Troy Taylor brings Olympic-level expertise to your living room through Tonal, the revolutionary wall-mounted smart gym that's transforming how we approach strength training. As someone who's coached multiple Olympic teams including Team GB, Team Canada, and Team USA, Troy now applies that elite-level knowledge to create training programs anyone can access at home.
What makes Tonal different from traditional weight training? The electromagnetic resistance system—which Troy describes as "what Tesla is to combustion cars, Tonal is to free weights"—allows for dynamic resistance that adapts to your strength curve in real-time. This means adding more weight where you're strongest and less where you're weakest, optimizing every repetition in ways impossible with conventional equipment.
The most fascinating aspect of our conversation centers around the unprecedented dataset Tonal has accumulated—over 250 billion pounds lifted across approximately 8 billion repetitions from users spanning ages 18 to 90+. This treasure trove of information has revealed surprising insights about strength development, especially for those over 55. The average user experiences a remarkable 73% strength increase in their first year, with even more impressive gains in power development (strength + speed), which directly translates to functional activities like rising from chairs and climbing stairs.
Perhaps most surprising is what predicts long-term adherence. It's not how much you do in your first week, but whether you show a gradual upward trajectory in engagement over your first month. This finding has transformed how Tonal designs its beginner programs, prioritizing consistency over intensity.
Whether you're looking to optimize your home workout space or simply curious about how technology is revolutionizing fitness, this conversation offers a glimpse into the future of strength training—where Olympic-level expertise meets cutting-edge technology to make evidence-based training accessible to everyone. Follow Troy on Instagram @StrengthScienceTroy to learn more about this fascinating intersection of strength science and technology.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of the Stephen McCain
podcast where I bring you peoplemaking world-class decisions in
the field of human optimizationand performance.
This week I'm interviewing TroyTaylor from Tonal.
Tonal is the world's smartesthome gym.
It's very innovative and wediscuss how this device is
(00:26):
really shaping the future offitness and strength training.
I'm sure you're well aware ofif you are in the longevity
space at all and listen tolongevity podcasts that strength
is correlated with longevity,and so I'm always interested
(00:47):
when these products come ontothe market.
So this is kind of like thePeloton for strength training
and it's got some amazingfeatures and they're able to get
a ton of data on strengthtraining populations that are
using their device to improvetheir programming.
(01:09):
And Troy has an incredibleresume where he has worked with
a lot of teams, a lot of Olympicteams, and so it's a really
great opportunity to learn howthis company is taking these
really advanced protocols andcombining it with an advanced
piece of technology that canjust fit on your wall and take
(01:31):
up a pretty small footprint tohave an amazing home gym.
So if you are interested inthis kind of stuff, you're going
to like this podcast.
Let's do it, Troy.
Welcome to the Stephen McCainpodcast.
Thank you so much for having meon.
I'm excited to be here.
Yeah, when you showed up assomeone who wanted to be on the
show, I got really excitedbecause I knew about your
(01:52):
product that you work for.
But you have an incrediblywell-versed background in
exercise physiology and you'repart of a lot of Olympic teams A
very incredible resume.
I would love for you just tokind of give us a brief overview
of your background and how thatled to Tonal yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, like many people I was in 25 or so years
ago.
I date myself, but, you know,was in school, didn't really
know what I wanted to do in thefuture.
I love sport.
Didn't think there'd be much ofa career in something called
sports science or strengthconditioning or anything like
that, but kind of loved sport,wasn't sure what I would want to
do.
Went to university, thought I'dbecome a PE teacher, physical
(02:35):
education teacher or somethinglike that.
Started studying sports science, went back, did a master's
degree, Turned out I was quitegood at it and when I was doing
my master's degree I startedvolunteering for the British
Olympic swim team.
This was in 2002.
So leading into theCommonwealth Games in England
that's the accent, I'm Britishand then later the Athens
Olympics in 2004.
(02:56):
And in that sort of internship,while I was doing a master's
degree, essentially I startedworking with athletes and loved
it and this is what I wanted todo human performance,
understanding how humans getbetter at sport, performance and
physical fitness and all thingsrelated to that.
So, fast forward, over about20-ish years, I ended up working
(03:18):
with three different Olympicteams so Team GB, team Canada
and Team USA as a sportsscientist, as a strength
conditioning coach, later as adirector of sports science and
medicine and a high performancedirector, most recently at the
US Olympic skiing andsnowboarding team.
So I was high performancedirector there from 2015 to 2021
and got to work with all theseincredible athletes, incredible
(03:40):
humans that can do incrediblethings on the sport performance
field and also a bunch ofincredible support staff
physiologists, psychologists,dieticians, nutritionists,
physical therapists, strengthcoaches and sort of these
diverse skill sets and so Ireally enjoyed doing that for
close to 20 years.
In the last few years at the skiteam, I started working a lot
with startups, really with theidea of how can we get
(04:03):
competitive advantage to get onthe top step of the podium.
So in the lead up to the 2018Winter Olympics, we ran projects
in transcranial direct currentbrain stimulation.
There was a company called Halothat did some brain stim back
in the day and some researchprojects around that.
We were the first ever Olympicor professional team to use
virtual reality.
We filmed the entire course in360 video, working with Stryver,
(04:27):
a small startup out of Stanfordat the time, but basically got
involved in the startup worldand I kind of re-found my
passion for how Humanperformance and tech and that's
really cool.
And so, literally coming intosort of the early stages of the
pandemic, I knew of Tonal.
I didn't think home fitnessequipment was really where I
(04:48):
would spend my career,necessarily, but was aware of
the product as lockdown happenedand gyms closed and training
centers closed.
I ended up getting a Tonal forMichaela Schifrin, one of the
world's best ever skier, mostwinningest athlete of all time
in skiing.
So I got a tonal for her, triedit, loved it.
I thought, well, this is reallycool.
(05:10):
This is like technology thatlike I as a consumer not as an
Olympic level athlete can buyand fit on my wall.
I point behind me because it isthere but is also something
that I would want to use withOlympic level athletes.
I hadn't come across anythinglike that before.
So fast forward about another12 or so months and the company
offered me a job to come overand lead their performance team,
(05:31):
which is really theintersection between what I've
done from my background in those20 years of human performance.
How do we take the best of whatscience and the best of what we
know from training the bestathletes in the world and apply
that into the product throughsoftware, through content and
through product development tohelp general population people.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Phenomenal.
That is a nice trajectoryyou've found yourself on.
I mean, I think I was anOlympian and I imagine you get
awesome compliance when you'reworking with Olympic level
athletes, so you can give atraining program and you're
pretty, you know pretty damnwell that this is going to get.
(06:12):
They're going work, sharpenyour skill set and then to now
be able to bring that tosomething like Tonal, where you
probably have, I would imagine,your database of data points for
(06:33):
people working out, must bemassive and to see all of that
come together, it must be quitea phenomenal thing for someone
with your background to now havealmost like big data working
for you on a massive scale,sitting on top of a history of
working with some of the bestathletes in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, don't tell my bosses I'm kidding the candy
shop, that's kind of the ideal.
So, yes, working with the bestathletes in the world, you don't
get to work with that many ofthem right.
In 120 years, seven Olympicgames, I was fortunate to maybe
work with 50 Olympic medalists,which is a huge amount, and I'm
extremely grateful for that.
500 or so Olympians in myentire career, which is awesome,
(07:17):
but that's an entire career for50 people that got to step on
the podium.
And one of the attractions ofTonal is coming and now you're
impacting on tens, hundreds ofthousands of people on a daily
basis.
And, purely from a selfish egoperspective, if you think you
can improve the lives or helpimprove the lives of that many
people, that's really kind offulfilling.
(07:38):
And so, yeah, you talk aboutthat database.
So every time someone lives onTonal we measure at 50 hertz, so
50 times a second, what forcethey're producing, how fast they
are moving.
And Tonal is just, it's rightover 250 billion pounds lifted,
something around 8 billion reps,probably close to a billion
(08:01):
sets, 50-ish million trainingsessions.
The data is huge, growing dailyand also longitudinal right,
because a lot in my field I gotto work with a lot of people who
work for a quad or two quads,sometimes even three Olympic
cycles.
But for the vast majority ofthe research that we base a lot
of our recommendations off, thebaseline level is a 12 week
(08:25):
training study, an eight weektraining study.
We get to track people.
Like tunnel launched in likelate 2018, early 2019.
So we've got users that beenusing our product on a weekly
basis since 2019.
So it's five years worth ofdata and it's not in a research
sense.
It tends to be just 18 to 24year old, mostly male college
(08:46):
students, that's who doesresearch in exercise science.
A little more on the femaleside and we're getting better at
that, but not great.
With Tonal it's 18 to 80 plusyear olds.
There's 90 year olds on ourplatform and so you've got this
huge range of this big data setover a long period of time with
a huge sort of subsection of thepopulation that's both sort of
(09:07):
been on the age ranges fromyoung to very old and also, not
far off, a 50-50 mix of male tofemale.
It's about 55% male, 45% female, but close to equal gender
balance, and so it gives youthis really great
cross-sectional look into howhumans train.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
This is so interesting to me.
Look, let's talk about theTonal product first.
For somebody who's listening tothis podcast, they might be
going what is Tonal?
What's the commercial?
Who's the basketball player?
Now?
That's LeBron James.
Lebron James, yeah.
So if anyone has seen thatcommercial, that's what you've
seen total on TV.
But it's got this smallfootprint.
(09:48):
It looks like a vertical screenwith these arms sticking out
that can be used as cableweights and those can be
adjusted.
But maybe tell us a little bitabout the actual piece of
equipment.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, so at its highest level, and my VP of
product, farman, gave me thiskind of piece, but it's an
entire gym with personaltraining that fits in your space
.
And so how does it do that?
How is it an entire gym?
Well, the reason that it'selectromagnetic resistance.
The easiest way to explain itis similar to Tesla is to the
(10:24):
combustion car, tonal is to freeweights.
Not that one's better or one'sworse, they're just different.
But we create resistance viaelectromagnetic resistance.
That means we can do it viamotors, and these motors don't
have to be large, they can bequite small, which means you can
fit it on your wall, and sothat's how it creates resistance
(10:44):
.
It also allows us to manipulatethe resistance in various
different ways that don't applyto gravity or where gravity
wouldn't make that possible, andwe can talk about how it might
do that.
But essentially that resistanceit goes in there for those that
are watching on things, there'sa touchscreen and it can switch
on and the arms come out.
250 plus something movements upto 200 pounds of resistance, a
(11:08):
hundred programs, 5,000 workouts.
So that's the sort of personaltraining element.
It was like integrated form,feedback, computer vision and a
whole bunch of other stuff.
That basically a really highend tech gym that literally fits
on your wall.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
That is awesome.
All right, I want to dig in alittle bit here.
So, in terms of the variousexercises you can do, you can
move.
