'Toning up'

[Rocky Balboa]

Is it actually possible to tone muscle i.e. make the muscle more tense therefore more defined? Or is this all a load of rubbish and the only way to achieve definition is to lose the body fat covering the muscle?

[dirty boy]

Rocky Balboa said:

Is it actually possible to tone muscle i.e. make the muscle more tense therefore more defined? Or is this all a load of rubbish and the only way to achieve definition is to lose the body fat covering the muscle?

You can tone muscle (although i'm sure someone more knowledgeable will say otherwise )

But for definition you have to lose body fat. I think to get visible abs it's something silly like 8% body fat?

If you do lots of repetitions, for instance crunches, you can harden the muscles, not necessarily making them bigger, which in essence is toning up what you have, which again, really is making them bigger I suppose.

Actually, I don't know what the hell i'm talking about.

I'm doing a bit of everything, trying to get fitter and get my body fat percentage down.

[bales]

I think its a bit of a misnomer probably, I would have thought that all you can do is either hypertrophy the muscle and reduce the amount of fat on top of it so it becomes more visible.

I would guess certain aspects of the musculature (I love that word) become more pronounced when larger so the muscles 'look' more toned but in reality your just seeing it more clearly.

[Animal]

dirty boy said:

But for definition you have to lose body fat. I think to get visible abs it's something silly like 8% body fat?

Nowhere near that low - probably 12% or so.

[E21_Ross]

bales said:

I think its a bit of a misnomer probably, I would have thought that all you can do is either hypertrophy the muscle and reduce the amount of fat on top of it so it becomes more visible.

I would guess certain aspects of the musculature (I love that word) become more pronounced when larger so the muscles 'look' more toned but in reality your just seeing it more clearly.

tone of musculature under rest is actually an autonomic function of the nervous system; our muscles stay a little tense under rest in a sort of "ready state". you can't change this (unless you sever a nerve or something in which case the muscle will be totally flacid)if you want to "tone up" in the normal sense it's just a bit of strength training if you want bigger muscles, or cardio work if you want to lose some body fat; both will increase you lean body mass, but in different ways. depends what you want really.

HTH.