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Beachbody in the News

June 1, 2011 –

There is barely a week that goes by when Beachbody isn’t mentioned in the media so I want to share some articles and videos over the past months. Many people are very skeptical about anything that is advertised in an infomercial. And frankly, they have a right to be. Ironically, I actually bought P90X from clicking through on  the Bowflex website and didn’t even know about the infomercial until later. There is a such overwhelming support for Beachbody and its products that the stereotypical informercial criticisms like “fad”, “one trick pony”, or “gimmick” can all be ruled out.

Beachbody is about hard work and doing the right things that will change your life forever. As the old adage goes, they teach you how to fish rather than giving you a fish for a day. So, if you needed anymore convincing besides real success stories like mine, then here are some great articles and videos for you to read / watch.

1) Fox L.A. TV – Featured Darin Olin, co-creator of Shakeology, on his world of Superfoods.

2) Tony working with Nellis AF base. He does ALOT of work with the military

3) Fox News – Tony has some great advice on how to “Bring It!”

4) Wall Street Journal – Talks about Tony and his work in DC at the Congressional gym

5) New York Times – Article on the Beachbody Business

6) Video of Tony at the Atlantic Fitness Club

ENJOY!


Shakeology Co-Creator & Ingredients Featured On Fox L.A. TV!

May 31st, 2011

Shakeology co-creator and our very own ingredient hunter, Darin Olien talked to Fox TV’s Los Angeles affiliate station about some of the superfoods found in Shakeology – The Healthiest Meal Of The Day.

Source Link – Click HERE


Clip of Tony working out with the men and women at Nellis Airforce Base.


P90X Creator Tony Horton Offers Tips on How to ‘Bring It’

By Colleen Cappon

Published June 01, 2011| FoxNews.com

Source Article – Click HERE

We live in a world of quick fixes when it comes to losing weight and looking good. With Americans spending $40 billion a year on everything from pills and shakes to pre-packaged meals and cellulite creams, we’re obsessed with buying almost anything to drop a few. Just don’t try to sell any of those products to Tony Horton.

If you don’t know who Tony Horton is, maybe you should. He is one of the hottest names in fitness as the creator of P90X, the at-home extreme fitness DVD program that has swept the nation and sold more than three million copies. He is also the author of Bring It—a lifestyle guide designed to whip you into shape. But what makes him different from almost any other exercise guru?

We asked him for his best advice on how to really “bring it.”

Exercise for the Right Reasons

First things first, you need to ask yourself if you are ready to make a change in your life and commit to it. Horton said hopping on the Stairmaster for 20 minutes three times a week is a start, and better than nothing, but is not going to give you the level of fitness essential for a healthy life.
Why are you making this change? Horton said if it is just to be thinner, you need to reevaluate yourself.

“Get away from the whole aesthetics factor. It shouldn’t be about eating foods that will help you be smaller later. It doesn’t matter how small you are—the fitness is what matters,” he said.
Instead, Horton said to concentrate on all the other benefits of exercise, and if you lose a few pounds in the process—that’s a bonus.

“If I exercise today and eat well, I turn back the clock. Cells will grow stronger, my immune system will function better and improve my quality of life. Memory will improve, I will have less stress and feel better,” he added.

Don’t Put Garbage in Your Mouth

Most people will tell you that healthy eating can be the most difficult part of getting into shape. Counting calories, weighing food and eating packaged diet foods don’t translate to a lifestyle most of us can stick to. Horton said he believes it’s as simple as this—“Don’t put garbage in your mouth.”

“Nine times out of 10, almost everyone knows the difference between healthy and not healthy food. We all know soda and doughnuts are not good, but we eat them anyway. We are unconscious eaters,” he said.

Horton’s program starts with a cleanse to get the body functioning efficiently by eating mainly fruits and vegetables, cutting out sugar and alcohol, and of course processed foods.

“Ultimately the most important thing is to put healthy whole foods in your mouth. I have never counted a calorie in my life. I just make sure there are fruits and veggies on my plate every time I eat,” he said.

