Perfect Calf Raise Form | Men’s Health Muscle - video Dailymotion

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Perfect Calf Raise Form | Men’s Health Muscle

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00:00 Do you actually need to train your calves? If you're aiming to build a perfect physique the answer to that is yes

00:06 We often think on leg day of hitting our glutes our hamstrings and our quads and we tend to stop there and often we forget

00:12 Our calves. Thing is our calves really bring our physique into balance and they're gonna give us that nice complete look

00:17 They're gonna make your legs look truly strong

00:19 So that's why we want to get a little bit of calf work done

00:22 The great thing with training our calves is it doesn't need to be incredibly complicated

00:26 We don't need to do six different motions. The truth is just one simple exercise can build all the calf muscle you need and that

00:31 Is the standing calf raise now?

00:33 There are two ways that we can do the standing calf raise if you're going to a gym you likely have access to a

00:38 Calf raise machine and that makes things nice and easy

00:40 You're gonna be able to build plenty of muscle just from doing that exercise

00:44 If you don't have that standing calf raise machine though, you can still get calf raises done

00:48 We're gonna show you how to do it with just a rack and a barbell and we're gonna do that now

00:52 So what are we actually training with the calf raise in general?

00:56 Obviously you're gonna train your calves and we're gonna do that by taking our calves through their fundamental motion

01:01 Their whole job is to drive us up onto our tippy toes

01:04 That's an idea called ankle extension and that's what we get to train with the calf raise in terms of the actual muscles

01:10 We're hitting we're actually hitting something called the gastrocnemius

01:12 That is the outer calf muscle and as the calf muscle that is most responsible for the really big

01:18 Bulky calf look that you see we're gonna train that anytime we do a standing calf raise when we're doing a calf raise with our

01:23 Knee essentially straight when you bend your knees you hit a different muscle that winds up being the soleus and that is not as

01:29 impactful from a visual standpoint now the one thing you're not training when you're doing a calf raise is

01:34 Athleticism a lot of kids go into the gym and they think they're gonna do a bunch of calf raises and all of a sudden

01:40 They're gonna be dunking a basketball

01:41 That's not gonna happen with the calf raise if you're trying to build athleticism

01:45 You want to think about jump rope you want to think about more athletic motions to attack your calves

01:49 But if we want pure muscle, that's when we're gonna go to the calf raise

01:52 So we've got Brett here to help us demo this calf raise Brett was formerly team skinny calves

01:57 But he's been putting in the work you see the results and he can put in all this work right in this rack

02:02 Yes, the machine is gonna bring us more stability

02:05 But we can come very very close to that when we're operating in this rack if we set things up correctly

02:10 So let's go through a little bit of what we have to do for that

02:13 So the first thing we're gonna need to get these calf raises done is some sort of elevation

02:18 Remember that more is better on this if you get a little bit higher up

02:21 It's gonna give you more room to take your calves through a fuller range of motion

02:25 So we've got a basic step and we've got that elevated up one level

02:29 Once you have that set up you want to make sure it's back a little bit in the rack because we're actually gonna work to

02:34 Lean into the rack once we start doing the calf raise so you don't want to have this directly under the rack

02:39 You want it shifted back you want at least I'd say four to five inches of room behind the rack that way you have some

02:45 room to work with the other thing we want to do with this step is we want to put some sort of

02:49 Weight in front of it. You can take either a kettlebell or a dumbbell

02:53 We want to make sure that that step is not gonna slide

02:56 Especially if we get up to very heavy weights and we're creating a lot more force

02:59 We want to make sure that step is not gonna slide so put like a 45 or a 50 pound dumbbell behind there

03:04 Just so that it's not gonna go anywhere

03:06 After we have that set up then we're gonna start to position the rack and what Brett wants here is he wants the pins

03:11 Extra high because the barbell is gonna wind up sitting on those

03:15 We want it a little bit lower than your shoulders when you're on the step. So Brett's gonna get on the step right now

03:19 We're gonna have to work to pick up this bar

03:23 But we want our shoulders above that support that way we can get a full range of motion for our calves

03:29 That's the very simple setup for this and then Brett's gonna do one more thing and then he's gonna be all set for this

03:34 He's gonna take off his shoes depending on the shoes you're wearing Brett has a relatively flexible pair of shoes

03:40 but if you don't if you're in lifters if you're in high tops all of that is gonna limit the ability of your

03:46 Toes to articulate and allow you to get that range of motion through your calf

03:51 So to compensate for that Brett's gonna take off his shoes

03:53 It's gonna allow him to get that fuller range of motion what we're really playing for on this calf

