Hey, what's going on Nation?
I'm Scott from muscularstrength.com
And I want to talk to you guys about some of my best tips to help stubborn calves grow
Now a lot of times when people say hey my calves aren't growing
Usually the response they get from either friends or trainers in the gym is well you probably
have to lift more weight and do more
volume
But what the the response should actually be is what
does your form look like when you're doing your repetitions because
You might actually already be lifting enough weight or maybe even using too much weight
and that's actually what's holding you back guys because the
calves while they respond to really heavy weights where you're
overloading during the stretched
Position if you're using too much weight you're not really able
to maximize the efficiency of the full range of motion and I'll explain what
I mean calves very easy guys. You literally go up go back down and then go back up
This is the movement in order to see massive calf growth
You don't have to change your position to really wide
Really close toes pointed out toes pointed in
and do all these different variations if you can't see growth from doing a simple
standard
feet shoulder-width apart
Going up going down then doing any other variation isn't gonna do anything for you
as well until you fix the key issue which is
Bouncing your repetitions and not feeling the stretch and not feeling the flex so bouncy reps
Let's get rid of that first a bouncy rep is literally when you're training your calves
And you're doing this and you're just kind of going through the range of motion
And it's so easy you could even be doing this with like 225 or even
315 like you can have a lot of weight in your shoulders and still do bouncy reps because you're not
Maximizing the Flex the top and the stretch at the bottom
So we need to eliminate that so immediately
start lowering the weight if you're doing bouncy reps now if you're doing
Standing barbell calf raise there are some things that need to be addressed number one
Obviously like I said you get more muscle breakdown during the
stretch we wanna make sure we're emphasizing the stretch
But if you're doing it off the floor with a barbell calve raise so you would have this barbell across your back
I'm not going to do it. This is just for demonstration purposes
If you pay attention to my feet there's there's really no stretch down
here right you're going flat foot and then to the top now
If you guys were using let's say like a leg press or seated calf machine
You would always be able to get that heel below your toes and you feel that deep stretch in your calves
So what you want to make sure that we're simulating that no matter what exercise we're doing
so if you're doing a standard
Barbell calf raise you need to get some sort of platform to put your toes on
So that when you get to the bottom of the movement you can really feel your calves in that stretched position
but
You also want to make sure that platform is high enough
I see people grab like five pound weights and stand on them like this if
You stand on these five pound weights like I'm doing right now, and
you don't feel any sort of stretch in your calves
And it's pretty much useless
They're not high enough
You really need to get those toes up really get that heel below your toes to feel that stretch
So what I want you guys to do is use tens or twenty fives so that when you're in the starting position
You feel your calves being stretched once you eliminate that problem
The last problem you have to eliminate is
Not flexing at the top of the movement if you're just going up and then immediately down
You're not taking advantage of that flex at the top so when you get to the top of the movement guys
You don't have to hold this position for like two or three seconds a brief second, it's fine
Just get to the top flex your calves as hard as you can
Then return back to the bottom of the movement and then go back to the top like this
so the tempo of this exercise
You're not necessarily doing slow repetitions
You're going up
flexing and going down feeling the flow of the stretch going
back to the top flexing going down feeling the stretch, so
Basically when you're training your calves if you're not feeling a stretch at the bottom
And you're not feeling a flex at the top that is what you're doing wrong
However for the very few of you who are feeling that but still aren't seeing calve growth
Then maybe you guys need to add a little bit more weight or more volume to your calve training
Just to try to spark some more growth with these exercises so
Very simple technique guys to help you get your calves to grow a bit if this helped you please
Let me know down in that comment section below
Smash that like button and as always more good stuff coming soon
See ya guys