The Essential Differences Between Bulking, Toning, and Stamina
Get Clear on Your Goals to Get Better Results
If you’re newer on your fitness journey or simply haven’t invested the time to learn the long list of gym-lingo, this is the article for you. There are countless types of exercise and extensive terminology within each one. It can be incredibly confusing to navigate which sort of training would best suit your goals, and perhaps even what your goals should be in the first place! Let’s dive in.
Figuring Out Your Fitness Goals
First and foremost, it’s essential to recognize that fitness is a completely personal journey. Anyone that tells you otherwise is either trying to sell you something or they just don’t know what they’re talking about.
This means there’s no one-size-fits-all program that will perfectly support your needs or give you the exact same results as someone else doing it. A lot comes down to genetics, age, personal preferences, physical fitness history, health history, nutrition, and even more extraneous factors.
Creating a training plan that encompasses these factors and that’s designed specifically for your goals will be the most effective strategy. Getting clear on what you want your fitness journey to accomplish for you is the first step in this process. It will save you time, frustration, and effort spent on training methods that simply don’t move the needle in a significant way.
The Most Common Fitness Goals:
- Weight Loss
- Fat Loss
- Muscle Building
- Toning/Definition
- Increased Strength
- Cardiovascular Endurance
While this isn’t an exhaustive list of potential fitness goals, it covers the basics of what most people are seeking. Athletes will also be concerned with functional fitness to improve their sports performance, but the vast majority of people who commit to some sort of fitness program do so largely to achieve the desirable aesthetic outcomes like the first four on this list.
It’s possible to work on more than one goal at the same time, but this can slow down your speed of progress if you don’t have a specific plan. Goals such as fat loss and muscle building, for example, are opposites in the sense that one is an anabolic target (mass building), and the other is a catabolic goal (mass loss). Pursuing these goals simultaneously is possible, but the ‘how’ will require separate actions to achieve the combined goal.
All About Bulking
Bulking is quite simply the process of building mass. It can be further separated into “dirty bulk,” which is an increase in both muscle and fat, or “clean bulk,” which is building only lean muscle mass.
Bulking is done with regular resistance training while eating a caloric surplus above your maintenance levels. It’s important to note that resistance training alone can’t achieve muscle size increases since your body requires fuel to replenish your body and physically grow your muscles.
If your goal is adding size and thickness to your frame, you’re going to need to go through a bulking phase. Bulking isn’t only a desirable physical outcome for some, but it also comes alongside a host of other benefits such as improved metabolic health, increased bone density, and greater strength.
Bulking is a slow process that generally takes months to begin to see results, but it’s one of the most rewarding aspects of working out. For optimal bulking, you’ll want to push yourself into challenging territory and work with reps in the range of 6-15. This is what’s known as hypertrophic training, and it effectively exhausts and damages the muscle fibers so they repair and increase in size.
If you’re more concerned with strength than muscle growth, you can work with lower rep ranges and heavier weights and focus on making each rep more ‘explosive’. This will train the nervous system to be able to create more force through your muscles, but it won’t directly stimulate as much muscle growth since there’s less time spent under tension to affect the muscle fibers.
All About Toning
Toning is perhaps the most common physical goal for gym goers, and it actually consists of two parts. Looking toned means there is visible muscle definition, and this is achieved through both muscle building and fat loss.
Essentially, when you want to look “toned”, what you truly want is to change your body composition towards more muscle mass with an overall lower fat mass. This is best achieved in two steps, and diet will play an essential role in addition to working out.
When trying to get toned, it’s easier to start with the muscle-building phase. This is because it’s easier to zero in on building muscle mass without worrying about how lean you are while doing it, especially for beginners.
Eating a small caloric surplus while consistently doing resistance training is required for this phase, and the good news is your body will already start trending towards having a higher muscle-to-fat composition simply from the added lean muscle mass. You may already notice some definition appearing simply because you have larger and more visible muscles.
The second phase is where the true “toning” comes in, and this is the fat loss phase. Thankfully, starting with the muscle-building phase makes getting lean easier because it shifts the body metabolically to begin burning more calories, even at rest. You may even notice some incidental fat loss during the first phase, but through toning (also called cutting), you can truly achieve the defined look you’re going for.
The most important part of toning is to maintain lean muscle mass while losing fat. For this, you’ll need to continue your resistance training and consume enough protein to fuel your muscle maintenance. On top of this, you’ll need to reduce calories to a slight deficit and/or add in cardiovascular training to increase your daily energy expenditure.
All About Stamina
Last but not least, your fitness goal may be improving your stamina. This refers to your aerobic capacity, also known as your cardiovascular fitness. Activities like running, biking, swimming, boxing, rowing, HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training), jumping rope, and more all fall under this type of training.
Improving your stamina is fantastic for your heart health, your mental health, your brain health, and your sleep. It’s a perfect way to blow off steam, find some meditative time for yourself, and improve your overall well-being while doing it.
One major reason people tend to gravitate towards this type of training is because they think it’s the best way to achieve weight loss, but this is actually a common misconception. Strength training in combination with cardiovascular training is generally far more effective, and the benefits of each complement one another in a holistic way.
Practically everyone can benefit from cardiovascular training for its health benefits, and it’s a useful complementary fat loss tool.
Wrapping It Up
To put it plainly, no one knows your body and your goals better than you. The more you equip yourself with knowledge, the better you’ll be able to achieve the results you want.
It’s certainly invaluable to learn from others, but incorporating new concepts into your arsenal rather than mindlessly copying other people’s training routines will empower you to take your health and physical appearance into your own hands.
