A beginners guide to training for muscle tone
If you walked into a gym and asked everyone about their goals - I’m sure you’d hear the word ‘ tone’ pop up more than just a few times.
Even if you primarily exercise for other reasons (mental wellbeing, health, strength, mobility etc), I’m yet to meet anyone who doesn’t feel a hint of satisfaction at the sight of a bit more muscle.
‘Tone’ can mean different things depending on who you ask, but generally it means improving body composition (promoting fat-free mass and reducing fat mass, or in fitness jargon - stimulating muscle and torching fat).
There are of course numerous methods to achieving any fitness goal, but if you’ve ever stepped foot in a gym with the intent of ‘toning up’ then you’re going to have to incorporate these principles to some degree.
Training
The Goal: Build or maintain muscle mass
If you want to see more muscles, you have to train them. Numerous studies have compared cardio to strength training for building muscle and strength training is the unanimous winner. Makes sense, right? When was the last time you saw a very muscular individual running in order to grow their legs?
This is the case for a number of reasons. In almost every instance strength training means we can take a muscle through a greater range of motion with less unpredictability (less injury risk), more load and less cardiovascular fatigue (which can interrupt muscle building pathways).
Exercise Selection
Do certain exercises stimulate muscle growth better than others? Kind of, but not really. Unless you’re getting paid to spend your days working out, it’s likely you’ve got other things going on in your life which means the time you allocate to exercise is limited. So whilst you could go to the gym everyday and train individual muscles one after the other - it wouldn’t be very efficient or necessary. Instead, focus on big exercises that work multiple muscles at the same time and give you a better return for your time. Think squats, pull-ups, bench presses etc.
Technique
There is a place to move weights fast, but building muscle isn’t it. The aim is to stimulate muscle, so every time you start an exercise your focus should be on safely getting as good a muscle contraction as possible. Breaking down the technique of every single lift is outside the scope of this article (please, email me with any technique questions jamesandrewpt@gmail.com) but as long as you're not putting yourself at risk, focus on that contraction.
Frequency
You don’t have to be in the gym everyday, in fact you probably shouldn't. Recovery is a huge component in building muscle and too much frequency can impede this. That said, working a muscle once per week is probably too far in the opposite direction, so aim to work everything twice per week as a minimum. Here’s a simple 2 x session split with a few example exercises:
What about burning fat?
If you want to see more of the muscles you're developing, you’ll have to pay attention to energy balance at some point. This means having an awareness of how much energy (calories) you're taking in and making sure it doesn’t exceed the energy you expend each day.
Outside the gym
What you do outside the gym will make or break your efforts to build a more toned body.
Burning Fat
‘Why isn’t this included in the training section?’ I hear you say. Fat is burned by sustaining a calorie deficit over time and is dictated by two factors: calories consumed and calories burned. Of the calories we burn in a day (TDEE), planned exercise contributes about 5%, whereas general movement accounts for about 15%. Think about it logically, at most we may exercise for an hour or so every day - leaving a further 23 hours outside of exercise to move.
For the reasons stated, it’s more effective to exercise for muscle development (which still burns calories) rather than simply training to burn calories. This means staying as active as possible throughout your day is going maximise the calories your body burns and really help maintain a calorie deficit to burn body fat. Next time you think twice about going for a walk at lunch - do it!
Nutrition
Let's remind ourselves of the goal: build muscle and reduce body fat.
In most cases, eating to create a calorie deficit requires a reduction in daily calorie intake. There are hundreds of ways to do this, but I recommend starting by including more nutrient dense foods (vegetables, whole grains etc) whilst cutting out some calorie dense foods (highly processed, convenience foods). If you’re still unsure, consider a more accurate approach such as recording the number of calories you consume using an app like myfitnesspal.
*More is not better with a calorie deficit - the goal is NOT starvation. Too big a deficit will increase the likelihood of muscle loss and become very difficult to sustain, very quickly. Focus on small changes that you know you can stick too.
In order to recover from your workouts and give your body the best chance of building new muscle, don’t forget about protein. Not only does protein fuel muscle growth, it also takes longer to digest so eating more of it should help you feel fuller and sustain that calorie deficit. Some good examples include, chicken breasts, fish fillets, low fat cuts of beef, icelandic yoghurt and whey protein powder.
Common mistakes
Not sticking it out
If you don’t have much experience and you’re going it alone, developing that ‘tone’ will take time because you almost certainly won’t get it right as you start out. When things don’t go the way you want, rather than blaming the method - reflect on what you think you could've done better. Then (and this is important), actually do, do it better.
Like anything else, stimulating muscle growth and reducing body fat is a skill and will take time to improve. If you hop between exercises and programmes every month, you’re starving yourself of the ability to develop those skills - keeping you at a beginner level with nothing to show for your effort.
“Men desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for a change as much as those who are doing badly.”
Lack of progression
So, you should keep your programme consistent for a number of months (not weeks!) but that doesn’t mean you don’t progress. Progress means over the course of time, you get stronger and develop muscle by lifting more weight and more reps. There are lots of methods for planning progress into your training, but as you start out all that matters is you do progress.
‘Go hard or go home’
There’s a misconception in fitness that unless you’re giving it 110% and absolutely crushing every single workout, then you’re not progressing. This is unhelpful and inaccurate. As well known trainer Tony Gentilcore puts it:
There will be times where you question yourself or get knocked off course. Remember, it’s consistency not perfection that we’re after.
“Excellence is mundane. Excellence is accomplished through the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, habitualized, compounded together, added up over time.”
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