Fat burning.
Many people start doing continuous and prolonged cardio exercises, trying to burn as much fat as possible, but they are completely mistaken in their attempt.
Low-intensity, long-duration cardio exercise
The first mistake is always doing low-intensity, long-duration cardio exercise, known as LISS (Low Intensity Steady State). With this type of cardiovascular exercise, our body usually adapts after six to eight weeks.
That’s why it's recommended to do mainly high-intensity interval training (HIIT), a proven protocol that helps burn more fat and also takes less training time. It has been scientifically proven that HIIT produces greater metabolic activation and post-exercise EPOC release, ultimately resulting in more total fat burn.
There are many ways to train HIIT; in fact, it can be done in many different ways, for example:
· Bicycle, running, or elliptical: generally the most common HIIT protocols are done either on a bike—adding high-intensity intervals with incline to keep our heart rate up during the sets—or by running outdoors, on a treadmill, or finally on the elliptical. In my opinion, it’s harder to reach high-intensity peaks on the elliptical, but it’s still possible.
· Push-ups: doing sets of push-ups (possibly with weights) can be considered HIIT. Depending on your strength, placing a weight disc on your back during push-ups can raise your heart rate significantly, putting you in the 70–80% maximum heart rate zone. For example, you could do 7 high-intensity sets of 15 seconds, resting 45 seconds between sets.
· Rowing machine: another option, especially if your legs are sore from training and you don’t want to do the usual HIIT on the treadmill, elliptical, or bike, is to use the rowing machine.
Toning
When we talk about toning, people usually think it means simply defining the muscles, which is achieved by eliminating existing body fat to reach a low fat percentage, along with prior muscle hypertrophy.
The problem is that many people, starting from very little, believe that when they first go to the gym (whether overweight or underweight), they can tone (build "lean" muscle or build muscle while losing fat), and it’s not really that simple.
Achieving muscle toning, as we can deduce from the previous two paragraphs, consists of two completely opposite phases. A muscle hypertrophy phase where we increase muscle mass, and a fat-loss phase.
Therefore, we could say that the act of toning as such does not truly exist. Except for beginners with some excess fat—who during the first months at the gym can lose fat and gain a bit of muscle—everyone else needs to go through different stages.
Depending on how fast we want results, we can go for short stages showing small long-term changes or larger stages like bodybuilders do. It all depends on each person’s preferences.
Keys to achieving good muscle toning
When we go to a gym, if the trainer isn't eager to explain the complexity of the human body to new members, they usually offer a generic toning routine. These typically consist of lots of exercises with light weights, high repetitions, and additional cardio. As you can imagine, this is not the right way. To tone your body, you need to follow these steps:
If you're overweight: if you’re starting from an overweight or obese condition, the first step is to go through a fat-loss phase. This phase should not consist of endless hours of cardio but rather intense and well-structured strength training, combined with a hypocaloric diet. Cardio can help speed up the process, but it’s not strictly necessary in all cases. I recommend this post: Cardio vs. Weights—what's better for burning fat?
If you're skinny: another scenario is starting from a thin condition, but with some flabbiness. In this case, you may weigh below average but still lack a muscular and toned figure—and may also carry some fat. Here, you should begin strength and hypertrophy training routines, trying to maintain a moderate caloric surplus. Since beginners don’t need a large surplus to see results (due to initially lower training intensity), moderate changes are enough.
For women: many women think that lifting a dumbbell over 5 kg will give them a bodybuilder’s physique—this is not true. If your goal is to gain "muscle tone" and you’re just starting out, you’ll likely have almost no base to begin with. Therefore, the work you must do is the same: intense weight training followed by either a hypo- or hypercaloric diet, depending on whether you first need to burn fat or go straight into muscle-building. I recommend reading: Women and Testosterone: why lifting weights won’t turn you into Hulk.
Don’t overdo cardio: if we overdo long and intense cardio, we’ll end up losing a significant portion of the muscle mass we need to look toned. Just use logic—what does a marathon runner’s body look like compared to a sprinter’s? Exactly, marathoners tend to have very lean, wiry bodies with little muscle mass, while sprinters usually have a well-toned physique.
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