Tone is Not Real: Why Building Muscle is the Goal
Elizabeth Wilkins
In the world of fitness, the word “tone” often gets thrown around, especially when women discuss their goals. However, “tone” is not a scientifically valid concept—it’s a marketing term. What people usually mean by “tone” is building muscle while maintaining a lower body fat percentage to reveal definition. The reality is, if you want to see those sculpted arms or firm booty, you have to focus on building muscle. Spot-treating, or targeting a single area to lose fat, is also a myth. While you can not control where your body burns fat, you can spend extra time focusing on specific muscles to grow and shape them.
Here are five key tips for building muscle:
Stay Consistent: Results come with time and effort. Stick to a structured program and trust the process. To build muscle, women need to prioritize progressive overload— gradually increasing weight or resistance over time to challenge the muscles. This is not about lifting as heavy as possible on day one but about creating a routine that builds strength consistently. Do not be afraid to do the same moves week after week.
Eat Enough Protein: Along with physical training, nutrition is critical. Eating enough protein is essential to muscle repair and growth, and women often underestimate how much their body needs. You should aim to eat .5-1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. Start your day off with your first 30g at breakfast to ensure you’re fueling properly!
Take Rest Days: Hear me out - muscles actually grow better when you rest. You should prioritize 1-2 rest days per week to recover fully. During exercise, particularly strength training, you create small tears in your muscle fibers. You're lengthening and strengthening them at the same time. While this might sound harmful, it’s actually a critical part of the muscle-building process. The real growth happens during rest when your body can repair these tiny tears, making the muscles stronger.
Focus on Compound Movements: Like most things in life, we try and multi-task whenever we can. Exercises like squats, deadlifts, and shoulder presses work multiple muscle groups, maximizing your effort and results. Elevate this even further by doing a squat hammer curl, deadlift with upright row, and chest press with a glute bridge. Compound movements like these demand more energy because they work larger muscle groups. The more muscles you recruit, the more calories you burn during the exercise. When your heart rate increases during these exercises, your body burns more calories both during and after the workout, increasing your overall calorie deficit (which is key for fat loss to see those muscles shine).
Remember my 3 Bs: Your breath, your belly button and your balance. Your core is involved in nearly every movement, acting as a stabilizer, supporter, or primary mover depending on the activity.
• Breath: You should always exhale during the effort. For example, during a pushup you should exhale as you rise.
• Belly Button: The idea of "engaging your belly button" during exercise is a cue often used to activate the transverse abdominals, a deep core muscle that acts like a corset around your midsection. For example, before you rise from that push up you want to pull your belly button towards the back of your spine and hold that engagement as you exhale and push up.
• Balance: Balanced hips enhance your ability to engage your core muscles. This contributes to overall stability and makes exercises safer and more effective. For example, in that pushup you want to keep your hips square to the ground as you rise.
By ditching the outdated concept of “toning” and focusing on strength-building strategies, women can create the lean, strong physiques they’re aiming for.
Elizabeth Wilkins is an ACE-certified Personal Trainer and Precision Nutrition Coach. Her passion for fitness ignited nearly eight years ago with the birth of her oldest daughter. She offers both personal training and group fitness classes, working with Flock Fitness in Central Florida. Her focus is on empowering pre- and postpartum women to achieve their health and wellness goals.