Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Dynamic Resistance Using Tonal vs. Free Weights for Muscle Gain (Troy Taylor) | Ep 268

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Dynamic Resistance Using Tonal vs. Free Weights for Muscle Gain (Troy Taylor) | Ep 268 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: New research shows that dynamic digital resistance feels up to 26% heavier than free weights, but does that translate to better muscle growth?
• 0:09
  Philip Pape: Today we're getting into the science with Troy Taylor, who's analyzed data for over 200 billion pounds lifted.
• 0:16
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 0:34
  Philip Pape: If you're curious about technology and optimizing muscle gain, you'll really enjoy this episode.
• 0:39
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.
• 1:10
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're examining the science behind dynamic versus traditional resistance training with Troy Taylor.
• 1:13
  Philip Pape: Now Troy leads performance innovation at Tonal, where his team analyzes millions of workouts.
• 1:14
  Philip Pape: Understand the effectiveness of dynamic resistance.
• 1:15
  Philip Pape: As the former high-performance director at US Ski and Snowboard, he helped athletes secure over 500 international podiums using traditional methods.
• 1:19
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 1:33
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: Troy, welcome to the show.
• 1:45
  Troy Taylor: Thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:47
  Troy Taylor: I look forward to our conversation.
• 1:48
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 2:12
  Philip Pape: And I think they found something like 23 or 26% heavier it felt heavier based on RPE.
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: So what's actually going on there?
• 2:20
  Troy Taylor: Yeah, so it was Kevin Ford's lab out of High Point University.
• 2:24
  Troy Taylor: He's an awesome biomechanics researcher.
• 2:26
  Troy Taylor: 200 plus peer-reviewed papers.
• 2:28
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 2:39
  Troy Taylor: What's going on?
• 2:40
  Troy Taylor: And so we basically wanted to commission peer-reviewed research to be able to look at that.
• 2:44
  Troy Taylor: And so what we did, or what they did, it's an independent study, I just get the results.
• 2:49
  Troy Taylor: It looked at four different movements.
• 2:50
  Troy Taylor: I know there were curls in there, there was deadlift in there, there was a couple of other movements and they did two things.
• 2:56
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 3:07
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 3:18
  Troy Taylor: But essentially they were lifting for the same maximal effort.
• 3:22
  Troy Taylor: They were lifting less on tonal than they were on free weights.
• 3:24
  Troy Taylor: And then they did a back-off training session where they looked at 10 reps at, say, 70% of your 1RM.
• 3:32
  Troy Taylor: I'm pulling this from memory but I think it was right around there.
• 3:33
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 3:40
  Troy Taylor: What's happening with the muscle activation from a surface EMG point of view?
• 3:45
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 3:54
  Troy Taylor: It's got its pros and cons.
• 3:56
  Troy Taylor: It's very good.
• 3:56
  Troy Taylor: It gives us an understanding of the muscles activated.
• 3:58
  Troy Taylor: Emg does not equal hypertrophy necessarily, but it does give us an indicator that the muscles are activated at lower weights.
• 4:05
  Troy Taylor: So the question would be why?
• 4:07
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 4:12
  Troy Taylor: This is not studied in the research necessarily, but like from our own internal data, we've been able to analyze this.
• 4:18
  Troy Taylor: A vast majority of it comes down to moment of inertia and the impact of inertia.
• 4:23
  Troy Taylor: When you're lifting with a free mass, it's Newton's second law Once it moves it wants to carry on moving.
• 4:29
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 4:40
  Troy Taylor: That doesn't exist as much on tonal.
• 4:43
  Troy Taylor: It's not that there's no inertia, but there's much less inertia.
• 4:46
  Troy Taylor: The motor, as soon as you start pushing or stop pushing against, it essentially stops very quickly.
• 4:52
  Troy Taylor: So you have this lower level of inertia.
• 4:54
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 5:05
  Troy Taylor: I'd say that's some made up percentage, but 70, 80, 90% of the variation is based on that.
• 5:11
  Troy Taylor: There's also a component of stability, depending on the movement pattern.
• 5:15
  Troy Taylor: On deadlift it doesn't really matter Deadlifting on tonal and deadlifting in free weight, stability doesn't really come into it.
• 5:21
  Troy Taylor: You're lifting a heavy object off the ground but say something like bicep curls, it's a cable machine.
• 5:26
  Troy Taylor: That's what tonal is, and so it's slightly different.
• 5:29
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 5:40
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 5:55
  Philip Pape: Yeah, okay.
• 5:55
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 5:58
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 6:23
  Philip Pape: So you're kind of touching on those things.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: And the thing with tonal and I know we haven't even, like, exactly said what it is People can Google it.
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: We're going to talk about it, Is it?
