The Only Proven Way to Tone

Toning has been one of the hottest words in fitness for the last few years and it feels like everybody wants it.

“How Do I Tone?” is probably going to be the title of a Jillian Michaels-produced Netflix documentary soon.

For better or worse, this article will serve as an entry point to understanding how to answer that question.

What even is Toning?

“Toning” has become a word that gets thrown around like a beachball at a dance festival - everyone wants a piece but nobody’s really sure why they’re doing it or who brought the damn ball in the first place.

Here’s the general consensus to what it means to “tone”:

Getting your arms, legs, stomach, back, armpits, earlobes or anywhere else to look smaller and a bit more defined but, like, not that defined. 

How Do We Do It?

Scroll the internet and you’ll see countless marketing ploys about how to do it and even more people selling it to you.

There are banded apparatuses to use & teas to drink, claims to only use bodyweight exercises and others to tell you to just “lengthen” your muscles.

FYI you can’t physically do that..but that’s a blog for another day.

Here’s what any good fitness professional knows you mean when you say this: “I want to lose some fat and build a little muscle”.

That doesn’t sound nearly as sexy as “toning” up but it’s the truth.

Build a little muscle so it can be seen and lose a little fat so you can see the muscle you built.

That’s the secret recipe!

Ok, So What Do I Do?

Focus your training on building strength within full ranges of motion. This means working mobility into your routine when needed and working towards becoming stronger throughout your body by using both your bodyweight, and weight-bearing exercises.

Overtime, focus on making those bodyweight exercises more difficult and those weight exercises heavier! Yes ladies, that means you too.

For nutrition, focus first on building (or maintaining) a high baseline of calories. An amount that your body will function well at, where you won’t put on weight, and will give you enough cushion later on when it’s time to drop calories off.

If you’re not sure where your calories are right now, I wrote another article that can help.

The number to aim for depends greatly on the person - and I don’t like painting with broad strokes - but once you’re eating a good amount of food, it’s time to drop some calories to help you drop fat.

The only way to “tone up” is to focus our training on building a little muscle and focus our nutrition on dropping a little fat.

Two focus points - no bullshit, no sales gimmicks - that require time, and effort. That really is the only way to “tone”.

Is it easy? Of course not - but it is that simple and you absolutely can do it.