Usain Bolt’s calves are pretty small. In fact, he is pretty skinny overall compared to the previous generation of sprinters.
There are a lot of sprinters with relatively small calves by BB standards. So, I would have to side with genetics on that one.
[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
Do sprinters actually have such amnazing calf development, or is it just a combination of a ‘decent’ amount of muscle with incredibly low bodyfat levels that makes it appear so to the average viewer?
S
[/quote]
I’ve been around the track since 1996 and I can’t think of a sprinter who has calves that are even approaching impressive by bodybuilding standards. Biomechanically, sprinting favors skinny calves with long achilles tendons, as big calves present burdensome mass.
[quote]belligerent wrote:
Professor X wrote:
belligerent wrote:
I wouldn’t have responded.
Why?
So, you only speak your mind if you can work it into office politics?
I adopted a policy of not attacking T-Nation authors after I fucked up Alwyn Cosgrove’s thread a few years back. If someone had just watned to discuss calf exercises, that’s one thing, but I’m not going to do a thread just to shit on CW.[/quote]
Why would you take a thread that provides his quotes – with not a single negative comment added – and asks whether this is the solution to be “shitting” on him?
I could take countless authors and quote points they had made, where they had said they had found the best solution to some matter, and just as well ask, Is this the answer? And no one would object to my doing so: there would be no reason to. In fact many times I have presented positions of others as points for discussion.
Why is that not, in your mind, an entirely reasonable thing to do? If you don’t think it is, surely that can’t be because of anything in my post.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
belligerent wrote:
Professor X wrote:
belligerent wrote:
I wouldn’t have responded.
Why?
So, you only speak your mind if you can work it into office politics?
I adopted a policy of not attacking T-Nation authors after I fucked up Alwyn Cosgrove’s thread a few years back. If someone had just watned to discuss calf exercises, that’s one thing, but I’m not going to do a thread just to shit on CW.
Why would you take a thread that provides his quotes – with not a single negative comment added – and asks whether this is the solution to be “shitting” on him?
I could take countless authors and quote points they had made, where they had said they had found the best solution to some matter, and just as well ask, Is this the answer? And no one would object to my doing so: there would be no reason to. In fact many times I have presented positions of others as points for discussion.
Why is that not, in your mind, an entirely reasonable thing to do? If you don’t think it is, surely that can’t be because of anything in my post.
[/quote]
I attribute it to fan-boyism. there are some people here who take ANY criticism of what these guys write as “shitting on them”…as if they can do no wrong or are deities in human disguise.
[quote]iamthewolf wrote:
belligerent wrote:
Calf development is determined above all else by genetics.
people should just do what i did, be born with proportionally large calves. it was so easy.[/quote]
Fcuker! (j/k)
[quote]WP wrote:
BONEZ217 wrote:
WP wrote:
When I was over 250lb my calves were 20" without too much fat accumulation around them. As I cut, they shrunk despite trying to work them.
Maybe its one of those “grows with the rest of you” things.
Or maybe you just had fat there like you did everywhere else? Not a insult at all, I’m just saying if your calves shrunk while you lost about (just guessing here) 100 pounds it’s safe to say that your body didn’t choose to abandon the muscle in your calves at a higher rate than elsewhere.
It was just from rough estimates using my fingers to pinch the fat around my calves, it never really much changed. There probably was some fat loss, but my calves before used to look quite solid when tensed.
[/quote]
If you lost that much size on your calves, there was more fat there than you were aware of.
In fact, if you can actually pinch significant fat at all on them then you are carrying quite a bit. I doubt most people under 20% can pinch much at all there.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
belligerent wrote:
Professor X wrote:
belligerent wrote:
I wouldn’t have responded.
Why?
So, you only speak your mind if you can work it into office politics?
I adopted a policy of not attacking T-Nation authors after I fucked up Alwyn Cosgrove’s thread a few years back. If someone had just watned to discuss calf exercises, that’s one thing, but I’m not going to do a thread just to shit on CW.
Why would you take a thread that provides his quotes – with not a single negative comment added – and asks whether this is the solution to be “shitting” on him?
I could take countless authors and quote points they had made, where they had said they had found the best solution to some matter, and just as well ask, Is this the answer? And no one would object to my doing so: there would be no reason to. In fact many times I have presented positions of others as points for discussion.
