Probably the biggest training fallacy that get’s under my skin the most is that to tone up, you should lift lighter weights and do more reps. This misconception, just like many others in the fitness industry have now become the gospel truth.

I would often hear people say “Oh I don’t want to do heavy weights I just want to tone up. In this article, I’m going to show you why I believe this is completely wrong.

I am not going to force you my beliefs down your throat. I am just going to give you my honest opinion and I’ll let you make up your own mind. Cool?

My belief is that the fastest way to get toned is to lift heavy weights. Here’s why.

There is no such thing as a toned muscle or an un-toned muscle. A muscle is always toned and can never be un-toned. Sometimes they may look un-toned simply due to a layer of fat on top of them or not having enough muscle to give your body shape.

To achieve the toned look you simply have to have muscle and low body fat levels. This is why lifting heavy weights is much more effective. For one, they help you build muscle, and two; it speeds up your metabolism, making fat loss much easier.

Another great benefit of lifting heavy weights, especially the big lifts like squats, deadlifts, dips and chin ups, is that they stimulate two powerful hormones, testosterone and growth hormone. This makes losing fat and building muscle happen much quicker and easier.

Performing high reps with light weight achieve none of this. It doesn’t build muscle, which means it doesn’t increase our metabolism and is far from being the most efficient way to burn fat. It also fails to stimulate testosterone and growth hormone.

The only thing training with light weights does, is build up a lot of lactic acid which gives you that burning sensation. This gives you the false hope that what you are doing is actually toning up your muscles. This burning sensation does nothing to tone up your muscles. It doesn’t help you build muscle, nor does it help you lose much fat.  

Many people choose to believe that the high rep stuff works simply because they don’t want to do heavy weights. That is understandable. But by when I say heavy weights, I mean lifting enough weight which will cause you to reach complete muscle failure in 6-12 reps.

This means you don’t have to do weights at all, if you don’t want to. There are many bodyweight exercises which are extremely tough to complete more than 6-12 reps. You could do stuff like parallel bar dips, chin ups and pistols (one leg squats.)

Basically to tone up, you want to push your muscles to the level of complete exhaustion in the 6-12 rep range. This rep range is perfect for building strength and muscle. Once you get over 15-20 reps you are now training more for endurance. This does little to build muscle or lose fat.