The ultra-fit trainer behind the global phenomenon P90X was nearly destroyed by a debilitating medical condition. The story of how he fought his way back to health—and peak condition—holds valuable lessons for us all.

INTERVIEW BY MATT TUTHILL

ROBERT IRVINE MAGAZINE: Diet is an even bigger part of being fit and healthy than exercise is. But we make it a little harder in this country than it has to be with the number of artificial flavors and colors and carcinogens that are a normal part of our food supply that are outlawed in many other places in the world. Do you have hope that the US can turn the page here and get right on some of this stuff?

TONY HORTON: Well, I think you’re asking this based on RFK Jr’s hopes and dreams to turn things around.

RI: Sure. I don’t know how realistic it is, but it’s in the spotlight finally.

TH: Look, man, I don’t know if it’s RFK or any particular administration… But if you’re going to sit around and wait for the government to begin to make changes for us, then you’ll be waiting a very, very long time.

If you don’t know the difference between complex carbs and regular carbs, then you might want to look into it. If you don’t know what one sugar is compared to another… most of us are like lemmings jumping off the cliff. We just assume that because it’s got a nice, pretty label on it and it’s on the store shelf, it’s safe. Then there’s a lot of people that did P90X and my new programs on Power Nation. They were a little bit more curious. They were a little bit more open-minded. They wanted to ask questions because they weren’t waiting for any government official to take ingredients out of their Froot Loops. You know what I mean? Come on.

RI: Sure.

TH: Seriously. It’s fruits, vegetables, whole grains, proteins, and healthy fat. That’s been around forever. Almost everybody knew that. A century and a half ago, those were the only options you had. But now because of fast food and processed food and all the other kind of junk that’s flying around, because they’ve got our taste buds wrapped around their finger, it’s too bad. So if either you want to learn a little bit more and feel a little bit better, or live a little bit longer because of those choices, then you’re going to have to do the work on yourself.

And if you’re just too overwhelmed and too busy and not interested, well, then you’re going to suffer more than you need to because these choices will shorten your life. They’ll ruin the last third or fourth of your life. Not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. You’re going to have a lot of issues—many more than other people who figured this stuff out on their own without help from the government. So it’s really up to the individual to figure it out or not.

RI: That’s a great way to put it.

TH: Look: As a kid, my favorite foods were burnt toast and chocolate cake. I don’t eat that anymore. I used to drink alcohol. Then I learned, “Oh, alcohol is really poison.” Even a quarter glass of wine, it’s poison. So do you want a little bit of poison over the course of a long period of time, or do you want a whole lot of poison right away and be dealing with your alcohol issues? Either way, it’s poison.

RI: That kind of tough love cuts through a lot… When did you quit drinking?

TH: Oh, 30 years ago.

RI: And what was the moment?

TH: I wasn’t dealing with alcoholism or anything. I just go, “I’m acting like an idiot. I’m doing it for all the wrong reasons. And the next day I feel like I have a flu. Let’s see. Math says, ‘Don’t do that anymore. Stop.’” And I think within two weeks I was like, “That’s it. I don’t need it ever again.”
It’s just empty calories. It’s bad for every internal organ inside of your body, bad for your brain, bad for your pancreas, your liver, your kidneys, your heart, your lungs. It’s just bad. Whatever. Am I stricter than most? Yeah, but can I do more than most people at 66? Yeah, that is also true.

RI: Could you then rebut some of the positive press we see for alcohol? Especially with regard to red wine and heart health and things like that. To you, it sounds like the downsides are just much more significant.

TH: Well, anybody can find an article about anything that says it’s okay. I don’t know who are sponsoring those articles about how a glass the wine is okay. And maybe for some folks, it is. Look, the truth be told, one size does not fit all. And so the way I live my life might not apply to other people based on their genetics, based on their culture, based on their stress levels or lack thereof, based on how often they exercise or they don’t, how healthy the rest of their diet is. You know what I mean? There’s so many things to consider. There’s a lot of people who have a beer at the game and have a glass of wine at dinner, and they live to be well into their nineties. You know what I mean? And they end up being pretty active, as well.

One thing about our conversation is I’m not giving anybody any advice. The worst kind of advice to give is the kind that’s not asked for in the first place, because your best intentions are received with resentment.

RI: You came down with Ramsey-Hunt syndrome in 2017. What were you feeling leading into that diagnosis? What made you go to the doctor?

TH: Well, it’s all stress related. It was herpes in my ear. Herpes zoster it’s called, which is just another term for shingles. Doesn’t sound as bad as herpes zoster, but it’s the same thing. And so I was feeling a lot of stress. The company that I was with at that time… they didn’t want to pay me what I thought I deserved after 20 years of helping millions and millions of people and helping make that company grow. It was a bit of a shock. And so I had to make a decision, and that was to leave. And that was scary. And then I had friends that were at the Vegas shooting and heard those stories, and that just rocked my world. And then Tom Petty died the day after the Vegas shooting. I knew and trained Tom for 32 years. He was a friend.

