I’m kind of skinny and tall. I’m about 6’2″ and weigh 185-190 pounds. I’m not looking to get huge too fast but just want to look as if I were at least working out to the general public. I really want to have veins going all the way down my arms and on my biceps. How do I get that veiny look to my arms?
To get a vascular look in your arms, it simply comes down to getting your body fat low enough so your veins pop out. The great thing about your arms is that you don’t carry too much body fat in this area, so it’s a little easier to get your veins to show in your forearms and biceps versus trying to get veins to show in your abs where you carry most of your body fat. You know you’re truly lean when you have striations and veins in your lower abdominals. This is the true sign of being absolutely shredded!
In order to get tree branch veins in your arms, you need to really focus on eating a clean diet, along with doing enough cardio to burn extra calories in order to reduce your overall body fat percentage. Your diet is the most important aspect of your fitness plan you need to focus on if you really want to reduce your body fat percentage. The type of calories you put into your body and the overall amount of calories are absolutely critical to building lean muscle mass and burning fat. Just think about it as fueling a high powered sports car. Would you put cheap low octane fuel into a 1,000 horsepower exotic automobile or would you put the best high powered, high octane fuel into it? Your body is the same thing! Make sure to choose the right foods to fuel your body for intense workouts and to recover and build lean muscle mass.
Along with choosing the right foods to fuel your body, you also need to know how many calories your body needs every day. If you consume too many calories every day, you will gain body fat, period! So even if you choose clean foods, if your portion sizes are too large and you have a surplus of calories at the end of the day, you will slowly pack on body fat. So, make sure you calculate your daily calorie needs.
Cardio is also a key component to getting ripped and developing vascular arms. There are two types of cardio you can choose to incorporate into your fitness plan. Slow and steady cardio is the normal type of cardio where you work at a moderate intensity such as riding the elliptical, walking on the treadmill or riding the bike. The other form of cardio is called HIIT (high intensity interval training) and this is when you do super high intensity cardio for a short amount of time (20-30 minutes) and you do short intervals with rest in between them. An example of a HIIT cardio workout would be ten 100 yard sprints with 60 seconds rest in between them. An example of a slow and steady cardio workout would be 45 minutes on the elliptical machine.
Along with cardio and a clean diet, you also need to choose the right exercises to build up your arm muscles in order to add lean muscle mass to your biceps, triceps and forearms.
To build solid muscle mass in your biceps, the top 3 exercises are:
To add size to your triceps, here are a few great exercises to include in your arm workout:
To really burn out your forearms, here are 3 great exercises to use:
Here are some additional weight training and diet tips for you:
- Do low reps. Sticks with 6-8 reps per set and lift heavy. You should barely be able to get up your last rep on each set (after warm-up).
- Eat a ton of clean food. Your diet should consist of at least 5 meals per day. Eat every 2.5 to 3 hours throughout the day. Eat at least 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. Include a lean protein at every meal.
- Your post workout meal should be the largest meal of the day. This is your time to grow, so eat like you want it. A shake works well here with high glycemic carbs. Try mixing 2 cups of nonfat milk with 2 scoops of protein, 2 scoops of carbs like dextrose or maltodextrin with 2 cups of fruit. Follow this shake up with a real food meal about 1.5 to 2 hours later. A great meal would be 2 cups of brown rice, 8 ounces of chicken breast and 3 cups of steamed broccoli.
These tips should help you get the ripped and vascular look you’re going for. Add 45-60 minutes of cardio after every weight workout in order to burn maximum body fat. Or, you can add 20-25 minutes of a HIIT style cardio exercise after your weight workout. Always make sure to do cardio after your weight training workout NOT before. You want to use up your glycogen (carbs) for intense weight workouts and then do cardio after in order to tap into your fat stores.
