The secret to toning your body

If your reading this, then there’s a good chance you’ve lost the unwanted fat and are ready to start shaping your body! Well in this blog I’m going to tell you how you can do that! It has been one of the most common questions I’ve had recently and therefore why not put it in a blog format so it’s up on the website for you to read for yourselves. There will be some unwanted truths, but ultimately the information I share with you today will help you achieve the best possible look that you can get, happy reading!

Firstly, I need this disclaimer, the first thing I tell anyone when they ask me how to tone up is that you should lose your unwanted bodyfat first, if you haven’t yet achieved that, then read my first ever blog “What’s the big secret to losing weight?” or join our accountability groups in order to get as much help as you need in order to achieve that goal first! I make it sound like I’m letting you in on a lot of secrets with these blog names. If you are already lean, then this is the blog for you!

The second disclaimer is that ‘toning’ is just a word used by the fitness industry that sounds very appealing, you can lose fat or you can build muscle, that is it, but I can understand that the phrase ‘building muscle’ might sound too extreme to some people, especially the ladies, but looking toned is just being able to see your muscles, so you need to build some in order to see it!

I’m going to hit you with a truth bomb now, if you have loose skin because you used to be larger, either because of having more body fat or from being pregnant, then I’m afraid the only thing you can do to get rid of it is surgery. Doing 10,000 sit ups a day will not get rid of loose skin around your belly or target belly fat, it will simply build the muscle you already have UNDER your loose skin and belly fat, there can be upsides to this which I will address later, but the loose skin is here to stay unless you go under the knife. The day of writing this is a week before we roll out a permanent abs class (Wednesdays, 6.30pm at Ings playing fields), and some of what I’m saying could potentially hurt the numbers, but you need to know the truth so as not to become disillusioned with your progress. I will follow this section with a glimmer of hope, and I’ll try and use an analogy to help you better understand. Imagine your skin is a large un-poppable balloon, filling it with fat all your life is like filling the balloon with air, it will stretch it out. Now if you blow up the balloon too much, you are pushing it past the point its natural elasticity can bring it back to its original shape, so when you let air out of the balloon, it will be bigger then before, and just like with your skin, this is now permanent. What we can do however is fill the balloon (your skin) with something else, and this is where building muscle comes into it. The larger the muscles you have, the more the loose skin will be filled out, just like it was with fat. The trouble is, in most cases you have to build A LOT of muscle in order to fill out the loose skin completely, but anything is better than nothing isn’t it! Also, it has to be said, your maintenance calories are based on your activity and your body weight, well it takes a lot more calories to sustain you body mass if you have more muscle, so more muscle = you can eat more, and who doesn’t want that?

I’m going to say build muscle a lot in this section, please don’t be scared off, I can’t bring myself to keep using the phrase ‘look toned’ because its fucking stupid and I hate that everyone has been filled with so much bullshit by idiots to the point everyone believes it. Whilst we’re at it, fuck any influencer or fitness professional who made you believe you could lose unwanted skin, or you can target certain areas to lose bodyfat, YOU CAN’T, fat will come off uniformly (evenly) and if I see one more video of a girl who’s never been fat in her life post a video saying “how to target unwanted belly fat” or “how to get rid of your mum tum” and then follow up with a series of bullshit exercises, I’m going to find her and force feed her donuts until she develops diabetes (I know that’s a bit extreme, but I nearly said tear my hair out, and that’s just silly). These videos usually show some young lady in her living room doing a series of bodyweight exercises, that isn’t going to do very much to tell the truth, same goes for using 1kg weights if you come to a class, 10 reps with 5kgs is better then 100 reps with 1kg weights. If you only take one thing from this blog, please let it be that! If weights are involved, use proper weights, otherwise your just doing cardio (if that’s what you’re there for, use whatever weight you like), but we want MUSCLE!

Second truth bomb, you won’t build muscle whilst you’re in a calorie deficit! Do all the weights in the world, if you aren’t eating enough, your body will use the calories you consume to maintain the body mass you already have, weights will help make sure you sustain your muscle and get rid of body fat instead if you’re in a deficit (this is why we keep protein high in our nutrition guide), but if you want to try and reduce the appearance of loose skin by building muscle, you’re going to have to eat above your maintenance calories! Scary I know! You might have heard the phrase ‘bulking’ and ‘cutting’, this purely refers to the number of calories someone is eating, my training and exercise stays the same all year round, but the amount I eat changes depending on whether I want to lose fat or build muscle, some fat is gained naturally when trying to build muscle, this can be kept at a minimum by keeping to our bulking guide, the less of a calorie surplus you’re in and the cleaner the food you eat, the less fat you’ll gain, but the longer it will take to gain any muscle. There is a very short period when you start lifting weights that your body will adapt to the new exercise (believed to be around 3 months), after this, you have to eat more to see the results.

I could get into the complexities of exercises and how often to train, what to train, how many reps to do, and so on, but I would need forever to try and sum this up! So instead I will try and keep it basic, just like I said in my other blog titled ‘weights vs cardio’ I will say this, lift as heavy a weight as you can, for as many reps as you can, without sacrificing proper form, so basically in a safe manner! The main lifts you should focus on are your compounds. A compound lift is anything that works more then one muscle at a time, the main ones being; squat, bench press, deadlift, military press (overhead press), lat pull downs or pull ups and barbell or dumbbell rows. If you are unsure on what any of these are then a quick google search will help you out. These lifts are what allow you to lift the most amount of weight, and that strain on your central nervous system is what tells your body that a change needs to be made, in other words, your body has a little conversation with itself and says “ok, looks like we have to lift heavy things now, we’re going to need more muscle in order to adapt to this”. This also explains why progression in your lifts is so important, you must keep adding weight or keep adding reps! Doing the same thing week in week out will get you nowhere, so, throw those 1kg weights in the bin, and let’s get working!

I hope anyone hasn’t got disheartened reading this because you don’t want to eat more or you don’t have access to heavy weights, there are always options. Plus, this is why you sign up to become a member with us, we are here to help in anyway we can. The Bald Boys are all well on track with building muscle, and it is no issue in opening this up to the ladies as well, the more of you who reach this stage, the more likely it is, we will start pushing it, and in the meantime, fell free to drop me a message, and I’ll see what I can do for you!

Happy gains,

Aaron

Ps. You won’t accidentally turn into Arnold overnight if you start lifting weights, I’ve been hoping for this for nearly 20 years and it still hasn’t happened