Take It Easy on Yourself

Hearing that people shouldn’t beat themselves up may sound surprising coming from someone as dedicated to fitness as Horton. But he claims America’s obsession with perfection is what causes us to fail.

“If you feel like you can’t do this, it’s OK to hit the pause button. The reason why so many people struggle is we have too many perfectionists. Who cares if you had a chocolate chip cookie? As long as you are in the game and participated, don’t beat yourself up,” he said.

Taking it easy also includes physical rest.

“Stress and not enough sleep will eventually kill your mojo, and you are more likely to fail. But if you have restful sleep, you will be able to sustain and be less stressed out,” he said.

Stick With It

So you’ve decided to change your lifestyle—you’re exercising, eating right and getting enough sleep. But how can you keep it up? Horton said the main thing is to understand how important it is in your life. But he also said he has a fool-proof way to stick with your exercise regimen—get a calendar and hang it on the refrigerator. Write down at the beginning of each month exactly what time you are going to work out every day, and as the days go on, cross out each day with a red pen. Sound silly? There is a method behind the madness.

“If you have already scheduled it like other appointments in your life, it is on there and it is about guilting yourself into doing something for yourself. Then you cross it out. It really works. It’s the simple techniques you follow and are able to stick to,” he said.

Winging It

Call it being lazy, call it falling off the wagon, call it taking a break—whatever you call it, it means making excuses as to why you are not living the healthy lifestyle you have the potential to live. And Horton said “winging it” will get you nowhere.

“Eighty percent of the people who say they don’t have enough time are full of crap. What they are saying is they don’t like it, and they don’t want to—that is the thing that drives me the most crazy—what people are doing to themselves is slow motion suicide,” he said.

Surround Yourself With Like-Minded People

How many times have you been out for happy hour and tried your best to make healthy choices, only to get heckled by your friends who are trying to get you to dive into the beer and nachos? According to Horton, you might want to think about getting some new friends.

“If you spend time with super-fit people who are getting up the next morning to run a marathon, you aren’t going to have a doughnut and a glass of wine. But if you are surrounded by people who don’t care, then you’re not going to keep your act together,” he said.

Horton emphasized having a rock-solid plan to be prepared for others to try and make you eat, drink or not exercise to make themselves feel better.

“Misery loves company. You need something powerful in your life to combat the negative things that are surrounding you,” he said.


The Wall Street Journal

MARCH 16, 2011

The Fight Against Government Flab Is Personal for These Politicians

House Republicans Sweat Over DVD; ‘I Couldn’t Move the Next Day’

By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON And PATRICK O’CONNOR

WASHINGTON—Congress’s new Republican leaders want smaller government, less spending, lower taxes…and sculpted abs, bulging biceps and flexibility they never dreamed possible.

To achieve that second set of goals, a group gathers most days around two televisions in the House gym to follow a series of DVD workout routines known to late-night infomercial fans as P90X, the “most extreme home fitness training program.”

A group of young Republicans are devoted followers of Tony Horton’s P90X workout routines. Kelsey Hubbard talks to the celebrity fitness trainer about his workout regimen and putting congressman through their paces in the House gym.

As have thousands of insomniac former couch potatoes, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy and a crew of young Republicans have taken to the P90X workout routines with an ideological intensity. For the lawmakers, it’s a get-tough fitness dogma that mirrors their promises to pump up job growth and chisel away flabby federal programs.

They may think like Gingrich and Reagan, but “we want to look like Tony,” says P90X devotee Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.).

Tony Horton is the tanned, buff fitness guru who created P90X and leads the routines on the DVD. Mr. Horton combined skills as a Hollywood personal trainer and actor to become a “Master of Motivation,” blending sayings like “Bring it,” with “Man, oh Manischewitz.”