You can do all movementpatterns push, pull, horizontal,
vertical plane, squat, hiphinge.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, you can hinge, you can deadlift, you can squat.
You can barbell squat.
You can hinge, you can deadlift, you can squat, you can barbell
squat.
You can, you know, squat withhandles or more like a goblet
kind of squat.
You can do lat, pull downs orchin up.
Variation type kind of movementpatterns.
You can pull horizontally, youcan push horizontally.
Yeah, you can do all types ofmovement patterns.
Yeah, it's over 200 moves thatare in the movement library and
then you can add additionalmoves as you want to do with
this.
Okay, like sled dragging on itand use the cables as resistance
(12:10):
, put on a harness and do someother crazy stuff like that.
But yeah, almost unlimitedmovement variations.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Okay, this is great.
And then, in terms of theresistance, is it isokinetic,
meaning it's matching youwherever you are.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So yes and no.
We do have an isokinetic modethat we use as a strength
assessment.
So isokinetic, same speed,which means the speed you'd set,
the speed I want to move outone meter per second or half a
meter per second, or 20 inchesper second, and the resistance
varies depending on how muchyou're pushing.
We use that as a strengthassessment at the start.
(12:50):
So it's a nice kineticassessment that's quite used a
lot in physical therapy and formaximal testing.
In that situation it's a verysafe way of testing strength
because if you can't push, itdoesn't ask you to push any
harder.
But it's actually not that anenjoyable way to train.
Not that many people love doingit, because everything's
maximal all the time.
It's highly effective, just nothighly engaging, and you talked
(13:12):
earlier about my experiencewith athletes.
They're very adherent.
Your average population mightnot have the same level of
adherence by things.
So we try to make it enjoyableexercise for them as well as
effective and marry those.
So we do use isokinetic, butmostly essentially what we are
able to do is apply what wouldbe feel more similar to free
weights, so more traditional inthe feel, in that, okay, it's 50
(13:36):
pounds on the way up, 50 poundson the way down and you can
standardize.
What we can do is we couldmanipulate something like that.
We know that on average, humansare about 25, 30% stronger in
the eccentric or the downwardmotion than they are in the
upward.
So I could make it 50 pounds onthe way up, 70 pounds on the
way down, nice, and so you canmanipulate eccentric,
(13:57):
accentuated eccentric loading,which has been proven to have a
lot of strength benefits, so youcan eccentrically overload.
For those that have been inserious gym situations, you
might have seen people load upwith chains on the bar.
Chains are a really good powerexercise.
When there's lots of chainlinks on the floor, the bar is
quite light and when you standup doing a squat pattern, more
(14:20):
of those chains come off.
Gravity pulls down on them andit's somewhat heavier.
The reason it's good is becauseat that end range of motion
we're quite strong and movingfast, and adding the extra
resistance allows us to producemore power force, times,
velocity Well, what about time,velocity and then?
(14:40):
So we have that at touch ofbutton, so you don't have to
load on chains, you can just hitchange mode and it would be 50
pounds at the bottom of thatsquat and 70 pounds at the top,
on a linear kind of basis.
And then we have a third modethat we call smart flex, which
is not the same as isokinetic,but essentially what it does is
where you're strongest in a moveit adds more resistance and
(15:02):
where you're weakest it takesaway resistance.
So if you think something likea pull down, you're strongest in
this little part of the motion,right, this first little bit is
the easiest part of a chin upor of a pull down.
Down here is really tough andyou kind of have to jerk it or
really strain to get it down.
So we can make that like 70pounds, 69, 68, 65, 60, 55.
(15:26):
Okay, 50 pounds down here andthen reverse on the way back so
you can match the force profile.
So essentially it's optimizedto the individual or to the
movement pattern.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
That's right, and is it doing that all in real time?
Yeah, real time I got thisthing.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I think it's something like 4 000 times a
second, so it's maybe slightlydelayed, but not not noticeable
yeah, so you can do so.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
You can effectively do something like with bands
where you can change the forceproduction resistance curve.
You can change the eccentricand the concentric and then you
can have this mode where it'sactually in real time, adding
more weight where you'restronger and taking away where
you're weaker to prevent that.
(16:11):
That's probably one of the bestways to prevent injury with
using something like this.
I imagine this is pretty cooland you can do all movement
patterns.
And so what about the actual uhprograms that you have?
Because normally when I look atmachines like this in the past
or any sort of any machine atall that has some built-in
(16:36):
programs, I immediately say I'mnot going to do their garbage.
I know way more than these guys.
You know like whatever.
But when I found out howknowledgeable you were, I
thought, jesus, I bet you.
The programs on this device areprobably phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, Like number one , you can do your own thing, you
can custom program your own.
You've got some special secretsauce that you love to do or
something you just really enjoydoing, Right, they even might be
more effective.
You can do that on your ownright.
Not even might be moreeffective, you can do that on
your own.
But if you want to do one ofthose 300 programs and the
programs are four-week programsthey might be as a minimal, as
(17:15):
like twice a week for four weeks, or as much as five times a
week, uh, for four weeks, buttypically they're four-week
programs and we stack them andblock them into making into sort
of meso cycles and macro cycles, so longer blocks and durations
.
But something that really wascritical to the team before I
came on board but became ascritical.
One of the reasons why is I'dhad similar experiences to you
(17:38):
in that anything that's out ofthe box, canned program, I was
not really interested.
I'm an Olympic level trainer, Iknow this, so I wanted to bring
that to that, and so the teamthat we have.
I write some of the programsthat are on there, but the
coaches themselves the on-cameracoaches write some.
We have Jenna and a programmingteam that writes some others,
(17:58):
but really high quality peoplewith you know undergraduates,
master's degrees, PhDs you know20 years working in Olympic
athletes John who works for mehas has done 15 years in
performance innovation at Exoswho are programming at the same
kind of level that we wouldbring to our individual clients,
(18:31):
whether that's people in youknow later life, you know in
their 50 plus and looking tomaintain function and form and
have great retirement years andgreat health spans, or they're
more athletic and focused.
But we wanted to bring the samelevel of thought and depth to
programming and, honestly, a lotfrom my science credibility
around that we would to theirprogramming.
So that's what we tried tobring.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
It really caught my attention in terms of thinking
there is some real benefit tosticking to a program.
I think that I always tellpeople look, you don't want to
wing it when you go into the gym.
You need to have some sort ofplan and a goal.
I mean, that's how you get realresults right, Even as
something as simple as writingdown your weights and so you
know how to properlyprogressively load, instead of
(19:14):
coming in the gym next timegoing what did I lift last time,
but to have these full-blownmulti-week, multi-month programs
already in there.
That and plus it'sautomatically keeping track of
all your data, and plus it'sautomatically keeping track of
all your data.
It's keeping track ofeverything.
So I think this is incrediblyattractive in terms of a
(19:35):
complete solution.
Let me ask you this With allthis data that you're acquiring
from all your users, is thatbecause you know what you know,
because you've studied and youworked with top athletes, what
has all this data that you'veacquired now?
How has that changed?
And changed the programming?
(19:56):
Yeah, so it has.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
I would say the science and the background we
have is like the foundationallevel.
These are things that we thinkand these are the foundational
blocks that we have.
I wouldn't say proven out, butwe have strong confidence.
There's a large evidencethey're supporting.
So an example of that might beI don't know proximity to
failure and hypertrophy.
So we know we need to workrelatively hard, we need to work
(20:22):
close to failure notnecessarily to failure in order
to stimulate muscles to grow.
We need a sufficient level ofrelative intensity.
That science has shown thatwith, I think, a relatively high
level of degree of confidence,and so that's like a
foundational level.
What the data set has allowedus to do is one of the things
(20:43):
that we talked about and we talka lot about internally is
science doesn't tell us a lotabout what makes someone
consistent.
How do we get engagement, andthat's actually way more
important than whether youworked hard or not.
It's whether you turned up ornot, and that has a much bigger
effect.
And so what the data setsallows us to do is mostly in the
way you look at it iscorrelation.
Correlation doesn't always makecause and effect.
It's not necessarily causation,but correlation to things.
(21:04):
What are some of the thingsthat have the highest
correlators, with people thatadhere more than others?
So the program example like wemined that database, we looked
at it.
I can tell you that people thatsign up to programs are 12%
more consistent than people thatdon't.
Quite simple, and that might bepartly because our programming
is awesome, but it might also bebehavioral science.
(21:26):
Commitment device you made acommitment to do something.
You signed up to do this,therefore I want to do it, and
so there might be sort ofaspects of that.
We look at things around socialengagement People that follow
one to four friends or one to 10friends on the app are
something like 20% moreconsistent than people that
don't.
People that check their statsthey have cognitive engagement
(21:51):
in their own process, theirself-ownership of their journey
and hey, how much did I lift?
Did I train legs today or not,people that go back and check
their stats again about 20% moreconsistent than people that
aren't, and so it's reallyaround.
A lot of adherence is where Ithink we get a lot of the data.
There was one really interestingstat one of our data scientists
(22:13):
, christy, pulled out wasbecause long-term engagement is
what everyone cares about, thatis the only thing not the only
thing that matters, but the mostimportant thing Do you turn up,
can turn up consistently over along period of time?
We don't get any fitness gainsin a day, a week or even really
a month.
To be honest.
They do take long.
And so she looked at analysisand looked at people who'd been
(22:35):
training at least a year ontotal, I think it was.
And she looked at what they didin the first month on total and
it was like, okay, well, didthey work out a little or did
they work out a lot?
And then she broke them in.
They grouped them into a high,a medium, a low or quartiles I
can't remember.
He said exactly what it was,but they looked and, yeah,
people that engage more in thefirst month generally engage a
(22:57):
little more 52 weeks later.
But of its own, it's not a greatcorrelator.
It's not a great predictor ofperformance.
What was a much strongerpredictor of how much do you
engage one year later is not howmuch you did in the first week,
but whether you did a littlemore in week two than in week
one and a little more in weekthree than in week two and a
little more in week four than inweek three.
(23:19):
So if you were on this upwardtrajectory so I came in first
week I trained twice for 15minutes 30 minutes of workouts,
but I came back the next weekand of workouts, but I came back
the next week and did 35.
And I came back the next weekand did 40 and came back the
week after and did 45.
And that upward trajectory onlyneeded to last a month.
That was a really strongpredictor of 52 week RU
(23:42):
engagement still working outconsistently a year later.
And so this upward trajectoryand this is based on again, this
is not causation data, it'sobservational data but that
makes a ton of sense of peoplethat are engaged in their
journey and kind of things.
So those are the types ofnuggets that you can pull out
from that programming.
So now, when I program, howdoes that affect you?
(24:04):
Can damn right.
Sure, I'm going to make yourfirst week.
If you tell me you're abeginner and you've never worked
, I'm going to make your firstweek.
If you tell me you're a beginnerand you've never worked, I'm
going to make your first week.