• 6:31
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 6:44
  Philip Pape: You know more of that resistance through the range of anyway, bad analogy.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 6:56
  Philip Pape: So I'm trying to think of where the best place to start on this is.
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 7:10
  Philip Pape: I just threw like a bunch of stuff at you.
• 7:11
  Philip Pape: Go ahead, man.
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no.
• 7:13
  Troy Taylor: I'm not sure my product marketing would love the analogy on the stickiness.
• 7:17
  Troy Taylor: But it's extremely smooth, but you do have to pull through the entire range of motion.
• 7:24
  Troy Taylor: There's no freebies.
• 7:25
  Troy Taylor: That's the way I can think.
• 7:26
  Troy Taylor: You imagine a rotational chop or something on a cable machine.
• 7:29
  Troy Taylor: If you get that moving in the first quarter of it you don't really have to pull because the momentum is taking you.
• 7:34
  Troy Taylor: The rest, with tonal, it's almost like working with chains, which we can talk about.
• 7:38
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 7:46
  Troy Taylor: So let's get there.
• 7:48
  Troy Taylor: So where to start?
• 7:49
  Troy Taylor: I would say what is Tonal and then we can go from there.
• 7:51
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 8:01
  Troy Taylor: So what makes it an entire gym?
• 8:03
  Troy Taylor: About it yes, it's a cable machine.
• 8:04
  Troy Taylor: It's a dual stack cable machine in that there's two arms that come out.
• 8:08
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 8:33
  Troy Taylor: It fits in your space.
• 8:35
  Troy Taylor: If you're watching this on video, it's behind me.
• 8:38
  Troy Taylor: It attaches to your wall.
• 8:39
  Troy Taylor: It's about five inches thick.
• 8:41
  Troy Taylor: It looks kind of like a big screen TV.
• 8:43
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 8:49
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 8:58
  Troy Taylor: It's good for us from an engagement point of view.
• 9:00
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 9:10
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 9:22
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 9:28
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 9:51
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 10:15
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 10:26
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 10:34
  Troy Taylor: We do that every rep, every exercise, every person, close to 10 billion reps or something like that.
• 10:40
  Troy Taylor: But you can also as, as well as monitoring it it's closed loop you can change that resistance in real time.
• 10:47
  Troy Taylor: So an example of that might be hey, chains, I want to hit the chains mode.
• 10:51
  Troy Taylor: As you increase, as the cables extend, we can make it linearly heavier.
• 10:56
  Troy Taylor: Touch of a button, you want to add an eccentric, accentuated, eccentric loading.
• 11:00
  Troy Taylor: Touch of the button, you can add eccentric loading, and so it's 100 pounds going up, or concentrically, 125 pounds eccentrically.
• 11:09
  Troy Taylor: And it allows us to build AI algorithms like, say, a built-in spotter mode.
• 11:13
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 11:25
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 11:31
  Troy Taylor: Or two, just switch the weight off if you're not moving, automatically done, it's gone, disappeared.
• 11:36
  Troy Taylor: You hurt yourself.
• 11:37
  Troy Taylor: Done, there's no resistance anymore, immediately.
• 11:39
  Troy Taylor: So those are some of the ways and changes that we take traditional training and make some things better.
• 11:45
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no, I love.
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: I'm a huge fan of technology.
• 11:47
  Philip Pape: I mean I have I always have the latest Oura Ring and Apple Watch and like phone and tablet.
• 11:51
  Philip Pape: I just love that stuff.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: I mean, I'm a huge fan of tracking and monitoring.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: And then the spotter as well, because people with home gym safety is huge.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: And again, when I hear people benching without spotter arms, I'm like what are you doing, Right?
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: I know the limits, just pure numbers wise are like 200.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: And maybe that's going up in the next version.
• 12:42
  Philip Pape: Um, how does that compare and how can you?
• 12:44
  Philip Pape: Can you replicate that, or is that just a different use case?
• 12:47
  Troy Taylor: Yeah, so as we record this podcast, 200 pounds is the max limit for Tonal.
• 12:52
  Troy Taylor: We talked about how that feels, 20, 25% lighter, so it feels like 250 pounds of free weight.
• 12:58
  Troy Taylor: And as of the 8th of January we announced because this podcast will release after then Tonal 2, which goes to 250 pounds.
• 13:07
  Troy Taylor: And so if you think about that, times by 20 or 25%, you're now over 300 pounds of equivalent resistance from a mass.
• 13:16
  Troy Taylor: That's, I think, the limit of where you can go.
• 13:19
  Troy Taylor: 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?
• 13:26
  Troy Taylor: No, we're not that use case.
• 13:28
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 13:37
  Troy Taylor: On electromagnetic resistance you start making trade-offs, mainly price and cost, because we have to have bigger motors that draw more power.
• 13:45
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 13:53
  Troy Taylor: But you have to make safety factors, factors of safety 3.75 times the amount of weight you can lift.
