It's been a wild year

A little over two years ago, I purchased a Tonal home gym. When I bought it, I had no idea how much of a life changing experience this machine would be. Throughout my life, I had tried many different workout plans and ways to keep my body in shape and none of them were effective nor did they fit into my schedule. Going to the gym, waiting for workout equipment to open up and trying to figure out what kind of a workout I was actually going to do just wasn't working for me.

Consistency is key to success with working out, and Tonal makes it so simple to be consistent. Throughout 2023, I completed 332 workouts. These workouts were not just lifting weights, but it was a combination of weight lifting, yoga, stretches, Pilates and meditations. All of these workouts from the vast library of workouts that the Tonal offers.

Those 332 workouts came out to 157 hours of exercise throughout the year. It is crazy to me that in the years leading up to purchasing my Tonal, I would probably get about 10 hours of working out the entire year. I am sure most of that time was spent just wandering around the gym or waiting on the bench or squat rack to open up.

Another cool stat was that I had 25 hours under tension, which meant that throughout the year, my body was pushing against weight for over a full day. That is crazy for me to think because most of the time when you are weight lifting, you probably spend about 20 seconds or so with each set. I spent a lot of time slowing down my reps and working on explosive power as I pushed the weights and during the lowering part of the rep, I tried to spend 3-4 seconds during the lowering phase. This really increases your strength when you take time to concentrate on your form and activating your muscle fibers.

Some of the workouts in the different programs can get pretty crazy. I did a program called Extreme Accumulation, and the focus was on high volume. This program was so cool. It was full of really high reps and got my body pretty sore. The highest volume workout for my entire year was a leg day where I got 29,370 pounds. This workout was pretty hard to get through, and my legs and core were super sore for a few days.

Another cool aspect of the Tonal is the achievement badges you can earn. I earned 33 awards throughout this past year. Some of them are getting workouts done on holidays or your birthdays, and other rewards are for streaks that you have going. Right now my wife and I have a 103 week streak, which means we have done at least one workout on Tonal in each week for the past 103 weeks. That's so cool, because we have never been this consistent.

My strength score has stayed pretty much the same throughout the entire year. This is mainly because I spent most of the year working out in the "recovery" mode. This mode lowers the weight and doesn't increase the weight automatically. I decided to do recovery mode for the majority of the year so that I can focus on form and decrease any chance of getting injured.

Recovery mode isn't easy though. I have gained more strength in my body using recovery mode and focusing on form than I did the previous year. Too many people that have a Tonal just try to push as much weight as they can so that they can increase their strength scores. I did this for a while before I realized that it was actually hurting my strength and teaching me bad habits. So now I focus on form above anything else and my body has responded better.

I lifted 1.42 million pounds throughout the year and have lifted a total of 4.22 million over the lifetime of owning my Tonal. The fact that every pound I have ever lifted with this machine is super cool. It even tracks the feedback for each rep I have ever done and I can go back and see each individual rep and how I have improved over time.

The Tonal is truly an incredible machine and I am looking forward to continuing my fitness journey. Getting older isn't as scary when you are in better shape. My health has never been as good as it is now and I contribute a lot of that to all the different workouts that I am able to do in the comfort of my home.

Maybe one day I will share some pictures of my progress. I have thought about entering in fitness or body building competitions, so maybe when that happens, I will post some pictures of my progress because I don't look anything like I used to a few short years ago.