Dynamic Resistance Using Tonal vs. Free Weights for Muscle Gain (Troy Taylor) | Ep 268
Download my free Progressive Overload Guide to learn how to gain muscle, strength, and performance like never before.
—
How can dynamic resistance change the way you build muscle? Are free weights holding you back in certain lifts? Could technology offer a safer and more efficient way to train without compromising results?
Philip (@witsandweights) dives deep into the science of strength training with Troy Taylor, Senior Director of Performance Innovation at Tonal. Troy shares his expertise from analyzing data on over 200 billion pounds lifted, offering a fascinating perspective on how dynamic resistance, like that provided by Tonal, compares to traditional free weights for muscle activation, hypertrophy, and strength development.
Explore how technology can enhance your training with real-time resistance adjustments, eccentric overload, and accommodating resistance—all while ensuring safety and efficiency. Whether you’re a seasoned lifter or starting, this will expand your understanding of resistance training science and innovation.
Today, you’ll learn all about:
2:21 How Tonal differs from free weights
7:12 Tonal features: Spotters, eccentric loading, and tracking
13:28 Who benefits most from Tonal’s capabilities
16:43 Strength training data analysis and trends
23:32 Why older adults can see faster strength improvements
25:28 Morning workouts and their impact on consistency
27:23 Tracking gains and hypertrophy progress
31:59 Program customization and progressive overload
34:56 Customized weight training, fatigue, and recovery needs
41:42 Leveraging lengthened partials and eccentric overload
47:22 Tonal’s new Training Lab launch in NYC
49:04 Outro
Episode resources:
Instagram: @strengthsciencetroy
Website: tonal.com
Training Lab: tonaltraininglab.com
Facebook: @TonalStrong
Youtube: @TonalStrong
Dynamic Resistance with Tonal vs. Free Weights for Muscle Gain
In this episode of Wits & Weights, we explore how dynamic resistance stacks up against traditional free weights for building strength and muscle. My guest, Troy Taylor, Senior Director of Performance Innovation at Tonal, shares cutting-edge insights from analyzing over 200 billion pounds of lifts.
You’ll learn how digital resistance adapts to your strength curve, why Tonal feels 20–26% heavier than free weights, and whether that translates into better muscle activation and growth. Troy also explains how technology like real-time resistance adjustments, eccentric overload, and detailed data tracking can complement traditional lifting.
Key Highlights
Why Tonal Feels Heavier:
Tonal’s electromagnetic resistance eliminates inertia, requiring continuous effort throughout the range of motion. This makes every rep feel harder compared to free weights, where momentum can provide assistance.Advanced Features for Strength and Safety:
Dynamic adjustments: Tonal can automatically adjust resistance mid-lift if it detects you’re struggling, acting as a built-in spotter.
Eccentric overload: Push 100 pounds on the way up and resist 125 pounds on the way down with the touch of a button.
Chains and bands emulation: Adjust resistance to match your natural strength curve, providing consistent tension at every point.
Who Benefits Most from Tonal?
While Tonal can accommodate up to 250 pounds (equivalent to 300+ pounds in free weights), it’s ideal for hypertrophy, functional fitness, and accessory work. It’s not designed for competitive powerlifters working with extreme loads, but it excels as a versatile, tech-enabled home gym.Consistency Through Data:
Tonal tracks every rep and provides insights into muscle fatigue, progress, and performance trends. Users who engage with their data and follow structured programs see higher consistency and better long-term results.
The Science of Dynamic Resistance
Tonal’s innovative design enables unique training benefits:
Enhanced Muscle Activation: Research from High Point University shows similar muscle activation to free weights at a lower absolute load, making it an efficient option for hypertrophy and strength.
Data-Driven Programming: AI algorithms progressively overload your lifts based on performance, ensuring continual gains while minimizing plateaus.
Building Strength and Hypertrophy
Whether you’re rehabbing an injury, maintaining muscle during a fat loss phase, or chasing strength and hypertrophy, Tonal adapts to your goals:
Recovery programs with lighter weights ensure consistency without overloading.
Dynamic resistance modes help target specific phases of movement, such as lengthened partials for hypertrophy.
Closing Thoughts
Tonal’s dynamic resistance system isn’t here to replace free weights but to offer a complementary tool for modern lifters. With cutting-edge technology and real-time data, it’s reshaping how we approach training—whether you’re lifting for longevity, muscle growth, or strength.
Send questions to @witsandweights
👩💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment
👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support
✉️ Join the FREE email list with insider strategies and bonus content!
📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS. The only food logging app that adjusts to your metabolism!
🏋️♀️ Download Boostcamp for free for evidence-based workout programs
🩷 Leave a 5-star review if you love the podcast!
Have you followed the podcast?
Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!
Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
New research shows that dynamic digital resistance feels up to 26% heavier than free weights, but does that translate to better muscle growth? Today we're getting into the science with Troy Taylor, who's analyzed data for over 200 billion pounds lifted. As the Senior Director of Performance Innovation at Tonal, you'll discover the latest research on muscle activation, learn how dynamic resistance adapts to your strength curves and understand exactly when to use each training method for optimal gains, even if you're currently all in on free weights. If you're curious about technology and optimizing muscle gain, you'll really enjoy this episode. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.
Philip Pape: 1:10
I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're examining the science behind dynamic versus traditional resistance training with Troy Taylor. Now Troy leads performance innovation at Tonal, where his team analyzes millions of workouts. Understand the effectiveness of dynamic resistance. As the former high-performance director at US Ski and Snowboard, he helped athletes secure over 500 international podiums using traditional methods. Now this experience lets him evaluate where each training modality might be most effective for muscle development, and today you're going to learn what research shows us about muscle activation in these dynamic versus free weight training. You're going to look at the scientific mechanisms behind things like perceived effort and actual gains and understand how to optimize your training using one or both approaches. Troy, welcome to the show.
Troy Taylor: 1:45
Thank you so much for having me on. I look forward to our conversation.
Philip Pape: 1:48
So I wanted to kick off with a study that hopefully I have my facts right 2021 at the Human Biomechanics and Physiology Lab at High Point University and they compared the muscle activation in Tonal's product to free weights, which is the main point of skepticism for many of us, of not only feeling the load and feeling the heaviness of it, but actually getting the result and getting the muscle growth. And I think they found something like 23 or 26% heavier it felt heavier based on RPE. So what's actually going on there?
Troy Taylor: 2:20
Yeah, so it was Kevin Ford's lab out of High Point University. He's an awesome biomechanics researcher. 200 plus peer-reviewed papers. And so what we heard from our community hey, I can curl 20-pound dumbbells in the gym all the time, but 18 or 17 pounds on tonal feels really difficult. What's going on? And so we basically wanted to commission peer-reviewed research to be able to look at that. And so what we did, or what they did, it's an independent study, I just get the results.
Troy Taylor: 2:49
It looked at four different movements. I know there were curls in there, there was deadlift in there, there was a couple of other movements and they did two things. Number one, they worked out they took 15 or so subjects, moderately trained, and took them to an estimated one RM and free weight and an estimated one RM on tonal and compared the two. And what we found out is right in that 20, 25% range is tonal feels 20, 25% heavier than free weight, and we'll talk about why that might be in a second. But essentially they were lifting for the same maximal effort. They were lifting less on tonal than they were on free weights. And then they did a back-off training session where they looked at 10 reps at, say, 70% of your 1RM. I'm pulling this from memory but I think it was right around there. And then they looked at surface EMG for muscle activation and what's happening at this lower resistance, because 70% at lower 1RM is a lower weight. What's happening with the muscle activation from a surface EMG point of view? And in that they found basically the same EMG activation at the same relative percentage of 1RM, but an absolute lower muscle mass and surface EMG. It's got its pros and cons. It's very good. It gives us an understanding of the muscles activated. Emg does not equal hypertrophy necessarily, but it does give us an indicator that the muscles are activated at lower weights. So the question would be why? I think it's probably the question that you asked me and I took a long way of answering it, but I think we didn't start like. This is not studied in the research necessarily, but like from our own internal data, we've been able to analyze this.
Troy Taylor: 4:18
A vast majority of it comes down to moment of inertia and the impact of inertia. When you're lifting with a free mass, it's Newton's second law Once it moves it wants to carry on moving. How we can clean and jerk and snatch is the bars going up and it gives me time to get under it, and so once you're putting speed into a free weight bar, it wants to carry moving up fast for a little period of time. That doesn't exist as much on tonal. It's not that there's no inertia, but there's much less inertia. The motor, as soon as you start pushing or stop pushing against, it essentially stops very quickly. So you have this lower level of inertia. Therefore you have to push through the entire range of motion for every movement, which means that your estimated or your 1RMs and your muscle activation essentially can be reached at a lower weight. I'd say that's some made up percentage, but 70, 80, 90% of the variation is based on that.
Troy Taylor: 5:11
There's also a component of stability, depending on the movement pattern. On deadlift it doesn't really matter Deadlifting on tonal and deadlifting in free weight, stability doesn't really come into it. You're lifting a heavy object off the ground but say something like bicep curls, it's a cable machine. That's what tonal is, and so it's slightly different. Right, there's a bit more stability in going on in terms of variations of shoulders and sort of your shoulder girdle and stability around there, potentially within the sort of the wrist and also the elbow, and so you might get additional activation. I think they probably looked at bicep brachii or something like that in the research study of that stabilization component which would add to a slightly lower estimated 1RM but potentially increased or similar muscle activation.
Philip Pape: 5:55
Yeah, okay. So there's a lot to unpack and a lot of really cool things I want to touch on, because I was just talking to a friend of mine just before this call. He was showing off some of the new equipment that his YMCA has that introduces instability, such as water-based weights things like that, perturbation, training type kind of Perturbation training, yeah, and we talk about how there's pros and cons, depending on what your goal is right.
Philip Pape: 6:14
Sometimes you want a ton of stability if you're trying to target a muscle group, and sometimes you want instability, which then tends to reduce the overall load, but then systemically you get some benefits. So you're kind of touching on those things. And the thing with tonal and I know we haven't even, like, exactly said what it is People can Google it. We're going to talk about it, Is it? It does remind me of a cable machine and it reminds me specifically of like, when my cable machine sometimes needs to be oiled up or like has more friction than I intended in the pulley and so you notice it gets even more. You know more of that resistance through the range of anyway, bad analogy.
Philip Pape: 6:48
The point is it's very different than just a free weight, like you said, because of the um, the strength curve and the momentum and all of that. So I'm trying to think of where the best place to start on this is. I think our audience is people who are used to traditional lifting and I want to understand what's similar, but then also what makes Tonal unique and maybe an advantage over traditional lifting. I just threw like a bunch of stuff at you. Go ahead, man. Yeah, no.
Troy Taylor: 7:13
I'm not sure my product marketing would love the analogy on the stickiness.
Troy Taylor: 7:17
But it's extremely smooth, but you do have to pull through the entire range of motion. There's no freebies. That's the way I can think. You imagine a rotational chop or something on a cable machine. If you get that moving in the first quarter of it you don't really have to pull because the momentum is taking you. The rest, with tonal, it's almost like working with chains, which we can talk about. It's maintaining the load, it's not increasing the resistance, but it's maintaining the resistance through the entire range of motion, which makes it feel different and technically harder. So let's get there. So where to start? I would say what is Tonal and then we can go from there.
Troy Taylor: 7:51
Tonal my VP of product, farman, gave me this because I struggled to give an elevator pitch it's an entire gym that fits in your space with the options of personal training. So what makes it an entire gym? About it yes, it's a cable machine. It's a dual stack cable machine in that there's two arms that come out. You can do 250 plus movements, from deadlifting and squatting and bench pressing to flies, to attach a barbell, to attach ropes, to attach handles If you see on my Instagram to attach any other accessory that you might want to attach a cable machine, even things like sled drags and stuff like that, if you want to get a little outside of the box so you can replicate many, many, many movements maybe not all, but many movements from a gym. It fits in your space. If you're watching this on video, it's behind me. It attaches to your wall. It's about five inches thick. It looks kind of like a big screen TV. To some extent it's designed to be in your home, whether it's a home gym or in your living room or your spare bedroom. It can go in your garage, but the idea was to kind of make it aesthetically pleasing so more people can put it in, because we know the more obvious it is, the more likely you are to use it. It's good for us from an engagement point of view. It's good for the consumer because, from an engagement point of view and with personal training, yeah, we have 300 or so programs and adding every month 5,000 workouts.
