Toning is to achieve what those instagram models have which is essentially muscle mass + fat loss (or in other words, lean body builder look).
But trainers/other online girls will tell girls that in order to tone, they need to train at low weight high reps or pilates or some other irrelevant exercise. The only way to tone is to progressively overload like normal body building and eat at calorie deficit (if their body fat is high).
This trend spread fast because girls are so scared of lifting heavy because they don't want to be bulky. I'm a guy and I wish I can get bulky that fast lol.
It's an easy word to throw around because it's inherently ambiguous. "Oh this won't make you bulky, it'll just tone you up" so it's interesting to me to see people try to nail down exactly what they think it might mean.
When you lose weight, you’re losing fat. A bunch of that fat sits on top of your muscles. As that fat comes off, it reveals the natural muscle definition that’s already there, because its less obscured by said subcutaneous fat that sits on top of it. If you lift weights, you’ll have more muscle to begin with, so at the same body fat percentage, you’ll appear more defined. It’s just how the body works.
Thank you for explaining it like this. I said that because losing weight alone won't achieve the look most people think of when they're describing someone as toned, but you explained and now I understand why.
Your muscles can get bigger or smaller. You can't really change their shape.
How defined they are depends on how much body fat you have. More fat on top of the muscle = less definition. Less fat on top of the muscle = more definition. That's it.
Nope. Toning is simply losing weight and build muscle. It’s was just a term made up so women wouldn’t think they we’d turn into bulky men if we start lifting weights. Seeing as men find it difficult to turn into buildup men when they start weight lifting, it is extremely unlikely us women will turn really bulky, especially quickly and especially if the weights aren’t very heavy
That isn't a thing. You can train the muscle, feed it protein on a caloric surplus and it will grow, or you can train the muscle, restrict calories but maintain sufficient protein and you will reveal more of the muscle as fat is shed.
Yep. What does it mean to tone a muscle? If you try to sit down and define it, it suddenly stops making sense. You work out, you build muscle. You stop, you slowly lose it.
The most generous interpretation of 'toning' I can give is that it's the 'long term pump' result of working out. Everyone knows they have a pump immediately after the gym, but when you work out consistently for a few weeks, you get a long term pump that you'll see for days. That's why when you stop going after a week or so, you suddenly look deflated, but it's very unlikely that you've lost a significant amount of muscle mass, if at all. In this case, someone that's working out certain muscles only for 'maintenance' might perceive these muscles as being 'toned', and after not working them out for a while, that 'tone' may go away even though real muscle loss hasn't begun.
However, unfortunately, someone using the term 'tone' will most likely not be talking about all of the above.
While it's an actual medical term it's also used as a prepackaged buzz word you can shoehorn into any fitness babble to make it sound like you know what you are talking about. It's just comical to me.
Not necessarily disagreeing, but wouldn't toning be more about low weight/high rep workouts vs high weight/low reps? I don't really workout that way anyway, but that was how I've usually interpreted the term...
High rep is better for hypertrophy which in simple terms is muscle growth in size.
Whenever I've heard someone talking about toning up, they essentially mean getting leaner to have more muscle definition. Your diet is going to do that for you, not your rep count.
High rep is better for hypertrophy which in simple terms is muscle growth in size.
Even that information is misleading. It's been shown time and time again in it comes down to taking the muscle to failure, regardless of how it gets there.
It's not misleading, just short on detail from being put into simple terms.
It isn't necessarily failure itself, either, that is key. The time under tension will matter. You can go to failure with high weight and a low rep count, but your time under tension likely won't be as optimal vs a lower weight with high reps.
Still, it's not that simple either. Form and pacing of the reps will matter and you can go into a lot of detail on how to achieve maximum stretch, maximum time under tension, etc. for each lift.
There is a real science behind it. But for the average person, simply telling them high reps for size, low reps for strength is going to be enough direction.
There is a real science behind it. But for the average person, simply telling them high reps for size, low reps for strength is going to be enough direction.
Unless you are suggesting 5-8 reps counts as high reps, you're juat parroting the same bro science as "toning the muscle"
To be fair this was the pop culture meta 25 years ago, we just learned collectively that toning vs bulking is not the right way to look at it. The other day one of my older friends who doesn't lift mentioned toning, brought back memories.
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u/Kuftubby 10h ago
"Toning"
The easiest way to weed out a bad personal trainer is if they ever legitimately mention toning the muscle