hahhaa that’s hilarious…remember flo-jo’s body suit??
it’s crazy how your calves can vary so much. there has to be defiency as charlie put it. with all those specific calve workouts, i don’t know if it would specific to sprinting also. i don’t know what else to say but maybe put some silcone in your calves to lmake them ook bigger…maybe it’ll give you the next something right?
I guarantee you that I can calve press 135 lbs better (because I can calve press 600 lbs) than any other person who has never lifted beyond 225 lbs. Your right, with calve raises the heavier the weight the harder it is to go to full extension, but you should still work the muscle like any other.
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Drop your phone and a 8.5 by 11 paper and see which one falls down faster. The paper will take longer to fall bc of air resistance.
Even so, then I am still looking for debate on my other two points. Those being an elite athlete can become faster sprinter with heavier and more powerful calves then logically he could push-off the ground with greater force (assuming his neuromuscular coordination is improved with the more powerful calves) and then swing his leg forward faster.
wind resistance due to the circumferance of an object makes a bigger circumferance object slower to the ground given that both objects have the same mass. For example, look at skydivers, they travel to the ground faster when they are in a pencil shape with their head down and arms to the side with both legs straight together then skydivers who leave their wings open.
Supervenomsuperman,
take that 8.5 by 11 paper, and crumple it into a tight ball and take your phone or pen or whatever and drop them from the same height, and see what happens!
man yall are pathetic…everything falls at the same rate without wind resistance. get a book that is big enough to put a piece of paper on top of it and also get a ball. then drop it at the same time…the paper should fall the same time as the ball if it is placed on the book correctly.
Terminal Velocity
On a similar topic if you had skinny Ben Johnson versus Wide Ben Johnson and both weighed the same and had the same strength and power; it follows that, skinny Ben Johnson would win by tenths or even hundredths of a second due to wind resistance.
Now seeing as wind resistance will hardly be noticable among any two real world people athletes, let’s get off this topic seeing as it is a moot point and focus on the other points I had in my posts.
Strength® Systems, Inc. created the concept of frontal platform shoes. In regular shoes, 70% of the body¹s weight rests on the heel. Therefore, the calf muscles exert little effort in supporting the body. In Strength® Shoes, the heel is eliminated, causing the calves to support 100% of the body¹s weight. This overload works the calves and Achilles tendons with a force equal to 6 times the body¹s weight upon impact. The Original Strength Shoe.
Comments?
Have you checked your soleus and gastrocnemius muscles lately? Astronauts do. They participate in long-term studies of microgravity’s effects on the neuromuscular system. This is being done to help researchers develop ways to prevent the deterioration of muscle fiber, nerves, and physical strength that come from extended stays in space.
The gastrocnemius and the soleus compose the calf muscle, which is responsible for extending the foot. The soleus starts just below the knee, runs under the gastrocnemius. The soleus is attached at the ankle by a tendon. In the study, astronauts measure the strength of their calf muscles before and after spaceflights. This is important because the calf muscle is critical in posture maintenance and walking. It also helps in the pumping of deoxygenated blood back from the lower body to the heart. Because of the force of gravity, the calf muscle must be strong enough to serve its purpose. If it were too weak, we would have difficulty standing and walking, and blood flowing back to the heart would be reduced. Our work capacity and quality of life would suffer. Strong calves mean strong astronauts.
Before astronauts go into space, they’re given a needle biopsy of calf muscle tissue. Through a small incision, a needle extracts a tiny sample of muscle tissue. Upon their return to Earth, another biopsy is performed, and the two samples are compared. Force and power capacity, filament loss, protein structure, and other changes are noted. This information is used to determine how long it takes for microgravity to affect skeletal muscles. This could explain why muscle is more susceptible to tearing upon return to Earth’s gravity. Scientists can then design exercises that work to prevent injury. Magnetic resonance images (MRIs) will also be taken of the calf muscle to offer additional data for the study.
The astronauts’ entire calf muscle function is also monitored. A specially designed Torque Velocity Dynamometer (TVD) measures muscle strength and power. Torque is the force generated by the contracting muscle. The power developed is related to the peak work capacity, such as how high a person can jump. The TVD looks something like a reclining bicycle. One foot is strapped onto a footplate containing a force monitoring system. The system measures the amount of muscle force and the shortening speed while the astronaut attempts to extend the foot. It also mechanically extends the ankle at a series of set speeds while measuring the force. Astronauts on the International Space Station will keep daily exercise logs while on orbit.
Currently, calcium supplements and targeted exercise help reverse the muscle degeneration astronauts experience while in space. The results of this study will be used to calculate specific changes that will happen to muscles on longer flights—including trips to Mars and back—so that effective countermeasures can be developed to ensure a healthy crew.
[So do the calves not act as a second heart in that it pumps blood back up to the heart, important for 200m, 400m?]
CALVES: SIZE vs SHAPE
GASTROCNEMIUS VS. SOLEUS
A great set of calves can make a fairly good pair of legs look unbelievable. This is why all bodybuilders strive to fill out their lower legs with full, diamond-shaped mass. If you’re seeking more lower-leg development and you know how each calf exercise trains the muscles, you can customize your workouts to create more size, better shape or both.
The two main muscles on the back of the lower leg are the gastrocnemius and the soleus. Bodybuilders often choose the wrong exercises to accomplish their goals because many don’t realize that it is the soleus, which lies deep in the calf, below the gastroc, that gives the area its size and the gastroc that provides the shape. If you want larger calves, therefore, you are better off focusing on exercises that train the soleus: and if you want your calves to have more shape and sweep, similar to the sharp diamonds seen on many top bodybuilder stars, then you need to focus on training your gastrocs.
