Read Time: ~3 minutes

I made a reel recently comparing the Tonal spotter to a half-drunk frat boy eyeing the girl on the stair-stepper in short shorts.

Like the frat boy, it barely pays attention to what you're doing.

Then it kicks in, if you're lucky.

And only if you know to engage it by coming to a complete stop.

Then, the second you get the rep up, it vanishes again like a fart in the wind.

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No human spotter in a gym works that way.

They don't wait for the bar to stop moving before stepping in. And they don't disappear on the next rep because they know you'll need help again.

But I didn't want to end that video on a negative note, so here's the line I closed with: it's a great safety feature.

That's not a consolation prize.

That's a major win.

Where It Actually Excels: Safety

The spotter isn't built to help you squeeze out extra reps past your limit... or even for eccentric loading. It's genuinely bad at those.

And we have Eccentric Mode for a reason.

What it's built for is the moment you actually need a spot due to safety concerns when you hit complete exhaustion or failure.

That's a real gap most home gym setups can't fill and Tonal fills it well.

Why Safety Matters Here

Because training to, or very near, true failure is actually really really important.

Not in the Spice Girls "tell me what you want, what you really really want" kinda of way. But in a "you're not going to build as much muscle without it" kinda way.

And that means you need something there to ensure safety when that happens.

The research on this is genuinely mixed...

Some studies show a small hypertrophy edge for grinding every set to true failure (Grgic et al., 2022).

Sorry Dorian Yates Blood & Guts advocates.

Other studies show that edge disappears once you match total training volume (Vieira et al., 2021).

What the data is consistent on: training within about 1-3 reps of failure is where most of the growth happens (Robinson et al., 2024).

And most people never get anywhere close.

When researchers looked at self-selected training loads, people were picking weights that left them 8, 9, sometimes 10+ reps in the tank (Steele et al., 2022).

That's not training near failure. That's a warm-up pretending to be a workout.

There's a line often credited to Warren Buffett:

The Only Way to Know Where That Point Is

You can't calibrate 1-3 reps in reserve if you've never actually felt true failure.

T.S. Eliot put it better than I can:

Okay, enough of the pseudo-intellectual quotes Jackson.

We get it, you like to read and consider yourself a know-it-all. Just get to the point...

Occasionally, on the right exercises, you have to go to that dark place very few are willing to go. The forbidden place called The Land of The Failed Reps.

Not every set. Not even every workout.

But enough to know what your limit actually feels like, instead of guessing at it from a safe distance.

That's the moment the spotter earns its keep. Not for extra reps...

But for the rep where you reach your limit and the real growth begins to occur.

If you're ready to take your Tonal Training to the next level, read every single work of this page:

​How 721+ Tonal Clients Lost an Average of 18 Lbs, 6% Body Fat, and Gained 1.5 Lbs of Muscle in Just 16 Weeks​

Time for action,

Coach Jackson

References:

1. Grgic, J., Schoenfeld, B. J., Orazem, J., & Sabol, F. (2022). Effects of resistance training performed to repetition failure or non-failure on muscular strength and hypertrophy: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Sport and Health Science, 11(2), 202–211.
2. Vieira, A. F., Umpierre, D., Teodoro, J. L., Lisboa, S. C., Baroni, B. M., Izquierdo, M., & Cadore, E. L. (2021). Effects of resistance training performed to failure or not to failure on muscle strength, hypertrophy, and power output: A systematic review with meta-analysis. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 35(4), 1165–1175.
3. Robinson, Z. P., Pelland, J. C., Remmert, J. F., Refalo, M. C., Jukic, I., Steele, J., & Zourdos, M. C. (2024). Exploring the dose-response relationship between estimated resistance training proximity to failure, strength gain, and muscle hypertrophy: A series of meta-regressions. Sports Medicine, 54(9), 2209–2231.
4. Steele, J., Malleron, T., Har-Nir, I., Androulakis-Korakakis, P., Wolf, M., Fisher, J. P., & Halperin, I. (2022). Are trainees lifting heavy enough? Self-selected loads in resistance exercise: A scoping review and exploratory meta-analysis. Sports Medicine, 52(12), 2909–2923.