Interview with Tony Horton

I was sitting in a coffee shop sometime in July waiting on some friends and I saw a flyer for canfitpro's World Expo. Now I'm familiar with canfitpro and their annual event, but what really struck me about the flyer was that Tony Horton and Shaun T were staring at me from the front.

I NEED TO BE THERE.

I have a passion for health, fitness and wellness, but these were my people! And I wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to see Tony and Shaun here in my hometown!

The world fitness expo is Canada's largest fitness expo and an opportunity to hang with 15,000 other fitness enthusiasts, trainers, instructors and vendors. 

I scored myself a ticket, planned out my day and the next thing I knew I was gearing up to interview one of my favourite Beachbody trainers - Tony Horton! I was persistent about getting this interview and felt so lucky to be able to make it happen bright and early on the Saturday morning. What do you ask someone who you've been following for years and who you recently spent 8 weeks for 22 minutes a day?

Tony and I talked about motivation, his favourite workout program, letting go and more. Check out our interview below!

You’ve trained celebrities, people in the military, everyday people like myself

Tony: you’re not an everyday people, you’re an extraordinary people and you know it

So what is one struggle that you see among all people – is there any common challenges that you see?

Tony: Is there one? We always want that one, when it’s really about a dozen. 

But if anything was to pop into my head I would say that motivation and diet are the two biggest issues in people. I think if they’ve figured out a way to stay motivated, and their reason why is rock solid and they were able to make healthy food taste good, then I think the problem would go away. It really comes down to those two things. 

Obviously hydration, sleep and the company that you keep – these are all things that matter as well, but really just understanding why you exercise, how often you exercise and the kinds of exercise, and you should have a variety of exercise and you shouldn’t be so attached to the outcome of exercise. You shouldn’t focus so much on your appearance and your ego and what people say about you and all that nonsense, and just focus on what you need and do whatever you need to do and do it poorly – but poorly is a helluva lot better than not doing it at all. And then the second part of that equation is just eating well. I mean there’s a healthcare crisis because people can’t eat well. And it seems so simple – it’s crazy.

I saw a study last week that said that 75% of Americans think they’re eating healthy.

Tony: yah, a lot of them think they do. And they tell me “I’m doing everything right” and then I’ll just kind of be at an event and watch them eat and I’ll think “Are you out of your mind? This is garbage” Because they’re avoiding bacon at three meals a day, they think they’re killing it. 

But all the fruit juices, and all those sports drinks and all the chemicals and salt, and the sugar and the garbage, and saturated fats that’s really where people are getting into trouble. I had an event recently where I asked a room of 800 people who ate 5-6 servings of vegetables a day – breakfast, lunch and dinner, and of the 800 people maybe 12 hands went up. So HELLO!

It’s easy when we get excited and we have a goal, but then it’s making it a habit. What would you say to someone who has been working out for awhile and they’ve started and they’re stoked, but they struggle to keep that momentum and motivation going.

Tony: Without [health, wellness and fitness], you’re surviving just like anyone else. But with it you thrive and it gives you the energy and enthusiasm to take on more in your life. And so if you understand that and you want to take on more, and have the energy and enthusiasm to really get outside your comfort zone, think outside of the box, have more experiences, have more adventures, improve the quality of your life today, avoid the illnesses that occur as we get older, that’s why I do it. 

The whole idea here is to try and stay as youthful as you can. If you train every day, you will stay as youthful as you can and if you don’t, you’re going to slip. And you’re going to age at the typical rate. 

I have this expression that people give me a hard time about, and that’s ‘aging is for idiots’ and what I mean by that is aging is for people who aren’t willing to do the work to prevent the typical form of aging. It can’t be sporadic and it has to be for that reason – not for the typical reasons that we do it. For the inches, the weight and the dress sizes and for the compliments. Those things are nice, but if you’re living and dying by that, then you’ll never succeed.

You’re known for saying ‘do your best and forget the rest’ – so often we dwell on ‘the rest’ – how do you let go of that.

Tony: Well you know a lot of time, the rest doesn't have to do so much with our thoughts of what we can or can’t do and how we compare ourselves from the past and how we hope to be in the future; A lot of it has to do with our expectations. 

If you have very low expectations you’re going to succeed. Just have really low expectations, but show up. But don’t try to knock it outta the park or concur the world. "I want to go rock climbing so I’m going to start with Mount Everest". You know, for a lot of people 22 MHC or P90x is Mount Everest. You have to kind of start with the modifiers – I’m the modifying king. But the rest also has to do with the company that you keep. 

