The Complete Guide on How to get Toned
Contents
Introduction
As summer has rolled right up, it is time to start thinking on how you can get that beach body or how to build your muscle fast. Following a long winter hibernation with lots of food and comfort, exercising may be the last thing on your mind. The gym and getting up and prepped for a hard workout are just not a part of the routine–at least not yet. Or maybe you just never thought about getting fit until now and your drive is to get your body to a better and more healthier you. In this case, you are probably motivated to get to work and stay in work for the long haul and beyond. In either case, to get to your goal, you need to know a few things that will push you towards the right direction of getting you the ideal muscle mass & body. Knowing what you need to do is essential to avoid wasting time doing the wrong things and allowing your body to adapt to the right exercises and build itself up. now the question is How to get toned? How to get that beach body ?. To begin, let us review the anatomy of the human body. This is important because it allows us to understand how muscle toning works.
Muscle and fat
The body is made of many things. Muscles, bones, tendons, blood, fat, and all other things. For the sake of our knowledge, we only need to focus on two: fat and muscles.
Fat is an important part of the body. It is responsible for providing us with energy, maintain core body temperature, protecting internal organs, and absorb nutrients. Because the body needs to consume fat in order to support bodily functions, it is an important part of keeping us working. Fat also has some negative aspects. When in the body in excess amounts, it can be a cause of health problems. High BMI, high levels of unhealthy cholesterol, and increased body weight (Read about BMI). When looking at holistic well-being and health, high levels of fat are detrimental to the maintenance of a healthy body. In terms of muscle toning, fat acts as a barrier to the effective results of toning exercises. Fat generally sits on top of muscles and when it comes to exercise, it reduces the effectiveness of repetitions, making them almost useless. With that in mind, fat in the body is one of the things to consider during your journey to get toned muscles. As you understand the effects of excess fat on your health and on your workout regimen, you are able to control and work towards a fat reducing goal first before proceeding to the actual toning process.
What exactly is muscle toning & how do i get toned?
It is a good idea to know what you are getting into right? Correct! And exploring the idea of what exactly muscle toning is, scientifically, you can have a realistic and well-oriented plan to get the results you want. Muscle tone can be defined as the residual muscle tension that is also a low-level contraction of muscles while at rest. The tension of the muscles is the reason behind the firm appearance and feel of muscles that are “toned.” Alternatively, muscle tone is the visibility of well-defined muscles with a firm appearance.
Myths about muscle toning
If you are doing research about “how to get toned”, you must also know, and know very well, the myths surrounding muscle toning. Having partial information that is full of unproven facts will be especially useless as you embark on this journey. Not only that but not knowing what is fact and what is fiction can lead you to waste time doing the wrong things and end up frustrated in the end because you are not seeing results. In this case, it is imperative to know the popular myths so that you can avoid being a victim.
Using machines helps you tone your muscles
People go to the gym for many reasons. Chances are a good amount of them go to the gym to get their muscles toned. They generally do this using the machines found in the gym room in hopes that it will get them the body they need. They go in day in day out doing the same workout with the machines and chances are, they are not seeing any real results. Why? Machines have their own purpose, and that is to target certain muscles and make them stronger. In this case, it will not help you much to get your muscles toned.
Higher reps of exercise help you to get toned
Also, you will have the camp of people who go to the gym and do thirty reps of the same exercise thinking it is going to make their muscles more toned. Well, that is not necessarily the case. Reps of exercises do play a role in muscle toning, but not the essential basic one. There are several steps preceding high reps of exercises in order to ensure the good toning of a muscle system and knowing the difference helps much. This is because the high repetitions do not necessarily offer the body the necessary resistance or stress on the muscle, two factors that are necessary for toning.
Smaller weights are good for toning muscles
Someone somewhere proposed that using smaller weights during workouts is effective in getting your body toned faster. The truth of the matter is that is not necessarily true because it has not been scientifically proven. Smaller weights may be appropriate for those who are not able to lift larger weights and those who are avoiding injuries. However, when it comes to toning muscles, the weight does play a role for those who choose to use free weights for their workouts, a notion and concept we shall look at a bit later.
