Tonal adds four new coaches.

Tons of new content announced.

We have a new book club selection – “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker.

September Challenge – Hyped Hypertrophy with Coach Nicolette.

Tonal is looking for market research participants if you live in L.A.

The Tonal app now lets you follow other Tonal users.

Tonal adds new social options!

All this plus our interview with Joe Wetterhahn!

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Tonal Adds New Social Options Plus Our Interview With Joe Wetterhahn

I got done doing my Tonal. If I sound winded or if I look peaked, that’s why. I don’t want people to be concerned.

They are concerned. I’m sure. People are always concerned.

They’re like, “Tom looks like he’s about to pass out. Why is he so red? Did Crystal tell him a dirty joke right before they started?” You have to be really dirty to make me blush. What pre tell do you have in store for people? 

We’re going to talk all about these brand new coaches at Tonal. There is some news that was dropped that we’re going to discuss. There are tons of new content we got to talk through. We also have an amazing interview with Joe Wetterhahn. We have a lot going on in this episode.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, wherever you find a podcast, you can find us. While you’re there, be sure to rate, review and subscribe. You can also find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/supersetpodcast. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. While you’re on a social media platform, that’s the easiest thing you can do to help the show. Share it on your Facebook feed or what have you. If you like Tonal or you probably have friends that have a Tonal, they might enjoy the show as well. If you want to watch these episodes, you can also find us on YouTube at YouTube.com/theclipout, which is the name of our other show, but everything lives on one YouTube channel. You can watch these shows in their entirety if you want to see us talk to the guest and whatnot. There’s all that let’s, let’s dig in. Shall we?

We shall.

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We have four new coaches.

We do, four of them. It’s going to be Brendon Ayanbadejo, Nikki Metzger, Kendall Wood, and Trace Gotsis. Brendan is a former professional football player. He describes his coaching style as a drill sergeant. I know that can have a little bit of a negative connotation, but I see that like Coach Jackson. That actually works well for a lot of people. Right now, you can already get three strength-based workouts from coach Brendon that are going to help you channel your inner athlete. Nikki Metzger is a certified strength coach and former Nike master trainer. Isn’t that amazing? This is very interesting to me. She discovered her true calling as a trainer during the pandemic, so she’s new.

How about that? Talk about baptism by fire.

I hope you like virtual, Nikki, because here you are.

That’s like, “This baseball glove looks interesting. I play for the Yankees now.”

She said that she loves showing up and serving her community, and being a Tonal coach is all about that. We then have Coach Kendall Wood, a.k.a. Coach Woody. I want to make sure everybody knows this. If you hear anybody referring to Woody, it is Kendall Wood. After moving to Los Angeles, Coach Woody took a leap of faith and traded a career in digital media for fitness. That’s a pretty big jump. Now, she’s bringing her contagious high energy to three new Tonal workouts. They are already on the trainer. You can go check those out. We then have Coach Trace. Fitness motivates Coach Trace because it’s an opportunity to encourage others to work toward the best versions of themselves. He’s bringing three new workouts also to help you work up a physical and mental sweat. Also, a particular note to myself and Tom, he is from Kansas City.

That’s relatively close to here. That’s like a four-hour drive.

It’s in the same state so I’ll take it.

I need to try him because I was like, “Trace like Trace Beaulieu from Mystery Science Theater.” 

There are a lot of cultural references in all of their names that you were making.

Anything that makes it nerdy, I’ll give it a shot.

That works. Whatever works to get you to take a class, Tom, we’ll take it.

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As always, there are tons of new content.

There is so much. One of the things I want to highlight though is Coach Liz’s new Ankle Mobility Clinic. As a whole, we tend to skip over mobility but it’s so important to keep moving. Mobility is important to be able to keep moving. I want to make sure people saw that and give it a try if you haven’t. There are all kinds of new things. We’ve got Athletic Sculpt with Coach Nikki. We’ve got Lean Legs with Coach Gabby, Warm-up Flow with Coach Nicollete. We then have recovery. This one is Postural Perfection with Coach Jared. Lord knows I could use that after sitting at my computer all day, a quick Cardio Crusher with Coach Woody, Beginner Bootcamp with Coach Amy, Boxing For Beginners with Coach Woody. I can’t wait to check that out because that’s another coach that’s doing boxing. I want to check that out. Back to kickboxing, we have one with Coach Brett.

We have Coach Woody doing boxing and Coach Brett doing kickboxing. I think they should fight.

That could get scary fast. Probably not until COVID is done. We need to make sure that they’re following proper COVID protocols. There’s a new meditation, Moment of Calm with Coach Allison. There’s a new yoga, Vinyasa for Hip Mobility with Coach Nikki, then Recovery Basics with Coach Jake. If you’ve never focused on recovery, that would be a good one to start with. Full-body Pilates Basics with Coach Frances, Core Heat Barre with Coach Frances. That is definitely not for beginners. That’s for intermediate.