I talk about it in my book – new haters and blockers. And sometimes we’re a new hater and what I mean by that is we don’t like new things. New things intimidate us, they scare us and so we avoid them even though that new thing is going to improve our lives – say like, a smart phone – that’s a new thing in the last couple of years, but everyone is willing to figure it out so that we can participate in the process of communication better than they used to. That’s what P90x and 22 MHC is – they’re a new thing and you have to figure it out. And you have to be willing to do that because you care about who you are. 

And then the other group of people are blockers. And blockers and new haters are pretty much in the same category. New haters hate new things and they’re always going on about how much this sucks and that sucks and times are changing. And they’re afraid to learn and they like it the good old fashioned way. Whatever the hell that was. They’re walking around with a horse and buggy? No. Forget it. Catch up with everybody else and participate in the modern world. 

You are the company you keep. Can you imagine if your best 5 friends were world class mountain bikers or rock climbers or surfers or snowboarders and that’s who your peeps were? Then you’d be really good at one of those things and you wouldn’t have a health issue, you’d just be kicking ass every day because your environment is awesome.

 But most people’s environment – their friends, their family, their bosses, their coworkers, siblings or whatever are bitching and moaning about how shitty life is and you need to run from them. Run away from them and find some really cool people. And if they’re not in your immediate area, you can go sign up for a class or go on the internet and find people who are doing neat things and join them or you know, that’s what Beachbody coaching is – it’s an opportunity to find like-minded people online or at events in your area, like Super Saturdays or Summits so that way you know, there’s a change in mindset because there’s a change in physical environment and who you’re around. You can do that if you’re willing to do that, and you’re willing to be a little bit uncomfortable and a little bit scared, then life will get better. Yay!

Do you have a favourite one of your workouts or is that like picking between your children?

Tony: My favourite right now is 22 Minute Hard Corps

It’s so good

Tony: It’s so good. And here’s what’s so great about it. There’s a bunch of new people coming into the fray who would have never done one of my programs. A lot of people look at my programs, like P90X or P90X2 or X3 and they think they're too extreme. And for a lot of people who have 100 pounds to lose, they took an approach that allowed them to get through it. But a lot of people don’t even want to go there. 

And so 22 Minute Hard Corps gives a lot of people who are maybe doing 21 Day Fix or maybe just going on walks an opportunity to participate in an intense 22 minute workout. That time frame – if people can’t do 22 minutes then you just don’t care. 

But P90X is what brought me here, that’s my first born child and 22 Minute Hard Corps is my youngest child. And you always have to have a strong feeling about that.

If you look back at your career what’s the biggest risk you’ve taken?

Tony: Probably stand up comedy. That was a major stepping stone for me – getting up onstage with my shtick and trying to be funny in front of people and it’s such an immediate thing. 

Unlike if I’m developing a program, I have a lot of time to look at it and see what it will be like and even all my “jokes” are not predetermined. They’re spontaneous. And having been an improv actor and liking comedy, I’m just a fan of laughing. Making people laugh, it takes your mind off the pain and the agony. But just getting super comfortable in front of large groups of people and interviews like this, on camera with 3 cameras and a cast. That’s what acting did and taking those classes did, you know it’s all about presentation and delivery. It’s about creating a persona that is interesting for people to watch. 

Why is anything popular? If it were somebody else in P90X, would it have been as popular? I don’t know – maybe. Maybe they would have had to bring their own persona to that equation. But that’s it – just making this whole process fun, that was a big stepping stone for me. Learning that it was okay and I could do it my way, using my style and my technique.

One of the things that I talk about a lot on my blog is mental health, depression and anxiety – is that something that you’ve faced in your life and in your career?

Tony: Hell yah. I mean anyone who is eating poorly and not exercising is going to have some sort of that, especially if they’re lacking purpose. People who are fired up on what they’re doing then they don’t have as much of that. 

What ends up happening when you’re depressed or sad or frustrated or overwhelmed is that you’re usually spending most of your time thinking about you. Like “woe is me and my problems and I don’t have this going” and then there’s a combination of that and a lot of finger pointing, typically. Like “oh my life sucks and I’m not doing well, and I don’t have enough money and I don’t have a boyfriend” and yadda yadda yadda – it’s his fault, her fault, their fault and mom and dad’s fault. Yah – you gotta stop doing that. 

There’s two things you can control to help turn that around. And that’s what you eat and whether you exercise or not. And so when you eat well and you exercise, you create a chemical shift inside of your brain. Because all those feelings that you have are chemical reactions inside of your head. It’s lack of dopamine, serotonin, brain drive, neurotropic factor – these are chemicals that occur when you breathe heavy for 20-30-40-50 minutes. And the harder you work and the more you breathe and the more often you do it, then there’s a dumping of these chemicals inside the temporal lobe. And so you read John Ratey‘s book Spark and you think “Oh wow, I have to work out today because I’m not in a good mood". If I work out today there’s a sort of a shift that goes from “I can’t” to “I can” and that’s what physical exercise does. 

