STRENGTH SENSEI BOOKSHELF
A New Direction in Calves
A classic book on rethinking lower leg training
If you want to sell articles and books about bodybuilding, focus on those teaching you how to develop the arms, chest, back, and shoulders. Charles R. Poliquin capitalized on this idea and wrote several books and countless articles devoted solely to arm training. Steve Davis, a Golden Age bodybuilder known for his symmetry, decided to fill the void with a book on calf training.
Davis says he always had excellent calf development because of good genetics and being an avid bicyclist, snow skier, and football player. At age 18, he had impressive 18-inch calves. Then he got to work, studying the anatomy of the gastrocnemius (upper) and soleus (lower) calves, and developing a calf block (to increase the range of motion of calf exercises) and a leverage calf machine. The result was that in just five months, Davis increased his calves to 20 ¼ inches.
A New Direction in Calves is a short book, just 32 pages, but it should be recognized as a classic because he was one of the first, if not the first, to design calf workouts according to muscle fiber type. You may recall the Strength Sensei using different repetition protocols for the calves in Muscle Media 2000 in the early 90s, but Davis’s book was published in 1977. Davis referred to this approach to calf training as “Calf Dualism.”
Davis focuses on just three calf exercises. He offers one workout, performed twice a week, with the exercises performed in this order:
- Seated Calf Raise (low reps)
- Standing Calf Raise (high reps)
- Donkey Raise (medium-high reps)
Consider that because donkey calf raise machines were not invented at the time Davis wrote this book, he advised you to find the heaviest guy in the gym to sit on top of you to increase resistance.
Davis discusses the importance of a full range of motion during calf raises and not using the quads to assist you in the exercises. He also adds variety to the workout with two positions of the feet, the importance of which was proven many years later by sports scientists.
A study published in August 2020 in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that foot position alters the calves’ training effect. The researchers concluded, “Positioning FPO [foot pointed outward)] potentiated the increases in MT [muscle thickness] of the medial gastrocnemius head, whereas FPI [foot pointed forward] provided greater gains for the lateral gastrocnemius head. Our results suggest that head-specific muscle hypertrophy may be obtained selectively for gastrocnemius after 9 weeks of calf training in young male adults.”
Students of Charles R. Poliquin will probably not find anything they didn’t know about calf training in A New Direction of Calves, but the Strength Sensei always believed in giving credit where it’s due. For this reason, today’s bodybuilders should regard Steve Davis as a bodybuilding pioneer and this book as a classic.
You can purchase A New Direction in Calves by Steve Davis in paperback and Kindle formats through Amazon.com.]
