At this point my only weight training is on the Tonal and I clip a million pounds every 93.5 days (last 5 1-million increments have ranged from 76 to 119 days).

Current strength score is 1530 composite (1617 U / 1328 C / 1644 L).

Will keep going until the wheels fall off!

6’3”

First pic I was 27 and 170lbs. Terrible diet. Never lifted. Could never gain weight

Second pic I was 38 and 230lbs (heaviest was 250lbs). This was right before we had our son after doing IVF (years of unknown fertility issues). Didn’t want to be known as the old dad AND the fat dad. Got a Tonal and Peloton

Third pic was this morning. 42 years old and 203lbs. My wife thinks I’m crazy but I don’t always see progress when I look in the mirror. When I compare pics though from my past, I definitely do!

Decided to create some knurled handles, here's the files if anyone wants to print! 30mm to try to stay around a traditional barbell diameter with volcano knurling. Put all the dimensions in there too if you want to play with it.

https://makerworld.com/en/models/3193024-tonal-smart-handle-cover-knurled#profileId-3612547

Anyone else ever get bruises from using their tonal for chest press or over head presses? Only happens to one side. What's a good fix to prevent this?

EDIT: Do you ever change your grip? Like instead of the wire rubbing over, it goes under your arm (if that makes sense)

I saw a Gen 1 Tonal being sold locally for $1,000. I'm really considering buying it, but I have one major hesitation: I'm afraid of running into problems down the road once it's no longer covered by warranty.

Do people usually have a lot of issues with these older units? I know Tonal's warranty doesn't transfer to a second-hand buyer, so I'd be paying out of pocket for any fixes. I'd love to hear from anyone who has had theirs for a few years: f you’ve had to pay for an out-of-warranty repair, what did it end up costing you?

I'm trying to figure out if $1K is a great deal or if I'm just buying an expensive future headache. Any advice on what to test before handing over the cash is also hugely appreciated! Thanks!

I’ve had my tonal for 3 years and 1 month. I’ve been through 2 entire pregnancies (currently 4 months postpartum) and a loss during this 4 million pounds. I absolutely love my Tonal and try and get in something daily. I also have a Peloton rower and an elliptical, but the Tonal is by far my absolute favorite piece of equipment in my home gym.

Coach Joe is my toddler’s favorite coach. She always pays attention to his motivational stuff.

Just wondering if anyone has used the off-brand Pilates loops found on Amazon or if it was worth the extra cost to buy through Tonal.

I have an 83" ceiling wrapping an and looking to build a finished basement gym. Hard constraint: 83" ceiling. Tonal is already mounted and I use it for cable/functional work. PRx plate storage is up, bench and dumbbells in place.

Goal: mount a folding squat rack (leaning PRx Profile PRO 73", no pull-up bar) with the uprights flanking the Tonal, so the same wall gives me Tonal cables plus a rack for heavy compounds — squat, bench, RDL, deadlift. Pull-up bar and standing barbell press are already dead at this height (I'm 6'3").

Two things I can't resolve from spec sheets:

1. PRx folds up, and a 73" no-bar reportedly needs ~91" to fold. At 83" I'd be running it permanently deployed. Can anyone confirm the fold is dead at this height, or is there a real low-ceiling fix?
2. The Tonal arms sweep wider than the unit. Do uprights at squat width foul the arm path on wide movements? Or did you set the rack far enough off to one side to clear it?

Ruled out Rogue, REP PR-4100, and Bells of Steel on upright height. Also weighing a fixed Titan X-3 80" if folding buys me nothing here.

Anyone flanked a Tonal with a rack? What would you do differently in this footprint?

I'm way too exhausted to write a full post but I just wanted to share with you all, ladies and gentlemen: we're in!

I got everything, the whole unencrypted data dump from the emmc, even userdata and the tonal app. I enabled ADB shell super user access, and even cleverly wrote a patching app that will inject data into the boot ramdisk to unlock a suite of permissions and enable ADB SU access without ever touching the system partition.

The keen eyed will notice in my screenshot: yes I have magisk installed. This means that everything done to get me to this point is completely non-destructive and relatively safe. Yes this means the tonal is "rooted".

It was far more difficult to root than your common android phone: there was no guide, the boot patching couldn't be done on the device, and I had to basically learn from scratch how to write magisk code.

Anyways, I'll let people know more soon and give a more complete writeup. For now I'm going to bed.