Why is that not, in your mind, an entirely reasonable thing to do? If you don’t think it is, surely that can’t be because of anything in my post.
[/quote]
Is there a reason why you chose those quotes? As with all actions there is always a motive. I ask because articles are posted here every weekday; but I don’t recall you making this type of thread in the past.
PS: For the record, I agree with others who have stated bodybuilders, not sprinters have the best calf development.
I thought, correctly it turns out, that it would generate good discussion on a point which there has been no general cure-all solution.
Perhaps other articles don’t make statements similar to those.
I probably wouldn’t find a point in picking quotes that were matters of common knowledge or in accord with widely-held opinion.
[quote]waylanderxx wrote:
Am I only one who thought Bill Roberts was mocking someone with this post? I have no idea who though.[/quote]
Waterbury.
Btw, he must have been reading T-Cell Alpha lately. He mentioned Pin CGP’s for tris… Wow… Maybe all is not yet lost.
Edit: Oh, so no mocking going on? Hmm, gotta confess I thought pretty much the same as way did.
As for the discussion on calf training… Well, I walk up and down the stairs a few times per day and play a few computer games and they grow… So yeah. I recommend you all do it that way, too 
Due to lack of knowledge on claf training, I’ve been doing Poliquin’s claf routine from the “best of calves” article, and ive put on a half inch on my calves since then.
That article made me laugh, generic popularist nonsense.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
belligerent wrote:
Professor X wrote:
belligerent wrote:
I wouldn’t have responded.
Why?
So, you only speak your mind if you can work it into office politics?
I adopted a policy of not attacking T-Nation authors after I fucked up Alwyn Cosgrove’s thread a few years back. If someone had just watned to discuss calf exercises, that’s one thing, but I’m not going to do a thread just to shit on CW.
Why would you take a thread that provides his quotes – with not a single negative comment added – and asks whether this is the solution to be “shitting” on him?
I could take countless authors and quote points they had made, where they had said they had found the best solution to some matter, and just as well ask, Is this the answer? And no one would object to my doing so: there would be no reason to. In fact many times I have presented positions of others as points for discussion.
Why is that not, in your mind, an entirely reasonable thing to do? If you don’t think it is, surely that can’t be because of anything in my post.
[/quote]
The impression I got was that you were ridiculing the quotes, because you didn’t seem to be asking a specific question about them. If I was jumped the gun, I apologize and let’s just drop the whole thing.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
I attribute it to fan-boyism. there are some people here who take ANY criticism of what these guys write as “shitting on them”…as if they can do no wrong or are deities in human disguise.[/quote]
I’m the last person on earth to do the fanboy thing. In fact, I couldn’t disagree more with CW ideologically. I just think that, if you’re a guest on someone’s site, you shouldn’t attack the host.
No need for apology, to be sure.
I didn’t think it necessary to ask a question more specific than the general one of whether this was the answer.
I could have offered an opinion, such as that if it were me and I were picking athletes, my impression is that for example NFL linemen have bigger calves than the athletes named, but there can be merit to just putting something up there rather than coloring it with opinion right off the bat. Doing so would be rather like what they call a “push poll.”
Besides, it is not an important point which non-bodybuilders have the biggest calves. It was however part of the presented reasoning for the presented best exercise for calves, and so was appropriately included.
I have no experience with one-legged DB hops and really can’t say anything on that beyond that. I suppose I could have put the question specifically on the hops, rather than on Is this the answer? but actually it seems to me the same thing. If a person thinks the hops not to be it, then the answer is no.
I have some large calves and I rarely train them. I attribute their growth to two things primarily…
Being heavier. I have weighed at one time up to 230 (I am 5’8) and now I sit at 205.
Growing up, I constantly used to walk on my toes and run on my toes. I have to actively think about walking with my heels first. Someone told me this could be because of a shortened Achilles tendon…I don’t know. But what I do know is that these two things have made my calves large. Even to the point where when I wear shorts, people point, stop and talk and ask me how the fuck did I get my calves this big.
That is all.
How would a person know what their calves would be like now if they had walked and run differently as a child?
How can it be ruled out that they might not be precisely the same?
