Calves Suddenly Stopped Growing, Overtraining?

Sup all, name Ryan, been training for a couple of years. I have a huge obsession with calves. My goal is 20 inch calves I always wanted them just so I can touch their beauty and cry of joy. LOL! My calves right now are 17 inches.

I train them till they shake and still add in another 50 partials. I like the pain I’m a sicko. I do 3 to 4 sets to absolute failure. The point where I can barely get a rep in and have to result to partials. I have done low reps high reps and high reps is the only thing that got them to grow barely.

Lately they just won’t grow I train them every other day with full force. When I finish my calves are completely dead but once I stretch them well and go to sleep wake up the next day. They are perfectly fine and they don’t hurt at all. Like perfectly new… I hate them so much because of how dam ignorant these f*ckers are. I could bring myself to death and still get nothing. Idk what it is I must get 20 inch calves. I need some advice. I really appreciate it all enjoy your day.
-Ryan

… so your calves (a notoriously difficult body part to grow) stopped growing…?

I’m going to give you 3 pieces of advice and one will be bad. It’s up to you to figure out which one that is

  1. calves grow best with Time Under Tension (TUT), often better done with negatives than iso holds to facilitate more weight.
  2. stop obsessing over a number. Muscle/belly size is largely genetic.
  3. inject synthol directly into the calve muscles if hard work and patience haven’t worked. Whatever it takes to get 20" calves, amrite?

Also, you aren’t overtraining your calves.

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I recommend you try adding loaded stretches after your final set - as a finisher. Done in the stretched position. It’s the Dante Trudel/Doggcrapp way of doing it.

That may add a new stimulus to your calves. Start out with a one set add-on for 30 secs and over time work your way up to 90 secs. Don’t overdo the weight/load, I often use 1/3 or less of my working weight. You may also try using it instead of partials. Below is an example link from T-nation.

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I love the DC style Calf training! I think it’s like a 5 second negative and 10 second stretch at the bottom. That’s super brutal and the best way for me to make Calf training hard since my gym’s Calf raise machine only goes up to 300 lb. Doing the stack with Max reps in this style helped me break through my personal Calf growth plateau!

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You mean dog shit training, right brah? Any links or articles about this type of training? Never tried that style of training. Appreicate the help bros.

Brah I got a story for that and it will be hard to believe but it happened. My calves started at 15s. My first ever workout was legs. I trained my quads and hammies and calves. I remember loading the leg press and did calves raises did a bunch of reps then as my calves rested I did loads where I let the weight stretch my calves. After like idk a bunch of sets then I put a plate of 35 pound plate on the seated and did as much as I did. The next day I legit could not walk at all. 4 days later I shit you not they grew a whole inch. Both quads and calves. Noob gains advantage for sure. Could never get those same results ever. But this made me remember, guess my noob lifting experience had some purpose. I only knew volume never knew about push/pull clueless brah. I’ll for sure try them and report back.

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Brah, I do a 4 minute TUT to the point where my calves are shaking to no end. I do that 4 times which is 20minute TUT 4 rounds and I barely rest like 15 seconds and I go again.

I agree brah, but I want that number cause when someone asks I can say it without bsing the measurements like the rest do obviously.

Lmfao! Right babe?

It seems I ain’t but does soreness always means growth?

Soreness =/= growth

You’re probably not using all too much weight if at 20 mins TUT a day. It’s not overtraining, it’s ineffective training.

What exactly are you doing for your calf training regimen? Did you measure and track calf growth before making this post? I don’t mean to come off rude, but you sound like a gym bro and have commented about beginner gains… If this is true, you probably have a fair bit to learn and unlearn. How long have you been training?

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You may want yo stop training them for a week…then start back up, this could accelerate growth

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I do really slowed controlled reps brah. I pause at the bottom for a good 2sec and when I extended I squeeze for a good 2sec as well and come down slowly. My reps end around 40 to 50 reps. When I can’t do a complete rep I will do partials then just bounce up and down until I feel a cramp. That’s what I do now. 3 sets giant sets standing to failure and 3 giant sets seated to failure. 50,40,30,20/ partials/bounces.

I tried the lower reps but all it gave me nothing. The 6 to 9reps. High reps is the only method that got them to grow a little after my newbie gains subsided.

I train them everyday after my workouts are done. My leg day starts with calves and ends with hammies and Quads since I’m very quad dominant.

Brah! That’s exactly what I thought. The reason I don’t believe I’m overtraining them is because they feel fine. My lifts are all normal I’m still setting PRs. That’s why I keep believing that they still got more in them. I’m on day 2 right now of no calves. I ain’t measuring either cause I will get an ego boost and want to train them some more. It’s tough out there!

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Your answer tells me you don’t track training and weren’t tracking growth. I do not feel as if I have any advice to give that will be followed.

Good luck with your calves

I never believed they were being over trained…but sometimes when you give your muscles a break…when you start back up again can stimulate growth

In my routine I train calves twice a week at the end of a quad-based and ham-based leg session. My go to is to set the standing calf raise machine at a challenging weight that I can execute with slow, controlled form especially on the eccentric (make sure to go into dorsiflexion at the bottom to hit the tibialis anterior) I do 5-6 solid reps at this weight and immediately get onto a raised bar and do ten bodyweight calf raises again with emphasis on time under tension and control, count 5 seconds up all the way onto your toes so you can see the bend in your foot and then count 5 all the way down to dorsiflexion. Do this 3-4 times. Then I get onto the treadmill on max incline and do 30 minutes walking putting emphasis on walking on my toes so I can feel the calf working (mimic going up a steep hill). Wear flat shoes with no ankle support.

I did the most miserable calf blast ever a couple weeks ago, and then @rugby_lifting did the thing where somebody says something tastes terrible and he wants to try it:

Get in the pin-loaded leg press and set it so you can do full ROM calf raises (“toe presses”, I guess?). Set the pin so you can do somewhere around 20 or so good, full reps (no bouncing). Now get 100. You can set it down and rest 10 seconds, but you can’t get out of the seat until you’ve done 100. It’s an insane level of soreness a couple days later!

I have no idea if it’s effective long-term, but it sucked. I do think calves have to be subjected to a bit of misery to grow, because we’re on them all day - they’re used to that. The most effective things I ever did were on two ends of the spectrum:

  1. 4 sets of 15, 3x a week, once standing, once seated, once donkey. Each rep has to get into a full stretch and full flex for 1-2 real seconds each. That’s the high-volume approach.

  2. The opposite worked well, too: the DC training calf protocol has you do every negative over 5 seconds, a 15 second stretch at the bottom, and go to failure for one set, 1-2x a week. That program also saw you doing a lot of incline treadmill walking, but we can probably assume something similar into a lot of bodybuilding programs.

I know it’s popular to say you get calf work from sprinting and jumping, but mine were actually pretty small when I was a lot more athletic. They definitely get worked, but not for growth. I do think you could probably get some solid calves out of sled pushes and farmers walks.

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Just to let you know my Calves still hurt nearly a week on. I’ve had to stretch them every day. I’ll let you know if it works when i’ve been doing it for a few weeks in a row.

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Animal!

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