How do I get a toned body?
MOST of my new client consultations with women start with them letting let me know that they don’t want to get bulky, they just want to “get toned.”
I kind of hate this word. But I absolutely don’t blame them for using it. Because almost EVERY single fitness product and program targeted at women uses the word “tone” or “toning.”
“Muscle toning” doesn’t mean anything, it’s nonsense. But we all know what people mean when they say they want to look “toned”: words like athletic, lean, strong, and firm immediately come to mind, right?
So.... How do we train to achieve this?
The truth is....
That to get “toned”... You need to do the kind of training that you think is going to make you look “bulky”
Looking “toned” - i.e. strong, athletic, lean - means having some visible muscles. So, logically, we’ll need to grow some muscles. Right?
And to give your body the stimulus it needs to maintain and grow muscle mass, we need to lift HEAVY weights.
What do we mean by HEAVY? Well, there’s a range, but a good place to start is picking a weight that you can only lift about 6-8 times before having to put it back down again.
I often find that when I start talking about lifting heavy, women will cringe and say, “But won’t lifting really heavy make me bulk up?!”
Let me reassure you...
Muscle building is HARD. It takes YEARS of hard training and sometimes intentionally eating in a big calorie surplus to build the kind of muscle that you’re picturing when you picture a really muscular, “bulky” female body.
We don’t have the same testosterone levels as men, which also makes it WAY harder to build muscle quickly.
There’s a quote I love on this topic, that goes something like this…
Saying that you don’t want to lift heavy in case you start looking bulky is kinda like saying you don’t want to learn to drive because you don’t want to accidentally qualify as an F1 driver
Depending on where you’re starting from, as well as lifting heavy, we might also want to implement some nutrition habits to “reveal” your muscles.
Think of strength training as what you do to build your shape. Then think of nutrition as what you do to chisel away any body fat that’s “hiding” the muscles underneath.
Muscle is denser than fat, so if you lose body fat and gain muscle, you might stay exactly the same weight, or even gain some weight, due to the changes in your body composition.
When people talk about getting toned, they're really just talking about losing fat while building some muscle.
And yes, it's possible to do both at the same time
FAQ: “I’ve heard that women should lift lighter weights for higher reps, to get a toned look and lean, long muscles. is that true?”
This kind of marketing is absolute nonsense AND YET it is still rife in the fitness industry. The idea of “long, lean muscles” became a popular marketing scheme targeted toward women who were afraid of looking “bulky”
We cannot change the length of our muscles.
Muscle length is anatomically determined by the muscle’s origin and insertion (where it attaches to the bone) and the tendons that connect muscle to bone.
There’s no such thing as a “lean” muscle
All muscle is lean. If you build muscle and lose fat, you’ll look leaner, but not because you’ve built a specific “type” of muscle
KEY TAKEAWAYS
If you want to look “toned” you need to do the kind of lifting that you think will make you look “bulky”
“Toning up” means building muscle and keeping body fat relatively low. Building muscle requires heavy lifting. So - don’t be afraid to lift heavy weights
Building the kind of muscle mass you’d need to look “bulky” is VERY VERY hard and will NOT happen by accident. Please don’t let that put you off lifting
Fitness marketing is pretty awful. Terms like “toning” and “long and lean muscles” should trigger your bullshit alarm 🚨