In 2010 and 2011, I worked as a personal trainer at a commercial gym in the CBD. My gym didn't do the best job at promoting the fact that we had personal trainers and sold personal training, or at least this is what I gather from the fact that the receptionists kept telling me about all the members who would come up to them and ask if we did personal training (as an aside, I would have enjoyed these stories a lot more if they all ended with the receptionist telling the member: "Yes, and Ryan's your man"). It turns out we had a great big pile of brochures in the gym to promote PT, but instead of being somewhere in which members might actually see these brochures, the brochures were stashed away in the membership consultants' office. Whoops.
I read the brochures one day. I can't remember exactly what they said, but they made a big deal about how with personal training you can get the toned look you're after without getting bulky...or words to that effect. It always struck me as interesting that instead of assuming that personal training is, you know, personalised, and as such people might actually want different things, it's all about getting toned and not bulky. Then again, I can't say it was all that surprising (albeit I did find it rather offensive to my profession), either, as one of the most common goals stated by members in that environment does seem to be about toning.
Hey look, I found a relevant picture that barely constitutes softcore porn.
What a feat.
This is all well and good, I guess. If they want to market towards people whose goal is to become "toned but not bulky" (or if they don't, seeing as the brochures where nowhere that the normal members would have ever ventured), that's fine. But a lot of fitness professionals will jump right on this, over one issue that we've been trained to make a big deal over: the use of the word "toned."
The fitness expert will see this brochure and roll his/her eyes, because they know better than to think that you can tone your muscles. And when they have clients ask them what they need to do to get toned, they'll explain to their clients that toning is a myth. And it is a myth, isn't it?
....Isn't it?
Okay, so here's what we're all taught while we're studying to become personal trainers, or from other experts in the field. There is such a thing as muscle tone, but it's the amount of contraction going on in the muscle at rest. The visual result that everyone calls "tone" is unrelated to this, and is actually the effect of having visible muscle, usually caused by building some muscle and losing some fat.
That seems to settle it. And from 2008 (maybe even earlier) up until very recently, I would have parrotted the same sentiment as a fitness mythbuster. But now that I think about it, I can't reasonably say this is right. To explain why, I'm going to defer to a story from even further back in my past.
Back when I was a teenager, I wanted to have toned muscles. As quickly as I became aware of the word "tone" being used in relation to muscles, I also became aware of the physiological concept that you can't "tone" your muscles, you can only make them bigger, smaller, stronger, weaker, etc. And as I was informed of this, I wanted to raise a huge objection. This objection wasn't about me doubting the source of the information, or the information itself. See, I was okay with the concept of building muscles and altering fat around them to create a certain aesthetic. But that's not properly grasping the purpose in which the word "tone" is being used here.
"Tone" is a word with way too many meanings, but a whole lot of those meanings are experiencial. To be "toned" is something you can touch and feel as well as see. It's texture and shade and shape. When people say they want "tone," they're saying that they want their bodies to look and feel a certain way...and this is a correct usage of the word tone. The problem in the language here is that they're talking about their muscles on an experiencial level, and when we say "you can't tone your muscles," we're talking on a biological level. We're using the same words but speaking a seperate language. We're correcting something which, frankly, I'm not sure warrants correcting.
In saying that, we trainers should certainly be informing people on what they need to do to create that experiencially toned physique. They need muscle mass and an appropriate amount of body fat, and they need to apply sound (or sound enough) training and nutritional principles to make that happen. If they believe things such as "low reps bulk and high reps tone," then the issue isn't that tone is the wrong word, the issue is that they don't know how to get there, and perhaps don't understand what factors contribute to being toned.
Likewise, we don't normally consider it wrong to describe a physique as "lean," or "cut," or "bulky," or "pudgey," or "soft," or "shredded," or any of the other descriptions we might use, so I don't see the rationale behind blacklisting the word "toned" in this sense. It seems to me that we're arguing for the sake of arguing.
And besides, let's suppose that "toned" is the wrong word to use. If we say that it's a myth that you can tone your muscles, clients will be quite reasonable to assume that we're telling them that their goals are unachievable. After all, we did just tell them: "Hey, you know that thing you want to do? Yeah, being able to do that is a myth." If we then go ahead and tell them that they actually have to build muscle mass and lose fat, and then they'll have the exact results they said they wanted to have, then we've now effectively told them: "Hey, you know how a minute ago I said that doing that thing you want to do is a myth? Well, here's how to do it. But we can't call it that thing you called it before." Does that sound sensible? It doesn't to me.