So, what do I have to do?
Remember the discussion about fat and muscle in the beginning? Well, that discussion brings about the first bit of what you have to do to achieve the nice and toned appearance of your muscles and that is a loss of fat.
Lose fat
Fat, as discussed previously, is a hindrance to toning for two reasons: it is a barrier of muscle appearance and a barrier to the effectiveness of exercises. You may be wondering exactly how one loses fat. The truth to that question is that it is not easy, but it is necessary. Losing fat from the body can be done through cardio exercises. Cardio is a well known for the number of calories it burns. Because of the workout ability to engage the body in an internal heat through external exercise, the exertion works to reduce the amount of fat stored in the body. Long cardio workouts can be long, boring, and time-consuming, and that is true for most people. But considering that every 30 minutes of cardio burns 400 kcal may change your mind.
(CALORIES BURNED CALCULATOR according to exercises). This burning of calories allows the body to create a caloric deficit which leads to the drop of your daily calorie intake. Through such a feedback loop, you are burning fat and you are avoiding the intake of new fat that can potentially be stored up. Not only is cardio great for losing fat, but it is also a great way to get you fit. Considering fitness such as endurance, cardio gets the body ready for long periods of exertion. When looking at the toning journey, you will find that cardio as a foundational basis will work great for you as you move onto the next step, which is toning the muscles.
note: to avoid non-useful exercises here is an article helps to know the best heart rate to burn fat
Do strength training
The next step, or rather the other factor, is working directly with the muscles. Muscle toning occurs when the muscles are engaged in necessary exercises that allow the muscle to be actively engaged in the process. Toning involves engaging muscles in high impact stressful exercises that stress the muscle. Stressing the muscle may have a negative connotation, but understanding it will shed more light on why it is important. Stress on the muscle engages them individually and allows the tension that we talked about earlier in the definition to develop.
How exactly does one do this?
It recommended for those wanting to tone muscles to engage in systematic weight training. It is called systematic for a reason. This type of weight training involves a series of high impact exercises for short periods of time. For instance, when going to the gym, doing five reps of a bicep curl with 50 kg is an example of an effective muscle toning exercise. And of course, repetitions can be added in terms of sets of exercises. This brings us back again to the myth that higher repetitions with smaller amounts of weights are key to achieving a toned look. While this a popularly held belief, it is not at all proven. In fact, a lower amount of reps coupled with higher weights is far more effective. This is because the muscles are more receptive to high impact exercises that put stress on the muscle. The stress then allows the muscle to tear and rebuild back during rest in a more firm manner due to increased amounts of muscle fiber. This is a natural body mechanism that allows muscles to protect themselves. With progress, it is recommended that progressive overload occurs during the progression of the workouts to ensure that the muscles are being constantly exposed to stress.
Another suggestion in this area is the use of circuit workouts. Circuit workouts are great for toning the body because they involve both cardio and high impact exercises for a short period of time. In circuit training, you go directly from one set on exercise on to another without rest. The quick turnover between exercises is one aspect of a cardio factor. The various exercises are aimed to work on different parts of the body and different muscles. It is very effective in burning fat and building endurance and strength–very important aspects of muscle toning.
All in all, the big three areas of focus in toning exercises is volume, intensity, and frequency. With high volumes and intensity and low frequency, you have yourself a foolproof plan to getting the body you want.
Conclusion
With all said and done, each individual is different and individual approaches to toning exercises may vary. However, there are general notions that everyone who wants to get a toned body should consider. One of the first things to know are the myths surrounding toning. Knowing these will help you avoid doing the wrong things and wasting your time doing exercises that are not delivering you any visible results. Secondly, striking a balance between fat and muscle is a healthy foundation for building toned muscles. Little fat and more muscle is the ultimate equation. To work on the fat, it is advised to take on cardio exercises due to their well-known advantages as fat and calorie burners. They also build an endurance component which is needed in the second part of toning which is strength training. Strength training involves high impact exercises at low frequencies. When you consider such information, you find that your plan and approach to muscle toning will be a fruitful and more effective one because it avoids the myths and does the right things to get the body to where it should be.