Your calf muscles don’t contribute much to exercises like pullups, leg presses or chest presses. However, your calf muscles are an integral part of every step you take. The larger of the two major calf muscles, the gastrocnemius, also helps bend your leg at the knee. Once you’ve mastered doing calf raises with only your body weight for resistance, you can use elastic resistance bands to make the exercise more challenging.
Plantar flexors and dorsiflexors provide the movement, strength and stability for your ankles. These muscles run up and down your calves and shins and allow you the motion to point your foot up and down. Ankle flexor muscles ar...
Metatarsals, your toes, can become fractured for a number of reasons including overuse, trauma or rotational forces. Rehabilitation exercises for the fourth metatarsal fracture include a variety of strengthening and flexibilit...
Weak ankles may be more susceptible to injuries, including sprains and strains. While a healthy diet helps keep bones healthy and strong, there are exercises, such as ankle flexion, that can help increase the strength of the an...
Gym weight machines and stair climbing are excellent calf workouts, but what if you are disabled or injured? Using resistance bands, it's possible to get an excellent result while standing, seated, or lying down performing calf...
These machines consist of a pair of pedals connected to the lower end of a vertical upright by resistance cylinders. A console unit mounted at the upper end of the upright provides a readout of workout data, including the numbe...
Resistance bands can help strengthen and develop the calf muscles with minimal risk of overdoing it, since the level of resistance can easily be controlled by adjusting the length of the band in use.
The soleus muscle is also a calf muscle even though it is below the gastrocnemius, and you cannot see it. Both these muscles are mainly responsible for one action, raising your heel. This is why calf raises are an effective exe...
