2X Your Workout Results In Less Time Using AI

Nick Urban [00:00:00]:
lot of bad advice in the fitness industry. While so much of it is personal and requires some nuance, there are also a lot of broadly applicable strategies, tips, tactics, and protocols that we can all implement. What if I told you that this Peak, we have insights from the world’s largest fitness dataset about what works, how it works, why it works, and most importantly, how you can use that information to get and stay fit. Our guest this week is also on the front lines. He’s been working with a lot of the elite athletic organizations Mind has his finger on the pulse of what works and what doesn’t work. We discuss many different forms of training that you can potentially implement to get the best results. We talk about why movement is so important. And although I forgot to ask him his opinion on electromagnetic stimulation, he has used it extensively and is a fan of the technology.

Nick Urban [00:01:14]:
But overall, whether you use a fancy technology or simple body weight exercise at home, really, any movement is great. If we discuss some terms that you’re unfamiliar with, there will be definitions of them in the show notes. Now who is our guest this week? Troy Taylor is a globally recognized expert in human performance with a wealth of experience in creating and managing top tier multidisciplinary teams. He excels at bridging high level strategic insight with practical implementation. Currently, Troy serves as the senior director of performance innovation at a company called Tonal. His job is to integrate evidence based fitness and human performance principles into Tonal’s product development and curriculum. Troy is also heavily involved with peer reviewed research on enhancing human performance through resistance training. To accompany this episode, I’ve also prepared a little cheat sheet of some of the coolest and most impactful tools, technologies, products, and even free modalities and tips that you can use to get fit and rapidly transform your body.

Nick Urban [00:02:36]:
I’ll put a link to the outlier body in the show notes of this episode, and it’s yours free for tuning in. To get that, or the show notes of this episode, visit the website at mindbodypeak.com/thenumber159. And although I don’t personally have a tonal, which is the company that’s aggregated and compiled the world’s largest fitness dataset, it’s based on a solid technology that I’ve experienced with, and I’m considering grabbing a unit if the price comes down a bit. Rather than waiting for the day, sometime down in line, I wanted to share this technology with you here today so that if you’re so inclined, you can stay ahead of the curve and get your own or try it out near you. Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode with Troy Taylor. Troy, welcome to the podcast.

Troy Taylor [00:03:34]:
Nick, I really appreciate you having me on.

Nick Urban [00:03:36]:
I’m looking forward to diving in today to the future of fitness, where things are going, some of the modalities and technologies you’ve tried, the ones you like, the ones that are maybe a little less favorable. And before we go on to that, let’s warm up with the unusual nonnegotiables you’ve done so far today for your health, your performance, and your bioharmony?

Troy Taylor [00:04:00]:
Nonnegotiables for me, AI not super advanced. Resistance training as frequently as possible, probably a minimum of 3 times a week. Often it’s 4 to 5 for me, but, like, resistance training AI think is the the basis of of pretty much everything that I do. I feel better after that. AI Mind of there. I Troy to get in about 10 ish 1,000 steps a day. I I have a I live in Park City, Utah so it’s kinda skiing skiing weather here for a fair amount of the year. So I have a treadmill, and AI definitely try and try and get some steps in and Mind feel a little better by Mind there.

Troy Taylor [00:04:36]:
And then unsurprisingly, Peak, sleep. I made a a big effort the last few years. In my previous role, I I traveled extensively internationally. And so my sleep has been, you know, pretty messed up. I’d be often in Europe for a few days once a month, over in China or Asia and various different places. And so CHEK I transitioned roles about 3 years ago, I AI made a big effort try and focus on sleep. I also have 2 kids under the age of 8, so that didn’t probably help my sleep for a few years. So the the third the last few years have been, definitely improving that.

Troy Taylor [00:05:07]:
I’m up to about, you know, 7 hours Mind 50 minutes is my average according to my aura ring these days. So I’ve probably increased about an hour a day, which, like, once you think about that 360 days a year, really adds up to a significant kind of increase. So, yeah, nothing nothing crazy wild there, I think, is the basis. I try to eat a protein forward diet.

Nick Urban [00:05:26]:
Simple enough. And those are some solid fundamentals. What does your workout split or routine look AI? And how long is your session? How many days per week? How are you breaking the sessions down by body part or by energy system or what?

Troy Taylor [00:05:40]:
Yeah. So I am a massive exercise snacker. I, I work out mostly on tonal as you the the Urban and AI of my my background. But I have 3 weights behind. I have a squat rack and and some other things. But I I work from home. I’ve had Tonal for about 3 years. I’ve worked for the company.

Troy Taylor [00:05:59]:
I’ve logged nearly 1500 workouts. So more than one workout a day, but I don’t work out 7 days a week. I tend to log, like, a 5 to 10 minute workout, 2 or 3 times a day. My split tends to vary a little bit. I generally focus, on 2 2 2 body parts per per day. So I like to do antagonistic Peak sets. So a lot of sort of chest and back work together, lots of arm, bicep, and Troy together, and then shoulders and legs is my tend to be to me my go to split if I’m I’m doing that. But I tend to break that out into yeah.

Troy Taylor [00:06:31]:
I’ll do 1 to 2 sets, and then go back to a Zoom call, and then come back 5, 10 minutes later or an hour later and do another 5 to 10 minutes and 1 to 2 sets. I’m a

Nick Urban [00:06:41]:
huge fan of that. Mind fact, several me 4 years ago, I wrote an article on what I called micro workouts at the time, and now they’re called exercise snacks more commonly. And they’re also called trigger sessions. And the way I like to structure my routine is that if I get to the gym at the end of the day, it’s optional. It’s like the icing on the cake if I get that extra resistance training session, and I’m active enough throughout the day doing those short 30 second to 5 minute, sometimes 10 minute, like, little snacks of of movement. And that’s a great use case for something like Tonal. I haven’t even thought about that. AI I use, like, kettlebells.

Nick Urban [00:07:18]:
I’ll do Body stuff. I’ll do, like, calisthenics, plyometrics. I’ll take the stairs, that AI of stuff, but it’s a little less convenient than having it all in one. The ability to target, like, pretty much every body part is right behind you. So tell me about, like, your evolution of, like, where you came from and how you got involved with the company, and you have some insights that I wanna get into at some point about the data that you guys have collected, which I think is one of the cool things about these systems and devices is you learn a lot Mind you can help optimize the experience for everyone and just share facts about it on shows like this.

Troy Taylor [00:07:50]:
Yeah. AI try to give the abbreviated version, but, I’m British. That’s where the confused accent comes from. So, you know, average sports person growing up, nothing things. But super interested in sport and exercise and health since I Taylor, like, a teenager. Didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I went and did exercise, science, undergraduate degree, kinda like that. Thought I’d go into, like, physical education teaching or personal training. Tried both of those.

Troy Taylor [00:08:17]:
They were not really the perfect fit for me at that stage. So went back, did a master’s degree in in Xfizz. And while I was there, I started volunteering for the British Olympic swim team. This was I’m gonna date muscle. But way back in, leading up to into the well, a few years before the Athens Olympics. I’ll just leave it there. Date myself a lot, lot. But before the Athens Olympics, I I worked with CHEK.

Troy Taylor [00:08:38]:
And I so I volunteered for 12, 16 hours a Peak. Not glamorous, but clutching heart rates, learning, running strict and conditioning sessions, and just learning on that in the AI, and I was hooked. I loved it. I loved working with the athletes loved working with the coaches. Got a job immediately out of that master’s degree really based on that experience. Again, working with some Olympians, some track and field athletes, some professional sports teams in the EPL, some university level athletes. And then, really over the next 15 or so years, crisscrossed the world a little bit, but worked in Britain, Canada, and in the US as a sports scientist, as a strength conditioning coach, and then led her as a director of sports science, a high performance director. Performance to work with, you know, 7 Olympic saves, something like 500 Olympic medal Olympic Olympians, from about 10 different sports and about 50 different Olympic medalists.

Troy Taylor [00:09:32]:
And so sort of AI, you know, was in that career, I didn’t think about necessarily transition to, let’s say, consumer level fitness and and general population necessarily. But when I came back to the US, I worked here a couple of times, but, I was the high performance director at US Ski and Snowboard. So it’s a relatively big national governing Body. You know, Mikaela Shiffrin, Lindsey Vonn, Sean AI, lots of those types of people are on that team. And that role as the high performance director is very much about being on the forefront of innovation and being, like, how can we get our ass reached to the top of the podium? What is coming Nick? And how can we make sure we’re there before any other country? And so I started essentially with that code, started working with Silicon Valley. I was like, what competitive advantages do we have in America? Like, in Britain and in other in Australia and various different other countries, there’s lots of government funding that doesn’t exist in America. So my budget wasn’t necessarily massive. But I’ve got really innovative people, not just in Silicon Valley, but across the US, that are in the AI startup world.