Troy Taylor: 9:10
Myself and my team write a lot of those along with coaches, from everything from I want to build muscle mass to I want to lose fat, I want to do strength training where I want to do yoga or I want to do all these different variations. So it's got a whole kind of components there, and then we have, you know, virtual coaches that are on screen that can show you the technique. And then we use technology both table position data and also AI, pose estimation models from a camera to be able to tell you are you doing that movement well, and give you coaching cues of yeah, hey, we've noticed that, you know that shoulder stability on that overhead press seems to be a little off, or you seem to be moving really quickly on the eccentric and not controlling it, and we can give you coaching cues for that. So it's that, and it provides resistance via a motor rather than through iron or traditional weights, and so I think the easiest analogy for people to get their heads around this is it's the Tesla or electric car to a combustion engine in some aspects, and there are people that love both, and there are pros and cons to it or differences between them the fact that it's electromagnetic we have that lack of inertia we talked about. So it's a motor that's providing it, but also that allows us to one monitor highly, highly in detail 50 Hertz, hertz, 50 times a second, every position, every force.
Troy Taylor: 10:26
Imagine you've used a gym aware or a linear position transducer, or sometimes an imu attached to a bar that measures your bar speed. We do that every rep, every exercise, every person, close to 10 billion reps or something like that. But you can also as, as well as monitoring it it's closed loop you can change that resistance in real time. So an example of that might be hey, chains, I want to hit the chains mode. As you increase, as the cables extend, we can make it linearly heavier. Touch of a button, you want to add an eccentric, accentuated, eccentric loading. Touch of the button, you can add eccentric loading, and so it's 100 pounds going up, or concentrically, 125 pounds eccentrically.
Troy Taylor: 11:09
And it allows us to build AI algorithms like, say, a built-in spotter mode. So if we detect you are struggling, you're halfway up a bench pressure, you're in your home gym, you're shouting for your wife or your husband or someone to come and help you, we can peel the weight off. We can do one of two things Peel the weight off one pound at a time until you move it, so it automatically allows that. Or two, just switch the weight off if you're not moving, automatically done, it's gone, disappeared. You hurt yourself. Done, there's no resistance anymore, immediately. So those are some of the ways and changes that we take traditional training and make some things better.
Philip Pape: 11:45
Yeah, no, I love. I'm a huge fan of technology. I mean I have I always have the latest Oura Ring and Apple Watch and like phone and tablet. I just love that stuff. So it's really cool to see how you're using things in very creative ways like that, with the real-time resistance, for example, like there's no way you could do that unless you had this kind of system or just the monitoring. I mean, I'm a huge fan of tracking and monitoring.
Philip Pape: 12:09
We talk about it all the time, and to do that with a traditional gym would require lots of extra equipment and expertise to even do that properly. And then the spotter as well, because people with home gym safety is huge. And again, when I hear people benching without spotter arms, I'm like what are you doing, Right? So one question that comes up then when we compare to traditional load is those of us that are trying to build a big base of strength and we like to push big lifts and high loads, something like a squat, and you're a 300, 400 pound squatter or you're a four or 500 pound deadlifter. I know the limits, just pure numbers wise are like 200. And maybe that's going up in the next version. Um, how does that compare and how can you? Can you replicate that, or is that just a different use case?
Troy Taylor: 12:47
Yeah, so as we record this podcast, 200 pounds is the max limit for Tonal. We talked about how that feels, 20, 25% lighter, so it feels like 250 pounds of free weight. And as of the 8th of January we announced because this podcast will release after then Tonal 2, which goes to 250 pounds. And so if you think about that, times by 20 or 25%, you're now over 300 pounds of equivalent resistance from a mass. That's, I think, the limit of where you can go. And then it's like if you're training 1RMs and you can 1RM 500 pound deadlift, are you going to do your max strength training on top? No, we're not that use case.
Troy Taylor: 13:28
The number of people that are lifting 500 pounds on a deadlift are probably not that many, while it's feasibly technically to do that. On electromagnetic resistance you start making trade-offs, mainly price and cost, because we have to have bigger motors that draw more power. You need special voltage in your house to be able to power that and then we have to beef up every single component to not be able to lift 500 pounds. But you have to make safety factors, factors of safety 3.75 times the amount of weight you can lift. So you have to make all the components 15, 16, 1700 pounds and so it just exponentially is not worth it. So if that's your goal and you're trying for one RMs and that's where you're not, then tone is probably not the product for you, for that circumstance Doesn't mean it can't be a good product for accessory training and other things.
Troy Taylor: 14:15
I'd also say if we say we're at 300, 315 pounds of free weight equivalent, if you're training you're a 500 pound deadlifter or maybe slightly less, but you're training, you know you're a 500 pound deadlifter. Or you know maybe slightly less, but you're training 6, 8, 10, 12 rep petitions. You're probably right in that kind of range. It's probably your 1RM work that we can't do or your very low rep work, but you know lower percentages of your 1RM. You're probably out. So we're really excited about that change in that you know there's only 10% ish of our users that actually max out the machine. But I'm one of those 10% on deadlifts and some of our other community, and so we wanted to be able to raise it up to 250, which subjectively I've never had no research on this Like, yeah, I can deadlift 350. I can just about get 250 for a single on total. It's maybe a bit skill training too and your ability to do that, but it feels pretty heavy.
Philip Pape: 15:10
That's cool, yeah, no, I mean, I can definitely imagine, even for the strongest folks. And again, you're not talking about competitive power lifters or anything here.
