The word “toning” is something of a joke in many fitness circles, because it’s a word used when people mean other things. Sometimes it’s a code word for being skinny, like when someone might promise you that a workout will tone your muscles instead of making you bulky. Other times it’s a ploy to make money, like when someone says you can do your toning exercises at home instead of buying weights or a gym membership.
Insofar as the word means something, we talk about this a bit when we discuss the fear of getting fat. Being “toned” generally means having some muscle definition while still being able to see your body as feminine or slim.
What happens when you work a muscle?
When you ask your muscles to do something, they do it better. While entire dissertations have been written on exactly what happens inside muscle cells when you exercise, the ways in which we change our muscles when we lift weights primarily fall into two categories:
- Improvements in the use of that muscle (neuromuscular adaptations)
- The muscle enlarges (hypertrophy)
Of the two, only the second (the growing muscle) has any visual impact. They both affect how strong you are, or to put it another way, what you can make with that muscle Getting stronger and getting bigger happen together: AndYou can try to favor one over the other, but strength training will give you bigger muscles as a side effect, and training for bigger muscles is practically impossible without getting stronger.
Now the human body is complex, so of course there is no only two things that happen. But those are the main ones. Other things that happen, though less noticeably:
- Your muscles improve by repeatedly contracting (muscular endurance)
- You burn calories during training.
These characteristics are not exclusive to strength training. You also burn calories and build endurance with cardio exercises, like running.
These last two items have no visible effect on your body. You can’t tell how good someone’s stamina is by looking at them. burn calories can theoretically result in fat loss, or even muscle loss, but that also depends on how many calories you eat. Exercise alone does not change the amount of fat in your body.
So how do I get that “toned” look?
When we look at the visible changes we can make to our bodies through exercise, there are really only two things we can control:
- We can enlarge specific muscles with resistance training (like lifting weights)
- We can eat fewer calories than we burn, while also training resistance to preserve muscle; this causes us to lose fat throughout our body.
Keep in mind that you can focus on which muscles you want to increase, but there is no way to lose fat in a specific part of the body. Fat distribution isn’t really under our control, so you can’t work out to get a flat tummy, or slim down your thighs, or anything like that. You can work your muscles to make them bigger, and eat in a calorie deficit to make your whole body smallerand see what happens.
To address a few other things that are discussed along with toning: you can’t build “long lean muscles” specifically. Lean simply means fat-free, so if you want to look lean, you’re looking at fat loss.
And the long of a muscle is not something you can control: IIt’s stuck to your bones. How would it be longer? Sometimes people mean they want their muscles to not look rounded or have a peak in their biceps, but that’s not really in our control either. Their attachment points and the length of their tendons versus the contractile portion of the muscles are just things you are born with.
What does a “toning” workout do?
Based on what we know so far, you’d expect that if you want muscle definition while looking slimmer, you’d need to lift weights and pay attention to your diet. (It would also be smart to do some cardio, which It is good for your health Y won’t kill your profits).
So what’s up with all these “toning up” workouts? Isn’t there a “toning” rep range? Don’t you need smaller weights to “tone” than to make your hair stand on end? What gives? Well I hate to break it to you but that’s all the shit people say to sell stuff.
Here’s the lowdown on rep ranges: Anything up to about 15 repetitions will do a good job of building your muscles and making you stronger.. Anything up to about 30 reps can still grow your muscles if you take the lift to failure (ie by rep 30 your muscles are on fire and you literally can’t do another rep). Beyond that, or if you’re doing a high-rep set but lower the dumbbells before you reach failure, you’re not doing much to increase the size or strength of your muscles. You’re still working on stamina, but stamina won’t do much to change the way your body looks.
What about the size of their weights? Well, to hit those proper rep ranges, you need to lift weights that are “heavy” for you. Maybe you’re new to this and five pounds is a really challenging bicep curl. Perfect! That’s your “heavy”, for now. As you get stronger, you will need heavier weights. (Keep in mind, though: Different exercises use different muscle groups. Someone using a five-pound weight for curls will need a heavier weight for goblet squats.)
If your muscle-building exercises don’t involve weights, the same principles apply. If you find it difficult to do 10 air squats, then air squats are helping you build muscle in your legs and glutes. But if you can do 50, you’ll need add some weight or find a different exercises without equipment that’s appropriately challenging.
“Toning” exercises to avoid
If you’re determined to get “toned up,” the muscle training you need to do is no different than what a person would do to get a jack. The difference is that getting a jack takes a lot of food (that muscle has to come from somewhere) and a lot of time. Even if you spend all your time in the gym, you won’t come out looking like the Hulk at the end of the year. That’s bad news for people who want to look like the Hulk and good news for people who don’t.
So you need to do normal strength training. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a couple of exercises that are marketed as “toning”:
HIIT workouts: True HIIT workouts improve your aerobic capacity (making you a faster runner, for example) but don’t have any special calorie-burning or muscle-building advantages. many popular they’re not even real HIITthey’re just circuit training.
circuit training: Doing a series of different exercises with little or no rest, and then repeating that series, is called circuit training. It’s a combination of strength training and cardio, which makes it a good option if you don’t have time to do two separate workouts. Crossfit WODs (workout of the day) also fall into this category. You’ll probably get better results if you separate the strength and cardio components, but if you enjoy circuit training, it’ll get the job done.
High repetition exercises without weights or with light weights: Much swag gang Y ankle weight Workouts fall into this category. If they feel hard enough to count as strength training, great! But most aren’t, especially once you’re no longer a beginner. At that point, they are only training resistance without building muscle. If you like them, or if resistance is important to you, enjoy it. But they won’t “tone” you at all.
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