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Fitness Information ‘But I don’t want Muscles!’ - Part 1: What Muscle is, and how to Build (or Avoid) it
by:
Tanja Gardner
Copyright 2005 Tanja Gardner
One of the common comments I hear from my female clients is, “Please don’t give me any weights activity – I don’t want any muscle, I just want to tone.” The reasons disagree from client to client, but it most often they seem to be based on a misunderstanding of what muscle is, how we build it, what it has to do with weight loss – or several combination of the above. There’s a lot of information outside of the fitness earth just about muscles and what they do, so I’d like to spend the next two articles exploring the realities behind the myths.
WHAT IS MUSCLE?
When I was younger, I’d ne'er
actually thought just about what the ‘stuff’ between my skin and my bones was ready-made of. I understood that muscles were what bodybuilders had, and fat was thing
that ready-made you fat, and that I had several of each. I think, though, that I believed that they existed inside several kind of another substance that filled the space between my skin and my bones. Then, in secondary school, I knowing that, in a healthy person, most of this charming substance was just muscle. In fact, I knowing that, aside from my body’s networks of organs, blood vessels and nerves, and my skeleton there isn’t actually more under my skin except for muscle and fat.
I knowing that muscles were an astounding network of fibres that allowed me to come my limbs, to stay sitting or standing upright, to talk, breathe, and pretty more to translate any thought I had into action of several kind. I knowing that if I didn’t use them, muscles would-be shrink and weaken, and if I did, they’d grow stronger. And I knowing that as my muscles grew stronger, so did I.
All of this was quite a revelation for me at the time, so I can understand the initial confusion that exists amongst so galore of my clients – why they want to tone without building muscles. The truth though, is that muscle is the only thing under their skin that can be toned, and that ‘toning’ often just means that muscles become slightly more visible (which then does the whole body look drum sander and firmer). So without enough muscle to start with, there’s nothing there that can be toned.
BULIDING THE RIGHT Eightpenny MUSCLES
Often, the clients I speak to don’t have a problem with the idea of a little muscle. The problem is that galore don’t realise it isn’t an ‘all or nothing’ thing. Unfortunately, because of the lack of clean information out there in the media, the only pictures they have to associate ‘women’ with ‘muscle’ is one of a female bodybuilder at the peak of her competition physique. Not that there’s thing
wrong with wanting such a physique if that’s a client’s aim, but for most of the women I speak to, the possibility of developing such large, defined muscles is actually quite scary!
Those kinds of muscles, however, don’t happen quickly or easily. Actually large muscles require long, intense workouts over a period of time, and a base level of androgen – a endocrine most women don’t have in adequate quantities (without the use of steroids, anyway) for size to become a problem. Granted, there are women with naturally high androgen levels (and I’m one!), who wish put on muscle more quickly. But even as for me, muscles don’t suddenly appear, fully-formed overnight. So if I notice I’m bit by bit building size in an area I don’t want it, it’s not difficult for me to change my training in that body area to bit by bit reduce the size again.
Also, galore folk believe any kind of weights activity wish mechanically
increase muscle size. The truth is that not all training produces size increases. There are a number of variables you can play with in strength training – the heaviness of the weight, the number of repetitions of the movement, and the time you allow yourself to rest between groups of repetitions (or sets). Really generally speaking, training with a heavy weight and low repetitions in each set wish increase strength; training with a medium-to-heavy weight and medium repetitions wish increase muscle size; and training with a lighter weight with high repetitions per set wish increase endurance.
In practice, it’s not actually quite this simple, and there are another factors to consider. The important point is that not all training wish increase muscle size, that several muscle is necessary if you want to tone, and that working with a competent trainer wish help ensure you get only the results that you want from your training.
In Part 2 of the article (http://optimumlife.co.nz/Fitness%20Articles/Muscle/Muscle2.htm), we look at why muscle is so important for weight management and long- term health.
Just just about the author:
Optimum Life's Tanja Gardner is a Personal Trainer and Stress Management Coach whose articles on holistic health and relaxation have appeared in various media since 1999. Optimum Life is dedicated to providing fitness and stress management services to help clients all over the earth accomplish their optimum lives.
To see more articles like this one, please subscribe to Optimum Fitness News at http://optimumlife.co.nz/Newsletter%20Signup.htm.To find out more just about how you could benefit from online personal training, please visit http://www.trainerforce.com/optimumlife/. To find out more just about holistic fitness and stress management please visit http://optimumlife.co.nz,or contact Tanja on tanja@optimumlife.co.nz.
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