Tony Horton Want You To Become A Beachbody Coach

The man himself, Tony Horton, wants you to become a Beachbody Coach. A few months ago he posted this letter on his facebook fan page wall.

A Letter From Tony Horton

“Boys and girls, I’m unaware of your financial situation but I do believe that you’re reading this page because you care about your health and fitness. If you have plenty of income and love your job then what I’m about to tell you might not be for you. If you’re not thrilled with the way you make a living, would like extra income, love Beachbody products, like the way they make you look and feel,
enjoy helping other people feel and look better, enjoy setting your own hours, get excited about being the captain of your own ship as opposed to working for the man – then listen up.

The reality is, your health and fitness moves beyond you. It impacts the people around you. You (whether you like it or not) have the power to change lives based solely on your own personal transformation. Inadvertently you become a catalyst for change. This is how I got started. I was clueless, asked a few questions based on my need to be strong and healthy, stayed with it and people in my life wanted to know what I was doing. Simple yet powerful.

If you want to share what you’ve learned with people in your life who want better health (and could use extra income in the process) then you should consider becoming a Team Beachbody Coach. I felt so strongly about this program that I’ve encouraged many of my friends to become coaches, even my own sister. She is doing great (even though my contract with Beachbody won’t let me help her). She is a perfect example of someone who had plenty of doubt and hesitation regarding the coaching opportunity and still found a way to make it work for her. A busy working wife and mother with three very active kids doesn’t sound like a good candidate to start an in-home multi-level marketing company. Did you say multi level marketing? What? Ick! You mean pyramid scheme right? Okay chill out. All these fears would be true if Beachbody were selling hats or kitty liter, but this is Beachbody people! The number 1 in-home
fitness company on the planet! P90X is steadily becoming the most popular fitness system in US history. Shakeology is the revolutionary replacement meal on the market today. We sell life-altering change – not soap.

Tens of thousands of regular folk around this country are doing something they love because of this coach opportunity. The unemployment rate still hovers around 10% but it doesn’t have to be that way if more people were willing to see that new opportunities exist all around them. The Team Beachbody Coaching opportunity is one of them. Health care companies, pharmaceutical companies and our government are not capable of solving this obesity crisis and we can’t wait around for them to do it. The crisis is now and the answer is YOU! I know that sounds a bit Rah Rah but it’s true.

Cynics don’t need to apply, but if you’re sick and tired of the status quo and want to make a difference in your own life and in the lives of those around you, then open the door. The two major issues of our time – the health care issue and unemployment rate could be resolved if a million more people in this country decided to get healthy and share the wealth. This is a brand new industry waiting to explode. It’s not happening in boardrooms or factories – it’s happening in the homes of tens of thousands of Team Beachbody Coaches and in the homes of their customers. With a tiny investment and a willingness to help people the sky’s the limit.”

- Tony Horton (Creator of P90X)

Become A Beachbody Coach!

A recent study showed that more than 25 percent of Americans age 17 to 24 are too overweight to join the military. But fitness guru Tony Horton, the creator of the P90X exercise program, is now stepping in to provide some guidance.

In recent years, 52-year-old (that’s correct, he’s 52) Tony Horton’s P90X workout program has attracted celebrities, professional athletes, congressmen, and a significant number of military members.

He’s now taking his expertise to the next level by providing guidance to military leaders on how to improve fitness for service members.

At results gym in Southeast D.C., he put some Marines to the test. The hour-long workout combined cardio, resistance training, yoga and pilates.

“I’ve never seen anyone his age give it his all, and it really made everyone here push themselves,” said Capt. Lisa Lawrence, a USMC Public Affairs Officer

Horton mentioned some military branches haven’t altered their fitness standards since 1980 despite an obesity rate he says has doubled since the start of the Iraq war.

Creator Of P90x, Tony Horton

I came across this great article at www.WashingtonPost.com, it talk all about Tony Hort on and P90x. The article explains Tony Horton’s backround and how he got to where he is today. I was surprised to find out that Tony once worked as a mime. Tony has also trained big stars Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen early in his career. The article also talks about P90x and how it works, and also why it works. This is a really good article.

