by Rusty Moore
The key to muscle mass is a high enough volume of lifts to induce a bit of damage to the muscles. After the muscle is damaged it is important to rest that muscle enough for a full recovery. Ideally when that muscle is recovered, it will be slightly bigger. Over time this builds a larger muscle. The key to muscle tone is to do less volume of sets, but work out more frequently.
How Many Sets for Muscle Tone?
Remember, your goal for muscle tone is to avoid damaging the muscles. If you get sore the following day, back off a bit the next time that you work those same muscles. I like to do 3-4 sets of anywhere between 3-10 reps for muscle tone. I chose 2 exercises per body part.
So How Many Reps Per Set?
Very few people understand how effective low reps are for muscle tone. Low reps create harder contractions and over time, your muscle will display better tone. Feel free to include medium to high reps, but make sure you don’t neglect heavier low rep training as well. Gaining strength at a low body fat level is a great way to look ripped!
It is Important to Work the Muscles Often When Going for Tone!
Muscle tone is basically the partial contraction of a muscle in a relaxed state, so your muscles are contacting a bit on their own even when you are completely relaxed. The way to increase this is to contract you muscles hard (workout) on a frequent basis. The problem with damaging a muscle is that you will be unable to work that muscle again until it is repaired. If you work a damaged muscle too soon, it will result in over-training. Another problem with working a damaged muscle is that it won’t be able to contract hard during your workout, so that workout won’t be very productive when it comes to increasing muscle tone.
Do NOT Train to Failure or Use Forced Reps When Going for Muscle Tone
Going to the point of failure will increase the likelihood that muscle damage will occur. The bad thing about going to failure is that it teaches your muscles to fail! Your body will react by not contracting that muscle quite as hard for the next set, it will also result in less muscle tone outside of the gym. Going to failure and forcing reps is great for muscle mass, but terrible for muscle tone!
Here is Common Mass Building Split Routine
A popular mass building routine is the “3 day split”. This is where you work the entire body over a period of 3 days. Day one could be Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps…Day 2 could be Back and Biceps…Day 3 could be Legs and Abs. The benefit here is that since the muscles are getting damaged, they need more recovery time. Also since you are only focused on a couple of body parts, you could really do a high volume of intense lifts for each body part. Cardio would be limited to maybe twice a week for 30 minutes.
Muscle Tone Works Better With a “2 Day Split”
Since you want to work each muscle group more often when going for tone, you should try to split you workout over two days instead of three. The great thing here is that you don’t need much recovery time when you don’t damage the muscles.
Note: So you should have a good idea on how to setup a great workout routine. Remember, if you are going for tone, keep the volume of lifting low and work each muscle frequently. Since your time in the weight room should be brief, spend the extra time hitting cardio hard to burn off all that excess body fat to reveal your toned muscles.
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