Stretching For Bigger Muscles

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Can stretching really lead to bigger muscles? Yes it can! Today we look at how stretching can help you on your journey to those bigger arms and massive legs.

One of my favorite reasons why stretching helps muscle growth is because it elongates the muscle. By elongating the muscle, there is more space for the muscle to grow and makes the muscle look bigger and more aesthetic. It won’t look shortened or too small for the area it is supposed to cover anymore.

Static Stretching

Static stretching is a type of stretching where you stretch and hold a certain muscle for a few seconds before releasing (like toe touches). Research has shown that static stretching before exercise (hamstring stretch before running, for example) does not actually decrease the risk of injury. Research has also shown that static stretches do not improve muscle performance either, but actually decrease muscle output. For example, stretching biceps in a static fashion before doing bicep curls will decrease their maximum output before failure. This effect lasts for over an hour following a good, thorough static stretch.

Does this mean that there is no place for static stretches in the world of muscle growth? Not at all! Static stretches aren’t effective as a warm-up or before exercise, but they do offer benefits like increasing range of motion, releasing tension and correcting postural imbalances.  All of which will decrease overall risk of injury in the long-term and help with optimize muscle gain. By increasing range of motion, you are able to get the best out of every rep. For example, people who have a problem with their heels lifting off the floor during the squat (bad form) because of tight calves muscles and tendons can do static calf stretches for a few days to loosen them so that heels are flexible enough to stay on the ground and stabilize the squat movement. Lifting weights can tighten muscles over time which leads to them losing their overall range of motion. For example, people who have built up their upper bodies but have not stretched regularly can often feel uncomfortable when resting with their hands folded behind the back of their head.  This is not because their muscles are too big, but because their muscles have grown tighter over time. Static stretching can both prevent and undo this.

As discussed above, static stretching is NOT best done before exercise. Static stretching can be done after exercise to cool down. This works well because when the muscles are warm, they are more flexible and will therefore respond well to stretching. Even better, static stretching is great to do on rest days for a variety of reasons. Firstly, not much energy is required to stretch and this means that you are still not burning too much energy on your off day. Furthermore, static stretching releases built up tension. It also and relaxes the muscles. This helps them to recover faster and grow more. Static stretching also helps to improve blood flow which helps the muscles disperse lactic acid and get the nutrients needed for recovery.

Dynamic Stretching

Dynamic stretching is a type of stretching that has movement throughout the stretch, for example swinging the arms in front of the chest and behind the back to stretch out the upper body (chest, back, biceps and triceps). Dynamic stretching, in contrary to static stretching, is well suited as a warm-up before exercise because it increases blood flow to the muscles and ‘wakes them up’ before exercise. Studies have shown that dynamic stretching of a certain muscle before weight training increases its power and strength output. For example, swinging the arms in front of the chest and behind the back could increase the amount of reps performed on the bench press. Besides increasing short-term power, dynamic stretching also elongates the muscles and increases range of motion.

Stretching helps to make sure that the muscles are supple. Having big muscle won’t cost you your mobility. For bodybuilders, stretching does not need to be done daily, but a good stretch once or twice a week could just give you an extra edge. As small as the impact stretching has on muscle growth seems to be, over time the difference adds up and makes a significant contribution. STAY STRONG!

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Get Bigger Calve Muscles

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Calves seem to be what I call a gene-muscle. Some people have it and others dont, even though both parties could be working just as hard on them routinely. Unfortunately, the size that your calves can grow in proportion to the rest of your body is largely predetermined to luck-of-the-draw genetics. But dont lose hope, there are still ways to get them show-ready and larger than life with smart lifting and a few changes to your work-out routine.

Treat Your Calves like Any Other Muscle Group

Firstly, the calves should be treated like any other muscle group. You want to increase the fast-twitch part of the muscle (the part that will show the most size) and have more fast-twitch muscle (responsible for low reps, more weight) than slow-twitch muscle fibers (they dont have much size, and are responsible for less weight but higher endurance). If you are working your calves every day, you are not working them hard enough per session (not enough to cause delayed onset muscle soreness) and you are not giving them enough rest to grow and improve for the next workout. You can grow the size of your calves the same way you do with chest and back muscles.