• 13:58
  Troy Taylor: So you have to make all the components 15, 16, 1700 pounds and so it just exponentially is not worth it.
• 14:04
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 14:15
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 14:23
  Troy Taylor: Or you know maybe slightly less, but you're training 6, 8, 10, 12 rep petitions.
• 14:28
  Troy Taylor: You're probably right in that kind of range.
• 14:30
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 14:36
  Troy Taylor: You're probably out.
• 14:37
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 14:45
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 14:58
  Troy Taylor: I can just about get 250 for a single on total.
• 15:03
  Troy Taylor: It's maybe a bit skill training too and your ability to do that, but it feels pretty heavy.
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: That's cool, yeah, no, I mean, I can definitely imagine, even for the strongest folks.
• 15:14
  Philip Pape: And again, you're not talking about competitive power lifters or anything here.
• 15:17
  Troy Taylor: Let's start with the population.
• 15:18
  Troy Taylor: But even those- 35, 55-year-olds is target audience.
• 15:22
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 15:38
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah and for sure.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 15:46
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: For everything else it's convenient as a home gym option.
• 16:05
  Philip Pape: I do yeah, go ahead.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, exactly, that makes sense.
• 16:09
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and I even have clients that don't have tonal on this.
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: Still, they'll go to the gym for this and they'll have the home gym for this.
• 16:13
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 16:26
  Philip Pape: What kind of patterns are you seeing that?
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: You know, tell me about some, some of what you learned from the data.
• 16:43
  Troy Taylor: Yeah, and so, yeah, I think it's where we really support.
• 16:46
  Troy Taylor: Last year, the state of strength that I think was we were around 200 billion pounds, then it's more now.
• 16:51
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 17:00
  Troy Taylor: But we first released the product late 2019, not a ton of users back then.
• 17:05
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 17:14
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 17:35
  Troy Taylor: What can I learn?
• 17:36
  Troy Taylor: And so I would say right now what are some of the key insights?
• 17:39
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 18:06
  Troy Taylor: We see changes in strength are dramatic with people that train.
• 18:11
  Troy Taylor: That's not new.
• 18:12
  Troy Taylor: We know people get trained, they get stronger, but they get stronger and it's not just.
• 18:16
  Troy Taylor: It doesn't stop at 12 weeks.
• 18:17
  Troy Taylor: We're seeing consistent increases over the first year, two years.
• 18:21
  Troy Taylor: After two years it does start to plateau, for sure.
• 18:24
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 18:33
  Troy Taylor: We're talking 70%, 75% I want to say average in the first year increases in strength across the general population.
• 18:40
  Troy Taylor: This is not a well-trained resistance population, this is not a beginner population.
• 18:44
  Troy Taylor: It's just looking at tens of hundreds of thousands of people and what kind of changes they seem to make.
• 18:49
  Troy Taylor: Those changes regardless of age.
• 18:52
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 19:13
  Troy Taylor: But we're seeing they can build strength as fast, if not faster, than our younger population and for significant periods of time.
• 19:19
  Troy Taylor: We're seeing that our female members particularly are lifting heavier year over year, week over week.
• 19:27
  Troy Taylor: They're relatively individually getting stronger and making those same changes, but they're also as a cohort of a population.
• 19:34
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 19:48
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 20:01
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 20:12
  Troy Taylor: So maybe most of your audience actually probably just works out, because they're intrinsically motivated.
• 20:18
  Troy Taylor: It's part of their identity that we're in the autonomy stage.
• 20:21
  Troy Taylor: I'm going to work out if no one's looking, no one's monitoring.
• 20:24
  Troy Taylor: It's just who I am.
• 20:25
  Troy Taylor: It's what I've done always and I will always do the average person.
• 20:41
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 20:44
  Troy Taylor: So most of the population isn't training.
• 20:47
  Troy Taylor: So what can we see in the data that looks at consistency and what is correlated again, not causation with consistency.
• 20:55
  Troy Taylor: And we see people that join programs are more consistent than people that just do one-off workouts.
• 21:00
  Troy Taylor: Makes a ton of sense.
• 21:01
  Troy Taylor: You've got a bit of a plan.
• 21:02
  Troy Taylor: You've got a commitment device from behavior science.
• 21:05
  Troy Taylor: You're signing up to something.
• 21:06
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 21:12
  Troy Taylor: But we'd certainly see the increases there.
• 21:14
  Troy Taylor: People that check their stats and their progress tonal tracks every rep every time.
• 21:18
  Troy Taylor: You get to see your volume, your power.
• 21:20
  Troy Taylor: You get to see progress.
• 21:21
  Troy Taylor: Strength training changes are slow, sometimes they take a while, but with Tonal, with one pound changes you can get to.
