This “one-two punch” is the secret to getting toned and defined like Brad Pitt in Fight Club.

You can make specific areas of your body toned and defined as opposed to big and bulky by lifting a light weight for high reps.

Want sculpted shoulders that look like scalloped seashells? Pick up a pastel-colored plastic-coated dumbbell and do front shoulder raises until you’re accused of being a member of the Schutzstaffel. Make your muscles burn so hard chlamydia seems like child’s play.

Do this for every major muscle group and you’ll look like Brad Pitt in Fight Club in no time… or so the story goes.

Unfortunately, if lifting a light weight for high reps was an effective way to increase tone and definition, then childcare workers would have amazing bodies.

Because they’re constantly lifting babies. And bottles of wine. Light weights, you know?

Alas, childcare workers don’t have shrink-wrapped stomachs. Unless being toned and defined is like time travel, where going forward at a suicide speed takes you backward in time. Maybe childcare workers are soft and squishy because they’re knock-dead toned and defined.

Maybe.

Until someone from the future tells me otherwise, I’m going with my gut on this: Lifting a light weight for high reps is dumber than daytime television. It won’t make you tighter or firmer.

Wanna know the best way to become more toned and defined?

Stop training for tone and definition.

Slap someone’s arm on a table and saw their biceps in half and you’ll see a big bone surrounded by muscle mass (steak) surrounded by body fat (mashed potatoes) surrounded by skin (plastic wrap). Your body composition is primarily a byproduct of these four variables. And so, to change your body composition, you have to modify the condition of at least one of them.

Obviously, you don’t wanna mess with your bone or your skin. The secret to building a talked-about body isn’t early-onset osteoporosis or skinning yourself alive (although the latter worked for Philip Jacobs).

The two remaining variables are muscle mass (steak) and body fat (mashed potatoes), and here’s where things get trickier than rocking a rhyme:

You can’t tone or define either of these attributes.

Muscles can either grow and get bigger, or they can shrink and get smaller. Nothing will make your muscles grow more toned and defined as opposed to less toned and defined. (Not even sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.)

In other words, you can’t tenderize your meat; beating your meat a certain way won’t make it firmer. There are bigger muscles. There are smaller muscles. There are no lean, toned, or defined muscles.

Same goes for body fat. You can either accumulate more body fat and get squishier, or you can dissolve the body fat you have and get harder. That’s all you can do. There isn’t a special kind of fat that will make you appear more or less toned and defined.

This begs the question:

If muscle mass and body fat can’t be toned or defined, how does one become toned and defined?

Appearing toned and defined is like Golden Corral’s business model. Quantity matters more than quality. You need a large-ish amount of muscle and a small-ish amount of body fat. If you’re missing the mark in either direction your chances of looking toned and defined will sink faster than Squints (if you don’t appreciate references to The Sandlot we can’t be friends).

Look at super-skinny runway models. They don’t have much body fat, which is good for tone and definition. Body fat is mushy, like mashed potatoes. If you lather a steak with mashed potatoes, you won’t be able to see the steak’s striations.

Unfortunately, super-skinny runway models don’t have much muscle mass; they don’t have steaks. They have a few tissue-thin slices of salami stuck to their bones. There are no striations to see, so they look like conscious coat hangers. They’d look more toned and defined if they gained muscle.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are heavyweight powerlifters and off-season bodybuilders. (The legendary Doug Hepburn comes to mind.) They have a bunch of muscle mass, which is good for tone and definition. Big steaks are dense and detailed.

Unfortunately, heavyweight powerlifters and off-season bodybuilders also have a bunch of body fat; their muscles are covered in mountains of mashed potatoes. This suffocates the subtleties of the steak, so they look like swollen sausages. They’d look more toned and defined if they lost body fat.

Between both extremes exists toned and defined bodies, like that of Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Muscles are big enough to display detail and body fat levels are low enough to put the details on display.

Appearing toned and defined is a game of quantity more than quality: You need a big (enough) muscle and a low (enough) body fat percentage.

If you aren’t as toned and defined as you like to be, you have two options: lose fat or build muscle. Odds say you need to do both. For whatever reason, skinny-fat guys tend to overestimate how much muscle they have and underestimate how much fat they have. (I have something known as “personal experience” with this delusion.)

Of course, I could be wrong.

You might already have sizable steaks, which means you should focus more on fat loss. Or you might already have minimal mashed taters, which means you should focus on more muscle growth.

I don’t know.

But I do know this:

There are dead wasps inside of figs.

I also know this:

Training for tone and definition won’t help you lose fat or build muscle.

When knuckleheads say they’re training for tone and definition they’re usually lifting a light weight for high reps, trying to make their muscles burn. In order for this kind of training to have an impact on tone and definition, it’d either have to contribute to fat loss or contribute to muscle growth.

It does neither.

MUSCLE GROWTH?

I don’t care what the lady wearing yoga pants told you, lifting a light weight won’t trigger muscle growth no matter how many reps you do for the same reason tickling your skin with a feather won’t create a callus. The stress isn’t large enough to warrant adaptation.

To trigger muscle growth, you need to put down your sister’s plastic-coated dumbbells and lift heavier things. The resistance you’re opposing should make you more “sticky” than “springy.”

FAT LOSS?

Muscle burn is a byproduct of the lactic-anaerobic energy system, which uses glycogen within working muscle(s) to replenish energy. Glycogen is stored carbohydrates, not stored fat. In other words, when you feel the burn, you aren’t burning fat.

Don’t confuse sensations with outcomes. You’ll also feel the burn if you eat the grass-green jalapenos authentic Mexican restaurants put on their nachos. Doesn’t mean you’re losing fat (unless the discomfort makes you squirm around enough to inadvertently raise your metabolism through increased non-exercise activity thermogenesis — did I just invent a new diet!?).

To lose fat, you need to create an energy deficit, which is most reliably driven by diet, not the muscle-burn sensation.

And so, lifting a light weight for high reps is less effective than Goldeen in Super Smash Bros. 

The idea of training for tone and definition is downside up and outside in. You can’t train for tone and definition because you can’t spot reduce body fat. Increasing the size of a muscle and decreasing the amount of fat surrounding the same muscle (to a significant degree) with one single exercise of training technique is impossible.

Becoming (more) toned and defined has been and always will be a two-part process. You have to grow your muscles with “sticky” resistance training. You have to decrease your body fat levels with an energy deficit. If you aren’t doing either of these things, then you aren’t gonna be tightening or firming or toning or defining much of anything (except your hatred for your body).

 

May the Gains be with you,
Ant