deadlift

[John]

@hemann

how can you say calves are one of the most used muscles in sprinting? They aren’t even heavily used when jumping! As kelly baggett put it: Try doing a vertical jump without bending your knees and just using your calf strength. how high did you get? 2-3 inches? So, do they play a role in sprinting? Yeah, i’d say about 5% of power output comes from the calves. thus, as charlie would also reiterate- sprint work and plyometrics are enough calf work.

But, some people still have shin splints etc, so I say, yeah, you’re calves are too weak to handle the pounding and intense sprint training-- so do some calf raises to strengthen them.

IMHO an injured calf is worse than a hamstring injury. It may only provide 5% (according to your estimation) but it is often impossible to do any sprint training due to the force absorption calves provide. With a hamstring you can at least sprint and that is part of the rehab. My suggestion would be to train calves with high frequency 50+ reps single leg with BW rather than low reps.