How can I Tone Up?

This is not a submitted question but one that I see plastered all over the internet, addressed in magazines and "solved" by new fad diets and exercise routines so much that I had to throw my 2 cents in. Despite the plethora of "information" out there telling people how to achieve the fabled and sought-after toned look, the answer to this question is fairly simple.

Toning is a myth. Or, at the very least, it's a misnomer. When people talk about toning, they mean that they want to increase the definition of their muscles and achieve a firmer look. A major problem is that many times people, especially women, who set this goal for themselves attach the statement "I don't want to get bigger" and begin to develop in themselves a phobia of strength training. But let's start over and take this myth apart one vague and insidious bit at a time.

Muscles cannot firm-up or become more defined. Muscles can only grow or shrink.

Fat can likewise only increase or decrease.

Any physical effects of exercise are a result of the balance of these two factors. Because fat sits on top of muscle, the amount of fat we have on our bodies can mask the amount of muscle.

So to increase muscle definition we need to increase muscle mass and decrease fat. But how do we do that? Not by doing thousands of crunches and certainly not by falling into the trap of another related and obsolete myth: Low weight/high reps. This technique doesn't work the muscles hard enough for them to grow and doesn't raise your heart rate enough for you to lose weight. Since muscle gain and weight loss are the two key factors here, this method won't work. Of course, no exercise is truly useless but the results won't be significant enough to make you want to continue and most definitely won't give you that coveted "toned" look.

So, decent cardiovascular training and proper diet will be important to help you lose weight and expose the rippling glory of those muscles... if they're there. If the muscles aren't present, we have to build them. That means strength training. With weights. Heavy ones. "But I don't want to get bigger!" you say. I know, and you probably won't. It takes years of concentrated, specialized training and dieting to achieve a "bulky"' look and pile on pounds of muscle. On the other hand, muscle burns enormous amounts of calories. Even when you're sleeping muscles are responsible for about 25% percent of your metabolism. The more muscle you have and the more you work it, the more calories you'll burn and the more weight you'll lose. It's one of the few beneficial cycles we can get ourselves stuck in.

The next logical question is "What kind of training should I do?" That is a highly personalized thing to figure out and may take some experimentation and time with a trainer. However, I can give you some guidelines.

• Pick a weight that will limit you to between 8 and 12 reps. That doesn't mean you can quit on the 12th, that means you have to quit on the 12th. The amount of resistance should exhaust your muscles after 12 reps.
• Stick to compound movements with an emphasis on large muscle groups such as the legs, chest and back. These muscles are going to give your metabolism a huge boost when they're drained and compound exercises will engage multiple muscle groups. Common compound exercises include bench press, lunges and squats. (See ExRx in the links section for a great selection of exercises)
• Use interval training in your cardio workout. This type of run/walk workout is generally effective in burning fat quickly.
• Try circuit training. This involves a fast moving strength workout that works every muscle group with no rest between exercises so it keeps your heart rate up, killing two birds with one stone. 

"Toning" is a vague and imprecise expression and, as discussed in the post on goals, to be successful we need to be specific about what we want to achieve. To really be able to transform our bodies we need a balance of weight loss and muscle gain.