---

P.S. A few people have asked about supporting this work. I’m currently between jobs and living off savings, so any help is appreciated if you feel inclined, no pressure at all. I might setup a patreon at some point, but for now just crypto.

Bitcoin:

1DW2HGqVp1qrG7AcqMCGEBBHH2EGRYphbw

ETH:

0x24201Ef392054b464De7c15DF871B93F9509b6E0

Either way, thanks for the interest and for following along. More details soon.

Just closed out six months of back-to-back Joe Rodonis programs and wanted to write up how it actually went, because progress posts are what kept me going early on.

1/30 — starting 12 Weeks to Unleash

Came into this upper-dominant and honestly a little soft on the legs after reemergence of my lower back pain. I'd been training and seeing upper results, but very tentative on legs/lower focused lifts, and it showed. Picked 12WTU because I wanted something that would tell me what to do instead of me improvising every session.

Strength score at the start: 880. First few weeks felt unremarkable. I was showing up, loads were creeping, and the chart barely moved. That's the part nobody warns you about going in.

4/29 — finishing Unleash

48/48 workouts. 739,122 lbs of total volume over the block, and my best week was the last one, 28,586 lbs. Strength score closed at 1104, which the app flagged as 50% Stronger. Picked up the 50 Hours of Time Under Tension badge along the way, and somehow finished a workout on Friday the 13th, which felt like it meant something at the time.

What the program actually did was build the base and teach me it was ok to load my lower half again. By the end I was moving loads I wouldn't have programmed for myself, and the leg days had stopped being the ones I dreaded. That mattered more than any single number.

5/11 — rolling into 12 Weeks to Jacked, second time through

I'd run 12WTJ before, so I knew what was coming. Running it a second time on top of an Unleash base was a completely different experience. Starting loads were way up, the volume that used to bury me was manageable, and weeks 9 through 12 were the best training I've done on this machine.

8/14 — finishing 12WTJ

48/48 again. 99% movement targets. Volume for this block: 1,060,187 lbs, nearly 50% more than the first program. Last set of the whole thing was Barbell Deadlift, 200 x 7, which is the machine's hard ceiling and it flagged as a Strength PR on the way out the door.

Strength score today: 1310

\- Upper: 1,337 (+83.4% since I started tracking)
\- Core: 1,390 (+93.3%)
\- Lower: 1,203 (+100.2%)

Lower body doubled. That's the number I keep staring at. I've been upper-dominant my whole life and legs were always a weak point that these programs helped me to stregehtn and regain my confidence in again. Running the programmed leg days and focus on movement quality has removed the pain and timidness I've had and made me feel stronger than my old D1 track days over 20 years ago.

Does it carry over?

This was the question I actually cared about. I spent a week traveling with nothing but a barbell gym and found out.

Benched 185 x 6. Pulled 225 x 3 conventional with reps left in the tank. Hit a 265 sumo single that had more in it. EZ bar curl 70 x 8.

Six months ago none of that was in reach. The carryover to real iron was better than I expected, and it's part of why hitting the 200 lb ceiling on deadlift didn't bother me. I know there's more there, I just need a bigger platform to find out how much.

Reflections on the last six months...

Both programs are put together well. The progression makes sense, the accessory work isn't filler, and I wasn't dreading sessions at week 9 of either block. That matters more than anything else, because the program you finish beats the perfect one you quit. Running 12WTU into 12WTJ was the right order and I'd recommend it to anyone deciding between them. Thanks Joe for really helping build programs that make us to be better athletes and demonstrate that the standard remains the standard!

If you're earlier in this:

My chart is not a straight line. Look at the shape of it: flat for two months, then it just doesn't stop climbing. There were stretches where nothing moved for weeks and I assumed I was wasting my time.

Six months, two programs, 96 workouts, and about 1.8 million pounds moved. Consistency beat every clever thing I tried in my first year on this.

Happy to answer questions on either program.

She bought me a pair of double-loop straps to help with my back pain and shoulder rehab. I was pretty skeptical at first, but after a week on the Tonal... man, I’m actually hooked!

My back feels way better, and it’s no joke of a workout. Any other dads here doing Pilates on their Tonal?

As an exercise science professional (I have a PhD in Biodynamic Studies of Physical Education and Sport, and I’m a senior manager of performance at Tonal, but all views here are my own and apply to any type of strength training), I get a lot of questions about how quickly you can expect results when you start strength training. This post breaks down the adaptations that happen inside your body, and in what order they occur, when you start a resistance training routine. 

