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Tone Up and Change Your Body Shape!

Many people today consider weight loss to be the single biggest factor in achieving the body they want, and it certainly gets a lot of press attention. But adding some shape, tone, and definition to your muscles can be just as important when it comes to how you look and feel.

There’s also a misconception that you have to be fat free to benefit from good muscle tone. If you happen to be carrying a bit of extra baggage, working the muscle underneath will give the layer on top a new shape.

If you’re not carrying too much or are downright skinny, good muscle tone and body shape can make your clothes fit and look just the way you want them to – and that applies to both men and women.

One thing’s clear, toning up is going to add to your sense of confidence when you’re out and about and when you’re in front of the mirror.

Great body shape is made in your mind!

At 3D Personal Training we think that one of the best ways to stay committed to your goals and succeed in reaching them is to realize how important they are to you.

It’s a great idea to take some quiet time and really think about how changing your body shape might positively affect the way you think and feel about yourself. Focus on visualizing how you want to look, what clothes you want to wear, and how attractive you’ll feel. By committing to your goals in this way, you’re much more likely to get where you’re going and take less time to get there.

So what’s the key to eating right for body tone and shape?

The number one rule for eating right when shaping up and aiming for body tone is to avoid high Glycemic Index (GI) carbohydrates. Why? When you eat carbohydrates with a high GI, it raises your blood glucose level quickly. Because high levels of blood glucose are dangerous, your body instantly recognises there's a problem and releases a powerful hormone - insulin. Insulin's job is to remove excess glucose (sugar) from your blood and ensure levels return to normal. The rapid removal of excess glucose from your bloodstream has two effects:

1. The glucose needs to be taken away and stored somewhere, it doesn't just disappear. It ends up in your muscles and liver, and, once they're full, it's converted into fat and dumped in the places you don't want it to be dumped. High GI carbs trigger insulin release and fire a red alert to your fat cells to get ready to store excess glucose as fat. And that won't help your body tone or shape.

2. Eating a high GI carb causes our blood glucose level to spike dramatically. Insulin then kicks in, stores away the excess and causes that glucose level to crash from its previous high. This sudden drop leaves us craving more high GI food for a further glucose hit. This is not good. If you feel hungry after eating a carbohydrate based breakfast cereal (probably adding a few spoons of nice refined white glucose known as sugar), or find that one biscuit is never enough, your blood-glucose level is yo-yoing.

The answer is to choose more vegetables that grow above ground - filling half your plate with these at lunch and dinner is a great start.

Right. And what about proteins and fats?

You need to be getting adequate amounts of high quality protein in order to get good body tone.

Protein is essential for growing muscles and for recovery from challenging workouts. Always choose the highest quality sources (organic, grass fed) if you can. Whey protein gets a bad press mainly because of the associations it has with muscle bound body builders, but the fact remains it can be a great addition to your diet if it's of high quality. Adding it as a snack as part of a balanced diet (remember our 'eat small amounts of food often' philosophy) will keep your insulin balanced, and for our vegetarian friends it adds essential protein to your diet. Our favourite is Goatein - goats milk is more digestible and Goatein is pesticide, herbicide, hormone and antibiotic free.

So that's protein, but to tone up you'll also need some high quality fats and oils. Fats and oils? They're my enemy I hear you cry! Not so. Fats and oils are essential building blocks for your body, providing a variety of useful hormones. The right types of fats and oils can certainly help shift unwanted fat and help your muscles to tone up, giving you the body shape you want.

The two right types of fats and oils we'll highlight today are fish oil and flax seed oil. These are high in omega 3 (which most people lack today) and are known for their ability to balance insulin levels and reduce inflammation, both of which contribute to fat storage (among other health issues).

Moving right for body tone

As we’re fond of saying here at 3D Personal Training, the first rule is to move your body every day. It doesn't matter how, when or where. The second is to move it right.

For body tone that means Hybrid Training, Circuits or Super Sets.

