GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Eddie Lacy’s workouts with P90X founder Tony Horton might not be done yet.
Although the Green Bay Packers running back, who spent two months training with the fitness guru this offseason, is back at Lambeau Field for the offseason program until mid-June, Horton told ESPN.com on Thursday that he’d like to get back together with Lacy for another stint before the season starts.
The Packers will have five weeks off after minicamp in mid-June until the start of training camp in late July.
“Ideally, what I’d like to do -- he’d have to be in L.A. for it to work -- but I’d like to see him play [basketball] one day, [go to] boxing class one day and I could work with him for three as opposed to six or seven like before,” Horton said in a phone interview. “It would give him more freedom, and the beautiful thing is he wouldn’t have to relearn everything again. I would really love the plyometric day and the cardio was essential for him.”
All of those activities were part of Horton’s training with Lacy for two months this offseason, first at Horton’s vacation home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in February and then in Los Angeles.
Packers coach Mike McCarthy, who called out Lacy for being overweight shortly after last season ended, indicated earlier this week that while Lacy had made significant progress, his work was not complete.
"I believe he'll hit the target that we're all looking for when the lights come on,” McCarthy said Tuesday after the Packers’ first open OTA practice of the year.
Horton reiterated that his work with Lacy wasn’t about weight loss but rather about a full lifestyle change that focused not only on workouts but also on nutrition.
“We didn’t talk weight. We didn’t talk inches. We didn’t get on a scale,” Horton said. “It was about lifestyle and performance and being healthy. He’s genetically gifted. He just had a misstep the last season and a half. So I just redirected him into a lifestyle that’s going to help him be productive and give him more energy and more stamina, and I know how to do those things. And I did them in a way he’s never done them before.”
Horton said Lacy was surprised to learn that alcohol use could lower testosterone levels.
“I don’t even know how that came up,” Horton said Thursday. “We were just sort of talking about the things that we need to do to maximize the process. I don’t even know how we got on that topic. I sort of pulled that out of my bag of tricks on things that apply to everybody.
“Not that Eddie had a problem. There’s nothing going on there. I just said, ‘Here’s what you need to eat. Instead of a beer, let’s have some Pellegrino.’ Fortunately for us, that never really came up. That wasn’t really an issue.
“I knew that food was an issue, being from New Orleans and eating rich foods. But we got right into it. I don’t think I ever saw him take a drink. I don’t know what he was doing prior. He knew what was at stake, so he just hunkered down and killed it. He struggled at first because it was all new stuff.”