Wow, dude, you are so swole! You’ve been wandering around the gym, chances are you’ve heard the term “swole” tossing around from time to time. Here’s How To Get Swole! 

There are so many new terms and sayings floating around these days it can be difficult to keep up. The term swole, as you may guess, is another word for swollen. We wouldn’t recommend calling someone swollen though. The last thing you need is to go home and call your wife swollen (unless you enjoy TV dinners and sleeping on the couch).

Instead, swole is another word for jacked.

Your muscles are big and you have a solid pump going on. In fact, some people may connect certain meanings to swole while others may considering it to be something else. Realistically though, it means you look bigger and more ripped than normal.

There’s nothing like that feeling as you leave the gym and you see your veins pulsating and your muscles pumping as if each fibre is growing in front of your eyes?

So How Do You Get Swole?

Let’s take a look. 

The Science of Getting Swole

Giving the scientific definition of “swole” is a bit tricky, because there are so many different definitions and means of swole, depending on who you’re talking to. We’re going to go with the idea that swole means your body looks jacked and your veins are popping out.

So why exactly does this happen? 

It likely is not the actual reason you have running in your head. 

If you, a (likely) non-osteopathic doctor, provided an answer to this question, what would you say?

More likely than not you’d say an increase in blood flow and even pressure in the body during a workout causes the increased definition of your veins. It’s a fine assumption and a guess most people would put forward.

But is, in all actuality, wrong. 

Let’s dive a bit into the vascular system.

As you may remember from high school science class, blood is pumped from the left ventricle of your heart and circles around until it re-enters the heart in the right ventricle. When blood first leaves the left side of the body it is in an area known as “high-pressure arteries.” These are high-pressure areas because the veins are thickest here.

The veins then begin to split into different areas of the body and tunnel off into smaller and smaller veins. Blood pressure drops off in the smaller veins due to vein’s wall resistance (there are also different names for different sizes of veins, with the smallest being venules).

These are high-pressure areas because the veins are thickest here. The veins then begin to split into different areas of the body and tunnel off into smaller and smaller veins. Blood pressure drops off in the smaller veins due to vein’s wall resistance (there are also different names for different sizes of veins, with the smallest being venules).

When you begin to work out, your heart rate increases, which pushes more blood through your arteries.

This as well increases your systolic blood pressure. What starts the vein popping appearance takes place here. The diameter of the veins during exercise begins to narrow (this is called vasoconstriction). The body does this in order to more or less streamline the blood flow process and allow the heart to receive blood faster. It cuts down on the pressure placed in the smaller venules.

With the constricting of the veins, plasma fluid and other important material that usually sits within the small tributary veins is pushed up through the vein walls into areas around your muscles.

Have you noticed your muscles seem to become harder while working out?

This happens because of the push of plasma fluid into the pockets around your muscles. At the same time, the hardening of the muscles pushes the major arteries and veins up further against the skin, which in turn gives you the rock hard, vein-popping appearance (Scientific American, 2015).

In reality, the rock-hard muscle appearance and popping veins have no actual scientific or medical benefit. It simply is what the body does when your heart rate increases during an exercise.

So don’t worry if your body is not yet showing off those veins that you want.

By increasing the size of your muscles and reducing your body fat, you’ll quickly achieve the look you’re going for. 

Supplements To You Get Swole?

We’re not going to dive head first into all the different supplements out there.

You could write a book about all the different supplements, and then write another book on how most of what’s out there simply doesn’t work and is more a placebo than anything else.

However, there are a few supplements you need to consider using (if you’re not), especially if you really want to obtain that jacked “swole” look. 

You already know the importance of protein. There’s also likely a strong chance you’re supplementing your workout and diet with protein powder. That’s great for building up muscles and providing energy, but it isn’t really a supplement you need for the jacked look (at least to obtain it at the gym). Amino acid supplements are great as well for post workouts. These supplements help aid in the recovery of your muscles, so you can get back to the gym faster.

So what helps you during the workout?

One, possibly two options. 

The first is creatine.

Your body naturally produces creatine, so you’re not dumping a strange white powder into your body that is foreign to it. Creatine helps give your body that extra push of energy to recover between sets faster. This allows you to squeeze out another rep on your sets. You make the biggest advances with these last reps, as you’re pushing your body further. These reps also help boost the appearance of your swollen muscles. Due to this, you need to include creatine in your diet. Make sure to follow the instructions and guidelines though on the product to ensure proper consumption.

Now, we said one, maybe two. The “maybe two” supplement is caffeine. 

