Your fiber type composition, there’s nothing inherent that prevents the calves from growing. There’s no genetic voodoo curse cast over your calves to keep them puny for life. However, both training status and muscle architecture should be taken into account in your training program design. The calves require a high volume and a high frequency of high reps, especially the soleus. The gastrocnemius requires more moderate training parameters.
To give you an idea of the effect of volume on calf development, highly trained runners in one study had 20% larger muscle fibers (type I and IIa) than recreationally trained runners. This may not sound impressive until you consider that the recreational runners in this study were already running up to 15 miles (25 km) and training up to 4 times a week, while the highly trained runners were averaging 59 miles (95 km) a week. That means even in individuals training a muscle 4 times a week, simply doing more of the same can increase your calves by over 20%. More importantly, running is generally terrible for muscle development, which makes the results all the more impressive.
When trained properly, your calves should be able to grow about as large as your neck or your upper arms. This is the case for almost all elite male drug-free bodybuilders. In women, the calves actually have a somewhat higher growth potential than the upper arms. Only if your ankles are small compared to your wrist do you have a legitimate reason to have calves that are much smaller than your arms and neck.
By small, I mean that your ankles are significantly smaller than 125% of your wrists as a man, or 120% of your wrists as a woman. (These are also almost exactly the measurements corresponding to the classical Graecian ideal and various other templates of a perfect physique.) So no more excuses. Your calves aren’t small because of genetics. Your calves are small because of problems in the following two areas.
#calf #muscle #bodybuilding #sport #weights #gym #f #fitness #healthyfood #healthylifestyle #lifestyle #blogger #workout #training #trainhard #personaltraining #coach #teamisak #bahrain @degalpinto @mohd210293 @arrun87
