Training Misconceptions Part IV
The myth of muscle toning and lengthening exercises, and building “lean muscle”
This post dives into why toning and lengthening exercises make no sense and are, in fact, just based in widely spread misinformation. These words have been taken out of context and defined incorrectly in order to sell health and fitness services that play into women’s insecurities and reservations about strength training.
It’s not all criticism, I also have helpful solutions. I’ll cover things like
What people actually want when they say they want a “toned look”, and what you should prioritize to get there.
The difference between muscle strength and mass, and what to focus on if you’d like to be stronger without adding a ton of mass.
What really causes that nice lengthened feeling in your muscles after particular workouts and stretches, and areas of focus to consider if you’d like to increase mobility, functional range of motion, and more.
The Myth of Toning Exercises
I can’t tell you how many inquiries I get from women who want to “tone up.” This stems from years of misleading marketing that feeds off of women’s insecurities. Essentially, marketing experts made the idea up to give women the idea that they needed to do special lady exercises - different ones from their male counterparts - in order to be “lean” and not “bulk up.” And, of course, those exercises consist of whatever moves the service in question is selling (usually a bunch of pulsing movements with 2-3 lb weights…).
As strength training becomes more and more popular with the general public, more people are learning that toning isn’t real and that strength exercises “for women” are actually - get this - just strength training movements and not at all determined by the gender of the exerciser. That said, the toning myth is still really pervasive. Here’s why it doesn’t make sense and what to look for instead.
Toning defined
Toning has taken on a powerful but poorly defined meaning for those who want to get strong - but not ‘TOO strong, build muscle - but not TOO much muscle. It’s come to be associated with a lean, marketable physique so brands everywhere use it to sell their product. In reality, muscle toning is simply a muscles ability to reflexively contract. The most common example is a baby - you can tell babies have low muscle tone because they can’t hold their heads up. As a child grows older, they begin to hold their head up without having to actively engaging/thinking about it. This is a sign they have more muscle tone. Muscles with TOO much tone can actually become immobile - think of a constant muscle spasm or a locked up joint! This is the result of muscles reflexively contracting way too much .
What people mean when they say they want “tone up”
When people say they want to be toned, they really mean they want to have muscle while maintaining a low enough body fat percentage to make sure those muscles are visible. Women use this word more than men because they want to communicate that they’d like to have muscle, but they don’t want to risk getting too bulky. Here’s a straight forward overview of lean body mass, muscle mass and total body mass.
Toning is often associated with building “ long, lean muscle.” I have news for you, all muscle is lean muscle by definition (it’s not fat) and there are no strength exercises that will help you to make your muscles longer. Muscles have a set point of origin (where they connect to tendons which connect them to a bone joint). Unless you’re considering a bone lengthening surgery, your muscles will essentially remain the same length as they will always tie into the same joint on each end. This article discusses the topic in more detail if you’re interested.
What to focus on instead.
If you want this “toned” look, or what we now know is a muscular physique with low body fat - it really comes down to two variables. You can build or lose muscle, and you can gain or lose fat to cover or uncover the muscle mass you’ve got. There are no specific exercises or numbers of repetitions that will help you to achieve a “toned” look. A well rounded strength training program that includes all your basic movement patterns should do it. As for the ideal number of repetitions, that will depend on the exercise in question, your anatomy and joint mechanics, training history and fitness level, lifestyle, and more. That’s why people like me have a job.
The toned look that most people are referring to is achieved with consistent well structured strength training, phases focused on growth followed by much shorter and less frequent fat loss phases in which you attempt to lose body fat without losing much muscle. This is done by training hard and eating adequate protein to fuel muscle protein synthesis. My post on protein gives a ton of information detailing adequate protein intake, protein content in a variety of protein sources, strategies for tracking and for those who don’t want to track food, and more.
There is no reason to be concerned with getting bulky (really). Building an amount of muscle mass that large takes a ton of hard work, a noticeable caloric surplus — and often steroids if we’re being honest. All of this builds up over the course of years of hard work. It won’t accidentally happen after a few heavy strength workouts (if it does, please let me and everyone else in fitness know your secret).
