What are the BEST CALF Exercises? (Science Explained)

the time has come to ditch the toothpicks here are the best exercises for building your calves according to the science welcome back Dr Milo wolf here today with wolf coaching PhD in sports science and proud owner of 17in calves these bad boys didn't grow themselves how did I get them well I use good exercises what makes a good calf exercise you ask the exact same things that make any other exercise a good choice for hypertrophy and his what those things are first we want an exercise that's reasonably stable something like a Bose ball calf raise

or some sort of drop jump isn't going to be ideal for the calves on account of poor stability next whatever exercise we do pick should Target one of the functions of the gastrus or the Solus the two calf muscles and ideally across your whole exercise selection or program you want to Target all of the primary functions of a muscle whatever excise we do pick for the calves shouldn't have too many moving parts that could be the limiting factor so so for example a squat jump where you're also involving your quads glutes and other muscle groups

probably isn't ideal because the calves are unlikely to be the limiting factor in whatever limits performance for that exercise next whatever exercise we do pick for calf growth should be stretch friendly and here's what I mean by that first it should allow the calvs to be sufficiently stretched in terms of the position they get into if an exercise doesn't allow for a good stretch it probably isn't going to be ideal for muscle growth two common mistakes people make when training calves are one allowing for a sufficient deficit to let your calves get fully stretched for

example by doing calf Rises just standing on the ground and two with regards to the gas TR neus doing too many seated calf raises by having your knee bent you're actually shortening the gas TR more and so for the gas TR neus doing a calf raise with your knees extended like a standing calf raise is going to be better in terms of lengthening that muscle the second part of being stretch friendly is having a stretch heavy resistance curve essentially the exercise you use should have plenty of tension in that lengthen position and finally whatever calf

exercise we pick should be length and partial friendly this is especially important since most calf raises are actually hardest at the very top of the rip when your ankle plant or flexors or your calves are most shortened and generally we want the opposite of this by doing length and partials we can circumvent this issue within most exercises fortunately most calf exercises are length and partial friendly and this is important because we do actually have one study that directly look at the effect of lengthen partials versus shorten partials versus a full range of motion in the

like press calf raay by Casiano and colleagues this study generally saw the best hypertrophy when using lengthen partials versus a full range of motion or shortened partials the length and partials group saw more hypertrophy than both the full range of motion group and the short and partials group at one site and similar hypertrophy to the full range of motion group at another site but that was still greater than the shorten partials group and so lengthened partials are likely a good idea when it comes to maximizing calf hyper another factor to consider when it comes to

calf training is whether or not the exercise you pick is or is not actually loaded essentially is there a load on your spine when you're doing your calf training for example in a like press calf raise or body weight calf raise there's usually less Force imposed upon your spine when compared to something like a Smith machine calf raise since loading the spine does nothing to increase calf stimulus we may as well avoid this if we can the final two factors that you may or may not want to pay attention to When selecting the perfect exercise

are as follows one time efficiency generally if you're someone who's limited on time you'll want to pay attention to what exercises allow you to do the most hard sets with a given amount of time generally exercises that use cables stack loaded machines or dumbbells will be more time efficient than exercises that require you to load the plates on a barbell or on a plate loaded machine likewise certain exercises just take a bit more setup before you can actually get started with the exercise so time efficiency is one additional Factor the final factor is microl loadability

certain exercises generally barbell exercises or plate loaded exercises you can adjust the weight by very small increments compared to set other exercises like for example a stack loaded machine or a cable stack where generally especially if you're using pretty low weights jumping from one weight to the next is a pretty large jump and might often take you months before you can do it having those smaller weight jumps available to you just makes progression week to week a little bit more consistent it's not a huge issue because you can just use double progression as a means

to get around that issue but if you have it a more microl loadable exercise may make progression a little bit smoother with all these factors in mind you may have quite a few exercises in your head that you think are good candidates for calf grth however before you can actually determine what the best one is you also need to know what the Cales actually do and how for example to stretch them the calf muscle or the tricep seray as they're sometimes called are actually composed of two muscles there's the Gastro nemus and the Solus the

