Myth About Toning Muscle

In this article, Musclehead attempts to dispell the myth about workout routines for toning muscle. Light weights and high reps are not the answer to toning exercises.

I’ve always found the fitness industry interesting. And spending a lot of time inside a gym like I have, meeting lots of fitness enthusiasts, you always get told lots of B.S. It’s amazing how little people actually understand about how to change their body.

Take “toning” for example. And yes, I did write it like that deliberately. You see, I don’t really consider “toning” a word that should ever be used by someone looking to get into shape. I’m sure you’ve heard it all before, probably even said it yourself.

It usually sounds something like this. “Oh, I don’t want to get really big, I just want to get a bit more toned…”. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to look like Ronnie Coleman, I certainly don’t. But wanting to get “toned” is stupid, because there is no such thing as toning.

When people talk about getting toned, what they really want is to increase muscle and decrease fat. Simple isn’t it? Why can’t they just say this in the first place! If you want to increase your muscle mass and decrease your fat, you need to go about things in a systematic way.

Oddly enough, Musclehead does not even like the word toning as used by most health enthusiasts and fitness trainers. Depending on your physical condition, when workout routines for toning muscle are mentioned it could mean there is a need for losing weight or gaining muscle.

Simply doing lots of repetitions with low weight will not make you “toned”. This is a huge myth and for good reason. I know gym instructors who tell clients to use higher reps and lower weights when looking to tone up. No wonder people are frustrated with their results! There are things you need to do in order to build muscle and there are things you need to do in order to burn fat. It’s as simple as that.

Unless you have superb genetics, chances are you are going to find it hard to build muscle and burn fat at the same time. This is because to gain weight, you need to eat more than you burn and to lose weight, you need to burn more than you lose.  Sure, at first, you may be able to gain some muscle as you lose fat, but eventually your body will adapt to its new situation and you’ll only be able to do one or the other at a time.

So I hope this has cleared up a couple of issues for you. If I hear you ever mutter the word “toned” inside a 5 mile radius of a gym, I’m going to slap you. And I hope you also understand the difference between building muscle and losing fat.

The Musclehead is a natural bodybuilder and the author of the brutally honest and revealing book "The Muscleheads Guide to a Godlike Physique". For more hard hitting information on how to get the body of your dreams, visit TheMusclehead.com

So, when considering workout routines for toning muscle, just explain to the instructor what your goal is. Do you want to lose weight or body fat or build some lean muscle. If you just ask for help toning, you may get a variety of answers that do not correctly address your needs.