RI: Whoa.

TH: Here’s this icon of rock and roll, I knew his first wife. I knew his second wife. I knew and watched his kids grow up. I went on tour with him. And he passed away. So if you’ve ever had chickenpox, shingles virus is in there just waiting for you to deal with the craziness of life. And that was too much for me. You know what I mean?

When it actually kicked in, my wife and I thought I was having a stroke because my balance was off. I had some serious brain fog. My right eye and the right side of my face started to droop, and then it became full Bell’s palsy there for about a month and a half… I was throwing up because I was so nauseous from being so dizzy. It affected my sight, my smell, my taste, and my balance. The nerves inside your ear, when you get open sores, it fries the nerves. And a lot of people don’t fully recover.
They don’t fully recover because they didn’t have the health and wellness background that I did. But there was just too much stress in my life, man.

RI: How do you treat this? How do you recover?

TH: You take antiviral meds, which I’m still on to this day. I still take a tablet of that every day. Plus meditation helps, breath work helps, plus yoga and stretching and playing music. You know what I mean? Just trying to stay chill. I go for walks. I hang out with my dog. I take naps. I meditate. I do sun salutations in the morning or when I need to.

I do a lot of mellow reading. I hang out with my wife just laying in bed, listening to music, doing nothing. I do a lot of altruistic stuff, a lot of charity work. On top of the cold plunges, and the saunas, and the foam rolling, and the massages, and the jacuzzi and the compression work, and my supplements, which are part of the recovery, and making sure that I’m getting enough protein because I don’t want to end up with sarcopenia like a lot of people my age. Hydration is also really important. Electrolytes are really important.

And then getting a decent amount of sleep. Creating an atmosphere in my bedroom that is free of EMFs (electromagnetic fields). There’s no phones and no laptops and no TVs in our bedroom.

RI: How long were you down and out?

TH: It took three and a half months to be able to drive again. Took that period of time to be able to walk on a treadmill again. It took me forever. I lost 25, 30 pounds and I was weak as a chicken.

RI: Well, if it was three months to drive, that first day back in the gym must have been one of the most humbling experiences a human being could really experience. This is Mr. High Intensity. This is Mr. P90X. If I could imagine it, that was probably a private moment for you. I would imagine you wouldn’t want to go to a public place and be around a lot of other people…

TH: Look, it didn’t upset me or bother me or freak me out as much as it could. Because I knew, I watched other people who lost 210 pounds through one of my programs. I saw where they started, and I go, “I already know all this stuff. I can’t do most of it, but I know over the course of time, I’ll be able to…” Why do you think at P90X I had those worksheets? I broke out a piece of paper and a pen, and I started writing down what I could do. And then I tracked it over time, and within three weeks, I was about half as strong as I used to be. At about six weeks, I was about 80% where I was. And after about two months, I was right back where I was.

My balance wasn’t great, and my balance still isn’t. That’s permanently damaged. Whatever nerves I have there are permanently quasi-fried. But yeah, I did what I could. And then I did the extra rep, and I added the extra five pounds, and I increased my range of motion by a half inch or more every time I did something. And the human body is pretty resilient. Even when you kick the crap out of, it’ll come back.

RI: But never mind the illness, there’s age, too, so you must be slowing down. You’re not the same exact guy you were when this thing came out.

TH: I’m better.

RI: You’re better?

TH: I’m better. BETTER.

RI: By what metrics are you better?

TH: In some respects, stronger. In other respects, not as strong. But in areas where I feel I could be, there is improvement, I will work on that. I’ll still work on my weaknesses. I made P90X to work on your weaknesses and your strengths. I can’t do as many push-ups as I used to be able to do. I can do 45 four ball pushups. I did it on Sunday. So four med balls, basically they’re hard as a rock like bowling balls. And I can get on all four, and I can do 45 pushups. I can do 30 pullups in a row still. I can sprint hills, which I couldn’t even do eight months ago, but I could do it now because I started working on it.

RI: When you couldn’t do a thing, did you have some dark thoughts?

TH: Oh, very dark… I was very sad, very depressed, very crushed, very overwhelmed. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees then, because I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t eat. If I turned my head too fast to the left or the right, I’d vomit. I had no energy. We had a little plastic chair in the shower, and I would just sit in the shower with my head between my legs and just let the hot water run over my body for a half hour. I took a bath as many days as my wife could draw one and throw epsom salts in there, and just lie there. Or I just laid in bed because getting out of bed was climbing Everest. It was terrible, man. Terrible.

RI: P90X is a thing that it still has a seemingly permanent recognition within the culture. It was such a huge phenomenon. As you’re creating this thing, I’m sure you know you’ve got a solid program, but you can’t predict it being embraced on this scale. So, its success: how did that feel? Did it alarm you? Or did you think, “Yeah this is what should happen”?

