The stronger your calf muscles, the more powerful your jumps, lifts shall be! Calf raises can be as important as the practice of walking. According to studies, Calf raises are a method of exercising the gastrocnemius, tibialis posterior, and soleus muscles of the lower leg. Calf raises help you improve your ankle stability that creates stable ankles, which indeed shall stabilize your foot lands that would decrease the risk of injury as well!
Benefits of Calf Raises
Standing Calf raises can be quite beneficial and significant to maintain a healthy body. Let us enlighten you with some benefits it provides, the correct way to perform it, and a few tips about the same.
1. Aesthetic Look
Let us begin the benefits with the most obvious and pretty one, Who doesn’t want well-sculpted legs? Standing calf raises can help you build calf muscles. Though some people are genetically gifted with sizable calves, some need to gain it. Standing calf raises are one of a few ways to build mass and grow your calves.
2. Stability and Mobility
Calf strengthening provides you with ankle stability and Mobility. Standing calf raises helps one to build up strong calf muscles that play a major role in stabilizing your ankle movement. Calf muscles are responsible for plantar-flexion of the ankle joint, having strong calf muscles can increase your ability to go into plantar flexion that will strengthen the stabilizers present in your ankles.
3. Reduces Chances of Injury
As mentioned above, the calf raises to strengthen your ankle. So weak calves generally would mean weak ankles that would be in turn a recipe for injury. Keeping the ankles aside, weak calves can also lead to shin splints, Achilles tendon strains, etc. Standing calf raises are one method of preventing these sorts of injuries because of the strength they provide.
4. Increasing Explosive Power
Although a lot of lower body explosive power is gained from our glutes, quads, and hamstrings. Standing raises help increase the explosive power through our lower body and can provide additional explosive output. This standing raises a favored exercise among those who participate in sports like sprinting or basketball.
5. Aids Lower body performance
Strong calf muscles will aid your lower body performance as they shall allow you to perform better in other exercises. The calves are actually not the most functional muscles and it often isn’t paid much attention in the training regime, however, stronger calves will lead to the ability to squat and deadlift with better efficiency. Therefore, standing calf raises makes us a good accessory exercise in any strength training regime.
Benefits of Calf RaisesHow To Do It?
To start with, Stand on a flat surface. Now keep your toes pointed straight in front and lift your heels. This will flex your calf muscles. You need to do the same slowly and steadily, pause for a moment, and then slowly return to the ground.
The above activity is one rep. For the beginning start with two sets of 10 to 15 reps and relax for a minute or half between the sets, after the end of each set you might feel a burning sensation and if you don’t, well multiply the rep count and try again! The burn you feel is what shows how effective it is acting on your calves.
Tips: While doing the exercise one thing you need to focus on is watching your ankles. If your ankles are weak, they might roll in or out which could lead to an imbalance in the posture and lead injury at the ankle or knee region. So in case, your ankle is weak, you should beforehand practice ankle strengthening exercises or stand near a wall to balance yourself if you are on the verge of falling due to imbalance.
Calf RaisesAnytime Anywhere
You can make calf raises part of your workout and pretty much practice the same anywhere, like for instance while brushing your teeth. This is easy to learn and do exercise while keeping some things in mind to avoid injuries. Calf raises are great for boosting ankle stability and overall balance in your body.
So go on to add this small yet immensely beneficial exercise in your daily life if you haven’t yet improved your lower body performance, balance, and stability.
Also Read: 10 Best Calf Exercises
