Muscle Tone – The TRUTH About Toning Up Your Body & How To Get Toned

If you’re reading this, then you probably want more muscle tone.

Maybe you want to tone up your legs, or your stomach, or your arms, or your chest, or your back or your shoulders. Hell, maybe you want to tone up your entire body.

Whichever it is, you want to know all about toning. You want to know the best muscle toning exercises, the best body toning workouts, and all of the tips, tricks and secrets of how to get toned.

Sound about right?

If so, then I have a message for you…

Everything You Know About Tone Is Bullshit!

That’s right, it’s true. You see…

• Nothing tones a muscle.
• Nothing defines a muscle.
• Nothing makes a muscle ripped or cut or slim or lean or sculpted or any other equally hilarious adjectives that essentially mean the same damn thing.

For all of that to make sense (and to get to the root of the bullshit), you first need a definition of what these words truly mean.

Since they all tend to be used interchangeably and really mean the exact same thing, I’m just going to use “tone” (and “toning“) to refer to this entire group of words. So…

Muscle Tone

It's not uncommon to overhear the occasional person engaged in resistance training state that their goal is to develop muscle tone, rather than muscle size or muscle strength. And, more often than not, it is a woman striving to achieve muscle tone rather than a man, given our conventions of what is considered to be a desirable body type for women. For the most part, women "don't want to get big," they "just want to get toned." But what is muscle tone? Can you achieve muscle tone without getting big muscles? Keep reading to learn the honest truth about muscle tone.

What is Muscle Tone?

There are really two definitions for muscle tone. There is the actual true, physiological definition, and the popular, conventional definition.

The Actual Definition of Muscle Tone

Muscle tone, also known as muscle tonus or residual muscle tension, is an unconscious low level contraction of your muscles while they are at rest. Essentially, muscle tone is what makes your muscles still feel somewhat firm while you are resting and not intentionally tensing them. You know how your muscles feel much firmer when you intentionally tense them? And how you feel a decrease in firmness the less you tense (i.e. contract) them? Well, that small remaining amount of firmness that you feel in your muscles when they are completely relaxed, with no intentional tensing, is your muscle tone.