By of the

Green Bay — On Tuesday, the Green Bay Packers held their first OTA workout open to the public, which meant fans and reporters saw a slimmed-down Eddie Lacy for the first time.

Lacy spent two months of his off-season working out with P90X creator Tony Horton, who appeared in a TMZ video in January saying he could help the struggling running back. Horton spoke to the Journal Sentinel on Tuesday afternoon in an exclusive interview detailing his time with Lacy in both Wyoming and California. He estimates that Lacy shed between 15 and 20 pounds.

The following is a portion of the interview between Horton and Michael Cohen. Check back later for a full story based on the interview.

Q: Did this partnership really come about as a social media connection?

A: TMZ was (contacting) me about it, about what I thought. Then (Lacy’s) folks kind of reached out to me and said, ‘Are you for real? Would you really like to help out Eddie?’ And I had never done anything quite like that before. Obviously I’ve sold a lot of DVDs and worked with a lot of folks in the military and the Pentagon, and I’ve worked with athletes before but never sort of a one-on-one like that where we actually got to hang out and spend almost two months together.

But I knew I could help him, and I knew what he was struggling from, and I think we both agreed in our meeting that he needed sort of a new perspective and a new approach. And we got along really great. We just met each other up in San Francisco the week before the Super Bowl. And we said hey, let’s give this thing a try. Come hangout with me in Jackson Hole and then after that stint is done we’ll come back to LA and continue it there. We just got along, you know what I mean? We laughed a lot and we worked hard and we ate clean food and just took care of business, you know?

Q: When it came to putting together the workout plans and things like that, was there any input from the Packers, or was it up to you to sort of do what you do?

A: I think the Packers’ opinion was, ‘Hey man, you’re an adult. It’s the off-season and we just hope you go out there and make good choices.' And they left it up to Eddie and I to get it done. They didn’t really have any impact or say in it. So yeah, there was never really any discussion about that with them.

Q: When we asked Eddie about what the workouts consisted of, he said there were times when he did some boxing, some basketball, some P90X — what all was he doing?

A: There was everything. I mean everything. I’ve been training folks for 35 years, and so my perspective is the more I got him out of his comfort zone the better. I wasn’t here to run 40s with him or plays or anything like that. I wasn’t here to do football stuff. I mean, I made him do yoga. We went to boxing classes. We did P90X, we did P90X2, we did 22 Minute Hard Corps, we did a lot of my personal workouts. We did pullups and pushups until we couldn’t lift our arms. We did everything. I had him do plyometrics twice a week. And then just pure cardio just to burn calories once a week. We had three days a week that were heavy on the plyometrics and the heart, lungs and legs. Then the other days of the week it was more resistance — body weight, functional fitness, balance, speed, range of motion and things like that. A lot of core work, which was really important for him.

Q: What types of things were reasonable in terms of expectations going into this?

A: There’s one thing I know that works, without having to get too hung up on numbers like weight and inches and the aesthetics. My goal was to help him lose the weight and move athletically six or seven days a week for the duration of our time together, and that’s exactly what we did. We had to do one routine on Fridays which was called Boxes and Balls, which is doing a lot of stablization work on BOSU balls and stability balls and then tons of plyo boxes. It’s a mother. Things that he’s familiar with to some degree as a football player, but a lot of the movements and sequences were brand new to him so it challenged him. Early on, that routine in particular was really tough. But at the end, he was kicking everybody’s ass. Oh my god. I mean, what was awesome about watching Eddie was how quickly he adapted to the exercies. I’m 58 and he’s 25, and most of the guys I train with are in their 30s and 40s. He just went right by us. That was really exciting to watch.

The other thing too was just getting his diet in order. The problem was caused because of a poor diet. That changed. He didn’t know that healthy food could taste good. I cooked for him a lot of days. It’s not that hard. You make some egg whites and throw some veggies in there. It’s not rocket science. He was excited because he learned that you can make healthy food taste really good, so it’s easier for him to be more consistent with it. In the past — he’s from New Orleans so there’s a lot of really rich foods. He grew up with that. He’s a crawfish fan. He cut way back on the alcohol, which he learned early on that excess alcohol causes testosterone levels to go down. And that’s all he needed to hear. It was really impressive to see his level of discipline and hard work and willingness to get way outside of his comfort zone. Because he knew what was at stake. It was important to him, so he did it.

Q: Was there a target weight you guys wanted to hit?

A: No I didn’t even know what he weighed when he came in. And I didn’t know what he weighed when he left. We didn’t want to do that. We wanted to take all the pressure off. We just wanted to have a good time, work really hard and eat clean and drink plenty of water. I had him on some supplements that he had never done. He needed some Vitamin D supplements. We just kind of checked what he needed, and he was low on Vitamin D and fiber. He had never taken a supplement before ever. He’s a genetic freak. But he took it easy there the last year and a half. Just like anybody else, if you don’t pay attention and think you’re going to get by on pure genetics, it’s going to catch up to you. We just made some dietary shifts, some supplement shifts. The company I work for, Beachbody, makes these performance formulas that really made a difference for him, really allowed him to recover from these new kinds of workouts and to have the energy to get in there and progress over the course of two months.

Q: Was he drawing on specific things or comments to fuel him when you guys were working out, or did he just want to work for the sake of being better?

A: We didn’t talk about it that much. I don’t know what motivated him from day to day. He understood based on comments that the coach made, based on comments that his supporters and the people around him were saying, knowing that this is the last year of his contract. He knew what was at stake. But one thing about Eddie, he’s a very humble cat, man. He doesn’t boast (or) any of that stuff, man. He’s just a really good dude. He just hunkered down and he focused. My guess is that he lost between 15 and 20 pounds. I knew that he had a belly when he started and he didn’t have one when he left. And he had much bigger arms, he had much better endurance, his agility had improved tenfold.

My only concern was that after we parted, being up in Green Bay with a lot of down time, the trick is always how do you keep those good habits intact if a guy like me is not around. Hopefully there is somebody up there that saw the progress and saw the improvement. But I never heard a word from anybody in Green Bay, which I didn’t expect it.

I know for sure that Eddie has really figured out the food thing. He’s continued with that. But I don’t think he’s going to be doing that Monday night plyometrics routine, which is brutal. (laughs) It’s a routine that I’ve been doing for 15 years. I’ve had Usher at my house doing it, I’ve had Olympic speed skaters do it and they can’t walk for four or five days. It’s a mother. When he first started, same thing: He couldn’t sit down on the john. At the end, he wasn’t even sore anymore.

Q: How excited are you to see him actually do something now on the field?

A: I’m rooting for him, man, because he’s such a great guy. Here he is, totally different worlds. I’m 30-something years older, you wouldn’t think we have much in common. But we just got along. I think that’s the reason he didn’t bail partway through. And he trusted me, you know? You want to hear something crazy? I’m in the best shape of my life because of training Eddie Lacy. I am. I said to him, ‘I’m not going to be just your trainer. I’m not going to just stand over you and hound you. I’m going to do everything that you do.’ So if it’s chest and back day, I’m doing it. If it’s plyo day, I’m doing it with you. I was more of a partner in the process than I was a guy just telling him what to do and standing there with a beer belly. We worked out almost seven days a week for two months. We missed some here and there because of travel and stuff.

Q: Do you think he ever got close to quitting?

A: I don’t know. I don’t know. He’s kind of quiet, keeps those things to himself. I think a few times along the way he felt like — you know, I don’t know. I would say no. I think he was committed the entire way. I didn’t really see any signs of anything where he was like, ‘I’m out of here.’ Never.