Calves Exercise Selection Guide
Stick to stable exercises with lots of ROM, that are limited by the target muscle group and that you can load properly. For calves, this includes the unilateral/bilateral stair calf raise, machine/leg press calf raises and smith machine/safety bar calf raises. If your goal is growth, you’re best off avoiding too many seated calf raises and 50+ reps of partial ROM calf raises. Read on to find out why.
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N.B. Throughout this post, I’ll refer to both the soleus and gastrocnemius muscles as the “calves”.
What do the calves do?
The calves have two functions we need to care about if our goal is growing them; knee flexion (like a leg curl) and ankle plantarflexion (like a calf raise). Specifically, the gastrocnemius does both, while the soleus only does ankle plantarflexion. This means that knee angle will impact how much the gastrocnemius is stimulated and grows.
Emerging literature is beginning to paint the picture that training a muscle group at longer lengths (i.e. when a muscle is more stretched) is an important component of optimizing muscle growth. For the calves, this means making sure to predominantly use calf exercises where the knee is extended, maximising the length of the gastrocnemius. To maximise the stretch on your gastrocnemius, lock-out your knees when performing calf raises and go all the way down.
Unilateral Stair Calf Raise
The Unilateral Stair Calf Raise makes a great heavy calf exercise that requires virtually no equipment. I would recommend using your hands to stabilize yourself; since you’re not using a machine, balance can sometimes be problematic. For most people, this exercise will be hard enough for the 5-10 or 10-20 rep range; if you’ve got a strong calf strength:bodyweight ratio, you might need to use some external load, like holding a dumbbell.
Bilateral Stair Calf Raise
This exercise has most of the same benefits as the unilateral calf raise, but is substantially easier. It’s a solid higher rep (10-20 or 20-30) range option, or can be loaded more heavily, ideally using a dip/pull-up belt to minimize axial loading and optimize SFR.
Machine Calf Raise (w/ Knees Straight)
These can be a solid option if you struggle with the instability of bodyweight calf raises. They can also be helpful if bodyweight calf raises are either way too easy or way too hard. That being said, machines can be hit-or-miss – you’ll need to try the machines your gym has to see whether they’re any good.
Leg Press Calf Raise
A decent alternative to machine calf raises is leg press calf raises. Most gyms have a leg press. Most of the leg press machines can be used productively for calf raises.
Smith Machine or Safety Bar Calf Raises
The Smith Machine and Safety Bar are likely slightly superior to using dumbbells or other bars to load your calf raises. This is because they are either more stable (when using a smith machine) or allow you to use your hands to stabilize yourself (when using a safety bar). Make sure you use a box or step of some kind to get a full range of motion.
What NOT to do
Lots of Seated Calf Raises
Because the gastrocnemius inserts at the knee and serves to flex the knee, performing calf raises while seated/with the knee bent/flexed shortens the gastrocnemius. This is not ideal for growing the gastrocnemius. Unfortunately, bending the knee also probably doesn’t grow the soleus more than it would when the knee was extended, so doing mostly standing calf raises/calf raises with the knees extended is a great idea.
50+ reps of partial calf raises
Based on the available literature, we’re fairly confident that full ROM is better for muscle growth than partial ROM. We’re also somewhat confident that there is a bottom end for maximally effective intensities (%1RM) for muscle growth, which is likely around 20-30% 1RM. Above that threshold, sets are roughly equivalent as far as how much muscle growth they induce. Doing sets of 50+ reps on partial ROM calf raises is almost certainly not an ideal way of growing the calves.
That wraps up the calves.
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