I train my calves quite a lot (ballet 3 days/week-which is very calves intensive with pirouettes and such; usually do some calves stuff-calf raises with bodyweight and on a leg press-at least once/week at the gym), but strength gains are pretty slow-particularly in my non-dominant side (left). :bang: Got any advice on getting stronger calves? Thanks! Best regards, Matvei.
run, jump, walk with weight, jump, oly lift. look for whichever sport has athletes with the most humongous calves (think it'll be ball sports like rugby and both footballs), and look at how they train too (bearing in mind the running woll be a huge part of it).
With your calf presses i would drop the reps right down and do like 5 sets of 2 or something with the highest weight you can manage. Your ballet will give you muscular endurance you just need to strength (I think from what you said). Try doing them single leg at a time for 2 reasons you can then be sure your loading your left side equaly and also you can then use the other leg to bail out if needs be. Personaly I found my calves got huge when I did a lot of hill walking, especialy when carrying a pack. Don't know if that's an option possibly?
iirc from what i've read of bodybuilding calf training methods, generally they go entirely to he other extreme, badger, like super slow tempo work for extremely high reps (think 30+ second reps to failure and such). that said, i'll bet you these guys don't do many calf raises:
(and yes, big calves are strong calves, and pretty much anything involving calf strength is something that involves the entire lower body pushing simultaneously, so that's what you train it with: squats, jumps, running, oly lifts, weighted walking )
Well fair enough if that's how it works best. I was just doin that silly thing and assuming it would be like strengthening any other muscle, Low reps and heavy weight being the usual method for that. Perhaps calves are different I don't know, I have never specificaly trained mine and they have always been pretty capable I played a lot of rugby when younger, do a lot of hill walking and plenty of squats and such and do a fair share of pushing heavy stuff around in work so it's probable one or more of those things is pretty good at calf strengthening.
well, different muscles have different fiber type distributions (alao varies between people), and how you can train them will vary depending on what actions they produce. calves in particular are one of the most active postural muscle groups plus a key component in gait, so they're pretty much in constant activity and are ridiculously hard to fatigue. you'd also have to take into account the type of lever to which the ankle belongs, which iirc is the only one of that type in the human body and makes it so that calf raise type motions are almost entirely done at a mechanical advantage, so that to properly load the calf muscles with high stress you have to use a high ROM eccentric and stretch them under load. i've fatigued mine very few times, but the only ones that come to mind have involved heavy eccentric stress (deep squats, jumping and oly lifts, basically).
1. Shorter rest periods when training calf muscles. They have a pretty good blood supply so in order to really exhaust them and induce growth keep the rest periods below 45 seconds when you do direct calf work. 2. Isometrics. I always found this to work wonders for strengthening calves. Load up around 75-85% 1RM on a machine you can safely unload the weight on (ex. standing calf raise). Raise the weight and hold for a set amount of time. Slowly build up and your calves will start fatiguing more and more. It's especially good if you do this in different positions throughout the ROM. 3. Eccentric handoffs - as Fish pointed out eccentric movement with full ROM in the joint is great for the calves. Another exercise I found helpful is to use one of those step boards for calf raises. Raise up to the top with bodyweight only, have someone hand you a dumbbell, lower down, hand off the weight, raise and repeat. Be careful with this as it's easy to go too heavy too fast. Be careful and train safely.
My family has naturally big/strong calves. Initially thought I got it from training, but my Brother and Sister both don't train (Brother only recently got into Boxing) and they both have muscular calves. Adding to the above posts, also do some silly stuff during your day to day ? Doing calf raises on the edge of stairs/whilst on the escalator Train legs more than once a week too?
Weighted sled pulls and sled push? Seems everyone else covered the run of the mill exercises and routines.
I'd go with body building methods like fish suggest or swc sifu ben. there is a selection factor with rugby players and calf size, often times its advantageous to have a larger calf and thicker ankle in rugby because it limits injury potential. so the people with that advantage often go far. its why the rugby team i interned with had all players doing high rep (aiming for 60 each leg) unweighted single leg calf raises recommended by the physio who was advised by other asian national team coaches. The thickness around the ankle is largely a genetic factor that wont change (like wrist size) and the upper part of the lower leg/calf muscle will be limited to an extent because of this (like the forearm is limited by wrist size). if you were a fat kid who got skinny then you'll like have big calves and ankles (usually) from having to support then weight. same with if you walked on your tip toes/fore foot as a kid. or, if like my gf, you have nordic blood then you will have thick calves with a low muscle belly due to the advantage it has in heat conservation. if you are of west african ancestry then you likely have a higher muscle belly because of the advantage it bears in sprinting.
I've added almost an inch to my calves since switching focus to deadlift from squats... most weighted calf training will not lend itself to heavy strength work at all, and if it does its really not worth the risk. like fish and narcsage said any form of explosive running is going to be a great way to develop the performance aspect. top two on my list would be sled pushes and hill sprints. remember to keep the tibia ant (shin muscle) nice and strong too, one set of high rep work per week should cover it.
hill sprinting and sled pushing/dragging destroys my calves +1 for hill sprinting and sled pushing/dragging. OFF TOPIC: steve - i'm having an issue sprinting where i push off my four toes rather than the big one with every step. puts my ankle in a dangerously twisted position when i review it and im afraid that one slip up will mess me up. any drills to remedy this?
glute tightness? souns like something could be pulling your knee out externally, could be a million and one things. weak tib ant springs to mind. you got any footage?
I did Olympic lifting for a few years and honestly and we had body builders train with us at the gym.... The biggest, most defined calf muscles I have ever seen have been fell runners. Seriously, google image fell runners calve muscles and see some of the images that come up.
