I was recently watching a tennis match on Australian open where Francesca Schiavone, ranked 8-th in the world defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova in 3 sets long match. Schiavone won and advanced to quarterfinals.

Beside Schiavone’s amazing fitness, she has exceptionaly fit arms. They are almost too lean. A lot of women dream about arms like that. OK, maybe not that lean, but something more human lean.

Women and low fat percentage

It is extremely hard to achieve leanness and body fat % like Schiavone for a women. She must be close to  7-10 % of body fat which is incredibly low. Women have naturally, genetically higher fat % than man do. So while becoming relatively lean for a man is easy, it is very difficult for women, especially at the leaner stages, when they are already lean, but want to become even leaner.

The question now is, how is she able to accomplish leanness like this?

While part of this is certainly genetics, there is a reason why Schiavone, 31 has arms like that.

It  is rare between top women tennis players to still compete at the age of 31. Schiavone has to keep her diet and physical preparation at a top level.

I am not saying that you should have arms like Schiavone. What I am trying to say is, that if you want to have leaner arms, and which woman doesn’t, with some discipline and consistency, you can. With a lot of discipline, you can even have arms like her. All you need to do, is to fallow a strict diet, free of sugar, processed and fried foods, exercise regularly and intensively. Do it for a very long time and arms like that are yours.

Skinny, lean, fit looking arms diet

Franchesca eats low calorie diet, free of sugar, processed foods and fried foods with a plenty of lean protein, rich in fruits and vegetables. Considering her activity level, she would eat 2 maybe 3 times as much as you just to cover her calorie expenditure.

Skinny, lean, fit looking arms workout

Her workout, beside spending at least 4 hours on tennis court every day, consists of intensive strength training. Exercises like push ups, bench dips, bench presses, lat pull downs, squats, squat jumps, shoulder presses and core exercises are part of her regular intensive routine. Usually done 2 times per week, depending on the season and tournament schedule. Her repetitions per set vary: But generally she performs 15 – 25 repetitions per set of exercise.

If you are not a tennis player, that’s OK. You can copy that plan for yourself and you don’t have to spent 4 hours on a running track. 30 min – 1 hr of cardiovascular exercise 3-5 times per week is enough. Adding 2 nonconsecutive days like Mondays and Fridays of strength training consisted of multi joint exercises like lat pull downs, push ups, shoulder presses, bench presses, squat jumps, leg presses, hamstring curls and core exercises will make that plan perfect.

And of course, you will be eating much less than Schiavone, because she is a pro tennis player probably burning about 3000 and more calories per day while you burn probably around 1000 calories.

Quality of what you eat is much, much, much more important than quantity. That means you won’t drink  any soda per day, but you can eat 7 and more apples per day.

Intensity

You will have to start slowly if you are a beginner, but once you advance, to achieve a leanness and muscle definition in your arms and whole body, you’ll have to start exercising very intensively. That means, that you’ll add some intervals to your cardiovascular exercise and you will be lifting weights that will actually make your muscles to burn and push to the limits.

Skinny, fit looking arms can be yours

The question of course is: Are you willing to put the work in? Are you willing to give up your brownies, ice cream, soda and occasional Italian restaurant? Probably not.

But that is exactly why the arms like Schiavone has, will always be in a big demand, exceptional and rare. Because it is a hard work to have them, it is a very hard thing to achieve. It’s like achieving  six pack abs for men. Only a very little percentage of men will ever have it.

And that is exactly why you should try to achieve to have skinny, lean, fit looking arms. Because you are not going to settle for average, you are exceptional, and you really want them. So go, get to work now and persist.

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