Caffeine really does have its place in workout out. Most of the pre-workout drinks you find on the market really is nothing more than caffeine with added B-12 vitamins and maybe some amino acids. There’s a reason why some gyms hawk Red Bull and Rockstar energy drinks (just don’t be the guy wandering around the gym wearing aviator sunglasses and sipping an energy drink…that’s probably how the guy who came up with the term “swole” looked too).

All joking aside, caffeine can give you the extra initial energy to push you through the workout. The thing about it is thought that caffeine often is a ticking time bomb. Once time is up, your body crashes. So you need to get the workout in before the body crashes. Just make sure you drink plenty of water alongside the caffeine though as it will dehydrate you.

The Get Swole Workout

There are going to be some out there who tell you how to get swole. You may even find certain workouts work better for you than others. 

However, there is a specially designed workout designed specifically for this look. It is tailor-made to jack up your muscles and give you a ripped look. Of course, it is also designed to not just be something that lasts for an hour or so after you hit the gym. By sticking with the “Get Swole” workout you are going to improve your body appearance so you always look swole. The workout is known as the “Cory Gregory’s Get Swole” workout.

It also focuses a good deal on diet, because realistically, you do need muscle definition to have that pure swole look, so if you’re interested in “getting swole,” you do need to target your diet as well.

Let’s Talk About the Diet

There isn’t anything truly special about the “swole diet” (if that’s what you want to call it).

Realistically it is a diet made up of lead proteins and lower calorie foods. Truthfully, you need to find a diet that works best for you. The Cory Gregory recommend protein list, for example, includes chicken, salmon, tuna, jerky, turkey, and eggs. With regards to carbs for your energy, it focuses on brown rice, sweet potatoes, quinoa, oatmeal, whole wheat bread and pasta, barley and yams.

Basically, everything else with regards to fruits and vegetables are good to go.

Essentially, you go with a high protein, low-calorie diet, and your seasoning is mostly salt-free options (although the hot sauce is listed as a primary condiment and while spicy foods to help boost your metabolic rate, the hot sauce comes with a good amount of sodium).

The Workout Mantra For Getting Swollen

We’re going to use the basis of Cory Gregory’s workout routine for the workout mantra.

You don’t need to repeat the exact exercises, but instead, focus on the concept. It’s not like there is just one way to get jacked, so we want to leave it open a bit for you to add in or remove certain workouts that you find to be better for you, or for moves that increase your personal chance of injury.

In general, the idea is to go big, heavy and fast.

So if you’re someone who just wants to get definition but not really put on any size, this isn’t the workout (or kind of workout) for you. The idea is to keep your body on the verge of exhaustion without completely going over. You also want to keep rest at a minimum. It is far too easy to finish off a set, then talk it up for 10 minutes.

You’re not at the gym to socialize.

You’re there to get work in.

So go heavy, go hard and go fast.

Rest for a second to regain your focus and strength, then go back at it. 

You’re also going to often combine two moves back to back without rest. It isn’t a specific lower/upper body break down. Instead, it is more specific muscle groups you’ll target. For example, on day one of the Cory Gregory workout, you’ll combine chest and back. On the first move you’ll work your chest, then you’ll move to the back.

Perform these back to back without any rest.

This is what we like to refer to as a “superset.” Because each move works opposite muscles you should still have energy in the tank for the opposite move. 

As an example, the chest and back workout begin with a wide-grip pull-up, where you’ll perform wide grip pull-ups, followed by a barbell bench press with a medium grip. Every set is either to failure (such as with pull-ups when no weight is involved) or to two, and you’ll do five sets.

Rep Numbers For Getting Swole

On a normal day at the gym, you probably perform your routines two or three times each.

Often times I’m sure you have asked how many reps and sets?

Perhaps you hit your more intensive moves, such as the bench press and squats, three times, while the smaller, supplemental moves, like a curl, two times or so. To get swole, it is recommended to hit each individual muscle group more than just the two to three times. Instead, as Corey Gregory recommends, every move needs to be made five times.

Because you are using heavy weight and aiming for 12 reps each, you are going to really hit each muscle group. By the time you hit the fourth and fifth sets, you’ll have little left in the tank. Every training day has four or five super-sets (so about eight to 10 moves a day), so while you’re not putting in a half-dozen different curls or lunges, you’re really tagging your muscles over and over again until, ultimately, failure.

Conclusion

Getting “swole” is really about cutting down on your body fat while working out different muscle groups to failure.

By targeting specific muscle groups and pumping out five sets per exercise, you force all of the plasma fluid into chambers around your muscles, giving you that rock hard appearance and bulging veins. As your body weight drops you’ll see a significant increase in the vein popping look.

This is why in order to “get swole,” you really need to focus not only on your time in the gym but the diet as well.

No matter how much time you put in at the gym, if your diet is bad, it becomes next to impossible to reach this desired look. 

-Terry Asher