Here is the full article from www.WashingtonPost.com

Inside the gym, Horton had earlier adjusted the volume on his headset.

“Hello, this is God,” he says playfully. “Do push-ups.”

‘Bringing it’

America wants fitness to be effortless. America wants to just take the stairs, get off the bus one stop early, skip the soda. America wants workout DVDs that will fit into the commercial breaks, that are described as “Easy” or better yet, “EZ.”

Therefore, the success of P90X, which has sold more than 2 million sets at a steep $119.85 a pop, is counterintuitive. Its selling point is that it is really, really hard.

You have seen the high-octane infomercials, yes? In their “Before” pictures the participants are pale and fleshy, like the dough that explodes out of a Pillsbury Crescent Roll tube. In their “Afters” they are ripped: rolling pectorals and half-moon buttocks. P90X is the workout for studs — which doesn’t mean it’s not for women, it’s just that the women are also studs, like that mom in the DVDs who has six kids and is probably the studliest of them all.

The 12 DVDs are only a portion of P90X. The Nutrition Plan tells Xers what to eat and how much and when. The message boards teem with people who speak the P90X language, which is a language of “Bringing it,” the phrase that can be affixed to the end of any declaration: Even my eyeballs hurt today. Bring it!

“I think a lot of companies that have made fitness products have underestimated people’s desire to work hard,” Horton says. He’s sitting in a French restaurant near Eastern Market after the Results workout, avoiding the bread basket, requesting that his salad be made without cheese and his fish without cream.

At 52, he looks 32, with dark wavy hair, an unlined face and biceps that are ads for the proverbial gun show.

Horton grew up in Connecticut and Rhode Island. After studying theater and communications at the University of Rhode Island, a then-waifish Horton moved to Los Angeles, where he still lives. The wannabe actor got work as a mime and as an assistant on movie sets until his agent told him he might get more acting jobs if he bulked up. The options at his gym were boring, so he joined three additional ones for variety, cobbling together his own homemade workouts. In the late ’80s, an exec at one of his jobs noticed his physical transformation and asked Horton to train him as well.

The exec later ran into Tom Petty, who remarked that he was looking newly buff; Horton soon became the rocker’s trainer.

“He said, ‘Hey, Tony, can you get me in shape? I got a tour in three months,’ ” Horton says.

Three months. The groundwork for a 90-day body revolution. Horton’s initial workout program was called Power 90; P90X came in 2004 after a year of consulting with fitness experts in various fields.

Petty, Horton says, led to Annie Lennox and Bruce Springsteen.

“I introduced Bruce,” Horton says modestly, “to an early version of muscle confusion.”

Ah, yes, “muscle confusion,” the cornerstone term of P90X, referring to the varying workouts that he says are necessary to combat workout plateaus.

Muscle confusion contains “absolutely nothing new in it whatsoever,” says Todd Miller, an associate professor of exercise science at George Washington University, who is an expert in strength and conditioning. P90X “is very high-intensity exercises that you’re doing for an hour a day. That’s a lot of freaking exercise. If you do any high-enough-intensity workout and couple it with a [healthy] diet, you’re probably going to get pretty much the same results.”

What Horton calls “muscle confusion” exercise scientists call “periodization,” and they’ve been calling it that for decades.

“Maybe the videos are well produced, or fun,” Miller says. “But the reason the program works is ultimately because people do it.” That’s not a slam — the hardest part of any exercise program is getting people to keep at it. And Horton manages to do that, despite the fact that . . .

“It’s awful,” says Richard Burr. “It doesn’t matter how many times you do it, it still makes you cry.”

Burr is a U.S. senator, a Republican from North Carolina, and one of the members of Congress who have embraced the gut-busting doctrine of Tony. He is speaking of the dread Ab Ripper X, the supplemental abdominal workout that is the topic of many a P90X discussion board. (Do it before the workout. Do it after. Do it after, but first drink some Recovery Formula. Do it occasionally. Do it often, but only if you can then pass out on the carpet.)

