But if you bench, include a row as well. You do not want your chest and upper back to get out of balance.
I was just thinking of the “big three” lifts, which are the Deadlift, squat, and bench press. I would if you are a beginning you’ll want to do those, plus others of course, like shoulder press, pull-ups (or lat pulldowns if you can’t do pullups), and others. Check out http://www.aswonline.com and http://www.stumptuous.com/program.html
Perhaps I should’ve been more specific, “Crunches, leg lifts, etc” will increase your abdominal muscle tone.
No, not really. There is no such thing as muscle tone in the way that people generally use it. There is two things; get bigger muscles, and lose weight. Toning is only doing both.
So will crunches, leg lifts, etc increase ab “tone”? No. It may seem that way if you are doing other exercises and your diet is adjusted so that bodyfat % is lost. Will it work your muscles? To some degree. Are they worthwhile compared to weighted exercises. Nope.
You know, I’m gonna have to keep disagreeing here. You seem to be saying that the only way to create muscle tone, and by tone I’m gonna take the definition that says tone=not flabby, is by doing <<weighted exercises>>. That is just not true. Pushups will both nicely develop and tone your chest, shoulders, and triceps. Pull ups will work great for your back, shoulders, and biceps. And sit-ups, crunches, and leg lifts will do the same for your abdominals. I give you boot camp as an illustrative example.
Will <<weighted exercises>> work too? Yes, of course. Will they work faster/more efficiently? With the right regimen, sure. But that does not negate the effectiveness of <<non-weighted exercises>>.
All of your non-weighted exercises use the body as a weight. Depending on how much you weigh, that can be quite a bit of resistance.
Depends on how much you want to “tone”. Do you need to lose 30lbs of fat to get “toned abs”. Have fun with your situps and pushups. Weighted exercises work much better because they cause greater hypertrophy and hyperplasia, which result in more calories burned. Weighted crunches develop thicker, stronger, and BIGGER abs. Bigger meaning they show up better, they use more calories, and they are stronger. (not necessarily stronger because they are bigger though)
Situps with bodyweight only work marginally. They break down into doing MORE situps, which does nothing for strength, only endurance, and do nothing for size as well. They burn calories and elevate the metabolism slightly for several hours after… That is it.
Can you develop a nice body with pushups, situps and pull ups alone? Not without diet. So do these exercises “tone” your muscles. No, the diet “tones” your muscles. All you get is endurance.
Here’s my original quote “And my own $.02, sit-ups, crunches, leg lifts, et al will increase your abdominal muscle tone, if however, your abdominal muscles are behind a thick layer of fat you will still have a gut. The only way I’ve found to show a nice six pack has been to go on a low fat diet. I’m at my optimum weight now, so it usually takes about a week of dieting to show some serious cuts. Someone who’s somewhat above their ideal weight will probably take longer.”
Note the part where I say “sit-ups, crunches, leg lifts, et al will increase your abdominal muscle tone, if however, your abdominal muscles are behind a thick layer of fat you will still have a gut”.
I think now were getting into a pointless argument about the definition of “muscle tone”. So I’ll leave the discussion.
to help clear this up…
one can only “tone” ( i hate that word) a muscle in the way bayonet is talking about if the muscle was dormant to begin with. then, and only then, will the muscle acquire a more firm “resting tension”… the muscle will be standing at attention more so, looking “toned”.
you cannot ask a seasoned bodybuilder to do situps to tone his abs… they are already toned. that’s why Epimetheus is saying this. the BB’er needs a load during his movements.
all there is is losing fat and gaining muscle. any different way one’s body looks is a combo of these two things and nothing more.
i hate that you can’t edit your post…
just to say that a dormant muscle becoming toned is simply your body realizing an abnormal load on that muscle and storing more water and glycogen in that area. (causing an increase in size and changing the slumping look into a firm look) this is why a trained muscle cannot get any more toned… this adaptation has already occurred.
