What the Fuck is Toning Up Your Muscles?
It’s just marketing gobbledygook.
It’s commonplace to see the word “tone” used in the marketing of fitness to women.
Tone up those muscles for summer!
There are even special workouts to help you get toned. You build muscle, but not too much… Because women don’t want that “bulky” look.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but physiologically, getting toned isn’t a thing.
In this article, I’ll explain why toning is a made-up concept and I’ll tell you what you do instead.
Toned: Marketing slang for looking fit
If we say a person looks toned, we’re probably referring to a woman with a tight stomach and ripped arms.
I’ve never met a guy that wants to tone up.
It’s just the way that fitness is marketed to women. A woman getting toned is based on the notion that women are scared of looking too muscular or “bulky”.
Getting toned up sounds more appealing to women than “build muscle”.
But the thing is, genetically, women can’t build a lot of muscle. Not when compared to men anyway. It takes steroids for the vast majority of women to build large amounts of muscle.
Anyway…
I used Google to find a definition of “toned”. According to a blog article by NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine):
“To tone up means to reduce the appearance of body fat by tightening up the muscles and giving them shape.”
Tightening up the muscles?
Firstly, muscle tightening is not a thing.
Secondly, to reduce the appearance of body fat you need to lose body fat (and build muscle).
Thirdly, to give muscles shape, you need to build more muscle (and lose body fat).
In summary, for that toned look, you need to:
- build muscle
- reduce body fat
In other words, build lean muscle.
Training to get “toned”
Women are often sold the idea by fitness marketing that they shouldn’t lift heavy weights. So, women tend to grab the 1 or 2 kg dumbbells.
But, lifting heavy weights is how we build muscle.
If you have to do 50 reps of an exercise to be somewhere near your failure point for that weight, you need to lift heavier.
Toning programs often recommend a rep range of 12–20 reps; which ironically is the optimum rep range for building as much muscle as possible. Given that the training intensity is near failure.
So, while most women think they’re training in a way to avoid building muscle, they’re actually optimising muscle growth.
Many people also mistakenly believe that lower reps mean building more muscle, but this is incorrect. Low reps (less than 6), are optimum for building strength, but not for building muscle.
I know… It’s confusing, right?
If you’re interested in learning more about the differences in training to build muscle or increase strength, check out the article below.
Building muscle
The first step to building lean muscle is in the gym lifting weights.
Firstly, it’s okay to lift heavy! Lifting heavy will maximise your results. Choose a weight you can lift for the allotted number of repetitions, leaving 1 or 2 reps in the tank. That means you almost train to failure on every set.
To force your body to adapt to the training stimulus and build muscle, lift weights 4 to 6 times a week. You could train a different body part each day (traditional bodybuilding split), do a push-pull-legs split, or do full-body workouts.
Aim for 15–20 total sets per workout to optimise your ability to build muscle. With 3 sets per exercise, 6 different exercises would result in 18 total sets.
Use a rep range of 6–20.
To increase your strength, do sets of 6 reps. For each workout, you should do one strength exercise at the beginning of a workout, using a compound exercise such as a squat.
Compound lifts use many muscle groups at once, as opposed to isolation exercises that only target one muscle group. Isolation exercises should be at the end of your workout, using higher reps (10–20 reps).
A good tip is to increase the number of reps you do per exercise, over your workout. For example:
- Exercise 1: 3 sets of 6 reps
- Exercise 2: 3 sets of 8 rep
- Exercise 3: 3 sets of 12 reps
To get the best results, make sure you exert maximum effort into every set — don’t just go through the motion.
10 exercises you should be doing for that whole-body toned look are:
- Squat
- Deadlift
- Leg Press
- Bench press
- Shoulder press
- Dumbbell lateral raises
- Cable push/pull-downs
- Triceps dips
- Pull-ups/Chin-ups
- Bicep curls
To build muscle, our diet also plays a role. We must consume enough protein to repair and grow new muscle fibres. Protein-rich foods include meat and poultry, dairy, nuts and legumes.
Aim to consume around 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight (around 2 grams per 1 kg of body weight) per day.
Protein powders are a supplement to help increase the protein in your diet,
Reducing body fat
There are two stimuli for building body fat. The first is doing cardio to burn calories and the second is reducing our calorie intake.
Once we reduce our body fat, we reveal the muscle we already have, giving us that toned look.
Cardio
Your workouts will also burn calories — but not as much as cardio. So, it’s best to do a combination of both.
Do 2–3 hours of steady-state cardio a week to help burn calories. Do cardio after your workout to not fatigue your muscle-building efforts.
To maximise your fat loss with cardio, avoid the five cardio mistakes discussed in the article below.
Diet
Cardio has its place, but our diet is by far the most powerful tool to control our weight and loss body fat.
Firstly, we need to control the volume of food we consume. To burn body fat, we must be in a calorie deficit. In other words, we have to eat less food than we currently do.
Secondly, we need to control the quality of food we consume.
Food quality diets impact our weight to a far lesser extent than food quality. However, the quality of food we eat impacts our general health and therefore, our ability to stick to our diet and training.
Eating healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables also allows us to eat more, as they are low in calories compared to other food options.
For more about how our diet impacts fat loss, you can read the article below.
Final Thoughts
Want to get toned?
In this article, I discussed how “toning” is the language used by marketers, to make lifting weights at the gym more normalised for women.
However, toning isn’t actually a thing. You cannot tone or firm up muscles — they can only grow or shrink.
Building muscle gives our body more shape and burning fat reveals more defined muscle.
For that toned physique, build lean muscle.
Thank you for reading.
If you enjoyed the content, you might be interested in this article about how heavy the weight you lift in the gym should be.
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