Troy Taylor [00:10:33]:
And so I started running projects. We were the first ever, as far as I’m aware, the first ever team to run, virtual reality projects. We filmed the 2018 Winter Olympic course, which is in Korea. Essentially, 2 years before the Olympics, it was forced. No one’s ever been on that course before. It was it was cut down specifically for the Olympics. There’s a test event the year before, which is the first time anyone gets to ski on it. You get to do Peak for 3 days, and then you come back for the Olympic year and run the biggest race of your life.

Troy Taylor [00:11:04]:
So it’s kind of a wild environment. So in that test event a year before, we spilled it in 3 Nick video. We set up virtual reality headsets. We could overlay with, sort of, you know, graphics. If it was snowing, what if it was flat AI? So we could prepare the athletes for that. So basically, I URBAN projects around how do I get people to the podium. AI was part of that. I started mentoring in startups.

Troy Taylor [00:11:26]:
Really enjoyed the startup world. And I had a board member at or a board AI at the ski team who was also a board adviser at Muscle, home fitness company. And I was like, hey, this is a pretty cool product. You should kinda come and come and try and and maybe join the team. And so yeah. 3 years ago, essentially, yeah, tried it, loved it. AI we can talk about why I love it, but, like, loved it. And, yeah, made a switch, into general population fitness, as well as, you know, we bought many elite athletes, but the the main focus is is honestly people AI probably me, you, and your audience.

Troy Taylor [00:12:05]:
It’s it’s people that are trying to improve their lives on a daily basis, not necessarily athletes.

Nick Urban [00:12:10]:
Yes. Exactly. And if we go back to the beginning of your story, are there any biomarkers or measurements that the elite athletes back then were taking that they’re still using? Like, perhaps they were using heart rate variability as a proxy for training load way back CHEK, maybe not, but perhaps there’s other things we can glean CHEK.

Troy Taylor [00:12:29]:
I first used heart rate variability in 2,008. So AI fairly early. Not I wouldn’t say super early, but, yeah, definitely more in the advance. Back then, it was, Firstbeat Technologies out of Scandinavia. They were the only real AI. And it was, essentially electrodes based to the heart, which is a pain to sleep on. So it gives you really accurate data, much more accurate than Peak. But you also get really disturbed sleep because you keep rolling on this electrode.

Troy Taylor [00:12:56]:
So pros and kinase. So that that was definitely one AI think Elite Sport was early on. I think most of the other things have generally come and gone. We used to measure a lot of creatine kinase for muscle damage. Creatine kinase when you’re is is essentially a marker of of muscle damage, your z line split and it leaks out. We used to measure that a lot Mind we were concerned as a marker. I think that’s it’s still decent, but it’s not something that I would continually Troy do with with elite athletes. We did a lot of, AI based testosterone and cortisol measurements, and trying to understand sort of those types of things.

Troy Taylor [00:13:32]:
I would say that’s mostly gone. And then we would saves done, 1st continuous glucose monitoring, would have been around 2015. So I wouldn’t say super early, but again, more and more on the leading edge, with our cross country athletes. And we were really, in ski team, making you know, are they fueled for performance? They’re going out for these 3, 4 hour cross country skis. What’s what’s their monitoring look like? What does their continuous glucose over a 24 hour period? When are the feeding windows? When are the crashes around there? So that’s, something I still think there’s value in, probably for short term interventions. I’m not a massive long term fan. Or I think you get a lot of the value in the first one to 3 months, like one of these, and then you learn the habits that are gonna be stacked CHEK we do it last. But, yeah, those are some of them.

Nick Urban [00:14:19]:
I like to use CGMs every once in a while. I use, like, once a year for a sensor or 2, usually, like, 1 to 3 weeks, and I’ll get, like, a a baseline. It’ll be AI a little accountability tool to see how my lifestyle has changed, how things look. And I know from back when I was getting into CHEK, wasn’t that long ago, but the technology has progressed incredibly in the last, I wanna say, 5, 6 years, 7 years, and the cost has gone way down.

Troy Taylor [00:14:45]:
Yeah. I think the future is bright with with, the sort of the monitoring technologies that’s coming out. Yeah. Insulin, even real time lactate measures, maybe noninvasive in the future. Yeah. Definitely a lobster. But I I like that kind of, like, periodic use case for those types of things. There’s a specific I wanna have a check-in.

Troy Taylor [00:15:03]:
You know, if I’m wearing it constantly, I’m I there’s some diminishing value return in that investment. But, yeah, once a year check-in or a specific training period or a block, I think it’s really useful. The other thing I probably should note that, I did try, which as it relates to the company that I work with, I bought my first electromagnetic, training device resistance training device. It’s called IMLifter. It was out of Austria. It’s gone bankrupt at least once, maybe twice. Cost $8,000. It, required a 400 volt, electrical power AI.

Troy Taylor [00:15:38]:
But it was back in about 2013 or so. Yeah. Because my job was to seek out innovations. I’m like, that’s really cool. Like, we can make the eccentric heavier than the concentric. That’s awesome. And so that that that was probably one of the devices that had an impact on my career because I, ended up working for one of those companies.

Nick Urban [00:15:58]:
What else? What what other technologies have you dug into, played around with, either liked or disliked?

Troy Taylor [00:16:04]:
I thought there was a lot of promise. I did I ran a project, with HALO, transcranial direct current brain stimulation, in 2015. Dan CHEK was the founder and CEO, a good friend of mine now. I I actually think there’s a lot of value in tDCS or or or magnetic versions of it. I think there’s muscle in CHEK consistent application. We ran a not a peer reviewed contraction AI. So, but with Nick ski jumpers. Mind we were measuring, essentially ski jump performance on a force plate.

Troy Taylor [00:16:36]:
It was jump performance on a wobble board, but it simulated, this idea. And what we saw is, a decrease in tautonicity Troy, if I remember correctly, which is the variability of your jump. How would you jump less variable after Optimization, which was really interesting because, obviously, that’s a very timing, very skill dominant sport. And so I thought that was super cool. Probably didn’t take off as Health. And I think the application across the head and the the wedding, there’s this, like, logistical challenges to doing it, but I think there’s underlying mechanisms of science of why that’s a really cool technology. AI hoping something around like that comes around again. And then on a similar vein, and this is still in, I wanna saves, it’s it’s not stealth, so I’m not sharing anything.

Troy Taylor [00:17:19]:
But, certainly, I don’t need to have consumer advice available. I was a mentor on Comcast Sports CHEK, lead AI and a mentor for for a number of years, which is an accelerator run by Comcast to find latest technology to help their partners AI Skin Snowboard or the golf channel, whoever it might be. There’s a company called Sharp Ascent Mind it does vagal nerve Optimization. And they’ve shown that it improves acuity, eye acuity, hearing acuity, Taylor, various different Taylor of there. While it’s being stimulated you essentially see better, hear better, smell better, have better kinesthetic awareness. I don’t wanna like some of the AI is in like rats and and and animal models. Some of it’s in Urban, but they’re looking at developing that which I think is really interesting. Not necessarily for sport because once you take it away, it it’s gone Mind it would be banned in elite sport immediately.

Troy Taylor [00:18:14]:
But you think about other applications of where people are struggling on daily basis. You you know, or would potentially improve their lives if they had better hearing, better eyesight, outside of things. I think that’s a really interesting and novel area, which is, like, super emerging.

Nick Urban [00:18:30]:
Yeah. On the one you mentioned before that, the Halo Sport, the headset, I was looking into that a long time ago when they were, like, first making the rounds, and I almost got one. I chose not to at the last second, but I have somewhere a TACS device, and I’ve experimented with those a little bit. And it does seem like it it impacts learning Mind memory if you do it right, but the issue is placing the electrodes in the right place and, like, the hassle of actually applying them and getting the right amount of water on it, choosing the right level of current. And there’s definitely a bio individuality component to it also. So it’s AI the right amount and the right frequency for me be a little different for you, and also the exact location will be a little different for you as well. So, yeah, it’s just like a it’s a a rabbit hole. It takes a lot of research, and AI ultimately just just too inconvenient to continue.

