It seems that you’re either born with muscular calves or you’re not. If you’re someone who wasn’t, it seems as though no matter how hard your train your calf muscles, they never seem to really develop in response to training like the rest of your body’s muscles.
Here are some tips and recommendations to help your calves break through that stubborn wall of minimal development, and spur some growth.
Calf exercise options
Standing Calf Raises (machine)
Standing Calf Raises (stairs, floor or small riser)
Dumbbell Standing Calf Raises
Seated Calf Presses (machine)
Seated Calf Presses on Leg Press (machine)
Donkey Calf Raises
Take it slow
Whichever calf movement being performed, take it slow. Try 1-2 seconds on the lift and 2 seconds on the descent. Ensure that it is only the calf muscle being worked and do not use momentum to help you lift with your calves. Only assist with your hands if there is a struggle to complete a repetition on the seated calf raise, for example.
Hit those calves a lot
Basically, your calves benefit from higher repetitions. They will likely see gains if targeted twice a week with two exercises on each of those days.
The exercises
Start with Standing Calf Raises, 3 sets of 12-20 repetitions and, at the end of every set, dismount from the machine and perform Free Standing Calf Raises to failure.
After those four sets, perform 2-3 sets of 20-30 repetitions of the Seated Calf Raise. At the end of every set, dismount from the machine and perform the raises in the same position to failure but without the weight (just grip onto the machine’s handle to keep your balance).
Do any two of those exercises above two to three times a week in the described sequence, maintaining the burnout sets after each machine set. Your calves may be burning, but you should see results from this hard work and effort and then maybe somebody will ask you if you were born with those calves.