How to Get Bigger Calves (WITH BAD CALF GENETICS!!)

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If you want to know how to get bigger calves then you better start with an understanding of how the calf muscles actually work in the first place. In this video, I cover an often overlooked but extremely important element of successful calf training. This is the concept of high tension spontaneous contraction. Almost every professional athlete incorporates this into their sport naturally, which leaves them with tremendous calf development without having to spend much time at all on direct calf training.
Here I’m going to show you a home calf exercise for bigger calves that can be done without any equipment at all. You can easily secure your feet under a couch or a stable piece of furniture if you don’t have the workout bench I’m demonstrating on.
The key to this home calf exercise is to anchor your feet under the bench or couch and flex your feet in order to keep your body upright. You will feel the calf contraction as soon as you set up if you do this properly. Begin with your butt sitting on your heels. When you are ready to light a fire in your calves, launch your body out and forward as I show you in the exercise.
This will demand a sudden and extremely high level of contraction from both the soleus and the gastroc muscles in your calves. The more your knee is flexed (as it is in the beginning of the exercise) the more you will be working your soleus. As you get stronger and can extend your body even further out against gravity, the more you will be working the gastrocnemeus as well.
The point is however that both muscles will be working when you flex your foot as shown in the exercise demonstration. Aim to complete as many reps as you can until failure for each set. Perform a few sets at a time and do this 2-3 times per week to bring up the size of those stubborn calf muscles.
Remember, relying on the same calf exercises over and over again despite the fact that they are not giving you the calf growth and size that you are looking for is not going to work. In order to get your calves to grow bigger you have to start incorporating an element of spontaneous instant contraction with high a high degree of tension. This is the perfect way to start that.
Doing 300 lb barbell calf raises if you are a 150lb person will do nothing to overload your calves. You are already carrying the entire weight of your body during single leg stance in the swing phase of gait. This is not a new challenge. What I show you here however will be an incredible overload for your calves.
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