Troy Taylor [00:19:17]:
Yeah. The the the friction value equation wasn’t quite there, and but, like, we see this with some really emerging stuff. Right? Someone tries, doesn’t quite get it right, and then we figure something out Mind you’ll see another product 1, 2, 5, 10 years later that kind of, you know, eventually figures figures a way out. Like, there there was electric cars before Tesla but no one scaled it, in in that kind of way. And so I I imagine something like TDCS will be something in the same code. But, yeah, I think that’s the the same exactly the same thing we we found is, cool technology. I think there’s a good mechanism. We have some preliminary data that suggested it was really beneficial, but the friction of actually doing it became too much to overcome to do on a regular basis.

Nick Urban [00:19:57]:
I have a device over here also. It’s called Sensei, and it has transcranial photobiomodulation, basically, like red LEDs that go around your head in different places, and you choose, like, a different mode you wanna put it on. And it can it stimulates using, like, different pulsation patterns and different strengths, different parts of the brain for either, like, relaxation or for focus. And I could see application of that to sport and, like, motor skill development and all that. But, again, fitness, I think, early days still.

Troy Taylor [00:20:30]:
Yeah. I I know. I’m not even aware of that. So, yeah, There’s definitely there’s a lot of cool stuff out there that AI, you know A lot of the way that I think about this, this might be diving in too deep, but AI, I love to none like, I’m a I’m a scientist by heart. That’s where I I class myself. Like, I’m an applied scientist. I’m not a not a researcher in the in the traditional sense that I’m in a lab. I certainly like to understand sort of the science mechanisms behind things.

Troy Taylor [00:20:55]:
And so I first looked at, like, is there a mechanism that I can understand or someone within my network who’s smarter than me can tell me there’s a good, like, methodological reason of why this might have benefit. Now there’s a difference between mechanism and outcome. Right? There’s a athletes of mechanisms that don’t necessarily translate to outcome. But if there’s not an underlying mechanism, I’m generally a hard pass. I’m like, we don’t kinda explain why this might happen, then then it’s not for me. And AI I that might make me a little slow to adopt some things. I think I’ve shown in the past. I’m not particularly slow, but it makes you kind of question because you spend a lot of time and energy chasing these things as a new sport director or as a Biohacking so I think you have to have some sort of a checklist of, like, what is worth my time thinking about? And so, yeah, mechanism Troy understand.

Troy Taylor [00:21:40]:
And then the second one I look for is, like, is the mechanism, like, in a dose response that I’m likely to get? Because a lot of these mechanisms are like, if I get 3000% more of this it has an effect, but the device you’re selling me has a 10% increase. That that actually relates back to the testosterone, cortisol thing.

Nick Urban [00:21:59]:
Oh, yes.

Troy Taylor [00:22:00]:
A lot of the the research was, AI, everyone knows, I think, if you take pharmaceutical exogenous testosterone, it improves muscle mass. That’s, I think, a fairly well established mechanism. Also, if you do short recovery training, it also increases testosterone. So the mechanism is, oh, do short recovery training Mind you’ll get bigger. But, actually, in human randomized controlled trials, short recoveries don’t lead to that. And it’s because, most likely, I think, well established now that the testosterone that you get an increase from, from a short recovery is like this. When you get pharmaceutical grades, it’s like this Mind the time course is like this versus time course like code. And so the magnitude of the response is very different.

Troy Taylor [00:22:40]:
So I AI to think of, like, is this been shown at the doses I’m gonna get? And those are my, like, 2 checks. If you check both of those Mind it seems like a good saves way, sign me up to try.

Nick Urban [00:22:50]:
Pretty simple criteria. The last one you mentioned, the vagus nerve stimulator, the VNS AI. What makes that one special? Is it anything unique? Because there’s a lot of different vagus nerve stimulators in the market, and I’ve played around with them a long time ago.

Troy Taylor [00:23:04]:
Yeah. So I wanna say Charles is the name of the CEO and founder. It’s I’m gonna say it’s 18 right. It’s 3 years since I left the ski team Mind that’s when I stopped mentoring that as as the thing. So it’s been a while. I really he was out of Columbia, I wanna say, is his Peak. Mind just AI really solid research. Like, that’s not a space I wanna be messing around with particularly.

Troy Taylor [00:23:28]:
And they were just a really, I thought, really reputable way of doing it. How we’re we’re taking the right approach in terms of making sure that they understood what was the right frequency and magnitude of response to get the outcomes, making sure the efficacy was there, making sure the safety was there, which made me, a lot more confident. But AI turned this. I haven’t looked at the space a bunch and seen, like, what’s been coming in that in that area.

Nick Urban [00:23:51]:
Let’s talk about the intersection of AI and fitness. I personally have used a device called the ARX pretty extensively, and I was mind blown just how destroyed I felt the day after my first workout. Like, my nervous system obviously had no idea what to Peak, and I felt okay during the workout itself. But then for, like, 3 days afterward, I could barely move.

Troy Taylor [00:24:18]:
So, like, ARX, incredible device. I’ve also used, like, 30 ish $1,000. I don’t wanna do a big kind of things, but highly expensive. But essentially, electromagnetic devices work on the same things. Rather than having iron or metal and working against gravity whether that’s a free weight and a barbell bench press or a cable column and and lifting up. Essentially, it generates, you know, resistance via a motor. And there’s a few things that you can do with that that become really cool. And so something like ARX, if I understand correctly, and and again, I don’t I don’t know exactly, but, uses a lot of isokinetic training.

Troy Taylor [00:24:53]:
Right? Their method is a lot of AI. So, they set the speed Mind you push against it, and no matter how hard you push the thing’s not gonna go fast. Every rep is maximum. Highly effective for strength outcomes if you get adapted to it. Highly fatiguing, generally not that enjoyable. Is is generally if you looked at the research of isokinetic training, it’s not the most fun training to do. But that’s like a proof of concept of what electromagnetic Urban AI do. So something like Tonal uses the same basic technology.

Troy Taylor [00:25:24]:
I I don’t wanna go into the hardware specifically, but it uses motors and electricity to generate resistance. Now, we have multiple modes and ways that we can then modify that resistance to optimize potential Practitioner. And also, I’m gonna say to provide variety and I’ll come back to that. So, something that’s fairly common, like so imagine I I train in my home gym. My wife is sometimes upstairs also working in in in her home office, sometimes out. Lifting heavy at home or lifting close to failure with free weights is not really the safest thing for me to do in the world. Right? I’m squatting with my max weight on the back. I get stuck.

Troy Taylor [00:26:02]:
There’s no one to shout on me to look silly in the gym but ask for a spotter. Electromagnetic weights essentially can sense that you’re failing, can measure the speed and velocity in real AI, and peel the weight off. And so it will spot you automatically. As soon as you slow down and you can’t show it, it will take the weight off. Or you could set it where, you know, most people have probably done some variation of, like, a drop set or or something like that, a strip set where you start with a heavyweight and you get to a lighter AI. You know, essentially there’s an algorithm that we can look at that’s called burnout mode that will sense when you’re failing and strip weight off until you start moving again. And so you can AI modify that around there. And then you can start looking at various things like, we know generally people are about 25% stronger eccentrically, so muscle lengthening going down than they are concentrically.

Troy Taylor [00:26:49]:
But we never work maximally eccentrically or most people don’t, in their things because I can only lift, like, put down what I put up, what I can lift eccentrically, what I can lift concentrically. Well, with something like tonal, you can set eccentric mode, load it up with 25% extra on eccentric, and it will take the weight off on concentric. And so, essentially, what you can do is start manipulating resistance in ways that you’ve never been able to do before, which I think is really code, because you code optimize for adaptations. Like, I think most of your your audience is is probably in the optimizers kind of space. I’m looking for, like, the the competitive advantage, the the the extra I can get. I think about that less about really maximizing my capacity now. I’m I’m all about time efficiency. I wanna know, like, how can I get the most stimulus in the least period of time? AI, I’m, you know, I’m I have a relatively busy job, couple of code, I’m like there’s stuff going on, but I don’t have 4 hours to train anymore.