• 21:28
  Troy Taylor: Oh, I've got a new estimated one RM.
• 21:29
  Troy Taylor: I lifted more volume than ever.
• 21:31
  Troy Taylor: My power on this move is higher than it's ever been.
• 21:34
  Troy Taylor: People that check their stats are more consistent.
• 21:36
  Troy Taylor: And then some of the other data is right, like consistency of timing of training and having the same window.
• 21:42
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 21:58
  Troy Taylor: Hey, from this unique vantage point of data, maybe incorporating these things into fitness training program might help clients be more consistent.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: I mean I want to summarize some of what you said for folks just so they drill it in.
• 22:19
  Philip Pape: But like the fact that you get so much stronger in the first year or two, no matter your age, is super empowering, right?
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 22:36
  Philip Pape: It's all tied together to strength muscle, you know and that.
• 22:39
  Philip Pape: And so in one to two years, having 75% growth in year one not uncommon, you know.
• 22:44
  Philip Pape: When I tell people in three or four months, you can like I'll say I'll say double.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: But I say double too.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: It's easy to remember.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: But yeah, you know, but like newbie, get it brand new People can really double it.
• 22:54
  Philip Pape: So you're talking about the average 75% in one year and then another, probably another 50% in the second year.
• 22:59
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: And then the rates of gain.
• 23:11
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I've, I've seen that as well, troy, lately.
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: How, for example, you know, women and men gain at roughly the same rate.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: Women often think they're disadvantaged.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: The only disadvantage is they have less muscle mass to start, but the rate is the same.
• 23:22
  Philip Pape: And what you're saying is that it might even be faster when we're older, potentially.
• 23:26
  Philip Pape: I mean, what's the theory there?
• 23:27
  Philip Pape: That we're detrained, we've lost muscle mass and it kind of comes back faster, something like that.
• 23:32
  Troy Taylor: Yeah, potentially guesstimation here, but yeah, potentially.
• 23:36
  Troy Taylor: Our users are people that trained in high school and college and then stopped training for a long time.
• 23:40
  Troy Taylor: The data also points they're more consistent and this data doesn't normalize and so they're training more frequently and more consistently.
• 23:50
  Troy Taylor: Therefore they get better gains.
• 23:51
  Troy Taylor: They have more time.
• 23:53
  Troy Taylor: Maybe the young kids or the busy job or whatever it might be.
• 23:56
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: So, yeah, we're taking more of the retirement age as well, and, yeah, okay, got it.
• 24:08
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 24:29
  Philip Pape: It's the loss of muscle mass and the increase in body fat, and you just have to flip that around.
• 24:34
  Philip Pape: And then I love the stats about consistency because you hit on a couple of things.
• 24:39
  Philip Pape: One that tracking.
• 24:41
  Philip Pape: I love tracking and measuring.
• 24:43
  Philip Pape: People complain about tracking being obsessive or whatever.
• 24:45
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 24:54
  Philip Pape: So you train yourself right and then you can get off that if you need to.
• 24:57
  Philip Pape: But the fact that you have the ability to see wins at a more granular level, I think is important, right?
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: And then the morning training guys listening, if you've already listened to this show, I talk about it all the time.
• 25:18
  Philip Pape: There is a difference for people.
• 25:19
  Philip Pape: The morning is just you get going.
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: It creates consistency.
• 25:23
  Philip Pape: Don't say you're not a morning person.
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: Stop saying that.
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: Just try it out for a while.
• 25:27
  Troy Taylor: Anyway, Troy, yeah, I have empathy.
• 25:31
  Troy Taylor: I never thought I was a morning person, but I have a couple of young kids and a wife.
• 25:34
  Troy Taylor: That's morning personal.
• 25:35
  Troy Taylor: I'm a morning person now, uh, but I, some people.
• 25:39
  Troy Taylor: It's not feasible, right I?
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: got my job for sure, and that kind of thing.
• 25:42
  Troy Taylor: So I don't want to like and it's, it's.
• 25:44
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 25:57
  Troy Taylor: And then number two is like, yes, if you do do it, the kind of the rest of your day goes better.
• 26:02
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 26:14
  Troy Taylor: I feel more energy in those.
• 26:15
  Troy Taylor: But yeah, we definitely see that.
• 26:17
  Troy Taylor: In addition to the physiology, I feel more energy in those.
• 26:20
  Troy Taylor: But yeah, we definitely see that.
• 26:21
  Troy Taylor: And I personally I just said I just finished my workout, like 10 minutes before this.
• 26:24
  Troy Taylor: I finished my 10 minute workout.
• 26:26
  Troy Taylor: I just exercised snack, I got something in.
• 26:28
  Troy Taylor: It started my day right.
• 26:30
  Troy Taylor: I didn't have long.