You have to combine it with food because food is another form of chemicals. You’re not going to see the physical, mental and emotional shift if you’re not eating well. Both of those things are hard. Both of those things require discipline. And they both require a plan. And they both require you to hang around the kind of people who are doing it as well. 

And if you can figure all that out – then you just feel fired up, and you feel like you can try things and you’re less fearful. And you’re less anxious. You’re less frightened. And you’re less scared. And it’s purely because you worked out. I mean – most people don’t know that. They just think that working out is something they do so that they can run faster or lift more or look good. And those things occur as well but those are just ancillary after effects. They aren’t as important as exercising purely for the purpose of becoming a happier, joyful person. That’s what really it’s about.

 I loved chatting with Tony! He's got lots of fun stuff coming up including a cookbook, a couple of TV shows / web series, and continuing to travel across the globe sharing his awesome workouts and approach to life with the masses. 

I can't wait to share more with you from my time at canfitpro world expo!

What Nan Taught Me About Love

It's been a really surprising couple of weeks. A week and a half ago I got a text from my uncle Glen late in the evening to say that my Nan had had a heart attack, but she was doing okay. I anticipated sending flowers to the hospital and then speaking with Nan in a few days. The next morning I got another message saying that things were not good, and my aunt Sharon and I made the decision to leave work and go to Belleville because we didn't know how things would progress.

We got to the hospital in time to see Nan and have her recognize that we were both there. It was surreal. As the day went on, we came to understand the impact of the repercussions of everything happening in her body that led to the heart attack and everything that happened as a result. She didn't make it through the night.

I'm so thankful that I got to say goodbye - but it was all truly shocking as everything unfolded so quickly.

As I've talked about before, grief brings up a lot of old feelings for me and I found it especially hard since it was my mom's mom. I'm so thankful for the incredible support I received from family and friends as I went through the motions of life in the days that followed. I was also really grateful for the love that surrounded Nan in the hospital on the day she died.

We had a celebration of life for her last week, which was attended by much of our family and friends. I spoke at the event, and I wanted to share my eulogy here as another way to honour Nan's memory and share my feelings about what her life taught me.

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For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ashley. Thelma was my grandmother by relation, but to me, she was always my Nan. I was never allowed to call her grandma or grandmother or granny (because those made her sound old) – so Nan she was.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I wanted to say about Nan today and how I wanted to express my feelings to celebrate her life. I’ve reflected on many memories that we shared over the years – from times at Tobe’s bingo hall, swimming in the backyard pool, getting my butt kicked at crib until I figured out how to beat her, having lunch at Zellers, eating lemon meringue pie to my hearts content, that time my mom warned her about my 3-year-old brother Cory putting her in a headlock, that time that 3 year-old Cory succeeded at putting Nan in a headlock she couldn’t get out of, that time I almost got married, Christmases, birthdays, graduations, shows– the list really goes on and on.

I’m the oldest daughter of her daughter Debbie, who died in 1998. Over the last week I’ve felt so many of the same feelings that I felt following my mom’s death – shock, disbelief, sadness and grief. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

Today I want to talk about love.

Because in the last week, I’ve realized that love is one of the greatest gifts that Nan gave me. Our family is unique – to say the least. But underneath it all, there’s a lot of love. And when I think back on the family reunions, the Christmases, the summers spent in the backyard – that love is a constant.

I remember waking up on Christmas morning in Belleville at the crack of dawn, and Nan being the first one to get up with me. This was always to the dismay of my mom who was NOT a morning person, even on the best of days. Nan’s spunk, excitement, and twinkle was always present and those mornings were filled with love – even if it was 6am, still dark out and we were the only ones crazy enough to be awake.

Nan taught me how to cook and bake all sorts of treats, which probably helped to cultivate my love for food. We would make up silly songs and put on cooking shows as we danced around the kitchen. We would laugh and be silly as we baked up a storm, with everything we made being infused with love (which obviously made it more delicious)

When I try to explain Nan to people, I tell them a story about when I was in college and visiting Belleville. I was sleeping and she came to wake me first thing in the morning. At my bedside, she said “Ashley, I’ve been thinking about it all night, you’re such a beautiful girl with a beautiful smile, and it’s just a couple of teeth – I want to get you braces” Still half asleep I said thank you, and a few weeks later I was in the orthodontists chair. Nan was known for speaking her mind, but she did it with love underneath it all. I smile bigger because of it.

