Seated Calf Raises Suck, Says Study?

This idea might seem ridiculous, but I’ll break it out.

Skip To:

• The Study

• The Method

• The Results

• The Conclusion

• What This Means For You

One thing you’ve undoubtedly seen going around is the stretch cult…

I’ve touched upon this a bit here and there and explained why it’s mostly nonsense.

This “stretch proof study” you might have seen will demonstrate something else.

It’s really demonstrating the principle of neuromechanical matching.

For a little TL:DR of what this study is about, it shows that straight leg calf raises grow the calves significantly more than bent leg.

Why does this matter?

People struggle to grow their calves.

The Study

This study puts bent and straight leg calf raises against each other and measures the growth in the heads of the calves.

The Method

This is a within-subject design study, that means they pick one leg to be bent, and the other to be straight.

They balanced out between the participants whether or not each is dominant/not to prevent this from effecting results.

• They did a great warmup

• They then did 5 sets of 10 reps on each exercise with controlled tempo

• They rested a good 2m between sets

One session they’d start with bent leg, and the other straight.

This would go on twice a week for 12 weeks and they’d train hard.

Pretty decent methodology at the end of the day, it’s not really something you can be mad about (although the amount of sets is a bit excessive).

The Results

To break this down for you.

Standing (straight leg) calf raises lead to a bigger gastroc, and an insignificant difference in soleus size.

Straight leg also leads to a bigger overall calf size.

Seated (bent leg) is very poor at growing the gastroc, but trends to be better at growing the soleus.

The Conclusion

Knee bend can influence the amount of growth experienced in regions of the calves, and how it’s distributed.

The interesting thing of note is that this growth aligns with the leverages of the calf heads, which follows the principle of neuromechanical matching.

Straight leg has a larger gastroc focus, and bent leg a larger soleus focus.

What This Means For You

It might seem like it gives you two paths in order to grow your calves.

“I’ll do bent leg one day, straight leg the other” you might be thinking…

The thing to remember is that straight leg still grows the soleus well.

Now unless you’re trying to milk out as much soleus growth out as possible as it’s a huge weakness, I really cannot recommend bent leg.

The soleus has a very low growth potential, it makes up a small amount of the calves.

Focusing on the gastroc is going to be your best bet for overall lower leg size.

Hopefully you have a good takeaway from this post.

Ideally it means you now have a better choice for training calves if you don’t skip them 🙄 

Outside of that, you’re starting to learn more about neuromechanical matching, and how the CNS picks and choses muscles to do movements.

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher