Quote:
Originally Posted by hannukah harry
if he wants to see real development he probably will need more than 1 exercise. unlike our other muscles, the calves...do not exhaust easily. if you really want to hit them and hit them good, you'll often need more sets than normal because they are so difficult to exhaust. a prime example of this is the govenator. he was huge and ripped and but had lagging calves because he treated them like his other muscles. until he started working them overtime, getting them burning and then going even harder he wasn't able to get them to develop well. carrying our weight is nothing to them.
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I, too, will respectfully degree. If you employ a high enough intensity then more than one exercise for you calves is unnecessary. I only do 1 working set of calf raises but I do them to failure, until I can't do another complete rep nor even hold the weight up any longer. And believe me after this they burn like crazy, takes a second before I can even walk again. After that they're exhausted, no use in working them again because that will just delay the rebuilding process.
And yes, I read the same thing about Arnold's calves. That not until he went to train with so-and-so in South Africa (I believe) and began doing large number of sets for his calves did they start to respond and get bigger. And I also used to do just what he said to do, I would do 5 sets of approx. 15 reps of calf raises twice a week. Most people will tell you now that doing something like that is vast overtraining and so I listened to them and ceased that routine.
Now I'm doing just 1 set of around 15 reps once a week and I don't think my calves have ever looked better.
We will probably always disagree on this but I do enjoy the argument. To each his own method.
And like I recognized your Arnold reference from his Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding, you may also recognize my references to Mentzer's Heavy Duty training. Just different camps to side with.