In the Weight Room: Toning vs. Bulking

With the lazy days of winter break behind us, many of you are probably looking to get back into shape. Whether this means toning up a little or gaining five pounds of muscle, lifting weights a couple times a week can be extremely beneficial. 

Toning

Too often, women looking to tone lift weights that are too light, or spend hours in the cardio room while avoiding the weight room entirely. Cardio is important, because it helps aid overall fitness, and can help lower your body fat content, creating more muscle definition. However, if you don’t have a lot of muscle, all the cardio in the world is not going to make you more toned, except for your legs. In conjunction with cardio and a healthy diet, lifting weights three times a week can help firm your other muscles without dramatically increasing size.
 
The old adage about higher reps at a lower weight will do little other than lengthen your workout. For all exercises, pick a weight that will allow you to do 10 reps with proper form. Do one rep of one exercise and then do another exercise with a different body part—this will cut down on time and keep your heart rate higher, leading to a greater calorie burn.
 

For cardio, shoot for a half hour four times a week at a moderate to high intensity, and incorporate intervals twice a week. A good interval workout is a five-minute warm-up followed by 20 minutes of 30-second sprints followed by 30-second recoveries at a slow pace. Do whatever form of cardio you like best. If you think routine is boring, mix running, cycling, rowing and the elliptical.
 
In addition to cardio, a healthy diet will help you get toned. Try to cut down on refined carbs and salt, which usually contributes to water weight. Focus meals on lots of protein, vegetables, whole grains and a moderate amount of healthy fats (olive oil, avocado, nuts, hummus). If you want to lose weight, you definitely need to eat less, but make sure to keep protein intake high to keep your muscles.
 

Bulking
 
Just as cardio alone won’t help you get toned, lifting is not enough to gain muscle mass. For that, you need to eat a lot more than you already are. It’s impossible to gain pure muscle, but a healthy diet combined with a moderate amount of cardio along with regular weight training ensure that you are gaining more muscle then fat. Bodybuilders often divide their muscle building into two phases. In the bulking phase, they lift and eat like crazy in order to gain mass quickly. Then, once they reach a bigger size, they re-introduce cardio and cut calories while keeping protein intake high, to ensure that they keep their hard-earned muscle mass while losing the fat that came with it. However, this very time and thought consuming, and you probably just want to put on some lean mass now.
 
To do so, focus your diet on fruits, veggies, higher amounts of healthy fats than you would for toning, whole grains, and lots and lots of protein and then some more protein. If you are mathematically minded, you can try to get at least one gram of protein for every pound you would like to weigh (e.g. if you weigh 140 pounds and want to gain 10 pounds of muscle, eat at least 150 grams of protein a day). If you’re having trouble meeting this goal, or just aren’t seeing the gains you want, you can drink protein shakes after your workout, but you don’t have to. If you just approach every meal and snack with protein in mind, you should be fine. Try to eat two or three more servings of meat than you are now, and have a couple servings of peanut butter or a couple glasses of milk before bed.
 

When lifting, focus on heavier weights. Choose a weight you can complete five reps with proper form, and aim to increase this weight slowly over time. Every couple weeks, try a heavier weight. Once a week, use weights with which you can comfortably complete three reps of 10, and on your last set, do the maximum number of reps you possibly can. For bulking, the classic three power lifting exercises—bench press, squat, and deadlift—will help build key muscles. However, there are a number of other exercises you can do to help strengthen certain muscles. Check back for a useful list of exercises!