[quote]peterm533 wrote:
“Actually, Dr. Fred Hatfield discusses this in some of his texts. He says that muscle “tone” is basically the increased tension a muscle holds at all times (i.e. relaxed). As alluded to in another post, this comes from training for size/strength”.
Muscle tone is the residual tension in relaxed muscle. It is not increased tension. It obviously does not
come from training for size and strength as all healthy untrained individuals have it. You may be asserting that increased tone comes from such training which is a different matter.
[/quote]
Wow, you can really split a hair. If you’re going to just disregard the topic we’re on to nitpick a post, then why quote? And Hatfield says that the tension can be increased with resistance training. I’m sure you got a PhD. in the box with your computer, so I’ll let you and the widely respected powerlifting doctor discuss that.
The point is, all muscles have a degree of tone (residual tension), and that that degree can be raised, which is basically the question asked. No, it’s not a myth. Even if an untrained person could be leaned out and dried out like a pro, the muscles wouldn’t appear to be the same because the tone would be very different.
[quote]Chi-Towns-Finest wrote:
You’re muscles can become more dense over time. For instance, now I’m about the same weight at 21 as I was being a senior in HS, although my muscles are much more dense and I’m capable of lifting a lot more.[/quote]
Then logically, you are now smaller than you were? Same weight + denser = lower volume, i.e. smaller.
I always have difficulty understanding whenpeople talk about ‘looking denser’ or ‘looking harder’, just dont see how you can see it, if you catch my drift.
SRT08- a discussion without precise use of terms is worthless. You purported to rely on what Dr Hatfield was
saying. That you did so imprecisely is your fault and no reason to start crying foul. My remarks were clearly designed to ensure that we stayed on topic and talked about the same thing.
As for Dr Hatfield being an unimpeachable source I have to say that I look at what he has to say with some
scepticism after his reference to the mythical 1964 Mexico (sic) study that allegedly proved that weight lifters ran faster than sprinters.
We do agree that all muscles have a degree of tone. We do not agree that that degree can be raised by weight training.
I think that most of us will agree that tone is the result of muscle innervation. What you need to do is to explain how that innervation is permanantly affected by weight training and when and why that process stops.
I am afraid that your example of comparing an untrained person with a pro is faulty on so many different levels. I dare say that there are many differences if you were to compare any one of us to a pro including size of muscle, ability to put on muscle, ability to recover, drugs in our systems and yes possibly even the degree of muscle tone. What this has to do with increasing an individuals muscle tone is anyone’s guess.
In the absence of any proof of change in muscle tone I think that what you are doing is simply taking that fact that larger leaner muscles look harder and believing that one apparently causes the other.
Ronsauce- Observed by whom? I have observed no such thing unless there is a corresponding loss of fat when the appearance but not the actuality may be one of increase in muscle tone. Anecdotally I was speaking yesterday to someone who had trained with a multiple world wrestling champion. He was remarking on how soft his muscles were to touch. I wonder why the vast volume of training he has clearly undertaken did not make his muscles more “taut”? He cannot be the exception to what you presumably believe is a universal process?