Troy Taylor: 15:17
Let's start with the population. But even those- 35, 55-year-olds is target audience. We have definitely 18 to 80-year-olds, but it's probably people like me and you who are relatively strong, but not necessarily I'm mentioning you in my level of strength, which is probably not fair but relatively strong, but not competing on the powerlifting stage.
Philip Pape: 15:38
Yeah, yeah and for sure. Given my own experience with running all sorts of programs, probably 80, 90% of the work you're going to do would fit in that envelope. For tonal, if not more especially hypertrophy work, you know bodybuilding type splits and whatnot, working out in the eight to 12 rep range and stuff, I definitely see the benefit. And for developmental variations, like you said, maybe you go to the gym once or twice a week to get the big heavy stuff and then you've got your tonal. For everything else it's convenient as a home gym option.
Philip Pape: 16:05
I do yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, exactly, that makes sense. Yeah, and I even have clients that don't have tonal on this. Still, they'll go to the gym for this and they'll have the home gym for this. So it's a very common thing to kind of split that up, since you have all this data, and not just data in the moment for the lifter, but all the I think you 200 billion pounds of lifts or something like it's a really amazing number. What kind of patterns are you seeing that? I don't know what we should talk about specifically, but either progression rates comparing to traditional resistance insights that are that surprise you guys, and maybe we're like are informing the future of the product. You know, tell me about some, some of what you learned from the data.
Troy Taylor: 16:43
Yeah, and so, yeah, I think it's where we really support. Last year, the state of strength that I think was we were around 200 billion pounds, then it's more now. I don't even know how many billion, but it obviously increases every time anyone lifts, and so you get both just the amount of lifted, and then you get to track people longitudinally anonymously. But we first released the product late 2019, not a ton of users back then. You're a small startup, but as we add more people and more things, that data set grows, but also the longitudinal tracking we forward another five or 10 years. You're like okay, I got a decade worth of data from someone that transitioned from being well, not someone from tens to hundreds of thousand people that transitioned from being 30 to 40 year olds. What can I learn? And so I would say right now what are some of the key insights? I think a lot of them, I would say, are proving out what research studies is generally shown in short term 12, 16 week studies, but maybe in slightly different populations and over longer times and also assessing some of the epidemiology research, so like cross-sectional, where I take a bunch of 34 year olds and I look at a bunch of 40 year olds and see what's the difference between them, and so some of the things that I really like out of that is number one.
Troy Taylor: 18:06
We see changes in strength are dramatic with people that train. That's not new. We know people get trained, they get stronger, but they get stronger and it's not just. It doesn't stop at 12 weeks. We're seeing consistent increases over the first year, two years. After two years it does start to plateau, for sure. You still make incremental increases, but looking at tens of thousands of people who are looking at the mean increases in terms of that, you're definitely seeing these increases. We're talking 70%, 75% I want to say average in the first year increases in strength across the general population. This is not a well-trained resistance population, this is not a beginner population. It's just looking at tens of hundreds of thousands of people and what kind of changes they seem to make. Those changes regardless of age. And actually our 55-plus-year-old members seem to make relatively larger increases in strength than our younger population, which I think is a great message for me as a 45-year-old and they start at a lower baseline, for sure, but relatively, and I think the research again shows this that we can build strength at any age. But we're seeing they can build strength as fast, if not faster, than our younger population and for significant periods of time. We're seeing that our female members particularly are lifting heavier year over year, week over week. They're relatively individually getting stronger and making those same changes, but they're also as a cohort of a population. If you got to look at, say, 25,000 females that joined in 2020 and compare it to 25,000 females that joined in 2020, people are getting stronger over time that join our product, both as they join and their increases once they get there. So I take that as a really good message for the message that strength training for female it seems to be getting out there at least taking this data and kind of interpolating or extrapolating it a little, which I think is super cool.
Troy Taylor: 20:01
And then one of the things that I think we have a unique vantage point because of the data is what is associated correlation, not causation, with markers of consistency, like. So maybe most of your audience actually probably just works out, because they're intrinsically motivated. It's part of their identity that we're in the autonomy stage. I'm going to work out if no one's looking, no one's monitoring. It's just who I am. It's what I've done always and I will always do the average person. Cdc says what 30-something percent of Americans self-select that they resistance train twice a week and I think that's probably self-selected, so it's a little high. So most of the population isn't training. So what can we see in the data that looks at consistency and what is correlated again, not causation with consistency. And we see people that join programs are more consistent than people that just do one-off workouts. Makes a ton of sense. You've got a bit of a plan. You've got a commitment device from behavior science. You're signing up to something. So maybe there's actually reverse causation, a bit of like people that sign up for programs are more likely to intend to do that. But we'd certainly see the increases there.
Troy Taylor: 21:14
People that check their stats and their progress tonal tracks every rep every time. You get to see your volume, your power. You get to see progress. Strength training changes are slow, sometimes they take a while, but with Tonal, with one pound changes you can get to. Oh, I've got a new estimated one RM. I lifted more volume than ever. My power on this move is higher than it's ever been. People that check their stats are more consistent. And then some of the other data is right, like consistency of timing of training and having the same window. People that train in the morning are slightly more consistent than those in the afternoon, and so these other data is around consistency, which we can either use to build into the product to make it more sticky pretty freaking sticky already, but more sticky and help people there or things that we can share with the broader fitness population. Hey, from this unique vantage point of data, maybe incorporating these things into fitness training program might help clients be more consistent.
Philip Pape: 22:06
I'm smiling because you should just be the co-host with me, like you're just selling every point that I want people to hear about training every time on this podcast. I mean I want to summarize some of what you said for folks just so they drill it in. But like the fact that you get so much stronger in the first year or two, no matter your age, is super empowering, right? Because the kind of the I like to call it the number one cause of death is frailty, which leads to falls, which leads to a lot of the other metabolic disease that ends up being heart disease or this or that. It's all tied together to strength muscle, you know and that. And so in one to two years, having 75% growth in year one not uncommon, you know. When I tell people in three or four months, you can like I'll say I'll say double. But I say double too. It's easy to remember. But yeah, you know, but like newbie, get it brand new People can really double it. So you're talking about the average 75% in one year and then another, probably another 50% in the second year.
