The Calves – The Misunderstood Muscle Group
Unless they are unusually blessed with good genetics, most bodybuilders find that achieving good calf development is a frustrating and confusing process. Initially, these bodybuilders can get fair results with 3-4 sets of 8-15 repetitions on the standing calf raise and seated calf raise exercises. However, eventually, additional calf muscle growth begins to diminish. Why is this? Well, it's because the calf muscles are misunderstood. Many bodybuilders don't understand that their calf muscles are different in composition from their other bodypart muscles.
This difference in composition is due to the muscle fiber type distribution in your calf muscles. The calf muscle group is made up of two muscles – the gastrocnemius and soleus. The gastrocnemius has two heads: medial (inner) and lateral (outer). Research studies have been done on the percentage muscle fiber content of each head. The gastrocnemius medial head has 50.5% Type II-Fast Twitch fibers and 49.5% Type I-Slow Twitch fibers. The lateral head of the gastrocnemius has 57% Type II-Fast Twitch fibers and 43% Type I-Slow Twitch fibers.
The soleus has 20% Type II-Fast Twitch fibers and 80% Type I-Slow Twitch fibers. However, I have seen figures given by other sources with the Type I-Slow Twitch fiber percentage being as high as 90%.
Type I – Slow Twitch fibers are recruited and activated for aerobic activities involving light loads for extended periods. These fibers are not capable of high force production, but are fatigue resistant and suited for high endurance activities.
Type II – Fast Twitch fibers are used when speed or high forces are required. These fibers are not capable of high endurance and fatigue quickly.
These figures give us an understanding of the differences that calf muscles have in relation to other muscle groups. For instance, biceps average 55% Type II (Fast Twitch) and the triceps average 60% Type II. Type II fibers will hypertrophy or get larger than Type I fibers. Therefore, if you have a predominance of Type II fibers in a muscle, that muscle has a greater potential to hypertrophy when weight trained.
The soleus is primarily a slow twitch fiber muscle designed for high endurance. The soleus fibers recover very quickly since they are high in mitochondrial density and are very resilient. Since the soleus is capable of sustaining contractions for extended periods (endurance), then higher repetitions in the 20 to 100 range must be used to fatigue the Type I-Slow Twitch fibers to stimulate growth.
On the other hand, the gastrocnemius has a nearly equal distribution of fast and slow twitch muscle. Since the fast twitch muscle in the gastrocnemius is around 50%, one would think that training them in the traditional 8-20 repetition range would suffice. However, that would be ignoring the other 50% of fibers that are slow twitch. These muscle fibers must also be trained – but at higher repetitions in the 20-100 repetition range. This means that the gastrocnemius must be trained with two different rep ranges if you want to maximize growth.
Hopefully, you now understand that a traditional or conventional approach of training calves in the 8-12 rep range will not elicit the optimum muscle development of your calves and that a more sophisticated approach must be used involving two different repetition ranges.
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