#075 - Tonal - A Revolutionary Home Fitness System - Aly Orady

On this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan welcomes Aly Orady - founder and CEO of Tonal - to the show.

Aly’s story is an all too common example of the price of success in the modern world. Aly was excelling professionally, but in the process his health was falling apart. He was overweight, and had developed type 2 diabetes and sleep apnea. And he was only in his mid-thirties.

He was moving on a dangerous path, and he knew it.

Realizing the peril that he faced, he quit his job and pivoted to an all-encompassing focus on health and fitness. He embraced strength training and lost 70 pounds in the process.

But as he sat on the bench at the gym at 5:00 in the morning, he experienced a moment of clarity. This routine that had restored his health, effective though it had been, was not sustainable. Eventually, he was going to have to return to work, and he would not be able to continue to commit the same amount of time and effort to exercise. How could he maintain the improved health and performance he had gained from training?

As he surveyed the equipment around him, he came up with an idea to remove all of the sources of friction associated with the gym, by packaging all of the exercises he performed into a single machine. And that inspired him to found Tonal.

Tonal is an elegant, wall-mounted device that employs electromagnetism to simulate and control weight, which enables it to replicate the resistance provided by many machines and lifts.

Tonal can deliver 200 pounds of resistance in a device smaller than a flatscreen TV, without having to drive to a gym, rack weights, or even change into workout gear. Better still, it can remove all of the usual guesswork involved with choosing exercises and planning programs. Tonal offers hundreds of guided workouts, presented via a 24” interactive display, and tracks your progress over time.

To learn more about Tonal, and about the future of home exercise training, check out our interview with Aly Orady!