What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
When it comes to the calves a lot of people would have you believe that you were either
destined to be a calf, or a calf-not.
I can tell you that is partially true.
Genetics play a large role in the ultimate size of your calves, but there is definitely
something you can do to make some changes to that and to help to fix your situation.
I am Jeff Caveliere, no doubt, but I've never been confused with Jeff Calfaliere.
What that has done to me – my struggles in building better calves – have provided
me with that motivation to find more ways to do that.
I will tell you, having worked with professional athletes, one thing that you will notice about
their training is there's not a lot of direct calf work in it.
That's because the essence of the activities themselves, the games themselves – runners,
jumpers, soccer players that have to cut multiple directions – usually have great calf development
because they have one thing that our calf training does not.
That is high tension, spontaneous contraction.
What am I talking about?
It's when you get a high level of tension generated in a single contraction over a quick
period of time.
A short period of time.
That is the essence, the key to building bigger calves, because that is how they respond the
best.
That is how you create true overload.
So I have a way here to show you how to do this at home with no equipment at all.
You're going to position yourself as I am right here.
On a mat, or on a floor with your feet either anchored under a bench like I'm showing you,
or under a piece of furniture, a couch, whatever it is.
What you do is, you push down.
You're going to find that your ankles will flex, your feet will flex, and your calves
will contract in order to hold you in this position.
Now, there is some tension generated here, but it's not what we're looking for.
What we need to do is provide that fast, spontaneous contraction – that overload – in a short
period of time.
That's when you're going to feel it.
So what we so is, we launch ourselves out.
The only thing holding me up at this point from falling flat on my face is an incredibly
strong contraction of the calves.
Incredibly strong.
If you do this, I guarantee you'll feel a stronger contraction on this exercise than
any other calf exercise you've done.
I don’t care if that includes you doing standing barbell calf raises with 300lbs.
Guess what?
If you weigh 150lbs your body is already used to that.
Each time you take a step your body is hailing 150lbs.
So if you add it up together it can handle 300lbs.
There's no overload there.
So, back to the exercise.
When you position yourself here, your knees flex, so you're going to be focusing a little
bit more on your soleus than you are on your gastroc.
Now, the soleus is a really important component of your calves.
It's the muscle that lies beneath the more visible gastroc.
As you can develop this you can start to build that and push out the gastroc adding more
size and definition to your calves.
The important thing is not to ignore this muscle.
The cool part about this particular move is that I move from a flexed knee position to
an extended knee position.
So I'm actually activating more gastroc as I get myself further and further out.
As I get even stronger in the exercise I can actually get more and more gastroc because
I can extend further and further out.
If I wanted to I could actually start that right away by putting a physio ball out in
front of me and getting more and more activation because I can actually lean on that as a little
bit of a spot to get me there.
The idea is this, guys: if you want to start building bigger calves it's not about how
many exercises or how many reps you do.
It's about doing quality reps and doing it the way that calves prefer to work in the
first place.
That's with a high tension overload in a spontaneous manner.
That is what's going to build bigger calves and that is why you can start seeing it much
more noticeably in athletes because they're doing it every single time they get out on
the field.
You guys can do it now and now you have a weapon in your arsenal to help you.
If you've found this video helpful, guys, make sure you leave your comments and thumbs
up below.
Obviously, I read what you say.
You've been asking for a calf video for a while.
Now I'm giving it to you.
I want you guys to make sure you continue to leave your comments because this channel
is about you, and I want to give you what you want to see.
All right, guys.
In the meantime, if you're looking for a complete program to train yourself without any equipment
at all we have an ATHLEAN-0 program at ATHLEANX.com.
You literally need nothing but your own body weight, just like this exercise here and you
can make great changes in just six weeks.
All right, guys.
That's over at ATHLEANX.com.
I will see you back here in just a couple days.