“I just want to tone my muscles a bit, not get all big and bulky.” This is another point of fear, another plea to mommy: I don’t wanna be a bodybuilder; lifting heavy weights wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Can’t I just, like, walk on the treadmill or use the machines? Look, few [...]
“I just want to tone my muscles a bit, not get all big and bulky.”
This is another point of fear, another plea to mommy: I don’t wanna be a bodybuilder; lifting heavy weights wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Can’t I just, like, walk on the treadmill or use the machines?
Look, few people want to be random blobs of bodybuilder brisket. I get it. This often leads people to the mainstream idea of “toning.” Where training like a bodybuilder, powerlifter, or whatever other barbell sport athlete gives you “big and bulky” muscles, “toning” gives you nice and shapely muscles.
Toning says that it’s possible to train in a way that make a muscle more aesthetic, more defined, more cut, more ripped, more lean, and more <insert buzz word here>.
It’s all garbage.
About toning and six pack abs
The actual definition of “muscle tone” refers to a state in which a muscle is always lightly contracted—the best example being your jaw muscles. Jaw muscles aren’t naturally totally relaxed. If they were, your jaw would hang loose and your mouth would be wide open 24/7. Instead, there’s a certain muscle tone—a constant, light contraction—that keeps the jaw in place.
When people use “muscle tone” in the body composition world, however, it usually refers to muscles that are visible, defined, and apparently “firm.”
People would have you to believe that there’s a way to train for the latter conception of muscle tone—that there’s a certain number of reps you can do or certain exercises you can do that better “tone” a muscle.
This is a lie and an easy way to identify a fraud. If someone promises you instatone, they’re probably lying to you.
Tone of any muscle comes from two things: size of the muscle, and the amount of fat covering said muscle. To increase tone or definition, you have one of two options.
- First, increase the size of the muscle.
- Second, decrease the amount of body fat around the muscle.
You can’t really accomplish both of these with any one exercise, any amount of reps, any cadence, any amount of sets, or anything. They are generally separate processes, which means you can’t tone a muscle with just one thing.
You can have a big muscle, but if you have a lot of fat surrounding it, you won’t appear very defined or tone. We’re back to the saran wrap. The first few layers of wrapping still withhold the shape of something, but as you keep wrapping, the shape becomes more generic.
We’re left with a few tiers of tone.
- You can either have smaller muscles and really low body fat (this is the Brad Pitt Fight Club and Bruce Lee category).
- You can have decent muscles and just low enough body fat.
You can safely assume that the bigger muscles you have, the more body fat you can have and still appear “toned.”
As this relates to the fabled six pack abs, you can’t do any exercise to “tone” them, which is to say you can’t do something that’s going to build the muscle and simultaneously burn the body fat around the tissue.
You already have a six pack
Just about everyone in existence already has a six pack. If you look at the anatomy of the abdominal muscles, they are already in a six pack configuration.
Connective tissue “dissects” the abdominal muscle fibers; this is why everyone has a six pack. What most people don’t have is a low enough body fat to show the muscles.
There are some cases that violate this tough. Some guys have a low enough body fat but don’t have abs that pop through. The answer here is to do your best to get the abs growing. Most of us just carry too much body fat though.
About spot reduction
The reason why six packs are hard to get is because it’s extremely difficult (not-worth-trying) to spot reduce where you lose fat.* Doing abdominal exercises or feeling the burn won’t preferentially zap the fat from that area, and this applies to just about every exercise.
When you convince the body to metabolize fat, the body chooses where it’s going to take the bulk of the fat from. Sadly, for most men, the stomach is the last place it will take fat from. (Especially if that fat is serving a secondary purpose like stress mitigation.)
There are some things that float around about spot reduction. I’m a skeptic, so research is always seen through a critical eye, but from what I know it can potentially go both ways. Blood flow increases fat mobilization, so it seems that exercising a muscle surrounding the area would help. Old school anecdotes support spot reduction at times, too.
I tend to think that if you’re in the business of fat loss, you’ve got bigger things to worry about other than any kind of fancy spot reduction method. Getting caught up in this tends to hurt more than help.
Spot reducing and toning hurt more than help
This idea of toning and spot reduction is a stake in the heart of someone with skinny-fat syndrome because it results in you spending a lot of time on terribly inefficient and worthless methods for your ultimate goal. Neither of these popular “toning” “defining” and “spot reducing” methods will actually work.
You need to:
- build muscle
- lose fat
Most pump and tone spot reducing gigs:
- don’t promote muscle building
- don’t promote fat loss
Like I said a long time ago, there’s a reason failure is the rule. When you listen to typical and mainstream advice, it’s almost always going to be served on a platter.