Tonal’s new Daily Lift feature is exciting, but its sophistication could spell bad news for personal trainers
Tonal has unveiled “Daily Lift,” a new artificial intelligence feature that creates personalized, daily strength training workouts for users.
Announced Wednesday, Daily Lift uses AI to analyze factors including a Tonal user’s recent workouts, their performance in those workouts and fatigue levels, while taking personal fitness goals and preferences into account.
The end result, Tonal says, is the perfect strength training workout. Users can tweak suggested Daily Lift workouts to alter program length, change muscle region focus or substitute specific exercises.
The launch of Daily Lift marks a potentially significant moment in the fitness industry’s growing embrace of artificial intelligence. While AI-generated workouts are nothing new, they’re often slammed for being overly cookie-cutter and too generic for hardcore fitness enthusiasts.
Daily Lift is much more personalized and robust, Tonal says, since it’s built on a user’s own workout history on their Tonal machine, along with reams of strength training data (Tonal’s new digital strength training machine, the Tonal 2, uses a camera to analyze 500 data points per second).
“Daily Lift isn’t just another AI-generated workout,” Tonal chief product and content officer Jonathan Shottan told Athletech News. “It’s built on Tonal Intelligence, a proprietary system that harnesses deep insights from your unique training data together with proven performance science principles to deliver the most personalized, effective workout out there.”
Fitness executives have mostly stated that AI won’t replace human personal trainers any time soon, although the launch of a product like Daily Lift could give them second thoughts.
While Tonal didn’t necessarily create the feature to get rid of fitness professionals (the brand itself still employs coaches), Shottan did say that Daily Lift is designed to replicate “what a top-tier personal trainer would do — automatically, daily and at scale for all of our members to enjoy.”
“Daily Lift marks the beginning of a more adaptive coaching layer within Tonal Intelligence – one that evolves with you, like a personal trainer, to meet your evolving needs and training style,” he added. “Over time, this intelligence will continue to deepen across the Tonal ecosystem, reinforcing the performance feedback loop that drives individual progress.”
Tonal plans to continue investing in artificial intelligence and other tech tools, Shottan confirmed to ATN.
“We will also continue to invest in world-class AI talent, tools and technology as a tool in our toolkit to further push the boundaries of what’s possible with Tonal Intelligence,” he said.
