Today I want to talk to you about a mistake that I made for years. I want to talk to you about toning muscles. For years I tried to tone my muscles. All the magazines and all the articles I read told me that I should be using light weights and high reps to ‘tone’ my muscles. The problem is that I did not understand what a toned muscle really was.

A muscle is more toned and defined when there is less fat covering it. A muscle is also more toned when it gets bigger. If your muscles are not toned it is because there is too much fat over it or it is not developed enough.

There is no other factor involved and there are no specific ‘toning’ exercises. So to tone muscles you need to build your muscles and lose fat. However the high reps and light weights recommended in magazines won’t do this. The only way to lose body fat over a certain muscle is to decrease your total body fat. Light weights won’t build muscle either. Muscle is only built when you overload them. This means using your muscles to lift heavier weights than it is used to.

So how do you tone muscles? Simple, use exercises and weights that are challenging. Once they become easy then increase the difficulty or weight. This will build muscle. To lose body fat just eat less calories than you burn per day.

It took me years to realise I was wasting my time lifting tiny weights for hundreds of reps. So I hope this article will help people avoid the same mistakes I did.