Get Smarter Workout Recommendations With More Specific Training Goals
Now you can give Tonal more details about what you want to accomplish with your training.
Fitness is a journey, not a destination. But you still need to map out the milestones you want to hit along the way to get results. That’s why setting goals is critical. On Tonal, you are prompted to choose between three primary goals: Build Muscle, Get Lean, and Improve Fitness. Now, you can update your training goals and drill down deeper into what you want to accomplish so you get relevant workout and program recommendations.
“We’re giving people the opportunity to better specify the outcomes they want from their training,” says John Christie, director of Applied Training Science at Tonal.
Being specific about what you want to achieve paves a clearer path to reaching your goals. It also allows us all to speak the same language about training so you know what you’re signing up for.
“Improve Fitness, for example, can be interpreted in so many ways,” Christie says, “whereas the new training goal language adds a greater specificity to the focus of training, and helps us to paint a clearer picture of the workout experience to prime members’ expectations.”
How to Choose Your Tonal Training Goals
When you choose your primary goal, you’ll now be prompted to share what results are most important to you and what additional fitness outcomes you want to explore.
For example, if Get Lean is your primary goal, weight loss may be the most important result that you want to achieve. As additional goals, maybe you want to build strength and grow muscle. Or if Improve Fitness is your primary goal, you may want to focus on functional strength while also building your endurance and losing weight.
These specifications help ensure that you and Tonal are on the same page about the results you want.
Most of us have a variety of fitness goals we want to accomplish through training, whether they are about aesthetics, athletic performance, just feeling more confident in everyday activities–or all of the above. So how do you choose what is most important? Christie’s advice is simple.
“Make the main thing, the main thing,” he says, and don’t let the fear of missing out cloud what you primarily want to get from your training. “If my primary goal is to Build Muscle, and from there, I want to prioritize building strength, I have set a clear focus.” Additional goals such as building endurance or improving performance can help round things out while still prioritizing your goal of building muscle.
If you’re new to Tonal, you’ll be prompted to choose your training goals as part of your onboarding when you first create your account.
If you’re already a Tonal member, you’ll see a module on the trainer and in the Tonal app that you can tap into to update your goals. Even though you previously set a primary goal when you created your account, now is a great time to review and add more specificity to those goals, or change them altogether if desired. Maybe this time you’re coming back to Tonal after an injury, or are looking to train for a competition–revising your goals can better set you up for where you currently are in your fitness journey.
You’ll get updated workout recommendations, and you’ll be able to filter by these new goals when you’re searching for options.
Tonal Training Goals
Here’s a breakdown of each of the training goals.
Primary Goals
- Build Muscle: Increase muscle mass, strength, and power.
- Get Lean: Burn calories and build muscle to shift your body composition.
- Improve Fitness: Boost your functional strength, balance, and flexibility.
Specific Focus Areas
Muscle Growth: Develop the size and shape of your muscles to increase lean body mass.
Workouts prioritize:
- Higher volume per muscle group each week
- Increased time under tension to create metabolic stress and stimulate muscle adaptations
- Training near or to failure to maximize muscle fiber recruitment
Weight Loss: Maximize calorie burn to decrease your body fat percentage.
Workouts prioritize:
- Compound movements that build lean muscle and improve fat metabolism
- Higher repetitions with less rest
- Increased cardiovascular demand to burn calories and activate the “afterburn effect”
Strength: Lift heavy and train your ability to overcome progressive resistance.
Workouts prioritize:
- Heavier loads to increase fiber recruitment
- Bi-lateral exercises to increase your potential to lift heavier loads
- Multiple sets to get the right dose for muscle response
Performance: Sharpen your athletic abilities with quick and explosive movements.
Workouts prioritize:
- Multi-joint movements to develop power
- Dynamic and plyometric movements
- Higher-velocity upper- and lower-body strength exercises
- Core movements emphasizing rotational power
- Strategic use of Chains dynamic weight mode to build explosiveness
Functional Strength: Lift dynamically and enhance mobility to perform everyday activities with ease.
Workouts prioritize:
- Bringing joints through a full range of motion under load in various planes
- Challenging stability to increase neuromuscular coordination
- Mix of bilateral and unilateral exercises
- Mastering bodyweight exercises
- Core strength to improve posture
Endurance: Boost your stamina and cardio capacity to go harder for longer.
Workouts prioritize:
- Unilateral and alternating exercises with a high rep range
- Higher volume and workload with moderate weights
- Sustained effort with limited rest
- Plyometric off-Tonal exercises
Movement Quality: Improve flexibility, stability, and balance to build physical resilience.
Workouts prioritize:
- Foundational movement patterns including the squat, hinge, lunge, press, pull, and rotation
- Bringing joints through a full range of motion
- Exercises that challenge balance and stabilization
- Dynamic and static stretches to increase mobility
Consistency: Commit to your goals and develop strong, sustainable habits.
Consistency is key to helping you reach any fitness goal. By understanding your personal trends and fluctuations better, you can work to establish greater consistency over time.
You can choose consistency as one of your additional outcomes, but not as a main focus area, as it will not currently impact the workouts that are recommended to you. Tonal is working on a suite of tools and metrics that can encourage consistency, so choosing this as an outcome indicates your interest in these features.
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