Philip Pape: 22:59
It's massive and most people are far from their genetic limit at any one point and that life interrupts us and we detrain and so train for the rest of your life and you'll always probably improve in some sense. And then the rates of gain. Yeah, I've, I've seen that as well, troy, lately. How, for example, you know, women and men gain at roughly the same rate. Women often think they're disadvantaged. The only disadvantage is they have less muscle mass to start, but the rate is the same. And what you're saying is that it might even be faster when we're older, potentially. I mean, what's the theory there? That we're detrained, we've lost muscle mass and it kind of comes back faster, something like that.
Troy Taylor: 23:32
Yeah, potentially guesstimation here, but yeah, potentially. Our users are people that trained in high school and college and then stopped training for a long time. The data also points they're more consistent and this data doesn't normalize and so they're training more frequently and more consistently. Therefore they get better gains. They have more time. Maybe the young kids or the busy job or whatever it might be. Not many 55 plus year olds have both of those, but as a cohort population they train a little more consistency, which I think is probably also driving it Okay.
Philip Pape: 24:04
So, yeah, we're taking more of the retirement age as well, and, yeah, okay, got it. And then females women lifting heavier yeah, that's a big message we have here, and I try to get a lot of guests on, also experts who are women in that sphere, to talk about that, because there are a lot of misconceptions about what women can't do, which most of them are false at any age, especially peripost-menopause, where some of these myths start to come up, and we know it's just like with most people. It's the loss of muscle mass and the increase in body fat, and you just have to flip that around. And then I love the stats about consistency because you hit on a couple of things. One that tracking. I love tracking and measuring.
Philip Pape: 24:43
People complain about tracking being obsessive or whatever. But all evidence about tracking anything food, lifting, whatever, food doesn't matter shows better results, at least for a period of time, at least for a period of time. So you train yourself right and then you can get off that if you need to. But the fact that you have the ability to see wins at a more granular level, I think is important, right? It's why, when we talk about your lifting, you know you should track as many measures as you care about, that will change fairly frequently, so that you can see the progress and you're doing it automatically for folks. And then the morning training guys listening, if you've already listened to this show, I talk about it all the time. There is a difference for people. The morning is just you get going. It creates consistency. Don't say you're not a morning person. Stop saying that. Just try it out for a while.
Troy Taylor: 25:27
Anyway, Troy, yeah, I have empathy. I never thought I was a morning person, but I have a couple of young kids and a wife. That's morning personal. I'm a morning person now, uh, but I, some people. It's not feasible, right I?
Philip Pape: 25:40
got my job for sure, and that kind of thing.
Troy Taylor: 25:42
So I don't want to like and it's, it's.
Troy Taylor: 25:44
The data from ours is not like it's all if I don't go down in the morning I shouldn't work out, but I think what it is is less stuff comes up during the day that derails you, and so I think that's primary is my hypothesis of what drives it, and and so you can do that. And then number two is like, yes, if you do do it, the kind of the rest of your day goes better. We know the impact of you know training on BDNF and mood state and you know selective attention, executive function, all these other like emotional and mental and cognitive functions, in addition to the physiology. I feel more energy in those. But yeah, we definitely see that. In addition to the physiology, I feel more energy in those. But yeah, we definitely see that. And I personally I just said I just finished my workout, like 10 minutes before this.
Troy Taylor: 26:24
I finished my 10 minute workout. I just exercised snack, I got something in. It started my day right. I didn't have long. I had a podcast. I probably should have tried to do my hair a little better, but I'll go back after this podcast and try and get another 10 minutes in. And then you know, this afternoon I'll go and get, and I got 30 minutes of training, but it was in three 10 minute blocks, um, and that's how I structure my day.
Troy Taylor: 26:46
I don't do that first one, I don't do the other ones. It's like this like you've got to get that breadcrumb going.
Philip Pape: 26:51
Yeah right, there are a lot of benefits to morning training if you can do it. Another one is, I think, stress management we're seeing when you look at cortisol and stuff like that. So, okay, you talked a lot, so you mentioned strength a lot, which is music to my ears because I always start from that. But strength and hypertrophy, although they're somewhat proxies for each other, they're also not always correlated. So when it comes to hypertrophy, how are you measuring your population on that like circumference? Measurements and such we are not not directly.
Troy Taylor: 27:24
We have a beta of a computer vision-based estimation. I'm an applied scientist at heart and that kind of thing, so I want to be able to do everything really accurately. If I can't give you a good number, I don't want to just give you a number. My take on what the data says on a lot of that even I would go to bioelectrical impedance and arguably even something like DEXA on an individual level. It's at a population level DEXA is great, but an individual level, those variation charts are pretty significant Correct. So no, we haven't.
Troy Taylor: 27:56
I can take a lot of my guidance from some of the influences and researchers in this space. I feel most of them are more subjective on a lot of those measures. Yes, if I could measure your bicep girth or your waist girth or your hip to waist ratio really accurately, I would. I don't think that the technology is there right now. We don't measure hypertrophy directly, but certainly we have indirect measures, whether it's strength or volume lifted and things like that. And then we have a community 60,000 or so in our Facebook community and you get to see their transformations. I wouldn't say we're like a transformation tonal brand. That's not really what we do. We don't do before and afters. Try and sell you gimmicky, right? Uh, that's not a time but. But people want to post their progress, which is awesome until you get to see. So we don't. I would say. Also, muscles no tension, right, tension is what drives mechanical tension is what drives hypertrophy, and I think we have extremely strong evidence that tonal drives the same, if not more, mechanical tension yeah, for sure additional training.
Troy Taylor: 28:57
Therefore, you you can get the same kind of hypertrophy and I'd say it's. It's interesting because I would love to be able to measure it. It's what the vast majority of our users select as their goal right 40 something percent of our members say they want to build muscle. I have that goal as a 45 year old kind of things. Um, we have, we are seeing an increasing uh number that say they want to move, work, movement, quality, function, strength, basically this bucket of goals that lead to longevity, health, span. But the largest cohort of people, particularly our male population, say they still want to build muscle and that's where we focus a lot of our programming and time and attention for sure Got it Got it.