• 26:31
  Troy Taylor: I had a podcast.
• 26:32
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 26:38
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 26:46
  Troy Taylor: I don't do that first one, I don't do the other ones.
• 26:48
  Troy Taylor: It's like this like you've got to get that breadcrumb going.
• 26:51
  Philip Pape: Yeah right, there are a lot of benefits to morning training if you can do it.
• 26:58
  Philip Pape: Another one is, I think, stress management we're seeing when you look at cortisol and stuff like that.
• 27:03
  Philip Pape: So, okay, you talked a lot, so you mentioned strength a lot, which is music to my ears because I always start from that.
• 27:08
  Philip Pape: But strength and hypertrophy, although they're somewhat proxies for each other, they're also not always correlated.
• 27:14
  Philip Pape: So when it comes to hypertrophy, how are you measuring your population on that like circumference?
• 27:22
  Philip Pape: Measurements and such we are not not directly.
• 27:24
  Troy Taylor: We have a beta of a computer vision-based estimation.
• 27:28
  Troy Taylor: I'm an applied scientist at heart and that kind of thing, so I want to be able to do everything really accurately.
• 27:36
  Troy Taylor: If I can't give you a good number, I don't want to just give you a number.
• 27:38
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 27:48
  Troy Taylor: It's at a population level DEXA is great, but an individual level, those variation charts are pretty significant Correct.
• 27:54
  Troy Taylor: So no, we haven't.
• 27:56
  Troy Taylor: I can take a lot of my guidance from some of the influences and researchers in this space.
• 28:02
  Troy Taylor: I feel most of them are more subjective on a lot of those measures.
• 28:06
  Troy Taylor: Yes, if I could measure your bicep girth or your waist girth or your hip to waist ratio really accurately, I would.
• 28:14
  Troy Taylor: I don't think that the technology is there right now.
• 28:17
  Troy Taylor: We don't measure hypertrophy directly, but certainly we have indirect measures, whether it's strength or volume lifted and things like that.
• 28:25
  Troy Taylor: And then we have a community 60,000 or so in our Facebook community and you get to see their transformations.
• 28:31
  Troy Taylor: I wouldn't say we're like a transformation tonal brand.
• 28:34
  Troy Taylor: That's not really what we do.
• 28:35
  Troy Taylor: We don't do before and afters.
• 28:37
  Troy Taylor: Try and sell you gimmicky, right?
• 28:38
  Troy Taylor: Uh, that's not a time but.
• 28:39
  Troy Taylor: But people want to post their progress, which is awesome until you get to see.
• 28:42
  Troy Taylor: So we don't.
• 28:43
  Troy Taylor: I would say.
• 28:44
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 28:57
  Troy Taylor: Therefore, you you can get the same kind of hypertrophy and I'd say it's.
• 29:02
  Troy Taylor: It's interesting because I would love to be able to measure it.
• 29:04
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 29:09
  Troy Taylor: I have that goal as a 45 year old kind of things.
• 29:12
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 29:22
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 29:31
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 29:43
  Philip Pape: It's not difficult to do that on your own.
• 29:44
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 29:55
  Troy Taylor: I don't, like I told you, we have a beta product.
• 29:56
  Troy Taylor: That's just within our internal staff.
• 29:58
  Troy Taylor: I probably shouldn't share those things, but the technology will get there.
• 30:01
  Troy Taylor: If you think about the advances in pose estimation models and advances, I don't doubt, particularly for girths, it will get there.
• 30:07
  Troy Taylor: Body fat, muscle mass I think you're stretching.
• 30:10
  Philip Pape: I agree To do girth measurements.
• 30:12
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 30:22
  Philip Pape: Yeah, Cause once you have that, now you can.
• 30:23
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 30:29
  Philip Pape: Yeah, Okay.
• 30:30
  Philip Pape: So I did want to ask about okay, let's run it, run us through a single lift.
• 30:36
  Philip Pape: So let's say the overhead press, one of my favorites.
• 30:38
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 30:45
  Philip Pape: 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?
• 30:53
  Philip Pape: What does the machine look like for an overhead press?
• 30:55
  Philip Pape: Like what does the machine look like for an overhead press?
• 30:57
  Philip Pape: Just with that example so folks can visualize this.
• 30:59
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 31:18
  Troy Taylor: What my team basically said how would a coach, how would a world-class hopefully coach, address those?
• 31:22
  Troy Taylor: 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?
• 31:35
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 31:49
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 32:02
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 32:11
  Troy Taylor: Or maybe we go a handle with lower resistance, so it's a lighter weight.
• 32:15
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 32:33
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 32:49
  Troy Taylor: I would say every program is a little different or can be a little different.
• 32:54
  Troy Taylor: I would say our default pattern is to more build from hypertrophy into strength than the other way around.
