My specialty for the past 15 years has been helping women increase muscle tone without getting bulky.
Creating a firm and COMPACT physique.
The way to accomplish this is by using high-tension training without excessive breakdown of the muscle.
High tension to a muscle is accomplished with strength training.
NOT light weights and high reps.
The KEY to a compact and tight physique is that you want to stop your strength training sets WELL short of failure.
In this article, I want to encourage you to test out doing HALF the number of reps you are capable of on a given set.
I can pretty much guarantee you that almost nobody in your gym trains like this.
This challenges almost everything we have been taught about resistance training.
It’s a big shift in thinking.
I used to believe that high reps were the key to “toning” and shaping a muscle.
I think the majority of people who work out train like that.
It can work but…
“True muscle tone” is created by hard muscle contractions, NOT by exhausting a muscle.
You aren’t really trying to break down or exhaust the muscles.
Training to failure or exhaustion is good for growth, but if you aren’t after growth, you will want to stop well short of failure.
For tone, you are after repeated hard contractions…
Frequency is more important than intensity.
When you are only lifting half the number of reps you are capable of… you are able to train muscles more often.
You are still using progressive resistance.
You will become stronger and get all of those benefits without lifting to failure.
It should almost feel too easy.
I recommend physically challenging yourself in cardio or HIIT part of your workout.
When you combine this type of strength training with HIIT style cardio, you develop a healthy, sleek, and toned physique.
Here’s an example of how to do this using seated dumbbell shoulder presses.
Short of Failure for Strength & Toning
- Grab a set of dumbells that you can press for 10 reps, let’s say 20-pound dumbbells.
- Instead of doing 10 reps, stop once you hit 5 reps.
- Lift and lower each rep slowly and really squeeze and flex the muscles hard.
- The idea is hard contractions, NOT to exhaust the muscle.
- Rest for 1-2 minutes
- Repeat for 4 more sets of 5 reps with this same weight.
Important: Make sure and rest at least a full minute between sets. You want the muscle to be fresh each set, which gives you the ability to contract the muscle hard.
Repeated contractions are what increase strength and create a compact firm muscle.
This short article is just scratching the surface…
I have an entire workout called Visual Impact for Women that is based on this style of training.
Check out my full workout here…