I want to make it that youturned up, you're not too sore,
you had a good time and wedidn't take too much of your
time.
That's my main objective thatfirst week, if you're a complete
beginner, it wasn't bad.
I could do this again.
(24:24):
And the next week later, maybeI'll give you a set more, two
sets more.
A week later, three sets more,like just a little more, not
lots, tons, but a little more.
I progressively overload you,but what I'm trying to do is get
you to engage a little bit moreeach week.
When we move by week four, wemeet from two times a week to
three times a week, still for 15minutes a time maybe, and those
(24:46):
small pieces, really long-termengagement of time, maybe, and
those small pieces reallylong-term engagement.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Wow, it's fascinating because it's not just about how
do we make you stronger andfitter, but how do we keep you
consistently using the product.
Ultimately, the thing's justsitting on the wall gathering
dust.
Yeah, you're not going to getfitter and stronger, so I think
it's incredibly interesting howyou're mining your data to find
those nuggets.
Let me ask you this what aboutare you guys hooking into any
(25:15):
other things like aura ringpeople's HRV, or is the machine
inherently already able to trackyour nervous system and how
fatigued you are just on yourforce production or your
velocity and things like that?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah, I would say somewhat following the next 12
or 18 months.
So we plug into Apple Healthand so we will track your
exercises into Apple Health.
And so if you told me in yourApple Health kit or Android, I
think but in your health kitdata that you just ran a
marathon yesterday, I'm notgoing to recommend that you
should do a marathon yesterday.
I'm not going to recommend thatyou should do a leg workout
(25:51):
today.
I'm going to show up on yourtonal there's a little Vitruvian
man and green is ready, gray islike kind of semi and red is
fatigued.
Your legs are going to show upred, fatigued, because you just
ran a marathon.
And so there's that level ofintegration of where we can use
it for some recommendations, Ithink the future 12, 18 months,
without saying this is in theproduct roadmap.
(26:12):
But how do you integrate ahigher level of granular data?
Is it sleep data, is it heartrate variability data?
Or, as you kind of alluded todo, I just need to do a warmup
set and measure your force andvelocity on tone on them.
That actually gives me bettersensitivity data and to some
extent.
You told me you only slept forsix hours and you normally sleep
for eight, but your centralnervous system looks great,
(26:35):
you're primed, you're ready,you're firing.
You, as an athlete, haveexperienced this Some days where
you don't think you have it andyou do, and some days where you
thought you had it and youdon't.
We probably have higherresolution and sensitivity data
of that than anything else.
We can measure that force, wecan measure that velocity and so
if we start normalizing that,we can look at your we'd call
that a Z-score, like your normalchange.
(26:57):
What's your normal variation?
And if you're outside of thatvariation, should that be a
predictor?
That's not in the product today.
There's conversations I don'tknow when that will make it into
the product, but certainlythose are some of the
opportunities of where you getto really specify the details.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah, I mean, I always tell people, look, if you
optimize for fitness, you endup optimizing everything else,
because look what an athletedoes in order to be completely
optimal at his sport he will goto bed on time, he will eat good
food and watch his diet, hewill make sure his stress levels
and things aren't stressing himout.
And I I think a lot of timesyou can take so much data, you
(27:34):
know cause, sit there and belike, oh, there's no way I'm
going to have a good workout,cause my aura ring said this and
that, and really, at the end ofthe day, it's exactly what you
said.
I've had some of my bestworkouts when I did not think it
was going to happen because Ifelt like garbage.
But at the end of the day, ifyou just show up and you let the
thing, okay, it feeds back toyou that you weren't as strong
(27:55):
and you weren't this.
That kind of implies to youwhat am I doing in my life that
I could be have showed up betterto this workout If I optimized
for my workouts?
Yeah, I didn't go to bed on timelast night, or you know what?
I'm letting this thing happen,or letting this happen, and so
sometimes you can get a littlebit overwhelmed with some of
(28:16):
these things, but I just wantedto see since you guys are so
data centric, maybe what youwere driving towards.
Let me ask you this Just torespond to that.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
I think, if you think about back your career, you
were a sort of 90s 2000 athleteright In gymnastics.
I started my career around late90s early 2000s.
If you think about the data youhad as an elite athlete back
then, or the first data that Icollected, the average consumer
probably has 10 times more datathat wants to has 10 times more
(28:43):
data than I had on the bestathletes in the 90s and early
2000s.
I'd have maybe some heart ratedata, some performance data like
how did they swim or run orwhatever it might be,
Self-tracking of sleep.
There was probably no decentnutrition apps.
I certainly didn't havesomething on my finger or on my
wrist that was measuring all thedifferent things, and so I do
(29:05):
think the consumer has access toa ton of data.
I think what we're focused onand I think every company will
say this is it's not about thedata, it's about the insights,
and so what is at the forefrontof our thinking is we will add
data sets if I can give you aninsight from it, if I can make
your behavior, change yourbehavior, because it either
tells you to do something ortell you not to do something,
(29:26):
and until I get to that level ofconfidence that we can do that
really well, then it's notnecessarily always worth just
aggregating more of it, but oncewe can give that insight, tell
you, hey, here's an informedpiece of based on this data set
or these combinations of datasets, here's something that I
think is going to work for you,stephen, today, then that
becomes the real value.
And we're still a little wayaway from that as an industry
(29:48):
not as tonal, but as an industry.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a good point Interms of your data and building
strength, because we knowstrength is correlated with
longevity.
I'd love to hear your sort ofpersonal feelings about that,
but I do want to know what dataare you seeing for people to
(30:12):
actually gain strength in olderpopulations like 55 plus?
Is it possible?
Are people really doing it?
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah.
So my I'll answer the firstpart, my personal take on it.
Yes, I think strength is well.
I think the research, theepidemiological research, is
very clear that strength, evengrip strength, is a great
predictor of longevity, probablyonly maxed by VO2.
It's probably the second bestmarker of living a long time.
I would say it's arguably abetter predictor of a health
(30:45):
span and living quality yearsyour ability to do that.
So I'm a big fan of strength asa whole.
Why?
Because you don't gain strengthovernight.
Strength is an investment oftime, in the same way that VO2
max is an investment of time.
It's not necessarily theproduct of strength, although
you do need strength to do theseactivities, like you need
strength to lift up thegroceries, to lift up your
(31:05):
grandkids, to do all these otheractivities of daily living.
But it means you've investedtraining time.
If you are strong, more thanlikely Some people are innately
strong.
But in order to have thatstrength in later ages and
particularly we know howstrength declines at later
points, it means you'veconsistently trained.
I think it's my personal biasthat the consistency aspect of
training over a long period oftime and my personal bias that
(31:25):
the consistency aspect oftraining over a long period of
time and the adaptations to thatare probably some of the
physiological drivers oflongevity.
The function of that strengthis improving your health.
Span Personal bias.
I'm not sure I have a ton ofresearch to back that up, but
that's how I think.
What does our research, whatdoes our data set over
increasing strength in 55 plus?
So I sort of mentioned earliermost of the research studies in
(31:49):
this is, like you know, a sixweek study in 65 year old males
or females, you know, showedthat if they train three times a
week doing X, y and exacttraining program, then they make
, you know, reasonable changesin both strength and hypertrophy
in muscle mass.
Maybe you go from six weeks,maybe to 16 weeks.
(32:09):
That's kind of about thelongest study I've seen in that
space.
What we can show over multipleyears is that doesn't just
happen for a short window oftime and it's not just with a
specific program.
If you turn up and engage withtonal or just in resistance
training, in general 75%increases or in the low 70s 73%.
(32:30):
I don't want to misquote my ownresearch 73% increases in
strength in their first year ontonal.
That's the average, the meanthat's not the best possible.
So there's people that workedout only once a week in that, or
people that have worked outfour or five times a week, once
a week in that, or people thathave worked out four or five
times a week.
So the mean increase is 75 inthe first year.
Wow, yeah, so huge increases instrength.
(32:51):
We can't measure hypertrophymuscle mass it's not easy to do
in a system like us but theproducts of strength are
undoubtedly.
We see in 55 plus or us.
We see you, training more timesa week does lead to greater
changes in strength, but it kindof starts to plateau quite a
lot around four Two times a week.
(33:11):
You're still making niceincreases Once a week.
You can still make 25%increases in strength in your
first year.
But you see almost a linearstep change.
If you go from twice a week,once a week to twice a week to
three times a week.
It starts plateauing a littleat four and then it kind of
levels off at four.
Once you're doing four or sotimes a week.
There's marginal benefits fromdoing five and six, but not a
ton.
And so we see that.
(33:33):
And what I think we also see,which I'm interested in, is not
just strength but the power sideof it for longevity and for
aging.
Strength is the easiest thingto measure and therefore has the
most.
Research is what we most quote,but, like grip strength, hand
grip strength is the most easilyaccessible measure of strength
in a research setting.
(33:53):
What would be much morefunctional is deadlift strength.
Right, that's actually amovement of life.
Can I pick this heavy objectoff of a floor and stand up?
And we see massive increases indeadlift strength from people
that train with the deadliftpattern.
So we do see that.
But what we also see is massivechanges in deadlift power and
so their ability to stand up,not just with additional weight
(34:16):
but with additional speed, andtheir ability to do that because
that's strongly correlated withstanding up out of a chair.
If you watch an elderly person,a frail person that maybe isn't
strong or powerful, theygenerally can get out of a chair
, but it's a very slow movementpattern.
Right, it's a very methodicalthought movement pattern.
(34:37):
Whereas a younger, healthyperson, or even just an older,
stronger person, is morepowerful, they can apply that
force over time Going up thestairs power exercise in your
70s and 80s and 90s.
Walking across the streetspower exercise in your 80s and
90s.
Getting your luggage into acarry-on so you can go on
vacation, enjoy your retirementyears.
(34:57):
Power exercise.
They're all about gettingthings up relatively quickly,
and so it's really interestingdata that we're seeing that the
power increases actuallyarguably more than the strength,
and people that train deadliftonce a week.
I think we saw 75-ish percentincreases in deadlift strength,
but we saw over 100% increasesin deadlift peak power.
So it's the strength with thespeed and I think that's super
(35:20):
cool.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
That's really cool.
And what would the programminglook like for power, if someone
was doing a power?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
program.
To be clear, these weren'tnecessarily just training for
power.
These are just people that weretraining and these are their
average outcomes.
But if I was trying to trainsomeone for power, let's say
they're an intermediate, so notcompletely brand new.
They can do movement patterns,they know how to hip hinge and
do that.
They're not necessarily liftingextremely heavy weights or
anything like that.
(35:47):
But I think number one isintent is focusing on moving
relatively quickly in theconcentric direction.
A lot of the time I see peoplebeing a bit too, not that we
don't want to be uncontrolled,but you don't need to
intentionally slow down.