Philip Pape: 29:31
Yeah, and I only ask as a nutrition coach who helps clients track these things, and we just do classic tape measure and then use something like the Navy formula. It's not difficult to do that on your own. I just was thinking like the Zozo suit and things like that, where they've got the imaging and can kind of measure your circumference and then you know, I assumed you could do something like that Fast forward 18 months, two years, I don't know the timeline.
Troy Taylor: 29:55
I don't, like I told you, we have a beta product. That's just within our internal staff. I probably shouldn't share those things, but the technology will get there. If you think about the advances in pose estimation models and advances, I don't doubt, particularly for girths, it will get there. Body fat, muscle mass I think you're stretching.
Philip Pape: 30:10
I agree To do girth measurements.
Troy Taylor: 30:12
do it with accuracy, in my opinion, is a matter of time before it can get to that level, and I think that'd be awesome that we can do that and track those progresses.
Philip Pape: 30:22
Yeah, Cause once you have that, now you can. You've got things like the Navy formula as well as the new body roundness index, and I don't know if you're familiar with that. Yeah, Okay. So I did want to ask about okay, let's run it, run us through a single lift. So let's say the overhead press, one of my favorites. It's one of my favorites because I've always loved it, but also I had rotator cuff surgery last year and I couldn't do it and I've been working on my shoulder a lot to get back. So if you just want to get better at that, you want to improve your shoulder health and your shoulder size, what would the progression look like? What does the machine look like for an overhead press? Like what does the machine look like for an overhead press? Just with that example so folks can visualize this.
Troy Taylor: 30:59
Yeah, so myself and the team, the performance innovation team, so my team, my background is mainly from Olympic sport, but we've got people that spent a decade or so at Exos, one that did their PhD at P3, p Performance Project in Santa Barbara, which shows a lot of the basketball players and around there. What my team basically said how would a coach, how would a world-class hopefully coach, address those? And so, if we're taking something like an overhead press, we would split our library into some buckets of movement patterns, right, what is a regression or a beginning movement pattern that we might be able to do? That that is likely smaller in range of motion, potentially maybe lower resistance to start with, and then have progressions both in the movement pattern and in the resistance and the range of motion so we can build that up strength over time. And so, depending on what the specific case might be, we might have some quote-unquote remedial internal and know internal and external rotational work in there that will be programmed into that.
Troy Taylor: 32:02
We might have, you know, you know, a high base of support in a on a overhead press, you know, maybe a barbell versus a handle or something like that. Or maybe we go a handle with lower resistance, so it's a lighter weight. So you can work on the mechanics of doing that and then increase the range of motion that you can move that over time to progress it into something that would be more, more where you want to work, but depending on whether you're, you know, want to do that movement pattern, to be stronger at that movement pattern, you want to increase your 1rm or you, you know, want to build more muscle mass around that. Then we change the rex and schemes you know, obviously relatively increase, relatively load more on for a strength parameter, probably bias, more proximity to failure and volume for hypertrophy outcomes, and typically we would progress. I would say every program is a little different or can be a little different. I would say our default pattern is to more build from hypertrophy into strength than the other way around.
Philip Pape: 32:59
Okay, tend to go higher rep ranges. Wrap the reps as you go.
Troy Taylor: 33:03
Yeah, higher rep ranges closer proximity to failure into more strength-biased work. Lower rep ranges strength. It gives us the hypertrophy training and the generally slightly higher rep training. It doesn't have to be very high but slightly higher.
Philip Pape: 33:22
Rep training doesn't have to be very high, but slightly higher.
Troy Taylor: 33:23
Rep training allows us repetition of practice and skill. Yeah, that's huge, which itself is a component of that strength. Skill acquisition is something that we want to install. We know the drivers of um motivation. We talked about intrinsic motivation before. I like competency. I want to feel good about things like and then autonomy and connectedness, but self-determination theory, but competency. We want our members to feel competent, that they have the ability to do this lift well.
Philip Pape: 33:43
And then on that progression, since it has all the data and it knows you, let's say it's a I don't know three-day program, four-day program and the next time you overhead presses, four days from now, does the program tracks like your calendar? What if you miss a workout? Is it going to somehow test you into the new load?
Troy Taylor: 34:00
Yeah, it has a has a calendar where you can self-select it. It knows when your last workout was. As long as it's within a normal sort of range of window, um, it doesn't change anything, but it has muscle utilization. So we estimate the muscle utilization and fatigue for every movement. So, like you know, if your program was three days a week, say, but like hey, uh, the bros called me and we went and we benched super heavy on a Tuesday and like it wasn't part of the program on tonal, we'll track that data and say you're fatigued? Um, like we wasn't part of the program but we know that you did it and therefore we will, you know, say that you're fatigued. You get to be able to see that data of muscle utilization and muscle fatigue. Um, and, yeah, we can, we can adapt around that no, no, that's good.
Philip Pape: 34:42
Yeah, I'm just, I'm just it's. It's pretty cool when you can. I'm thinking again of consistency one, because people always have roadblocks, like now I have to think about my next workout and then how much weight do I lift the next time, and all these things. I was gonna say that we.
Troy Taylor: 34:56
We suggest every weight for every movement. We do a movement calibration or a strength calibration. At the start it's only four movements and essentially it takes you up to an estimated, probably like it's 10 or 8 RM, and then we estimate up from there. But from there we can estimate with an AI algorithm every single movement for every single pattern, so you get the right suggested weight. And then we have another algorithm that has progressive overload built in it.
Troy Taylor: 35:24
If we sense those last two reps, you're not in close proximity to failure. We're going to increase that weight by one or two pounds for the next workout and we do that a little more. Let's say I'm going to say the word aggressive, but a little faster earlier in your progress, because we know you're going to be making progress quicker and a little slower once you've been established lifting hey, I sure has been lifting for a while now on toner. I'm not increasing the load every single time, even if I say I've got like two reps in failure. I'm going to shoot like the machine's going to want me to show that to it a couple of times.
