Best way to work calves?

[Coleman]

Hi,

Right now I'm just working my calves like my other body parts. 1 warm up set, then 2 heavy sets to failure at 6-8 reps. I've heard that for optimal calf growth you need to work them differently. What would you suggest? I would like to limit how much I do because I'm limited time-wise.

[Lucian]

Use very heavy weights. IF you are going for higher virtical you go heavy, if you want size you go alittle bit lighter, only heavy enough so you get to failure, and stop there.

About 8 reps to failure, at the most go to failure one more time if you need to and your done, 8 reps.

So basically you are doing it right

[millertime]

you should do 4 sets for calves. Try working our calves slowly, thats what worked for me.
What I do is holding the weight up until it burns really bad, then that counts as one rep. Try to do that 5 or 6 times, you'll be limping out of the gym.

[runt]

Try suppersetting Squats with sissy squats. You get an incredible burn and your doing a heavy lift in conjunction with a stretch excersize for optimal blood circulation.

[Accipiter]

burn just means lactic acid is building up in the muscle, it's not an indicator of growth at all

[millertime]

Originally posted by Accipiter
burn just means lactic acid is building up in the muscle, it's not an indicator of growth at all

I didn't say burning = growth. What I said was hold the weight until you can no longer hold it up. Each rep should take about 15 seconds, nice and slow.

[Vido]

I would say a couple of strip sets and you'll be on your way. Something like 5 reps and drop the weight, followed by another 5 reps and another drop, and a final 5 reps. My buddy also recommended a one-rep strip set where the weight is dropped 10 times and at each weight you only perform one strict, slow rep. The basic point is hit them hard, but not for more than 2 or 3 sets.

[Lucian]

I made the mistake of hitting them too hard, doing 30 reps 5 sets

While I could do this as a teenager and see my calves double in size in like a week, I'm 21 now and tried it and I was sore for a week and my calves got WEAKER

Dont over train, and as you get older you have to adapt your trianing to what your body can handle genetically.

[GeneticallyGifted]

Originally posted by Vido
I would say a couple of strip sets and you'll be on your way. Something like 5 reps and drop the weight, followed by another 5 reps and another drop, and a final 5 reps. My buddy also recommended a one-rep strip set where the weight is dropped 10 times and at each weight you only perform one strict, slow rep. The basic point is hit them hard, but not for more than 2 or 3 sets.

This is a great method, Vido brought up. I know that I use this also with the apply pressure sets. Its a killer and mass builder for the calves.

[g-dot]

Vido and AFreakyMutation hit the right idea with the strip sets. In my opinion you're not doing enough sets to stimulate calf growth. I believe that the best way to train both calves and forearms are to use strip sets utilizing heavy weight but by stripping also getting high reps. I'm not talking about 30+ reps but for calves I'd say the beneficial range lays above 10 to 15 QUALITY reps. From my experience the winning combo is heavy + high reps which can only be achieved in a strip set and I think its a great misconception that "calves are like every other muscle groups and should be trained likewise".