Since the Republicans won control, Mr. Horton’s been a household word in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Ryan started on P90X two years ago after two buddies—a Green Beret and a Navy SEAL—recommended it. Mr. McCarthy saw Mr. Ryan doing the workout and asked to join him, as did others. This fall, the new GOP in-crowd strutted its buff stuff on the campaign trail, waking hotel guests with the travel version of the workout—a frenzied mix of jumping, push-ups, pull-ups, weight training and 300 punishing abdominal moves.

The goal of the exercises is to “confuse” the muscles by working different parts of the body each day in a workout that escalates in difficulty. Like much that gains traction in Congress, it’s a familiar idea wrapped in new packaging.

“I thought it looked like some kind of Jane Fonda video,” says Rep. Aaron Schock (R., Ill.), 29, a former recreational weightlifter, but “it kicked my butt.”

This all contrasts sharply with the normal routine in Congress, where extreme fitness isn’t first nature. Especially in the grayer, jigglier Senate, some lawmakers walk to floor votes in rocker-bottomed, rump-toning sneakers and call it a workout. The biggest commercial health club on Capitol Hill, Results Gym, boasts 12 members of Congress among its 6,000 members. Most read the newspaper on the treadmill, while their stressed-out staffers jam the yoga classes.

I would say it’s been a victory to get some of them to take the stairs instead of the elevators,” says Brian Moody, the gym’s vice president for operations.

Mr. Horton, age 52, may seem alien among this sedentary crew, but his roots are pure pencil-neck. An Army brat, he says he was a classic “98-pound weakling: beat up at the bus stop and my lunch money stolen.” He went to theater school, in part to overcome a speech impediment which he describes as “I talked too fast.” That proved an asset in his transformation from a flabby, part-time pantomime to tanned-from-a-can late-night pitchman.

“Get your little bucket, my friends, because this routine is X City,” Mr. Horton says on one of his ads, which can be translated to mean the routine is so extreme that those following along might vomit. “This is the ‘X’ in P90X.”

Every morning at 6:30, about a dozen lawmakers on the P90X A-list gather toward one end of the basketball court in the no-frills, slightly stinky House gym, located near the Capitol. They drag a series of foam mats behind a makeshift curtain partition, cluster around two TVs on carts and cue up Mr. Horton on DVD. Members of the group change, depending on each lawmaker’s schedule, but most regulars are Republicans.

They all do pull-ups on steel bars bolted to the walls, and share a couple of sets of barbells. The growing size of the group requires them to take turns, which slows things down slightly.

The group’s unofficial leader is Mr. Ryan, of Wisconsin, the House Budget Committee chairman who delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union address. Other diehards include Mr. McCarthy of California; Reps. Kevin Brady of Texas and Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania; and Rep. Peter Roskam and Mr. Schock, both of Illinois.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor, of Virginia, did the workout on his own, although aides say he no longer does the program.

Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy, a newly elected Republican, bought the DVDs after Mr. Ryan appraised his colleague’s election-season spare tire. “On the campaign trail, you just turn to flab,” Mr. Duffy says. “It was a helluva workout…I couldn’t move the next day.”

Last year Mr. McCarthy took the videos on the road while he was recruiting Republicans to run for Congress. At least one motel operator called to complain that his jumping shook the floor, but Mr. McCarthy lost 28 pounds in three months, although he says he’s added seven since.

North Carolina’s Heath Shuler, a former NFL quarterback, is the Democrat who most frequently joins the early-morning workouts. He recently traded P90X for Insanity, a cardio-heavy exercise program from Beachbody LLC, distributors of P90X.

Other Democrats have been in the group, including former Rep. Bart Stupak (Mich.), but he retired. Two others lost re-election bids.

There are signs the workouts could grow into a vehicle for bipartisan, bicameral fitness. “The members’ gym is a great place to get to know other members on a human level,” Mr. Schock says.

Mr. Horton, who describes his politics as “less liberal than I used to be,” has visited the House gym several times to put the politicians through their paces. He says he’s never seen a lawmaker pursue a partisan beef during the workouts he leads.

