Muscle Toning Exercise Tip 1 – Decide On Your Muscle Toning Goals
When it comes to building muscle there are three main goals. In the section below I’ll be looking at these three goals in more detail and explaining how you can achieve each one:
Muscle Size & Strength: If you want big, strong muscles then you need to be lifting pretty heavy and choosing weights that you can lift for 6-8 reps per set.
Muscle Shape & Tone: If you want to shape and tone your muscles without adding too much size then you should be lifting medium weights that you can lift for 15-20 reps per set.
Muscle Endurance & Stamina: If your main goal is to improve your muscle strength and stamina then you need to be lifting relatively light weights that you can manage 20-25 reps per set.
Muscle Toning Exercise Tip 2 – Choose Where You Want To Train
When it comes to training you have two main choices – training at the Gym or training at Home.
Training at the gym is the most popular option and for good reason. For a monthly fee you get access to a huge range of muscle building equipment.
However, if you don’t think you’ll enjoy the crowded gym, training at home is still a great option with lots of benefits.
Unlike the gym, when you train at home, you have constant access to all YOUR equipment and overcrowding is never an issue.
In addition to this, you don’t have to commute when your working out, instead of going to train at the gym.
So run through the benefits of these two training locations, decide which one is best for you and make your final choice.
Muscle Toning Exercise Tip 3 – Choose Your Best Workout Times
Deciding on your best workout times is an essential part of the muscle building process.
By doing this, you’re much more likely to stick to a consistent workout routine and as a result you’ll build more muscle.
To choose your best workout times, simply decide which of the following options will work best for you:
Morning Workouts: If you’re a morning person or you start work late, training as soon as you get up is a fantastic option. Most gyms open their doors around 6 am, so even if you have to be at work for 9 am, you can still get a great muscle building workout in.
Afternoon Workouts: If you have a gym close to your workplace or work flex-time, training during your lunch break is an excellent idea that breaks up the day.
Evening Workouts: If you have a lot of free time in the evening or feel you could be using your time after work more productively, you may prefer evening workouts.
Once you’ve chosen your best workout time, it’s also a good idea to choose a reserve workout time. That way, if something comes up on the day which prevents you working out at your preferred time, you still have a backup time slot.
Muscle Toning Exercise Tip 4 – Decide How Many Days Per Week You Can Train
Deciding how many days per week you can train is crucial and has a direct impact on the way you construct your muscle building workouts.
For the best results, you should aim to train 3-4 days per week.
To determine how many days per week you can realistically train, take a look at your calendar.
If you have any regular commitments on certain days of the week, consider whether these commitments will prevent you from working out on those days.
Likewise, if you have any days where you’re consistently free, you should make these one of your workout days.
Once you’ve decided how many days per week you can train, you then need to factor in how you construct your muscle building workouts.
To ensure that your muscles develop evenly, you need to be hitting eight major muscle groups across the week – chest, triceps, upper back, biceps, forearms, shoulders, legs, and core.
Muscle Toning Exercise Tip 5 – Research & Choose Your Muscle Toning Exercises
When building muscle, there are eight major muscle groups that you should be targeting each week – chest, triceps, upper back, biceps, forearms, shoulders, legs, and core.
In the section below, I’ll be listing some of the best exercises for targeting all of these different muscle groups.
Chest:
Chest Press = A popular exercise that involves pressing weights above your chest and can be performed with a barbell, dumbbells or a chest press machine.
Chest Fly = A dumbbell exercise that helps sculpt the chest and involves squeezing the weights together using your chest muscles.
Triceps:
Tricep Extension: A versatile tricep exercise that can be performed using a barbell, dumbbells or a cable machine and involves straightening your arms from a bent position while holding a weight.
Tricep Skull Crusher: An effective tricep exercise that can be performed with a barbell or dumbbells and involves raising and lowering the weight above your skull as you work your triceps.
Upper Back:
Upright Row: A compound exercise that involves raising a weight from your waist up to your shoulders in a rowing motion. It can be performed with a barbell, dumbbells or a cable machine.
Lat Pulldown: A machine based exercise that involves pulling a weight towards your chest with your upper back muscles.
Biceps:
Bicep Curl: A classic bicep exercise which involves flexing your biceps in order to curl a barbell, dumbbells or cable towards chest.
Preacher Curl: A variation on the bicep curl which can be performed using a barbell or dumbbells and places further emphasis on the biceps.
Forearms:
Wrist Curl: A great forearm strengthening exercise that involves curling a barbell, dumbbells or a cable with your wrists.
Shoulders:
Shoulder Press: One of the most popular shoulder exercises that can be done using either a barbell, dumbbells or a shoulder press machine and involves pressing weights above your shoulders.
Arnold Press: A dumbbell exercise made famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger which involves pressing the dumbbells above your shoulders while twisting them at the same time.
Legs:
Squat: A staple muscle building exercise that can be performed with a barbell, dumbbells or a smith machine and involves squatting up and down while supporting weight on your shoulders.
Deadlift: An excellent lower body exercise that involves raising a barbell or dumbbells off the floor using the muscles in your legs.
Core:
Plank: A brilliant exercise that targets all your core muscles and involves holding your body in a plank position for as long as you can possibly manage.
Leg Raise: An excellent core exercise that involves lying down and raising your legs off the floor and pointing your feet towards the ceiling.
While these exercises are a great starting point, once you get going with your muscle building workouts, you will want to expand them and add more exercises.
