Anyone successfully significantly grow their calves?

[initialize]

Last several months I've been training my calves hard -- hitting them 4-5 times per week with various calf raises, tibial raises, jump rope, inclined walking for 30-60 minutes, etc. Haven't seen much growth but some increased vascularity. I'm already eating enough and on "TRT +".

What else do I need to do? Lol

 

[BlazinDayz]

Are you performing both sitting and standing calf raises?

 

[initialize]

Are you performing both sitting and standing calf raises?

Yeah, I definitely do standing/straight legged raises more though

 

[buck]

I have got mine to grow fine with lifting weights. I find doing aerobics long term can shrink them as it sends mixed signals. Toe presses and standing presses do it for me. Never got much out of seated. Most just bounce up and down at the bottom range of motion while leaning back and forth like they are on a merry go round. Heavy high rep and heavy low rep. Full range of motion which is far more then 1-2 inches. Rising up off the big tao as much as possible and not just rolling to the outside of the foot. Are you eating enough calories for muscle growth.

 

[FFHall]

Yes....but mostly from cycling up long ass hills.

Anecdotally, the best growth I had previous to that was when I was only doing level to lowered, single leg calf raises to failure for 5 sets, twice a week as the only calf isolation exercise. Stand on something with your heel off the edge, lower it down as low as you possibly can slowly, then bring it back to a level as if you were on flat ground, then repeat. Enough weight that you burn out somewhere around the mid twenty rep range each set, each leg.

 

[initialize]

Yes....but mostly from cycling up long ass hills.

Anecdotally, the best growth I had previous to that was when I was only doing level to lowered, single leg calf raises to failure for 5 sets, twice a week as the only calf isolation exercise. Stand on something with your heel off the edge, lower it down as low as you possibly can slowly, then bring it back to a level as if you were on flat ground, then repeat. Enough weight that you burn out somewhere around the mid twenty rep range each set, each leg.

Nice. Why not go past level though?

 

[FFHall]

Nice. Why not go past level though?

I remember reading something at the time saying that from level to raised wasn't as efficient for growth and that calves grew more under full stretch so that this was a better way to get more bang for your buck before failure. Always felt like they were being worked hard so just stuck with it.

 

[creep]

Step mill with accentuated calf raise at the top

 

[Jabroni_Meathead]

7-8 sets of calve raises twice a week. I do half seat and half standing with as much damn weight as possible for 9-12 reps. Seat calves I usually add 3-4 plates and go HAM. I have huge calves but my traps hate me

 

[Ouch]

Calves are weird and on some people seem genetically impossible to grow sometimes. Jon Jones comes to mind. Even moving up to fight at heavyweight he still has toothpicks…maybe too much aerobic work idk.

I’m of the belief that people with hard to build calves should focus on explosive moves and high reps. I count my calve reps like I do abs - in the 100s with medium weight.

Box jumps (or any type of jumping movement) and sprints, focusing on staying on your toes. And I also think you should try to work on your tibialis anterior muscles. I do straight up/down jumps holding kettlebells and they kill. Kind of look like an asshole but whatever.

 

[Zesty]

I know this is old but the best I’ve found is a straight leg calf press on a leg press
Holding the stretch for 3-4 seconds before contraction
2 sets of 5 twice per week at the start of my lower days

 

[Bandern]

My calves grow the best doing 100 rep dropsets on standing calf raises on the smith machine. I’ll stand with my toes on some plates so I can get a good stretch on them. I’ll usually start with 3 pizzas on each side and get down to 1 and a quarter by the end. Leaves them sore for days so I can only do it twice a week. It sucks I love it!

 

[OldGHGuy]

Standing calves are much better than seated, good stretch at the bottom, progressive overload, higher reps (10-15), hit them 4-5 times per week.

 

[eery]

Look in to lengthened partials at the end of your workset, the different techniques to emphasize different parts of the valves and stick to a simple and effective exercise selection.

Train them as much as you can recover from, all the frequency, volume and 0-1RIR with lengthened partials at the end.

As long as you are progressing week to week in reps or load and eating enough, give it time.

 

[29trt]

The best way is the fat way .... Meaning eat like a mofo and train only your calves...they will grow!
A more practical approach is like with any muscle group, keep everything else at maintenance and just blast your calves as soon as they recover and of course calorie surplus...
Thats the reason most guys grow their calves later in life.. as they plateau their upper body so they are basically maintaing but the calves still have room to grow and they do.

 

[BigDadd7]

Walk around with an extra forty pounds in a backpack all day. That's why fat guys always have big calves.

 

[RzSco]

Try walking in barefoot shoes, I have injured my calves so badly that I can’t even walk 300m without pain now. I only tried to start with 2km as well!

So you literally need to work up from like 100m but it’s MURDER on calves.

I also grew my quads by 4cm from cycling and not training legs at all so there are some gains to be had by doing this kind of endurance stuff even though most guys say it doesn’t work. I guess it’s some kind of increased glycogen storage adaptation.

 

[nerdwithmuscles]

honestly my calves finally grew when i started used GH. I didn't change much outside of increasing my gear dosages. Training has stayed the same outside of increased load on most leg movements which I would assume helped as well. doing heavy ass hack squats and leg presses are still going to engage your calves.

 

[The Answ3r]

I’ve always looked at calves like this - if you’ve got the genetics, they’ll grow, and if not, who cares… unless you’re competing on stage. I do different variations - leg press machine, standing, seated - they’re growing a little, but I don’t stress over it.

My grandma’s calves put mine to shame, and all she’s done is haul buckets and dig in the garden her whole life. I swear she could probably out-calf-raise me without even taking off her slippers.

 

[allBlack]

Try what phil mentions about climbing the ladder on pin loaded calf raise. Do this for 1 year.

Mine grew and i had skinny calves


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