Hi all, this past winter i went through a 5x5 linear progression and made some solid progress on top of doing Waterbury’s high frequency calf program. I made some gains in my calves, but not enough (didn’t do a great job with the program, and though i gained around 20 lbs by the spring time, after cutting down again i had basically gained only 10-12ish lbs of muscle).
anyway, this got me thinking: this coming offseason from baseball i will be trying to bring up my calves and forearms more, but i would like to focus on one at a time. If i spent 6 weeks doing John Roman’s “diamonds in the rough” program and made progress, what would i need to do to maintain those gains? Would it just be a matter of maintaining weight, or would i also need to get in some calf work on the side?
[quote]mnmax wrote:
Hi all, this past winter i went through a 5x5 linear progression and made some solid progress on top of doing Waterbury’s high frequency calf program. I made some gains in my calves, but not enough (didn’t do a great job with the program, and though i gained around 20 lbs by the spring time, after cutting down again i had basically gained only 10-12ish lbs of muscle).[/quote]
You gained 10-12 pounds of muscle over a few months? That’s pretty solid work.
Once you’ve built muscle, whether it’s on your calves, lats, pecs, or biceps, it’s there to stay as long as you don’t allow the muscle to atrophy. Atrophy can occur when you don’t get sufficient calories, protein or carbs, when you grossly and legitimately overtrain the muscles (the calves of marathon runners will often atrophy after a race), or if you neglect to train/maintain strength in the muscles (stop training your back and see what happens to your overall size).
Bottom line is that if you want to maintain gains after a specialization program, you’ll need to at least do some direct maintenance work for that bodypart. Depending on how well you respond to training, that could be a few sets once a week, a few sets each workout, or somewhere in the middle.