The legislative grunt sessions are perhaps the most illustrative examples of the bonding power of the X, the camaraderie that comes through sweat. P90X speaks to something primal, a return to a time when there were no at-home elliptical machines, when all you had was gravity and your own body.

Many of P90X’s legislative followers say they got into it to reclaim old levels of fitness, or because the program’s portability fit their travel-heavy schedules. McCarthy says he sleeps better; Shuler says he’s had fewer exercise-related injuries. Burr says he hasn’t been in such good shape since college football more than 30 years ago.

Shuler, a former Redskins quarterback, recently went to a Colorado Rockies baseball game to catch up with Todd Helton, an old buddy who plays first base. Helton noticed that Shuler had slimmed down; Shuler told him why. Helton replied, “I love P90X!,” and pretty soon several men were huddled in the clubhouse, bonding over Tony.

Horton swings by the congressional gym whenever he’s in Washington. He’s no lobbyist, but he hopes that by teaching lawmakers about exercise, he might persuade them to support legislation that supports health.

“We did one-legged dip jumps,” says Shuler of a workout held one morning. “Thirty reps on each leg, 40 minutes into the workout. . . . I certainly got my workout.”

“Today I got a ‘Perfection’ from Tony,” McCarthy says proudly. “Not just a ‘Good Job,’ but a ‘Perfection.’ ”

In the home stretch

Back at Results, Horton is leading his class through a final round of squats, offering encouragement to pull them to the end.

“The lower you go, the more pert your [butt] is later in life!” he calls out to one struggling participant. “You see that back there?” he says to another, gesturing toward the exerciser’s posterior. “You need to squeeze that!”

The last set completed, he beckons everyone to the ground for a post-workout stretch before dismissing the class, which responds with applause.

“Tony is the man,” says one attendee, whose shirt is sopping. He staggers out through the door and toward the showers. “Tony is the man.”

I found this great interview at www.AskMen.com that I wanted to share. In this article Tony Horton talks about P90x in depth and explains how and why it works. Tony explains that P90x is not a weight loss product, it is a lifestyle changing product. The editor of the article actually tested P90x out and had great results, he lost 25 pounds.

Here is the actual article:

Everyone is skeptical when it comes to fitness trends, especially those presented on late-night infomercials, especially ones that claim to be (and are) the No. 1 infomercial in the country. When something is so popular, AskMen feels obligated to put the product through the wringer. So, for the 90 days required to complete P90X we put our nose to the grindstone for your benefit, which is to report the truth to men.

Does Tony Horton’s P90X work? Honestly, that’s your decision, but this editor lost a total of 25 pounds, 4.5 inches off my waist and 10% body fat. Did I have the weight to lose? Hell yes I did. But I still had doubts as to whether or not I was the “ideal” candidate for P90X since it wasn’t developed as a weight-loss program — “it’s a lifestyle-shifting program.” When I expressed my doubts to Tony Horton and told him about my minimal activity and poor eating habits prior to P90X, he expressed to me that P90X is a “50-50 equation” where activity and nutrition are concerned. “P90X works for anybody really.”

P90X comes with explicit instructions about your training, an in-depth nutrition plan that can get pretty expensive, and there are hidden costs behind just the DVDs you order (you have to buy home gym equipment and optional protein powder and bars). While doing P90X some questions came up, some of which Tony answered for us.

TONY HORTON ON P90X SKEPTICS

I think there’s skepticism because it’s a philosophy that is atypical. When it comes to approaching fitness, people want to master something and so this amount a variety typically is not a mentality that a lot of professional fitness folks take. They like to stick to the same old thing: Do cardio a certain way and get good at it, do yoga and get really good at it. I’m trying to avoid boredom, plateaus and injuries. We have different demographics [doing P90X]: We have people who are not in shape and we have ex-athletes that are looking to become better athletes, and oddly enough the combination of different types of exercises seems to work for both. Jerry Stackhouse just came out of retirement and he was doing P90X to get ready — and he’s knocking people over with how fit he is. How can you be skeptical about that? If you’re skeptical, you’re not very bright.