Troy Taylor [00:27:46]:
I never really had 4 hours to Troy, but I definitely don’t have 4 hours to train a day anymore. So AI my life, how do I get the maximum stimulus and perfectiveness in the shortest period time? So you can kind of look through that then. And the other piece is, like, a lot of our members are, like, I would say, like, intermediates. They’re not the most advanced people in the world. They’re not the Olympic athletes. It’s it’s people like us but maybe maybe a little less experienced. And for them it’s about providing novelty and providing variety. How do I keep me engaged in training? I like, training the fundamentals, like my base fundamentals, is not not wildly complicated.

Troy Taylor [00:28:20]:
Right? If you wanna put on a little bit of muscle mass, get a little AI, like, there’s lots of like, you can pull URBAN online training program and it would do that or hire a personal trainer and Mind you can do this. But, like, standing like 4 times 10 for bench press doing it 3 times a week would have kinda gets Biohacking, kinda gets dull. And so these modes provide variety and novelty, which we have a ton of data around, that says increases engagement. And I think my ultimate thing is, like, how do you stick long term engagement? Anyone can train for a week, a month maybe, but we know outcomes for that we’re interested for health and wellness are long term. And so how do we keep engagement? And so the other side of electromagnetic resistance is the data that you collect. And so we could probably dive into that, but, like, you generate a lot of data that can inform a lot of things.

Nick Urban [00:29:10]:
Yeah. I wanna go there. But before we do, you mentioned optimization. And to play devil’s advocate, why would I even need to bother with knowing the difference between eccentric and concentric? Why can’t I just lift weights like I normally do? Why like, what’s the benefit of loading up your eccentric higher than your concentric?

Troy Taylor [00:29:30]:
I think it’s for the for the two reasons. So there’s a lot of research evidence that suggests that eccentrically overload training leads to greater adaptations in strength. You’re essentially the fitness, is is stretched, but if you can train that heavier so if if I can only lift a £100 concentrically, say, then that’s the maximum on traditional training that I could do eccentrically. Right? Because I’ve gotta get back up unless I’m dropping the weight or I’m doing 2 footed to 1 footed or without a spotter with someone lifting you. If I can do a 125 eccentrically, I’m essentially maxing that capacity. I’m straining that system more, and I’m creating adaptations that will lead to increases in strength. And there’s, I would say, less Troy, but evidence that it will potentially also increase hypertrophy and muscle mass. So I see it as like a stimulus to AI of response.

Troy Taylor [00:30:19]:
I get the same amount or better stimulus, from a single rep of eccentrically overloaded training than I would, with, just a standard weight moving down. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get strong and you can’t get big. We’re just worth doing a £100 concentric, eccentrically. You URBAN. And I lift the light that a lot of AI, but there’s times and places when concentric overload, might be beneficial.

Nick Urban [00:30:42]:
Yeah. I heard somewhere on a podcast or an interview or something that one, your eccentric or concentric is better for strength and for mitochondrial biogenesis and mitochondrial Health, and the other is better for, I wanna say, hormone production. Is there any truth that I I’ve actually looked into the research to see if that’s borne out there.

Troy Taylor [00:31:03]:
I can certainly say that that there’s a lot of evidence around the strength component Mind that being better for eccentric. I haven’t looked at mitochondrial Bioharmony related stuff, and how that they might affect in there. Troy probably I know there are a number of studies that looked at eccentric only and concentric only training. And the end result of most of those adaptations is is they’re fairly similar. You get a little bit of bug from from strength, from eccentric, but that it’s it’s small percentages different. I haven’t gone down to the mechanistic level, and and and I don’t know, what it might tend to Performance production. The other way is just as an example of where you could do it. You you may have tried or you may have seen people in in in your gym, train with chains.

Troy Taylor [00:31:46]:
Right? You know, the chain’s on the floor and it wraps around. That’s a mode of tonal. And so that increases the weight. Right? The more of those chain links that lift off the floor, Health that that device becomes. That’s really good for power training. And we know power is probably the most important variable for health span and longevity. Oh, it’s not longevity per se, but health span in terms of your functional ability, is related to the power that you have. And so that’s a mode that you can add with a touch of a button where it would increase the resistance linearly as you go.

Troy Taylor [00:32:16]:
So just examples of the ways that you can manipulate resistance in real time.

Nick Urban [00:32:21]:
Yeah. And using like, overloading the eccentric and also using change or even bands around, like, a barbell in the gym? AI, I’ve used all those for overcoming, like, sticking points and breaking through plateaus and all that stuff. Yeah.

Troy Taylor [00:32:36]:
I I use chains a lot. My my big my big focus is I’m relatively strong. I have a reasonable amount of muscle mass. Love more. But my big focus for training is making sure that I have the same amount of muscle mass and saves amount of strength when I’m 60. And so I lose a lot of the change for when I’m, like, power training. I I’ve incorporated I’ve never really trained that before. But the reality is is I don’t do a lot of power related movements.

Troy Taylor [00:33:00]:
I’m not I’m not playing a ton of competitive sports these days. I’m not doing those. So I I have to work that intentionally in the gym these days in ways that I probably didn’t when I was in my twenties Mind early thirties because I was getting a lot of power development from other activities that I was doing. But, yeah, there’s a there’s a ton of evidence to suggest that that power, particular deadlift power, which is your ability to get out of a chair, or to walk upstairs, like, that’s really freaking important. And so those are those are the properties that I wanna have, like, I think Peter Ortier talks about. A lot of rep a lot of reserve capacity. If I get lose a little bit, but, like, if it takes me, I don’t know, you know, 50 kilos to get or what a £50 to be able to do this, I wanna have a 100 right AI. So I’ve got a a reserve capacity knowing that I’m likely to lose some strength, with, you know, just age related changes.

Nick Urban [00:33:48]:
Yeah. I think power is a good one to talk about too. I haven’t mentioned it much on the show, and it’s my favorite way to train. It feels like it has the most crossover to the rest of AI. And it’s also, like, one of the things that really high level athletes tend to excel at because it’s important to them. But even if you’re not an athlete, like you’re saying, if you if you slip and you’re falling to catch yourself, requires power. If you’ll exert a lot of force throughout a range of motion, I guess, it’s also mobility. There’s a lot of different uses, and it also just feels really good to train and also to have that, like, quickness.

Troy Taylor [00:34:21]:
I I would actually say and it was it’s probably been in the last 5 years. I think I underappreciated. And you could go to any commercial gym, and you will not see a ton of people training for power related exercises outside of the, like, the athletes that were in there. Your your typical 30, 40, 50 year old is not training for power. But the research evidence is very clear that that’s the the ability that we need to maintain. We don’t think about it. Like, power is force force divided by time. Like, how quickly can you move? Like, if you think about something about getting out of a CHEK, if you see someone when they’re sort of 70 or 80 and frail.

Troy Taylor [00:34:54]:
Right? They can get out of a chair but it’s a real slow movement pattern. Right? They have the strength because they’re applying the force to do it. They just can’t do it quickly. And so something like a get up and go test, which is where you sit to stand and walk and come Nick, AI, highly predictive of health span and longevity, essentially correlates to can you cross the road in time CHEK when the green man flashes? Do you have the gate speed? Again, power. It doesn’t feel like power to relatively healthy people but that’s like turning your legs over quickly. And I think, yeah, there’s just it’s not necessarily just for the the very elderly but, Lauren, I think now me playing with my kids. A lot of what they want me to do with them is power related AI, right? It’s a quick sprint, it’s a lift me up over your Health. It’s all of those AI of things.

Troy Taylor [00:35:40]:
You know, even a luggage Nick, excuse me. Luggage over the over the rack in in a, you know, an AI. Like, you’ve gotta get it up relatively quickly. Those are power related exercises. So, yeah. I just I think the I really underappreciated wear AI.

Nick Urban [00:35:53]:
And how do people usually train for it? You mentioned deadlifts and some of the explosive movements in the gym.

Troy Taylor [00:35:59]:
I really like, deadlifts with chains. And chains and bands are basic. Accommodating resistance. It’s heavier at the top than it is at the bottom. So I can get out of the hole Mind then then it loads up. I really like that because it’s, I think, very functional for life. Lifting something heavy off the floor, whether it be a suitcase, whether it be my kids, whether it be me getting out the the chair, but I’m driving force into the floor, is is definitely one of my favorites. I also do a lot of, chains work on, like, rotational movements, like rotational chopping and trying to maintain that athletes, translation of force from lower body to upper body or from upper body to lower Body.

Troy Taylor [00:36:36]:
Chopping and lifting. But lots of those rotational movements are probably my favorite ways to to add chains and Peak train for power.