I know people also get discouraged when they can’t see results in the mirror, but I hope this post explains how positive changes are happening before aesthetic ones, and why you should keep going. 

Whenever you place demands on your body, whether that’s lifting weights for the first time or picking up something heavier than you’ve lifted before, your body adapts to those demands. Resistance training triggers a cascade of adaptations. Some occur in the nervous system, allowing you to produce force more efficiently, while others occur in your muscles, tendons, and bones, leading to long-term structural changes.

Here’s what to expect in your first six months of training:

Weeks 1-6: Neuromuscular Adaptations

Not surprisingly, one of the first changes you’ll notice is that you’re getting stronger. 

Interestingly, these early strength gains occur long before your muscles have had enough time to grow substantially. During the first several weeks of training, most improvements are driven by adaptations within your nervous system rather than structural changes in your muscles. That means you’ll likely feel these changes before you can see them. 

When you’re new to lifting, your body is relatively inefficient at recruiting motor units, the functional units of the neuromuscular system consisting of a motor neuron and the muscle fibers it controls. With consistent training, your nervous system becomes much more efficient by recruiting more motor units, increasing their firing rate, and improving coordination between them. Simply put, your brain becomes better at activating the muscle you already have.

At the same time, each training session stimulates muscle protein synthesis, the process responsible for repairing and building muscle tissue. Although these responses begin immediately after your first workout, noticeable increases in muscle size require repeated training sessions over time, along with adequate dietary protein and overall nutrition to support recovery and growth.

It's also completely normal to experience muscle soreness during your first few workouts. Fortunately, your body adapts remarkably quickly through what researchers call the
repeated bout effect,” meaning you'll gradually become less sore when performing the same exercises again.

TL;DR: In weeks 1-6 you can expect improvements in strength as your nervous system learns to recruit your muscles more effectively and your movement patterns become more refined.

Weeks 6-12: The Transition to Muscle Growth
As training continues, the repeated increases in muscle protein synthesis begin to accumulate. When these repeated training sessions are paired with sufficient dietary protein (around 0.54-0.73 grams per pound of body weight) and overall nutrition, your body starts building new muscle tissue, a process known as hypertrophy

This period is often especially rewarding because you're now benefiting from both continued improvements in neuromuscular efficiency and increasing muscle size. Larger muscles, combined with a nervous system that has learned to activate them more effectively, allow strength gains to continue accelerating. 

TL; DR: At this point, many people begin noticing visible changes in muscle size and body composition while continuing to make significant strength gains.

Months 3-6: Building Your Foundation
By this stage, your rate of improvement may begin to slow compared with your first few months, but don't mistake a slower rate of progress for the end of progress.

As long as you continue applying the principle of progressive overload, your body will keep adapting. Strength continues to improve through a combination of ongoing neuromuscular and muscular adaptations, while muscle growth continues provided you're consistently training and consuming adequate nutrition.

By this point, your movement patterns have become more consistent and efficient. With a strong technical foundation in place, you can begin shifting some of your focus from simply controlling movement to moving with greater speed and intent, an important step toward developing muscular power.

TL; DR: The rate of improvement may seem to slow here, but you’re still making progress. With your foundation in place, you can focus on more specific training goals.

In summary…

Weeks 1-6

• Rapid strength gains driven primarily by neuromuscular adaptations
• Improved movement quality and coordination 
• Decreasing soreness as your body adapts

Weeks 6-12

• Continued strength gains
• Visible improvements in muscle size and body composition
• Muscle growth becomes increasingly apparent

Months 3-6

• Continued improvements in strength and muscle size through progressive overload
• More efficient movement patterns
• A strong foundation for developing power and long term performance

Getting started is often the hardest part. I hope this post helps answer some common questions I’ve gotten over the years around what to expect. Wherever you are in your journey, consistency trumps all so hang in there! 

Feel free to respond with any questions about early training adaptations or additional topics you’d like me to dive into.

Sources: 

• American College of Sports Medicine. Progression Models in Resistance Training for Healthy Adults. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2009.
• Greyvenstein D, Newbold J. Tension to Translation: External to Internal Processes in Muscle Hypertrophy. 2025.
• Jäger R, Kerksick CM, Campbell BI, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Protein and Exercise. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2017;14:20.
• Aragon AA, Schoenfeld BJ, Wildman R, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Diets and Body Composition. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2017;14:16.