I prefer Tippy toe stair climbs with heavy dumbells. It’s kinda like a farmers walk but with more emphasis on calves. The calf is a REALLY hard muscle to train because it’s used to being under constant strain (think how much you have to walk around every day) so to work calves I’ve found you have to go beyond typical rep-set schemes.
But to answer the OP, i wouldn’t drop either heavy or light sets, but I’d emphasis the lighter (WHAT!?!?!) set over the heavy just because of how much more you can force the contraction.
Don’t quote me on this but I’ve heard that calves are made up of mostly slow twitch muscle fibers so they take alot more to break down.(low reps won’t cut it you have to go for lots of reps and frequency)
Thats why sprinters have huge calves because they do lots of reps (sprints) frequently.
[quote]Rainclouds wrote:
Don’t quote me on this but I’ve heard that calves are made up of mostly slow twitch muscle fibers so they take alot more to break down.(low reps won’t cut it you have to go for lots of reps and frequency)
Thats why sprinters have huge calves because they do lots of reps (sprints) frequently.
Just look at tyson gay’s calves.
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The gastroc are predominately fast-twitch (about 60%), soleus is slow-twitch (90%). Something to experiment is for gastroc, have your sets be around 20-40 secs (including the stretch at the bottom). For soleus, sets that last longer than 40 secs.
He weighs 165 and his calves are huge.
If he was 200 his calves would be enormous.
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It’s a sad world when 17" calves (at best) are considered huge.[/quote]
Really? Surely that just means your 19" calves automatically become humongous…
I think sometimes we forget that because the general public has such a skewered perception of muscularity and size, any serious trainee will end up really standing out as a result. Ride the waves man, don’t fight 'em.
Totally skewed. You have to view the calves in light of everything else. I’ve seen plenty of fat guys with huge calves,… on the other hand, I’ll admit that mine only measure 17" or so (absolutely shredded year round though), but I’ve had plenty of judges comment on them at contests,… hardly ‘sad’ when I win the overall
I didn’t say Tyson Gay didn’t have muscular calves compared to his peers, but sprinters… as a group… do not have larger calves compared to equally sized weight training individuals… generally.
Guys, the dude wasn’t saying to do Tyson Gay’s workouts to get his calves because they’re huge. He said to train with the high rep scheme of a sprinter because it has created results for sprinters. We’re not comparing a sprinter’s calves to a bodybuilder’s becuase we both train differently for different goals. We use heavier weight (whereas a sprinter would just do body weight more or less) because we want bigger legs.
We’re not looking for the same results. But, what the guy meant is that what sprinters do (high rep) gets results. So incorporate that general outline (high reps) into your training, but with modifications (weight) for your goal (size).