Hybrid training essentially combines a number of separate exercises into one movement - for instance starting with a squat with dumbbells moving into a dumbbell bicep curl to a shoulder press, all in one fluid movement. Hybrid training offers several advantages, such as a greater number of muscles used in a shorter space of time, greater range of joint movement, prevention of muscular imbalance and prevention of injury due to single muscle group overload, and it's extremely time efficient. Strength, speed and suppleness are combined in a single training session, and this way of working out keeps you mentally fresh.

Just make sure you choose a weight which will not impose excessive strain on the muscles involved in the weakest area of the movement.

Hybrid training can be performed in various ways:

Alternating repetitions: Alternate between two separate exercises every repetition, for instance for one repetition perform a narrow grip bench press (or push up) which emphasises use of your triceps, followed by a rep performing a wide grip bench press, which mainly uses the chest muscles.

Hybrid sets: Exhaust one body part then move on to another without rest, for instance performing 5 reps of squats with dumbbells followed (without rest) by 10 reps of overhead shoulder presses. Put together a number of combinations like this and perform them together for a great toning workout.

Hybrid repetitions: Here one movement flows into the next, for instance a squat with dumbbells into a bicep curl into a shoulder press would be one repetition. Another example would be a lunge with dumbbells into a shoulder press. Again, put any number of these together to form your workout - the combinations of separate exercises you use to form your hybrid rep is only restricted by your imagination!

Circuits elevate your heart rate while working your muscles by stringing exercises together to make a circuit. Perform one set of any number of repetitions of a single exercise (you decide the right level for you) before moving onto the next set of a different exercise, then the next.

Take a 0 to 30 second rest between sets, and a 3-5 minute rest between circuits. Try doing 2 full circuits of say 6-8 exercises, with one set per exercise. If that's too easy, complete 3-5 circuits with no rest between sets, and a 2-4 minute rest between circuits.

That’s a lot of info in two paragraphs. Take a few minutes with a pen and paper to break it down in a way that makes sense to you - it’s well worth it.

Super Setting: Involves putting together two exercises back to back with no rest between them. It's a common strategy among body builders but is also highly regarded by athletic trainers. You could super set two ways, the first is to use different, or opposite muscle groups back to back, such as a bench press and a bent over row, or a bench press followed by a chin up.

The second way is to use two exercises which work the same muscle group, such as a bench press followed by a push up. Both will get you toned up in no time.

None of these methods of training are about getting big muscles like Arnie. They'll give you some muscle tone and body shape very quickly and effectively though.

But don't forget the cardio...

H.I.I.T - High Intensity Interval Training

At 3D Personal Training we firmly believe that interval training, with its relationship to fast fat loss and the benefits it shows over low intensity, long duration cardio is the way to go. H.I.I.T is a 10-20 minute cardio blast and works very well at the end of a toning workout. Here's a sample program:

First choose your exercise. Running, skipping, cross trainer, boxing, and the rowing machine all work well - the key is that you should be able to reach your max heart quickly and that you can slow down quickly to slow your heart rate.

If you're not adding this to the end of a workout, warm up for 3-5 minutes first, so that you warm your body and feel a light sweat.

Then increase the intensity to 75% of your maximum heart rate* (getting a heart rate monitor will help you know where your 75% level is) and stay at this pace for 30 seconds. Then:

• Bring the intensity down to 30-40% for 2 minutes
• Increase to 100% (flat out) for 30 seconds
• Bring the intensity down to 30-40% for 2 minutes
• Increase to 100% (flat out) for 30 seconds

Repeat 4-8 times, depending on fitness. Then cool down for 5 minutes at 30-40% or until your heart rate drops below 110 beats per minute.

* Finding your maximum heart rate is best done by working with a professional who will take you through a max heart rate test. A more generalised method is by taking 214 minus (0.8 x age in years) for men, and 209 minus (0.9 x age in years) for women.

Yours in health,

Craig Burton and Matt Brereton-Patel.