What Does It Really Mean to “strengthen” Muscles?

The word “pull-up” has become something of a joke in many fitness circles because it’s often used to mean something else. Sometimes it’s a code word for thinness, as when someone promises a workout will tone your muscles rather than make you look ripped. Other times, it’s a way to make money, as when someone suggests doing pull-ups at home instead of buying dumbbells or a gym membership.

To the extent that the word has any meaning at all, we talked about it a little when discussing the fear of becoming too bulky . Being “toned” usually means having some muscle definition but still perceiving your body as feminine or thin. “Tonned” isn’t something inherent in human biology; it’s a word we use, balancing on the edge of how we want to be perceived.

What happens when you exercise a muscle?

When you give your muscles a task, they become better at it. While entire dissertations have been devoted to the precise processes that occur inside muscle cells during exercise, the changes in muscles during weightlifting generally fall into two categories:

• You will learn to use this muscle better (neuromuscular adaptations).

• The muscle increases in size (hypertrophies).

Of these two factors, only the second (increased muscle mass) has a visible impact. Both affect your strength, or, in other words, what you can do with that muscle. Strength gains and muscle mass gains occur simultaneously: you can try to prioritize one over the other, but strength training will lead to increased muscle mass as a side effect, and training for muscle mass gains is virtually impossible without increased strength.

The human body is a complex organism, so of course, there’s more than just these two things happening. But these are the main ones. There are other, less noticeable phenomena as well:

• Your muscles are better able to handle repeated contractions (muscular endurance).

• When you exercise, you burn calories.

These benefits aren’t limited to strength training. You can also burn calories and build endurance with cardio workouts like running.

The last two points have no visible effect on the body. You can’t judge a person’s endurance by their appearance. Burning calories can theoretically lead to fat or even muscle loss, but this also depends on the amount of calories consumed. Exercise alone doesn’t necessarily change body fat levels.

So how do you achieve that toned look?

If we look at the visible changes we can make in our bodies through exercise, we see that we only have two things under our control:

• We can increase the size of individual muscles through strength training (such as lifting weights).

• We can consume fewer calories than we burn while doing strength training to maintain muscle mass, which leads to fat loss throughout the body.

Keep in mind that you can target specific muscle mass, but you can’t lose fat in a specific area of ​​your body. Fat distribution is largely out of our control, so you won’t achieve a flat stomach or slim down your thighs with exercise alone. You can train specific muscles to increase their volume and eat in a calorie deficit to reduce overall body mass , and see what happens.

To clarify a few points that are often discussed in connection with muscle toning: it’s impossible to build “long, lean muscles.” Toned means lacking fat, so if you want to look toned, you need to reduce your fat.

Muscle length is something you can’t control: it’s attached to your bones. How can it get longer? Sometimes people mean they want their muscles to look less rounded or their biceps to have a bulge, but that’s also out of our control. Muscle shape depends on factors like attachment points and the length of the tendons compared to the contractile portion of the muscle. It’s simply something you’re born with, and training can’t change it.

What does muscle toning training provide?

Based on the available information, it seems that achieving defined muscles and a leaner physique requires strength training and a balanced diet. (It would also be wise to incorporate cardio, which is healthy and won’t negate the results you’ve already achieved .)

So what exactly is this “muscle toning workout”? Isn’t there a rep range for “toning” muscles? Doesn’t “toning” require lighter weights than building muscle? What’s the matter? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this is all nonsense people say to sell their products .

Here’s the truth about rep ranges: 15 reps is a decent way to build muscle and get stronger . Thirty reps also promote muscle growth if you perform the exercise to failure (meaning by the 30th rep, your muscles start to burn and you literally can’t do another one). Any more—or if you do a higher rep set but lower the dumbbells to failure—you do little to increase muscle size or strength. You’re still working on endurance, but endurance won’t make much of a difference in how your physique looks.

What about the size of your dumbbells? To get the right number of reps, you need to lift weights that are “heavy” for you . Maybe you’re a beginner, and five pounds is a very difficult weight for bicep curls. Great! That’s your “heavy” weight for now. As you get stronger, you’ll need heavier weights. (Keep in mind, though: different exercises work different muscle groups. Someone who uses five pounds for bicep curls will need a heavier weight for dumbbell squats .)

If your muscle-building exercises don’t involve weights, the principles remain the same. If you struggle to do 10 squats without weights, then weightless squats are helping you build muscle in your legs and glutes. But if you can only do 50, you need to either add weights or find another exercise without weights that’s challenging enough.

Toning workouts should be avoided.

If you’re determined to tone your body, the workouts for building muscle are no different from those required to achieve the perfect figure. The only difference is that achieving the perfect figure requires a lot of eating (muscle comes from somewhere) and a lot of time. Even if you spend all your time in the gym, you won’t look like the Hulk by the end of the year. This is bad news for those who want to look like the Hulk, and good news for those who don’t.

So, you need to do regular strength training. With that in mind, let’s look at a couple of workouts that are advertised as “muscle toning”:

HIIT workouts : True HIIT workouts improve aerobic endurance (making you a faster runner, for example), but they don’t provide any significant benefits in terms of calorie burning or muscle building. Many popular workouts aren’t even true HIIT , they’re just circuit training.

Circuit training : Performing a series of different exercises with little or no rest, then repeating the series, is called circuit training. It’s a combination of strength training and cardio, making it a good choice if you don’t have time for two separate workouts. CrossFit workouts of the day (WODs) also fall into this category. You’ll likely get better results if you separate the strength and cardio components, but if you enjoy circuit training, it’s perfectly fine.

High-rep exercises with no or light weights : Many workouts with resistance bands and ankle weights fall into this category. If they seem challenging enough to be considered strength training, great! But most of them aren’t, especially once you’re no longer a beginner. At this stage, they simply build endurance without building muscle mass. If you enjoy them or if endurance is important to you, enjoy them. But they won’t “tonify” you.

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