What To Do When You Hate Working Out

We’re now onto part 4 of the 9-part interview with Tony Horton, but if you missed part 3 where he revealed the fountain of youth, and why not being able to do something right away might actually be a good thing, then you’ll want to check that out.

Today,  Tony discusses what kind of results you can really expect from working out only 10 minutes a day, as well as offering alternatives to doing long, slow boring cardio that will keep you motivated and coming back for more.  So let’s get into….What To Do When You Hate Working Out

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Craig Ballantyne: So let’s switch gears and talk about the ten-minute programs that you have now.  Why don’t you tell the folks listening at home what people can really get done in ten minutes and then how you structured those workouts to get the absolute, 100 percent out of every single second in those ten minutes?

Tony Horton: Well, remember when the ten-minute trainer came out, everybody was calling me a sellout, you know what I mean?  “Oh, Mr. Extreme Fitness is selling ten-minute workouts.  He’s a sellout.”  Well, what I’m trying to do – what Carl Daikeler, our CEO, is trying to do – is get as many people moving and getting off the couch as possible.

So there’s a MASSIVE demographic of people who can’t even get near Power 90 or P90X, folks that have got 60, 70, 150 pounds to lose.  There’s a lot more of those kinds of people in this country than ever before.

So the only way you’re gonna get them off the couch is introduce them to routines that are obviously shorter.

They have to still be intense.  I mean, they can’t be – walking ten minutes is not gonna have the same amount of results as something that is very synergistic in nature, where you’re lunging and curling and pressing and kicking and – you know what I mean?  That’s the thing about the ten-minute trainer routines.  Each one of those ten-minute workouts are NOT a walk in the park. Some of them have the same level of intensity as parts of the P90X routine.

The idea is, I show you modifications – “Look, here’s the advanced way to do it; here’s the super-modified way to do it.  Pick one that you can physically do, but I want you to finish the ten minutes.”  You know, “Just do the ten minutes.” So the idea is to try to get two of those in a day.

Now, if you did just ten minutes a day, the results would come, very slowly – that is, if you modified your diet, right; you got all the junk out and you started eating better.  But at twice a day, the idea is – we sell the ten-minute trainer as a means to help people who have very tight schedules to start working out, people who have had all these excuses, “I don’t have time, right?  I need – I don’t need –”  So it takes you ten minutes to make the bed.  You can work out in ten minutes.

But the demographic that we don’t talk about are people who HATE exercise.

Hate it.  They just – “Ah, forget it.  I don’t like sweating; I don’t like breathing hard; I don’t like my muscles being sore.”  So the idea is to try to introduce to those folks, “Look, if you want the quality of your life to improve, you’re not gonna get it through a pill, a potion, or processed food.  You’ve been wasting your time and going around in cycles with that.  Why don’t you try stepping up – do ten minutes in the morning?”

I have a cousin who’s a perfect example.

She didn’t like going to a gym; she had a bunch of kids.  She had the time. I mean, she knew that she could make the time.  She just didn’t want to.  And so I said, “Look.  Here’s a disc.  It’s me.  It’s your cousin.  Just put it in the thing and do it.”  I mean, what’s – and she lost a bunch of weight.  She has a ton of energy.  And she got off some of the basic crap food that she was eating, and she got amazing results.  So –

Craig Ballantyne: Very good.  All right, so let’s talk about interval training.  I was reading, actually, your – there’s a Wikipedia page on Tony Horton, and it was talking about how you got into interval training with the help of, I think, Mark Sisson or something.  And so why don’t you tell us about your favorite interval type of training, your favorite duration, length, that type of workout, and then how you like to do interval training the best?  Is it some type of cardio machine, or is it biking outside, or what do you like to do for interval training?

Tony Horton: Well, I do different kinds of interval training.  Like, the one that I’m gonna do tonight is a leg – is a Plyometric legs routine.  And so, unlike the Plyo routine in P90X – we kind of go from one to another to another of super-intense Plyometric move to a semi-intense to a completely non-Plyometric move, because you need that.  You can’t do Plyo, Plyo, Plyo, Plyo.  There’s just – the lactic – the Krebs cycle won’t – I’m not – how do I say this in basic terms?  There’s just – the lactic acid builds up so your muscles burn out and you can’t do it.

So the routine I’m doing tonight is a combination of a Plyometric movement and basic leg moves.  So there’s a lunge move; there’s a squat move; there’s a Plyo move.  And we kind of rotate.  And there’s some – I have a lot of isometric movements in there.  We do chair against the wall, one-legged chair against the wall.

And I – and we try to go as quickly as we can, because the heart rate shoots way through the roof.  And then you take a short break, maybe 15 seconds, and you get – 15, maybe 30, if there’s – sometimes we have 12 people here at my house doing it, so some folks, I don’t wanna leave them behind.  So we have to – more people slows it down.  But that’s one of my favorite interval routines.

The other one I do is on machines.

I love doing intervals on – like at my house, here at my gym, I have a slide board; I have a ski machine; I have a VersaClimber; I have a stationary bike; I have a treadmill; I have a platform to jump rope on; I have a set of stairs and a heavy bag.  Now, what I’ll do is I’ll do five minutes on each one of those, right?  So – and then I even have them all numbered.  I went and had them all, like, and then – with these interchangeable numbers.

So it’s this – every Wednesday night, I do this mixed-up – I call it core cardio interval routine.  So the heart rate’s up, and then you’re going full blast.  Five minutes is awesome.  It’s a perfect amount of time for me just to go crazy.  Then I hop off; I give myself, like, 30 seconds, and then, bang, I jump on another one.

And the great thing about that is, if you think about it – you can go for a 45-minute run, and what are you doing the whole time?

You’re running.  You’re running, you’re running, you’re running, you’re running. 

So you might hurt your knees, you might hurt your ankle, you might hurt your back.  You’re very susceptible to injury, especially as you get older.  Have you ever watched somebody in their 60s or 70s run?  Holy cow, you just wanna pick them up and throw them in a yoga class, you know?

And – but when you’re doing a routine like that, you go from a lateral ski exercise to a vertical VersaClimber routine to a linear running thing and then to a Plyometric jump roping thing.  I mean, you can’t beat that.  You’re less vulnerable to injury.  You’re less vulnerable to getting hurt.  And it’s a heck of a lot more fun, man, when you’re mixing it up like that.

To discover the rest of Tony Horton’s fat burning advice:

Click here to listen to this exclusive interview

I promise you’ll learn a lot to help you lose belly fat