Setting the Tone - Why I am Pissed Off and Why You Should be.

Setting the Tone

My industry is full of marketing, nonsense, broscience and plain old bullshit. I have had enough and have decided to do something about it. I have teamed up with Average PT, well he follows my around all the time, to take on this crap.

In today's battle of wits between Pissed Of PT (POPT) and Average PT we cover the travesty of the completely made up process of toning.

At this very second in a gym near you a potential new client is having a consultation with a Personal Trainer (PT). The vast majority of these consultations seem to start with a very similar scenario.

PT: So what is your main goal in the gym?

Client: I just wont to tone up a bit.

Sounds like my kind of client, hand her over POPT.

You will get your chance Average PT but any half decent PT should be invisibly rolling their eyes at this one, I bet your eyes are visually still and have the pound sign flashing in them.

What the PT should say is something like this:

While lacking a one true/consistent definition the term Muscle Tone generally refers to the natural tension in the muscle, even at rest, that helps maintain posture. I can clearly see you are not all floppy so you are already toned.

What a load of nonsense, everyone knows toning is all about how shapely the muscles are, especially on the beach.

Wrong Average PT, I think you have been reading the tabloids too much. It is not up to the Daily Mail or The Sun to decide who or what 'toned' is. Sadly, most gyms, PTs and Group Exercise Instructors will sell the fucking sole to the devil and use the Daily Mail definition, not anything measurable or objective. Go to Google and type in any of the big gym names followed by 'toning' and you will be sure to find they offer some sort of toning class.

Anyone would think that gyms base their classes on media articles rather than facts and science.

Don't tell me, this pisses you off?

Of course it pisses me off, toning in the Daily Mail sense DOES NOT EXSIST! You muscles are either under layers of fat, or they are not. Your muscles are either shapely (very subjective) or they are not (equally subjective). How shapely your muscles are depends on their size, you can not change a muscle shape without changing its shape, and your genetics.

Just look at this picture from 2014 Commonwealth Games 800m heats.

All these women are fit, have muscle and low body fat but they are all different shapes and sizes. This is despite the fact that they will all train in similar ways, they will all do a mixture of weight training and cardiovascular training yet the actual affects on their body shape differs. This is real life, you can only enhance what you have got, you can not suddenly look like your favourite Instagram fitness model or whoever The Sun decides looks toned this week.

Read my profile in the gym Mr Pissed Off, I am an expert in toning so if my client wants to look like Millie Mackintosh I can make that happen.

Who the hell is Millie Mackintosh? Don't tell me you have been on the Daily Mail website again?

Yes

In that case I don't care. The shape of your muscle depends on 2 main factors. Genetics and size. Some people just have amazing muscle shape naturally, they did not do anything special to achieve this shape. Some people have low body fat naturally, they did not have to follow any specific diet or nutritional approach to achieve this. Some really, really lucky people naturally have muscle shape AND low body fat. Other, still lucky people, only have to follow half decent training and nutritional programs in order to have a chance of being considered 'Toned' by The Daily Star. For many people, even if following excellent training programs and diet, they will never have the 'toned' body they want because their particular muscle shape does match the muscle shape that they consider desirable.

So what you are saying is, for example, my client Anna looks great because of luck not because of the way I train her?

Anna? The 21 year old who had 11% body fat and only used to do spin class before you started training her?

Yes.

Anna who now follows a straight forward resistance training regime 3 times a week and has done so for 10 months?

That's the one.

Yes, she has excellent genetics and does the basics well and would look that good following any plan found on bodybuilding.com

I hate you.

Good, now go and practice your posing and swig some over priced and ineffective supplement.

So here is the summary.

• Toning in the popular sense does not exist.
• If you want to change the shape of your muscle you need to make them bigger by lifting weights.
• If you want to see those muscles you need to ensure you have low enough body fat through dietary intervention.
• There are NO toning exercises, none, nada.
• Choose your parents wisely in order to get good genetics.