Nick Urban [00:36:44]:
Alright. Let’s get into the insights now that you had from you have from your members. 1st, like, have you noticed any general minimum effective dose? Because as I’ve been looking through the research recently on the minimum effective dose of exercise, I’m pretty shocked that it’s not nearly what I thought it was in order to at least maintain muscle and even to build slightly. It doesn’t require a bunch of sessions per week. It doesn’t require 90 minutes of resistance training. It’s, depending on age and other lifestyle factors, a lot less.

Troy Taylor [00:37:16]:
Yeah. Way way less. So first, I Peak you, like, what is the dataset? And then we can dive into it. So every time someone lifts on Total, every single rep, we measure that data anomalously, but at 50 Hertz, 50 times a second for every single rep. Right now, Tonal members of Lifted, I checked yesterday, was a £194,000,000,000. So I’ll just break it. 194,000,000,000 with a b. It breaks into that’s about 5,000,000,000 reps, 600,000,000 sets, 35,000,000 training sessions, something in that AI of region.

Troy Taylor [00:37:53]:
AI, we’re talking a big dataset. And all of that at 50 times a second. It’s undoubtedly the world’s largest strength training database and it’s between people I I like to say 18 to 80. It’s really probably at 16 or below to 90 plus. But 18 to 80 is catchier. But it’s Peak of all walks of life. And so AI a a report, an industry report. We called it the state of strength just, the turn of the year.

Troy Taylor [00:38:19]:
Also, we looked at a 175 1,000 of our users, not the entire database, but a big chunk, of people. And we just looked at, like, on average, not cherry Biohacking, AI, the minimum to be required in this this sort of sample study was, like, you must saves worked out at least 3 times on Tonal Mind you had to be, like, work out at least once every 20 weeks. Just pretty low bar. Right? Which was not a cherry Nick data set of, like, if you train 5 times a Peak, the average increase in strength for that group over the 1st year is something like Nick% are mean. That’s like no thanks. So you got people up there who are doing lots and getting 2, 300%. There’s a lot of people that are, like, you know, training once every couple of weeks, maybe less. And still that skill comes out of the mean.

Troy Taylor [00:39:04]:
Actually, your older population actually makes bigger increases. And that’s something that’s been really fascinating me to dive into, like, the 55 plus. They’re probably starting from a lower barrier, a lower bar, but are making relatively larger increases. So to to get to your question of, like, minimum code, real small. AI think that the research evidence, like, I think, doctor Peak actually, just did a paper on this in, like, power lifters or something like that. He was one of my he was one of my coaches for a while, that showed, like, you know, I think, deadlift strength was, one Health set and was enough to maintain in elite power lifters. And then if you added 3 back offsets a week, you could actually make increases in strength, in in in high level athletes. There was a paper came out a few years ago that looked at I think they had people training at 27 sets a week, and then they reduced their training volume, down to I think it was 1 9th with the bottom of the group, and they still maintained their gain.

Troy Taylor [00:40:05]:
So 3 from 27 sets to 3 sets a week, and they maintained strength. The difference though is that was not in older populations Mind that wasn’t in people in a calorie deficit. And so I think the dose response relationship is actually related a little to age. I think Tonal necessarily you need a bigger stimulus as you’re older, but that may be true. You may if you’re already resistance trained, I think you may need a larger stimulus, just more anabolically, challenged. If you’re new, I think you can still make significant changes. But if you’re in calorie deficit, you also probably and protein requirement related to calorie deficit, you probably need to be in a larger, you probably need a larger larger volume. So the the Tonal data says, like, just a a summary, like, on average, people who train once a Peak, once a week, are still making something like 25% increases in strength in their 1st year.

Troy Taylor [00:40:59]:
Oh, as a mass as a as a sort of a conglomerate. Once a week, AI% increase. It’s not AI it’s not massive but it’s not tiny. If you could told me I could get 25% stronger and that’s the average increase of people training them on once a Peak. It’s still pretty significant. And so, yeah, I think minimum effective dose for getting something is very low. Now AI always would love to be Peak to do a little more. I think there are benefits of doing more, but if you’re starting from nothing, pretty much anything will get you gains in strength.

Troy Taylor [00:41:30]:
I think gains in hypertrophy have to be a little bigger. You need a little more training stimulus. I’d saves, like, around 4 sets a Peak. Not a lot, but 4 sets a week per muscle group. I think, Brad Schoenfeld, did a research study on that. I think the tonal data supports that data. If you’re getting 4 sets per week, you’re most likely and you’re new, you’re most likely to be increasing muscle mass. Strength, probably 1 to 2 sets a week.

Troy Taylor [00:41:55]:
Hypertrophy and building AI, probably 4 sets.

Nick Urban [00:41:58]:
And these are per week. Did the allocation of those sets matter? Like, does it maybe split up over 2 sessions or 1 session or it didn’t really matter?

Troy Taylor [00:42:07]:
Yeah. No. It doesn’t doesn’t really matter at that low level. Like, you’re talking training frequency, doesn’t doesn’t play a big role in in Practitioner. Where training frequency, in my opinion, reading the research and looking at tonal data plays an opinion, plays a message. Well, it’s more on the top end. If you’re pushing the training volume Mind you’re optimizing, like, there’s only so many sets in a session that can be effectively stimulating for for, let’s say, my biceps. I can’t do 50 sets.

Troy Taylor [00:42:36]:
Well, I could. I wouldn’t like to. Wouldn’t be in Nick trouble. But AI 50 sets of biceps in one day is probably not going to be more effective than saves to 16 sets in one day. There’s a there’s a plateau where it becomes there. Where training frequency becomes important. Well, if I trained biceps 3 times a week with saves 10:10 to 20 sets each of those, then I might be able to get 50 sets so we can get more benefit out of it. And then so it’s AI, frequency becomes this modulator of overall training volume.

Troy Taylor [00:43:06]:
But at the low Mind, yeah, you train a muscle group for 2 to 4 sets a Peak. That could be in 1 set 1 session or it could be over over 2 sessions, and you’re probably that’s, in my opinion, somewhere near the minimum effect it does.

Nick Urban [00:43:20]:
Yeah. That makes sense. Based on your dataset, have you done any contraction? Maybe it’s, like, overlaid the qualitative survey type stuff or just, like, from knowing the information about your purchasers, their training age. To get an elite lifter and have them increase their numbers by 25% is unheard of. And, conversely, if someone’s never touched a weight before, getting them to increase by 25% makes sense. And, of course, I’d imagine there’s some mixture of all types of people that use Tonal. But would you say that the demographic skews more towards one way or another?

Troy Taylor [00:43:59]:
So we yes. We do have that data in a couple of different ways, both in sort of self selected survey data as well as some of the data, that we’ve collected from from the system itself. Essentially, what it nets out is most people on average are what I would say, like, just above intermediate. That’s your typical person that’s, you know, it’s it’s a it’s a relatively large investment to AI something like Tundra. You’re into resistance training. A resistance training age of probably 2 to 5 years is typically the norm the mean kind of person Tonal medium person would be a training age of that. They tend to be 35 to 55 years old. It’s about 65% saves, AI% 35% female, 45% female.

Troy Taylor [00:44:41]:
I’m a do my math here. Peak. Nick 6040. Keep it that way. It has actually did change. It was more male dominated when we first testosterone, and now, now we’ve had more females join the platform overall. It’s about Nick, I wanna say is the overall split. And they tend tend to be under training age of 2 to 5 years is the average.

Troy Taylor [00:44:58]:
On the opposite side, yes, we have some people like me. I’ve been resistance training since I was 16, and would class myself as an advance. And there’s some people that have never lifted a weight before they’ve ever touched Tonal. And so when we talk mean or median numbers, it’s AI of squashing the ends. But the majority of people are in that sort of middle intermediate band, 2 to 5 year training history.

Nick Urban [00:45:21]:
So a lot of movement and adaptations that take place are sport or movement specific, such as running on the treadmill doesn’t necessarily apply to running off the treadmill outside. Do you find that users of Tonal are able to actually apply that strength in, like, a more functional way to either other forms of lifting or more importantly to everyday life?

