Easy home calf exercises

A Thing or Two about Our Calf Muscles

As we all know, proper exercising can help you develop many of your muscles quickly and effectively. Therefore, there are numerous exercise programs out there which can do the same for you, regardless of the group of muscles you are dealing with. Once talking about our calf muscles, we need to emphasize their importance. Namely, these two muscles, each pair located on the lower back parts of our legs, are incredibly important muscles of our proper mobility and functioning in general. Calf muscles provide support for the rest of our leg and for the foot as well, making us capable of standing or running for a long time. Of course, this is only true if our calf muscles are in good shape. Thus, before being able to use these muscles intensively, you need to know how to train them and develop them right. These are sensitive muscles, prone to injury, thus you need to be very careful. Even though these are one of the most useful muscle groups involved in athletic sports, calf muscles easily get hurt and these mishaps are quite common with athletes.

How To Train Your Calf Muscles?

These exercises will involve weightlifting as well. Before indulging into them, make sure you warm up properly as to avoid injuries before strengthening your calfmuscles.

The first exercise involves you standing on a step or any elevated, flat space, with the balls of your feet. The other parts of your feet should be hanging in the air. Then, while holding one dumbbell in each hand, you are to lift your heels up and tense your calf muscles. Then, after holding this position for a split second, you are to lower the heels below the initial level, and repeat the whole exercise. Alternatively, once you gain more strength, you might be capable of performing this exercise with a single leg. Nevertheless, be careful regarding your balance and support yourself with your hands.

For the second exercise you will have to sit on a bench, close to the edge of it. Then, you are to place weights upon your knees. After doing this, while resting your hands on the bench, providing you support, you are to push your feet off the ground, transferring the weight on your toes. Once you feel your calf muscles get tensed, hold it for several seconds before returning to the initial position.

If you happen to have an exercise ball in your household, you can use it for these purposes as well. While holding weights in your hands, you are to press onto the ball with your chest, pushing it onto a wall, and perform the same feet movement as in the first exercise.

Ten or fifteen repetitions will suffice for each exercise.