We got more. Coach Brendon has Strength for Life. There’s Movement Basics with Coach Woody, Endless Summer Body with Coach Trace, Cardio Legs with Coach Trace, Let’s Get Pumped with Coach Nikki, Stable Base with Coach Nikki, Balance Burn with Brendon, Core Challenge with Brendon, Buys and Tries with Coach Woody, Keep it Coming Crusher with Coach Woody, Break a Sweat with Coach Nikki, and Can you Handle It? with Coach Trace. More yoga and more flow. This one is Chill Flow with Coach Frances, Pilates Powerhouse Cardio with Coach Frances. More new barre, Discovering Your Core Spinal Mobility with Coach Jared, and Release Negativity with Coach Nikki. More kids camp and new family. This is Karate with Coach Paul. tons. If you’re looking for kids content, barre, mobility, yoga, regular old strength, and hit cardio, we got it.

You can add Coach Paul to the Brett and Woody fight. It’s going to be like an action movie.

What they should do is not have a fight. They should have one of those tournaments. Most of the instructors are pretty fit. They could all join in and they could fight. Whoever wins that round goes to the next round. They have this big thing and we can all bet on them. It sounds like a lot of fun.

It’s like Tonal fight club.

Who can shadow box the other person? For all of those new classes, I have been seeing tons of good things, but especially I want to call out, Can You Handle It? I have seen many people take that and say very good things about how hard it was, but a good workout.

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The September Book Club selection has been announced.

It is Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD.

Because we’re tired. It looks like a short book.

That got that covered. Thanks, Tom.

I don’t even have a PhD. My guess is there’s more to it than that.

I think this is more about improving your sleep, but that book title was probably taken. This gives the why it’s important to sleep. How about that? I think that this is about improving it. This will be an interesting book club to hear what people do today and what kind of changes they make as they go through the process of reading the book, what kind of advice they take, and what things they learned from each other.

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The September Community Challenge is upon us.

For September, it’s going to be Hyped Up Hypertrophy with Coach Nicolette. That’s a tough one.

I’m halfway through it.

How’s it going, Tom?

I talked about how peaked I was at the beginning of this episode and that is why.

Each of these workouts is pretty long.

The one that I did was 54 minutes. That’s how long it was supposed to be, but it might have been a little longer for me. She’s got you working for good such time.

Are there breaks between each move?

There are but there are not.

There are for you. Are they programmed in?

She keeps you moving. It’s not too bad. There are active recoveries for you to recuperate a little bit. It’s not too terribly bad. I’m making it sound worse than it is.

I’m asking because I want to try it. I haven’t been working on the Tonal. I’ve been doing a lot of cardio for MetPro. I’m a little scared of this one, to be honest. I don’t know if I should jump in and go for it or if I should ease into it with something else. We’ll see. That’s why I’m asking. It’s a totally selfish question, but I figured somebody else out there might have questions too. The challenges are cool because you don’t just do these programs. You also have all these other things going on all month long. One of the things that you get is for Facebook lives. There are going to be movement technique workshops that Coach Nicolette is going to run. She’s going to give you in-depth guidance on moves like the neutral grip, deadlift, lap pull down, bent over row, overhead press, and goblet squat.

You can get into those moves and make sure that you’re doing them well. It gives you the confidence to know you’re doing them well. There are going to be four of those. That’s one every week. There’s also going to be 30 days of curated workouts. It’s not just the hypertrophy, but also every single day has something. Sometimes it’s mobility. Sometimes it’s a yoga class. It’s different every day. You can check out the group, it’s called Coach Nicolette’s Hyped Up Hypertrophy Challenge. When you go to that group, you can quickly find the calendar under the announcements. You’ll be able to follow along. There’s group accountability. In the end, there is an end of program celebration that everybody gets to join in.

Also, if you live in the Los Angeles area, Tonal wants to talk to you. 

They are looking for people in the LA area to participate in a 30 to 60-minute market research study. If you qualify and you participate, you will be compensated for your time. Compensation begins at $75 for people that complete it. There is a link that you need to use to apply. There’s a 5 to 10-minute screening survey that you have to complete in order to see if you’re eligible. That’s step one. If you do qualify, you can go to the in-store interview at Century City Mall or a focus group at the Jackson Adept Research in Beverly Hills, California. It’s going to be August 30th and 31st. People are probably going to have already missed the date by the time this is published but it’s pretty cool. I can’t wait to see what they are getting ready to do.

It makes me wonder what they’re researching. I’m also pretty impressed that Coach Jackson has his own marketing firm.