“They’re just trying to survive. They hate each other and now they’re next to each other in down dog,” the yoga position practiced on all fours.

But Mr. Horton’s killer calisthenics have yet to lure the highest-ranking Republican in the leadership, Speaker of the House John Boehner. While his colleagues pump iron, Mr. Boehner, a smoker and neat freak, vacuums, takes early-morning walks and rides his bicycle around monuments.

Write to Elizabeth Williamson at elizabeth.williamson@wsj.com


The New York Times
May 28, 2011

The Fitness Revolution Will Be Televised (After Leno)

By

For the Source Article, Click HERE

SANTA MONICA, Calif.

IT’S 3 a.m., and Tony Horton is talking to you, couch potato.

“Get absolutely ripped in 90 days!”

Viewer, check out those abs, those pecs, those glutes.

“Guaranteed or your money back!”

This man is 52 years old — and probably buffer than you’ll ever be.

“All for three easy payments of $39.95!”

On televisions across America, Tony Horton is selling a burning-sweat vision of physical fitness, and these days, a lot of people are buying. He is the pitchman and wise-cracking star of a brutal, make-it-stop workout called P90X, and he has won converts from Hollywood to Capitol Hill. The singer Sheryl Crow, the sportscaster Erin Andrews, the former NFL quarterback Kurt Warner, Representative Paul Ryan and a dozen or more of his Congressional colleagues, and the list goes on and on.

P90X fans swear by the workout, a mix of jumping, yoga, martial arts and strength training that, in fact, isn’t all that revolutionary. But the secret of P90X’s success is the marketing: Mr. Horton and his business partners say they have built a $400-million-a-year empire on what, to many, might seem like a foundation of schlock: TV infomercials.

But wait, there’s more: through these infomercials, P90X has grown into a major player in exercise DVDs, one of the few growth spots in an otherwise shrinking DVD market. Beachbody, the Santa Monica company behind P90X, has expanded into workout DVDs and infomercials tailored to particular audiences. Its Body Gospel, for instance, is aimed at Christians. There is also Tony & the Folks for seniors and TurboFire for women. On top of that is a range of supplements and fitness gear.

Mr. Horton may be the face (and biceps) of P90X, but the man behind the curtain is Carl Daikeler, who has been plying the infomercial trade since the 1980s. His first production was for an industry that isn’t exactly known for its quads: accounting. Later, he produced infomercials for all kinds of pitches, be they dating services or eight-minute abdominal workouts.

His breakout idea was to create a workout program that was so hard that he dared TV viewers to try it. In 2002, he and his business partner, Jon Congdon, took that pitch to Mr. Horton, who had starred in an exercise video called Power 90. The result, released in 2005, was P90X — X for “extreme.”

The early P90X infomercials bombed. But that changed when, at Mr. Daikeler’s urging, customers like “Dallas C.” and “Kristy M.” began sending in before-and-after pictures, now featured on the company’s infomercials and Web site. More than three million copies have been sold since then, with sales increasing every year through 2010 (they are currently running even with last year), company officials said.

Now Mr. Daikeler, 47, wants to more than double his annual sales to $1 billion. To do so, he will have to move beyond the buff clientele who have embraced P90X to an even bigger market: Americans who are overweight or nowhere near as fit as they need to be to keep up with P90X.

That, of course, is a goal that has eluded fitness gurus — not to mention public health officials — for years.

“Whoever succeeds at making the living room an effective place to get fit is going to be a billionaire,” Mr. Daikeler says.

INFOMERCIALS have been around almost as long as TV. But the genre really took off in the 1970s and ’80s, with such wonders as the Ginsu, the kitchen knife that was shown samurai-ing its way through soda cans and leather shoes.

Health and fitness have long been goldmines in this field. Richard Simmons sweated to the oldies. Suzanne Somers extolled the virtues of the ThighMaster. And Jack LaLanne urged viewers to “unlock the power of fresh-squeezed juice” with the Power Juicer.