TH: We were blown away, mesmerized, overwhelmed, shocked, appalled. No, we weren’t appalled. We were thrilled. But yeah, we did something called Power 90 prior, which was also pretty intense. My initial feeling was that we should back off a little bit, make something for people who are way out of shape and not ready for this kind of lifestyle. And then we had other conversations. Then they said, “What do you do to be the guy you are?” I go, “I crush everything. I go to town on everything.” So eventually we said, “Let’s do that.” I thought, “I don’t know how this is going to go.”

And in the first year, it was crickets. I was seeing my royalty checks come in and go, “Oh boy, that wasn’t very smart. Probably should have done Power 90, Part2.”

But then word of mouth started to kick in. And the infomercials were there and we were changing the offers. And we were taking people’s videos and photos of themselves that they were submitting to us, and we were putting that in the infomercial. That was what was actually happening. Initially, it was, “Look at these results from the folks that were in our test group.”

They were real results, because I was eyeballing them. I was the one leading these classes morning and night every day for our test group folks to make sure that it worked. And everybody’s like, “Nah, that’s a controlled environment. I don’t know. That’s not really me.” But there was that select few people out in the world that went, “Man, that looks badass and serious. And it’s time for me to step up.” Along with a lot of people in the military along with a lot of division one, two, and three college coaches making their students do it. The other day I met this kid. He was a guest at one of my workouts. He said, “Yeah, man, I saw you from third grade through 12th grade in our gymnasium at my school. They would just plug you in.”

That happened in schools all across the country. Then I got involved with the Pentagon. The folks at the Pentagon go, “Oh, yeah, it’s the most popular thing any of us ever do.” I went to Andrew’s Air Force Base, it was my first military pit stop, and they put me on a screen the size of the Empire State Building behind me and then there are all these Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine joint base… And then year two, three, four, five, six, it was insane.

RI: You are a guy who was famously stuck for a while. Now you’re unstuck. What is the best advice you can give to someone who feels stuck?

TH: Purpose, plan, accountability, and intensity.

First, PURPOSE: You need a reason why it’s so impactful, so forceful that there’s nothing that can stop you. You know what I mean? And so that requires a little bit of research, a little bit of introspection. So what I would tell people is write down on a piece of paper, “What is the problem?” A lot of times it just sits in your head and 10 years later it’s still in your head and you haven’t done anything about it. You haven’t done anything because you haven’t written it down. So in two sentences, you don’t have to write a novel. Just two sentences. “I’m really struggling with my health and wellness. I don’t like the way I feel. It’s really preventing me from enjoying my life. And I don’t know what to do about it.” Boom, perfect.

And then you have seven days to take the first step. What’s the first step? Call, find out how much trainers cost, find out if somebody else, who’s a friend, a neighbor, a relative that you want to do this thing with and figure it out. If your purpose is, “I want to look a certain way on this date,” then you’re screwed. “I want to look like a certain thing”? What are you? A bikini model? Are you a professional bodybuilder or are you somebody with a massive ego that only cares about how you look in front of other people? Because they don’t really care because they’re too focused on themselves.

So that’s not the reason. The reason is, “I want to feel good today. The past is history. The future is a mystery. What is it that I can do today to improve it today?” So if I move physically, with any method: yoga, weightlifting, cardio, elliptical, versiclimber, slide board, ski machine, animal flow, Pilates, it’s not like there aren’t enough choices. All right? Figure out which one you’re quasi-interested in and start doing it. Go read John Ratey’s book Spark, and you won’t miss a day of working out ever again unless you broke your leg. That book says, you move today, you’re better today.

Here’s a simple thing: escalators on either side of the stairs. Pick the stairs in between because you know that’s just the wisest thing to do. That’s my purpose. My purpose is to function as well as a 66-year-old as I did when I was a 22-year-old. Period. Aging’s a number.

Then your plan. What are you going to do when? Now, this fitness thing is a priority.
It’s not like this fifth thing on the list, the seventh thing on the list, the 12th thing on the list. It has to be number one. So you tell the entire world, “I’m working out on these days, doing these things at this time, these things on these days at this time. And so don’t schedule anything. Don’t schedule a call. Don’t schedule a meeting, don’t schedule a flight. Don’t schedule anything because that’s what I’m doing, and I’ll figure out how to work everything else around me.” All right? And then accountability comes from the company you keep.

Now, if you’re not self-motivated and you’ve been having this self-talk that sucks forever, then you better find some new friends. Your number two priority is find ass-kickers. All the naysayers and the finger pointers and the wannabes, they go to the back of the line. And you see them at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Other than that, you have no need. You don’t have to spend any more time with lazy procrastinators that hope and wish and pray.

Give yourself four months. Work out four or five days a week and get off the hooch and eat more vegetables. You’ll be a completely better human being because those four months are going to come and go. So you can either talk to yourself and beat yourself up, and say, “Woe is me,” for those four months, or you just do what I say. Like I tell my friends, “You want to live? Come with me.”

To learn more about Tony Horton, visit TonyHortonLife.com and to buy his supplements—which we reviewed and loved in our last issue, visit MyPowerLife.com. Follow him on Instagram @TonySHorton and check out his YouTube channel.