If the bar has a 10 rep weighton it, a 10 rep max weight, like
(36:08):
it's not going to be super fastfrom the first rep anyway
because it's kind of heavy.
And so trying to move withintent and move powerful because
there's a lot of research fromthe sport world that actually
moving fast is important but notthat important.
The intent to move fast, it'sthe neuro connections that we're
trying to drive.
So the intent to move quicklywith safe form and then control
(36:30):
the eccentric, control, thedownward motion.
So you or you can drop if youwant, but it's control the
downward motion but move theconcentric direction, move it
fast would be number one.
Number two is you can't workpower for that many reps.
I gave a 10 rep example.
I would generally go less.
Most of my power stuff is likehey, do six reps and move all of
(36:52):
them relatively fast withrelatively heavy, or do clusters
right.
So a cluster set is where youkind of break up a bigger set
into smaller chunks.
So rather than a set of six, Imight do three sets of two, with
like 10 seconds between each ofthose sets, or 15 seconds.
So do two reps, take a minirest, two reps, take a mini rest
(37:13):
, two reps, and so you've stillgot six reps of work, but you've
got this recovery period,because we know we need that
recovery for that sort of CNSsystem to be able to drive
maximally.
And then, thirdly, I'd thinkabout actually what we talked
about before, that change Adding, change mode is a great way to
work on power, because as youcome up, right, for anyone
(37:33):
that's deadlifted it's prettyslow getting off the floor right
, and then you get it up toabout your knees and then you
can shoot the last bit reallyfast.
Well, you can still do thatwith change, but it's heavier at
that top portion.
So you're going to generatemore power, which is going to
train that property.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Those are sort of three of the ways that I would
incorporate it.
Yeah, yeah, great stuff.
Is anybody topping out on the?
Because you said it can produce200 pounds of force.
Is that per each one?
Speaker 2 (37:59):
It's 200 pounds total .
I did a study actually out ofHigh Point University two years
ago now because a lot of ourmembers were saying, hey, in the
gym I can curl 35s and on tonalI'm only doing 25s.
And so I commissioned thisresearch study to compare tonal
pounds to free weight pounds andwe called it wheel feel or free
weight equivalency feel.
(38:21):
The long story of that studywas the research showed that
tonal feels about 25% heavier onaverage and it's because of
inertia and the way that inertiaworks.
Once you start moving that bar,the bar actually wants to keep
moving Newton's laws.
Eventually gravity slows itdown relatively quick but you
get a bit free energy out ofthat.
Tonal with motors doesn't allowyou to get the same level of
(38:43):
inertia, so it feels a bitheavier.
So it's 200 pounds ofresistance probably feels closer
to 250.
I think something.
I can't remember exactly whatthe percentage is, but most of
our members never come anywherenear tapping out.
I would say on deadlift, yeah,I can lift 200 pounds, I can max
out deadlift and that things,and so there is a small
percentage of our populationthat can max it out pretty much
(39:04):
only from those sort of grossmovement patterns from the floor
.
So deadlift variations, maybean RDL, those types of stuff,
but the vast majority of membersnever come close to it.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Got it.
So, look, I'm impressed.
I mean, clearly, your trainingprograms in this thing, I'm sure
, are top-notch.
You're basing it off of amassive aggregate of data.
That is very insightful and,I'm sure, making your programs
even that much more effective.
(39:35):
The thing has a small footprint.
I imagine.
The thing can even coach orexplain exactly how your form
should be before you do any sortof exercise.
You probably have beginner,intermediate, advanced stuff you
have.
I mean, this thing is a turnkeysolution.
Walk me through.
Let's say I want to buy one.
(39:57):
What is the process?
I see on your website you canfinance it, or it's $3,595,
$3,595.
And it's got to be connected toa wall, right?
So how does all that work?
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, totally so.
Yeah, wwwtonalcom is thewebsite and you can find out all
the details there.
The hardware itself is about$3,500.
And then there is we come inand install it.
We do an installation process.
It's like hanging a big TV, butit's a big TV that you're going
to pull off and we really wantto make sure that you hit those
(40:33):
studs, Not like my homeimprovement work where I'm like,
yeah, I had a mirror slash theother week, so we don't want
that with our customers.
So we come out and we installit for the customers, and so a
team comes.
So you'll come in, you canpurchase outright there or you
(40:55):
can affirm finance it up to 48months at 0% finance I think is
the maximum and kind of thereand pay out there.
Typically, schedule installswithin about two to three weeks
right now, and so you can comeout and we'll find a wall.
You essentially just need studs.
They can be wooden or they canbe metal.
There are some concretelimitations.
We can install on some types ofconcrete and not in others, but
there's details around there.
But vast majority of homes,particularly in the US, you can
(41:17):
come out, get installed and setup then, and then there is a
subscription on top of thehardware.
That is mandatory for 12 months.
You can drop it after the 12months, but that's what gives
you access to those modes and tothe training programs and the
advanced features.
The machine still works.
There's funky things likeBluetooth weight on and off so
you never have to strugglegetting through.
(41:38):
That stays forever.
But the programs and thedynamic weight modes and some of
those are a $60 a monthsubscription on top of that for
as long as you want to keep them.
And it turns out a ton of ourmembers see a ton of value.
I saw a stat that was likePeloton was something like 90%
of our members that joined lastyear are still members and I'm
like 90% of our members thatjoined ever are still our
(42:01):
members.
Like our people, thankfully,love the product and continue to
subscribe and continue to useit over nearly three times a
week, I think is the averagethree years later.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah, I recommended a while ago a doctor friend of
mine.
I said you should look intothis Tonal device.
I think it'd be great for yourclinic Because he kind of had
this clinic with a LivO2 oxygentraining thing and some PEMF and
he bought it.
He's like dude, I love it.
I love it and I've had my eyeon this for a long time.
(42:33):
I just thought it's very slick,it's very sophisticated.
I love the footprint.
I assume you are using thisthing.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, I train exclusively.
I do have a free weight squatrack behind me that I got at the
start of the pandemic before Icould get a tonal that I
actually free weight bench presslast week hit 225 for a triple.
So not that strong but like Iwas reasonably happy with that,
I hadn't free weight lifted forabout 18 months.
I have them there.
It's just so much easier towork out.
(43:02):
Tonal Don't have to changeweights, it remembers all of my
weights, it progresses me.
I can do all of these likeweight modes that I like to do
and keep it interesting.
So yeah, I train almostexclusively on on tonal.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Phenomenal, phenomenal.
I really am very interested inthis and in the field that I'm
in and the different businessesI'm associated with, I just
think this is a great product.
I personally want to try it,but I think that for the full
spectrum of demographic,especially aging population, I
(43:35):
think this makes a lot of sensebecause it inherently has a
teaching device right there.
It has some safety modes.
You don't have to get a cardrive to the gym, which I love
working out by myself.
I have no problem, unless I getterribly out of shape, which
almost never, ever happens,because then it's kind of like I
(43:55):
like to be in the environmentbut, man, for me, I like to just
get it done and be into it 100%.
This seems like a really greatoption for someone at home to be
using this.
Is there anything we missed?
Is there anything in terms oftonal or that you would like to
add to this, or maybe somethinginteresting that you've found in
(44:18):
your experience or with thedata that maybe you just want to
put out there?
Speaker 2 (44:22):
No, I obviously.
I'm wearing the logo and workfor the company, so I agree it's
a pretty compelling product.
I think the biggest surprisefor me that I've started working
.
I was not an Olympian, not evenclose to being an Olympian, but
love training and love exercise, and so I've never been really
struggling to motivate it.
What I found is I exercisesnack so much more now I have
(44:46):
tonal Like and so, for thosethat don't know, the exercise
snack is a short bout ofexercise, relatively intense.
I like when you're going to thegym you're not going to drive in
there.
Drive to the gym, go and getchanged, go in and do one set of
bench, like warm up and do oneset of bench and then drive back
.
It's not highly efficient useof your time, right?
You?
You've right.
I'm going to spend at least 30to 45 minutes here, probably an
(45:07):
hour, because I'm waiting forequipment and then I'm going to
drop.
I'm going to make it hit.
I don't do that.
I train.
I come in the morning, I go in,do a couple of warm-up sets and
then I'll hit a set of bench.
Okay, I'll do like, go and doon Zoom call, jump behind me, do
a set of squats, like I think Iaccumulate so much more
training because I'm kind ofjust jumping into it all the
(45:28):
time.
Now, unfortunately, I work fromhome and so on, I have no
ability to do that.
I'm basically on zoom callsmost of my day, so I get 10
minutes here and there inbetween the finishing it kind of
.
But that's literally changed myworkout like mentality.
You know, I used to have tobuild up this almost like
psychological right.
Right, I'm going to hit it hard.
Today I got 15 sets in myworkout program and I kind of
(45:50):
think I'm like it's a mentaltask, just to like I'm going to
have to push it.
And now I've like, oh, you gotone set.
It's going to be pretty tough,but it's one set.
And then you've got an hourbreak.
I'm like so I kind of think so,which I never really thought I
would train that way and neverintended to train that way.
But it's just been kind ofalmost life changing, because
there's also a lot of researcharound how those mini bouts of
exercise actually really goodfor your physical health, not
(46:12):
just the strength, but just likemovement.
Like doing an hour of exerciseand then 23 hours of nothing,
that kind of doesn't actuallycounteract all the 23 hours of
doing nothing as well as we'dlike it to.
It's better than not doing it,but it's it's not as good.
So these mini bouts are reallygood for that.
It's really good for cognitivetoo.
I didn't realize that doing aset of cards before I go and
(46:32):
meet with my boss makes mebetter at meeting with my boss
or presenting or hopefully,doing a podcast.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Maybe I should have another set of sports.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
The benefits of that I never really realized and
that's been a real nice sideeffect for me.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yeah, I love that.
I would be willing to betthat's exactly.
I'd be doing it like that allthe time and I've seen some of
that research that you'rereferring to and I like that.
I like the idea of just gettingpeppy, you know, like just boom
and going back, and I mean Iwould, I think I would put the
tonal if I get it, in my officeand literally cause I just love
(47:08):
having an active workspace.
So, man, troy, awesome product.
Man, kudos to you guys.
Like I really think you guyshave crafted something special
and the fact that they arebringing people like you, with
as much history as you have withworking with you know elite
athletes and all the sciencethat you know and the
(47:30):
programming, that speaks a lotto me about the company.
So I'm I'm excited you got achance to come on here and you
know, in terms of anyonelistening, if this sounds like
something that you're interestedin, definitely check it out.
At tonalcom you can go to myresource page on this podcast.
We'll have all links toeverything that's going to be at
(47:51):
stephenmccaincom.
Backslash tonal T-O-N-A-L.
Troy, how can people find youif they're interested in
reaching out?
They have any questions.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, so you've given the Tonal website.
Tonal also has an Instagram.
Lots of member stories and theprograms that are dropping that
are on there.
So just search for Tonal.