This just simply is not true. Increased muscle tone is the recruitment of more of the existing muscle fibers in a contraction. Low weight, high reps will tone by merely fatiguing fiber clusters that are used most often and forcing the recruitment of those rarely used. Toning is the training of to use all of its’s fibers in a contraction.
Building muscle with heavy weights is microtearing the muscle and rebuilding it with more during rest.
Maybe you should tell that definition to all those fitness trainer, bodybuilders, kinseologists and exercise physiologists then. I can find you quote after quote of certified trainers, or trainers with a degree, saying “there is no such thing as toning”. Here are a few:
From:
http://www.aswonline.com/faq6.html
Probably otherwise known as the “pump”.
From:
http://www.dolfzine.com/page33.htm
From:
http://www.muscleandfitness.com/nutritionsupp/p/1886.jsp
From:
http://www.stumptuous.com/gymlies.html
Maybe they are all wrong. If you feel so, I am open to seeing some citations that prove me wrong. After all, I have no vested interest in the fact that there is no such thing as toning. Other than getting tired of explaining it to people because it is a common myth.
I see that part. That was the part I was calling you out on. Clapping my hands will help me lose weight, if as long as I watch my diet. See the logical fallacy there? Situps, crunches, and leg lifts do NOT increase muscle tone. Diet does. Walking around all day and stabalizing yourself utilizes more muscle fibers in your abdominals, and is used much more than situps.
Those people that do push ups, sit ups, and do high rep dumbell curls with 10 lbs trying to “tone” are fooling themselves, and I am preventing beginners from falling into a trap of wasting their time.
What can I say, we obviously have had different experiences in working out. In my world moderate-non-heavy-weight-lifting exercise has been quite effective in developing and maintaining what I have always called muscle tone. Diet never has.
Btw, here’s how you can tell that situps, crunches, and leg lifts will most definetly work on yor stomach muscles much more than walking around all day: walk around all day. Rest. For the next few days you will feel some muscle soreness, probably on your legs, butts, maybe your lower back.
Now, do a few sets of sit-ups, crunches, and leg lifts. Rest. For the next few days your stomach muscles will tell you what muscles you were exercising.
Perhaps I am coming off as saying they have no benifit. Re-reading my post I guess it does seem that way.
The average joe, with very little muscle, will benifit from these exercises. For awhile. When it comes down to 100 sit ups, they offer no benifits other than being able to do more sit ups. If twisting back and forth for 8 hours at my job worked my obliques I would have the best obliques in the freaking world. Doing situps untill you can do 20-30, then alternating them with weights, declined planes, and such will help in muscular growth. That is not the debate. What I am saying is this:
There is no such thing as muscle tone. What you are attributing this myth to is building up slight muscle mass from your bodywieght lifts, and losing fat from your low fat diet. (lets just hope it is not too low)
That is it, you cannot “tone” a muscle, you can get “tone” yes, but you cannot “tone” a muscle. Only have it grow.
Muscle tone is the level of contraction of existing muscle.
http://www.weightrainer.com/physiology/pgrowth.html
Toning is casued by sarcoplasmic hypertrophy while body building is caused by sarcomere hypertrophy.
From that cite:
*Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy
Increasing the volume of the tissue that supplies energy to the muscle or is involved with the neural drive: Intimately involved in the production of ATP are intracellular bodies called “mitochondria”. Muscle fibers will adapt to high volume (and higher rep) training sessions by increasing the number of mitochondria in the cells. They will also increase the concentrations of the enzymes involved in the oxidative phosphorylation and anaerobic glycolysis mechanisms of energy production and increase the volume of sarcoplasmic fluid inside the cell (including glycogen) and also the fluid between the actual cells. This type of hypertrophy produces very little in the way of added strength but has profound effects on increasing strength-endurance (the ability to do reps with a certain weight) because it dramatically increases the muscles’ ability to produce ATP. Adaptations of this sort are characteristic of Bodybuilders’ muscles.
It should also be obvious that as the volume of the tissue that supplies energy to the muscle represents only around 20% of the total muscle cell volume in untrained individuals, this isn’t where the real size potential lies.
Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy of muscle cells does directly produce moderate increases in size . But also, as you’ll know from the Neuromuscular System series, ATP is the source of energy for all muscular contraction - type II fibers included. Wouldn’t having more of this in the muscle, and having the ability to produce greater intramuscular quantities at any one time, be an asset? The answer is, cleary, “yes”. That’s where a major portion of the importance of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy comes into Bodybuilding. (We’ll deal with training to produce this type of adaptation in an article on the ‘Training Related Articles’ page.)
As for increasing the tissue that is involved with the neural drive, this would theoretically occur in response to the need for contracting cells with hypertrophied contractile machinery. Directly, it would produce very little in the way of added size.
In addition, there are other intracellular bodies who’s growth and/or proliferation would fall under the category of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. These would be organelles such as the “ribosomes”, which are involved in protein synthesis. As in the case of neural drive machinery, in most cases they would increase in size or number only to support sarcomere hypertrophy. They would have little direct impact on overall muscle size.
Sarcomere Hypertrophy
Increasing the volume of contractile machinery: The vast majority of the volume of each muscle cell (~80%) is made up of contractile machinery. Therefore, there lies the greatest potential for increasing muscle cell size. Trained muscle responds by increasing the number of actin/myosin filaments (sarcomeres) that it contains - this is what is responsible for increased strength and size. But before a muscle will grow like this it has to be “broken down”. Let’s take a look at both the “breaking down” and “building up” processes:
The Process Of Exercise-Induced Muscle Cell Damage
Actin/myosin filaments sustain “damage” during high-tension contractions. In addition, breaches in plasma membrane integrity allow calcium to leak into the muscle cells after training (there is much more calcium in the blood than in the muscle cells). This intracellular increase in calcium levels activates enzymes called “calpains” which “break off” pieces of the damaged contractile filaments (called “easily releasable myofilaments”). Following this, a protein called “ubiquitin” (which is present in all muscle cells) binds to the removed pieces of filaments thus “identifying” them for destructive purposes. At this time, neutrophils (a type of granular white blood cell that is highly destructive) are chemically attracted to the area and rapidly increase in number. They release toxins, including oxygen radicals, which increase membrane permeability and phagocytize (ingest and “destroy”) the tissue debris that the calcium-mediated pathways released. Neutrophils don’t remain around more than a day or two, but are complimented by the appearance of monocytes also attracted to the damaged area. Monocytes (a type of phagocytic cell) enter the damaged muscle and form into macrophages (another phagocytic cell) that also release toxins and phagocytize damaged tissue. Once the phagocytic stage commences, the damaged fibers are rapidly broken down by lysosomal proteases, free O2 radicals, and other substances produced by macrophages. As you can tell, the muscle is now in a weaker state than before it was trained. Incidently, macrophages have an essential role in initiating tissue repair. Unless damaged muscle is invaded by macrophages, activation of satellite cells and muscle repair does not occur.
err, that should read “Muscle tone is the level of contraction of RESTING muscle” not existing.
Well, seems I am somewhat wrong. I am going to read this article in greater depth when I get some sleep, but skimming it I see no mention at all that Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy is toning, It seems YOU are attaching that type of hypertrophy to the term ‘toning’. Well, off to bed, work was hell today. 
This is 100% correct. Couldn’t have said it better myself 
Yes I alone am attributing the term toning to sacroplasmic hypertrophy but I think it’s a reasonable one. Our disagreement is more of a reflection on how bad the term “building muscle” is than anything else. Like the article said this type of hypertrophy is typically the result of high reps. Whether you work out with high rep/low weight or low/rep high weight you are still reminding your body to recruit ALL the muscle fibers in a contraction which is, imo, what contributes to what people consider to be muscle tone. The difference is that the former is not producing more muscle fibers while the latter is. IMO, there is a reasonable difference in these types of hypertrophies to warrant the seperate terms of “toning” vs. “bulking up.”