1. Watch Your Diet
Diet plays an integral role in building good muscle tone. High protein diets help your body to build muscle definition. Vitamin rich diets, popularized by many fitness buffs, help the body burn fat and increase lean muscle mass. Watching your calorie intake is important, but it should be relative to your size, body type and workout regimen. Average caloric intake is often not right for everyone, so ask your nutritionist or doctor how many calories you should consume each day.
2. Drink Water to Stay Hydrated
Muscles need the purification properties of water in order to regenerate, so keep them lubricated with at least 40 ounces of water a day. If you're training to increase muscle tone, your body will be begging for more water. Drinking water during your workout also keeps the body hydrated and allows the muscles to stay pliable and healthy while you are exercising. Continual fluid intakes keeps the body flushed of toxins and impurities.
3. Rest Your Body
Working out every day is not good for your body and will lead to muscle fatigue, which will eventually impede muscle growth and definition. Interspersing your workout with days of rest is important to keep the body rejuvenated and properly functioning. In a typical regimen, you might work your upper body on Mondays and Thursdays and your lower body on Tuesdays and Fridays, with days off on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. You can do cardio, such as running or swimming, four or five days a week. Variations in your daily routine also keep the body guessing. Muscles build with a variety of exercises. Toning happens when the muscles are continually challenged by different activities, so changing your workout routine will do wonders to build muscle tone.
4. To Lift or Not to Lift
It is all the rage to hear phrases like "use high reps and low weights," or "do cardio, cardio and more cardio" from experts advising you on how to build muscle tone. However, building muscle tone is particular to each person and a workout routine should ideally fit the individual. Some bodies respond well to high rep/low weight workouts while others do not. The goal of weight training is to build muscle definition by performing your exercises properly. Find a trainer or workout partner to help you maintain good form during your exercises; it will do much more for your definition than simply doing many repetitions of an exercise improperly.
5. Other Cardio Options
Aerobic exercise is vital to weight loss and burns fat to reveal the body's natural muscle tone. However, you don't have to run until exhaustion to define your body. Sports like cycling, badminton, basketball, dance or yoga are excellent ways to get a cardiovascular workout. Finding an aerobic activity that fits your personality and interests will do more for you than simply running on a treadmill for 30 minutes a day. According to several research studies, you will burn more calories and fat doing cardio activities you enjoy as opposed to activities you find boring and tedious.
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