I am on Instagram.
I came a decade late, butstarted maybe last year or so.
I post mostly my Tonal workouts, some of the fun stuff that I'm
playing around with and Tonalor some of the latest research
around there, or I'm on LinkedIn.
(48:24):
I don't know what thatbackslash is.
Oh sure, on Instagram it'sStrength Science Troy, strength
Science Troy on Instagram.
And then, yeah, I'm on LinkedIntoo.
So, yeah, definitely reach meout if you're interested in
finding out more.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
I'll put links to all that as well Again in the show
notes.
Stephenmccaincom backslashtonal Troy slash tonal Troy.
Really appreciate the time.
Thank you for sharing this.
I think this is a really greatproduct for my audience, and
thank you guys for tuning in andwe will see you on the next one
.
Stay healthy, everyone.
Cheers.
Welcome to another episode of the Stephen McCain
podcast where I bring you peoplemaking world-class decisions in
the field of human optimizationand performance.
This week I'm interviewing TroyTaylor from Tonal.
Tonal is the world's smartesthome gym.
It's very innovative and wediscuss how this device is
(00:26):
really shaping the future offitness and strength training.
I'm sure you're well aware ofif you are in the longevity
space at all and listen tolongevity podcasts that strength
is correlated with longevity,and so I'm always interested
(00:47):
when these products come ontothe market.
So this is kind of like thePeloton for strength training
and it's got some amazingfeatures and they're able to get
a ton of data on strengthtraining populations that are
using their device to improvetheir programming.
(01:09):
And Troy has an incredibleresume where he has worked with
a lot of teams, a lot of Olympicteams, and so it's a really
great opportunity to learn howthis company is taking these
really advanced protocols andcombining it with an advanced
piece of technology that canjust fit on your wall and take
(01:31):
up a pretty small footprint tohave an amazing home gym.
So if you are interested inthis kind of stuff, you're going
to like this podcast.
Let's do it, Troy.
Welcome to the Stephen McCainpodcast.
Thank you so much for having meon.
I'm excited to be here.
Yeah, when you showed up assomeone who wanted to be on the
show, I got really excitedbecause I knew about your
(01:52):
product that you work for.
But you have an incrediblywell-versed background in
exercise physiology and you'repart of a lot of Olympic teams A
very incredible resume.
I would love for you just tokind of give us a brief overview
of your background and how thatled to Tonal yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, like many people I was in 25 or so years
ago.
I date myself, but, you know,was in school, didn't really
know what I wanted to do in thefuture.
I love sport.
Didn't think there'd be much ofa career in something called
sports science or strengthconditioning or anything like
that, but kind of loved sport,wasn't sure what I would want to
do.
Went to university, thought I'dbecome a PE teacher, physical
(02:35):
education teacher or somethinglike that.
Started studying sports science, went back, did a master's
degree, Turned out I was quitegood at it and when I was doing
my master's degree I startedvolunteering for the British
Olympic swim team.
This was in 2002.
So leading into theCommonwealth Games in England
that's the accent, I'm Britishand then later the Athens
Olympics in 2004.
(02:56):
And in that sort of internship,while I was doing a master's
degree, essentially I startedworking with athletes and loved
it and this is what I wanted todo human performance,
understanding how humans getbetter at sport, performance and
physical fitness and all thingsrelated to that.
So, fast forward, over about20-ish years, I ended up working
(03:18):
with three different Olympicteams so Team GB, team Canada
and Team USA as a sportsscientist, as a strength
conditioning coach, later as adirector of sports science and
medicine and a high performancedirector, most recently at the
US Olympic skiing andsnowboarding team.
So I was high performancedirector there from 2015 to 2021
and got to work with all theseincredible athletes, incredible
(03:40):
humans that can do incrediblethings on the sport performance
field and also a bunch ofincredible support staff
physiologists, psychologists,dieticians, nutritionists,
physical therapists, strengthcoaches and sort of these
diverse skill sets and so Ireally enjoyed doing that for
close to 20 years.
In the last few years at the skiteam, I started working a lot
with startups, really with theidea of how can we get
(04:03):
competitive advantage to get onthe top step of the podium.
So in the lead up to the 2018Winter Olympics, we ran projects
in transcranial direct currentbrain stimulation.
There was a company called Halothat did some brain stim back
in the day and some researchprojects around that.
We were the first ever Olympicor professional team to use
virtual reality.
We filmed the entire course in360 video, working with Stryver,
(04:27):
a small startup out of Stanfordat the time, but basically got
involved in the startup worldand I kind of re-found my
passion for how Humanperformance and tech and that's
really cool.
And so, literally coming intosort of the early stages of the
pandemic, I knew of Tonal.
I didn't think home fitnessequipment was really where I
(04:48):
would spend my career,necessarily, but was aware of
the product as lockdown happenedand gyms closed and training
centers closed.
I ended up getting a Tonal forMichaela Schifrin, one of the
world's best ever skier, mostwinningest athlete of all time
in skiing.
So I got a tonal for her, triedit, loved it.
I thought, well, this is reallycool.
(05:10):
This is like technology thatlike I as a consumer not as an
Olympic level athlete can buyand fit on my wall.
I point behind me because it isthere but is also something
that I would want to use withOlympic level athletes.
I hadn't come across anythinglike that before.
So fast forward about another12 or so months and the company
offered me a job to come overand lead their performance team,
(05:31):
which is really theintersection between what I've
done from my background in those20 years of human performance.
How do we take the best of whatscience and the best of what we
know from training the bestathletes in the world and apply
that into the product throughsoftware, through content and
through product development tohelp general population people.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Phenomenal.
That is a nice trajectoryyou've found yourself on.
I mean, I think I was anOlympian and I imagine you get
awesome compliance when you'reworking with Olympic level
athletes, so you can give atraining program and you're
pretty, you know pretty damnwell that this is going to get.
(06:12):
They're going work, sharpenyour skill set and then to now
be able to bring that tosomething like Tonal, where you
probably have, I would imagine,your database of data points for
(06:33):
people working out, must bemassive and to see all of that
come together, it must be quitea phenomenal thing for someone
with your background to now havealmost like big data working
for you on a massive scale,sitting on top of a history of
working with some of the bestathletes in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, don't tell my bosses I'm kidding the candy
shop, that's kind of the ideal.
So, yes, working with the bestathletes in the world, you don't
get to work with that many ofthem right.
In 120 years, seven Olympicgames, I was fortunate to maybe
work with 50 Olympic medalists,which is a huge amount, and I'm
extremely grateful for that.
500 or so Olympians in myentire career, which is awesome,
(07:17):
but that's an entire career for50 people that got to step on
the podium.
And one of the attractions ofTonal is coming and now you're
impacting on tens, hundreds ofthousands of people on a daily
basis.
And, purely from a selfish egoperspective, if you think you
can improve the lives or helpimprove the lives of that many
people, that's really kind offulfilling.
(07:38):
And so, yeah, you talk aboutthat database.
So every time someone lives onTonal we measure at 50 hertz, so
50 times a second, what forcethey're producing, how fast they
are moving.
And Tonal is just, it's rightover 250 billion pounds lifted,
something around 8 billion reps,probably close to a billion
(08:01):
sets, 50-ish million trainingsessions.
The data is huge, growing dailyand also longitudinal right,
because a lot in my field I gotto work with a lot of people who
work for a quad or two quads,sometimes even three Olympic
cycles.
But for the vast majority ofthe research that we base a lot
of our recommendations off, thebaseline level is a 12 week
(08:25):
training study, an eight weektraining study.
We get to track people.
Like tunnel launched in likelate 2018, early 2019.
So we've got users that beenusing our product on a weekly
basis since 2019.
So it's five years worth ofdata and it's not in a research
sense.
It tends to be just 18 to 24year old, mostly male college
(08:46):
students, that's who doesresearch in exercise science.
A little more on the femaleside and we're getting better at
that, but not great.
With Tonal it's 18 to 80 plusyear olds.
There's 90 year olds on ourplatform and so you've got this
huge range of this big data setover a long period of time with
a huge sort of subsection of thepopulation that's both sort of
(09:07):
been on the age ranges fromyoung to very old and also, not
far off, a 50-50 mix of male tofemale.
It's about 55% male, 45% female, but close to equal gender
balance, and so it gives youthis really great
cross-sectional look into howhumans train.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
This is so interesting to me.
Look, let's talk about theTonal product first.
For somebody who's listening tothis podcast, they might be
going what is Tonal?
What's the commercial?
Who's the basketball player?
Now?
That's LeBron James.
Lebron James, yeah.
So if anyone has seen thatcommercial, that's what you've
seen total on TV.
But it's got this smallfootprint.
(09:48):
It looks like a vertical screenwith these arms sticking out
that can be used as cableweights and those can be
adjusted.
But maybe tell us a little bitabout the actual piece of
equipment.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, so at its highest level, and my VP of
product, farman, gave me thiskind of piece, but it's an
entire gym with personaltraining that fits in your space
.
And so how does it do that?
How is it an entire gym?
Well, the reason that it'selectromagnetic resistance.
The easiest way to explain itis similar to Tesla is to the
(10:24):
combustion car, tonal is to freeweights.
Not that one's better or one'sworse, they're just different.
But we create resistance viaelectromagnetic resistance.
That means we can do it viamotors, and these motors don't
have to be large, they can bequite small, which means you can
fit it on your wall, and sothat's how it creates resistance
(10:44):
.
It also allows us to manipulatethe resistance in various
different ways that don't applyto gravity or where gravity
wouldn't make that possible, andwe can talk about how it might
do that.
But essentially that resistanceit goes in there for those that
are watching on things, there'sa touchscreen and it can switch
on and the arms come out.
250 plus something movements upto 200 pounds of resistance, a
(11:08):
hundred programs, 5,000 workouts.
So that's the sort of personaltraining element.
It was like integrated form,feedback, computer vision and a
whole bunch of other stuff.
That basically a really highend tech gym that literally fits
on your wall.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
That is awesome.
All right, I want to dig in alittle bit here.
So, in terms of the variousexercises you can do, you can
move.
You can do all movementpatterns push, pull, horizontal,
vertical plane, squat, hiphinge.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, you can hinge, you can deadlift, you can squat.
You can barbell squat.
You can hinge, you can deadlift, you can squat, you can barbell
squat.
You can, you know, squat withhandles or more like a goblet
kind of squat.
You can do lat, pull downs orchin up.
Variation type kind of movementpatterns.
You can pull horizontally, youcan push horizontally.
Yeah, you can do all types ofmovement patterns.
Yeah, it's over 200 moves thatare in the movement library and
then you can add additionalmoves as you want to do with
this.
Okay, like sled dragging on itand use the cables as resistance
(12:10):
, put on a harness and do someother crazy stuff like that.
But yeah, almost unlimitedmovement variations.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Okay, this is great.
And then, in terms of theresistance, is it isokinetic,
meaning it's matching youwherever you are.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So yes and no.