Troy Taylor: 35:52
Yeah that this wasn't just a freaky strong day and he slept great, ate great, took all the stress out of his life. Then he hit PRs. But I need to do it multiple times to do that. But essentially there's a progressive overload algorithm, so you're constantly being challenged in that variation.
Philip Pape: 36:10
Yeah, I love that. And another thing that came to mind when you were talking about the shoulder pressing it sounds like you can have therapy and recovery programs as well.
Troy Taylor: 36:18
Right, yeah, we have a recovery like default recovery weight mode. So super easy. You can just add recovery weights to any workout, any program. Hey, today I don't feel it. I slept terribly, you know, but had more alcohol than I probably should have. Whatever the reason is, hit recovery weights, everything drops to 80% so you can still do the training session again.
Troy Taylor: 36:37
Consistency Don't want to lose that habit, kind of things, but everything's a little diet things. And then the next time you can go back to your full weight. And then we have, like more specific programs where we will reduce the weight from your like what an estimated you know, one RM for that particular move will be for specific kind of purposes. Sometimes it might be for more like I don't know, a hypertrophy. We want to do myoreps and therefore we need to reduce the weights, or something like that. Or it could be for a therapeutic situation where someone you know we had some programs that are intended for absolute beginners and we don't want to push you we know enjoyment is super important. We know, um, we know that doms are a challenge to building consistency early. So let's try and take away that option to start with.
Jerry: 37:26
Hey, just wanted to give a shout out to Philip.
Jerry: 37:28
I personally worked with Philip for about eight months and I lost a total of 33 pounds of scale weight and about five inches off my waist.
Jerry: 37:36
Two things I really enjoy about working with Philip is number one he's really taken the time to develop a deep expertise in nutrition and also resistance training, so he has that depth. If you want to go deep on the lies with Philip, but if also if you want to just kind of get some instruction and more practical advice and a plan on what you need to do, you can pull back and communicate at that level. Also, he is a lifter himself, so he's very familiar with the performance and body composition goals that most lifters have. And also Philip is trained in engineering, so he has some very efficient systems set up to make the coaching experience very easy and very efficient and you can really track your results and you will have real data when you're done working with Philip and also have access to some tools likely that you can continue to use. If all that sounds interesting to you. Philip, like all good coaches, has a ton of free information out there and really encourage you to see if he may be able to help you out. So thanks again, philip.
Philip Pape: 38:39
I was even thinking if someone, let's say someone had had surgery and they needed rehab obviously there's a medical kind of scope of practice issue involved as well. But do you like, could I go in there and say give me a shoulder internal rotation mobility program.
Troy Taylor: 38:55
Number one. In that scenario your therapist can write a custom workout, a custom program, or you as an individual to for your very specific individual, for your very specific, and then you can add recovery weights to that kind of thing, so it's going to give you a lighter. We have an algorithm that if you've been off the machine for a while, we will reduce the weights because you're probably detrained. I think in therapy situations we certainly have a number of therapists that utilize tonal in their rehab process and in their small group training process. I would say that's mostly done via a custom basis where just a trainer goes in or a coach goes in or a therapist goes in. Hey, this is my specific shoulder rehab program for you. You can do it in my clinic on my tonal or you can do it at home on your tonal and we get the data. Either way, yeah.
Philip Pape: 39:39
And what about somebody's phase of nutrition, like if they're dieting, they're cutting heavy versus they're bulking? Do you just account for that with the progressive overload detection or do you program that in? Do you say like I'm actually in a fat loss phase now, so you got to account?
Troy Taylor: 39:56
for that you would get to choose from your goal and therefore the workouts or programs that would better align to your goals. We know that diet is mostly nutrition-based. Our philosophy from a training perspective during periods of fat loss or weight loss is generally to make sure you have enough stimulus to maintain muscle mass. I don't think anyone that diets wants to lose muscle mass. So we know that proximity to failure and volume are important to maintaining muscle mass. So we'll that proximity to failure and volume are important to maintaining muscle mass. So we'll be thinking about those in a program and we do have an element of work in there.
Troy Taylor: 40:28
Right, burning extra calories is not going to be the difference maker between losing 20 pounds and not losing 20 pounds. But if I can give you a bit more compound high movements, bit more volume, we measure work, so we measure force over distance all the time. If I can bias the movements towards those big compound movements rather than a ton of isolation exercises, yeah, I'm going to try and leverage that a little bit and maybe that will be a couple of hundred calories, that additional burn that you might get. But I'd say that's our kind of approach is to mostly focus on the maintenance of muscle mass and making sure we're getting stimulus and secondary to work about with work during those periods.
Philip Pape: 41:04
Okay, cool, yeah, just throwing a lot of these questions are just literally selfish questions. For me wondering about this stuff Because another one comes to mind is there's a lot of talk in the research about range of motion and lengthened partials. What's better, what's not?
Troy Taylor: 41:18
Milo Wolf.
Philip Pape: 41:19
Yeah, yeah, exactly, milo Wolf right, and there's a lot of. I guess the general consensus right now is look, just use a diversity of movements. We're talking about traditional training, Use full range of motion by default, but then you can play around with different ranges as finishers and bodybuilding, because you have this different strength curve. How does that equation change?
Troy Taylor: 41:41
Yeah, good question and one I would love to investigate when I get some research time. I know we have a Toner, brad Schoenfeld out of Lehman College, big hypertrophy researcher, milo and Pat. Dr Pat are both involved with Lehman College. They're visiting profs over there so they both have experienced Toner. So we've had some conversations around how we might do that.
Troy Taylor: 42:05
I think there's a couple of things, my take on that research and I think this is emerging and so I don't think there's an absolute consensus. The evidence-based community says this is the way. But I think what it seems clear is you need to do the lengthened portion of the rep if that is whether it's part of a full range or a dedicated partial in that. So when we're talking about the lengthened partial, imagine a fly and it would be this extended part. My peg is most stretched out, that portion you should probably, if your hypertrophy is your goal, not just ever do a partial in the short one range of motion. I think the research is very clear in that, whether the lengthened partial to full range or whether it's just the length and partial to half range is more hypertrophic or not, I think there is evidence to suggest in some muscle groups it looks like it is, whether that's based on only in new lifters and novice lifters, whether it's based on sarcomere, genesis or myofibril or hyper. I don't know if I have a strong opinion on that and I think we could probably get debated by experts much better than me in that space. But definitely you need to do the full range of motion or you need to do the length and portion of that.
