Muscle Toning Program for the Over 40 Fitness Crowd (Part I)

If you want to get toned up, you probably have a few parts of your body you wish looked better. Maybe it’s your midsection, which has gotten a bit flabby, or the back of your arms. You may have tried spot toning, which is performing exercises aimed at a specific part of your body.

Unfortunately, spot toning doesn’t work. That’s why it’s important to learn how to tone up your body and then to learn what you need to do in order to get toned.

Why Am I Less Toned Than I Used to Be? As we age, we lose muscle. Most of us also gain fat. This is because your metabolism has changed. Your muscles fibers have also changed, requiring more challenges in order to remain as toned as they used to be. This is bad news for the over 40 fitness crowd, but it isn’t disastrous. It just means you will have to work harder for a toned body than you had to work when you were in your 20s and 30s.

What Exactly Does Getting Toned Up Mean? Actually, sculpting or toning is all just a nice way to say building muscle and losing fat. Getting toned means you will need to challenge your muscles and lose fat so people can see the muscles that are hiding under your existing fat.

How Do I Get Toned? You will get toned if you do the following:
• Perform exercises that tear down muscle fibers (weight lifting, resistance training, toning or sculpting exercises that push your muscles to muscle failure) and feed your body (lots of protein) so your body can rebuild muscles.
• Lose fat so your muscles will show.

It’s really pretty simple. However, you’ll want to let go of the idea that you can tone just your arms or just your chest and realize you need to tone all of your body (and lose excess fat). You have to do this even if you just want to improve your arms or chest or whatever area is bugging you.

Toning Myths You Will Want to Ignore Lots of people will tell you that you will get toned if you:
• Do higher reps with lighter weights
• Do fewer reps with heavier weights
• Work specific muscle groups

Here’s the truth behind each of these myths:
• Higher reps with lighter weights will help you avoid injury. This means this is a good practice for those of us in the 40 and over fitness group, not because it will get you toned quickly, but because it will allow you to work out safely and build muscles.
• Fewer reps with heavier weights are a no-no for those of us who are over 40. Why? Because the risk of improper form and injury is too high. Skip this. It won’t help you get any more toned anyway. It just saves time for people who are young enough and lucky enough to be injury-resistant.
• Working specific muscles groups only produces more defined muscles in that area if you’ve already lost enough excess fat for changes in muscle mass to show in those areas. If you are already very slender, and just have very small muscles, working specific muscles will indeed show up as greater definition and tone. However, if you’re carrying excess fat in areas, you will have to lose the fat before working those specific areas will bring any noticeable success.

Toning Facts You’ll Want to Live Out in Practice
This means you will want to follow a workout routine that builds muscle and helps you lose fat. You can find plenty of articles and recommended resources on this site that will help you lose fat, so please click around and find inspiration and specific direction. Then proceed to Part Two of our muscle toning series to find out what exercises you’ll want to tackle first for maximum toning benefit.


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