I have told many, there are two main types of body mass, muscle and fat, you must have one or the other. I remember was seeing a woman accompanying one of the regular women trainers as far as reception declaring she would never do weights because she wouldn't want big arms, while hers were at least 15 inch of sheer flab.
ReplyDeleteThe fun comes in when considering different types of muscle, red, white and pink (how pretty) which develop in different ways. Red becomes wiry when training is low load, high duration, fast recovery. White becomes larger under high load, low duration, slow recovery, pink, will become one or the other dependant on your training. Number of each is genetic, you can't change it.
Fat is white or brown, with different texture and volume to weight. So simple two types of body mass becomes more complex.
Everyone has their own idea of what is attractive. Protruding bones is lean elegant beauty for some, while bulging mass is the image of perfection for others, both could be vomit worthy for someone else.
Ideals change over time too. With more men using Jus de Testes the perceived perfect male increased in size, Sean Connery was Mr Universe, now he’d be underweight and flabby compared to a magazine model.
Women have gone under the knife meaning many with low body fat and a twin pack of silicone sealant to add shape.
Add Photoshop for pictures of people that are, in some cases, anatomically impossible and we have serious issues in both genders.
Most I met asking for tone, wanted moderation in effort and appearance to for close to TV ideal whilst accepting they live in reality. The majority want the middle ground, curved at the major joints, shoulders, hips etc. with a balance of fat and muscle that makes them look and feel attractive in their own eyes, very personal, Miss Softcore is a prime example.
All looks good and sensible, where's the catch? Many think moderate effort means going to the gym once a week for a PT session to compensate for spending the rest of the time being sat in front of the TV with beer and crisps. This is where the search for toned body goes horribly wrong.
There's something to be said about someone who won't lift weights because they don't want to get big, when they've already got 15inch fatceps and, for their claimed goals, should be eating in such a way that they won't get bigger no matter what kind of exercise they do. Part of me wants to laugh, another part of me just feels sorry for people who think that way.
DeleteI remember being told that brown fat in humans is mostly only found in babies (no idea how reliable that information is; have never bothered to look further into it) and that animals use brown fat for hibernation. That's the sum total of my knowledge on that topic.
"Everyone has their own idea of what is attractive." This is a very important thing to recognise when dealing with any of these aesthetic issues. When I was 12 I thought Arnold Schwarzzenegger was the physical ideal. When I was 15, I was far more drawn to the likes of Cloud Strife. As I've progressed through different levels of strength and size, my sense of "ideal" has shifted as well, and now I've gotten to the point where I no longer see the point in identifying an ideal physique to have -- so long as my body's in proportion and at a reasonable bodyfat level, I'll tend to be happy with my physique.
A lot of boys that are into bodybuilding these days think that for a man to weigh under 100kg is unforgivable, and they want to look like Ronnie Coleman. Some girls ar very attracted to that look, but most girls outside of the bodybuilding circle seem to find that look disgusting. Same way I find a bit of muscle on a woman attractive, but the point at which it becomes too much for my taste is far more conservative than some guys I know, and far more liberal than others. I remember one night a couple years ago my then-girlfriend was telling me how insecure she felt about her legs, because women's magazines imply that her legs need to be skinnier to be attractive. I couldn't have agreed less, and told her exactly that. If I recall correctly, she was most surprised.
It takes a lot to be happy with yourself, something to be very proud of. I consider myself fortunate to only have to care what one person thinks of my body.
DeleteThe difference between what men and women think are attractive on their own or the opposing gender are often hilarious.
Women tend to want to be skinnier all of the time, seeking a figure more natural on a 12 year old girl than fully grown woman. Men generally like curves usually figure 8, most struggle to keep eye contact when looking down at a woman's face when they have these curves. Some men will like the twiggy legs that appear on catwalks, but most like one who can't hide behind a lamppost.
Men going for aesthetics may be thinking He-Man, while women often desire a more athletic look.
The similarity between both is that most desire fit appearance more than fitness. Being able to lift a bus or run a marathon is less appealing to most than looking perfect even if they can’t lift a bag of sugar or run for the bus, hence the increase in cosmetic surgery.