Warning: Light weights and high reps won't tone your muscle

LuckeyStoke has nice muscle tone!

After years of being told that high reps increase muscle tone, I'm here to tell you to take the opposite approach. Read on to find out why it is actually heavy weight/low rep training that tones your muscles.

The question most asked by novice trainees is: “How do I get the firm and toned body I always wanted?”

The answer they will likely receive to this question is: “If you want to tone do light weights and high reps.”

But guess what… your personal trainer or good intentioned friend is wrong!

Read on to find out why light weights and high reps don’t tone your muscle and what should you do for excellent muscle tone.

What is muscle tone anyway?

Muscle tone is residual tension in a relaxed muscle.

What this means in layman terms is that even when a muscle is relaxed, nerve impulses from your brain stimulate the muscle fibers within it to contract; so the muscle is in a constant state of partial contraction which keeps it firm, healthy and always ready to use.

So, basically, you already have a certain amount of muscle tone.

How can I improve my muscle tone?

Because, as you learned earlier, muscle tone comes from neurological activity increased muscle tone is not the result of a physical transformation of the muscle but rather an increase of residual tension in the muscle as a result of the nervous system being more alert.

Again, what this means in layman terms is that in order to increase muscle tone you must increase the tension in the muscle. Lifting heavy weights generates higher tension in the muscle than light weights therefore should be practiced for muscle tone.

But if high reps/light weights don’t work, how come I feel so hard and toned after such a workout?

Good question!

The way muscle fibers work is that they can contract on their own but need energy to de-contract. The energy compound that relaxes the muscle is known as ATP.

High reps exhaust ATP in your muscle which leads to a temporary hardness (due to impossibility to de-contract) also known as the pump which is just temporary muscle tone.

But won’t training hard bulk me up instead of tone my muscle?

This depends on the volume of work (number of sets and reps) performed.

The key to getting strong and hard (toned) without the added bulk is to train heavy but keep the volume low.

How you should train and how low is enough is the subject of a upcoming post, so I won’t go into details here.

I realize that just this single post is not enough to convince you to give up on the idea that high reps = high tone that you’ve been indoctrinated in all of this years but I hope that at least it got you thinking a bit.

Until next time!