We do have an isokinetic modethat we use as a strength
assessment.
So isokinetic, same speed,which means the speed you'd set,
the speed I want to move outone meter per second or half a
meter per second, or 20 inchesper second, and the resistance
varies depending on how muchyou're pushing.
We use that as a strengthassessment at the start.
(12:50):
So it's a nice kineticassessment that's quite used a
lot in physical therapy and formaximal testing.
In that situation it's a verysafe way of testing strength
because if you can't push, itdoesn't ask you to push any
harder.
But it's actually not that anenjoyable way to train.
Not that many people love doingit, because everything's
maximal all the time.
It's highly effective, just nothighly engaging, and you talked
(13:12):
earlier about my experiencewith athletes.
They're very adherent.
Your average population mightnot have the same level of
adherence by things.
So we try to make it enjoyableexercise for them as well as
effective and marry those.
So we do use isokinetic, butmostly essentially what we are
able to do is apply what wouldbe feel more similar to free
weights, so more traditional inthe feel, in that, okay, it's 50
(13:36):
pounds on the way up, 50 poundson the way down and you can
standardize.
What we can do is we couldmanipulate something like that.
We know that on average, humansare about 25, 30% stronger in
the eccentric or the downwardmotion than they are in the
upward.
So I could make it 50 pounds onthe way up, 70 pounds on the
way down, nice, and so you canmanipulate eccentric,
(13:57):
accentuated eccentric loading,which has been proven to have a
lot of strength benefits, so youcan eccentrically overload.
For those that have been inserious gym situations, you
might have seen people load upwith chains on the bar.
Chains are a really good powerexercise.
When there's lots of chainlinks on the floor, the bar is
quite light and when you standup doing a squat pattern, more
(14:20):
of those chains come off.
Gravity pulls down on them andit's somewhat heavier.
The reason it's good is becauseat that end range of motion
we're quite strong and movingfast, and adding the extra
resistance allows us to producemore power force, times,
velocity Well, what about time,velocity and then?
(14:40):
So we have that at touch ofbutton, so you don't have to
load on chains, you can just hitchange mode and it would be 50
pounds at the bottom of thatsquat and 70 pounds at the top,
on a linear kind of basis.
And then we have a third modethat we call smart flex, which
is not the same as isokinetic,but essentially what it does is
where you're strongest in a moveit adds more resistance and
(15:02):
where you're weakest it takesaway resistance.
So if you think something likea pull down, you're strongest in
this little part of the motion,right, this first little bit is
the easiest part of a chin upor of a pull down.
Down here is really tough andyou kind of have to jerk it or
really strain to get it down.
So we can make that like 70pounds, 69, 68, 65, 60, 55.
(15:26):
Okay, 50 pounds down here andthen reverse on the way back so
you can match the force profile.
So essentially it's optimizedto the individual or to the
movement pattern.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
That's right, and is it doing that all in real time?
Yeah, real time I got thisthing.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I think it's something like 4 000 times a
second, so it's maybe slightlydelayed, but not not noticeable
yeah, so you can do so.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
You can effectively do something like with bands
where you can change the forceproduction resistance curve.
You can change the eccentricand the concentric and then you
can have this mode where it'sactually in real time, adding
more weight where you'restronger and taking away where
you're weaker to prevent that.
(16:11):
That's probably one of the bestways to prevent injury with
using something like this.
I imagine this is pretty cooland you can do all movement
patterns.
And so what about the actual uhprograms that you have?
Because normally when I look atmachines like this in the past
or any sort of any machine atall that has some built-in
(16:36):
programs, I immediately say I'mnot going to do their garbage.
I know way more than these guys.
You know like whatever.
But when I found out howknowledgeable you were, I
thought, jesus, I bet you.
The programs on this device areprobably phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, Like number one , you can do your own thing, you
can custom program your own.
You've got some special secretsauce that you love to do or
something you just really enjoydoing, Right, they even might be
more effective.
You can do that on your ownright.
Not even might be moreeffective, you can do that on
your own.
But if you want to do one ofthose 300 programs and the
programs are four-week programsthey might be as a minimal, as
(17:15):
like twice a week for four weeks, or as much as five times a
week, uh, for four weeks, buttypically they're four-week
programs and we stack them andblock them into making into sort
of meso cycles and macro cycles, so longer blocks and durations
.
But something that really wascritical to the team before I
came on board but became ascritical.
One of the reasons why is I'dhad similar experiences to you
(17:38):
in that anything that's out ofthe box, canned program, I was
not really interested.
I'm an Olympic level trainer, Iknow this, so I wanted to bring
that to that, and so the teamthat we have.
I write some of the programsthat are on there, but the
coaches themselves the on-cameracoaches write some.
We have Jenna and a programmingteam that writes some others,
(17:58):
but really high quality peoplewith you know undergraduates,
master's degrees, PhDs you know20 years working in Olympic
athletes John who works for mehas has done 15 years in
performance innovation at Exoswho are programming at the same
kind of level that we wouldbring to our individual clients,
(18:31):
whether that's people in youknow later life, you know in
their 50 plus and looking tomaintain function and form and
have great retirement years andgreat health spans, or they're
more athletic and focused.
But we wanted to bring the samelevel of thought and depth to
programming and, honestly, a lotfrom my science credibility
around that we would to theirprogramming.
So that's what we tried tobring.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
It really caught my attention in terms of thinking
there is some real benefit tosticking to a program.
I think that I always tellpeople look, you don't want to
wing it when you go into the gym.
You need to have some sort ofplan and a goal.
I mean, that's how you get realresults right, Even as
something as simple as writingdown your weights and so you
know how to properlyprogressively load, instead of
(19:14):
coming in the gym next timegoing what did I lift last time,
but to have these full-blownmulti-week, multi-month programs
already in there.
That and plus it'sautomatically keeping track of
all your data, and plus it'sautomatically keeping track of
all your data.
It's keeping track ofeverything.
So I think this is incrediblyattractive in terms of a
(19:35):
complete solution.
Let me ask you this With allthis data that you're acquiring
from all your users, is thatbecause you know what you know,
because you've studied and youworked with top athletes, what
has all this data that you'veacquired now?
How has that changed?
And changed the programming?
(19:56):
Yeah, so it has.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
I would say the science and the background we
have is like the foundationallevel.
These are things that we thinkand these are the foundational
blocks that we have.
I wouldn't say proven out, butwe have strong confidence.
There's a large evidencethey're supporting.
So an example of that might beI don't know proximity to
failure and hypertrophy.
So we know we need to workrelatively hard, we need to work
(20:22):
close to failure notnecessarily to failure in order
to stimulate muscles to grow.
We need a sufficient level ofrelative intensity.
That science has shown thatwith, I think, a relatively high
level of degree of confidence,and so that's like a
foundational level.
What the data set has allowedus to do is one of the things
(20:43):
that we talked about and we talka lot about internally is
science doesn't tell us a lotabout what makes someone
consistent.
How do we get engagement, andthat's actually way more
important than whether youworked hard or not.
It's whether you turned up ornot, and that has a much bigger
effect.
And so what the data setsallows us to do is mostly in the
way you look at it iscorrelation.
Correlation doesn't always makecause and effect.
It's not necessarily causation,but correlation to things.
(21:04):
What are some of the thingsthat have the highest
correlators, with people thatadhere more than others?
So the program example like wemined that database, we looked
at it.
I can tell you that people thatsign up to programs are 12%
more consistent than people thatdon't.
Quite simple, and that might bepartly because our programming
is awesome, but it might also bebehavioral science.
(21:26):
Commitment device you made acommitment to do something.
You signed up to do this,therefore I want to do it, and
so there might be sort ofaspects of that.
We look at things around socialengagement People that follow
one to four friends or one to 10friends on the app are
something like 20% moreconsistent than people that
don't.
People that check their statsthey have cognitive engagement
(21:51):
in their own process, theirself-ownership of their journey
and hey, how much did I lift?
Did I train legs today or not,people that go back and check
their stats again about 20% moreconsistent than people that
aren't, and so it's reallyaround.
A lot of adherence is where Ithink we get a lot of the data.
There was one really interestingstat one of our data scientists
(22:13):
, christy, pulled out wasbecause long-term engagement is
what everyone cares about, thatis the only thing not the only
thing that matters, but the mostimportant thing Do you turn up,
can turn up consistently over along period of time?
We don't get any fitness gainsin a day, a week or even really
a month.
To be honest.
They do take long.
And so she looked at analysisand looked at people who'd been
(22:35):
training at least a year ontotal, I think it was.
And she looked at what they didin the first month on total and
it was like, okay, well, didthey work out a little or did
they work out a lot?
And then she broke them in.
They grouped them into a high,a medium, a low or quartiles I
can't remember.
He said exactly what it was,but they looked and, yeah,
people that engage more in thefirst month generally engage a
(22:57):
little more 52 weeks later.
But of its own, it's not a greatcorrelator.
It's not a great predictor ofperformance.
What was a much strongerpredictor of how much do you
engage one year later is not howmuch you did in the first week,
but whether you did a littlemore in week two than in week
one and a little more in weekthree than in week two and a
little more in week four than inweek three.
(23:19):
So if you were on this upwardtrajectory so I came in first
week I trained twice for 15minutes 30 minutes of workouts,
but I came back the next weekand of workouts, but I came back
the next week and did 35.
And I came back the next weekand did 40 and came back the
week after and did 45.
And that upward trajectory onlyneeded to last a month.
That was a really strongpredictor of 52 week RU
(23:42):
engagement still working outconsistently a year later.
And so this upward trajectoryand this is based on again, this
is not causation data, it'sobservational data but that
makes a ton of sense of peoplethat are engaged in their
journey and kind of things.
So those are the types ofnuggets that you can pull out
from that programming.
So now, when I program, howdoes that affect you?
(24:04):
Can damn right.
Sure, I'm going to make yourfirst week.
If you tell me you're abeginner and you've never worked
, I'm going to make your firstweek.
If you tell me you're a beginnerand you've never worked, I'm
going to make your first week.
I want to make it that youturned up, you're not too sore,
you had a good time and wedidn't take too much of your
time.
That's my main objective thatfirst week, if you're a complete
beginner, it wasn't bad.
I could do this again.
(24:24):
And the next week later, maybeI'll give you a set more, two
sets more.
A week later, three sets more,like just a little more, not
lots, tons, but a little more.
I progressively overload you,but what I'm trying to do is get
you to engage a little bit moreeach week.
When we move by week four, wemeet from two times a week to
three times a week, still for 15minutes a time maybe, and those
(24:46):
small pieces, really long-termengagement of time, maybe, and
those small pieces reallylong-term engagement.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Wow, it's fascinating because it's not just about how
do we make you stronger andfitter, but how do we keep you
consistently using the product.
Ultimately, the thing's justsitting on the wall gathering
dust.
