The Toning Myth

‘I just want to get toned’ is one of the most common fitness goals. The phrase is normally coupled with ‘I don’t want to build any muscle because I don’t want to be bulky’. People will then start curling doing 50+ reps thinking that they will lose fat in their arms. This is bullshit and the fitness industry has taken advantage of these people.

So what does ‘toning’ actually mean… You want to build some muscle and lose some fat resulting in a better body composition and therefore more ‘toned’ muscles. All that happened in reality was you lost fat therefore you can actually finally see your muscles 😂.

Toning = body recomposition = lose fat + build some muscle. So are you a candidate for body recomposition:

Beginner - Less than 1 year training experience. These people are still fresh to the muscle building stimulus and therefore gain muscle relatively easily even if in a caloric deficit. Therefore, they can tap into body fat stores to fuel the muscle building process. This coupled with a caloric deficit will result in these individuals gaining muscle while simultaneously losing fat, AKA body recomposition.

Detrained - Someone who has trained in the past but has not trained in 6+ months (pulling 6 months out my arse, somewhere around that). These individuals would have lost some of the muscle they gained while they were active trainees, and due to muscle memory (Whole other topic) they can gain this muscle back very fast. Therefore as the muscle building stimulus is fresh to them again, they can be in a caloric deficit and call upon body fat to help the recomp process.

Obese - Someone who’s body fat is > x%. These people have a big store of body fat, which can be used to once again fuel the muscle building process, which results in recomp.

So to summerise when ever someone says ‘I just wanna get toned’ don’t let them do 50 rep sets, tell them to train in the 5-30 muscle building rep range, eat in a 250-500 calorie deficit, with sufficient protein (0.8g per 1lbs of body weight). If they follow that perfectly, they will get that ‘toned’ body they are after.