Learn how these workouts are designed to build lean muscle and burn fat.
By Karen Iorio Adelson and John Christie
If you’ve been measuring your progress by the number on the scale, you’re not getting the full picture. If you’re serious about improving your health and fitness, it’s time to think about body composition instead.
Body composition refers to the ratio of lean body mass (which includes muscles, bones, and organs) to fat mass. Increasing the percentage of lean muscle mass makes a huge difference in how you look, feel, and perform, even if your weight doesn’t budge. That’s why Get Lean programs and workouts on Tonal are designed to change your body composition by building lean muscle.
Compared to other workouts on Tonal, Get Lean sessions are higher in density, which means you’ll spend more time under tension and lift more volume per minute. This type of training improves your work capacity (or the amount of exercise you can do in a given time) so you can build more lean muscle and burn more calories in each workout.
If you’re ready to change your body composition while boosting your energy levels, you’re going to love Tonal’s Get Lean programs.
What Are The Benefits of Get Lean Programs?
Building lean muscle mass increases your resting metabolic rate—the number of calories your body burns each day before factoring in any activity. This leads to a shift in body composition. Get Lean workouts emphasize multi-joint compound lifts such as squats and deadlifts that recruit large muscles like your glutes and quads that burn more calories at rest. Along with building muscle, you’ll also burn calories and fat during Get Lean workouts thanks to the steady pace and high workload.
Tonal’s multi-week Get Lean programs have been expertly designed to build your work capacity as you progress. In these programs, volume and resistance increase week-over-week while rest periods get shorter. To ensure you’re ready to give it your all in each workout and keep the intensity high, Get Lean programs often feature training splits that give individual muscle groups time to recover between sessions.
As you complete these workouts, you’ll likely feel like you have more energy and a higher capacity for activity, both during your workouts and in everyday life.
How Should Get Lean Workouts Feel?
You should feel pumped after a Get Lean workout as blood flows to your muscles, and you might experience some soreness in between sessions. As you engage with these programs, you’ll enjoy a sense of accomplishment as you conquer each new challenge and leave workouts feeling energized.
Check out the programs below, which are listed from easiest to hardest (or jump in at your level if you’re more experienced) to start getting lean on Tonal.
Get Lean: Beginner
Starting Out with Tonal – Coach Liz Letchford
If you’re new to strength training (or strength training on Tonal), this introductory program will set you up on the right foot. Simple yet stimulating, these workouts introduce you to Tonal while also kickstarting your metabolism with ample training volume.
Beginner Heat – Coach Amy Schemper
Beginner Heat is an exciting two-week program with a unique workout each day that’ll keep you on your toes. The sessions follow a steady structure with an increased workload in the second week so you can gradually burn calories more efficiently.
Four-Week Fast Track – Coach Gabby Sansosti
Establish consistency in training and load up the volume as you push through this four-week program. Gabby’s energy always pulls more out of you, and the session structure and training splits allow you to show up fresh each day. The workouts are divided into push and pull days so you’ll be able to work one group of muscles while another rests.
When to Move on to Intermediate Programs
Since intermediate Get Lean programs move at a faster pace and squeeze in more work with less rest, you’ll know it’s time to move on when the rest periods in your beginner programs start feeling too long. If you have noticeably less soreness between workouts than when you started, that’s another sign you’re ready to level up.
Get Lean: Intermediate
20-in-20: Ignite – Coach Tony Horton
It’s easy to understand why this program is one of the most popular among Tonal members—and it’s not only because of Coach Tony’s unique sense of humor. Each session is unique, and the pace is fast and furious. You’ll train five days per week, reinforcing consistency, boosting fat burn, and increasing your weekly volume to build lean muscle faster.
Lean Machine Bootcamp – Coach Nicolette Amarillas
Each session of this two-week program features four separate training blocks to pack in a tremendous amount of volume. You’ll find circuits filled with heavy lifts to develop strength, and then test your power with explosive plyometrics.
Shaped and Shredded – Coach Gabby Sansosti
In this four-week, full-body program, you’ll burn calories from the moment you start each workout to the last rep. It’s full of big, complex lifts that will challenge every muscle fiber and spike your heart rate. Coach Gabby keeps you moving at a challenging pace, and her energetic coaching style will pull you through every set.
When to Move on to Advanced Programs
You’ll know you’re ready for Advanced Get Lean programs when you’re consistently setting Power PRs in your workouts and feel confident in every move, with mostly smooth lines in your range of motion charts If you can finish Intermediate programs within the estimated time while feeling in control of your breathing and heart rate, it’s time to take the next step.
Get Lean: Advanced
The Power of You – Coach Gabby Sansosti
With the customizable Programs+ format, The Power of You is an excellent introduction to advanced programming as you can fine-tune the duration and difficulty of each workout depending on how you feel on a specific day. This program includes an effective mix of stability, strength, and power training to build lean muscle while torching calories and fat in each session.
Shaped and Shredded: Maximum Burn – Coach Ash Wilking
If you loved the intermediate Shaped and Shredded program, this is the natural next step when you’re ready to level up. You’ll lift heavy to build lean muscle and finish each session with an explosive block that’ll leave you feeling powerful.
Four Weeks to Fat Loss 2 – Coach Jackson Bloore
Get ready to feel a major sense of accomplishment—both physically and mentally—when you complete each workout in this incredibly dense and challenging program. You’ll push impressive volume numbers in every session, and the blocks often pair a plyometric exercise with a rotational power move to fire up every muscle fiber.
Substitutes While on the Go
Keep making progress toward your goal when you’re on the go with bodyweight HIIT or strength workouts, or faster-paced yoga sessions. If you want to do a workout on an off day during your program, focus on easing sore muscles and reducing achiness with restorative flow yoga, recovery, and Theragun sessions.
What’s Next?
The high volume of Get Lean programs is engaging and fun, but it’s important to mix up your workouts and introduce your body to a new stimulus from time to time, especially if you want to fortify your strength foundation, which will improve your output in future Get Lean programs. Try a Build Muscle program to boost your strength and power, or test your improved work capacity with a greater focus on functional performance in an Improve Fitness program.
