Anatomy of the calves: In the calves, we have basically 2 main muscles (I won’t get into too many details about anatomy, otherwise it gets boring for you): Gastrocnemius and Soleus. The Gastrocnemius are those outer muscles, split into two heads, and the Soleus is this inner muscle layer, right underneath the Gastrocnemius.
The Gastrocnemius has its origin in the femur (thigh bone) and its insertion in the ankle. So, when you do a knee flexion (knee bend), the Gastrocnemius is being recruited as well. This is not its main function, but it works together to the hamstrings. Its main function is to make what we call Plantarflexion, meaning, raising the heels. And the Soleus muscle, which has its origin in the Fibula and Tibia (calf bone), has its insertion in the ankle. Its function is basically to do Plantarflexion and stabilize the leg on the foot.There is also a third and usually forgotten muscle, named Anterior Tibialis, which is positioned in the front of your calf, it has its origin in the Tibia and its insertion in the Medial Cuneiform and base of the 1st Metatarsal. The Anterior Tibialis Dorsiflexes (raises) and inverts the foot.
Training for calves:
Some authors mention that the Gastrocnemius is mainly composed of white muscle fibers (responsible for short duration, explosive exercise), while the Soleus is composed mainly of red muscle fibers (responsible for resistance exercise) which makes sense, since the Soleus are “Postural Muscles”, meaning, they are the muscles responsible for stabilizing your body while you stand and walk (together with other muscles from other body parts, of course). The Anterior Tibialis is also composed mainly of red muscle fibers, because it is responsible for lifting your toes every step you take, so it works all the time.The question is: How to train them more efficiently? In my humble opinion, I think you should emphasize heavier weights on the standing calf raises, which work mainly your Gastrocnemius because you stretch them to the maximum length (remember, origin in the femur), and higher reps in the seated calf raises (which automatically shorten and inhibit the Gastrocnemius when you bend your knees), because of their composition of muscle fibers. White muscle fibers will respond better to heavy weights, always, and the opposite works as well with the red muscle fibers. About the frequency of training, rest between sets, range of motion, etc, I will get a little more specific now. Again, in my humble opinion, all those questions are very personal, except for the rest between sets. The calf muscles are composed of very dense, thick muscle fibers, so they can take a lot of work, and recover very quickly. Your rest between the sets should be short (30, 40 seconds max, except if you train VERY heavy. You will need longer breaks then). For the frequency of training, there are different points of view. Dorian Yates, probably the best calves Bodybuilding has ever seen states that you should train your calves with extremely high intensity once per week ONLY. I think that most of the population will have more benefits by training them with more frequency, simply because 99% of the population doesn’t have the genetics of Dorian, but at the same time, who am I to disagree with him? Again, it’s up to you to find what suits you best. The range of motion of your calves is quite short, so work on it entirely! One tip that I give you is to stop the movement at the top of the contraction for 2 seconds, and at the bottom as well, and restart the movement slowly. If you just bounce the weights up and down, you will start using too much elastic energy, which means your body will just bounce the weights back up, instead of contracting the muscles efficiently.
Foot positioning:
In the study “Different Foot Positioning During Calf Training to Induce Portion-Specific Gastrocnemius Muscle Hypertrophy.” by Nunes JP, Costa BDV, Kassiano W, Kunevaliki G, Castro-E-Souza P, Rodacki ALF, Fortes LS, Cyrino ES. – J Strength Cond Res. 2020 Aug;34(8):2347-2351. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000003674. PMID: 32735428. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32735428/) it was shown that “Our results suggest that head-specific muscle hypertrophy may be obtained selectively for gastrocnemius after 9 weeks of calf training in young male adults.”. For a long time it was believed that altering foot positioning during calf training wouldn’t change anything in terms of regional hypertrophy in the calves (myself included) simply because the calves don’t have any anatomical function in rotating the tibia in the knee joint. Charles Poliquin was one of the few people who suggested back in the 80’s already that changing foot positioning would change something in terms of hypertrophy, and indeed science is catching up to it, with this research from 2020 showing promising results for those techniques. I have been trying it myself lately and it’s still too early to give you an opinion, but it will definitely not hurt you, so you can try it as well.
Now I will give you a personal opinion about calf training. I have seen thousands of gym goers complaining that their calves just don’t grow. When you check the person’s training, the calves are the last muscle to be trained, and the person is doing 3 x 10 in the end of the training session only. That’s not enough, and your calves will never grow like this. The calves are not such a big muscle group, so it’s possible to train them first and still have enough energy to do a really good chest, back or even legs training. Use them as your warm-up, instead of wasting several minutes on the useless treadmills (same goes for abs here). Leave the treadmills and bikes for specific cardiovascular work. Warm up doing sub-maximum sets of the exercise you will start your routine with, you will not have injuries because of that, believe me. Do several sets for calves, using different rep ranges, super sets, stripping sets, etc. And don’t forget to train your Anterior Tibialis either. They will give you a really nice aspect from the front view, and also prevent injuries. Whenever you stumble upon something on the streets, it just happens because you didn’t raise your toes enough, which can be prevented by training your Anterior Tibialis. The most important message of this article is: don’t give up on training your calves! It will take at least 2, maybe 3 years of really hard work until you see satisfactory results. Even if you don’t have the best genetics, work on them, so they might not get freaking big, but they will look more muscular, or as some people prefer, “toned”. One thing is guaranteed: you will not regret training them. Even if you don’t get the aesthetic results you search for, just by being able to walk around without any pain and being able to not hurt yourself on the weekend’s sports activities will pay off greatly.
Source: Netter’s Clinical Anatomy 3rd Edition
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