• 32:59
  Philip Pape: Okay, tend to go higher rep ranges.
• 33:02
  Philip Pape: Wrap the reps as you go.
• 33:03
  Troy Taylor: Yeah, higher rep ranges closer proximity to failure into more strength-biased work.
• 33:07
  Troy Taylor: Lower rep ranges strength.
• 33:09
  Troy Taylor: It gives us the hypertrophy training and the generally slightly higher rep training.
• 33:14
  Troy Taylor: It doesn't have to be very high but slightly higher.
• 33:22
  Philip Pape: Rep training doesn't have to be very high, but slightly higher.
• 33:23
  Troy Taylor: Rep training allows us repetition of practice and skill.
• 33:24
  Troy Taylor: Yeah, that's huge, which itself is a component of that strength.
• 33:26
  Troy Taylor: Skill acquisition is something that we want to install.
• 33:27
  Troy Taylor: We know the drivers of um motivation.
• 33:28
  Troy Taylor: We talked about intrinsic motivation before.
• 33:30
  Troy Taylor: I like competency.
• 33:32
  Troy Taylor: I want to feel good about things like and then autonomy and connectedness, but self-determination theory, but competency.
• 33:37
  Troy Taylor: We want our members to feel competent, that they have the ability to do this lift well.
• 33:43
  Philip Pape: 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?
• 33:55
  Philip Pape: What if you miss a workout?
• 33:56
  Philip Pape: Is it going to somehow test you into the new load?
• 34:00
  Troy Taylor: Yeah, it has a has a calendar where you can self-select it.
• 34:03
  Troy Taylor: It knows when your last workout was.
• 34:05
  Troy Taylor: As long as it's within a normal sort of range of window, um, it doesn't change anything, but it has muscle utilization.
• 34:11
  Troy Taylor: So we estimate the muscle utilization and fatigue for every movement.
• 34:15
  Troy Taylor: 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?
• 34:28
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 34:33
  Troy Taylor: You get to be able to see that data of muscle utilization and muscle fatigue.
• 34:37
  Troy Taylor: Um, and, yeah, we can, we can adapt around that no, no, that's good.
• 34:42
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I'm just, I'm just it's.
• 34:43
  Philip Pape: It's pretty cool when you can.
• 34:44
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 34:54
  Philip Pape: I was gonna say that we.
• 34:56
  Troy Taylor: We suggest every weight for every movement.
• 34:59
  Troy Taylor: We do a movement calibration or a strength calibration.
• 35:02
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 35:13
  Troy Taylor: But from there we can estimate with an AI algorithm every single movement for every single pattern, so you get the right suggested weight.
• 35:22
  Troy Taylor: And then we have another algorithm that has progressive overload built in it.
• 35:24
  Troy Taylor: If we sense those last two reps, you're not in close proximity to failure.
• 35:26
  Troy Taylor: We're going to increase that weight by one or two pounds for the next workout and we do that a little more.
• 35:32
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 35:44
  Troy Taylor: I'm not increasing the load every single time, even if I say I've got like two reps in failure.
• 35:48
  Troy Taylor: I'm going to shoot like the machine's going to want me to show that to it a couple of times.
• 35:52
  Troy Taylor: Yeah that this wasn't just a freaky strong day and he slept great, ate great, took all the stress out of his life.
• 35:59
  Troy Taylor: Then he hit PRs.
• 36:00
  Troy Taylor: But I need to do it multiple times to do that.
• 36:02
  Troy Taylor: But essentially there's a progressive overload algorithm, so you're constantly being challenged in that variation.
• 36:10
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I love that.
• 36:10
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 36:18
  Troy Taylor: Right, yeah, we have a recovery like default recovery weight mode.
• 36:20
  Troy Taylor: So super easy.
• 36:22
  Troy Taylor: You can just add recovery weights to any workout, any program.
• 36:25
  Troy Taylor: Hey, today I don't feel it.
• 36:26
  Troy Taylor: I slept terribly, you know, but had more alcohol than I probably should have.
• 36:32
  Troy Taylor: Whatever the reason is, hit recovery weights, everything drops to 80% so you can still do the training session again.
• 36:37
  Troy Taylor: Consistency Don't want to lose that habit, kind of things, but everything's a little diet things.
• 36:41
  Troy Taylor: And then the next time you can go back to your full weight.
• 36:44
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 36:55
  Troy Taylor: Sometimes it might be for more like I don't know, a hypertrophy.
• 36:59
  Troy Taylor: We want to do myoreps and therefore we need to reduce the weights, or something like that.
• 37:03
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 37:14
  Troy Taylor: We know, um, we know that doms are a challenge to building consistency early.
• 37:20
  Troy Taylor: So let's try and take away that option to start with.
• 37:26
  Jerry: Hey, just wanted to give a shout out to Philip.
