The approach between building mass and tone is extremely different. When you are shooting for mass, you are purposely trying to damage the muscle with a high volume of lifts...then you need to rest that muscle for a long enough period of time so it repairs itself. When you are going for muscle tone you want a lower volume of lifts each workout, but you want to work each muscle group more often.



So How Many Sets for Muscle Tone?

Contrary to popular belief, you want to keep the volume low when you are shooting for muscle tone. If the volume gets to high, you will damage the muscle and will be unable to work it frequently. I would recommend 2 exercises per body part and just 3-4 sets.

So How Many Reps Per Set?

Very few people understand how effective low reps are for muscle tone. Low reps create harder contractions and over time, your muscle will display better tone. Feel free to include medium to high reps, but make sure you don't neglect heavier low rep training as well. Gaining strength at a low body fat level is a great way to look ripped!

It is Important to Work the Muscles Often When Going for Tone!

This is one of the big keys to muscle tone, that I never hear personal trainers talk about. Muscle tone is basically the partial contraction of a muscle in a relaxed state, so your muscles are contacting a bit on their own even when you are completely relaxed. The way to increase this is to contract you muscles hard (workout) on a frequent basis. There are two reasons you want to avoid damaging your muscles. The first is that if you are sore, you will over-train if you work that muscle again too soon. The second is that you will be unable to get a hard contraction on a damaged muscle.

Do NOT Train to Failure or Use Forced Reps When Going for Muscle Tone

Going to the point of failure will increase the likelihood that muscle damage will occur. The bad thing about going to failure is that it teaches your muscles to fail! Your body will react by not contracting that muscle quite as hard for the next set, it will also result in less muscle tone outside of the gym. Going to failure and forcing reps is great for muscle mass, but terrible for muscle tone!

Here is a Typical Mass Building Split Routine

A popular mass building routine is the "3 day split". A 3 day split simply means that all the muscles in your body are worked in 3 different workouts. So what a lot of people do is work chest, shoulders, and triceps on one day...back and biceps on another day...and legs and abs on the third day. The benefit here is that since the muscles are getting damaged, they need more recovery time. Also since you are only focused on a couple of body parts, you could really do a high volume of intense lifts for each body part.

Muscle Tone Works Better With a "2 Day Split"

Since you want to work each muscle group more often when going for tone, you should try to split you workout over two days instead of three. The great thing here is that you don't need much recovery time when you don't damage the muscles.

Note: This is just a quick outline to setup a good workout routine. The goal for muscle tone is that you want to avoid damage, since sore muscles aren't your ally. Generate strong contractions on a regular basis with less sets, then spend the rest of the time burning off body fat with cardio. Make sure and lift heavy at times, but stop short of reaching failure.