Coach Jackson is into all kinds of things. He’s got a little dabbling in this, a little dabbling in that.

He was like, “Side hustle, start a marketing firm.” 

I don’t think that they are related. We still need to chat about this cool new thing that was dropped for social. 

You can connect with friends and get stronger together on Tonal.

This is so cool. You can follow people on Tonal and they can follow you. Whenever you open up the app, you have to make sure you downloaded the most recent version. It’s got to be version 4.0.0 or further if somebody reads this down the road. When you download it, you can have an option to go to your profile. There’s a social tab and you have to change your visibility to be like, “Show my leaderboard name. Don’t make my profile private,” to be able to participate in this. You can then follow people. If you already follow them on Facebook and they are using this app, you will automatically be suggested to those people. If not, all you got to do is follow this cool thread that Kate started over on the official Tonal community.

She started a neat flash challenge. What she’s trying to do is get as many people on this thread to follow each other as possible. The goal is 15,000 member to member follows in 24 hours. If we make this date, then she will randomly select 15 members from the thread to win a Tonal gift box. It’s cool because whenever you have all these friends in your feed, you can see what workouts they did, and when they completed them. You can put your reaction to it. It’s not just in love. They’ve got a strength reaction and a heart reaction and a fire emoji. They are fun. I love seeing that in my feed. It’s very motivating to see what other people are doing. Also, I haven’t been using Tonal and I became very aware of how empty my feed is. I was totally embarrassed. I need to get some workouts ASAP. Tom, are you going to share yours so I can follow you?

I haven’t downloaded the app because I got to the machine.

I’m going to download the app on your phone.

Okay. You have to log me in because I was going to change my screen name, I couldn’t remember my password.

You’re a mess.

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Joining us is Dr. Joseph Wetterhahn. How is it going?

I’m terrific.

Joe, I am curious how you originally found out about Tonal and decided, “I’m bringing this guy home,” and how long ago was that?

I grew up on a farm as a farm kid. Our farm went broke because farms do that, but I grew up doing that stuff. I was in reasonably good shape. I played baseball and hockey primarily as a high schooler and stayed in good shape through manual labor. Life then goes on. I go to college medical school, get married, have kids, and found that that time of my life was the least healthy I’ve ever been. I gained weight and I couldn’t do anything. My son who’s a little four-year-old, I couldn’t catch him running up a hill one day. I said, “This has to change,” because I did nothing.

I started to run and then running leads you to think that you need to do more than cardio. I started to do some resistance training at home like Star-Lord in the Guardians of the Galaxy. I bought a Bowflex and I committed. I knew Tom would like that. I started working out at home, which then leads you to say, “This is not sufficient.” I ended up going to the gym. I became a Y-rat for a good 10 or 15 years or so. Life circumstances change and I’m living far enough away from the Y that it’s not practical to do that. I tried to find a way to continue my resistance training at home. I was never satisfied.

For someone like me, it was hard for me to workout well at home. I have dumbbells, bars, whatever, but shoulder pain, no spotter. You can’t get the weights in position. I was using lighter weights because I didn’t have anybody there to help me. In the Y, you’ve got the guy who’s going to help you put the dumbbells in position for a good shoulder press. At home, your shoulder hurts like how you think you’ve torn something and you’re done. I do believe it was the television ad. I don’t even remember how I found Tonal, but I saw that and said, “I wonder if this is real or it’s just another TV thing.” It looks incredible. I’m immediately skeptical because I’m skeptical by nature about things.

I do my research and I see some reviews. I look at some of the tech specs. I talked to the chief financial officer in the house. She gives me the thumbs up and says, “If you use it, which I know you will, I think it’s a great idea,” which is her way of saying, “You better do something. I’m nine years younger. I’m not going to be walking around with a guy looking like that.” We lived the life. It might have been a television ad but in my own personal research.

I ordered it mid-pandemic. I ordered it in October 2020. It arrived in December, installed it and fell in love with it. I went cross country skiing with the lovely Mrs. Wetterhahn. On our Christmas trip to Lake Placid, New York, I fell and dislocated my elbow. That put the damper on using it with any kind of intensity. I feel like I got doing it in February of 2021. Everything I had hoped it would be, it is. It is very challenging. I hate the AI and it hates me. The constant ratcheting up of the resistance. It’s like, “Come on, cut me a break on some of these.”

It doesn’t hurt my shoulders. I get the things in position. I turned the resistance is on. I do my lift. I turn the resistance off. There’s none of that lurching trying to get away. It was perfect for a guy like me who doesn’t have a spotter to get things in position and was hurting himself, trying to workout hard. I’d like to work out hard. I’m not there for toning.

You want to make sure it’s worth your time.

What this has done is let me workout with a lot of intensity, some good resistance without hurting myself.

