So, You Want To 'Tone' Your Muscles?
Last week, my wife joined a gym. This was a difficult decision which carried a great deal of emotional stress … for me. Don’t get me wrong; I am all for my wife joining a gym and taking some time to exercise. Considering all the time she spends volunteering at school and such, she could certainly stand to blow off some steam. My problem is this: I now have to let other people talk to her about strength training and nutrition. I have issues with that.
To illustrate why I have these issues, look no further than last night, when my wife attended her initial ‘orientation’ to the gym. The orientation included basic instruction from one of the trainers. The trainer told her that, if she didn’t want to ‘bulk up’ and only wanted to ‘tone’ her muscles, she should lift lighter weights, and perform high repetitions. So, now you understand my frustration.
You don’t? Let me explain.
For the record, muscle ‘tone’ is defined as: A characteristic of a muscle brought about by the constant flow of nerve stimuli to that muscle, which describes its resistance to stretching. (and isn’t that what you’re all trying to achieve?) Unfortunately, the word ‘toning,’ as related to muscle, has been used incorrectly for years by ‘fitness professionals’ who are seeking to make resistance training attractive to women. This is both disturbing and dishonest, as it perpetuates the myth that women who do heavy resistance training will find themselves with large, unfeminine muscles.
The fact is, resistance training with weights or machines will help you add muscle to your frame. This is a good thing! Muscle is the most metabolically active tissue in the human body. All fuels - including bodyfat – burn primarily inside muscle cells. Muscle burns calories 24/7. Hence, the more muscle you have on your body, the more fat and calories you can burn.
What about the bulking up? There is no bulking up. Not for women. Unless you’re injecting yourself with testosterone daily, there’s about as much chance of a woman bulking up due to weight training as there is of me bursting into ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ during a training session - not going to happen. Women are not genetically designed for the type of musculature so popularized by the men’s health and fitness magazines. In actuality, muscle takes up far less space in the body than fat does, so when women add muscle, they look smaller and leaner. Having stated that, there are two other important things you should be aware of.
First, you need to be willing to differentiate between losing weight, and losing fat. When someone says that she wants to lose weight, she really means she wants to lose fat. The good news: losing weight is easy! If you want to lose weight, take off your shoes. (congratulations; you just lost three pounds.) On the other hand, if you want to lose fat, you need to do some progressive resistance training, and implement supportive nutrition to both fuel your body and help it recover.
Second, once you begin your resistance training program, your scale weight may increase. Since muscle is denser than fat, adding muscle to your frame may make you heavier. However, since it takes up so much less space, you will likely find yourself fitting into your clothes better, despite the increased scale reading. The number on the scale is just that: a number. Ten pounds of diamonds looks much better than ten pounds of lard, but they weigh the same.
So … unless you’re suffering from a disease such as cerebral palsy, your muscles already have tone. If you want to see those muscles better, you need to lose the fat covering them, and one of the best ways to do that is to add resistance training to your exercise program.