• 37:28
  Jerry: 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.
• 37:36
  Jerry: 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.
• 37:48
  Jerry: 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.
• 38:00
  Jerry: Also, he is a lifter himself, so he's very familiar with the performance and body composition goals that most lifters have.
• 38:08
  Jerry: 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.
• 38:27
  Jerry: If all that sounds interesting to you.
• 38:30
  Jerry: 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.
• 38:36
  Jerry: So thanks again, philip.
• 38:39
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 38:47
  Philip Pape: But do you like, could I go in there and say give me a shoulder internal rotation mobility program.
• 38:55
  Troy Taylor: Number one.
• 38:56
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 39:08
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 39:15
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 39:23
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 39:29
  Troy Taylor: Hey, this is my specific shoulder rehab program for you.
• 39:32
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 39:37
  Troy Taylor: Either way, yeah.
• 39:39
  Philip Pape: And what about somebody's phase of nutrition, like if they're dieting, they're cutting heavy versus they're bulking?
• 39:47
  Philip Pape: Do you just account for that with the progressive overload detection or do you program that in?
• 39:52
  Philip Pape: Do you say like I'm actually in a fat loss phase now, so you got to account?
• 39:56
  Troy Taylor: for that you would get to choose from your goal and therefore the workouts or programs that would better align to your goals.
• 40:01
  Troy Taylor: We know that diet is mostly nutrition-based.
• 40:05
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 40:15
  Troy Taylor: I don't think anyone that diets wants to lose muscle mass.
• 40:18
  Troy Taylor: So we know that proximity to failure and volume are important to maintaining muscle mass.
• 40:22
  Troy Taylor: So we'll that proximity to failure and volume are important to maintaining muscle mass.
• 40:23
  Troy Taylor: So we'll be thinking about those in a program and we do have an element of work in there.
• 40:28
  Troy Taylor: Right, burning extra calories is not going to be the difference maker between losing 20 pounds and not losing 20 pounds.
• 40:34
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 40:42
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 40:54
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 41:04
  Philip Pape: Okay, cool, yeah, just throwing a lot of these questions are just literally selfish questions.
• 41:09
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 41:17
  Philip Pape: What's better, what's not?
• 41:18
  Troy Taylor: Milo Wolf.
• 41:19
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, exactly, milo Wolf right, and there's a lot of.
• 41:22
  Philip Pape: I guess the general consensus right now is look, just use a diversity of movements.
• 41:27
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 41:39
  Philip Pape: How does that equation change?
• 41:41
  Troy Taylor: Yeah, good question and one I would love to investigate when I get some research time.
• 41:46
  Troy Taylor: I know we have a Toner, brad Schoenfeld out of Lehman College, big hypertrophy researcher, milo and Pat.
• 41:54
  Troy Taylor: Dr Pat are both involved with Lehman College.
• 41:57
  Troy Taylor: They're visiting profs over there so they both have experienced Toner.
• 42:01
  Troy Taylor: So we've had some conversations around how we might do that.
• 42:05
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 42:11
  Troy Taylor: The evidence-based community says this is the way.
• 42:14
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 42:24
  Troy Taylor: So when we're talking about the lengthened partial, imagine a fly and it would be this extended part.
• 42:30
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 42:37
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 42:59
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 43:05
  Troy Taylor: But definitely you need to do the full range of motion or you need to do the length and portion of that.
• 43:11
  Troy Taylor: Total has two things.
• 43:12
  Troy Taylor: Number one we apply consistent resistance throughout, so it doesn't really matter.
• 43:16
  Troy Taylor: So if you imagine, yeah, so that'd be number one.
• 43:21
  Troy Taylor: Number two we can emphasize more resistance on the long muscle length, partial portion of that.
• 43:29
  Troy Taylor: So imagine a pull down.
• 43:30
  Troy Taylor: This is where it's stretching of the lat.
• 43:32
  Troy Taylor: You can make it heavier here and lighter here.
• 43:35
  Troy Taylor: Reverse chains you know chains like you.
• 43:38
  Troy Taylor: You can't do change pulling down uh, but you would imagine as the cable extends chains would make it heavier.
• 43:44
  Troy Taylor: Reverse chains we call smart flex essentially matches the strength curve of the movement.
• 43:49
  Troy Taylor: Say it's 100 pounds here, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, maybe it's 80 at this bottom range.
• 43:55
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 44:11
  Troy Taylor: I think that's pretty cool.
• 44:13
  Troy Taylor: We haven't researched that in a peer reviewed randomized control trial.
• 44:17
  Troy Taylor: I would love to at some point.
• 44:20
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 44:34
  Philip Pape: I think that's really cool too.
• 44:35
  Philip Pape: And then it it brings up you mentioned chain, so like accommodating resistance.
• 44:38
  Philip Pape: That makes me think of.