When you had your injury, did it have any physical therapy aspect or did you let yourself all the way heal and you didn’t need it in that regard?

You don’t know me at all. I’m not smart enough to let it heal.

You’re a doctor.

I give great advice but I don’t follow great advice. I didn’t let this heal super well. To this day, I’m wearing a brace when I workout because it’s still naggy a little bit. It’s totally thrown off my golf game, which is a whole other show. I could have, I should have. Your question was both to expose my faults and also to talk about this as a physical therapy-type device. This is custom made for people doing their own physical therapy. A 1-pound increment, unlimited range of motion. If I had a brain in my head, I probably would be all better now. Instead, it was like, “It’s February and I’m going to lift 60,000 pounds for my birthday,” and all that effect.

I want to talk about that because when we were talking before the show started, you said something that I must have misheard. You lift once a month, 100,000 pounds in one workout. You could not have meant that.

I was getting frustrated by the elbow. I wanted to get into high-volume workouts. I would lift a lot of weight. I said, “I’m turning 60 and I want to see if I can do a 60,000-pound workout.” I was doing 30/40 and that wasn’t too terrible. It wasn’t that hard. I worked out and I got 60,000 pounds in. I’m like, “What’s the next step on this?” I’m sure that people have done this. There’s no way I’m the first person to do this. I’m certainly, nowhere near the strongest guy in the Tonal room.

I do not claim it ever to be the first guy who has done this but I said, “I’m going to do 100,000 pounds workout once a month.” I’ve done that. I did one in March, April, May, June, July, I’ve done those five months and I’ve got a couple of times in August. My record is 112,000. I tried to do 1,000 pounds a minute. I don’t do this over the course of an afternoon. My pace is usually about 1,000 pounds a minute. It takes me 1.5 hours, 1 hour and 45 minutes, close to 2 hours when I did the 112,000 but I can do 100,000 pounds in a workout.

Is that the only thing you do for the month? Is that how that works?

No, that’s just my day. I’m not trying to sound like a jerk here. I don’t have delayed onset muscle soreness after that. I’ll go out, do my day and play golf or do whatever I have to do. The next day, I’m ready to go back and do what I’m going to do. You’re not going to do this doing lateral raises or with triceps extensions. You’ll be there for a month. These are squats, deadlifts, rows, bench presses, and the big muscle groups. I can imagine I had boredom if I did this with smaller muscle groups. I get it done with big muscle groups. The backs out on the squats, the deadlifts, the barbell rows and the upper rows, so it’s easier to get there. I like to do shrugs, which is a non-official, off library movement, but that’s part of my workout routine. I can use a high volume in that. That’s how that’s done.

Do you build custom workouts?

Almost primarily. I’m a terrible guest for you because I literally, and only because of you, completed my first program. I’ve never done a program because I know what I want to do. First, these Tonal coaches are incredible. I listened to Coach Liz’s as I commented. I wish I knew 10% of what she knows. These people know their stuff and how to put programs together by raising the barbell too. That was the only program I’ve ever done and I finished it. Unlike most people whose curves go higher and higher, my second week was higher than my last week.

In my first week, I do it as a newbie doing a program. I skipped the first day because it was legs. I had done my legs a day before. I thought that was for the next time. No, you can’t do that. You can’t go back. I missed a whole day of volume on that. My total was 500,000, 600,000 for the program, which is fine. I do primarily custom because I know what I want to do, but that’s not to disparage the coaches because they are incredible. One of the huge strengths of this machine is you can know nothing about resistance training. They’re going to take you by the hand and say, “Tom, here’s how you start working out.”

That doesn’t make you a terrible guest. That makes you use Tonal differently than we do, which is good because it illustrates how many different ways people can use Tonal.

There’s not just one way to use the machine.

My stepdaughter who is a D1 athlete plays college lacrosse. She has the workout that she’s supposed to be doing during the summer, and she will adapt Tonal to that. She was the envy of the team because she’s got this Tonal she could workout on. I bought a hex bar, if anybody knows what that is, because she’s supposed to do hex squat. I literally adapted this hex bar to use on the Tonal then got a huge amount of abuse from those mean kids over on Tonal Fitness Nation for that. It was an ugly thing. That’s what she does. She adapts it to that.

I saw your post about that. I was fascinated.

I got to get rid of that. The amount of money I spent so that girl can do hex squats, but it’s what she wants to do. You can do it.

That’s cool that the capabilities are there and that you’re able to do that.