Troy Taylor: 43:11
Total has two things. Number one we apply consistent resistance throughout, so it doesn't really matter. So if you imagine, yeah, so that'd be number one. Number two we can emphasize more resistance on the long muscle length, partial portion of that. So imagine a pull down. This is where it's stretching of the lat. You can make it heavier here and lighter here. Reverse chains you know chains like you.
Troy Taylor: 43:38
You can't do change pulling down uh, but you would imagine as the cable extends chains would make it heavier.
Troy Taylor: 43:44
Reverse chains we call smart flex essentially matches the strength curve of the movement. Say it's 100 pounds here, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, maybe it's 80 at this bottom range. So I'm actually taxing that long muscle length which is where I'm strongest right, that long muscle length which is where I'm strongest right and that might, might lead to more hypertrophy growth because you'd be maxillizing, getting maximum mechanical tension in that long muscle length. I think that's pretty cool. We haven't researched that in a peer reviewed randomized control trial. I would love to at some point. But theoretically, as I understand the mechanisms, you can any row based exercise, particularly, or any any chest based exercise you can over emphasize that that strength curve, uh, which I think is pretty cool.
Philip Pape: 44:34
I think that's really cool too. And then it it brings up you mentioned chain, so like accommodating resistance. That makes me think of. Let's take a bench press sounds like you can. Then because of the curve, you could emulate chains or bands and you could even do an overload right like an eccentric overload. You have that mode.
Troy Taylor: 44:50
You can do it both at the same time if you want um right yeah you don't need a spotter to like take off the first time you do it you're like oh, but like it's potentially very beneficial. Uh, so chains my take on the research, for you know, louis Simmons and all back in the powerlifting days in the West Side really good for powerlifting right or for power development. As we extend. We are generally, you know, we are most powerful at that end range of motion. Chains overloads that end range of motion, so we're getting constant resistance. With Tonal we already said that we don't get that freebie anyway and if you add chains to it it could be really, really beneficial for power training.
Troy Taylor: 45:26
And so I think about that for people that want to get strong or do powerlifting things. I actually think about it for the 55-year-old female that wants to maintain deadlift power. Power is the ability to get out of the chair, to walk up the stairs, to have gait speed, to do all those activities. Those are power exercises. And so I love to add chains because it's a touch of a button to a 65-year-old, post-menopause female program. Because, yeah, it's lighter at the bottom and as you come up and you're stronger at that top motion, it accommodates the resistance to get that power kind of emphasis. And, yes, accentuated eccentric loading probably good for strength development, maybe for hypertrophy. I think the research is out there. But you could add 100 pounds on the way up, 125 pounds on the way down and you can literally do those two together on tonal, which is, I don't know of any evidence to say that's beneficial. But you can if you want to, it's awesome.
Philip Pape: 46:16
Yeah. And one last question related to that. Then if you have a sticking point, so again just saying bench press and you.
Troy Taylor: 46:26
You have a sticking point two inches up the chest, if you're me, yeah does tonal detect what that is based on your velocity or something we we can't. We will detect the velocity change and so that's where I use with that burnout mode, so that will be where it decreases one pound resistance. So I get continual progressive overload of that. In that it will be, you know, 200. I can't bench 200 on tonal. It's too hard for me. I can bench significantly more on a freeway, but on tonal I'm kind of like sets of eight around 180. 180 here and I get to get off two inches off my chest and then it will go 179, 178, 176, 175, and then I can move it again and then it can go back to 200. I can either leave it so it doesn't increase or it goes back to 180 pounds at the top and every time I get to that sticking point it reduces a little bit and I get to work on that sticky point overload.
Philip Pape: 47:07
So cool man. No, I'm glad you came on. I'm glad we had you on to talk about this. It's just fascinating. I go on all day. I know we're short on time, so I do. Is there any question? You wish I had asked that I didn't, and what is your answer?
Troy Taylor: 47:22
Not really, I will say, because when this is releasing, tonal is home gym, that's what I think. We are in some personal training studios and some physical therapy clinics. In January February in New York we are opening the Tonal Training Lab, which is like small group boutique fitness training based on Tonal. So if you're hearing this and you're in the New York area and this comes out around that kind of time from January into February, you can try tonal not just in a showroom and a retail but based on a a sort of a boutique fitness uh work, small workout class which is project time, and even I'm kind of super excited to see how that goes.
Philip Pape: 47:54
Yeah, that's awesome. So that's a, basically a gym is what you're saying with.
Troy Taylor: 47:57
Yeah, Imagine imagine a small group. There's, I think, eight to 10 tonals in the room. It will be a standardized group class but all the advantages of tonal plus real life coaching, Nice. So you get the kind of combination of this tech enabled in-person class, all right, troy.
Philip Pape: 48:12
Well, yeah, thanks for coming on, man and letting us. I mean, I really want people to open their mind to these possibilities because I definitely was skeptical a couple of years ago when I first heard about you guys. I think I heard, I saw, I think you were on Mind Pump and I was like starting to warm up and then had some clients start to use it and start to research it more. This is interesting, especially as part of, like, your overall package here for training and what the options are out there. So keep doing what you're doing, man. I'm excited for the next chapter and thank you so much for coming out.
Troy Taylor: 48:45
Oh, and where do you want people to reach you? Cause I want to throw those in the show notes. Oh, yeah, so, uh, my Instagram is strength science Troy. Uh, you'll see lots of tonal, some evidence-based fitness, but lots of tonal uh. And you know, non non-officials accessories uh for for fun ways to train uh on that. Obviously, tonalcom is the main tonal website and that tonal training lab, uhlabcom, is the website for the New York pop-up gym. Those are probably the best places.
Philip Pape: 49:04
I'll throw those in there. And again, thank you so much, man, for coming on. Thank you so much for having me.
