Body Toning Workouts – What Are They? And Do They Really Work?

We hear a lot about body toning or body contouring and how particular toning workouts will give you that dream body.

The term body toning gives us the impression that you can somehow use exercise to mold your body into a desired shape, that perhaps there are moves that will give that hourglass figure to the girls with a perfect V for the guys.

Well it is important to understand what body toning means: it is a way to tone certain muscles of the body so that they firm up and look good. This is not a way to actually lose weight from targeted areas of the body. Anyone with any fitness knowledge probably knows that spot reduction of fat is just not possible.

The only way to remove fat from one particular area of the body (and not others) is a surgical procedure.

So no matter what the ‘Body Sculpting Experts’ tell you, but body toning workouts will do is, they will help to tone certain muscles and offer an attractive look of firmness, which may perhaps offer overall weight loss.

The main components of body toning workouts are:

Resistance: Whichever way is employed to build resistance in a work out; free weights, bands, exercise machines, stability balls or the weight of one’s own body, resistance exercises are perhaps the most effective method of tightening and toning muscles and therefore of sculpting the body.

Increasing strengths of muscles and endurance, this improves not only the physical appearance but also the health of the person. You can use weights and other resistance training methods to tone the butt, the legs, arms, or areas of the chest (even women will find that the appearance of sagging breasts can improve with the exercises that target the chest), or any other specific area of the body.

Stretches: stretches are an excellent way to tone specific muscle groups and improve their appearance. Stretching[stretching exercises] has the added benefit of helping to warm up and cool down before or after a workout, and also improving flexibility and muscular strength.

Dancing: Toning workouts are often based on dance moves and dance principles. And it’s not just the lower body that gets targeted through dance; even the upper body gets a good workout with the right kind of dance steps.

And best of all, dance does not feel like a workout. Though it is one, and can be very strenuous, it is perhaps the most fun component of body toning workouts.