To round back the what time I do primary custom workouts because I know what I want to do. I wanted to try a program and it was great. I will probably do another. Workout-wise, I try to sprinkle them around from the coaches, but I’m a big P90X alum. That was the first thing that my wife and I started to do when we transition from being Y rats to home gym people. We tap on P90X3. I liked Tony Horton. I like his workouts and banter. I developed an immunity to his sense of humor. I said, “I’d spent a lifetime becoming immune to that.” It’s like cocaine powder. Each schtick cannot kill me so I can listen to it and laugh. The guy’s two years older than me. I can sit there and look at him and say, “That’s something to aspire to.” In two years, I’ll hope I have as much hair as he does. It gives me something to aspire to.

I never thought that a lot of the exercise programs that are out there don’t have coaches that are in their 60s. I feel like that’s special for Tony Horton and to be doing that on Tonal. That’s forward-thinking Tonal.

Tonal is incredibly inclusive, body shapes, body sizes, ages, former pro athletes, people that you look at and don’t think that they would be a coach. It’s great. Everybody can find somebody to identify with. I identify with Tony Horton because of his age and bad sense of humor.

I knew P90X only because it was mentioned in a Bruno Mars song. Who am I to judge somebody for being goofy?

My wife is not as devoted to Tonal. She is not the Tonalista that some other people are. She likes the Tony Horton workouts because it reminds her of when we used to do our P90X stuff.

They should call them Tonal Horton workouts.

Do you guys do partner workouts together? Do you make the Tony Horton workouts like a partner workout?

I don’t think you can do the Tony Horton workouts.

I can’t do them at my house.

We did one partner workout and she told me that was an interesting experience never to be done again because we both liked to do things quickly. She didn’t like the idea of watching me rip through my set at double speed. I know that she doesn’t want to watch me do this. I’m going through it at an incredible phase but it’s still like, “Are you done yet?” “Honey, I did like twelve bench presses in four seconds. Is that not enough?”

You have to be careful because you’re a physician and she’s a PA. You guys work together. How’s that go?

You guys live together and spend all day together. How are you guys with that?

We work not just in the same building. We literally share the same office. Her desk is right there. We do spend all that time together and then we come home and have become husband and wife together, having dinner, whatever. Our work and our home life are so interwoven at this point. It’s very difficult to tease that out. I have told her 100 times, “I don’t know what people do, who don’t work with their spouse.” I’m so used to it and it works so well for us. Not everybody would say that and I can hear the internet rolling his eyes because not everybody’s the same, but I can’t imagine not working together.

It would be great. There’s very rarely an hour that goes by that we’re not chatting.

We do the same thing. We have the same specialty. We do primary care family medicine. We work in the hospital. We admit patients. We round on patients. She works in the ICU, CCU, ER just like I do. She has the same skillset that I do. I get paid more but she does the same amount of work. It’s a great gig. We can communicate about things that are extra glue for the relationship. We have had the strangest pillow talk sometimes because she will sit there and be thinking about somebody. She’s like, “I saw this guy. I’m wondering if I did the right thing with this.” We’ll start talking about that, but that’s what we are.

My parents owned a printing company and they were happily married for 35 years. Not to each other, but it happened so that counts for something.

The other thing is we live in a small town. There are maybe 1,500 people where we live. You have no privacy or anonymity. When we go for a run, we will always hear the next day or in the office, “I saw you going for a run the other day.” I’m playing in a golf league and the guy I’m playing against says, “I saw your wife running and you weren’t with her.” The fact that this guy who I played against once knows that I’m not running with my wife on that day. Our work and home life become so intertwined that it’s very difficult in this situation to imagine it being different.

You were describing the town you live in before. In my head, I pictured the film, Funny Farm with Chevy Chase. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that.

My generation was called Green Acres.

I was discussing the history of Green Acres with my seventeen-year-old, and then I went on a ten-minute diatribe about the world purge. Do you want to get me started on the history of sitcoms?

We will be here all day and never get back to Tonal.

Our small town is Northern New York. We’re about five minutes from the Canadian border. We’re a short fifteen-minute drive from Lake Ontario. We are North and when people say New York, they think New York City. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s my favorite city. We’d love to go to New York, but we’re much closer geographically and probably from a mindset to Toronto or Montreal than we are in New York. We’re way up there. We’re in what they call the Snowbelt. We get a lot of snow.

It’s good to be that close to Canada in case you need to make a break for it.

Except they’ve kept us out lately. We’ve not been to Canada in years. That’s our recreation when we’re going to Canada. Someday the border will be reopened and we’ll all be friends again.

How wonderful to have your Tonal during the winter when it’s all that snow, when you can’t go outside and workout.

Before, you would get up in the morning and they would be 2 to 3 feet of snow in your driveway and you would not be able to get to the Y.

It’s 100,000 pounds of shoveling.

