Calves: the importance of building them in bodybuilding

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Calves: the importance of building them in bodybuilding. Enjoy your reading


Your calves consist of two muscles: the gastrocnemius and the soleus. The heart-shaped gastrocnemius makes up the bulk of your calf. Beneath this muscle is the fan-shaped soleus. The fibers of these muscles attach to the Achilles tendon, which connects to the heel bone. When these muscles contract, they lift your heels and shift your weight to the balls of your feet. Because you use calf muscles in everyday activities, such as walking or climbing stairs, you need to exercise them to keep them strong and flexible, the calves can be a stubborn muscle group because of poor genetics and/or bad training. Unfortunately, you can’t improve bad genetics. But you can learn how to train your calves the right way, so even if you can’t build the calves of your dreams, you can at least make them better than they are now.


The calf raise exercise involves the basic up-down movement for strengthening calves. The main types of calf raises include the standing and seated positions. Both types involve lifting your heels up and standing on the balls of your feet. For a standing position, use a standing calf raise machine or a barbell. Stand on a block and let your heels hang off the edge of the block. Raise your heels so your body weight shifts to the balls of your feet. Hold this position for a second or two before lowering your heels. Perform 12 to 15 repetitions. Seated calf raises enable you to isolate the movement to your ankles and reduce the stress on your back.
Proper form is an absolute must. This is obviously true for all exercises, but is especially true for calf exercises. Even though the exercises listed earlier are not difficult movements to perform, it is easy to unknowingly use cheating form.


The following advice will help you escape the trap of using poor technique:
Don’t Bounce. It’s easy to cheat by bouncing the weight at the bottom of the rep. This is due to the elastic recoil of the Achilles tendon. There are two quick solutions to this:
Use weight that you can actually handle. Less is more.

Pause at the bottom (more on this below, with regard to training tempo) Use the Right Training Tempo. Using the correct tempo as I outline below will not only eliminate any bouncing (mentioned above), but it will also enhance the overall effectiveness of the given calf exercise:
Perform the Full Range of Motion. Utilizing full range of motion for calf exercises is required for effective muscle stimulation, but is often absent from the technique of many trainees. Ensure that your form is correct by:
Going as high as you can at the top of a rep (increase plantar flexion), and focus on squeezing the calves at the top – you should feel a good burn.
Extend your heel below parallel at the bottom of the rep, but stop and pause once you feel a mild calf stretch