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The Nuts and Bolts of Arm Toning Tips for Women

Some of the best tips women should use to tone their arms -

Arm toning is still the number one reason women come to Real Women’s Fitness. Everyday hundreds of women use Google to search for articles and information on how to tone their arms and wind up here. For this reason I continue to provide high quality tips and information on how to best tone your arms.

Here are some of the most important tips you can utilize to tone up your arms. I called it the nuts and bolts because they are basic and straight to the point.

1. To tone your arms, forget your arms!

One of the first tips I give to my female clients who are obsessed with toning their arms is that they need to forget about toning them for a while and focus on what really matters.

This may seem a little odd at first so let me clarify. To tone your arms you need to lose weight. You need to burn the fat off of your arms so that the muscles show through and have the appearance of being tight. To do this you need to have a good healthy diet and a strong cardio exercise routine. So, if you are compromising these things with thoughts of just doing weights to tone your arms then you need to forget about that for a while and focus on cardio and diet.

2. To tone your arms workout like you are on fire!

When I am going for a run with a girlfriend or training one of my clients I always tell them “okay, now you are on fire!” when it is time to kick into over-drive. It is a great image to have in your mind if you want to run faster or work harder.

Of course, I don’t mean literally on fire. If you actually burst into flames I do not recommend you run around and do pushups and situps, etc. That would probably make things worse! I am talking about the metaphor that the sports world uses when someone is playing really well. They are on fire! If you learn to automatically switch on that “fire” then you will be able to train harder more often.

Intense workouts are the best way to burn fat. You need to get your heart rate up and your muscles pumping if you want to have a lean body and to do that you need to continually push yourself to higher and higher boundaries. Forget the walk around the block, start sprinting, skipping, boxing, etc.

3. Weight train heavy

Women seem to have such fears about picking up a heavy weight. It is so humourous to me. They think that as soon as they start using heavy weights they are going to grow a massive set of pecs and huge biceps. Its so silly! I have even had women write me emails ABUSING me for saying that heavy weights are good for women! I nearly fell off my chair. What are they on about and what information have they been reading?

All those men who have big muscles worked damn hard for them. They ate copious amounts of protein and worked out 4-6 times per week for years to get that big. And some women think that they are going to get the same results by doing one or two workouts? I don’t think so! Women simply do not have the genetics to get big and bulky. And, on the odd occasion that a woman does want to get big, she has to work a lot harder than the men do.

If you want to tone your arms you need to workout with weights and they need to be heavy. You need to keep pushing your muscles to get them to grow. And, for women, the result of heavy weights seems to be increased definition and tone in their arms. Where men get big women seem to get slim and toned.

If you have been putting off training with weights because you think you are going to get big then I think you need to snap out of it and give it a go. It is good for your health and can prevent things like osteoporosis and heart disease (the biggest killer of women!).

If you do not like the results then you can stop. No drama.

4. Switch to arm intensive cardio

Sometimes when people get it into their mind that they need to lose weight they get a bit boring and uncreative. Treadmill - everyday - 40 minutes.

Cardio doesn’t have to be like that and some of the best cardio methods are those that use the arms. For example, if I look at my weekly cardio exercise sessions about half of them are “arm related”. For example, I do boxing, rowing and skipping as the core of my fitness workout. All of them use the arms. I also run, play indoor soccer and ride the bike but I would have to say it is the other stuff that gets me really fit.

These cardio exercises burn fat and build muscles so they are perfect for toning the arms. If anything, at least they get you to do something a little bit different for a change. Keep cardio exciting otherwise you will get bored and give up soon.

Conclusion
There are so many articles here on Real Women’s Fitness about toning the arms and how one should best go about it. It is a good idea to gather as much information as you can on a topic before getting into it and doing the wrong thing so spend an hour reading through the archives to get yourself educated!

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