What Does It Mean To Build Muscle Tone?
Have you ever heard people in the gym talk about toning their muscles? Have you ever wondered what they meant by that? I sure have. So I started to do a little digging and tried to find out exactly what they were talking about.
By asking around and getting different people's opinions, I started to get a clear picture of what people have in their minds when they use this term. You see everyone is obsessed today with having the perfect body. Well, maybe not everyone is obsessed with this, but certainly a great deal of people out there feel that this is important. If they didn't, you wouldn't have a need for so many advertisements and commercials geared towards beauty products, weight loss, etc.
Now I'm not going to turn this article into a rebuke against materialism or anything like that. We'll leave that debate for another time. All I really wanted to do was find out what in the world people meant when they talked about toning their muscles. By understanding that people want to look great, I've come to better appreciate this term.
When people talk about having well toned muscles, they really mean that they want their muscles to be well defined. They want to have a body that is well shaped. Some want a slim body while others prefer a more muscular body, but none of them want to have an excess amount of fat. Why does any of this matter?
The thing is that people get all sorts of crazy ideas about how to tone their muscles. They come up with elaborate ways to make their muscles (and therefore their bodies) more beautiful. They would make their job a lot easier if they understood a basic principle about muscle. There are two things that determine the way your muscles look: the size of the muscle and the fat surrounding it. That's it. You either build up your muscle or you lose the fat so your muscle is better defined.
There's no need to follow some crazy system to shape or sculpt your muscles. Either use progressive resistance training to build your muscles, or go to the cardio room to lose some fat.
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Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
Added: April 26, 2008