Yes, you could, but that was a negative incentive to get to the Y. You can’t be having a cup of coffee or 2, 3 or 4 with your wife, and then you both go downstairs and workout. You can’t beat that. She does her thing. She’s in great shape. She got in great shape doing Kathy Smith’s of all things on a VHS. She has done the model that she’s always liked to do. It became P90X and now there’s other beach body type stuff. She likes that. She will come over and do Tony Horton on a Tonal. I don’t like that. I like tech stuff. This is right up my alley. We’re in the same space. I will occasionally go over and do some of hers because it feels nice to do the same thing. I liked their ab workouts, but we’re in the same space, but I’d rather do my Tonal more than anything because I’m a tech guy.

Are you saying that you do the Kathy Smith workouts on the VHS? Do you still have those?

We don’t have VHS anymore. She has that on a DVD, but she’s moved away from that. Every now and then Kathy works her way in, but that’s a hard workout. Every now and then, I’ll stay on over and there’s Kathy wearing her stuff from the ‘80s and when it’s done, it’s like, “My legs hurt but I’m not saying anything.”

The premise is it’s still functional.

I was more like, “You’re using a VHS to work out? Wait.”

We moved past that.

You’re on a DVD player. I got it.

Where your kids call the Blu-Ray.

I usually only ask this if you were talking about the Peloton side of things, but we have the leaderboard now for Tonal. Do you have the leaderboard? Do you have a leaderboard name? Is it just your name or did you add an actual leaderboard name?

I literally don’t know what my leaderboard name is. It’s not clever. I felt bad when you asked that. I could be clever. I saw one like Tonal Stark. I thought, “That guy’s got it. He thought his way through.” Some of the leaderboard names are great. I know that not from the leaderboard but because of their official Tonal community Facebook posts. You see it there when they post off. I don’t look at the leaderboard. The leaderboard is a great thing. Measuring the amount of time people spend on their tonal is a great way to be inclusive. I don’t find that useful for me because I tried to do 1,000 pounds a minute. I’m not spending a lot of time on the Tonal.

You’re the opposite of that metric.

I don’t think I’ve ever broken the top 2,000. That’s when there were 2,003 people who own that. I see these people, “I’m in 8th, 5th place.” I admire those who are so well-rounded in what they do. I am strong in that period. I am not flexible. I am not a good meditator. I don’t do the rest of that well. I don’t spend that much time on it.

I don’t even know where to go to find the leaderboard.

That’s because you don’t have the app.

That explains it.

He refuses to download it.

It’s on the interweb. Peloton is part of our lives too but ironically, she hates to ride a bike and I don’t like to run on a treadmill. She has a tread and I have the bike. That’s our cardio. They literally stopped my Peloton subscription in the summer because we’d rather run. When the snow falls and they don’t take care of the sidewalks here, because it’d be too much work. You can’t run outside. That’s when we break out the Peloton and she runs on the tread, which we love. She and I do the bike.

What’s a typical week look like for your workouts then. Is it like five minutes on Tonal doing your 1,000 pounds?

Our typical workout is at the weekend. We like to run. I will try to get one weekend lift in. I try to do most of my resistance training during the week. My wife has to start an hour earlier than I do in our office. Twice a week, typically, she will come downstairs and do either Tony Horton on the Tonal, or a 90-day fix extreme is her thing that she enjoys the most. She will do one of those while I’m on the Tonal. My typical is three days on the Tonal during the week, one day on the weekend. I put my cardio around that, but I get a lot of cardio on the Tonal. My Peloton and I are spending a little time apart.

There’s nothing wrong with that because there’s so much to do on Tonal. I know that’s not how you’re using it. You’re using it as you’re lifting.

I still use it. I like it. I’m not denigrating one bit. It’s an amazing piece of hardware. Their concept is incredible. I can get my heart rate up on the Tonal to the same extent I can get on my bike. This is a different coaching style. I’ve never been a big fan of the Peloton coaching style. I don’t respond well to the aspirational approach because I’m a little cynical. There’s nothing wrong with that. I admire people that can do that but that’s not for me.

Tom and I talk about that all the time. He gets his heart rate up on the Tonal. We always are unsure if that counts as cardio. Mostly because we’ve been working on MetPro. The reason I say that is because they are always like, “You need to do a steady-state cardio.” That’s hard to do when you’re lifting weights. Your heart rate is up and down a little bit. It’ll spike when you’re doing something really fast and then you might take a break.

There’s a benefit from that physiologically. You need both. You train your heart well by making it spike like that. That’s the whole idea behind higher intensity interval training. You also help your body become stronger through the sustained respiratory effort of a steady-state. The best of both worlds is I can spike my heart rate doing an aggressive Tonal workout and I can do the same stuff on my Peloton.

I feel like people need to hear that because it doesn’t have to be so black and white that it’s like strength is strength and cardio is cardio. I feel like there’s not a lot of talk about that. It’s important.

