Linford christie and Donovan Bailey have the longest achiles tendon/highest calves (in ratios to lower leg length) I’ve ever seen.
Calf raises will not improve top speed. Your calf exercises have to have a large component of reactive strength requirement. One leg hops with stiff knee for speed concentrating on active ankle joint landing on the ball of the foot spending as little time on the ground for 30-60m is more effetive than calf raises for sprinting. Along with other drills that have a plyometric actionon the calves are excellent. Very very low boxes are also good, concentrate on repelling the ground by actively “pawing” the ground. The anlkle joint should be used. Verticle hops over objects with an active ankle joint on touch down will develop the calf and achilles tendons ability to resist bodyweight and the ground.
Calf raises will train just the muscle increasing cross-section, but that does not mean that you will be quicker.
LOL!!! 
I nearly DIED at that!
The human head weighs about 8lbs on average, if we could cut down to about 2 then the man is 6lbs lighter, hell yeah he would be faster, more power to wt ratio!
:rolleyes:
Haven’t you seen Jerry McGuire? The human head weighs 8 pounds.
Whatever you get the point. :rolleyes:
So, with any sort of athletic goals, calf raises are kinda useless/inefficient? That’s Kind of the conclusion I have come to, but why is it that calf raises are unique in their uselessness? Cause they’re an Isolation exercise? For athletic purposes (strength training, sprint work, etc.) would you then reccommend work like Sled dragging, oly movements and other compound exercises that incorporate heavy calf use? Does this mean that ALL isolation movements are then inneficient at building specific (functional wince) strength? Should they be avoided like the plague?
You can always do a calve raise squat, where you squat and then calve raise at the end of the movement; however, its doubtful that you will be doing enough weight.
For all of you who say calve work is useless, let me pose a question! HAVE ANY OF YOU EVER DONE ANY CALVE WORK? HOW MUCH? WHAT ABOUT ECCENTRIC LOADING?
I say eccentric loading referring to Dan Pfaff and Michael Colgan.
The calves receive a tremendous amt of work because of the vol of speed and power-speed drills done. Of course all these drills have an eccentric componant.
To an extent. Doing standing calve raises with your feet on a 6 inch box allow your heels to at a higher angle than you could achieve by doing plyos and other drills. You are lowering your heels so that they are below the horizontal level of the box. This allows you to go beyond your stretch reflex especially if the calve muscle which you are stretching is being loaded with 300lbs for example (of a one-legged calve raise). This increases your ROM so that you have more potential power in the ankle extenstion (by pre-tensing/cocking/dorsiflexing your foot before ground contact) of the triple ext in sprinting! It also allows you to apply more potential force to the ground!!
This is why I believe Dan Pfaff does eccentric loading of the cavles.
Does he do this work year round or only in the GPP?
In the sprinting motion, don’t the tendons of the ankle/calf/foot unit provide for more elastic force than the actual muscles themselves? I remember reading somewhere that the majority of the muscle action occurs during dorsiflexion (landing) and that the achilies etc. provide HUGE amounts of elastic force during plantarflexion (takeoff).
(I probably got the two “flexions” mixed up)
Now one could probably argue that more muscle in the ankle/calf/foot unit would mean a capeability of producing more elastic force. Wouldn’t a balance between muscle size, and tendon elasticity be the goal instead of pure calf strength? power/weight ratior, etc?
I guess another potential problem is that the antagonist for the calve muscle must also be worked to create muscular balance and in this regard I can see CF’s original point; nevertheless, you still can work the calve muscle antagonists.
Palmtag,
You are correct. I hate to use animals as an example but I suppose it will serve the purpose. Cheetahs’ and Pronghorns’ (type of antelope) have the same top speed, but Cheetahs’ have a greater rate of acceleration because of larger muscle cross section of what is their calf muscle and quads. The pronghorn can maintain the same top speed for longer because they have less calf muscle size and more of what is their achilles tendon so they rely more on non metabolic power (muscle and elastic stiffness). I suppose to SOME extent we can apply this to human sprinters. GENERALLY (definitely not always) 100m men with greater muscle mass (and I dareadd large clves in proportion to bodyweigth) have greater acceleration.
The lion has the highest G-Force of any animmal on land so what does that tell us apart from a big animmal accelerating very quick? The Cheetah accelerates faster at zero to 40 m.p.h in just under 2 seconds. The fly is something i would just stamp on. Ben Johnsons calves were pretty big for a sprinter, but thin ankles of course.
We all know that eccentric loading creates higher force production bc the muscles are stretched.
From Zatsorsky “The Science and Practice of Strength Training”
Angle, degrees Force, N
140 (plantar flexion) 3,840
102 (plantar flexion) 4,630
90 (normal flexion) 5,600
78 (dorsiflexion) 5,950
Perhaps this is the reason Dan Pfaff uses eccentric calve loading as an exercise instead of regular calve raises. You can produce much higher forces eccentrically upto and including 140%. I am not saying the CF is wrong; however, why not try and produce as much force throught the entire sprinting motion. Therefore, should an eccentric loading calve exercise be introduced into the exercise selection?
I’m not saying I’m right either, but I’ve had arthletes running fast and I’ve never had an athlete rupture an achilles tendon.
Ouch! How about a blown pectoral muscle?
In all fairness to Pfaff didn’t Bailey rupture his Achilles while playing basketball.