Troy Taylor [00:45:42]:
The set principle exists. Right? The so set principle is is specific adaptation to an imposed demand. And so if you wanna get better at running, run. You wanna get better at lifting, lift. If you wanna get better at running upstairs, run upstairs. Mind then there’s you have to balance that with the idea of transferability, in that what skills Mind cars skills that are closer to each other have a higher level of transfer generally, than that. And so, yeah, the strength the strength like, deadlifting on tonal translates almost one to one to deadlifting in the gym. And the way that our resistance profile AI, it actually feels a little heavier.

Troy Taylor [00:46:18]:
We ran a research study out of High Point University a couple of years ago. Because essentially when you lift with iron, you you essentially put inertia or momentum into the bar. Right? The bar is moving and it’s pushing so Newton’s laws, it wants to carry on moving because I’ve moved it. So, actually, that end of the tricep that end of a bench press is actually relatively easy because I’m already put speed on the bar if I’m moving fast or or would’ve been with tonal or electromagnetic, that inertia momentum is actually much smaller. So you have to push throughout the range of motion. So arguably, it’s actually a little harder, than sort of traditional lifting in that component. They also the cables had a stability component to a lot of exercises, which is sort of actually translates, I would say, to functional tasks better, or at least as well if not better. In that there’s a stability component.

Troy Taylor [00:47:08]:
So AI, you know, my shoulder strength is, you know, yes, I want to be able to bench press like AI, but I need this this stabilization here is really good for all of those those functional things. So, lots of lots of high level transfer into into traditional lifting or into, yeah, into real world scenarios. As much as I think training can come into real world scenarios. Depends what your real world scenario is. But, and then of one case study, overhead pressing my 8 well, close to the 8 year old son is good. The number of reps I can do directly correlates to the number of, of Tonal overhead presses I can do. So, there’s a one to one relationship with my case study.

Nick Urban [00:47:51]:
What are some of the other insights you’ve gathered so far from your dataset?

Troy Taylor [00:47:55]:
There’s tons, but some of the ones that I’m sort of most interesting to me is I Mind mentioned, like, engagement and consistency. One of the new things I think about our data set is yes, it’s massive, but it’s longitudinal. Right? This is people training over months, years, like we’re 5 years old right now as a company, 5, 6 years old. You got some people who have been training Nick 6 years. And so what we can start looking at is the idea of what are the associations with consistency over AI? And how can we kind of bring those forward from a product development spend? How can I, like, feed these into the system so people are more likely to work out on my device because that’s good? But a bit bigger than that, like, I believe resistance training is good for everyone whether it’s on tonal or anything else. But for public health good, how can we use this dataset to improve people’s efficacy or or, engagement with resistance training over time? And so some of the things we start diving in in here becomes AI there’s some simple things or relatively simple, is things like, you know, the time of day that you work out and your your time window. We know that people who have a a smaller time window are more consistent than those who have a varied time window, scheduling behavior, not AI think there were short term studies that have shown that in sort of Nick 8 week Tonal, we’ve shown this in 52 week in general population free living individuals. It it Health true.

Troy Taylor [00:49:21]:
Generally, on this the more simple side too, we know that if you follow more friends on our Facebook app or URBAN our on our app, you’re more consistent with your workouts. There’s an association. I can’t say correlation doesn’t equal cause and effect, but there’s an association in that, hey, people who are actively engaged so maybe we should build more features or or maybe that’s something you should build into your Peak, goes to the accountability buddy. Right? Again, not rocket science, but you’re showing this in 100 of 1000 of real world people. And then just testosterone on some of the sort of more advanced things. Like, we start looking at people who follow programs versus workouts. We have programs that are AI 4 week programs where you can follow vagus you can turn up and you can do a coach led program or you can do your own program or your own workouts or a coach led workout or your own workout. People that follow programs are a lot more consistent than people that just turn up and pick a random workout or having a schedule.

Troy Taylor [00:50:20]:
But people who actually invest in making their own workout, we call it custom, are actually relatively engaged too. Right? The idea of autonomy and I’m having a component in there. So how do we build features that sort of build on something AI, say, self determination theory? The idea that we want autonomy, we want fitness, that would be the social p Peak. We want competency. I wanna feel good about what I’m doing or or that I have the skill set to do it. So how do we build those features into the program and also share that that this might be really, you know, an important component, of how we do that. And then one of the other things that I think is code is we didn’t publish this data. So I wouldn’t say this is as Health.

Troy Taylor [00:51:01]:
So this is more on what my my feelings is, which I’m I’m sure is supported in in the evidence, but I don’t have the data in front of me to say the specific number. AI believe there are 3 massive drivers for what makes a workout or a program more engaging based on 35,000,000 training sessions that my team has written. Time efficiency. Shorter workout, more people will do it. Given a choice, there are free living people in their own world. If I write a 15 minute, a 30 minute, or 45 minute workout, there will be close to a linear engagement based on time. So time efficiency matters massively if you want people to engage. Showing progression within the cycle is super important for engagement.

Troy Taylor [00:51:45]:
And so as stroke adaptations are slow. Right? They’re it’s not AI I lift one time and I’m suddenly like Arnold Schwarzenegger or whoever it might be. You’re like, I’m not Jack. So, like, to keep that motivation so we have to find ways to build progression and show progression. It might be volume, it might be intensity, but we need to be conscious building that into a program. I would argue, I think you code make an argument that the best evidence based program might be somewhat the same for 4 weeks, for 8 weeks, for 12 weeks. Right? You just skill acquisition training, and you shouldn’t buy it. I would say, CHEK.

Troy Taylor [00:52:17]:
Add a add a rep 1 a Peak. And you the person will see the graph come up. And as soon as they start to see that Troy start showing to other people the graph went up. And then everyone and it snowballs. And we see that momentum. The programs where we build in intentional progression, that the member can see. Like, they always get a little bit stronger, but that becomes huge. And then 3rd is that novelty variation without being random.

Troy Taylor [00:52:40]:
So how do I use dynamic weight code? How do I muscle, like, if if the session was 4 set 4 times 10, 4 sets of 10 reps, could I do 12, 10, 8, 6 instead? Because that’s more cognitive URBAN it’s just got more it keeps me a little more engaged. However, we can build in sensible variety, I think is a real engager, a real driver engagement, which I I haven’t seen anyone their data might be existing out there, but I’ve never seen it in strength training. And, I think our dataset is uniquely positioned to be able to answer some of those questions.

Nick Urban [00:53:14]:
For that second one that you wanna show continuous progress, what is that in terms of, like, the rep range or the total weight lifted? Or what’s that that graph you’re referring to?

Troy Taylor [00:53:25]:
There’s multiple things. Volume load is the easiest one to show. If you showed an increase in volume, there’s no sets AI, direct time to wait. So either add a set, add a rep, 1 or the other, both add intensity. So, like, same rep range but in group but Nick like progressive overload we know is a principle of training that you need to have, but I don’t think we thought about it as a it’s a tool for engagement, not a necessarily Tonal for adaptation. It is a tool for Practitioner, and we do need it for adaptation. But, yeah, I would manipulate essentially one of those athletes variables almost on a weekly or a biweekly basis. So how do I do that? You can sort of modify it by hitting, an exercise selection change, something that you’re slightly stronger in.

Troy Taylor [00:54:08]:
And so you can get the the load weight increasing that. But people wanna see they’re doing more. They’re getting better. They’re improving. And they wanna see it not in a 6, 8, 12 week cycle. They wanna see it on a week to week vagus. And I think we can like, there’s some AI portion of delayed gratification that, hey, wait for the outcome. But I care about getting people to move not being right.

Troy Taylor [00:54:30]:
I care about people exercising. And so if I can build in, hey, it was 10 reps this week and it’s 11 reps next or you did £100 last week and it’s 102 this week. I would saves done some of those Practitioner or those changes from a progressive overload on a every 2 to 4 week basis. I now do it on a 1 week basis because of the engagement tool that I’ve seen it to be.

Nick Urban [00:54:50]:
Okay. So this would be especially helpful for people who are newer, but also it’s good it’s nice for everyone to see. It feels good for either of us to see that also. But so after they they progress from beginner to intermediate, one of the most important variables or themes of fitness is where you’ll be in years from now. It’s the consistency over time because lack of consistency is the fastest way to lose your progress. And the biggest thing that causes that, especially in people who are have been doing it for a long time, is injury. Do you have any data on injury rates compared to, like, conventional free weight training?

