Tony Horton, a love hate relationship with my personal guru and saviour (sort of)

I have a love hate relationship with Tony Horton. "Who he?", you might ask. For those of you who have never suffered from insomnia and had access to late night cable TV you may never have heard of him. He is the front man/star/designer of a series of get fit infomercial videos that have heavy rotation on cable stations during the wee small hours. If you want to know more about him, here are two links you can look at:

http://www.tonyhortonlife.com and 

https://plus.google.com/+tonyhortonfitness.


OK, so, what's the story with Tony and why am I thinking about him this morning?. Well, I have to say that Tony is in the back of my mind most of the time, he has that sort of personality that makes his message very "sticky" (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUF1GUaOV38 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_to_Stick for more info on "sticky ideas").


Tony has a simple message about fitness and achieving goals. In fact, he has two main ones, "Bring it" and my personal favourite (UK spelling) "Decide, Commit, Succeed". This is a sort of mantra of his that he uses at the end of one of his Yoga training videos. The video is called "Fountain of Youth Yoga" from his "One on One" series. If you look for these on Google it will make more sense to you.


Getting back to the point, near the end of the yoga video (about 35 minutes), we, the students, are sitting in a pool of sweat, our sides heaving, gasping for air and Tony, calm, cool and collected as ever, is doing some hamstring stretches. He tucks one leg in, stretches the other one out and proceeds to place his head on his knee, easy. Easy? Is it hell. The first time I tried doing this, my back and hamstrings protested and I got to an angle of about 45º. While he is doing this, Tony starts talking about the importance of consistency. "Do your workouts, Keep turning up, and soon you will be hanging out on the floor with me". Then he utters the magic words "Decide, Commit, Succeed".

Three little words, so easy to say, so difficult to follow. There are many times when I "fall off the wagon" so to speak and I go through weeks/months of not joining Tony on the floor sitting in a pool of my own congealing sweat. However, his voice eventually penetrates the fog of apathy, frustration and lethargy that occasionally envelops me like a Dementor from Harry Potter, 
(http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Dementor), and I start again and again and again and again (you get the message).


I was reflecting on Tony and what I have achieved with him over the last 4 years. Thanks to the yoga videos my core strength and flexibility are very much better. I have to add here that I am now 54 and since the age of 28 I have been suffering from the effects of two herniated discs - thanks to my time in the 12th Infantry Battalion. For years the doctors and physios told me that I had to in the wonderful Spanish expression "Agua y Ajo" - something like "suck it up and f*** you". And so I did, getting more and more unhealthy, overweight and miserable.


Today I am still overweight (not training for 4 months) but I am in much better shape than before (I just ran 10km for the second time in 3 days - without pain, stress or discomfort - thanks to "natural running" https://youtu.be/zSIDRHUWlVo. I can almost get my head to my knees, I can get my leg WAY up over my head during Kickboxing training - much to the amazement of the trainers and the other students, all of whom are years/decades younger than me.


So all in all, I am doing OK. Of course I could be a lot better. Tony Horton is 57, I don't think I will ever achieve his levels of fitness or look as good. This isn't why I hate him, it is his voice that speaks to me at 06:00 in the mornings to get out of bed and drag on the running gear. "Bring it, bring it, bring it". In many ways he reminds me of one of my NCOs who used to wake us during our recruit training by hitting our metal lockers with a large stick. "Yes Tony", and up I get. I hate you but I love the results.

Facebook updates

Today is a very quiet day, of course, not only is it Sunday, it also an extended long weekend here.

If people are bored, you can always check out some of the latest things I posted on my  Ingés con Alan facebook page. 

I have uploaded some more photos from the 2014 and 2015 summer courses in Ireland (more pending - waiting on permission from parents), and some interesting articles in Spanish about Irish literature and some political/historical information about the the differences between the UK, and Ireland, Scotland and England (always a great source of confusion for people here).

https://www.facebook.com/Ingl%C3%A9s-Con-Alan-1100018310022074/

Happy reading and enjoy the rest of the long weekend.

Inglés con Alan

Taller sábado 12 diciembre 2015

12:00      Welcome – objectives / plan for workshop

12:10      “Icebreaker” activities – asking for and giving personal information presenting others to the group, revision of ‘Wh’ questions, “this/that/these/those,

pronunciation of ” /s/ /z/,long and short “i”sounds.

             Pronunciation drills “ship or sheep”.

12:30      Introduction to conversation techniques / eliciting and expressing opinions.

12:40      Break

12:50      Pair work, practising question phrases.

13:00      Group discussion on a chosen topic

13:25      End of workshop and feedback