Everything is so tribal these days anyway. Why can’t we just agree that exercise is a good thing? If you’d like to do resistance training, you’re probably helping your cardio. You could do cardio. You’re probably getting stronger legs. We probably would all be better if we did some of each.

Everybody wants that perfect formula like, “I did it the perfect way, now I will live forever.”

Not just that. They usually want to get to a certain weight. They want to look a certain way. It’s what’s going to achieve that.

You see that on the posts on the Tonal community like, “I can’t wait for my Tonal to come. I want to lose 60 pounds.” People have done it and they admire the heck out of that. Typically, a person is not going to lose a ton of weight just by exclusively changing one part of their life. They can workout aggressively or strapped themselves to Peloton or to whatever. Unless they change their eating habits and their activity level, you probably aren’t going to get to that. It has to be a complete lifestyle readjustment. Buying a Tonal and working out will certainly make you stronger, healthier and happier, but you’re probably not going to lose 60 pounds. There are exceptions. Your mileage may vary.

Do you have any advice for people that are just getting a Tonal?

I’m a jerk about that. I literally hit my head against the wall, wondering how people could spend $3,000-plus in that, know that their handles need to be paired, or the bar control module can move, or jump into it with, “I’m going to raise the barbell to when I haven’t done anything in ten years.” When you have these amazing programs, I always refer people to starting out with Tonal, which teaches you, “Here’s how you move the arms. Here’s how you turn the weights on and off. Here’s how you adjust. Here’s what’s the difference.”

There are people who have had this same for weeks or months or longer, and don’t know about the dynamic resistance modes, which are a game-changer because they just dove right in. My advice for people is you’re eager and you’re super excited. First, don’t do the rookie move of buying a bunch of accessories because you probably won’t need those fancy handles. Save them for when you are in a little bit of a wall and you need to do something to reinvigorate your workout.

Don’t have them sitting there because you’re probably not going to touch them for six months. Use what comes with the machine and start out with something like starting out with Tonal so you know how to use your machine. All of a sudden, it’s like, “I can move the bar control module to the rope. That’s why my handle, nothing’s happening, I haven’t paired them.” Here’s how you work out. It teaches people how to work out. It’s all there.

It’s funny that you said about the different things that can be attached. We have a thing that hangs there that it’s bent. I don’t know what it is. I’ve never once had to use it. Did it come with the machine? I have no idea. What is it?

It’s a curling bar and they’re great, but I don’t need it. I use it because it’s easier on my biceps tendons and I’ve always used a curling bar. I certainly didn’t need it. If I am new to Tonal, I wouldn’t use it.

I’ve never touched it. I should probably move it in the same way when I’m trying to hang up the other things. I’m always working around. I should move it to the other end.

I was a Y rat for 10, 15 years. I use every kind of thing they had there. I didn’t want to lose any of that. That’s why I’ve got all the different handles and stuff because I can do all that here. No one needs any of that. You see people say, “Getting my Tonal in three months, what should I buy?”

You don’t need to. You mentioned that you guys have courses that you do as part of your practice. It’s helping people understand how to cook well and things like that. I am curious about that.

It’s called culinary medicine, which is this concept that you can use food to augment medical care, not to replace it. This is not cinnamon can cure diabetes or tarragon can make cancer go away. This is saying, “If you eat good whole foods prepared in a healthy way, you will need less prescription medication and you will find yourself in a healthier way.” It’s this constant idea that people don’t generally cook as much as they used to.

The Public Health School at Harvard started these things called Teaching Kitchens, which is teaching medical providers how to teach patients how to cook. That sounds very foo-foo and incredibly pragmatic. We took some courses out in Napa that was hard. We learned how to apply this. In our little rural office up in Illinois, patients could come in and our hospital pays for all this. It’s entirely free. They will come in and have a three-hour cooking class, usually around the Mediterranean diet because it’s such a healthy diet, but teaching simple techniques.

It’s like, “Let’s learn how to roast seeds and vegetables rather than steam or boil them. Let’s deal with fish because everybody is afraid of fish.” Let’s make sure we have a good fish dish or a seafood dish. We have an excellent nutritionist. She’s wonderful. She comes almost to all of them on her own time. We teach medical students and residents at the hospital. They come and both do dishes for us, which is key. I also assign them a topic. They might want to talk about the health benefits of farro or the difference between farm-raised and wild salmon.

We get them involved that way. It’s been immensely successful. Our hospital was very generous. They bought cooking stations like restaurant grade knife sets, cutting boards, whisk, whatever for twelve learners. We quickly had to expand to 22 because we had so many people signing up. They were terrific and then COVID hit. They’ve been mothballed until we get past this mess. We will do them again. The idea is when we say to people and someone says, “I don’t eat breakfast,” so then we probe, “Why not? Why don’t you have breakfast?” “I don’t have time.” “Let me talk to you about a couple of things that you can do that will make you have a good breakfast. I’ll teach how to make chia seed yogurt or overnight oats.” I will hand them recipes.

