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Hi I'm new!

Could you maybe rephrase your question? Are you asking about the difference between muscle strength and muscle mass?

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Or maybe just phrase a question.

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

Sorry for the vague topic, basicially I want to be 'ripped' and after exploring the internet for many hours finding different and conflicting information, I think I've found some sort of answer relating to myogenic tone.
Section 2: You Should Train Heavy
There are two types of muscle tone; myogenic and neurogenic. Don't get thrown off by the sciency words; the first simply refers to your muscle tone at rest. It is affected by the density of your muscles; the greater the density of your muscles, the harder and firmer you will appear. Heavy training increases your myogenic tone through the hypertrophy (growth) of the contractile proteins myosin and actin (myosin and actin are by far the most dense components of skeletal muscle).

Training in higher rep ranges promotes more sarcoplasmic (fluid) hypertrophy, which in turn yields a "softer" pumped look. If you want to be hard, firm, tight, etc, the latter is certainly not the way to go. The second aspect of a muscles' tone is neurogenic tone, or the tone that is expressed when movements or contractions occur. Again, lower rep training comes out on top as training with heavy loads will increase the sensitivity of alpha and gamma motor neurons, thus increasing neurogenic tone when conducting even the simplest of movements (i.e. walking, extending your arm to point, etc).
Found this on bodybuilding . com, cant post the link though.

To me that says that low reps, 4-5, and heavy weight will improve my myogenic tone will ensure I achieve my goal of getting 'ripped'?

Your goal of getting ripped is determined primarily by your diet and bodyfat %'s. Heavy weights with lower reps can help, as can higher weights with more moderate weights with a much quicker rest time between sets and exercises, but in the end, it's you bodyfat %.

Not sure of the actual body fat percentage but my BMI is 21.6.

BMI doesn't tell you anything by itself. You could be skinny fat or lean and muscular at the same BMI. The best way to tell is to look in the mirror and decide whether you need to lose fat, gain muscle. Those are really the 2 choices. Training heavy and eating nutritiously will give you some of both but usually losing fat and gaining muscle are hard to do at the same time.

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Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~Hippocrates
Strength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley
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Thanks TimD

don't think about it in terms of myogenic vs sarcoplasmic. Do some of your lifts in the 3-5 range, some of your lifts in the 6-8 range, some in the 8-12 range, and even some as high as 15 or even higher. Covers all your bases.

I'm guessing you are new to the weight lifting lark? That's cool, we all started somewhere, but there's no need to overcomplicate things. Eat well, lift weights and rest. That'll get you big, strong and ripped without having to worry about myogenic muscle tone or any of that other guff.

what roberscott said. Clean up your diet, read less and lift more. Still read. Reading is good. I like books with pictures. Few words more pictures.

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Thanks TimD.

I've always kept healthy and active doing push ups, pull ups and crunches but have recently joined a gym at uni and have a module of my course looking at personal training so its tied in together and i'm really interested now.

Thanks for the advice, i'm going to be doing alot more reading of academic sources and forum discussions! Looking forward to it

we're here to help anytime, just make sure you don't make the classic mistake of reading far too much about training. Don't get me wrong, reading and learning are invaluable, it's just easy to get way too caught up in the science. I speak from personal experience here.

Remember the old TimD adage: it's as simple as lift, eat, sleep

Of course, if he's taking a class he'll have to read a lot.

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

na, just the occasional use of wikipedia