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Muscle toning
Women often see muscle toning as a good compromise between not working out, and full on weight lifting. Whereas with weight lifting the goal is usually to add as much bulk as possible, with muscle toning it's more about shaping what's already there.
Actually, there's not really any such thing as muscle toning - exercise either stimulates the body to grow or it doesn't - but it's a term that has come to describe a particular type of workout with a particular end result.
Workouts of this type typically involve high repetitions with low weights. For anyone new to exercising, they will actually promote some growth initially, but the long-term effect for anyone will be an improvement in their overall appearance.
This is due to a combination of two factors. The first is simply that any area of the body that is exercised regularly will look better. The second is due to the effects of strength training on the metabolism.
Any time you workout intensively, as with weights, you provoke your metabolism to burn more calories. Not only that, each and every pound of extra muscle you add burns an additional 15 - 35 calories per day.
When you put all this together it soon becomes apparent why more and more women are adding strength training to their regular workouts.
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