Maximizing Strength Without Adding Mass
While you shouldn’t be too concerned with accidentally building huge muscles without trying, there are a few strategies you might keep in mind if you’d like to build strength without building mass. If your goal is to build mass, you should still really keep these in mind - they’re good habits to keep in mind regardless of your goal as they basically come down to doing moves well and with intention.
Form and neuromuscular control
Essentially, the current size of your muscles is an indicator of your current potential for muscular strength. Muscular strength is a practiced skill that has a lot to do with coordination (neuromuscular control - so mind body connection + nervous system adaptations). Most of us have not maximized the efficiency of these pathways, so we have yet to reach our full strength potential with our current muscle mass. If you’ve completely mastered form and maximized the efficiency of nervous system pathways in question during your strength training exercises, then you actually do need to add more muscle mass (physical size) in order to continue to get stronger. However, most of us gen pop people have not maximized the strength potential in our current muscle mass.
This focus and coordination aspect is why newbies experience more rapid progress (newbie gains!) Essentially, you already have a lot of strength and the initial phases of a training program are helping you to teach your brain how to communicate effectively with the muscles in question in order to properly coordinate a lift. By nailing form and really thinking about what muscle to use, you’ll be able to lift a lot more without adding additional muscle mass.
Relevant Strategies for Achieving “lengthened” Muscles
We learned that muscles can’t get physically longer since they are attached to pretty fixed points (your bones), but why do our muscles feel lengthened after consistent stretching? Why do certain exercises and training styles feel lengthening?
nervous system adaptations
Consistent stretching has a bigger impact on our nervous system than on our actual muscle length! Essentially, consistent stretching increases our stretch tolerance - as your body gets accustomed to stretching, it will take your brain longer to send the message to muscles that you’re taking things too far and need to stop to keep yourself safe. By stretching consistently, we increase our functional range of motion by training our nervous system to delay sending warning messages to the muscle in questions.
Correcting muscular imbalances
Often when a muscle feels tight, what’s really to blame is weakness in the opposing muscle groups or synergistic dominance.
An example of a tightness sensation that may be attributed to weakness in opposition groups: your chest, neck and anterior deltoids (front of the shoulders) might feel tight, but the answer may have more to do with strengthening your back than with stretching your chest.
Keeping with the chest/back example, priorities here might be adding more row variations into your program.
The hamstrings are a great example of a tightness sensation that may be more accurately attributed to synergistic dominance. Hamstrings tend to be chronically over-activated - resulting in a feeling of tightness - while the glutes tend to be chronically inhibited and weak in the average person. As a result, hamstrings take over as the primary muscle group driving movements that should be powered primarily by the glutes (with the hamstrings working as a secondary supporting muscle). This is what we call synergistic dominance - one muscle that should a little helper tends to activate too easily and take over as the primary mover. This leaves the muscle that should have been working hardest under utilized and, eventually, chronically inhibited and weak and the little overworked one ends up feeling super tight and over used.
Keeping with our hamstring/glute example, priorities might be experimenting with variations on basic movements until you find variations that help you to properly engage your glutes. Ideas include adding mini band activation moves to your warm-up, adjusting foot position, and mentally focusing on using your glutes during bigger lifts like squats and thrusts.
Training movements with full range of motion
The last strategy I’ll touch on here is the importance of training muscles with the full range of motion. Oftentimes when muscles feel tight, it has to do with weakness at the end range of motion. Take the biceps curls for example - if you tend to cheat on your curls by not straightening your arms on each rep, you neglect to train a noticeable portion of your bicep muscle. Eventually, ignoring that bottom portion will limit your muscles functional range of motion simply because you’e neglected to train it to work in the full range.
By emphasizing concentrated, intentional, controlled, full range of motion in our movements we can maximize our current strength potential and achieve that lengthened feeling that results from correcting muscle imbalance and increasing our functional range of motion.
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