TONY HORTON ON P90X AND COMPARABLE PRODUCTS

[P90X] is relatively hard, there’s an excitement about it, it brings out the best in people, it brings out their deep desires to want to be better because of a combination of things, [like] muscle confusion and new movements. A piece of machine, like a Total Gym or something, is probably very effective if you do what they tell you to do, but it doesn’t have any personality, there’s not a camaraderie there that you feel when you’re watching people who are working hard on the screen in front of you.

TONY HORTON ON MUSCLE CONFUSION

If you go up and down a ladder a bunch of times, you’ll get some exercise from that, but if you climb a rock wall, you’re gonna get a lot more. The nuances in muscle confusion [is that] it’s multidimensional. In P90X there’s a strong emphasis on flexibility, there’s a strong emphasis on resistance exercises, there’s a strong emphasis on core, there’s a strong emphasis on cardiovascular strength, there’s plyometrics in there for fast-twitch work. The idea is to work on your strengths and weaknesses, and that’s what muscle confusion does. Muscle confusion is a plateau-buster because you’re constantly challenging different aspects of your fitness.

TONY HORTON ON RECOVERY DURING P90X

Great fitness comes from a smart strategy and the proper recovery time. It’s about stress management and getting enough sleep. People don’t talk about that because it’s not as exciting as muscle confusion, but it’s as important as proper diet and variety in exercise. Sometimes you have to do nothing so that you can do something.

TONY HORTON ON THE KEY TO P90X

With P90X we made sure that we created a product for a society that is extremely overweight, so that’s really the key. The key is to try to give everybody the opportunity to get fit and healthy. But we all have different starting points and that’s why there are so many modifications in P90X.

TONY HORTON ON PREPARING FOR P90X

There are really two different groups of people who come and ask me that question, and I say that you have to figure out which of these you are:

If you’re not athletic with a bunch of weight to lose and you jump into P90X, plan on having a really hard time for the first 45 to 60 days, where you’re not going to be able to do maybe half the routines, half of the exercises. But while everybody else is doing pull-ups and you’re toast, you’re marching in place and you come back another day and do an extra pull-up, an extra push-up. You have to modify the hell out of the program, but each time you come back, you might be able to do a rep or two more because you’re focused, you’re consistent, you’re eating right, [and] the weight’s coming off.

For other people, I say go get P90; the workouts are half as long, they’re half as intense, but it’s still working, it’s still six days a week and it’s still a diet program.

TONY HORTON ON WHY PEOPLE FAIL OR SUCCEED

I think people fail because their reasons for doing it aren’t very good. Usually we get caught up in the desire to look differently in the future, but you have no idea how you’re going to look in the future. It all becomes about ego and aesthetics. Typically that’s the reason why everybody buys into theses short-term products that help them lose weight. P90X is not a weight-loss product; people will lose weight, but it’s a health and fitness product, it’s a lifestyle-shifting program.

The people who succeed are the ones that go: “I want a new life; I want to feel good; I want to be healthier; I want to be fitter; I want to do things that’ll make me less vulnerable to being hurt and getting sick.”

If your priorities are in order and your reasons why are based more on being a better person as opposed to looking good in front of people who could care less, that’s huge and that’s really the difference between the two.

TONY HORTON ON QUITTING P90X BECAUSE OF TIME ISSUES

If you exercise today and eat better today and follow along the best you can based on whatever you’re dealing with (busy schedule, kids, traveling, bio rhythms, etc.), do your best, and forget the rest. If you want to be healthy today, you work out today. If you want to be fit today, you work out today. If you want to improve the quality of your life, you work out today. Twenty minutes or more a day is going to change your quality of life, give you enthusiasm and energy, help cognition and memory improve; that is a universal truth. That happens for everybody.

