04.27.11
The Importance of Calf Raises
Calf raises are often put in the back-burner with most weightlifters, which is a pity. With a good machine, calf raises can optimize your stability with lifts such as squatting, or with explosiveness in sprinting and biking.
What is it for?
Calf raises are an isolation exercise that focuses on your calf muscles. The strengthening of the calf muscles provides a great deal of power for anything involving forward motion (the list is endless).
Great for:
- sprinters
- improving jump height
- explosive forward motion
- stability for squatting and dead lifting
When should you do it?
Unlike many heavy leg exercises, you can do calf raises with almost any routine. You can do them more than once a week, since they tend to recover faster than other leg muscles, but don’t do them every day. Focus on implementing calf raises at the end of your lower body workouts, especially days you squat.
The Basics
There are many different ways to do calf raises, but my favorite has to be doing them while seated.
This video shows a similar seated calf raise machine to the one I use. Generally, you want to keep with one set amount of weight. Unlike in this video, you want to be able to do about four sets of 20 or so, since you want your calves to have a high level of endurance.