It’s possible to have bigger calves than most from pure genetics, e.g. the above pic. The dad of course has trained his calves, but the kid seems to have them without, most likely, having done a thing.
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
waylanderxx wrote:
Am I only one who thought Bill Roberts was mocking someone with this post? I have no idea who though.
Waterbury.
Btw, he must have been reading T-Cell Alpha lately. He mentioned Pin CGP’s for tris… Wow… Maybe all is not yet lost.
Edit: Oh, so no mocking going on? Hmm, gotta confess I thought pretty much the same as way did.
As for the discussion on calf training… Well, I walk up and down the stairs a few times per day and play a few computer games and they grow… So yeah. I recommend you all do it that way, too
[/quote]
hahaha man, I get the most ridiculous calf pumps when I walk up stairs at this weight now. I hope that means some extra growth!
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
How would a person know what their calves would be like now if they had walked and run differently as a child?
How can it be ruled out that they might not be precisely the same?
It’s possible to have bigger calves than most from pure genetics, e.g. the above pic. The dad of course has trained his calves, but the kid seems to have them without, most likely, having done a thing.[/quote]
That’s got to be Erik Frankhouser. He says his four year old lifts with him often in MD articles. Who knows maybe the kid’s been doing his dumbell hops
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
How would a person know what their calves would be like now if they had walked and run differently as a child?
How can it be ruled out that they might not be precisely the same?
It’s possible to have bigger calves than most from pure genetics, e.g. the above pic. The dad of course has trained his calves, but the kid seems to have them without, most likely, having done a thing.[/quote]
You bring up a valid point but in my case, no one else in my family has large calves so I really never attributed it to my genetics but rather my motor patterns. In another case, I was at the mall once and I saw a young boy, maybe 2 who had fairly large calves (while the father did not) and he walked on his toes as well.
As a funny side note: I found this brief question from a mom while searching google for toe walking and calves…lol
[quote]
I have twin boys and only one walks on his toes, always has. he can waslk and run heal/toe. But prefers the tippy toes. I tell him feet down and he does it, but goes back. He went to a pediatrist and no luck. Saw a developmental pediatrician for toe-walking and speech delay. He thinks its sensory. Any suggestions on what we can do about this. His calves are going to be huge and now its kind of looking odd and people are asking questions. Does anyone have any suggestions, or children who outgrew this?[/quote]
What if he wants big calves?! Haha.
Genetics can be a funny thing.
My best friend is Puerto Rican, and his parents, brother, and sister are all light skinned (not in the very pale sense, but in the sense of being similar to say the middle of the Caucasian range, with his mom and sister being somewhat in the lighter end of that range.) His dad appears to be either mostly Caribbean Indian and some Spanish or perhaps entirely Caribbean Indian and as mentioned is light-skinned; his mom appears to be mostly or perhaps entirely Spanish.
However he is rather dark skinned. Moreso than anyone without black or East Indian ancestry that I’ve ever met.
Enough so that I have to wonder if his dad was wondering WHAT THE HECK??? in the delivery room 
Now before anyone suggests that well maybe his REAL dad is different from whom he thinks and from his brother and sister, but this is extremely unlikely as other than skin color and age, he is remarkably close in appearance to his brother. Much moreso than most brothers, closer than any two that I’ve known personally, though not as much so as identical twins. Split the difference between typical similar-looking brothers and identical twins, and maybe there you have it.
And there was a bit of a family repeat in this, though not to the same degree: As mentioned his sister would be in the lighter part of the Caucasian skin tone range. She married a Caucasian who is also pretty light. I would guess her husband to be probably mostly or entirely of English descent, or at any rate he looks it. Yet my friend’s nephew, from them, is considerably darker than either of his parents, though with the difference relative to his parents being only half as much so as with my friend. Still, it’s enough to catch your attention.
Or, historically, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach was described as being quite dark, but his father (JS Bach) and mother were both light-skinned. So it’s not a unique thing.
Now, on your calves and the childhood walking style, you could well be right on this being causative. I am saying only that I don’t see how one would knowit (except perhaps if known from identical twin cases.) It reminded me of Steve Reeves attributing his calves to riding his bicycle up hills when he was a kid. How would he know how he calves would have turned out without having done that?