Yeah, you're not going to getfitter and stronger, so I think
it's incredibly interesting howyou're mining your data to find
those nuggets.
Let me ask you this what aboutare you guys hooking into any
(25:15):
other things like aura ringpeople's HRV, or is the machine
inherently already able to trackyour nervous system and how
fatigued you are just on yourforce production or your
velocity and things like that?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah, I would say somewhat following the next 12
or 18 months.
So we plug into Apple Healthand so we will track your
exercises into Apple Health.
And so if you told me in yourApple Health kit or Android, I
think but in your health kitdata that you just ran a
marathon yesterday, I'm notgoing to recommend that you
should do a marathon yesterday.
I'm not going to recommend thatyou should do a leg workout
(25:51):
today.
I'm going to show up on yourtonal there's a little Vitruvian
man and green is ready, gray islike kind of semi and red is
fatigued.
Your legs are going to show upred, fatigued, because you just
ran a marathon.
And so there's that level ofintegration of where we can use
it for some recommendations, Ithink the future 12, 18 months,
without saying this is in theproduct roadmap.
(26:12):
But how do you integrate ahigher level of granular data?
Is it sleep data, is it heartrate variability data?
Or, as you kind of alluded todo, I just need to do a warmup
set and measure your force andvelocity on tone on them.
That actually gives me bettersensitivity data and to some
extent.
You told me you only slept forsix hours and you normally sleep
for eight, but your centralnervous system looks great,
(26:35):
you're primed, you're ready,you're firing.
You, as an athlete, haveexperienced this Some days where
you don't think you have it andyou do, and some days where you
thought you had it and youdon't.
We probably have higherresolution and sensitivity data
of that than anything else.
We can measure that force, wecan measure that velocity and so
if we start normalizing that,we can look at your we'd call
that a Z-score, like your normalchange.
(26:57):
What's your normal variation?
And if you're outside of thatvariation, should that be a
predictor?
That's not in the product today.
There's conversations I don'tknow when that will make it into
the product, but certainlythose are some of the
opportunities of where you getto really specify the details.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah, I mean, I always tell people, look, if you
optimize for fitness, you endup optimizing everything else,
because look what an athletedoes in order to be completely
optimal at his sport he will goto bed on time, he will eat good
food and watch his diet, hewill make sure his stress levels
and things aren't stressing himout.
And I I think a lot of timesyou can take so much data, you
(27:34):
know cause, sit there and belike, oh, there's no way I'm
going to have a good workout,cause my aura ring said this and
that, and really, at the end ofthe day, it's exactly what you
said.
I've had some of my bestworkouts when I did not think it
was going to happen because Ifelt like garbage.
But at the end of the day, ifyou just show up and you let the
thing, okay, it feeds back toyou that you weren't as strong
(27:55):
and you weren't this.
That kind of implies to youwhat am I doing in my life that
I could be have showed up betterto this workout If I optimized
for my workouts?
Yeah, I didn't go to bed on timelast night, or you know what?
I'm letting this thing happen,or letting this happen, and so
sometimes you can get a littlebit overwhelmed with some of
(28:16):
these things, but I just wantedto see since you guys are so
data centric, maybe what youwere driving towards.
Let me ask you this Just torespond to that.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
I think, if you think about back your career, you
were a sort of 90s 2000 athleteright In gymnastics.
I started my career around late90s early 2000s.
If you think about the data youhad as an elite athlete back
then, or the first data that Icollected, the average consumer
probably has 10 times more datathat wants to has 10 times more
(28:43):
data than I had on the bestathletes in the 90s and early
2000s.
I'd have maybe some heart ratedata, some performance data like
how did they swim or run orwhatever it might be,
Self-tracking of sleep.
There was probably no decentnutrition apps.
I certainly didn't havesomething on my finger or on my
wrist that was measuring all thedifferent things, and so I do
(29:05):
think the consumer has access toa ton of data.
I think what we're focused onand I think every company will
say this is it's not about thedata, it's about the insights,
and so what is at the forefrontof our thinking is we will add
data sets if I can give you aninsight from it, if I can make
your behavior, change yourbehavior, because it either
tells you to do something ortell you not to do something,
(29:26):
and until I get to that level ofconfidence that we can do that
really well, then it's notnecessarily always worth just
aggregating more of it, but oncewe can give that insight, tell
you, hey, here's an informedpiece of based on this data set
or these combinations of datasets, here's something that I
think is going to work for you,stephen, today, then that
becomes the real value.
And we're still a little wayaway from that as an industry
(29:48):
not as tonal, but as an industry.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a good point Interms of your data and building
strength, because we knowstrength is correlated with
longevity.
I'd love to hear your sort ofpersonal feelings about that,
but I do want to know what dataare you seeing for people to
(30:12):
actually gain strength in olderpopulations like 55 plus?
Is it possible?
Are people really doing it?
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah.
So my I'll answer the firstpart, my personal take on it.
Yes, I think strength is well.
I think the research, theepidemiological research, is
very clear that strength, evengrip strength, is a great
predictor of longevity, probablyonly maxed by VO2.
It's probably the second bestmarker of living a long time.
I would say it's arguably abetter predictor of a health
(30:45):
span and living quality yearsyour ability to do that.
So I'm a big fan of strength asa whole.
Why?
Because you don't gain strengthovernight.
Strength is an investment oftime, in the same way that VO2
max is an investment of time.
It's not necessarily theproduct of strength, although
you do need strength to do theseactivities, like you need
strength to lift up thegroceries, to lift up your
(31:05):
grandkids, to do all these otheractivities of daily living.
But it means you've investedtraining time.
If you are strong, more thanlikely Some people are innately
strong.
But in order to have thatstrength in later ages and
particularly we know howstrength declines at later
points, it means you'veconsistently trained.
I think it's my personal biasthat the consistency aspect of
training over a long period oftime and my personal bias that
(31:25):
the consistency aspect oftraining over a long period of
time and the adaptations to thatare probably some of the
physiological drivers oflongevity.
The function of that strengthis improving your health.
Span Personal bias.
I'm not sure I have a ton ofresearch to back that up, but
that's how I think.
What does our research, whatdoes our data set over
increasing strength in 55 plus?
So I sort of mentioned earliermost of the research studies in
(31:49):
this is, like you know, a sixweek study in 65 year old males
or females, you know, showedthat if they train three times a
week doing X, y and exacttraining program, then they make
, you know, reasonable changesin both strength and hypertrophy
in muscle mass.
Maybe you go from six weeks,maybe to 16 weeks.
(32:09):
That's kind of about thelongest study I've seen in that
space.
What we can show over multipleyears is that doesn't just
happen for a short window oftime and it's not just with a
specific program.
If you turn up and engage withtonal or just in resistance
training, in general 75%increases or in the low 70s 73%.
(32:30):
I don't want to misquote my ownresearch 73% increases in
strength in their first year ontonal.
That's the average, the meanthat's not the best possible.
So there's people that workedout only once a week in that, or
people that have worked outfour or five times a week, once
a week in that, or people thathave worked out four or five
times a week.
So the mean increase is 75 inthe first year.
Wow, yeah, so huge increases instrength.
(32:51):
We can't measure hypertrophymuscle mass it's not easy to do
in a system like us but theproducts of strength are
undoubtedly.
We see in 55 plus or us.
We see you, training more timesa week does lead to greater
changes in strength, but it kindof starts to plateau quite a
lot around four Two times a week.
(33:11):
You're still making niceincreases Once a week.
You can still make 25%increases in strength in your
first year.
But you see almost a linearstep change.
If you go from twice a week,once a week to twice a week to
three times a week.
It starts plateauing a littleat four and then it kind of
levels off at four.
Once you're doing four or sotimes a week.
There's marginal benefits fromdoing five and six, but not a
ton.
And so we see that.
(33:33):
And what I think we also see,which I'm interested in, is not
just strength but the power sideof it for longevity and for
aging.
Strength is the easiest thingto measure and therefore has the
most.
Research is what we most quote,but, like grip strength, hand
grip strength is the most easilyaccessible measure of strength
in a research setting.
(33:53):
What would be much morefunctional is deadlift strength.
Right, that's actually amovement of life.
Can I pick this heavy objectoff of a floor and stand up?
And we see massive increases indeadlift strength from people
that train with the deadliftpattern.
So we do see that.
But what we also see is massivechanges in deadlift power and
so their ability to stand up,not just with additional weight
(34:16):
but with additional speed, andtheir ability to do that because
that's strongly correlated withstanding up out of a chair.
If you watch an elderly person,a frail person that maybe isn't
strong or powerful, theygenerally can get out of a chair
, but it's a very slow movementpattern.
Right, it's a very methodicalthought movement pattern.
(34:37):
Whereas a younger, healthyperson, or even just an older,
stronger person, is morepowerful, they can apply that
force over time Going up thestairs power exercise in your
70s and 80s and 90s.
Walking across the streetspower exercise in your 80s and
90s.
Getting your luggage into acarry-on so you can go on
vacation, enjoy your retirementyears.
(34:57):
Power exercise.
They're all about gettingthings up relatively quickly,
and so it's really interestingdata that we're seeing that the
power increases actuallyarguably more than the strength,
and people that train deadliftonce a week.
I think we saw 75-ish percentincreases in deadlift strength,
but we saw over 100% increasesin deadlift peak power.
So it's the strength with thespeed and I think that's super
(35:20):
cool.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
That's really cool.
And what would the programminglook like for power, if someone
was doing a power?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
program.
To be clear, these weren'tnecessarily just training for
power.
These are just people that weretraining and these are their
average outcomes.
But if I was trying to trainsomeone for power, let's say
they're an intermediate, so notcompletely brand new.
They can do movement patterns,they know how to hip hinge and
do that.
They're not necessarily liftingextremely heavy weights or
anything like that.
(35:47):
But I think number one isintent is focusing on moving
relatively quickly in theconcentric direction.
A lot of the time I see peoplebeing a bit too, not that we
don't want to be uncontrolled,but you don't need to
intentionally slow down.
If the bar has a 10 rep weighton it, a 10 rep max weight, like
(36:08):
it's not going to be super fastfrom the first rep anyway
because it's kind of heavy.
And so trying to move withintent and move powerful because
there's a lot of research fromthe sport world that actually
moving fast is important but notthat important.
The intent to move fast, it'sthe neuro connections that we're
trying to drive.
So the intent to move quicklywith safe form and then control
(36:30):
the eccentric, control, thedownward motion.
So you or you can drop if youwant, but it's control the
downward motion but move theconcentric direction, move it
fast would be number one.
Number two is you can't workpower for that many reps.
I gave a 10 rep example.
I would generally go less.
Most of my power stuff is likehey, do six reps and move all of
(36:52):
them relatively fast withrelatively heavy, or do clusters
right.
So a cluster set is where youkind of break up a bigger set
into smaller chunks.
