Best way to tone?

[Raoul Duke]

Hello guys,

Been a reader of this board for ages but this is my first post. just wondering what the best way to get toned is? Is it best to do 20-25 reps on a moderate weight or 3-6 on a hard weight that you can only just manage?

Cheers in advance

Raoul Duke

 

[7 Virtues]

While tone has nothing to do with body fat or muscle size, it really isn't a trainable goal.

Doing 12+ reps is useless.

You can reduce your body fat to give more definition to your muscles, but toned (harder) muscles come with length of training.

So focus on other goals (Mass, strength, weight loss, etc.).

 

[MrFitness880]

If you want tone you're going to have to work on reducing fat and water retention.
This is a result of diet and cario.

Keep the weight training to achieve your size/strength goals. You're going to want to have some muscle to tone.

 

[Duke Togo]

tone doesnt exist its a word used by bad personal trainers and fitness people on those adverts that sell garbage ab machines e.t.c

what do people mean when they want to tone?
i think its an epidemic of stupidity in the fitness scene, its really annoying whena 350lb woman comes into the gym and asks someone how do i tone my neck muscle so the fat under my 3rd chin hardens up. heres how, lose weight, no amount of resistance work brings out definition, lose fat and you will reveal your muscles.

you can only do 4 things, lose muscle mass, gain muscle mass, lose fat, gain fat, nothing more. creating density or hardness of the muscle using a high rep range, is a temporary effect of blood vessels occupying the muscle called the pump effect. there are 2 benefits for using high reps 15+, 1st being muscular endurance, 2nd being hypertrophy/activation of slow twitch fibres. the next time someone says tone educate them so we can limit this epidemic.

 

[Eulogy]

Originally posted by Sazuki
The best way to looked toned is to cut bodyfat and focus on a lot of isolation next to compound movements.

I saw a picture between Arnold S. and M. Mentzer, Arnold did compound and a lot of isolation, he looked really toned. Mentzer did only compound and looked big, but beefy.

That's fucking stupid, and has absolutly nothing to do with it. Stop posting on the board.

There is no such thing as "toned" its either fat, or muscle. You CANNOT "shape" a muscle, you can either add more muscle to it, in whichever way you are genetically inclined to add it on, or you take it off. Same goes with fat.

You either take of the fat, or you pack on more muscle. Isolation work isnt worth a damn, and you won't look "bulky" if you only do compound movements.

Don't waste your time with high reps. Either maintain the muscle you have with moderate intensity (maintenance) weight training and a lot of cardio, or bulk up. And quit being a god damn pussy , that goes to all of you.

 

[Eulogy]

Originally posted by Sazuki

They talked about compound vs isolation and showed some pictures, made perfect sense to me.

Of course.

Guy 1: Isolation

Guy 2: Compound

Result?:

Guy 1: Sweat a little, lost his time in the gym, looks the same.

Guy 2: Packed on some mass, looks "bulky".

The way you will look depends on your body shape, not the way you train. Arnold could do whatever he wanted, hell he could stroll a cart around and still gain like a monster with all the shit he was taking, and his freak genetics.

 

[Upstanding Young Man]

Alright, I don't know where to put this, I did a little search and couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. So I'll check here and hopefully not get too bad of a newbie burn.

I am completly new to this, so please forgive any ignorance and newbieness to this. Just got a bench and some weights.

I just started lifting, first I went with 100lbs off the bat and my arms were useless for a couple days after just 10 lifts or so.

So I went down a little and usually lifted two times a day, once the next day, twice, and so on.

Since I don't know anything about this, I got it in my head to just add 5 lbs whenever I could get what I had up 20 times. I'm only up to 90lbs (with 1 15lb bar) and I can get that up 17 times.

Believe me, I understand that this is probably a nonsense way to do this. So point me in the right direction.

I'm currently on a low carb high protien diet, I'm down about 25 lbs in a month, but I've still got a lot of gut and ass. So now I want to work on my arms, cardio is still a pain in the ass at my weight, so this is something I figure I can do for now.

How should I lift and how often?