Building Calf Muscle

health, bodybuilding

This article is going to be on one of the forgotten muscle groups. While your broad shoulders and rippling biceps are on display to the world, there is a couple of little muscles at the bottom of your leg that are feeling a bit sad. You see, they get hardly any attention from bodybuilders. And this is understandable.

After all, you want to look your best and be at your fittest, but you don't really see where your calf muscles fit in, do you? Well, if you want a well rounded physique, pay attention to this article and start giving your calves the respect they deserve.

There are two main muscles that make up your calf. There is the larger gastrocnemius (Try slipping that into a sentence next time you're at a party), which is where you will get most of your size from. It's the roundish muscle at the back of your calf.

Then there is the soleus. This is the slender muscle that runs up the side of your calf. Working on this muscle can really give your calves a defined look.

So what to do to get the calves that an overweight person would be proud of? Well, you first need to realise that the calf muscles are made of slightly different stuff than most of your other muscles. I know what you're thinking "Umm, Sean, muscle is muscle, what are you on about?". Put away the straight jacket, I haven't gone crazy yet.

You see there are a couple of different sorts of muscle fibres. And while I'm not going to go into that today, just accept that muscles like your calves, forearms, abs need to be trained differently to your legs and chest.

Ever noticed that really obese people have calves like tree trunks? Do you think they got them by doing 6 reps at the gym everyday? No, it's because the muscle fibres in your calves react better to higher repititions.

So what does this mean in terms of training? Well, it's (once again) pretty simple. You just need to put your calf muscles under stress for a longer period of time. So instead of doing a couple of sets of 8 reps, try going a little higher.

I've had success using 12-15 reps for my calves. I've also had success doing as many reps as I can for a couple of minutes. Stopping, then going again until my calves just give out. As long as you put in the effort that you do with the other parts of your body, you will see results. Just give it time.

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