Staying 24 with Body Sculpting and Toning

CEBU, Philippines - How would you like to look 34-24-34 when you are no longer 34 or 24? The workout is called body sculpting and toning.

Generally, nobody is too old or too young to go on a workout. Nobody is too young or too old to stay in shape. But because of an attitude for quick fix solutions, most people turn to the knife or the capsule to lose weight and be in shape. Either way, it’s dangerous and risky and even with all the money in the world, it’s not worth it. Aesthetic surgery and slimming food supplements are notorious ways of desecrating the body.

Like sculpting a work of art, sculpting the human body fashions the body into a desired shape. But while in the art of sculpture, hard materials such as stone, marble, metal, glass, wood or clay are shaped and combined to form a three-dimensional artwork, in sculpting the human body, no hard materials are needed.

In sculpture, materials can be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding, hardened by firing or molded or cast. In making the body a work of art through sculpting and toning, the human body can be carved or cast by educating, elongating and resuscitating the innate and intelligent abilities of the body to shape itself.

Three components.

Body sculpting refers to workouts designed to help tone, strengthen, define and firm muscles in specific areas of the body combining flexibility and cardio vascular training. Body sculpting removes fats from those places which are difficult to remove such as in the abdomen, lower belly, in the arms and lower back. Women whether in their 40s or 20s often have unsightly flabs in their upper arms and the best way to take that off is not to scrape it – it is through sculpting and toning.

If there is any hard material that you will use in sculpting and toning, it is just the weights.

I would say that a body sculpting workout has three components: first is weight loss which is the cardio vascular exercise, toning which is isolating muscle groups so that these are strengthened and firmed and stretching which is elongating muscles. All three components must be present in a workout and performed faithfully or you cannot achieve your desired shape.

Why need all three? A strict diet alone cannot tone or firm up your muscles even if you shed 30 pounds because you would still be carrying a smaller version of your old body proportion. Cardiovascular exercises cannot shape the body because although cardios even when done regularly can only improve stamina, lower blood pressure and cholesterol and ease stress levels, cardios alone cannot tone, define or firm the muscles.

Carve, weld and cast.

Just like a sculptor, who is careful and meticulous about what he carves, welds, molds or casts, so is a fitness trainer with sculpting the human body. In a body sculpting workout, you start with a cardiovascular exercise to pump prime the heart. It lets the heart get used to the next level of strengthening. I recommend 20 to 40 minutes of treadmill, cycling or spinning and cross training for this component.

When done with cardio, go for a little stretching to prepare, condition and educate the muscles for the toning and strengthening. In this component, we isolate and focus on specific muscle groups such as in the arms, legs, butts, chest, shoulder, stomach, thighs, hips and back. By strengthening and training each muscle group, lean muscle mass is built and defined. Strength training enables more lean muscles built and burns off more body fat because it replaces fat with firm muscles. Building lean muscles are denser than fat and take up less space.

Once those muscles have been “carved, molded and educated to a defined shape,” it must now be elongated or stretched so that the new muscles stay that way. Stretching also allows for greater flexibility and keeps the muscles in nimble, supple and toned condition.

In most cases, people just tend to workout without a good stretch. Tendency is, those reshaped muscles won’t heal in the way in you want it shaped. If the human body could complain, it would be screaming. But too many gyms and health clubs don’t orient their clients so well and the client sometimes gets more disfigured than before they had a workout.

The other thing about sculpt and tone workout is that the routines must be spaced. Which means if you work with your arms, shoulders or chest in day 1, you can work with your butts, thighs or lower back on day 2, then have an aerobics workout on day 3. It is best not to do the same routine everyday so as to give the muscle groups a chance to heal and get used to its new shape. By varying the routines, you tone specific troubled areas and the whole body as well.

There is just one thing to consider: you must have a faithful and honest fitness trainer to help you program your sculpt and tone workout. Only a good fitness trainer can advise what is best for you. Just as you choose your doctor, hairstylist or manicurist, so must you be choosy about your fitness trainer. Looking 24 and staying 24 means you have to stop counting the cost, it is staying healthy, radiant and in shape that becomes the cause.