But P90X has achieved blockbuster status with a new approach. Its infomercials are shot in a more documentary style. They feature testimonials from P90X converts, interviews with Mr. Horton and scenes from the workouts. Old infomercial lines like “How much would you pay for all this?” are not part of the pitch.

Still, P90X is walking a well-trodden path. At-home workout videos took off in 1982, with Jane Fonda introducing aerobics to millions. In the years since, celebrities, models and personal trainers have crowded in. Claudia Schiffer has her “Perfectly Fit Buns.” George Foreman wants you to “Walk It Off With George.” Zsa Zsa Gabor tells her customers, “It’s Simple, Darling.”

Many of these workout fads faded fast. A few have captured the zeitgeist, like Billy Blanks’s “Tae Bo” workout in 1999 and, more recently, videos by Jillian Michaels from “The Biggest Loser,” whose “30-Day Shred” DVD is a bestseller.

Indeed, sales of fitness DVDs are growing by roughly 20 percent a year, even as overall DVD sales decline, according to the Nielsen Company. Billy Law, director of home entertainment measurement for Nielsen, attributes the increase to shows like “The Biggest Loser” and “Dancing With the Stars.”

In 2010, videos from Ms. Michaels and “The Biggest Loser” accounted for seven of the 10 best-selling exercise videos, Mr. Law says. Nielsen tracks sales at most major retailers but doesn’t capture sales of P90X, because P90X is sold only via the Beachbody Web site and over the phone.

Harold W. Kohl, a professor of epidemiology and kinesiology at the University of Texas in Austin, says such at-home programs probably help people who stick to them. But he suspects these DVDs are more valuable to the people who sell them.

“The ideal that is being conveyed in these tapes is not attainable for many, many people,” Mr. Kohl says. “So it very quickly goes into the dustbin with the exercise equipment in the corner.”

So does P90X really work? It’s certainly a tough program. You’re supposed to work out six days a week and follow a standard cut-the-carbs-and-junk diet, which may be harder than the workouts themselves.

Congressman Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said that he had been doing P90X for several years with colleagues and that it was tough to cheat with many people around. “It works, I’ll tell you that,” he said, but added that he was not ready to display before-and-after photos.

The guiding principle is to mix up routines and “confuse” the muscles so as to avoid hitting a plateau. So some days are devoted to dumbbells or resistance bands, in addition to old-fashioned push-ups and pull-ups. Other days are reserved for yoga or cardiovascular workouts that involve a lot of jumping and squats.

But Robert Marting, a personal trainer who sells his own exercise videos, says that “muscle confusion” is a time-tested principle of bodybuilding, and that the idea has been around since the early days of Joe Weider, a creator of the Mr. Olympia contest. Beachbody “kindly borrowed the principle and just retermed it as a training secret,” he says.

True enough, Mr. Daikeler says.

“Trainers love to give negative reviews of P90X, saying it’s not that special,” he said. “They are right. It’s not that special.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Daikeler says Beachbody has managed to package the concept into an entertaining and effective plan that leads to at-home success in — you guessed it — 90 days.

Says Mr. Horton: “I never said I reinvented the wheel. I just made the wheel faster, better.”

TONY HORTON, with nary an ounce of fat on him, sits on a leather couch in his Spanish-style house in Santa Monica. He is wearing a pair of shorts, slip-on Chuck Taylors and a U.S. Navy golf shirt that shows off the veins on his well-pumped arms.

The man sure looks fit. He can do 100 push-ups and 35 pull-ups without stopping. He can climb a 25-foot rope hand over hand — upside down.

“If I don’t look a certain way, I’m just another salesman,” Mr. Horton says.

How he got fit and then rich is a classic Charles Atlas story. Growing up in Trumbull, Conn., he was, by his own account, a “quintessential 98-pound weakling.” He also had a speech impediment.

