Does anyone experience really bad doms on teir calves the next day after training them? I never use to get them but lately they’ve gotten so bad that i can hardly get up and walk in the morning . They usually last 4 or 5 days. Maybe im not warming them up properly or im over stretching?
I usually don’t most of the time, but I kind of have freak calves in terms of size and strength.
What exactly are you doing for calves?
[quote]SSC wrote:
I usually don’t most of the time, but I kind of have freak calves in terms of size and strength.
What exactly are you doing for calves?[/quote]
i do about 4 sets of 15-18 on the standing calf raise machine and then another 3 or 4 sets on the donkey press. Sometimes ill use the leg press to subsitute the standing calf raises.
i love getting sore in my calves, one of my favorite muscles to beat the shit out and walk funny afterwards with all the blood pumping.
i know it sounds daft, but when you sleep your toes might be pointing down, causing the tightness. i get this sometimes and it takes like 15 mins to massage it out again
caveman - there is this contraption the ‘strausberg sock’ that holds the foot in a dorsiflexed position for sleep. apparently it is hard to stretch out the achilles (for example) since most of the work is undone by sleeping in a plantarflexed position (as most people do).
OP - have you tried using a tennis ball to roll some of that tension? i very rarely get DOMS anymore, but i surely get muscle tension and knots the day after i’ve worked a muscle group hard. more gentle rolling with a foam roller might also help you recover (e.g., by increasing blood flow).
I had the same problem, got incredibly sore for a week. Soreness is nice up to a certain point but this kind was just crippling.
The problem is that your muscles swell up and squeeze the nerves, cause they are surrounded by a pretty tight fascia and there’s only so much room. This causes pain.
What helped me is training them DC style. Every rep is done with a 5 second negative and a 15 second pause in the stretched position. You do 10-12 reps. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong)
This way you train your muscles well, but you also stretch the fascia a lot. You’ll get sore, but not in the same bad way. Try it.
never thought about muscle swelling and nerve compression, reading like that it might seems dangerous lol.
Funny story about the first time I did standing calf raises and DOMS. I don’t do calf raises very often and I didn’t know how do adjust the standing calf raise so I just used the seated one until a few months ago someone was using it so I had to learn how to adjust the standing one.
The first time I did standing calf raises I used very low weight (25lbs per side) and a few sets of around 10-15 reps. This happened on a Thursday, on Friday my calfs were only a little bit sore, but by Saturday and Sunday I had so little mobility in my ankles that I couldn’t even walk flat footed.
Any amount of stretch on my calfs would cause pain. I had to walk on my tip-toes for that entire weekend. I’m not sure what happened but I’ve been doing calf raises (both seated and standing) regularly since then with out problem.
best invention ever for calf muscle soreness is the 5 gallon GOTT cooler. 15 min in an ice bath and you’ll feel like new.
PS dont get fancy and add salt to the water.
Doing some very low weight work helps me a lot with those. Not even at the gym, stand on a step and do some raises, at whatever ROM you can. a few low rep ‘sets’, just to get blood going there.