Choose the Best Workouts for Your Goals with Enhanced Workout Details
Get a snapshot of how well a workout or program aligns with your Training Goals, so you can better target your training.
Whether you want to pack on muscle mass, shift body composition, maximize athletic performance, or simply improve how you move in daily life, training on Tonal can help you reach your goals. But not all strength training sessions are the same, and some may be more specifically geared toward your desired results than others.
By tweaking variables including exercise selection, rep and set structure, and rest times, Tonal’s programming experts create different workouts optimized for different training goals. Now, you can easily see how each session contributes to specific goals right on the workout or program’s details screen. Just as a food item’s nutrition label breaks down its macronutrient content, Tonal’s new enhanced workout details reveal how much any given workout or program focuses on each training goal.
Choose Workouts Aligned to Your Goals
Even when they’re designed for different goals, strength training sessions can look very similar. A workout meant to help you gain strength and a session that’ll boost your stamina both involve challenging your muscles with resistance. However, if you dig deeper, you’ll see that one workout might involve lifting heavier weights for a lower rep count while another may feature more reps and shorter rest periods.
Tonal’s new workout details break down the workouts so you don’t have to be a fitness pro to know what to expect from a session. To give you the confidence to choose sessions that’ll get you closer to your goals, Tonal’s fitness experts have crunched the data on thousands of workouts to create a clear visualization of each workout’s specific benefits.
“We’ve extracted every training variable relevant to each of our Training Goals, and translated these variables into a standardized scoring system that’s been applied to our entire content library” says John Christie, Director of Applied Training Science at Tonal. “We’re excited for our members to be able to fully optimize their training to meet their goals, and make choosing their next workout easier than ever.”
Now, when you view a workout or program on the Tonal mobile app or your Tonal device, you’ll see how it scores for any of the seven training goal options: muscle growth, weight loss, strength, performance, functional strength, endurance, and movement quality. The bar below each goal shows the extent to which that program or workout includes the specific training stimulus necessary to further that goal.
When you’ve chosen Training Goals on Tonal, you’ll see your selected goals highlighted in the workout details to ensure you’re getting the right training stimulus to see the results you want. To find workouts that align with your goals, visit the “Workouts for Your Goal” row on the trainer or filter directly from the Explore page.
Ensure Science-Backed Progression
Along with showing whether or not a workout is suited for a particular goal, these new workout details also illustrate how challenging a session is in terms of that specific training stimulus. This information helps guide your training to keep leveling up as you make progress.
A workout with a full bar for muscle growth, for example, will have you lifting more volume (the main training stimulus for muscle growth) than one with a less filled bar. Christie recommends finding a baseline that matches your ability level—maybe a half-full bar feels appropriately challenging for you right now—and then gradually working up to ones with more filled bars. He explains that “doing this essentially applies the key training principle of progressive overload, which is the gradual and methodical increase in the stress of your workouts over time to safely get you closer to your goals.”
You can even use the workout details to find sessions that are different from the ones you usually pick. For example, even if your goal is to gain strength, you might still want to slot in a performance-focused workout once a week or get in the occasional sweaty weight loss session. Systematically varying your training focus—a proven technique known as periodization—can help you break through plateaus and improve overall fitness.
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, these new workout details empower you to see the intention behind Tonal’s workouts so you can choose sessions that are optimized for your goals, experiment with different training styles, and challenge yourself through progressive overload. As Jenna Moore, Tonal’s Lead Programming Specialist, highlights, “This will give our members a deeper understanding of how the programming was developed and what outcomes they can expect.”
Notes
- Tonal’s enhanced workout details are calculated based on the original programming. If you select recovery weight or a replacement move in a workout, they may no longer accurately represent the exact training stimulus you’ll get in your session.
- In customizable Programs+ programs, details are calibrated for the 45-minute, intermediate-level option for all workouts. Any adjustments will not be factored in.
- Enhanced workout details are currently not available for Custom workouts and On-the-Go, off-Tonal sessions.
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