Introducing New Metrics For Your Training Goals

Key metrics and personalized targets help unlock better fitness outcomes.

October 21, 2024

There are lots of ways to track your strength training progress. Are you able to lift heavier weights? Can you keep your form strong for longer sets? Do your clothes fit better? Depending on your personal goal, some of these measures may matter more than others. With Tonal’s new personalized weekly targets, you’re able to track your development in the areas that mean the most to you.

Choosing your Training Goals is the first step in customizing your Tonal experience to get the most out of every workout. Once you’ve selected your goals, you’ll get recommendations for workouts and programs that will help you progress, and can easily assess how well specific workouts target your goals with Tonal’s new enhanced workout details. Personalized weekly targets will allow you to monitor key metrics for each of your goals and keep you on track.

Each research-backed metric measures your exposure to a specific training stimulus that’s directly associated with the desired outcome of your Training Goal. Focusing on the key metrics associated with your Training Goals ensures you’re training in a way that supports the results you want. Tonal also recommends workouts and programs that keep you on the path to success.

Every week, Tonal will assign you a new target range for each metric based on your past performance. These ranges are developed around the proven principle of progressive overload to help you make steady, continuous progress by gradually exposing you to more of that specific training stimulus without veering into overtraining. Keep hitting your weekly target, and you’re more likely to see long-term changes across your Training Goals.

New Metrics for Each Training Goal

Goal: Muscle Growth

Metric: Volume

How it’s Measured: Volume is the total amount of weight you lift in each workout, measured in pounds. It’s calculated by multiplying sets, reps, and load.

Why: Research indicates that lifting more volume at a sustained high-effort level is generally associated with hypertrophy, or an increase in muscle size. Lifting more volume creates muscular tension that signals the increase in mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin), a protein that controls muscle cell growth, as well as MPS (muscle protein synthesis), the metabolic process of producing new muscle protein.

Goal: Strength

Metric: Strength Sets

How it’s Measured: Strength Sets are sets performed with loads greater than 72% of your estimated one-rep maximum (1RM).

Why: Lifting heavier loads leads to increased muscle fiber recruitment and triggers neural adaptations that enhance strength gains. Performing more of these sets (typically low-rep, high-weight) is one of the most effective ways to increase muscle strength. Ultimately, this translates to the ability to lift heavier over time.

Goal: Endurance

Metric: Endurance Sets

How it’s Measured: Endurance Sets are sets in which you complete nine or more reps at your suggested weight.

Why: Studies show that doing more repetitions helps your body adapt to be able to exercise for longer periods. These changes include better handling of fatigue, the ability to use energy more efficiently, and even structural changes to the muscle fibers.

Goal: Weight Loss

Metric: Work

How it’s Measured: Work is calculated by multiplying the total distance traveled by Tonal’s cables (in inches) by the total load lifted (in pounds) in each workout. Work is measured in kilojoules (kJ).

Why: Calorie balance—or burning more calories than you consume–is the key factor that influences weight loss. Work is an accurate proxy for calorie burn on Tonal. Performing more work increases caloric expenditure and boosts resting metabolic rate, both of which contribute to healthy weight loss.

Goal: Performance

Metric: Power Reps

How it’s Measured: Power Reps are reps performed above 80% of your Power PR for a particular move. Power is calculated by multiplying the weight you lift during a rep by the speed of that rep.

Why: Power, or the ability to produce force rapidly, is an essential aspect of athletic performance. Regularly performing high-power reps stimulates power development by triggering neural adaptations that improve the efficiency of muscle contractions for explosive movements. To generate more power, lift explosively with maximal intent.

Goal: Functional Strength

Metric: Functional Strength Score (FS Score)

How it’s Measured: Each Tonal workout is assigned an FS score. Workouts with more components that promote functional strength, such as exercises that involve moving joints through a full range of motion under load in different planes, as well as unilateral and rotational movements, have higher FS scores. Your FS score is the total of all your weekly workouts’ scores.

Why: Functional strength, or the ability to move dynamically and perform everyday activities with ease, is developed by these types of exercises as they challenge your stability, improve coordination, reduce asymmetries between sides of the body, and increase core strength to improve your posture.

Goal: Movement Quality

Metric: Movement Quality Score (MQ Score)

How it’s Measured: Each Tonal workout is assigned an MQ score. Workouts with more components that improve movement quality by challenging balance and stability—both loaded moves on Tonal and off-Tonal dynamic and static stretches—have higher MQ scores. Your MQ score is the total of all your weekly workouts’ scores.

Why: Movement quality is developed by improving flexibility, stability, and balance, all of which come together to build physical resilience. Foundational movement patterns such as squats, hinges, and lunges all improve movement quality, in addition to stretches that increase mobility.