It’s unusual for a patient to leave my exam room without a recipe. This is very practical stuff. “You say you don’t have time for breakfast, here take this home, go across the street to the Tops grocery store.” We buy everything at our local grocery store. If you have to go 60 miles to Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, that’s not going to work. If I can’t buy it across the street, we don’t use it. “Go across the street, buy some oats and some almond milk. Here’s the recipe, stir this together. In the morning when you get up, you’ll be able to put this in the microwave, heat it up and go,” and off they go. I’m not spending all day because I got medicine to do for a living. I’m probing for something that’s keeping them from cooking in a way that helps their health.

We’re finding stuff. I had a patient who is a nurse who revealed to me that she’s been married for 30 years and have never turned on their stove or oven. Everything they’ve eaten in their entire married life is takeout and microwaved. She was a nurse. She was a little sheepish to admit that. There are people out there. We’re getting hit on all sides by the dollar store phenomenon. You walk into the dollar store in some days and look at what’s near the register. They are full of Little Debbie snack cakes, convenient foods, meat products that are full of salt. Things that you can get and consume that’s prepared that are terrible for you. People are buying more from groceries than dollar stores, which is cutting into the ability of real grocery stores to provide good food sources for people.

You provided information for people, but is there a local search that people could do to see if there are programs in their area like you’re providing? That could be helpful for a lot of people.

I would search culinary medicine or Teaching Kitchens. I would do Teaching Kitchens and then put your state. Who has Teaching Kitchens? Google has a teaching kitchen. Apple has a teaching kitchen. Harvard, Stanford, Adam’s New York, Samaritan Family Health Office. Adam’s, you’re not going to expect you’re going to find a teaching kitchen, but the aim of this movement is you’re going to find these spread out into primary care areas. You’ve gone to these courses that Harvard puts on. Every time there’s more people because people are realizing that it’s a good way to connect with your patients and try to make them healthy.

I feel like one of the things that Tom and I have learned through doing MetPro is a different relationship with food. We didn’t eat out all the time, but what we did do was have quick foods that were pre-packaged, a lot of that. We do a lot less of that now. I personally enjoy the food better and more than I would have expected. That could be helpful for a lot of people.

It’s interesting the lifestyle measure that correlates the most with good health. They used to think of how much time you spent a day cooking. It turned out that it’s actually how much time do you spend doing your dishes. You can correlate your health to that because the more time you spend doing dishes means you didn’t buy prepared food. You chopped and sauté. When you look at that pile of dishes and say, “I wish it were my turn.” It does correlate with the fact that you’re making tremendous inroads into improving the way that you’re fueling your body. It makes you feel better with all those dishes.

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join us. Before we let you go, where can people find you on social media, if you would like to be found?

They can’t find me on social media because I’m anti-social. I have an Instagram account because I was goofing with the kids one day. They listed me as a paper salesman. It’s a vlogger story but it’s not that. I’m not a social media guy. I’m a hermit guy up here in the North country doing my thing.

It sounds like a nice life.

Thank you for taking a step away from your wonderful life and joining us. Thank you so much for doing this.

I appreciate it very much.

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I guess that brings this episode to a close. Until next time, where can people find you?

People can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. They can also find me on the Tonal app under Clip Out Crystal. If you would like to follow me on social media, I am over on Instagram and Twitter at @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/tomokeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/supersetpodcast. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. Don’t forget, wherever you’re getting your podcast from, be sure to subscribe or follow so you never miss an episode. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep lifting.

Important Links:

• Tonal
• MetPro
• Teaching Kitchens
• Apple Podcasts – The Superset Podcast
• Spotify – The Superset Podcast
• Google Podcasts – The Superset Podcast
• Facebook.com/supersetpodcast
• YouTube.com/theclipout
• Why We Sleep
• Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe
• Instagram – Crystal O’Keefe
• @ClipOutCrystal – Twitter
• @RogerQBert – Twitter
• Facebook.com/tomokeefe
• https://www.Tonal.com/blog/why-we-sleep-book-club/
• https://www.Facebook.com/groups/hypeduphypertrophychallenge
• https://Participant.adeptresearch.com/Pages/survey40006.asp
• https://www.Tonal.com/blog/new-tonal-coaches/

About Joe Wetterhahn

60 years old working as a family physician in rural Northern NY. He works with his wife (a PA, they even share an office; she’s a lucky girl). They also offer free hands-on cooking classes for patients and teach med students and residents in the emerging field of Culinary Medicine. Their practice is very focused on health promotion and preventive care.