Beauty

Benefit exercises

Developing calf muscles probably requires the most patience and effort from anyone in the gym. The main exercises for pumping calves are considered to be all types of calf raises. The most effective of them is considered to be the lift performed while standing, since in this case not only the calf muscles are loaded, but also the soleus muscles, the development of which will allow you to achieve a significant increase in calves in volume and give them a distinctly convex shape.

In addition, well-developed calf muscles are a great bonus in almost any sport, whether it’s jogging or gymnastics. Ankle flexion happens all the time in any sport: every time you take a step, you lift your heel off the ground and therefore force your calf muscles to work.

Standing calf raise technique

1. Stand on the calf raise machine with your heels out and your shoulders under the padded supports. Put your socks at a distance of 15-20 cm parallel to each other. Now fully straighten your legs and body, lifting the weight from the support.

2. Slightly bending your knees, slowly lower yourself as deep as possible. At the bottom, take a deep breath, and holding your breath, rise on your toes as high as possible.

3. At the top of the movement, pause and further tighten the calf muscles. After a pause on the exhale, slowly lower yourself down.

It is important:

Raise and lower the weight with only the strength of your feet.

During the exercise, do not straighten your knees completely, also tighten the muscles of the abdomen, hips and lower back to avoid unpleasant injury and increase the load on the calves.

You can pause at the bottom if you want to further stretch your calf muscles and Achilles tendon. On the contrary, for maximum load, without a pause at the bottom point, immediately start moving up.

Rise as high as possible, thereby more and more muscle fibers will be included in the work.
Never spring at the bottom point, this is fraught with injury to the Achilles tendon.

If over time the effect of the exercise becomes less and less noticeable, then try to perform the exercise experimenting with the setting of the feet, which will allow you to work out the calf muscles from different angles.

Options

• Raises on socks standing on one leg. In this variation, you load only one caviar. This exercise will be useful in case of a lag in the development of one calf from another.

Muscles worked during standing calf raises

• calf muscles
• soleus muscles

Alternative exercises

• Sitting calf raises

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