• 44:39
  Philip Pape: Let's take a bench press sounds like you can.
• 44:42
  Philip Pape: Then because of the curve, you could emulate chains or bands and you could even do an overload right like an eccentric overload.
• 44:48
  Philip Pape: You have that mode.
• 44:50
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 44:59
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 45:10
  Troy Taylor: As we extend.
• 45:11
  Troy Taylor: We are generally, you know, we are most powerful at that end range of motion.
• 45:15
  Troy Taylor: Chains overloads that end range of motion, so we're getting constant resistance.
• 45:19
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 45:26
  Troy Taylor: And so I think about that for people that want to get strong or do powerlifting things.
• 45:30
  Troy Taylor: I actually think about it for the 55-year-old female that wants to maintain deadlift power.
• 45:35
  Troy Taylor: Power is the ability to get out of the chair, to walk up the stairs, to have gait speed, to do all those activities.
• 45:43
  Troy Taylor: Those are power exercises.
• 45:44
  Troy Taylor: And so I love to add chains because it's a touch of a button to a 65-year-old, post-menopause female program.
• 45:50
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 45:58
  Troy Taylor: And, yes, accentuated eccentric loading probably good for strength development, maybe for hypertrophy.
• 46:03
  Troy Taylor: I think the research is out there.
• 46:05
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 46:14
  Troy Taylor: But you can if you want to, it's awesome.
• 46:16
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 46:16
  Philip Pape: And one last question related to that.
• 46:18
  Philip Pape: Then if you have a sticking point, so again just saying bench press and you.
• 46:26
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 46:29
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 46:35
  Troy Taylor: So I get continual progressive overload of that.
• 46:38
  Troy Taylor: In that it will be, you know, 200.
• 46:40
  Troy Taylor: I can't bench 200 on tonal.
• 46:42
  Troy Taylor: It's too hard for me.
• 46:43
  Troy Taylor: I can bench significantly more on a freeway, but on tonal I'm kind of like sets of eight around 180.
• 46:49
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 46:58
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 47:07
  Philip Pape: So cool man.
• 47:08
  Philip Pape: No, I'm glad you came on.
• 47:09
  Philip Pape: I'm glad we had you on to talk about this.
• 47:11
  Philip Pape: It's just fascinating.
• 47:12
  Philip Pape: I go on all day.
• 47:12
  Philip Pape: I know we're short on time, so I do.
• 47:17
  Philip Pape: Is there any question?
• 47:19
  Philip Pape: You wish I had asked that I didn't, and what is your answer?
• 47:22
  Troy Taylor: Not really, I will say, because when this is releasing, tonal is home gym, that's what I think.
• 47:27
  Troy Taylor: We are in some personal training studios and some physical therapy clinics.
• 47:30
  Troy Taylor: In January February in New York we are opening the Tonal Training Lab, which is like small group boutique fitness training based on Tonal.
• 47:38
  Troy Taylor: 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.
• 47:54
  Philip Pape: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 47:54
  Philip Pape: So that's a, basically a gym is what you're saying with.
• 47:57
  Troy Taylor: Yeah, Imagine imagine a small group.
• 47:59
  Troy Taylor: There's, I think, eight to 10 tonals in the room.
• 48:01
  Troy Taylor: It will be a standardized group class but all the advantages of tonal plus real life coaching, Nice.
• 48:07
  Troy Taylor: So you get the kind of combination of this tech enabled in-person class, all right, troy.
• 48:12
  Philip Pape: Well, yeah, thanks for coming on, man and letting us.
• 48:14
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 48:20
  Philip Pape: 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.
• 48:27
  Philip Pape: This is interesting, especially as part of, like, your overall package here for training and what the options are out there.
• 48:33
  Philip Pape: So keep doing what you're doing, man.
• 48:34
  Philip Pape: I'm excited for the next chapter and thank you so much for coming out.
• 48:45
  Troy Taylor: Oh, and where do you want people to reach you?
• 48:46
  Troy Taylor: Cause I want to throw those in the show notes.
• 48:48
  Troy Taylor: Oh, yeah, so, uh, my Instagram is strength science Troy.
• 48:49
  Troy Taylor: Uh, you'll see lots of tonal, some evidence-based fitness, but lots of tonal uh.
• 48:50
  Troy Taylor: And you know, non non-officials accessories uh for for fun ways to train uh on that.
• 48:55
  Troy Taylor: Obviously, tonalcom is the main tonal website and that tonal training lab, uhlabcom, is the website for the New York pop-up gym.
• 49:02
  Troy Taylor: Those are probably the best places.
• 49:04
  Philip Pape: I'll throw those in there.
• 49:05
  Philip Pape: And again, thank you so much, man, for coming on.
• 49:07
  Philip Pape: Thank you so much for having me.