Troy Taylor [00:55:32]:
Yeah. I have a little data. Like, it’s not something we directly collect, but we have done some survey data on what people have injuries. Mind, like, the the data is very similar to what the research would say is typical injury rates within lifting. A little lower probably is my my estimation of those because of those safety factors. It’s, you know, it’s got spotter and some things with where people hurt. But it tends to be, AI, it’s it’s those chronic overuse nerves, that are probably the ones. And so we’ve started building on platforms like movement modifications.

Troy Taylor [00:56:08]:
We have something called recovery weights now. So, like, you can like, making it easy Performance empowering, again, autonomy, self determination theory, people to take charge of their journey. I I’m a real believer in, like, you should be the driver of your own fitness journey. I’m here. I’ve got a lot of tools Nick can help you a long way. But you have to be the person that knows how you feel today and whether you can push it. And so we’ve spent a lot of time on building movement replacement contraction. You know, you have bad knees, so let’s let’s change out a knee dominant exercise maybe for a hip dominant exercise Tonal.

Troy Taylor [00:56:40]:
Or like recovery weights or building in we building deload weeks now. And so encouraging through our platform that, like, CHEK. We’ve just done 8 weeks of back to back stuff. Probably time for a deload. You know, let’s take just a back off week and, like, main some intensity but decrease the frequency maybe, and AI of modifying in there. But the overall injury rates are probably fairly similar to Practitioner which are low. Like, if you look at that data, it’s it’s not tends to be not that people get injured lifting. It does happen, but it’s not the massive amount.

Troy Taylor [00:57:12]:
It’s they get injured doing something else that throws them off from lifting. You know, it’s AI gets in the way Mind you, you know, you’re on a ski trip and you’re building a knee out or you’re you know, those types of types of issues. And so I think I don’t have data on which feet, but what I would hypothesize around that space is we become a very and I we take a lot from my background and others in elite sport. Like, if if a skier blows their knee, that means you you’re not training that knee. It means you got a lot of the rest of your body you can carry on training. You can go surgery, you know, someone like Lindsey Vonn who’s had, I don’t know, 10 knee surgery. She trained pretty much every day she wasn’t on the operating table. She wouldn’t train that leg, but she was training the other leg.

Troy Taylor [00:57:57]:
She’s training her upper body. She’s training her core. And so providing opportunities for people to, hey, this doesn’t mean that you don’t train. You know, Some, some nerves do mean that you don’t Troy, but often it’s AI, how am I modifying your training, so you can maintain the habit of doing that. And then we will, like, you know, once you’re ready and your physical therapist or whoever else, your physician, your Health professional, then let’s incorporate, you know, resistance training back in on the affected limb or affected area. But wherever possible, let’s try and maintain that and work around the injury.

Nick Urban [00:58:30]:
Yeah. For the elderly, it seems to be more of a concern. They sustain injuries more easily.

Troy Taylor [00:58:36]:
I think, like, once you get over 60 5, I think the data is. Once you if you fracture your hip, like, there’s your Nick of death increases dramatically. I think about that in 2 ways. Number 1, you’re more much more likely to fall and hurt yourself if you’re frail and weak. And so getting you strong and powerful, like, in the first part of the conversation early, decreases your chances of doing those those

Nick Urban [00:59:05]:
focusing on hypertrophy and not strength?

Troy Taylor [00:59:07]:
Lots of this data is, like, observational correlation data. We don’t track over over long periods of AI. But muscle mass as a thing is a good marker of both longevity and irrespective of strength, but strength is a better marker, of lifespan and health span, I believe. They’re not polar opposites, right? Like we some of us tend to think about them as that. But they’re they’re much closer. Like, yes, if I’m a powerlifter versus a bodybuilder they’re very different. But for the general population they’re much smaller, in terms of of where they’re focused on. But AI sarcopenia, like age related, loss of muscle mass is definitely a predictor on its own independently of, of health span and and lifespan.

Troy Taylor [00:59:50]:
Strength is a good marker. And I think that the one that we talked on earlier Mind I think it’s more more research actually powers probably the best of them, because it’s incorporating your ability to have strength over short periods of time. The research shows it was Joseph Nick, use it or lose it, I think is the title of the research paper. He showed that people were gaining muscle mass in their fifties, sixties, and seventies, and could continue to gain strength, but not necessarily muscle mass in their eighties nineties. So and I think that actually another common paper has come out recently that AI disputes that. It says people can still put muscle mass in their eighties AI. But the older you get, it kinda gets to a point of where we’re not in a hormonal state or or a I’d say we code put on large amounts of muscle mass. But it’s old.

Troy Taylor [01:00:36]:
It’s it’s 80 plus. It’s not it’s not 60. It’s probably 80 plus. And you can still make the neurological strength changes at that that 80, 90 year old age. And maybe you can make hypertrophy, maybe maybe not. But yeah.

Nick Urban [01:00:50]:
Yeah. And so much of strength is neurologic, and so that’s a a good benefit. But, Troy, are there any downsides? Obviously, the price of this technology is still more expensive than buying a dumbbell off Amazon. But, like, are there any issues with excess central nervous system fatigue or anything else? Any, like, things that people should be wary of?

Troy Taylor [01:01:15]:
It’s it’s an investment in your future Urban investment in your health and and, you know, not everyone can afford it. And we would love to make it cheaper. It’s just that’s unfortunately, to run a business is what it costs right now. And so so that that obviously is a barrier. No. There there are not concerns on on on neuro Taylor. Like AI isokinetic mode that you AI in ARX, we have it as a strength assessment Mind think it’s good as an assessment tool. We which is not our favorite from a training perspective.

Troy Taylor [01:01:42]:
My personal bias, I’ve used AI quite a lot. It’s highly effective. It’s just not necessarily the most engaging Mind there are downsides neurologically of pushing that hard. So it’s not something that we have in the platform as of now. Like anything, you can overdo it for sure. If you if you start, like, ramping and lifting and kind of things, but there’s a lot of tools in the system that will try to help you not do that. And so whereas a dumbbell or any freeway, it just knows it’s being well, it doesn’t even know it’s being moved. We have a lot of tools that are now, hey, we’re noticing velocity is slowing or power is decreasing or your strength is going down.

Troy Taylor [01:02:18]:
Maybe take that deload Peak or, like, here’s the right progression for you. Here’s a, you know AI analyzed our database, Troy, there’s, you know, 25,000 people like you, middle you know, 40 to 50 years old, resistance training, advanced AI of thing. These are the programs that they really liked and they got really benefit from. How about you try some of those? There’s a lot of advantages to to those Taylor, but you can overdo it. But it’s not a it’s not a major concentric for training real hard. You need to really push it to AI, overreaching, you can do short term saves, but I’ve worked with, like, athletes that have trained a lot. As long as you don’t go from 0 to a 100 and you have some logical progression, your body can handle a lot in my experience. Lots more than we probably thought it could a while ago.

Troy Taylor [01:03:08]:
We Troy around terms like overtraining a lot, and I’m not sure that that many people have actually really experienced those long term decrements. It can happen particularly with under fueling and particularly on the endurance side, but strength side, much less in my opinion.

Nick Urban [01:03:21]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I discovered firsthand that when I did a program called squat every day where 6 days a Peak, you would do, like, Peak actually, no. You would max a different version of your squat, and I realized it really is less of over under recovery. And I was blown away that even after lifting for years, I was able to put add £50 of my squat over the over the span of 2 of those programs over over 60 days. And by the end, I was squatting, like, 495. And so I I didn’t see that as being possible to do multiple days in a row, and your body adapts incredibly.

Troy Taylor [01:03:58]:
You code train real hard. You can have work life and stress, but you need to take care of your nutrition, your sleep, like, you know, your recovery modalities. If they’re not taken care of, those other 2 might come back and bite you in in the ass. But you you you need at least 2 of the 3, but yeah. You don’t wanna you don’t wanna be training hard, not sleeping well, not eating well, you know, not doing your recovery Practitioner. But as long as you’ve got those in, most people in most scenarios can handle, I think, a fair amount more as long as they progress appropriately.

Nick Urban [01:04:26]:
Alright, Troy. We also saves to wind this one down. If people want to connect with you, they wanna check out Tonal or follow you guys on social. How do they go about that?

Troy Taylor [01:04:35]:
Yeah. So, for tonal information, the best place, would be tonal.com, is our website. And so if you wanna find more about the product and the modes and the data and everything we do around that, if you wanna lower it about Tonal and Troy more member stories and the programs, our Instagram account is a really good AI of place for that. Lots of coaches share and and kind of on Tonal. And then myself, my Instagram account is strength AI Troy. I tend to share, honestly, athletes of retraining, but training with Tonal, with blood flow restriction bands, with sled drags. I I try to, like, show what’s possible with our device and also share a fair amount of, like, cutting research evidence, what’s being published in strength hypertrophy power type space. So that’s strength science on Instagram.

