Want To Increase Your Vascularity?
Increasing your vascularity isn't a matter of aligning planets or performing 15 hours of cardio a day...
Want to increase your vascularity? Here's what you need to do:
- Reduce your body fat to single digit
- Continue to build lean muscle mass
- Decrease your stored water weight (water retention)
- Increase your body temperature (for temporary gains)
- Supplement with a safe natural diuretic such as dandelion root
- Supplement with vasodilators such as L-arginine and L-citrulline
Check out my full article here on the exact steps required to implement the above points.
3 Things I learnt By Increasing My Vascularity
I've gone through numerous cutting phases before - reducing my caloric intake and increasing the amount of cardio I'm performing to get down into single digit body fat.
But it's only recently that I decided to go out of my way to place emphasis on my vascularity... here are the 3 biggest things I learnt:
Water weight makes a huge difference
When we're on a carbohydrate heavy diet we're often holding a lot more water weight than you'd think. By placing my body in a caloric deficit (by reducing my carbohydrate intake) while supplementing with dandelion root extract, a natural diuretic I was honestly surprised at just how much water weight I was holding.
You may be thinking "what's it matter? water isn't fat!"
Retained water is stored between the skin and the muscle, often decreasing vascularity and definition - when you're holding less water you'll look leaner.
Vascularity gives the illusion of lower body fat
Some guys just don't have much in terms of superficial vascularity - and as a result at low body fat those guys don't look as lean as they often are.
A 10% body fat physique with road map vascularity will look leaner than a 7% body fat physique with minimal vascularity.
This is why when it comes time to step on stage the top tier bodybuilders will often use a hair dryer on their arms, shoulders, chest and abs to utilize heat to draw more attention to their prominent vascularity - giving the illusion of lower body fat and that 'shrink wrap' look to the skin.
Vasodilators can work wonders for endurance
L-citrulline, L-arginine, nitrox oxide supplements as well as beetroot juice are all loaded with nitrates, these supplements all give of a fantastic superficial result in terms of increased vascularity but the big difference I also noticed came to my cardio endurance.
Maintaining intensity on my spin bike HIIT workouts and deadmill sprints reflect the research and studies linking beet juice to increased exericse endurance.