So rather than a set of six, Imight do three sets of two, with
like 10 seconds between each ofthose sets, or 15 seconds.
So do two reps, take a minirest, two reps, take a mini rest
(37:13):
, two reps, and so you've stillgot six reps of work, but you've
got this recovery period,because we know we need that
recovery for that sort of CNSsystem to be able to drive
maximally.
And then, thirdly, I'd thinkabout actually what we talked
about before, that change Adding, change mode is a great way to
work on power, because as youcome up, right, for anyone
(37:33):
that's deadlifted it's prettyslow getting off the floor right
, and then you get it up toabout your knees and then you
can shoot the last bit reallyfast.
Well, you can still do thatwith change, but it's heavier at
that top portion.
So you're going to generatemore power, which is going to
train that property.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Those are sort of three of the ways that I would
incorporate it.
Yeah, yeah, great stuff.
Is anybody topping out on the?
Because you said it can produce200 pounds of force.
Is that per each one?
Speaker 2 (37:59):
It's 200 pounds total .
I did a study actually out ofHigh Point University two years
ago now because a lot of ourmembers were saying, hey, in the
gym I can curl 35s and on tonalI'm only doing 25s.
And so I commissioned thisresearch study to compare tonal
pounds to free weight pounds andwe called it wheel feel or free
weight equivalency feel.
(38:21):
The long story of that studywas the research showed that
tonal feels about 25% heavier onaverage and it's because of
inertia and the way that inertiaworks.
Once you start moving that bar,the bar actually wants to keep
moving Newton's laws.
Eventually gravity slows itdown relatively quick but you
get a bit free energy out ofthat.
Tonal with motors doesn't allowyou to get the same level of
(38:43):
inertia, so it feels a bitheavier.
So it's 200 pounds ofresistance probably feels closer
to 250.
I think something.
I can't remember exactly whatthe percentage is, but most of
our members never come anywherenear tapping out.
I would say on deadlift, yeah,I can lift 200 pounds, I can max
out deadlift and that things,and so there is a small
percentage of our populationthat can max it out pretty much
(39:04):
only from those sort of grossmovement patterns from the floor
.
So deadlift variations, maybean RDL, those types of stuff,
but the vast majority of membersnever come close to it.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Got it.
So, look, I'm impressed.
I mean, clearly, your trainingprograms in this thing, I'm sure
, are top-notch.
You're basing it off of amassive aggregate of data.
That is very insightful and,I'm sure, making your programs
even that much more effective.
(39:35):
The thing has a small footprint.
I imagine.
The thing can even coach orexplain exactly how your form
should be before you do any sortof exercise.
You probably have beginner,intermediate, advanced stuff you
have.
I mean, this thing is a turnkeysolution.
Walk me through.
Let's say I want to buy one.
(39:57):
What is the process?
I see on your website you canfinance it, or it's $3,595,
$3,595.
And it's got to be connected toa wall, right?
So how does all that work?
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, totally so.
Yeah, wwwtonalcom is thewebsite and you can find out all
the details there.
The hardware itself is about$3,500.
And then there is we come inand install it.
We do an installation process.
It's like hanging a big TV, butit's a big TV that you're going
to pull off and we really wantto make sure that you hit those
(40:33):
studs, Not like my homeimprovement work where I'm like,
yeah, I had a mirror slash theother week, so we don't want
that with our customers.
So we come out and we installit for the customers, and so a
team comes.
So you'll come in, you canpurchase outright there or you
(40:55):
can affirm finance it up to 48months at 0% finance I think is
the maximum and kind of thereand pay out there.
Typically, schedule installswithin about two to three weeks
right now, and so you can comeout and we'll find a wall.
You essentially just need studs.
They can be wooden or they canbe metal.
There are some concretelimitations.
We can install on some types ofconcrete and not in others, but
there's details around there.
But vast majority of homes,particularly in the US, you can
(41:17):
come out, get installed and setup then, and then there is a
subscription on top of thehardware.
That is mandatory for 12 months.
You can drop it after the 12months, but that's what gives
you access to those modes and tothe training programs and the
advanced features.
The machine still works.
There's funky things likeBluetooth weight on and off so
you never have to strugglegetting through.
(41:38):
That stays forever.
But the programs and thedynamic weight modes and some of
those are a $60 a monthsubscription on top of that for
as long as you want to keep them.
And it turns out a ton of ourmembers see a ton of value.
I saw a stat that was likePeloton was something like 90%
of our members that joined lastyear are still members and I'm
like 90% of our members thatjoined ever are still our
(42:01):
members.
Like our people, thankfully,love the product and continue to
subscribe and continue to useit over nearly three times a
week, I think is the averagethree years later.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah, I recommended a while ago a doctor friend of
mine.
I said you should look intothis Tonal device.
I think it'd be great for yourclinic Because he kind of had
this clinic with a LivO2 oxygentraining thing and some PEMF and
he bought it.
He's like dude, I love it.
I love it and I've had my eyeon this for a long time.
(42:33):
I just thought it's very slick,it's very sophisticated.
I love the footprint.
I assume you are using thisthing.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, I train exclusively.
I do have a free weight squatrack behind me that I got at the
start of the pandemic before Icould get a tonal that I
actually free weight bench presslast week hit 225 for a triple.
So not that strong but like Iwas reasonably happy with that,
I hadn't free weight lifted forabout 18 months.
I have them there.
It's just so much easier towork out.
(43:02):
Tonal Don't have to changeweights, it remembers all of my
weights, it progresses me.
I can do all of these likeweight modes that I like to do
and keep it interesting.
So yeah, I train almostexclusively on on tonal.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Phenomenal, phenomenal.
I really am very interested inthis and in the field that I'm
in and the different businessesI'm associated with, I just
think this is a great product.
I personally want to try it,but I think that for the full
spectrum of demographic,especially aging population, I
(43:35):
think this makes a lot of sensebecause it inherently has a
teaching device right there.
It has some safety modes.
You don't have to get a cardrive to the gym, which I love
working out by myself.
I have no problem, unless I getterribly out of shape, which
almost never, ever happens,because then it's kind of like I
(43:55):
like to be in the environmentbut, man, for me, I like to just
get it done and be into it 100%.
This seems like a really greatoption for someone at home to be
using this.
Is there anything we missed?
Is there anything in terms oftonal or that you would like to
add to this, or maybe somethinginteresting that you've found in
(44:18):
your experience or with thedata that maybe you just want to
put out there?
Speaker 2 (44:22):
No, I obviously.
I'm wearing the logo and workfor the company, so I agree it's
a pretty compelling product.
I think the biggest surprisefor me that I've started working
.
I was not an Olympian, not evenclose to being an Olympian, but
love training and love exercise, and so I've never been really
struggling to motivate it.
What I found is I exercisesnack so much more now I have
(44:46):
tonal Like and so, for thosethat don't know, the exercise
snack is a short bout ofexercise, relatively intense.
I like when you're going to thegym you're not going to drive in
there.
Drive to the gym, go and getchanged, go in and do one set of
bench, like warm up and do oneset of bench and then drive back
.
It's not highly efficient useof your time, right?
You?
You've right.
I'm going to spend at least 30to 45 minutes here, probably an
(45:07):
hour, because I'm waiting forequipment and then I'm going to
drop.
I'm going to make it hit.
I don't do that.
I train.
I come in the morning, I go in,do a couple of warm-up sets and
then I'll hit a set of bench.
Okay, I'll do like, go and doon Zoom call, jump behind me, do
a set of squats, like I think Iaccumulate so much more
training because I'm kind ofjust jumping into it all the
(45:28):
time.
Now, unfortunately, I work fromhome and so on, I have no
ability to do that.
I'm basically on zoom callsmost of my day, so I get 10
minutes here and there inbetween the finishing it kind of
.
But that's literally changed myworkout like mentality.
You know, I used to have tobuild up this almost like
psychological right.
Right, I'm going to hit it hard.
Today I got 15 sets in myworkout program and I kind of
(45:50):
think I'm like it's a mentaltask, just to like I'm going to
have to push it.
And now I've like, oh, you gotone set.
It's going to be pretty tough,but it's one set.
And then you've got an hourbreak.
I'm like so I kind of think so,which I never really thought I
would train that way and neverintended to train that way.
But it's just been kind ofalmost life changing, because
there's also a lot of researcharound how those mini bouts of
exercise actually really goodfor your physical health, not
(46:12):
just the strength, but just likemovement.
Like doing an hour of exerciseand then 23 hours of nothing,
that kind of doesn't actuallycounteract all the 23 hours of
doing nothing as well as we'dlike it to.
It's better than not doing it,but it's it's not as good.
So these mini bouts are reallygood for that.
It's really good for cognitivetoo.
I didn't realize that doing aset of cards before I go and
(46:32):
meet with my boss makes mebetter at meeting with my boss
or presenting or hopefully,doing a podcast.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Maybe I should have another set of sports.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
The benefits of that I never really realized and
that's been a real nice sideeffect for me.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yeah, I love that.
I would be willing to betthat's exactly.
I'd be doing it like that allthe time and I've seen some of
that research that you'rereferring to and I like that.
I like the idea of just gettingpeppy, you know, like just boom
and going back, and I mean Iwould, I think I would put the
tonal if I get it, in my officeand literally cause I just love
(47:08):
having an active workspace.
So, man, troy, awesome product.
Man, kudos to you guys.
Like I really think you guyshave crafted something special
and the fact that they arebringing people like you, with
as much history as you have withworking with you know elite
athletes and all the sciencethat you know and the
(47:30):
programming, that speaks a lotto me about the company.
So I'm I'm excited you got achance to come on here and you
know, in terms of anyonelistening, if this sounds like
something that you're interestedin, definitely check it out.
At tonalcom you can go to myresource page on this podcast.
We'll have all links toeverything that's going to be at
(47:51):
stephenmccaincom.
Backslash tonal T-O-N-A-L.
Troy, how can people find youif they're interested in
reaching out?
They have any questions.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, so you've given the Tonal website.
Tonal also has an Instagram.
Lots of member stories and theprograms that are dropping that
are on there.
So just search for Tonal.
I am on Instagram.
I came a decade late, butstarted maybe last year or so.
I post mostly my Tonal workouts, some of the fun stuff that I'm
playing around with and Tonalor some of the latest research
around there, or I'm on LinkedIn.
(48:24):
I don't know what thatbackslash is.
Oh sure, on Instagram it'sStrength Science Troy, strength
Science Troy on Instagram.
And then, yeah, I'm on LinkedIntoo.
So, yeah, definitely reach meout if you're interested in
finding out more.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
I'll put links to all that as well Again in the show
notes.
Stephenmccaincom backslashtonal Troy slash tonal Troy.
Really appreciate the time.
Thank you for sharing this.
I think this is a really greatproduct for my audience, and
thank you guys for tuning in andwe will see you on the next one
.
Stay healthy, everyone.
Cheers.
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