Tonal. Worth the Hype? (Full Review and Workout Demo)

what's up everyone paul scalar from paul scholar x fit and today as promised i'm going to give you my full review of the tonal digital cable system and i'll explain to you why i called it the coolest but most challenging cable system that i've ever used i'm going to go over everything from installation to accessories to how to use the system to why it's challenging and what makes it different from all other cable systems and exercise equipment i'm going to go over some of the most asked about exercises on the tonal i'll be going over the squat i'll be going over the deadlift i'll be going over the bench press and i'm going to give you a whole bunch more what makes the tonal different at least for me is the use of digital weight now i've never used digital weight before this was the first time that i've used it so as soon as i actually got into position i realized this is ridiculously challenging so let's first start with installation this was a question that i got asked a lot about how is it installed on my wall two delivery guys came they took a bracket they stuck six lag screws into two studs on my wall and then this unit itself the tonal unit itself weighs 165 pounds so we all know that i can lift that however i can't lift it on my own so two delivery guys picked it up stuck it on my wall simple i didn't have to do anything they were in and out of my house within 20 minutes so let's talk about the accessories that come with the tonal the first the rope i was actually very surprised at how sturdy the rope was it's actually a lot sturdier than the ropes that we have at our studio what makes this rope actually unique and what makes the entire system unique is this t-hook at the top so this t-hook goes into the cable arms and makes it extremely extremely efficient and fast to change out any of the accessories and we'll go into that in a little bit the second accessory and this is one of the reasons why i say it's probably the coolest cable system that i've ever used second accessory is the cable handle now it comes with two cable handles same thing comes with a t-hook at the top for easy installation and change out and what makes this extremely unique there are actually batteries inside of this cable handle and the reason that there are batteries inside this cable handle is because there are two safeties at each end of the cable handle so you can actually activate and deactivate the weight with a click of a button and i'm going to show you that in a little bit when we actually get into the exercises the third accessory is the bar so we use this bar for all of our barbell exercises same thing it's got a t-hook on either end so we can attach it to both cable arms and here's what makes this even more unique so this is a safety clip this safety clip acts the same way as the buttons on the side of the handle so we can actually activate and deactivate weight at any time during any motion when you're using the tonal we actually take it and clip it onto the bar now we want to clip it on to the bar closest to where we have access especially with our thumb or finger whatever you need but as soon as you press this button here it either activates or deactivates the weight and it's a great feature and it's used extensively especially when we get set up for the bench press it also comes with a handy mat and a solid roller and then a flat bench all we do is we hit the touch screen wait for it to boot up and while we're waiting for it to boot up which was obviously very very fast i'm going to show you how the cable arms actually work we've got these cable arms that are actually stowed behind and we move them out to the side the cable arms we want to lock into position and then very very easy adjustments after this as far as moving the cable arm there is a lever right on the side we lift that lever and that levers it up and down by pushing this button we can move the cable arms in either direction here's a neat part and that's what i talked about earlier when we talked about the t-hooks on the end of each piece so this t-hook very simply goes right in i twist and i'm done same thing with all the other accessories that we have on this unit to take it off push in turn and done so we've got our rope in turn done we've got another lever on the side and all i have to do is gently pull it and it slides up and down so it's very very simple all of the adjustments are user friendly so obviously the tonal comes with a base price and then there is your additional subscription your monthly subscription that you can actually cancel at the end of the year i would say when it comes to that subscription there are a lot of people that if they purchase this unit without a subscription it would just sit there and they wouldn't use it and they probably wouldn't get their money out of it being a trainer for almost 30 years i've seen people purchase home equipment like treadmills and bikes and other weights and they end up sitting in the corner collecting dust not all of you may like the fact that there's a subscription i'm not saying it's good or bad if you are not inclined to use a piece of equipment all the time and to have the motivation all the time to get on it it's a good thing but if you take a look at the screen you can scroll through all of the workouts so you've got a ton of exercise quick workouts kickboxing boxing warm-up mobility recovery i mean the list goes on and on and on so there really is a benefit to that subscription because you get all of this and there's so much you really can't go wrong you've got hundreds of workouts to use that you can pick with a trainer or you can do standalone i chose to do stand-alone that means i get to pick my own exercises there's a video demonstration on there if i don't know how to make the adjustments with the arms so it shows you exactly how to set everything up which is actually pretty neat the other neat thing about this is it comes with a music subscription so you can choose whatever music you want so if i looked up here i've got top 40 electronic dance house beats techno remix 80s pop early 2000s on and on and on if you know me you know i like hard rock so i usually go with the hard rock station so you've got music along with it it's very interactive it's very intuitive it makes it fun especially if you like music and you like working out it makes it fun to do everything if you take a look down here there's something called weight modes so when i press weight modes it shows me the smart flex feature it shows me an eccentric feature there's also a chains mode and the chains mode simulates using chains on your barbell when you lift so it's actually pretty neat there is a spotter mode and a burnout mode i usually like to use the spotter mode because when it gets extremely challenging and it does i can actually use that spotter mode to help me get through whatever exercise it is that i'm doing the other neat thing is that you can create exercise blocks so down at the bottom if i want to create an exercise block i can create a whole bunch of exercises that i can use later and go up and just hit the button and all the exercises that i actually programmed in there are still in there all right so let's get started with the bench press the bench press was probably the most asked about exercise on the total i am going to take weight off so that there's no resistance at all and all i have to do is press that and it took all the weight off all right so i'm sitting on the bench i've got the barbell on my legs what do i do now so remember i don't have any tension i've got my safety clip by my right arm all