What do calf raises work out

Holding a dumbbell in each hand while doing raises will help prepare the calf to handle the extra pressure put on it during sports like running.

Stand on a step so your heel can drop lower than the rest of your foot at the bottom of the movement. This provides a greater range of motion in your calf during the exercise. You can hold dumbbells to make this variation tougher, but it can be tricky to keep your balance when holding dumbbells that are too heavy. Bending your knees slightly when doing any kind of calf raises switches the workload from the gastrocnemius — the larger calf muscle — to the soleus, which might be smaller but is no less important.

Turn the toes inward slightly and you'll work the inner calf muscles more; turn them outward slightly and you place more tension on the outer calf muscles. You can increase the range of motion of the calf raise by doing it on a step or stair. This allows your heels to drop down further during the eccentric portion of the exercise. To do it, stand with the balls of your feet on the step or stair, push your heels up as far as you can, then lower them slowly until your heels are just below the top of the step or stair.

Once you feel a good stretch in your calf muscles stretch, not pain , return to the starting position. Use dumbbells , kettlebells , or even gallons of water to add weight to your raises. This can help you build strength in your calves as they work harder to lift the additional weight. Hold the weights at your side during this movement with your arms slack. Avoid these mistakes to keep your standing calf raises safe and effective. Stretching is perhaps the most important component of calf exercises as it prevents exercise-related cramping and reduced flexibility.

Spend five to 10 minutes stretching your calves before training to avoid these issues. Control the tempo of the exercise to see the full benefits of standing calf raises. Once you've mastered calf raises, you can perform them with more power and force to gain maximum benefits from this exercise.

To stay properly balanced while performing calf raises, keep your chest up and stand tall. Leaning too far forward redistributes your body weight and the weight of your dumbbells, if you're using them , which can cause back pain and reduce the effectiveness of the exercise. To prevent injury during the exercise, focus on moving slowly, keeping a soft bend in the knees, and pushing your shoulders back to prevent rounding in the spine.

If you experience pain, stop the movement and consult your doctor. For sedentary and lightly active people, calf muscles can be overactive tight due to a lack of flexibility training.

With proper stretching, standing calf raises can be a beneficial part of a regular strength training routine. Do this exercise 10 to 30 times, starting at the lower end of this range and working your way to the higher end as your calves become stronger. Incorporate this move and similar ones into one of these popular workouts:. Get exercise tips to make your workouts less work and more fun.

Cleveland Clinic. Pulled calf muscle. Well, we're here to tell you that theory is nonsense. It's not that you can't strength train your calves, it's more a case of finding the right exercise to target them, and there's no better exercise to begin with than calf raises. What's more, as long as you've got the correct exercise it doesn't really matter what weight you perform your calf raises with. A study published in the journal Physiological Reports , strength trainer and exercise scientist Brad Schoenfeld got 30 untrained students to do calf raises in different ways on different legs.

On one leg calf raises were performed with a weight that they could comfortably manage for 6 to 10 reps, while they trained their other leg with a load that allowed 20 to 30 reps. After 8 weeks of strength training, Schoenfeld found that their muscle thickness had increased just as much in the calves trained with light weights and many repetitions, as in the calves trained with heavy weights and few repetitions.

So pick up a heavy, or light, weight and let's get going on those calf raises. We promise you, your legs will thank you later. We'll get onto how to train your calf muscles in a minute, but before we tell you how to train them it's probably not a bad idea to find out what muscles you're going to be training. Your calves have two primary muscles: the soleus and the gastrocnemius. Lift your heels off the floor to flex your calf muscle.

Pause for moment, then slowly return to the floor. Calf raises are great for boosting ankle stability and overall balance. Plus calf strength! You should feel a burn but not pain by the end of each set; if not, up your rep count, Baston says. Form tips: The one thing to watch is your ankles—if this area is weak, your ankles may roll in or out which can create imbalances and lead to injury at the ankles and knees, Baston explains.

If this is the case, do ankle-strengthening exercises before you start bringing calf raises in to your workouts. And you can stand close to a wall for balance if necessary. Calf raises primarily work, you guessed it, the calf muscle.