Are You Working Them Hard Enough?

If you train your chest to failure, why are you not training your calves to failure? Calves are harder to train to failure because you will initially have a larger portion of slow twitch muscle fibers, from being repetitively used in low-intensity, high endurance movements like walking and running which we all do a lot of in life. 

This means that when you do exercises that recruit fast twitch fibers like calve raises, your higher percentage of slow-twitch muscle fibers releases more lactic acid as a response (you feel a burn in your calves before you reach failure). Every time you work your calves, work past the burn until they start to fail and you cant move the weight on them. Once you are failing to execute full reps on them, you are reaching failure. In order to start increasing the fast twitch fibers in your calves, you need to get used to working your calves to failure every time you work them. This will take some time to get used to because your calves are naturally inclined to burn and make you stop BEFORE they fail as a survival mechanism. As a rule in survival, your calves are programmed to never fail, because reaching failure means that you would not be able to get away from dangers (like animals in the wild). 

Once you have reached failure, try do a few forced reps (with as much of the full rep movement as you can) because calve muscles are also programmed to recover as quickly as possible to ensure your natural mobility and therefore survival. From the beginning of your movement, make sure that you complete full movements of your reps. Try starting with your heels as low as feels naturally possible and then lift them as high as you can, you should be struggling to get your heels as high up as possible with each rep, meaning that you almost pause for a second at the top of each movement trying to reach your highest point possible. 

Dont rush through your movements as this would be your natural instinct to recruit slow twitch fibers by turning it into an almost cardio like movement. But just like when you work your other muscle groups, it is about increasing strength and size, not speed. The slower you go the more it burns. The more you work through the burn, the closer you get to failure. The more you cause your calves to fail, the more they are forced to grow through fast twitch muscle fibers, the ones we want, that increase size.

Use a Rep Range Lower

You bench at a range of 8-12, right? Then why are you doing calf raises in the 15-20 rep range? Because it is easier to use the fast twitch muscles in our chest and it is easier to use the slow twitch fibers on our calves. Using heavier weight and failing on lower reps just feels wrong on your calves because they are not designed to do so, but the whole point of this is to grow your calves past what they are naturally inclined to grow and have their size proportional to the rest of your muscle gains. Do this this, put them on the same regimen as the rest of your body, whether if feels comfortable or not. Make sure to reach a point of failure and do a few reps of forced reps after that with each set as well, as mentioned above. Get used to using a lower rep range, and then alternate between rep ranges every few weeks to keep them on their toes (pun intended).

Muscle Confusion

Your calves will get used to their exercises very quickly, because they are naturally essential to our primal survival as our means of mobility in nature. Counter measure? Use calve exercises until they reach a plateau and then change the exercise to keep them growing. The change could be something simple like swapping the standard standing calve raise machine for standing dumbbell raises on a step, to using a barbell on your shoulders, to doing raises on the flat ground, to changing rep ranges. You should be changing your calf exercises more regularly then other muscle groups because of the fact that they adapt so quickly.

Different Exercises for Different Goals

Different calf exercises will affect the calf muscles differently, so be sure to do a mixture of exercises to grow the different parts of the calf evenly.

Standing calve exercises (straight knee) will stimulate the gastrocnemius more. This is the part of the calve that looks like a tennis ball at the back of your calve and gives the calve the shape and definition which looks very aesthetic.

Seated calve exercises (bent knee) help to widen your calves and add bulk, which is important to keep your calves in proportion with the rest of your body.

Lifting you toes while keeping your heels on the ground under a weight will increase the size of the front part of the lower leg. These are the muscles that are closest to your shin. You can do this by holding a dumbbell or kettlebell on your toes with your hands whilst lifting your toes and balancing your heels on the ground, or a step for a greater range of motion.

Was this helpful? Let us know in the comments below. Stay Strong!

   

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