Calves and Muscle Size

[sleepingdog]

So, is it fair to say that, genetics play a role in your starting point, as well as the ease you develop the muscles in question, but the end results are dependent on the individuals training, not their genes?

[Bill]

my calves are around 17" or so...i don't do any work for them. although my ankles are tight and i tend to walk on the balls of my feet. so i'd say they get a lot of work from just walking

[Mr Awesome]

Um....you guys work calves?

Why?

V/R
Mr. Freaky Calves

[SCStrong]

I have calves like a 12 year old girl ..... I am weak and worthless.

[5kgLifter]

Originally Posted by BendtheBar

So here's the question. Saw this elsewhere on the nether...

Do you think most lifters have small calves:

A) Because they just won't grow, and are truly a frustrating body part?

B) Because people are simply not hammering their calves hard enough, like they do other bodyparts?

All of the above, plus C genetics.

The interesting thing with calves is that they also appear to get denser, in some instances, as people age; it was highlighted, quite a while back now, by someone, that Arnie's calves didn't really have a whole lot of mass to them in his younger days but as he aged, they grew.



The calves take a lot of punishment; the amount of reps they do on a daily basis, either walking or runnning etc, and yet feel nothing from it...10,000+ reps, all depending on what people are doing, yet still no impact in the form of DOMS or any growth, means they need a LOT to trigger them, to begin with.

Taking that in to account and the little that other muscle groups are generally used but still trained with huge weights and at times reps, such as the back, just shows that there is a lot of disproportionate training to normal use occurring (I don't mean that in a bad way, just that given the ratio of using the calves to their weights training in comparison with the usage back muscles get in ratio to their training...neither adds up).

And then, there's genetics; some people just don't have huge calves and many never will. Body shape, height and muscle shape also all play a role.



People can only train a bodypart so much and if it's an unresponsive muscle group coupled with "poor" genetics for mass bb-style growth, that's a double whammy.




I sneeze at my calves and they grow; I don't train them and they still remain...I will never have skinny calves and I believe it's mostly genetic, on my part.