• Home
• People
• Tony Horton

Tony Horton

Anthony Sawyer "Tony" Horton, Jr. is a fitness guru best known for the boot camp style P90X home fitness program. His direct-response advertisements are some of the most frequently aired infomercials on American television. Horton was raised in Trumbull, Connecticut, and attended the University of Rhode Island where he became a brother of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. By 1980, however, he had embarked on a coast-to-coast move to Los Angeles with the intention of becoming an actor. For a time, he also earned a living as a stand-up comedian; but, following his love of fitness, he began working out at the World Gym in Venice, California, which had been frequented by professional bodybuilders such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno. In an attempt to avoid the bulky, non-flexible bodybuilder look, Horton focused more on exercise routines to bring about speed, flexibility, and balance, as well as muscle growth. Later, he collaborated with former-triathlete and Ironman competitor Mark Sisson, who introduced him to interval training. It was also during the early 1980s that Horton became a personal trainer and established his business, ASH Fitness (based on the initials of his given name), in Santa Monica. He began to gather a list of clients that boasted such artists as Billy Idol, Tom Petty, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, and Bruce Springsteen. More recently, he has trained multiple-Grammy-winner Usher Raymond and actor Ewan McGregor, and he has developed workout plans for a variety of health and fitness magazines. Prior to his success with P90X, Horton served as spokesman for NordicTrack exercise machines. Horton is on the Board of Directors of GO Campaign, a nonprofit that supports orphans and vulnerable children around the world.