Nick Urban [01:05:22]:
Let’s do a quick rapid fire round of you listing off different modalities. You you mentioned a couple right there that we didn’t even really talk about. And you can just give me the thumbs up, thumbs down, and a sentence of why. So we can start with blood flow restriction training.

Troy Taylor [01:05:37]:
Yeah. I’m big fat.

Nick Urban [01:05:39]:
Mobility training?

Troy Taylor [01:05:42]:
Yeah. I think I think I think resistance training mobility training, I don’t think you need to necessarily do a AI separate. If you’re working through a full range of motion, I think there’s a lot that says that actually, you can get most of your mobility through that. If you’re not doing that, then you’re gonna need to train yourself.

Nick Urban [01:05:56]:
Static stretching.

Troy Taylor [01:06:00]:
AI you find personal benefit, I don’t think there’s any any real benefits to it. But if you like it, do it. But I wouldn’t say something I would suggest.

Nick Urban [01:06:09]:
Field work and sleds and that kind of stuff. Parachutes.

Troy Taylor [01:06:14]:
It’s how I get my high end cardiovascular trait. Like, my my intensity, I do sled drags on tonal. AI Tonal AI. So I I’ve never liked it, but I find a benefit to my outcome. So I’m gonna give that thumbs up. Anyone that knows me knows I don’t really like working more than about 6 reps. So, I buy. I’m AI.

Nick Urban [01:06:31]:
Yeah. Well, I was gonna ask you AI 2 max training.

Troy Taylor [01:06:34]:
Feel very similar to the last one. I think it’s good. I don’t do enough of it. Yeah. I take some churros to Troy preempt. I’m like, some dude’s fine. It just seems it’s got Taylor a life of its own. Like Yeah.

Troy Taylor [01:06:48]:
Athletes you’re training 12, 14 hours a week, go hard Mind you’ll probably be better than doing a ton of zone 2. That’s when someone AI probably 30 hours of zone 2 to Olympic athletes at various different times per week. But if you’re not an Olympic athlete and you’re not training for 10:10 or more hours a week, go hard. You’ll get more outcomes.

Nick Urban [01:07:07]:
Okay. So list some of the other tools and technologies and things that you’ve broken down in your Instagram and or that you’ve come across that are fitness related that you like and don’t like?

Troy Taylor [01:07:18]:
Most of the stuff on Instagram’s sort of training related attachments. So I use BFR bands quite a lot. I kind of attach kettlebells and Tonal and so you get AI accommodating resistance kettlebell work. So like chain kettlebell, which is kind of a cool kind of environment, to play around there. Do lots of sled dragging on that.

Nick Urban [01:07:42]:
Heavy duty resistance bands.

Troy Taylor [01:07:44]:
I have resistance bands. Like, they work the same as chains. They’re, like, they’re good for power development. I just it’s much like, it’s a pain in my ass to shut them up to set them up. So I just change on tonal and get the same outcome, for for much less effort.

Nick Urban [01:07:59]:
How about the hypoxia inducing masks, training

Troy Taylor [01:08:04]:
masks? No. Not a fad. I think there’s there’s a research evidence, on inspiratory muscle training. So the idea of sucking in against this spring loaded, AI, PowerBreathe was the company back in the early 2000. There’s that improves lung function, mainly at altitude or at in, as I understand it, in compromised positions. If you’re a rower or something like that, you can’t expand. There’s value in this. But the standard hypoxic device, I don’t think is particularly valuable.

Troy Taylor [01:08:36]:
I like heat stress. I think heat’s good. I think there’s you can drive adaptations from heat stress, within limits.

Nick Urban [01:08:44]:
What about fat grips?

Troy Taylor [01:08:46]:
Yeah. I have fat grips. I used to really like them because I used to have a lot of shoulder pain and they were really good for my shoulder pain. Actually, since I’ve got Tonal and it’s worked on that Tonal, CHEK the shoulder stability, my shoulder pain’s gone away. So I use them a lot less now, but it is interesting. This is an ego worth AI. I like to think I’m good at hanging Mind good at chin ups. And I went to like a country fair and they had one of those AI fat bars that you hang on.

Troy Taylor [01:09:10]:
If you can hang for 2 minutes, then, you know, you win a $100 or something. I don’t care about the $100 I AI, but not really. AI my I wanted to impress my son, and I did it. And it got to, like, 96 seconds Mind I fell. So I started doing fat grip training for this because I’m like, next step, I am get to the 2 minutes. It rotates too. I think there’s a motor on it. They’re trying to chip me, but it’s a functional test now for me, that I am gonna try and improve upon.

Troy Taylor [01:09:33]:
But, yeah, sometimes you wanna pick up big fat things. It’s tough. And so having the strength to do that, I AI, can have value.

Nick Urban [01:09:39]:
Yeah. What about hanging in general and then also inversion?

Troy Taylor [01:09:43]:
I think hanging’s great. I think it’s a, like, putting you hanging and the ability to pull yourself up is, I think, a really functional, like, kind of things. There’s lots of times you are going to need to pull yourself up, whether it’s directly, you know, vertical or or it’s slight horizontal angle. So I think maintaining that strength pattern and being able to do that for body weight, your entire body weight, it would be a really valuable thing for people to be able to do. So I’m a big fan of that. Inversion, I haven’t really done a much of. I I have no I’ve never really read the research on it, and I don’t really I’ve never applied Practitioner myself or 2 athletes. Do you have any any background in that? I’ve never done.

Nick Urban [01:10:21]:
I do it every once in a while. It seems to marginally help me recover faster, but it’s a marginal effect, and I haven’t read research on it. I was just recommended it, and it feels nice afterward Troy. And that’s been the extent of my use. Well, Troy, what is one thing the the Tonal AI does not know about you?

Troy Taylor [01:10:41]:
Really don’t like cardiovascular training. And I know I should do it Mind I should do it more, but I don’t do it as anywhere near as much as I should. For yeah. I have a treadmill, so people see me on walking on treadmill meetings. I was like, I do lots of low end hot walking, but I, do not stretch my lungs at the high end capacity anywhere near as much as I should.

Nick Urban [01:11:00]:
Do you do any, AI, sprinting or anything like that?

Troy Taylor [01:11:04]:
I I haven’t for a long time. I’m I started trying to get back into doing doing some stuff. But yeah. No. It’s not, not an area of my fitness that I’ve I’ve worked on. Honestly, it’s having a 6 year old kid, 7 year old kid has made me realize I don’t have that capacity anymore. Neither I’m very good at it. But, yeah, it’s, it’s amazing how long it takes him to recover from a short effort.

Troy Taylor [01:11:24]:
And he’s actually Podcast. So so

Nick Urban [01:11:26]:
Well, Troy, how do you wanna wrap up our episode together today?

Troy Taylor [01:11:29]:
Nothing. Just to say thanks. I super appreciate you having me on. It’s, been an enjoyable chat. Yeah. Honestly, I hope you resistance train. I think resistance training is probably the single best thing that people code do. You wanna do it on Tomball? That’s great.

Troy Taylor [01:11:42]:
But, you know, just AI think resistance training, maintaining that is should be a solid foundation for anyone.

Nick Urban [01:11:48]:
Doesn’t take much. Just once a Peak. Get that get that in. Build a habit. If you wanna do it twice, 3 times, 4 times a week, go ahead. But, yeah, it’s such a pivotal habit to build for Health, performance, longevity, energy, stress management, just about everything. So great advice. Really interested to hear all the stats and findings you’ve had from your world’s largest strength dataset.

Nick Urban [01:12:14]:
Thanks for joining me on the podcast today, and I look forward to a future conversation with you.

Troy Taylor [01:12:20]:
Appreciate it. Thanks, Nick.

Nick Urban [01:12:22]:
I hope that this has been helpful for you. If you enjoyed it, subscribe Mind hit the thumbs up. I love knowing who’s in the 1% committed to reaching their full potential. Comment 1% below so that I know who you are. For all the resources and links, meet me on my website at mindbodypeak.com. I appreciate you and look forward to connecting with

Troy Taylor [01:12:49]:
you.