Donkey Calf Raises For Quickly Developing Huge Calves
You can’t train your calves with the same reps and intensity you do other muscles…
Calves tend to be the most difficult muscle in the body to develop because people make the mistake of training them with the same volume and intensity they do other muscle groups. This is, more often than not, completely ineffective.
Calve muscles need to be extremely dense (packed with an incredible amount of muscle fibres) because with the entire weight of the body to support and stabilise when standing and walking, if the calves weren’t such a dense muscle, we’d be tired and falling over within 20 steps.
To illustrate the huge difference between the density of the calve muscle and other muscles, I like to compare the biceps with the calves. The biceps have 40,000 muscle fibres while the calves have 1.2 million. It shouldn’t be too difficult to see now why the calves take extra measures to effectively fatigue them and get them to grow.
Enter donkey calve raises…
A punishing exercise, donkey calve raises are known to be the most effective exercise for building huge calves. Not only is this down to the great amount of weight which can be added when a person or two people hop on your back, but because of the exaggerated stretching which occurs whilst under tension from the weight.
Let me explain a little deeper…
For years bodybuilders have known that stretching the muscles under weighted tension can have incredible effects by making the muscles expand and grow far bigger. Such notable practitioners of this method are Arnie with his famed chest, and Tom Platz with his enormous thighs.
Because the knees are straight, and the torso is bent at up to 90 degrees at the hip, this immediately puts more tension onto the calves. Add weight (a person) and you’ve got even more tension and stretch – particularly in the bottom portion of the movement.
Donkey calve raises should be performed at high reps of 15 – 20 reps and about 3 sets. Although, some trainees may wish to do 12 full reps and 8 partial reps at the bottom stretch position for each set.
