Let’s get
this straight; I am not talking about skin bleaching! For the purposes of this
post toning refers to muscular definition. From my experience in the gym, a lot
of women want to tone their bodies; special areas of interest are the arms and
love handles. However a lot of ladies are scared of developing muscular, macho
looking bodies and because of this they go about the whole process of “toning”
all wrong and end up with unsatisfactory results. Today’s post is inspired by
all the women who want to have a lean body, neither flabby nor muscular but
don’t know how to go about it, this is for you! Before we get into the meat and
bones of it, you should note that I love weights, weights are part of the
solution, and you have to stop being scared of weights! If you are a woman you
cannot turn into the incredible hulk overnight, it’s freaking impossible!
That said,
if you want to find out how you can trim off those flabby arms and belly and
get back that youthful body that exists only your old photographs, then please
read this article, I promise you that if you apply these principles to your
exercise routine you will get wonderful results in almost no time.
Thanks, and
do have a wonderful weekend!
WHAT DOES “TONING” MEAN ANYWAY?
When people
talked about a toned body, they are referring to a firm body with a fine
muscular definition and shape, many people, especially women have this as a
fitness goal with special emphasis on the arms, to avoid the dreaded Christian
mother arms and cellulite riddled thighs. Mistakenly, due to a lot of media
hype, a lot of women think that in order to get “toned” all they need to do is
endless aerobics and little or no weight training. Even when they do train
weights, the weights are to light and the reps to many as to achieve any
meaningful result. Lastly, a lot of women also forget that cardiovascular
activity and dietary disciple are part of “toning”.
Let’s melt the fat on the misnomer of
toning once and for all, firming up (a better term) or toning comes about as a
result of an increase in muscle tissue, as well as a reduction of body fat to levels
that the shape and definitions of muscle become visible and the wobbly flesh is
reduced considerably. Muscle does not go from soft to hard or vice versa, it
either shrinks or grows, muscles do not firm up or tone.
WEIGHT TRAINING AND FAT LOSS FOR THE
TONED BODY
It cannot be
avoided, in order to get the defined or toned look, you must engage in weight
training and fat loss. Resistance training alone cannot get you the required
look, a calorie deficit also needs to be created to shed some of the subcutaneous
body fat (fat under your skin).
THE MYTH OF HIGH REPETITIONS TO TONE
Ladies (and
guys), just because you don’t want to get bulky or add muscle mass doesn’t mean
that you should run away from stressing your muscles with relatively heavy weights. If you want to burn fat and tone, effort
needs to be exerted and muscles stressed in order to achieve this. If you
simply go through the motions with light weights you will see little or no
change. To illustrate, generally you are supposed to train for 8 to 12 sets of
each exercise and the only reason that you shouldn’t get to rep 13 is that you can’t! If you still have enough
strength to do 13 plus reps, then the weight is too light.
FAT LOSS BENEFITS FROM
STRENGTH/WEIGHT TRAINING
Weight
training and cardio don’t need to be exclusive of each other, you can get a cardiovascular
and fat burning benefit both directly and indirectly from weight training.
Indirectly;
the more muscle tissue that you add through strength training, the higher your
resting metabolic rate and the higher
your metabolic rate, the more fat you burn, get it? This is a more permanent
solution to losing fat.
Directly; If
you train large body parts i.e. legs, chest back, shoulders with a challenging
weight and very little rest time, you will elevate your heart rate and get the
same immediate calorie and fat burning benefits of traditional cardio exercises
like running.
You can kill
two birds with one stone with this; you get the weight training and cardio
benefits of exercise. Get a well-developed program that inculcates training
with weights that are moderately heavy, train hard, train quick. You should not
rest more than 30 seconds between sets. This will put your body under metabolic
stress and as your body struggles to adapt, you will get stronger and in the
process burn more fat, build more muscle and get “toned”.
Remember, on
every set train to failure, i.e. at the end of every set you should be too
fatigued to lift the weight once more. If you are a woman reading this, don’t be
afraid of the weight or the pain, yes you will be in pain and you will not be
able to do as many reps as you are used to, it doesn’t matter! Quality trumps
quantity any day!
You should
note, if you find yourself struggling to do 8 to 10 reps of a particular
exercise, chances are the weight is too heavy and you should reduce it. Another
tip is to always time yourself so you don’t rest too much, remember the 30 second
rule? After a while you will get used to it and will not require a timer to
know when to stop resting.
TO TONE YOUR BODY CIRCUIT TRAINING IS
A MUST!
Circuit training
is easy to apply, what does it mean? It simply means training one muscle group
and from there going to another exercise to train another body group in the
same session. For example, training your arms and from there going to train
your back and from back to chest etc. this is done with no rest between
changes, take note. It is extremely effective in burning fat and building
strength and endurance as well as the toned look.
To close
out, if you say I don’t have access to a gym so this is not for me, I say
bullsh#t! , I currently train without a gym. Here’s an exercise routine you can try. It’s a form of High Intensity
Interval Training (HIIT)
1. Skipping : 50 reps or 20 seconds,
whichever you get to first.
10 seconds rest
2. Push ups: 10 reps in 20 seconds
10 seconds rest
3. Squat jumps: 10 reps in 20 seconds (you
squat them jump up instead of standing up)
10 seconds rest
4. Abdominal plank: for 20 seconds.
Now tell me that wasn’t easy? Here’s the catch, after the first set, rest
for only 10 seconds and repeat the
entire routine for 8 to 10 sets, it won’t take long, but you will feel it!
I am attaching a video with a short demo of this exercise for
illustration purposes, sorry about the poor quality but i really had to compress it! Thanks and have a wonderful weekend!
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