Tuesday, July 26, 2016

PSA: Warning about the dangers of calf muscle specificity

This applies less to younger people because calf tears are more common in older populations, but it's good advice in general. If you're a power athlete, never undertake leg training without including some sort of power training for the calves in dorsiflexion and plantar flexion. Even for a little while.

I found out the hard way that training only heavy and maximal closed-chain flat-footed leg exercises relatively weakens the calves. In 6 months of hard training for my legs, I practically doubled my quad, glute, and hamstring strength, but I neglected calves because I supposed they would be getting enough training from other stuff, and that calf training was mostly cosmetic. I also added like 10 pounds of muscle, which is even more stress on the calves.

The problem is, my legs overpowered my calves. The first time I tried to sprint in 6 months, I immediately tore a calf muscle. This could be due solely to the rest of the leg putting down too much force, but also is due to the lack of heavier ROM training for the calves. They are strong at middle ROM but not end ROM, and one of them (right medial gastrocnemius) ripped (grade II.) it was also complicated by the fact that I had finished a heavy 5x5 session two days earlier.

It seems to be getting better pretty quickly, but the semi-obvious takeaway is to not get so obsessed with strength in certain exercises that, as an athlete, you are ignoring important sport-specific ROMs for medium to long periods of time. Even if you just sprint (if your sport involves sprinting) or do box jumps, jump squats with a barbell or trap bar, etc. When it comes to calves, shoulders, knees, etc, this is even more applicable to older athletes.

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