Conventional wisdom promotes the idea that toning your muscles requires greater repetitions with lighter weights. Fewer reps with heavier weights is associated with bulking up and bigger muscles. But not all fitness experts agree with that distinction. Challenging yourself with heavier weights, even with fewer reps, can also help tone muscles without bulking up. The key to building big muscles is partly to do with weight training but also with calorie consumption.
Heavy Weights
Lifting heavy or challenging weights, of sets of around eight repetitions, may do more to tone your muscles and rev up your metabolism than doing more repetitions with lighter weights. In a study of post-menopausal women, those engaged in resistance training that involved three weekly workouts where exercises were done in sets of only eight repetitions experienced significant improvements in weight loss and overall fitness.
Finding the Right Weights
When determining the weight you're going to lift in a particular exercise, whether it's a lat pull-down, military press, leg press or some other option, try to find a weight that will have you reaching your maximum effort, or close to it, by the 12th repetition. You can achieve as good or better results in building and toning muscles with a 12-repetition set that maxes you out at the end, than you can with multiple sets of lighter weights, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Frequency
In addition to workouts of fewer repetitions, the actual length of the workouts themselves can be more abbreviated than you might think. The Mayo Clinic suggests that resistance training workouts of 20 to 30 minutes, two or three times a week, will be sufficient for most people. Spending hours a day in the gym isn't likely to give you much of an advantage over fewer, shorter, but well-designed workouts with exercises that challenge you at 10 to 12 repetitions.
Calories and Cardio
The reason people who work out with heavy weights and low repetitions get big muscles is because they also consume massive amounts of calories. Your normal diet or even an eating plan that involves reduced calorie consumption will not produce bulky muscles on a low-rep, high-weight routine. In addition, if you combine your weight workout with high-intensity cardio exercises, you will help lose weight all over your body, which will help you tone your muscles and get that toned look faster than if you didn't do some cardio on your own.
References
- New York Times: The Claim: For Better Muscle Tone, Go Lighter and Repeat
- "Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise"; Resistance training predicts 6-yr body composition change in postmenopausal women; July 2010
- Mayo Clinic: Strength Training: Getting Stronger, Leaner, Healthier
- Health Guidance: Light Weight High Repetition Exercises to Define
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