Calf workout: stand for the gastrocnemius, sit for the soleus

The calf is two muscles. The gastrocnemius is the one you can see, with two heads at the top of the back of your lower leg; it crosses both the knee and the ankle. The soleus sits underneath it and crosses only the ankle. Both point your foot, which is what a calf raise trains. Together, the gastrocnemius's two heads and the soleus are called the triceps surae.

That knee detail decides the workout. With your knee straight, the gastrocnemius is stretched and does a full share of the work; with your knee bent, it's shortened, and the soleus does more of it. Here's what that means in practice, and a session for the gym, dumbbells or no equipment. Calves are one of the four areas the leg day workout covers.

Standing vs seated calf raises

A training study measured it directly. In a 12-week trial, 14 untrained adults, seven women and seven men, trained one leg with standing calf raises and the other with seated ones, five sets of 10 twice a week. On the standing side, the two heads of the gastrocnemius grew 12.4% and 9.2%; on the seated side, 1.7% and 0.6%. The soleus grew about the same either way, 2.1% and 2.9%.¹

A single-session study points the same way. In 17 young women, straight-leg calf raises swelled the gastrocnemius more right after the session, while bent-leg raises swelled the soleus more.² Swelling right after a workout isn't growth, but it agrees with which muscle did the work.

So if you do one calf exercise, make it a standing one. Seated raises still train the soleus, and they're worth adding if your gym has the machine and your week has the time.

How to do a calf raise

1. Balls of your feet on the edge of a step, a plate or the machine's platform, heels free to drop.
2. Knees straight but not locked for a standing raise; bent about 90 degrees for a seated one.
3. Lower your heels slowly until you feel a stretch in your calves, and pause there for a second.
4. Rise as high as you can onto the balls of your feet, through your big toe rather than rolling to the outside of your foot.
5. Pause at the top, then lower slowly again. About two seconds up and two down.

The two-second pace isn't magic, but it's how the 12-week trial above ran every rep.¹ A slow, controlled rep also stops you bouncing out of the bottom.

Range of motion and the stretch

The bottom of the rep, with your heels low and your calves stretched, may matter most. In 42 young women who trained calf raises three times a week for eight weeks, the group that did only the bottom half of the range grew the inner head of the gastrocnemius 15.2%, against 6.7% for the full range and 3.4% for the top half.³ In 21 untrained young men who trained calf raises twice a week for eight weeks, a 20-second loaded stretch between sets may have added growth in the soleus, while its effect on the gastrocnemius was uncertain.⁴

Those are two trials in two groups of young adults, and the American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 overview found too little data to say whether range of motion changes muscle growth in general.⁵ The practical reading: use the full range, and don't skip the bottom. Lower all the way into the stretch and pause there. If you want to lean on that finding, finish a set with a few half reps in the bottom half once full reps run out.

Toes in, out or forward?

Forward is fine. In one nine-week trial, 22 young men trained each leg with a different foot position. Toes pointed out grew the inner head of the gastrocnemius more, and toes pointed in grew the outer head more.⁶ That's one small trial; the difference was a few percentage points. Keep your toes forward unless you have a reason to change them, or rotate positions across sets.

Three calf workouts

Pick one, and do it at the end of a lower-body day or on its own day.

On the leg press version, keep the sled under control and lower only as far as your heels travel comfortably. At home with no equipment, the single-leg raise is the harder one: your body weight on one calf at a time is often plenty to start. When 20 slow reps get easy, hold a backpack or a water jug, or add a longer pause at the bottom.

How many sets, and how often

• Six to twelve hard sets a week, across two sessions. In 61 untrained young women who trained calf raises three times a week for six weeks, 12 weekly sets grew the outer head of the gastrocnemius and the soleus more than 6 did, while all three groups grew.⁷ The ACSM's 2026 stand found muscle growth was enhanced by ten or more sets per muscle group a week.⁵
• 10 to 20 reps, ending each set with a rep or two left. (How to judge reps left.) The studies above used sets of 10 to 25.
• Not always last. Whatever comes last gets cut when you're short on time. If calves matter to you, do them earlier, or pair them with an upper-body exercise as a superset.
• Twice a week fits most splits: both lower days on an upper/lower week, or legs day plus one other on push/pull/legs.

Common faults

• Bouncing at the bottom. The stretch-and-spring does the work. Pause in the stretch.
• Only the top half. Heels barely drop below the step. Lower all the way.
• Bending the knees on a standing raise. It turns into a push from your legs. Keep your knees straight but soft.
• Rolling to the outside of the foot. Push through the big toe.
• Training through pain. Sharp pain in the calf or the back of the heel is not soreness. Stop, and see a doctor or a physical therapist.

If you'd rather not plan it alone

Two calf exercises fit on a sticky note; fitting them into a week that already has squats, hinges and a schedule of its own is the part a page can't do. Coaching is the version where your workouts are built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: find a step, and do three slow sets of single-leg raises on each side twice this week.