“My calves are sore”, I note, “that’s odd I don’t specifically train them”.
I realize it’s from the jogging in place burpees – a running like stimulus that I actually will do.
As a fat middle schooler I developed “fat man calves” which stayed with me when I lost about 40lbs as a high school freshman.
I remember liking that my calves stayed big, even growing from all the newly participated in locomotion, while my weight shrank.
I maintained this size with basic activity (walking, running, sports), and an occasional set of the calf raise machine using the stack, superset with dips in the school weight room before catching the bus.
Only two kids in high school had larger muscular calves than I.
One, a jock, who always walking on his toes, developed the ability to rep the stack of the same calf machine one legged.
Another, my buddy, with a pill head mom who didn’t have a car, always walked or ran everywhere (backpack on), and out of boredom would do bodyweight calf raises up to 500 in a set.
I’ve seen him do that at random multiple times.
That’s why he had 19″ calves at 5’8″ish 165lbs or less. With at times a 100lb weight difference he always had larger calves than I.
Probably the biggest muscular calves I’ve ever seen are on a relative who hikes in the summer and goes for long walks in the winter, those walks sometimes with pack on.
The biggest my calves ever were was in the period I did 100 calf raises a day for a decent amount of time as part of my daily PT.
First you do it in sets of 10, 15, or 20.
You get consistent at 5×20, then go 4×25, soon after it’s 3×35/35,35,30, then 2×50, then 1x amrap, 1x30ish, then it’s 100+ a set or 2 amraps which will get to 100+ each given enough time.
The 3×35, or 35,35,30 protocol the lazy maintenance get it done day.
That program maintained all my leg strength for awhile without other leg work, it’s something I always have in my back pocket should I need/choose to use it, and is something I recently spoke of to a kid on the gym floor speaking to me of his desire to build bigger calves.
Calves may be stubborn, though from Arnold to an old lifting partner, even a pair of calves with the worst of insertions can be built up.
My buddy annihilated his something like 4x weekly to end lifting sessions, and in all honesty with my bigger calves and better insertions for size did this regularly while I wouldn’t go through the entire thing with him (normally tapping on the seated calf raises sets), and eventually his calf size did surpass mine.
The work you require is what you require.
They’re a body part I’m fairly blessed with, but not as freakishly as that jock, my buddy (who by lifestyle had the highest calf workload in the modern world running/walking everywhere with his backpack on), and my at one point 21″ calves with a mind of their own sporting hiking relative.
He actively wanted them to atrophy.
They’re still 18 or 19″.
Lots of contractions big calf make.
Locomotion wearing a pack while not necessarily time efficient (though it may just be what’s required for monster calves) builds the largest of calves.