Want To Have Some Monster Calves?
Calves can be one of the most challenging bodyparts to train and most people don’t put sufficient intensity, mental focus, or effort into building a great set of calves.Bodybuilding Legend Boyer Coe who possessed one of the best sets of calves in bodybuilding was asked once how he built his calves so big? Boyer answered, “”I train them as hard as I train arms”".
Boyer’s answer was simple and too the point and what’s interesting is most people would never consider only performing a few exercises of say biceps or triceps to build their arms.
What’s more calves have way more muscle cells, more mitochondria, and require way more work and intensity than any other bodypart. It doesn’t matter what exercises you are performing if your only performing a few sets a week, not much is going to happen in the way of calve development.
Standard exercises like standing calf raises, seated calve raises and donkey calf raises are the old stand bye’s that have been used for almost a century with great results. While there are plenty of other calf exercises that work these “”Big 3″” have built more great calves than any other exercise. It doesn’t mean don’t work other exercises into your workouts, but these exercises are proven to work.
Because the calves have a common origin and insertion it’s not so much the exercise but the performance of the exercise that becomes the biggest factor in growth. What I can say Time under tension if very critical in calves as is volume of training.
It’s really important to get a full stretch and a full contraction and most people just have to much weight on the stack. Also few have the pain tolerance to handle real high intensity calve training as it hurts. I suggest blasting every rep as if it’s life and death, when you can’t perfrom full range motion on a set, continue with partials, until you can’t move the bar. Then put your calves in the stretch postition for 30 to 60 seconds.
Also the pain is going to be intense so deep tissue massage or myofascial massage may be needed in order to loosen the dense fiber that encases the muscles of the calves to allow for growth.
Also make your calves a priority, train them every second day if you must. 10-20 sets.
Calves more than any other bodypart are influenced by genetics however don’t let that be an excuse to slack off. Whatever you development you can improve it by train hard, smart and refusing to let anything stop you from being your best. Don’t let the old “”bad genetics line”" stop you from building the best body you can.
