Beginners Guide to Better Muscle Tone

By Phil Sims

Here’s a few tips to help you achieve better muscle tone. There are no hard and fast rules to these tips or an order to which you should proceed, just have fun doing them and remember they will help you.

Warm Up: Always remember to warm up before you start your training program. 10 minutes is all you need to prepare your muscles for a workout. Running, fast paced walk, exercise bike and rowing machines are ideal. Warming up your muscles is essential in the prevention of injury, so don’t forget to do it.

Variety: Try to vary your training days, alternate from cardio and muscle training at different days of the week.

Diary: Maintaining a training diary during your training sessions helps you to understand and evaluate your fitness levels. Knowing what you jogged, cycled or lifted the previous week is an excellent way to monitor your progress. Also keeping a weight loss/gain plan in your diary is a good idea.

Routine: Make up a routine for your muscles. Working with different sets of muscles one day will allow for the other muscles to relax.

Goals: Set your goals for what you want to achieve in a certain time frame. Setting goals gives you an aim, a target to strive for. Try not to set the impossible, just enough to make you work hard. Monitor your progress in your diary. There is no better feeling than seeing a good end result.

Staying Focused: When you enter the gym remember what you entered for? Focus yourself on the training regime of the day. Remember it’s not a military exercise, but some amount of focus and dedication is needed.

Breathe Right: Breathing correctly when training does take some practice, try to monitor your breathing technique. Remember to breathe out when lifting, and in when returning to the beginning position. Also remember to breathe when cardiovascular exercising, holding your breath along with erratic breathing patterns will result in poor performance.

Warm Down/Cool down: After a period of workout, give your body a chance to cool down. Try a short cardio cool down session of stretches, light jogging or walking. This will help with training pains and muscle ache.

Over Training: A good rule to stick by when training, is don’t over do it! Pushing yourself to the limit only results in injury. Know what your body is capable of, pushing yourself too hard will result in more time spent in pain the in training.

Posture: Try to keep your posture straight, sitting or standing. Try stay straight when ever you can.

With a combination of all these tips along with regular healthy eating, the body you desire will soon be upon you. Always remember to focus and stick at your routine. In the end all the effort and training will be worth it.

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