re: Best way to really develop calves?

A lot has to do with genetics no matter what anyone says. Some people have larger looking calves as the muscle is longer. Some have these balled up calves way up the leg (Stan Efferding, and a lot of black guys).

Now, I don't think doing isolated calf raises is going to cut it. Look at the really heavy guys that lose a shite load of weight. Boom, big calves. That tells me you need to be doing heavy things. Not just a calf raise once a week. Weighted walks, weighted carries, weighted stair master. Kinda like developing large arms from doing a lot of back work.

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My dad won Mr Louisiana back in the day and the best calf exercise he ever recommended to me was doing raises each time you walk up stairs I.E. 10 raises with left leg on stair 1, 10 raises with right leg on stair 2, etc. alternating all the way up whichever stairs you have in your house, every time. It’s time consuming but it’ll make your calves fricking huge

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I think it was Herschel Walker that did this every time he saw a set of stairs. I did it once. Was hard to walk for about 4 days. Imagine it works if you keep it up over time.

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A lot of good information here. Thank you everyone who gave some input.

Going to do the stairs thing, walking up steep hills (whenever I’m in Central Texas), was going to use heels but heard those are bad for lower back

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i highly encourage you to atleast try DC training for 8 weeks after yo have done the stair thing for a while.

another advanced technique from Dante is setting the treadmill all the way up and leaning forward a ton and really try and drive the heal down on every step to get a great stretch. Do this for your morning walks. gets you a ton of volume.

First day of training done over the weekend, can hardly walk today. Gotta still get my mind right for my Grip training this evening

Will take measurements ASAP, didn’t think about that. Little bit of pain from Achilles but very little. Not much

Damn, guess I better back off then

1. Do them as much as your body will allow. If that’s 5x per week, do them 5x per week. Take a break every 8 weeks from that much frequency then get right back on it.

2. Get up on your toes and control the weight all the way down. I see so many people in the gym moving massive weight with shite calves. They use momentum and have a limited range of motion. Check your ego and get up on those toes. Doesn’t matter if you’re using hardly any weight at all. That will come.

3. Prioritize them. Get to the gym 10 minutes early and do your calves first. Most people put them at the end of workouts and just go through the motions.

I’ll follow this template.

Do you continue training the following day even if the muscles are sore beyond belief? And what do you think of calf presses with a leg press? And can I keep wearing shoes every day that help developing the muscle or is that too much when added with 5x a week gym training? I’m not a bodybuilder or anything but I had standing in the mirror with a big upper body and then having *relatively small calves. Plus I get made fun of for it at work. Lol.

Will do