In 2020 my husband and I replaced our gym membership with an at-home system called the Tonal. The Tonal is a smart home fitness system that is mounted on a wall. It features a 24-inch screen that you can select myriad workouts from, along with adjustable arms that you can attach various smart exercises pieces to. Your weight is adjusted digitally without you having to ever physically add any more metal weights. I’m sharing my thoughts and experiencing using the Tonal as part of my exercise routine.
It’s an investment of a few thousand dollars to buy a Tonal, but one that replaces a family of four’s gym membership in a year. It’s like we have a trainer at home, too. You can select from strength, cardio, yoga, pilates, family (kids), HIIT, and so many more types of workouts. You can also make your way through various programs with specific goals. Right now I am doing the Fit for Summer series, for example. As you work out, you can listen to a Tonal station with top 40 hits, for example, or use an Apple music playlist.
A team of professionals delivers and installs the Tonal on your selected wall of your home, as long as it’s a wall with two studs. It is ready to go from the start.
The workouts are tough, even if they don’t feel like they are in the moment. After every single workout I’ve felt like it was a full-body workout and that I actually worked up a sweat. As you work out the Tonal provides instant form feedback and can tell you to slow down if you’re moving too quickly, for instance. It also changes your weights once it senses that it’s too easy for you. You don’t have to think about upgrading your weight; the Tonal does it for you. (Of course, you can always increase it on your own, too.) The Tonal makes weight lifting more accessible and less intimidating, because setting up weights has always been something I was afraid to do at gyms.
So far I have completed 24 workouts for a total duration of 8 hours and 53 minutes. I’ve lifted 12,689 pounds, according to my stats, which are available on the Tonal app.
With Tonal, you can select from a diverse team of coaches. They all have unique personalities and you can find body diversity as well. To motivate you more, you can compare yourself to other Tonal users on the leaderboard, which shows your total workouts for the month compared with the 13,000-plus others on the app. You can also unlock achievements, like completting, 10, 25, 50, or 100 workouts, or by lifting 50,000 pounds, 100K, 500K, etc. I have acquired badges for working out on my birthday (Icing on the Cake), Early Riser, High Intensity, Healthy Habit, Namaste and Starting Weights.
While I need to get into a better habit of incorporating workouts into my daily life, I know that Tonal will help me hit my fitness goals this year. It’s made it easy to get in even a short workout because I don’t need to leave my house, and I can always find a workout to match my mood. I might sometimes want a slow, gentle yoga session or an intense, full body workout. I can find it all on Tonal.
