Wouldn’t that mean a Hypertrophy phase on the calf or calf growth through training would be detrimental to sprinting?? I thought sprinters/jumpers still went through hypertrophy on the calf?
The calf/achilles is very important though… apparently it accounts for 40% of vertical impulse in jumping. It’s also the slenderness of the achilles that makes it more elastic not just the length.
directly training the calves in a sprint program would be overkill, sprinting, jumping etc are more than enough stimulus.
hypertrophy in general is rarely used in my experience (and also what Charlie says in CFTS) the apropriate somatotype is achieved through years of proper sprint focused training.
obviously these are general guidlines, everything is a tool to your disposal as a coach, use it to the specific needs of your athletes
I’ve been thinking about the calf hypertrophy a little more and noticed that quite a few good athletes have quite large, developed calfs. But they’re all white athletes.
All the power transfer of the leg goes through the calf, I think athletes of West African origin usually have long achilles tendons and therefore can store and transfer power of the leg more efficiantly through the tendon and don’t need a large calf. People with high calfs are also notorious ‘hard gainers’ in that area.
So I figure people who aren’t blessed with a very long achilles may need to develop the calf muscle more.