TONY HORTON ON TRAINING & EATING TIMES

There’s no universal truth there [to the best time of day to train and eat]. You’re a victim of your reality, and your reality dictated that that was the best thing for you to do so you could show up every day. You had what you had so you did what you did. When people ask me if it’s better to train in the morning or night, my answer is: “Well, if you’re rich and don’t have a job, you have options.” But who has that?

TONY HORTON ON BEING FULL OR HUNGRY

At camp this week, I got two different questions from two different people. One was: “I’m starving all the time. I feel like I’m balking. I’m following the diet guide to a T. What do I do?” I just said: “Eat more.” It’s a general guide, not a bible. You have to focus on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats. Just eat more calories. Then the opposite happened. I had a question that was about “I can’t eat all of this food.” I said: “Then don’t eat it.” Eat when you’re hungry; just make sure that what you’re eating is clean.

TONY HORTON ON PROTEIN SUPPLEMENTS

In theory, bodybuilders think you need a gram of protein for every pound that you weigh. I think it’s more like half that, but if you’re gonna work really hard and lift big, protein is the one that will help your muscles grow. P90X has three different versions (the classic, the lean and doubles), so if you’re doing doubles, obviously you’re going to need a little bit more protein than somebody who’s doing the lean version.

TONY HORTON ON PROTEIN SUPPLEMENTS

In theory, bodybuilders think you need a gram of protein for every pound that you weigh. I think it’s more like half that, but if you’re gonna work really hard and lift big, protein is the one that will help your muscles grow. P90X has three different versions (the classic, the lean and doubles), so if you’re doing doubles, obviously you’re going to need a little bit more protein than somebody who’s doing the lean version.

TONY HORTON ON CHEAT DAYS

A cheat day is really going to set you back. Think of all the excess calories, the excess salt, fats, sugar. If you’re eating a whole day of that stuff, the next day is going to be a disaster. Have a cheat meal or snack; that’s what I do. I like chocolate chip cookies. I like a small bite of ice cream. I don’t eat candy or donuts [because] I don’t eat white flour.

TONY HORTON ON LIFE AFTER  P90X

Get out and see what your new body can do; find a hobby; find a sport.

TONY HORTON ON HIS MOTIVATION

It makes me happier. It helps my confidence. It’s fun to be super fit at 51 and I would never want to lose that. I love challenging myself. I love skiing faster, skiing steeper.

Tony Horton

Improvement and change occur when you do things often. Stopping and starting all the time will kill any momentum you need to succeed. You must find ways to stay in the game. Moderate forms of exercise, done consistently, provide far better results than the occasional full-body pummeling. A lifestyle that includes multiple forms of exercise five to six days a week guarantees results.

There are certain things that rise to the surface when it comes to staying consistent. One of them is staying motivated. How does anyone sustain anything without motivation? You bought one of my programs because you’re committed to making huge changes in your life. Being consistent is critical. Sustaining it and staying motivated at times can be difficult. It’s easy to create reasons not to do Power 90®, especially when you’re feeling weak and puny, and my jokes aren’t funny anymore. We travel, get sick, get tired, and often get discouraged. We work too hard, we under-sleep, and get stressed out. So what do we do about it? It can be overwhelming. What about the people who don’t quit? Who are they? Are they super-android-robots from a galaxy far, far away? What the hell makes them so special? Why are these robot-people consistent and others not? The answer is that successful, consistent, and motivated folk have tricks . . . Aha! They have found a way to do it anyway.

Here’s my list of tricks that will help you stay motivated and consistent.

• Stop beating yourself up if you can’t sustain and/or maintain your “perfect” plan. It’s okay to miss a workout once in a while. It doesn’t mean that your process has gone to hell in a handcart. It doesn’t mean you have to start over. Life happens. Priorities shift. So what? Big deal. Just start up where you left off. If you’re doing Power 90 or P90X®, just add the missed days to the back end. I decree the burden lifted! Of course you must recognize the difference between a missed workout or two and a missed week or two. If you miss two weeks of exercise, it will take at least that long to get back where you left off. If you miss one workout once in a while, you lose nothing. The extra day off can even do the body good.