i'm going to do is lean back slowly i still don't have any tension on it here's my right thumb i'm going to get ready to click the safety and it's going to load all the weight onto my chest so clicked and now i've got weight and you can see the bar is already starting to shake shaking is okay the shaking does all of your stabilizing muscles that don't always fire when you do traditional free weights so as i'm pushing harder the machine is intuitively giving me more weight and causing me to shake which is fine because my chest and my arms are firing hearts on my rep number seven and you'll see if you look up at the screen it's adjusting the weight as i go now the spotter just kicked in and it continues to apply force even as i go so i'm gonna hit my safety just took tension off of it i'm gonna lift my head up i'm gonna put it behind my neck and i'm gonna sit up so you can see how difficult that was vicious chest pump i'm now going to go into the barbell deadlift again 200 pounds of digital weight completely different i've got 155 pounds weights are off and here's the fun part so all i have to do i can set up in position here i don't have any weight on it yet i've got my spotter safety right here just loaded weight and now i've got it and you can see it's sucking me into the ground i come down into my deadlift and up and i can tell you flat out ridiculously difficult so if i get stuck i can hit that safety and i just release the tension or i can bring it back down to start all right so i can switch very very easily to a standing barbell overhead press it's got me at 55 pounds i'm not going to put any weight on it yet so i'm going to get myself into position first i'm going to hit my safety and it just put weight on so i'm gonna press and push my body through core tight the entire time this is one big exercise for core engagement shoulder recruitment so i can bring it back down to start position hit my safety and release it the neat thing about this also is it gives you constant feedback for every rep of every set it tells me about my range of motion did i complete a full rep they were all up and all down in the same position how many reps i did how much time under tension and then it tells me how much above 80 percent i went so one of the bigger questions that i've gotten is can you squat on the tonal yes you can squat on the tunnel today i'm going to show you a front squat and i'm going to show you how to get the barbell into position that was the other big question you got the barbell down at the floor there's no weight on it i've got my safety my on off switch right here get myself into position now i'm only going to be using a fraction of the total weight the total weight on this is 200 digital pounds i'm only going to be using 75 digital pounds as you'll see it'll be more than enough for today so i'm going to press my safety i've just loaded myself into position it's pulling me into the floor descend and it's giving me more weight as i go along all right so i'm going to unload it by pressing my safety bring it back down to the floor so if any of you have seen my videos you know my legs are strong i'm only using 75 pounds of digital weight 200 as a max on this so i'm not even close and i'm out of breath so anybody who thinks they're too strong for this you might be but you probably are not so pull-ups are one of my favorite exercises chin-ups pull-ups any type of grip doesn't matter i've been asked well how do you do a pull-up on the tonal right now it's at 69 pounds i know for a fact this is going to be ugly i've done it before it was one of the things that wowed me about this machine again how much tension that it could possibly provide and this is one that really really defines it i'm going to grab my handle grab my handle sit on down and when i sit down you can see i barely can sit so i've got to really pull myself down and most people have asked me well how do you keep yourself in position i keep my core tight so if you come around to the front you can see the core i lock my core in place extra extra tight i got my lats fully engaged and then i pull but i'm pulling with my upper body so that was the first rep and you can see there's ridiculous back engagement again barely able to pull if i want also so now it's getting very tough i can take my knees pull against the bench and hold myself in position so i am only rip number four no different than doing a pull-up okay so this is actually one of the coolest parts about the tunnel aside from all the other cool parts the chest fly i'm going to do a decline chest fly one of the problems that most people have when they're taking weight off of a traditional cable system is that they end up hurting the shoulder there's too much weight on it as they try to take it out and pull it out with both sides greatest part about this is that i can take tension off before i even start so there's no weight on it instead of injuring my shoulder i'm going to grab it pull it off gently like that there's no tension on it grab this and now i can get myself into position i still haven't even loaded the weight yet i've got myself leveraged into position i can start either with the tension out here or i can begin my exercise with the tension here i'm going to choose to start with my tension here that way unload it so with my thumb i'm going to flex hit it and take it back so now i'm in a great position and i can generate tension through again extremely extremely smooth so when i'm done hit my safety i just released all the tension i can place it back gently no injuries chest pumped great feature of this machine okay now the big question did the tonal meet my expectations absolutely and not only did it meet my expectations it far exceeded them i'm not a big tech guy i'm not a gadget guy i'm pretty straightforward with all my exercises however i was absolutely stunned at the amount of resistance that you could actually get with digital weight how good could a cable station be this one's pretty solid so the big question i get besides that is is it worth the money and i think so yes i think it is worth the money if you have the money to spend and you're looking for a solid all-inclusive piece of home equipment this is it now i really can't think of too many drawbacks to this system other than the fact that if you want to purchase it you do need to purchase the subscription that comes along with it you can cancel the subscription at the end of 12 months but do keep in mind you will lose some functionality that does come along with the subscription you will however still be able to enjoy the benefits of the actual system itself now the base price of the unit runs around thirty five hundred dollars with accessories the subscription is forty nine dollars a month so you're basically looking at around forty one hundred dollars all in if you decide to cancel the subscription at the end of 12 months i hope you enjoyed my review of the tonal i give it a double thumbs up five stars i think it's a phenomenal product i hope you do too but again you have to experience it to understand exactly what it can do so if you enjoyed my video please subscribe to my channel leave some comments below and let me know what you thought about the tonal if you had any more questions about it and hopefully i can try to get to and answer some of them for you thank you so much for tuning in and i will see you next time

Channel: PaulSklarXFit

Views: 97,843

Rating: 4.9081688 out of 5

Keywords: Tonal, Tonal Review, Workout Videos, How to use the Tonal, Home Workout Equipment

Id: sWpLZ5OfabM

Length: 17min 35sec (1055 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021