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I don't believe in damaging a muscle when you are going for tone. If you want to build muscle mass (which I don't), then you want to do enough volume of lifts to induce a bit of damage. After this, you need to allow the muscles enough time to recover to rebuild themselves a bit bigger than they were before. If you are going for tone...you want to do less sets and volume so you don't damage the muscles. Since you are not damaging the muscles, you can work those same muscles out more often. How Many Sets Do You Need to Do For Muscle Tone? Contrary to popular belief, you want to keep the volume low when you are shooting for muscle tone. If the volume gets to high, you will damage the muscle and will be unable to work it frequently. I would recommend 2 exercises per body part and just 3-4 sets. So How Many Reps Per Set? Believe it or not, strength training can bring out amazing muscle definition. You can get pretty toned with medium to high reps in each set, but you won't reach your full potential until you include sets in the lower rep range. It is good to vary your rep schemes. Do 4 sets of 3 reps for a period of time, then switch to 3 sets of 8 reps, etc. Just make sure you include strength training in the lower rep range every now and then. It is Important to Work the Muscles Often When Going for Tone! This is one of the big keys to muscle tone, that I never hear personal trainers talk about. Muscle tone is basically the partial contraction of a muscle in a relaxed state, so your muscles are contacting a bit on their own even when you are completely relaxed. The way to increase this is to contract you muscles hard (workout) on a frequent basis. There are two reasons you want to avoid damaging your muscles. The first is that if you are sore, you will over-train if you work that muscle again too soon. The second is that you will be unable to get a hard contraction on a damaged muscle. Do NOT Train to Failure or Use Forced Reps When Going for Muscle Tone Going to failure and using forced reps is great for muscle mass, but bad for muscle tone. These two lifting techniques insure that muscle damage will occur! Another problem with going to failure is that "you are training your muscle to fail". Your body will react by not contracting the muscle as hard during the next set. Here is Common Mass Building Split Routine The "3 day split" is a common routine for muscle mass because it works well. A 3 day split simply means that all the muscles in your body are worked in 3 different workouts. So what a lot of people do is work chest, shoulders, and triceps on one day...back and biceps on another day...and legs and abs on the third day. The great thing here is that since you are working only a few body parts in each workout, you can focus on blitzing each muscle group. You can really do a high volume of lifts for each muscle group which is the key to mass. The 2 Day Split Muscle Tone Workout Routine Since you want to work each muscle group more often when going for tone, you should try to split you workout over two days instead of three. The great thing here is that you don't need much recovery time when you don't damage the muscles. Note: So you should have a good idea on how to setup a great workout routine. Remember, if you are going for tone, keep the volume of lifting low and work each muscle frequently. Since your time in the weight room should be brief, spend the extra time hitting cardio hard to burn off all that excess body fat to reveal your toned muscles.
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