• Don’t freak out if you don’t see results in the first 45 days. “What?! No results in the first month and a half?!” See, I knew you’d freak out. The reality is that we all have different starting points. The 90 in Power 90 and P90X stands for 90 days, not 90 minutes. Some folks will see results the first week—bastards! Others will have to wait a little longer, based on age, body weight, how out of shape they are when they start the program, flexibility, balance, athletic background, etc.—this is normal. The variety of workouts in P90X purposely plays into your strengths and weaknesses. Both programs were created to have a 30-to-50-day “adaptive phase.” This phase is shorter for some and longer for others. Be patient. Your body will adapt, and you will be amazed at how you look and feel.

-Tony Horton

Tony Horton

Variety is the spice of life and fitness. A lifetime of health and fitness is achievable when you can think outside the box. You have to mix it up all the time. Stay curious, creative, and stick with the kinds of workouts that you enjoy. A variety of exercises, workouts, and sports will allow you to avoid injuries, plateaus, and boredom.

One of the reasons why Power 90®, Power Half Hour®, the Master Series, and P90X® work so well for so many people—who have tried and failed with other programs—is because they are NOT one discipline. Those programs incorporate a variety of things: sectional progression, plyometrics, ab and core routines, boxing and kickboxing, yoga, stretching, and cardiovascular exercises. From Tony & the Kids! to P90X I have always tried to make the routines fun and filled with a variety of movements. Workouts that are uncomplicated, easy to follow, time-tested, with combinations that work. I’m not a fan of boredom. Doing the same routines and movements over and over again doesn’t appeal to me. That’s why many of my programs don’t repeat the same move twice.

Curiosity is a key reason why I’ve been able to sustain a high level of fitness for over 20 years. If I see something that looks fun and challenging, I’ll try it. If it doesn’t ring my chime, I’ll move on to something else. Curiosity was one of the reasons why you picked up the phone and ordered Power 90. You weren’t happy with the status quo. You were probably unhappy and unhealthy. You were in a rut and you wanted a change. When I’m in a rut, I look at ways to mix it up. Just because something works for me right now doesn’t mean it will work or hold my interest later. Too many people hold on too tightly to things that don’t work anymore. You know it’s time to change things when you hear yourself saying: “I feel burned out.” “This isn’t fun anymore.” “I’m no longer seeing improvement with this routine.”

You could be suffering from a temporary bout of mind babble, or maybe it’s your heart telling you that it’s time to move on. Only you know the difference. Don’t do something just because everyone else is doing it. Figure out what keeps you in the game, even if it’s very different than what others think you need. If you’re beating yourself up when it comes to inspiration and motivation regarding perspiration then you need an alteration to your transformation.

Variety in your fitness world will keep boredom, injuries, and plateaus at bay. That’s the reason why Power 90 has two levels. P90X and the Power 90 Master Series were created so that you’ll have a myriad of ways to mix it up and continue to see improvement over time. If you really want to improve your fitness and physique and make this a lifestyle thing, then eventually the other box you’ll need to get outside of . . . is your house. This might be hard for people with a hectic schedule but why not skip that Sunday barbecue for a hike or run or skate or swim or volleyball game. After you’ve seen my goofy mug too many times, you might want to open the door and explore.

Power 90 is the on switch to a lifetime of health and fitness. After your 90 days are up, a nice variety of activities, workouts, and athletic endeavors will turn even more lights on. I like to call the program after Power 90, Power 10,950. That’s 30 years. You can reinvent yourself and take control of your life if you stay curious and try new things. Finishing Power 90 (or any other program for that matter) lets you begin to explore all the possibilities. Variety in fitness and life is essential for keeping the lights on.

-Tony Horton