Skip to main content

Do This Twice a Day for Bigger Calves

By

You don’t have to live with chicken legs

If you want to banish your chicken legs, your current routine of 3 sets of 10 reps of a calf exercise isn’t going to cut it. 
The fix for skinny calves: high-frequency training (HFT), which involves hitting your calves twice a day. Your body adapts to the extra work bouts by accelerating the recovery process. And since your muscles grow bigger and stronger during recovery, you’ll speed up your gains.
Your calves are the perfect candidates for HFT because theyalready recover quickly. They have to—you spend hours walking on them, after all. That means you can work them more without compromising your workout the next day. Other muscle groups couldn’t handle that. 
Increasing training frequency doesn’t mean you need to spend more time at the gym, though. The exercises below only require your body weight and a step, so you can do them anytime, anyplace, including your bedroom or an office staircase.
DO THIS TWICE A DAY
Perform the single-leg standing calf raise twice a day, resting at least 8 hours between sessions. Do this for 6 days in a row, and then rest on the seventh day. Repeat for 6 weeks.
Single-Leg Standing Calf Raise
Take off your shoes and stand about a foot away from a wall, facing it.  Rest your fingers against the wall at chest level for balance. Stand on your left foot with your right foot a few inches above the floor behind you. Keeping your left leg completely straight, lift your left heel as high as you can. At the top of the lift, pause and squeeze your calf hard for two seconds while pushing through your big toe. Slowly lower. Perform as many reps as possible with your left leg, and then switch sides.
DO THIS TWICE A WEEK
For faster results, work the single-leg hop and elevated standing calf raise into your regular routine twice a week in addition to your twice-daily routine above.
For example, you’ll do your twice-daily single-leg standing calf raise routine (from above) on Monday through Saturday. And then on two of those days—like Tuesday and Friday—perform the routine below during your regular workout. It’s best if your workout falls between your two daily sessions of the single-leg calf raise. 
Perform the two exercises below back-to-back resting as little as possible in between. That’s 1 round. Rest for 3 minutes and repeat for 2 total rounds.
1. Single-Leg Hop
Stand on your left leg. Bend your right knee at a 90-degree angle so your right foot is behind you. Hope as high as you can on your left leg. Your left knee should bend only enough to cushion your landing. Perform 10 reps, and then repeat on your right leg. 
2. Elevated Standing Calf Raise
Stand on a step or box with your feet shoulder-width apart. Balance yourself on the balls of your feet with your heels hanging off the step. Lift your heels as high as you can. Pause, then lower your heels as far down as you can. You should feel a stretch through your calves. That’s one rep. Do as many as you can.

Comments

Post a Comment

Ezoic

Popular posts from this blog

How to make any workout feel easier

By
How you feel during training is not always a reflection of how fit you are. If you know just how to manage it and use a variety of mental tricks you don’t just get to feel better than you would otherwise, you will be performing better, doing more and work out harder. Fitness is, mostly, inside your head. It’s first of all a mental battle you need to win in order to make yourself train, make yourself train on the level you need to, and then to continue doing it time and time again. Once you do get yourself to exercise, there are a few tricks you can use to make the whole process easier on yourself: Don’t think about how hard it is. We often concentrate too much on how difficult and challenging training is, magnifying it in our head, all the while struggling more and more with the load. The more you think about yourself not being able to cope, the harder it feels. Essentially this is the pre-game pep-talk technique, applied to your training routine: Keep telling yourself that what you ar...
Post a Comment
Read more

10 Best Spring and Summer Workouts

By
Though statistically we fail miserably at keeping our New Year’s Resolutions to get fit, there’s still hope around springtime. Study’s show that when you begin a few months after January, you’re not only more likely to keep your fitness goals, but it’s also easier to get motivated (due to better weather and the thought of fitting into a bathing suit during the warmer weather, I suppose). This year, there are some very intriguing exercises that are perfect for getting uber-fit and toned with stronger and leaner muscles. The theme of this year’s best fitness workouts are based on one word, “FUN!” No one wants to do boring workouts anymore. People want something that will be fun and that keeps you motivated to go back and do it again and again. These 10 workouts for spring and summer are just that – super fun, electrifying, challenging and will whip your body into shape in no time flat. 1. AntiGravity Fitness Possibly the most visually mesmerizing form of exercise is AntiGravity. Think Ci...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pre and Post Workout Nutrition

By
Pre and post workout nutrition is simple: one is fuel and the other one is repair. You eat before your workout to have the extra energy to push yourself during a training session. You eat afterwards to repair the damage done to your muscles, help them rebuild faster and grow. Depending on your goals, you can do either or both, or you can ignore it altogether. The before and after meals are there to aid you do all of the above. They’re not something you need if all you are trying to do is lose weight. Your body has two fuel tanks: primary and secondary. Your primary fuel tank is the energy stored from your previous meal (glycogen stores) and the secondary fuel tank are your fat reserves (fat stored in fat cells). Unless the primary fuel tank is empty, your body will not access the secondary energy supply = your fat cells. So if your goal is to lose weight and/or streamline, you really want is to make sure you empty your glycogen stores first so you can access the fat stores. Weight loss...
Post a Comment
Read more