Am I hindering my progress??

S

Squall

0
For those of you who don't know me I'm about 6'0 170 lbs and around 8-10% body fat.

I'm on a shredding phase right now to get better definition and seem to be doing ok with it. Of course I am trying to at least keep muscle mass the same or even gain some muscle as I do this. However no matter what I do I can't seem to get my calves to volumize.

It does not seem like there are that many exercises to isolate calves that you can do on machines at the gym. The only exercise on a machine I can do are calf raises which I have been doing 160 lbs in reps of 8-10 3 times. SOmetimes I will do a seated calf raise with around 70 lbs plus the weight of the machine which may be 15 lbs, 8-10 reps for 3 sets. I keep increasing the weight and my strength increases but my size does not.

I basically do everything you can think of for legs. My thighs and hamstrings are volumized well as are my hip abductors (I think they are called) from all the ice hockey. However I just can't get my calves to do anything. I have read body builders have this problem too.

Is this because of all the cardio I am doing? My cardio consists of jogging outdoors 3-4 miles, high intensity eliptical, stair climber, and martial arts type kicking on the bags. I will mix all these things and up for doing cardio around 30-60 minutes 3-4 times a week.

I won't bother putting my diet in here because all my other parts seem to be doing ok.

What should I do? Should I do more of my cardio working on the punching bags instead of running? Should I incorperate some jumping exercises or something?? I am worried all my cardio is stopping my calves from gaining size. I don't want to have 1/2 chicken legs.
 
Since you are 6 foot, you probably suffer from "high calves". Nothing to be worried about, its just the structure of your gastroc/soleus. Your achillies tendon is probably really long to make up for the extra long tibia bone length. In your case, its really hard to pack on mass in the lowerbody. Continue your cardio--thats not the problem.

I suggest explosive lower body movements such as plyometrics, cleans, snatches, jump shrugs, single leg bounds. You can see all these on my website and video preview.
 
I’m gonna go completely the opposite and say, do all your compound and polymetrics for your legs, and on a non-leg working day isolate the calves.
But do one at a time, this way you don’t need as much weight and you can focus more energy into your calves.
I work calves on a leg press machine and put thick plank of wood under the toes of my trainers.
 
Thank you for the advice guys. Sorry it took me so long to respond I have been out camping for a few days. If I have any progess I will let you know, thanks! As you can see there are not to many people who care about their calves. I only got 2 responses!
 
There are a couple of things about training calves that many people don't do. Train them seated, as well as standing. This will hit both the superficial and the deep calf muscle. The achilles tendon, especially in tall people, has a great deal of elastic energy. Make sure you pause for a second at the top of your contraction, and pause again for a second at the bottom of the contraction. This will take the bounce out of the rep and make your muscle do the work, rather than the elasticity of the tendon. Train them just as you would any other muscle, with this in mind.

One other mistake that people make when training calves, is training too heavy, then working a very small range of motion. If you can not get all the way up, and all the way down, the weight is too much, even though it may not feel too heavy.

Calf size also varies greatly due to genetics. West-europeans will very often have big ripped calves without training them. Then the rest of us look like we are riding chickens.
 
Damn you spanish! Gimme thouse calves! *rips*
 
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