The Best Totally Body Toning Workouts For Women

The best workouts for toning your total body combine more than one style of movement within the workout. For women, it is important to have a strength-training component of some type to reduce body fat and tone the trouble zones. Combining a variety of movements into one workout makes it time efficient as well as effective.

Cardio Kickboxing

Cardio kickboxing attacks a woman's trouble spots by combining upper-body and lower-body moves. Many cardio workouts, such as running and bicycling, target primarily the lower-body muscles with the legs doing all of the work. In cardio kickboxing, your lower body is kicking, shuffling, squatting and performing athletic-style moves that all target the glutes, hamstrings and legs for lower-body toning. The upper body also gets a workout from punching, blocking and twisting. The upper-body moves tone the arms, shoulders, abs and back very effectively, creating a strong, toned look.

Cardio kickboxing workouts tend to be interval-style workouts. This means you will have a segment of working more intensely, then a recovery segment where you continue to work, but at a lower intensity. Interval training like this burns more calories overall and adds to the toning effect of the workout. When you combine the upper- and lower-body movements with the cardio intervals, you have one of the best total-body-toning workouts.

Boot Camp

Boot-camp workouts combine intervals of cardio and strength training for a total-body-toning experience. Although boot-camp workouts have a reputation for being intense and hard core, most instructors give options for modified versions of the toughest exercises so that all participants can be successful regardless of their fitness level. The strength exercises target the entire body, with many of the exercises targeting multiple muscle groups at once so you get more toning benefits in less time. Like cardio kickboxing, boot camp uses interval training to increase the total calorie burn of the workout so you burn more fat and calories while toning the entire body.

Yoga and Pilates Blend

Both yoga and Pilates have a body-strengthening and -toning emphasis. Pilates primarily focuses on the abs and back, with some toning for the buttocks. Yoga has more toning for the arms, shoulders, buttocks and legs. When you combine the two methods into one workout, you get toning for the entire body. Other benefits of this combination compared to more aerobic-style workouts include less impact on the joints; more calming and centering types of movement; increased flexibility, balance of strength and stretching; and increased core strength. Although the actual format of how these two methods are combined can vary greatly, the end result is still an effective toning workout.