What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
So today we're going to talk about vascularity and how to eat to get vascular.
That's a key word there – EAT – to get vascular because as you're going to see here
in a second, that's where we're going to start and keep this whole conversation revolving
around it.
It actually starts first and foremost from where this actually came from.
A post was made on Instagram and Facebook last week – and I thank you, those of you
that actually pointed this out to me – I'll link it and pin it down below.
This post was by my childhood icon, Sylvester Stallone.
He had some incredibly complimentary things to say about me and about ATHLEANX and I have
to say, coming from the person that singlehandedly influenced me to pursue this career path in
the first place as a very young kid, I can't tell you what it means to me.
I'm incredibly humbled by that and I thank you for leaving those comments, and I thank
those of you who thought enough and knew my history and connection with him to remind
and post that for me.
Like I said, I'll put that down below.
In that post which, this is what it looked like here on Instagram, Sly talked about this
topic of vascularity.
He had gotten to a point where he was so vascular that he joked about even having veins in his
hair.
I think I can relate at times to that concept.
I even have one around my freaking eye socket here that you guys point out a lot of time
in my videos for me.
Thank you for making me self-conscious, by the way.
So vascularity, as I said before – and I'm going to tell this to you guys as no BS as
it gets.
If you're not committed to lowering your body fat level to at least 10% then don’t commit
to this idea of you being vascular because I don’t care what foods you eat, what supplements
you take, what other things you do – even the training style that you follow – if
you're not committed to proper nutrition which puts you in a hypocaloric state, not a big
one which we'll talk about in a second.
But in a hypocaloric state; you're not going to drop body fat.
You're not going to get down low enough to be able to start seeing that vascularity.
So what is that goal?
As I said, 10% is a good, rough goal.
Some people could look more vascular than others at 10% body fat.
A lot of that could even do with your current state of hydration.
I'm taking about long term what you look like.
You want to get down to that level.
Every percentage point that you can get below that, you're starting to look more and more
vascular.
You're starting to see them your chest.
You start to see them in your shoulders.
You start to see them in your abs.
As you drop down the amount of vascularity will significantly increase.
So we talked about being hypocaloric.
How are you going to get there?
In that post that Stallone left he talked about a point where he was eating about 1500
calories.
This is a guy that was filming movies and was actively on his feet pretty much all day
long.
He didn't even have [inaudible 0:02:55] training.
He didn't have enough energy to get through his workouts because what he was doing was
restricting his calorie well below baseline in an effort to get ripped even faster and
also focus on eating healthy fats, which is critical.
But fats being more calorically dense than proteins, or carbohydrates will also quickly
take up the amount of volume that you can eat in a day.
Because a pad of butter is only that much, where maybe a plate full of broccoli is about
414 calories.
This is about 414 calories of broccoli.
You can eat more volume when you do that, therefore maybe stay more satiated by eating
the other foods.
But that's not how he did it.
So when you start adopting methods of eating that dramatically alter your ability to remain
consistent with them you're done.
Forget vascularity because vascularity is something you need to approach very slowly.
Vascularity is something you need to do over the course of many, many, many weeks.
You need to stay in that small level of deficit so you can gradually drop body fat, but still
have the ability to maintain energy to train hard.
Still have the ability to maintain the energy to train hard enough to build muscle.
Increase your protein intake – as I pointed out in our other videos before – to be able
to adapt to your needs for staying in a positive nitrogen balance to be able to still put on
muscle while you're dropping some body fat.
All this needs to be in place and if you're not committed to doing that, as I said, forget
it.
It's not in the cards for you.
But when you are committed there are some things you can do.
Within that nutrition, and that healthy eating style there are foods that are actually niacin
rich that can help in terms of vascularization.
There are foods that are nitrate rich.
I'm talking about plant based nitrates, not animal based nitrates for the very sake of
the fact that these convert eventually into nitric oxide, which is what you've probably
heard many, many times in terms of supplementation.
Agmatine, citrulline malate, arginine; things that actually increase that in your body to
increase vascularization, or vasodilation.
That's all good if the nutrition is already in place.
Those supplementary additions can be great and that's why pre-workouts have become so
popular.
Why people seek the pump; because they work.
They definitely work, but if you're looking for vascularity, if you're taking these pre-workouts
and you're buried in 25% body fat you aren't going to see anything pop out.
They're not going to melt away the body fat.
From a training standpoint, can you do anything from a training standpoint?
You can increase capillary density by doing higher rep work, longer duration.
That's all good, but again, that is not going to have this changing effect on how you actually
look unless the body fat is there.
So it's not even really worth discussing in this context.
The bottom line here is this: from a realistic standpoint vascularity is something that is
not for everybody.
If it is something that you're seeking to do you can do it.
It must start with nutrition.
It could be helped by supplementation, but both of them, and all of it must be wrapped
around an expectation that is elongated, in terms of 'it's going to take you some time'.
If you do that and you have an eating plan that allows you to stay with something consistently
then you're going to see the results, and you're going to see that vascularity.
All right, so we have another – come over here, Jessie.
We have somebody that – look at the vascularity on Jessie.
It actually brings up one other point.
See?
He's actually getting the Cavaliere vascularity here.
Nice job, Jessie.
The fact is, Jessie's a thin person.
So if you're out there and you're already lean, vascularity is probably not a problem
for you.
As you put on more muscle it's going to become even easier for you to remain vascular because
your metabolic rate will go up with the more active tissue of muscle actually burning through
more calories.
So it's not going to be your problem.
He needs to eat more calories to be able to support his muscle growth.
He doesn’t need to be hypocaloric, but if you're somebody that knows that you're overweight
and need to lose body fat, start with nutrition, stick with nutrition, get it locked in, then
start looking for other things from there.
Lastly you guys, one more time, I want to thank you out there who brought the post to
my attention.
Sylvester Stallone, I want to thank you for inspiring me.
Not just me, but many, many others to this day with everything you've done and how you
stay committed to the goal.
At 70 years old, still doing it.
Looks better than me.
I swear to God.
So again, guys, if you're looking for a program that leads you to the proper nutrition, expectations,
and the right training and does it in a no BS way; head to ATHLEANX.com.
Let me know what else you want me to cover here in future videos and I'll do my best
to do that for you guys.
I'm glad to make the videos that you want me to cover here.
All right, I'll see you soon.