So use my article as a blueprint to get started but make sure you’re performing lots of additional exercises too.
Muscle Toning Exercise Tip 6 – Create Your Muscle Building Workout
In my article, I’ve been discussing how to choose the optimal amount of reps per exercise, how to determine your workout times, how to choose the number of days per week you workout and how to select muscle building exercises that target each area of the body.
Now I’m going to show you how to bring all this information together and create a muscle building workout.
To begin, write down the days and times that you’re planning to train each week. Ideally, you should be aiming to train 3-5 times per week.
The full body routine has eight main muscle groups that you need to train (chest, triceps, upper back, biceps, forearms, legs, shoulders and core) across these days.
So for example, if you’re planning to train on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you could hit your chest, triceps and biceps on Monday, work your upper back, forearms and legs on Wednesday and your shoulders and core on Friday.
Once you’ve done this, decide on the specific exercises you’re going to be doing on each day.
So for example, if you were training chest, triceps and biceps on Monday, you’d want to be performing two chest exercises, two triceps exercises and two bicep exercises as part of this workout.
Then all that’s left to do is decide how much weight you’re going to be lifting per exercise and how many reps you’ll do.
Once you’ve established this, stick to it and aim to increase the amount of weight you lift each week for consistent muscle growth.
Muscle Toning Exercise Tip 7 – Buy Some Weightlifting Gloves
I've discussed how to put together an effective muscle building workout. However, before you get started with this you should definitely invest in some weightlifting gloves.
In the list below, I’ve highlighted why they’re such a good investment:
They Protect Your Hands: If you’re lifting heavy weights on a regular basis, then the skin on your hands is likely to blister. Not only is this painful but maintaining a good grip with blistered hands is very difficult. By investing in some weightlifting glove, you avoid this problem and ensure your hands feel great after every workout.
They Protect Your Wrists: As well as protecting your hands, good weightlifting gloves also provide wrist support. Not only does this reduce wrist pain but it also prevents your wrists from letting you down while you lift and ensures that your other muscles get a good workout.
They Improve Your Grip: Weightlifting gloves are specially designed to maximize your grip when you lift. They’re constructed from non-slip materials which keep the weights firmly held in place when you’re lifting and reduce the risk of them slipping out of your hands.
Muscle Toning Exercise Tip 8 – Focus On Your Form
One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to build muscle is increasing the amount they lift but neglecting their form.
As a result, they start to believe that they’re making consistent improvements but in reality they’re not working their muscles properly and setting themselves up for a serious injury.
To avoid making this same mistake, you need to focus on your form from the very beginning and maintain this focus on form every time you workout.
The good news is that getting your form right isn’t difficult. Simply grab a light weight that you can comfortably lift and then slowly perform the exercise for 20 reps.
As you do this, make sure you’re bringing the right muscles into play and not using momentum to lift the weight. Then once you’ve finished your 20 reps with the light weight, maintain the exact same form as you move onto heavier weights.
Muscle Toning Exercise Tip 9 – Seek Consistent Improvement
Consistent improvement is one of the cornerstones of muscle toning success. If you’re not improving in most workouts, your muscle growth will suffer and you won’t get the results you desire.
To ensure that you’re improving in every workout, set yourself a target of lifting more weight/resistance than the previous week.
You’ll find that most weeks you will manage to increase the amount you lift as the previous workout has stimulated new muscle growth and made you stronger.
However, in the weeks you don’t manage to lift any extra weight, do a few extra reps instead. This way you’ll still be improving on the previous workout, even if you don’t lift any extra weight.
By having targets like these in place, you’ll make much better progress in the long term and as a result, you’ll get maximum muscle growth.
By doing this, you’ll still be able to make consistent improvements with the amount you lift but you’ll be much less likely to injure yourself and your muscles will get the maximum benefit from every exercise you perform.
Muscle Toning Exercise Tip 10 – Rest Up Between Workouts
If you’ve been following my information in this newsletter up to this point, you should have now created and started your very own toning workout routine.
One final thing you need to ensure maximum toning and muscle growth is to take the time to rest between workouts.
Failing to rest up between workouts can stunt your muscle growth, make you more susceptible to injuries, reduce your performance during workouts, reduce your overall energy levels and much more.
To make sure you adequate amounts of rest between workouts, implement the tips below:
Spend At Least 1 Hour Per Day Relaxing: This not only gives your body and your mind time to recuperate but it also gets you in the habit of relaxing regularly and makes you less likely to neglect it. Some relaxing activities you can do during this hour include meditating, reading, taking a hot bath and listening to music.
Get At Least 6 Hours Sleep Per Night: Failing to get at least 6 hours of sleep per night reduces your growth hormone levels and this has a negative impact on your muscle growth. To make sure you’re getting at least 6 hours of sleep per night, have a regular bedtime and stick to it. Also, make sure your bedroom is dark, quiet, comfortable and conducive to sleep.
Take 1 Full Day Off Every Week: Training on a regular basis is addictive, especially when you’re starting to see results. However, if you’re training every day, your body’s not going to have enough time to recover from the workouts and you’ll do more harm than get. So make sure you have at least one day each week where you take it easy and completely avoid physical activity.
Eating right, along with challenging exercise, is the formula for a toned, lean body. Guarantee your results by teaming up with me.
Together we will come up with a fitness plan that is uniquely yours, one that fits your lifestyle and helps you achieve your goals.
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