Does anyone else suffer the same problem?

mishima

mishima

mishima

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GYM workouts: Does anyone else suffer the same problem?

I've been doing my legs for around 3-4 weeks now (this is the only body part I can train cause of upperbody injury). Each time I do my calves on the standing calf machine I really struggle. In my gym the weights are indicated as 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. I can only manage 5, I do 4 sets of 8-10 reps. I do get a complete burn in the calves and they do feel good.

Does anyone else struggle to train their calves? Any tips?
 
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If 5 is difficult don't just jump on the machine and start with 5. Start at 3 and do a set of 15, then 4 and do a set of 12 and then put the weight on 5 and rep out 10 and then do another set. You'll probably find them a little easier.

I never jump straight into a hard weight, do lots of warm-ups and get your body and muscles ready for the load you're about to hit them with.
 
Do they have similar system in your gym with the weights on certain machines? I'm wondering what the increments actually are, possibly 5KG?

How many sets, reps would you recommend for building big calves, I want to blast them. I'll take your advice and start lower next time.
 
Train them 3 times a week if you can dude :) you'll soon see a big improvement! and as above has been posted do drop down sets to get to the heavier weights
 
mishima said:
Do they have similar system in your gym with the weights on certain machines? I'm wondering what the increments actually are, possibly 5KG?

How many sets, reps would you recommend for building big calves, I want to blast them. I'll take your advice and start lower next time.
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The calf muscle is the most stubborn of the muscles. You have to appreciate this muscle is capable of carrying your whole bodyweight all day long without complaining, it's VERY strong high endurance.

If you want to build big calf muscles then you have to hit them hard and often imho. Train them everytime you train, train them high reps and low reps and eventually they will begin to respond.
 
As you know I've only just recently started training them, in the first two weeks I could only do one workout a week on them cause they would ache so badly after workouts (for days). But now I'm able to train them twice a week. I will mix it up a bit then and see what I can do, big curvey calves look awesome!
 
Follow Chongs advice mate, it's great.

Calves are horrible muscles to train and get BIG. But train regularly, hard, heavy, low rep, high rep, and you should notice great gains. Calves are my most stubborn bodypart but with mixing up training gains are going well.
 
Calves are one of if not the hardest muscle to train(I believe this was the muscle arnie was most proud of because of that very reason). Everything you do from standing up out of seat to walking upstairs use your calves, they take a lot of stressing to exercise well. For the last few months I have been doing sets of 3 between 12-15 reps. This doesnt really seem to work for me all that well, and I was reading an old magazine in my gym (this was dated 1993!!) that reps of 50-100 are good :eek: :eek:

I dont do any where near that because lets be honest 100reps would take sometime. I now do 20reps on seated then jump straight onto the standing and do another 20, this is with less weight than I was doing before but doing that many reps on a high weight is too much. I did find tho that last week my calves actually ached the day after for the first time!
 
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