I’ve talked to a few big guys recently, and they’ve told me that directly training the soleus is inherently pointless, because it does not really add to the overall mass of the calve. How true is this?
I could see why it would be important to train for an athlete (stabilization, support, etc) but is there really any need to directly train the soleus when you are just training to increase the overall size of your calves? Or is it better to purely focus on the gastrocnemius for size? Any insight would be appreciated.
I have truly awful calves, and I did have a theory for a while that since the difference between calf raises with the knees bent rather than straight is simply deactivation of the gastrocs, with the soleus able to work equally well either way, that I could drop the seated calf raises.
Result after a while: even worse calves.
It was a mistake.
Now, some individuals I don’t doubt have no need of the exercise.
I would say, experiment and see what is true for yourself.
Training the soleus should have the same effect on the calves as training the brachialis has on the biceps. I figured this out a few years ago and started hitting 'em hard (on separate days from the gastroc) and my calves suddenly started growing. There are few if any muscles that you should ‘not bother’ with. If you are actually trying to bodybuild, everything has to be developed. Look at how many people actually can build decent calves (notice I said ‘build’, because some people just genetically have decent lower legs), and then watch and see how many actually train their calves with the same ferocity as they do their chest and arms.
Training the soleus won’t make the gastroc bigger. It will, however, make the soleus bigger. Whether you should train the soleus directly depends on whether that’s impotant to you. Frankly you can just do standard calf raises and hit them both, or you can put a slight bend in the knee and shift more of the work to the soleus.