As I got older, Nan was always very curious about the people that I dated and I realized that it was because she equated happiness with love – and didn’t want me to be without it. In the last couple of years, she would always ask me if I was “still going with Corbin” and when I said that I was, she would tell me how happy she was that I had found him. Because she held love in such high regard and truly wanted that for the people who were important to her.

What really inspired this reflection was the time we spent at the hospital last week - because there was so much love surrounding her in the room when she died. Love from my uncle Glen, my aunt Sharon, Martin’s children, friends, the ICU staff, people sending good wishes and prayers, but most of all Martin.

Seeing the two of them share their last moments together was one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen. Watching Nan look over and make sure that he was ok. Hearing Martin say that he was going to hold on for as long as he could.

Every moment.
Every breath.
That is love.

It's been said that grief is the last act of love we have to give to those we have loved. Where there is deep grief, there was love.

Nan’s life and her death has made me think closely about what we leave behind when we leave this world – and Nan has left behind many memories, experiences, very special people and most of all, love.

Toronto Fringe 2016

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Toronto Fringe Festival is basically the second coming of Christmas for performers.

It's an amazing opportunity to see lots of shows, visit with friends, hang out in the Fringe tent, frolic in the sunshine and enjoy the arts and general merriment for 10 days. This year is slightly bittersweet as it's the last year that the Fringe tent will be in the Honest Ed's alley (since Honest Ed's is set to close and be turned into condos...)

I've had many good memories in the Fringe tent over the years! It always takes at least 30 minutes to an hour to leave because anytime you try, you wind up running into 10,000 people you know and it's just a fun place to socialize and chat with people who you don't always get to see. I live nearby, so I end up in the tent many nights after seeing shows just to have that fun social time. Even though I'm not performing in a show this year, it's still such a blast and something I really look forward to every summer.

The Fringe officially starts today and I've already got a handful of shows picked out to get this ball rolling! With 160 shows, it can be tough to start making choices about which to prioritize. Since shows can also sell out quickly, it's also great if you can set your schedule, and pick up advance tickets for anything that you're desperate to see.

There's lots of great lists floating around (including ones from Derrick Chua and Steve Fisher at Post City whose opinions I value) But here are some things I'm getting started with this weekend / grabbing my advance tickets for!

Dance Animal - Knowing a friend in the cast and watching Dance Raccoon do a monologue at a recent event has me completely sold. Comedy + dance + animals = absurd hilarity.

#MannequinGirl: the musical - I really enjoyed writer Elize Blue Musselwhite's fringe musical last year and the premise of becoming an internet sensation after being hit with a mannequin in the street speaks to the social media lover in me. Alyssa Minchillo is a heck of a talent and I think it should be really cute!

SexT - The conservative parents of Ontario have been livid over the province's new sex ed curriculum and from my perspective it's all been pretty ridiculous to watch unfold. This show has been developed with a bunch of teens and I love that they're bringing sex, consent, sexting and relationships, front and centre from their perspective.

The Pirate Queen of the Stars - I met Megan (who is in the show as well as producing it) years and years ago on an internet message board (true story) and we finally met last year in Toronto during Fringe. It's been amazing to watch her grow over the years as a human and as an artist, so I'm ultra excited for this show! I've been hearing bits and pieces of some of the songs over the last few weeks which has piqued my interest and I'm really looking forward to seeing it all come together. They've assembled an incredible cast of hilarious powerhouse performers and it's billed a sci-fi musical comedy - COME ON.

Other shows I'm looking forward to: Life After (I was part of a reading of this a few years ago and can't wait to see how far it's come. Britta Johnson is such a talent), Bright Lights (top notch cast + Kat Sandler = Fringe magic), Romeo and Juliet Chainsaw Massacre (so much happening and lots of great folks involved), The Fence (Johnson, Johnston and Wilde are incredible and I adored Summerland last year), Wasteland (Sex T-Rex is always awesome), Blind to Happiness (coming highly recommended!) and Echoes (again another great team with a new musical)

I'm sure there will be other shows that come and go onto my list as word of mouth starts to spread - which is half the fun. I can't wait!

If you'd like to follow along with my adventures, I'll be tweeting up a storm (@ashleydtl) and probably adding some snaps to my story (ashleydtl) likely with shenanigans from the tent!

If you're in Toronto over the next 10 days, I highly suggest you grab a program or download the app and support some amazing theatre! All ticket sales go back to the artists involved and be sure to take a moment to tip the Fringe.

What are you looking forward to this Fringe?