It wasn’t until he got to the University of Rhode Island that Mr. Horton discovered fitness. He took a weightlifting class, thinking it was an easy A. He ended up loving it and getting “crazy fit.”

“It was a brand new feeling,” Mr. Horton recalls. “It changed me mentally and emotionally.”

Then one summer he and a friend set out to drive across the country. His $400 got him as far as Colorado Springs. So he dusted off an R-rated pantomime routine that he had perfected in college and eventually made enough money to reach California.

Mr. Horton ended up staying in California, waiting tables, painting houses and taking a job as a gofer at 20th Century Fox. He joined a gym to meet women. When a Fox executive asked him for training tips, Mr. Horton became his personal trainer. He worked out of his garage and charged $20 a lesson.

One client led to another. Eventually Mr. Horton was recommended to Tom Petty, who wanted to get in shape for a concert tour. It wasn’t long before he was making a good living training the likes of Billy Idol and Annie Lennox.

“I’m sitting there with the lead singer of the Eurythmics, eating fruit,” Mr. Horton recalls. “It was pretty cool.”

Ms. Lennox could not be reached.

In his free time, Mr. Horton got bit parts in a few movies, tried stand-up comedy and became a pitchman for NordicTrack. He met Mr. Daikeler through a mutual friend and ended up acting in a play, “Pizza Man,” with Mr. Daikeler’s first wife.

Mr. Daikeler’s first video starring Mr. Horton, in 1999, was called “Great Body Guaranteed.” Mr. Horton was paid $2,000. The video did well enough that a group of investors put up money for another video, “Power 90,” an unexpected success and the precursor to P90X.

These days, Mr. Horton spends his time promoting his videos — he recently appeared on the “Today” show and QVC — and conducting workouts for fans, including members of Congress and American soldiers overseas.

With his lawyer and assistants, Mr. Horton also is trying to figure out how to extend his personal brand. He has a new book, “Bring It!: The Revolutionary Fitness Plan for All Levels That Burns Fat, Builds Muscle, and Shreds Inches.” He is discussing other business ventures, including a line of sunglasses and workout clothes, a reality TV show and a syndicated radio show.

Mr. Horton, by all accounts, practices what he preaches. He and his girlfriend, Shawna Brannon, have a home with Hollywood views, where Mr. Horton works out in a tricked-out gym. He rarely eats meat or drinks liquor or coffee.

“When I stop eating broccoli, I don’t get headaches,” he said of his aversion to coffee. “If I’m going to cheat, it’s going to be chocolate.”

AT Beachbody’s sleek offices on the edge of Santa Monica, Mr. Daikeler is also trying to figure out ways to extend his company’s brand. Beachbody has continued to produce videos aimed at the hard-body crowd. A current hit is “Insanity.” A follow-up to P90X will be released soon. He is also looking to extend Beachbody’s name to beauty and health products, though he insists he will not overreach.

“We are not going to do the Beachbody deep fryer or car wax,” Mr. Daikeler says.

But finding a way to expand his audience, particularly those not prone to exercise, has proved more challenging.

Mr. Daikeler recently convened a meeting at Beachbody to discuss ways to improve sales for Body Gospel, the workout aimed at Christians. The $80 price tag seemed high, and the diet was proving to be a challenge for budget-conscious consumers.

Another problem: conservative Christians were reluctant to provide before-and-after photos, an important ingredient in the Beachbody formula. The pictures typically feature men with their shirts off and women in bathing suits or workout clothes.

The group batted around ideas for how to lower the price, by offering fewer DVDs, perhaps, or taking out the resistance bands that are normally included. As for the problem of getting Body Gospel’s customers to provide testimonials, Beachbody’s employees suggested allowing written testimonials or “lifestyle photos” with shirts on.

Mr. Daikeler says that if customers aren’t willing to peel off their shirts, his product simply isn’t compelling enough.

“The needle moves on undeniable proof,” he says. “I want to know: did their body change? That’s what we have to solve.”


Tony Horton at Fitness Atlantic, April 2011

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