Toning, Real or Marketing? Part One

This is going to be a two part series, part one I dig into the definition and semantics. Part two I dissect the programs that are usually associated with "toning". Please do not be so emotionally tied to this term that you automatically disregard everything I say, now break out the pink dumbbells and get the circuits started, its time to tone!

What is Tone?

You see it in on headlines all over, magazine covers, the internet and youtube, “toning”, what does it mean? Most people use the term "toning" in place of desired body composition, usually the image of a lightly defined body where the the major beach muscles are etched through body fat is what comes to most minds. When we say body composition we are usually talking about

“In physical fitness, body composition is used to describe the percentages of fat, bone, water and muscle in human bodies. Because muscular tissue takes up less space in our body than fat tissue, our body composition, as well as our weight, determines leanness”.

how much lean body mass and body fat you have on your person, someone who weighs 190 pounds at 15% BF (body fat) is going to look more "toned" than a gentleman who is 190 pounds at 20% BF, with muscle mass being the exact same. So we can argue that "toning" is mostly understood but it is vastly dependent on body fat where usually the focus is on the muscle itself. This part is more about semantics and some may think its a petty thing to argue about, but if the base of an idea is wrong even in the slightest it allows for other ideas that stem from it to be vastly deranged.

Here is the actual definition of tone, 

verb past tense: toned; past participle: toned

1.give greater strength or firmness to (the body or a part of it)."exercise tones up the muscles"

2.harmonize with (something) in terms of color."the rich orange color of the wood tones beautifully with the yellow roses"

Breaking it Down

So you see that tone only speaks of the actual firmness/strength of a muscle from exercise, a muscle can be as firm as it can be, but if you still carry enough body fat your body will not have that prefered sculpted look to it or your desired body composition. So now you may be thinking, “okay, yea so the term may not be 100% correct but people get what we are saying and I know what I mean”. Yes, you may know what you mean but how does that help anyone else? Why use a term if it changes per person (similar to the term clean eating), the term has no holding. Now remember that the definition of tone talks only of the strength/firmness of a muscle, but the whole idea of a “toned” body heavily relies on having a reduced body fat (in most cases, some people may need only to increase muscle size but both is more likely) and the definition makes no connection to body fat, very similar to how people think of toning the body.

As I stated earlier, “if the base of an idea is wrong even in the slightest it allows for other ideas that stem from it to be vastly deranged”, now we get to the deranged parts of using the term “toning”. People sell programs and devices of all sorts with the idea of “toning” behind them, but very rarely will the idea of losing body fat be the main focus, most of the time it will be some quick 20 min home workout circuit to tone the body (focusing on the muscle development not body fat). So from the start these programs are terrible because the idea they are based on is wrong (In part two I go into deeper inspection of “toning” programs). I saved the best for last (in this article), the bastardization of “toning” has become so bad that people (who usually are trying to sell you something, go figure) have used toning as an idea of changing the shape and length of an actual muscle/muscles. Human physiology would like to say other wise, the shape and length of a muscle is already pre determined by ones own genetics. We can not “tone” a muscle, the muscles insertion point, muscle belly, and genetics have decided that for us. A muscle can grow and shrink, holding a dumbbell semi lateral while doing tricep kickbacks while sanding on a bosu ball in hope to tone the tricep muscle to grow a certain way is futile. We can only hope to increase the muscle size (hypertrophy) and keep our body fat at a desired level to give us the body we are looking for.

Toning Real?

I hope this post has shown how a wrong use of a word can lead to such deranged branches of it, usually in the hope of selling something by appealing to the masses. So remember to tone is to strengthen or make more firm, if you are looking to change your body composition then usually a increase in muscle size and reduction in body fat (neither have to be to the extreme) will more than likely give you the body and “look” you desire. I might add that following those “toning” routines/workouts will usually have a very small effect that will not last long, but I dig deeper in part two.