For all its ingenious complexity and amazing potential, the human body is a lazy and stubborn thing. It will not do anything unless given a compelling reason to do so. Even then it will do the bare minimum it can get away with until you force it to adapt some more the next time you work it.
The only way to make progress is to tax the body beyond its capabilities in a safe and controlled manner on a consistent basis. This means you will need to invest genuine effort into your training. When it comes to lifting weights this means that you must constantly challenge yourself with weights that are relatively heavy for you and push yourself until you cannot lift any more. Your body must respect the amount of work that you present it otherwise it will not grow bigger and stronger.(So how do you know if you're lifting decent weights? Check this out: http://www.ultimatebodysuccess.com/e-course9.html)
I often hear the people say that they just want to ‘tone up a bit.’ The problem is that the ‘toned bodies’ that they often aspire to, are built on intense training regimes, serious nutrition and mental discipline? They have been led to believe that if they take the path of a ‘serious’ trainer they will develop into a huge, overblown hulk, completely lacking in aesthetics. They have no idea just how much effort it takes to actually grow lean muscle mass and thus have an unfounded fear that somehow they’ll become too muscular, when nothing could be further from the truth. Many guys would like the body of certain professional athletes. Do you think these highly paid professionals get the impressive bodies they do by training to ‘tone up a little’?
(Do you know how important the Big 3 weight training exercises are to stacking on muscle mass? Check this out: http://www.ultimatebodysuccess.com/e-course8.html)
Training with lighter weights that are comfortable so that the muscle will only ‘tighten up and grow a bit’ is completely wrong. Light stimulus has no adaptive effect on the body; your body won’t improve if it can handle what you throw at it. If the ‘not training too hard just to tone’ up theory was valid, all the walking we do in our daily lives would keep our legs growing until they were the size of (literal not metaphorical) tree trunks. The body just doesn’t work that way.
Another reason people say that they ‘just’ want to tone up a little is because they do not believe that they can achieve an outstanding level of development. The reality is that, the ‘toned look’ they are after is a function of a low level of body fat that requires a certain degree of effort and application to achieve. If the person is lacking the confidence or the commitment to put forth a high level of effort that their body will respond to and is only willing to stay within their comfort zone and self imposed limitations then they are doomed to fail.
The mental consequences of the whole tone up mentality are probably worse than the fact that it makes no physiological sense. Achieving a lean muscular physique, is based on a belief that it is within your capability to do so. No one will attempt what they genuinely believe and perceive to be beyond them or impossible.
Limiting your thinking with the ‘just tone up a bit mentality’ is one of the worst mistakes you can make.
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