03:59 Raise is a true full range of motion for our calves. We want to get into very deep ankle flexion

04:05 Before we extend at the ankle and when we do that, that's how we're gonna build muscle

04:09 So Brett is now going to get into position on the rack. The setup for this is very similar to if he were squatting

04:15 He's gonna make sure he's got a lot of tension in his upper body

04:18 He's going to think about squeezing his shoulder blades

04:21 Think about driving his elbows in line with his torso keep his abs nice and tight and then the last piece of this

04:28 He's going to lean into the rack. That is what's gonna give him the stability if he's away from the rack

04:33 Then all of a sudden we have to be a little bit lighter. He's got to worry about balance

04:37 I don't want him thinking about balance on this

04:39 All we want him thinking about is focusing on the motion that he's going through with his calves on being explosive and by leaning into the

04:47 Rack that's gonna set him up for success. That's the setup for your calf raise

04:51 Once you understand this you're gonna be able to go very very heavy once he's set up for this

04:55 The calf raise is simple. He's gonna keep leaning into the rack

04:58 the goal as he's doing this rep is to essentially continue to scrape the rack as

05:03 He's going up and as he's going down and to be honest

05:06 This is going to put you in a really really good position to get a good stretch on your calves

05:10 Because we're leaning forward we get a little bit of forward lean through our lower body

05:14 That's gonna put us in a nice position what Brett's going to do

05:16 He's going to lower down

05:18 One you want to take about two seconds to do this try to really feel your calves as you do this

05:22 He's gonna lower down as far as he can everybody's gonna have a little bit of different

05:27 Mobility through their ankle a little bit of different flexibility through the Achilles tendon you want to get as deep as you can

05:34 Hold in this position for two seconds

05:36 This is that stretch position for your calves and that's where they're gonna get a lot of their growth potential

05:41 We've really got to spend a lot of time and attention in that stretch position after he holds for two seconds

05:47 He's going to drive up continue driving the bar into that rack

05:52 And he's driving up as high as he possibly can trying to really actively flex his calves at the very top

05:59 Hold for about a second over there, and then he's just gonna do the exact same thing so we're gonna lower slowly

06:04 Think about trying to get even deeper into that low spot hold for two seconds

06:09 and

06:11 Then drive up again keep trying to drive into the rack

06:14 That's the ideal tempo for this because remember we're not doing this for athleticism

06:20 There are better options for making your calves athletic and for building calf power

06:24 What we're doing here is chasing calf hypertrophy and when we're doing that we want this slow tempo

06:30 You want to pause even longer in the bottom reps to think about holding for two full seconds once he's at his deepest

06:36 He's gonna think about one 1000 to 1000 and he's driving up with control trying to get that really good squeeze on his calves

06:43 Let's do one more breath

06:44 all about patience on this live in that stretch position for a split second longer than you actually want to and

06:50 Then go up really get that good flex on your calves. That is a calf raise that is a calf raise in a rack

06:56 Without a machine, but it's still gonna get you that same hypertrophy quality and we can still train it very heavy

07:02 Especially once we get comfortable with it

07:04 So that is your basic standing calf raise done in a rack and the rack is going to be superior to any other option

07:10 Except the machine. Yes, we can do calf raises with dumbbells. We can do them with kettlebells

07:14 But in all those situations you have to worry so much about

07:17 Stability that we don't get to really just focus on going through that full range of motion and getting that really good

07:23 Squeeze at the top of every rep getting that good stretch at the bottom

07:26 That's why if you can you want to look to do this with the barbell in a rack just the way we showed you in

07:32 Terms of sets and reps we want to keep this very very high rep

07:35 You can even think about doing 20 25 reps to a set remember this with your calves

07:40 They're different from some of your other muscles every single step you take every single day

07:44 Your calves are getting a little bit of work. So they are a muscle that is meant to take a lot of reps

07:49 They are a muscle that is meant to be very high endurance. Don't be afraid to take this 20 to 25 reps

07:54 You can do three to four sets because again

07:56 We're on our calves every single day and they are working with every single step

08:00 We take you can also train this with more frequency than you can blast say your quads and your hamstrings

08:05 You can train this three four or five times a week

08:07 So don't be afraid to do that if you are really trying to bring up your calves and get off of team skinny calves

08:12 Then you can even lead all of your workouts with this because there's such a small muscle group

08:16 It's not really gonna interfere with the rest of your workouts

08:18 So that means you can get a lot of calf work and get very effective calf work in the rack

08:22 And that is all you need to get off team skinny calves. So go get it

08:25 (upbeat music)

Perfect Calf Raise Form | Men’s Health Muscle

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