way, horrible is okay because I'm going to be learning stuff. And if I don't judge it because we're judging the living snot out of every half a second in our life and it's just such a waste of energy. And I went, “Okay, that was a terrible experience, but what did I learn?” Okay, “What happens if I go again?” Three of those things happen, but not all four. So, I guess there's change purely based on the fact that I showed up again.

And then I was P90X guy. I went down to the beach with Bobby Stevenson in P90X and I couldn't climb a rope. Saved my life. I couldn't get 4 feet off the ground. I felt like my hands were going to rip off. I was like, “How come I can knock out 25 pull-ups but I can't go 3 feet up a rope?” So, I kept going and kept going and kept going whereas if that had happened to me in my 20s, I would have gone “ropes aren't for me.” And that simple philosophy applies to everyone in everything you do. So, if you're a new hater or a blocker, and you keep showing up anyway, and you don't attach to the outcome and you don't judge how badly it's going, and you know that's a good thing, then you can become a seeker. And if you're a seeker, man, you're heli-skiing in Alaska. Whereas before you wouldn't even ski anything other than a blue run and that's basically me. Life is cool. Life is fun. Life is interesting. Life is filled with other really amazing people, if you're willing to put it out there. Or it's small and tiny and sad and horrible and over sooner than it should, but a lot of it's just choice you know and seeking or not. 

Melanie Avalon: I could not agree more. Awesome. Well, thank you, Tony. Thank you so much for your time, all that you've done, it's just overwhelming and changing literally so many lives. Literally, literally thousands of lives. 

Tony Horton: Literally.

Melanie Avalon: Literally millions maybe. I don't know the numbers. 

Tony Horton: It's millions.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, millions. Let me say that then, it is changing literally millions of lives. 

Tony Horton: It might be 999,000 thousand. I don't know. What's the number 1 below? What's the number below 1, Melanie?

Melanie Avalon: 999,000. [chuckles] Well, if you want to below millions, it would have to be 1 million 999,0000. 

Tony Horton: Yeah, 1.000-- one million, that way. I don't know. You can cut this part out. No one will know. 

Melanie Avalon: [laughs] I'm keeping it. I like it. 

Tony Horton: Well, you know what's been fun about this? This has been a very fun, free flowing, no holds bar, silly at times, fun exchange. And that's because of you. So, I appreciate, that was fun. Usually they go, “Hey, they want 90 minutes.” Oh, my God, 90 minutes. Are they kidding me? But I'd do another 90, but I have to go do plyo. So sadly, I can't. 

Melanie Avalon: No. Thank you so much. This was so enjoyable and such a moment for me. I can't wait to share it with listeners. So, links. How can people get the program, your stuff?

Tony Horton: All the places. Where do you find the Horton go tonyhortonlife.com. That's the website, tonyhortonlife.com. If you want my supplements, which is called Power Life, which changed my life when I created them back when I was super sick mypowerlife.com, that's mypowerlife.com. If you want to know more about Power Nation, which is where the Power of 4, my 24 workout program lives, where my other trainers’ programs live Michael Bradley's, Brian Palatucci, Chelsea McKinney, all these other great. There's so much content, it's crazy. But if you really want to go to learn more about PowerSync 60, all of that and PowerSync 60 lives at powernationfitness.com. It's a beautiful website and we have lots of apps, there're multiple ways to see it. Roku and Apple and Spring Burger. I don't know if that's not a real thing. 

Melanie Avalon: You got me at Roku. I love my Roku. [chuckles] I'm in. Well, we'll put links to all that in the show notes. I promise, this is the last question, it's very easy, It's very short. I just ask every guest this at the end and it's just because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is. So, what is something that you're grateful for? 

Tony Horton: I'm grateful that I'm in the place that I'm in at my age I'm grateful for even though my journey is a little difficult right now, I had a few snags, but I'm learning. I'm past the point of beating myself up about it, which I did. I've done the last two days. And as of today, I've turned off the woe is me, and I've turned on the solution finding me. And I'm very grateful that I have that in me and that I can be here and continue to work on the next chapter. So not a short answer, but an honest one.

Melanie Avalon: No, I love that. I love that. Well, thank you. My gratitude just I can't give you enough of it. So, thank you for all that you're doing. I look forward to all of your future stuff. Yeah, have a wonderful workout. 

Tony Horton: Thank you, Melanie. And by the way, invitation to you. If you're ever in the City of Angels, you can come and work out with us. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, thank you. That might be the carrot I need to 

Tony Horton: There you go. Come and hang out with the kids. The kids, meet the wife. She's lovely. I get a feeling talking to you, I think you two would get along wonderfully. Again, my pleasure, and thank you so much, and we hope to see you in the future one day. 

Melanie Avalon: Likewise. Enjoy the rest of your evening. Thank you. 

Tony Horton: Likewise, likewise. 

Melanie Avalon: Bye.

Tony Horton: Bye, bye.

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