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          Tony Horton's fitness advice: Get off the couch and put down the beer, pizza

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          Lacy improved, but not a finished product (1:36)

          ESPN Packers reporter Rob Demovsky details the training Eddie Lacy did with P90X founder Tony Horton and how coach Mike McCarthy noted Lacy's progress thus far. (1:36)

          • Rob Demovsky, ESPN Staff WriterMay 27, 2016, 07:41 AM ET
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              Rob Demovsky is an NFL reporter at ESPN and covers the Green Bay Packers. He has covered the Packers since 1997 and joined ESPN in 2013. Demovsky is a two-time Wisconsin Sportswriter of the Year as selected by the NSSA. You can follow him on Twitter at @RobDemovsky.
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          GREEN BAY, Wis. -- You too can make a body transformation like Green Bay Packers running back Eddie Lacy. You just need to listen to P90X founder Tony Horton, who trained Lacy this offseason and helped put him on the path toward satisfying coach Mike McCarthy’s demand that he can’t play at the weight he was at last year.

          But you’re going to have to meet Horton halfway.

          “If you’re hanging around a bunch of dudes who want to sit on the couch and drink beer and eat pizza, then you’re going to become that,” Horton said this week during an extensive interview about his work with Lacy.

          “The question should be: 'What do I need to do to achieve top fitness at my age?' You need a plan. You need to be consistent, and that’s minimum five days a week and you need accountability through a fitness trainer or mentor or other people who like to kick ass. If we put you into a mountain-climbing crowd, you’d get pretty good at that mountain climbing. It’s really a simple formula.”

          When asked for three tips the average weekend athlete could use to get into better shape, Horton said it usually takes more than that.

          “P90X is 12 different workouts because 12 different workouts forced most people -- whether you’re a ectomorph, mesomorph, athlete, mother of five -- to work on your weaknesses,” Horton said. “The goal is to exercise in ways you don’t like, aren’t good at, need a lot of improvement in. That way, you’re forcing your body to lose weight quickly, burn more calories and learn in the process.”

          But if there were three things?

          “Let’s make it four,” Horton said.

          • “You’d have to have a very strong leg day -- a day that is not just cardiovascular [exercise],” he said. “Like plyometrics, you’re going deeper in the muscle, it’s lower rep counts, unlike cardio. I mean you could ride a bike or go for a run for a half an hour or an hour, but you should be [going deeper] with plyometrics."

          • “You’d also have to do some sort of upper-body resistance routine at a relatively quick pace. Chest, back, arms, the whole nine yards. People have a tendency to focus on one-half of the body, but you want symmetry.

          • “You also want to have a flexibility day. Yoga and Pilates are huge.

          • “And then a calorie-burner -- a sweat day. Just something where you’re really sweating.”