Real Toning
July 24th 2007 14:25
Most weight training newbys express as their chief objective to tone their muscles. I assume that in that context tone means that the muscles show and the fat doesn't. If you are in the gym to tone,please read the below. First my normal caveats:
If you are not dieting you can do weight training until the cows come home and you will not look toned. You will look solid, if you work hard in the gym, but you will not look toned. You will have a layer of fat over your muscles.If you try to wear off the fat with cardio, you will look smaller, if you succeed, but you will not look toned. That is because aerobics prompts your body to rid itself of muscle. Look at a picture of an off season bodybuilder and compare it to one from his contest portfolio. When he uses aerobics in his contest preparation period, he loses muscle. Looks great, yes, but has smaller muscles.Toned muscles show and when you cause the body to get rid of them they cannot show. That is what happens to "aerobics only" people.
So lets assume you get serious about dieting and would like to use weights for toning, i.e. you want the muscles to bulge just a little and appear firm when dieting takes away the fat. What is the most important factor? It is to ignore the simplism that the public is sold about toning: higher repetitions will tone the muscles. Why? Because high repetitions mean light weights and light stress,but muscles grow because of stress. When muscles grow they are and appear more firm.
Stress is a result of intensity. Stress happens when the body must function repeatedly under a heavy load. If you want your muscles to become toned, you must learn to apply maximum stress to the body. This is not accomplished by doing repetition after repetition with a tiny weight,nor is it accomplished by doing one repetition with all the weight you can handle. It is done by doing several repetitions with a the heaviest weight you can handle. The old beginner 10 rep workout is actually on the right track. If you choose a weight that you can do only with extreme difficulty for 10 repetitions, you will cause so much stress that whatever you are training will have to grow larger and denser i.e. toned. That is not so true with really high reps with silly little weights and it is not,counterintuitively, with a huge weight done one time.
If you experiment a little, you will soon see what I mean. An entire body exposed to the serious stress of moderate reps with maximum possible weights to complete those reps will create the tone which so many beginners say they are seeking. I suspect they are actually looking for something for nothing. They want toned bodies,but not the hard work. Your servant, as always.
If you are not dieting you can do weight training until the cows come home and you will not look toned. You will look solid, if you work hard in the gym, but you will not look toned. You will have a layer of fat over your muscles.If you try to wear off the fat with cardio, you will look smaller, if you succeed, but you will not look toned. That is because aerobics prompts your body to rid itself of muscle. Look at a picture of an off season bodybuilder and compare it to one from his contest portfolio. When he uses aerobics in his contest preparation period, he loses muscle. Looks great, yes, but has smaller muscles.Toned muscles show and when you cause the body to get rid of them they cannot show. That is what happens to "aerobics only" people.
So lets assume you get serious about dieting and would like to use weights for toning, i.e. you want the muscles to bulge just a little and appear firm when dieting takes away the fat. What is the most important factor? It is to ignore the simplism that the public is sold about toning: higher repetitions will tone the muscles. Why? Because high repetitions mean light weights and light stress,but muscles grow because of stress. When muscles grow they are and appear more firm.
Stress is a result of intensity. Stress happens when the body must function repeatedly under a heavy load. If you want your muscles to become toned, you must learn to apply maximum stress to the body. This is not accomplished by doing repetition after repetition with a tiny weight,nor is it accomplished by doing one repetition with all the weight you can handle. It is done by doing several repetitions with a the heaviest weight you can handle. The old beginner 10 rep workout is actually on the right track. If you choose a weight that you can do only with extreme difficulty for 10 repetitions, you will cause so much stress that whatever you are training will have to grow larger and denser i.e. toned. That is not so true with really high reps with silly little weights and it is not,counterintuitively, with a huge weight done one time.
If you experiment a little, you will soon see what I mean. An entire body exposed to the serious stress of moderate reps with maximum possible weights to complete those reps will create the tone which so many beginners say they are seeking. I suspect they are actually looking for something for nothing. They want toned bodies,but not the hard work. Your servant, as always.
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