Your knee position-bent or locked-determines which of the two muscles you isolate. When your knees are bent at 90 degree angles, as when you perform seated calf raises, you isolate the soleus muscles. When you do standing calf raises, with your knees locked, however, most of the work is done by your gastrocs.
So when you’re working calves to add size, concentrate on exercises in which your knee are bent. Heavy, seated calf raises, for example, are excellent for building mass in this area-this was one of Tom Platz’s favorites, and he had some of the best calf development ever. For calf shape choose exercises in which your knee joints are locked, such as standing calf raises, and which focus on the gastrocs.
Feb92IM
[Come to think of it, I only did seated calve raises for most of the time, I only did standing calve raises starting this month!]
The only thing that will build the calves is some hard-core heavy weight calf presses which will build muscle that can transfer the force into your sport . Do not forget to stretch them between sets, and you should be working in an 8-12 rep range, nice and slow to feel the excruciating burn [I would not stay in this range unless your doing hypertrophy]. In order to transfer your strength to the field or court, you should be doing foot drills one to two times a week during the offseason to maintain your speed and stability.
The muscles of the lower leg are responsible for stabilizing the lower part of the knees and ankles. The primary muscles of the calf include the gastrocnemius (the W shape on the upper rear calf) and the soleus muscles(the V shape below the gastrocs) which both attach into the Achilles tendon into the heel. These muscles are responsible for plantar flexion, which is bringing the toe down towards the ground. This movement is a large part of the last push off of a running or walking stride, which shows the importance of stretching the upper and lower calf muscles before and after long runs, walks, and calf training.
The muscles of the calves are composed mostly of type 2 muscle fibers, meaning that they are built physiologically for explosive movements like jumping (try jumping flat footed and see if you can jump as high) and running (same idea). Type 1 muscle fibres are made energetically for long distance, low intensity activity,(e.g. walking) and make up the remaining percentage of the calf, and these are used for lower intensity activities like walking. Furthermore, when any muscle is “asked” to perform a movement, it will recruit the weaker motor units of a muscle(those made up of type 1 fibers) then the slightly stronger (Type 2a, a more endurance based form of the type 2 fibre) if needed, then the strongest (Type 2b, the larger faster muscle fibres) if needed to complete the movement. In order to recruit the percentage of the calf muscle mass made up of Type 2a and b fast glycolytic (those fibres responsible for size and strength), you must put the calves in situations where it needs as much of the muscle as possible, namely high intensity heavy weight exercises . The side effect of this training is that a lot of lactic acid builds up because the muscles are in compartments where the acid can not diffuse readily into the bloodstream, and thus an extraordinary pain develops. Nonetheless, the only way to progress in calf training is to push the envelope.
A good idea would be to mix up your workout so you can hit as many parts of the muscle as possible. So you should be trying calf presses on the leg press machine, standing calf raise machine, single calf raise (holding a dumbbell on the side of the working calf and performing a one leg calf raise off a step), and some seated calf raises to build the soleus muscles. It is also extremely important for you to do some work on the muscles responsible for dorsiflexion(bringing the top part of the foot upward), inversion (turning the inside of the foot inward), and eversion (turning the outside of the foot outward) so that no muscle imbalance develops. You can attach some tubing to the forefoot and attach it in the opposite direction of the movement you want to perform and do repetitions up to 15-20 to begin for a few weeks then you can progress to 8-12. These muscles are usually weak in untrained people and you don’t want to strain them too soon. For example, if you wanted to work your dorsiflexors, you attach the tubing to the top part of the foot and raise the toe end up towards the shins. You should be working these with your leg workouts, and can adjust the intensity of the tubing by changing the distance from where the tubing is attached.
Alex Mayfield
B.H.K, P.F.L.C, C.S.C.S
have you seen my profile… 
(as in my face and head in a side on view) aerodynamic… like a toyota yaris ha!!
The foot calf complex are also responsible for the high levels of reactive strength achieved by sprinters. If they are not “stiff” in amortisation then power is inefficiently used. That is not to say that the bigger they are, the stronger they are. Doing drills with emphasis on heel-ball-toe or landin only on the balls of your feet or toes with knees locked, one leg hops with knee locked bare footed in sand or grass (emphasis on ankle joint activity), on track wear a 2-6kg belt; will produce some awesome pair of calves. Donkey raises in the weights room do not compare. Try doing 2-300m of calf work in a session over 30m (weighted drills) 60 and 80. If proper technique is not used you will not develop in that area.
I agree…
A couple of things here.
(1) What about quality work? —Imprinting and so on.
(2) What about volume? —signaling.
(3) Function loss and injuries?
(4) Range of motion and injuries
Please elaborate
Sometime i asked to Daniel St-Hilaire why Nic is so fast…
He told me that one of the reasons is because Nicolas has very stronger calfs ?!
The main criteria for speed is the lever position of the achilles, how high the gastroc inserts and how much percentage fast-twitch fiber the calf has innately. I like what SVSM is saying because I used to have weak calves and have done hard w/o’s to correct that BUT am still slower than fast sprinters because I don’t have (in abundance anyway) the above mentioned factors. I mean, some kids can dunk @ 6 feet tall and haven’t done a maeningful calf raise in their life.