gastr nemus has two functions the first is knee flexion like a light curl and the second is ankle plant reflection like well a c raise and in fact the only function of the Solus is ankle planter flexion as well and so because both the Solus and the gastrus are involved in ankle planter flexion doing a CAF ra is going to hit both of them pretty effectively there's a few implications of this anatomy and the functions of the muscles involved first because the gastr does contribute to NE flexion as well just doing some light curls might

get you reasonably decent calves another implication of the anatomy of the gas Ro specifically is that the gas rock is more lengthened when the knees are extended like in a standing calf or a c pH on leg press for example for the Solus on the other hand the position of the knee doesn't impact its length and so if we both want to maximally lengthen the gastr and the Solus in the same exercise we want to pick an exercise with the knees extended fortunately you don't just need to take my word for this because we actually

have studies comparing calf raises with your knees extended to calf raises with your your knees flexed and actually measuring Gast Rock growth to see whether or not extending your knees during calf raises actually does lead to more gastrock growth and to make a long story short both a study by Kim and colleagues and a study by our own lab in New York with Brad shenfeld has found that the gas roock seems to grow more when you do your calf raises with your knees extended like a Smith machine calf raise or any sort of standing calf

raise variation and meanwhile for the Solus there just doesn't seem to be any major difference in hypertrophy whether you do your caf seated or standing and So based on the anatomy of the calves based on the criteria for selecting your best calf exercise and based on the three studies I mentioned earlier what do I think is single-handedly the best calf exercise I think the single best calf exercise All Things Considered is going to be the leg press calfas or really any stack loaded calf machine that has your knees extended and doesn't place any load on

your back let's break the leg press CAF down first there is no load on your spine there also aren't really any other muscle groups besides the the gastrus and the Solus that could potentially limit performance hit Additionally the like press calf race targets the primary function of both the calf muscles which is to plant or Flex the ankle or essentially go in your tippy toes it's also stretch friendly there's plenty of tension in lengthen position it's safe to lengthen paral on because you can just react the weight and finally because your knees are extended you're

fully lengthening the gastrus and obviously the Solus as well just by getting into deep dorsy flexion compared to a plate load leg press the fact that you can just adjust the weight on the stack means Big Time Savings as you can usually use a pretty respectable weight on the leg press cafr if you're too strong for the stack at your gym you may need to do either single leg calf raises on a leg press or do higher reps whichever one suits you better personally when doing a leg press calf raise there's a few things I

do one because I get pain at the bottom of my feet when I do High Reps I typically do lower reps and two when I'm doing length and partials which is always I just aim to get my ankle to about 90° essentially my toes are in line with the heel what are some honorable mentions for the best calf exercises one great exercise is the single leg body weight calf raise nearly everyone has access to what it takes for this exercise all you need is some sort of stare or step even just your body weight can

be sufficient for a lot of people to get an infected hypy stimulus in doing between 5 and 30 reps you can load them even more by just holding on to a dumbbell and using the other arm for stability holding on to something else and in fact during the co pandemic and during lockdown and I was training at home I did these all the time another honorable mention is the Smith machine standing calf ra or any standing calf ra machine again because the knees are extended this still provides a full stretch to the gas Rock but

it is loading your spine a little bit and you may or may not need to load the plates which reduces its time efficiency a little bit now to answer a question I'm sure I'll get in the comments below can you still do seated calf raises first off you absolutely can I'm not your father I'm not going to tell you exactly what to do and what not to do with that being said it's hard to argue that seated calf frees should be a main stay within your training program because we have three studies all finding that

getting a good stretch in your gastr is important to maximize its muscle growth so if you're making seated calf raises your bread and butter just expect to lose out on some gastral growth on top of that these two studies comparing the seated to the standing cavies didn't really find a benefit to the Solus either so it's not like you're getting less gastrock growth but more Solus growth you're just getting less gastral growth for the same Solus growth so if you do still want to include seated calf raises feel free but I would say keep them

to about maybe 10 to 20% of your overall calf training volume otherwise you will likely compromise overall calf growth and in fact if you want to maximize the size of your calves at this point I would probably forego them all together anyways that is the video give the like press CAF a shot in your training and let me know what you think if you enjoyed this video please comment like subscribe let me know if there are any other videos you would like to see or if you have any questions about this video If you want

me to handle your training consider getting coaching on my website link up here somewhere thank you for your time today have a great day and I'll see you next time peace