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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.