Copyright © 2018 MIND PUMP MEDIA All Rights R eser ved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Our Clients Did It You Can Too! Why is it so much easier to build your upper body than your lower? Calves. It is said that you either have them or you don’t. If you ask any gym rat or bodybuilder what the most difficult body part to develop is on an individual they will all undoubtedly say it’s the calves. A common myth says that since you walk around and use the calves more than other muscle groups they simply don’t respond like other muscles. Another common myth says that since the calves are largely made up of slow twitch (endurance) muscle fibers they don’t have the capacity to grow. There is some truth to the above myths. Yes, you DO use your calves a lot…more so than most of the other muscles in the body. Yes, the soleus (a flat calf muscle that lies underneath the larger and more bulbous gastrocnemius muscles) has a larger percentage of its fibers being geared towards endurance. Both of which may make building the calves more difficult. However, I am here to tell you that isn’t exactly the case. 4 You will hardly see a man who trains in the gym skip bicep or chest day but when it comes to calf training they either treat it as an afterthought or they ignore them all together. Step one is to make your calves a priority. If calf development is important to you then don’t skip calf workouts EVER. Now that we have that established keep reading…I am going to share some very effective calf training tips and techniques with you. Through my two decades of professional training I have identified 3 calf training techniques that work on EVERY PERSON I have ever tried them on. If nutrition is good and the rest of the exercise programming is good (for more on exercise programming click here) then applying the following 3 techniques will make a huge impact on your calf development. Seriously…make calf training a priority today and apply the following training techniques and the vast majority of you will experience significant calf muscle growth within months. 5 3 TECHNIQUES TO ACHIEVE GREAT CALVES TECHNIQUE 1: EMPHASIZING THE STRETCH AND THE SQUEEZE Every time I see someone training calves in the gym I wince at the HORRIBLE form I see. Bouncy, short choppy reps EVERYWHERE. If I had a dollar for every full rep of calf training I have ever seen in my 20 years as a fitness professional I wouldn’t have enough money for a matinee movie with my girlfriend. For some strange reason people think short reps are okay when it comes to calf training…WHY?? Short incomplete reps aren’t ideal for ANY body part let alone the stubborn calves. Train them with a FULL range of motion. Now that we are clear lets also EMPHASIZE full range of motion. When you get to the top of the rep squeeze hard and get your heels as high as you can…push and squeeze until you cant go any further. When you lower the rep allow your calves to stretch...and HOLD the stretch. Let those heels drop and feel the muscles BURN. Yes, it will hurt like a son of a bitch. In fact if you squeeze and stretch every rep of your calf exercises this way expect some soreness…they do create more muscle damage. Also expect a pump like never before. Speaking of pumps… WWW.MINDPUMPMEDIA.COM 6 TECHNIQUE 2: UTILIZE BFR TRAINING Occlusion training aka blood flow restriction training (BFR) aka KAATSU training is easily one of the biggest breakthroughs in muscle growth training I have seen in my entire career. It works and it’s backed by DECADES of research. pump went away. He also noticed that after doing this repeatedly over the weeks his calves GREW in muscular size. Over the years he researched these phenomena and by 1973 he had fully developed the techniques of KAATSU training. My MindPump co-host IFBB Physique Pro Adam Schafer first introduced me to BFR training in 2015. He told me that if I tied my arms off (above bicep & triceps, at armpit) with knee wraps while training that they would grow fast. I thought he was crazy until I looked up the history and science…then I was truly intrigued. Since then numerous studies have been done on BFR training and each study shows dramatically accelerated muscle growth and KAASTSU training: (what BFR training was originally called) was discovered by Dr Yoshiaki Sato in 1966 while attending a Buddhist ceremony in Japan. While kneeling in the temple he noticed that after an hour or so his calves would get “pumped” with blood. Once he stood up and massaged his calves the 7 3 TECHNIQUES TO ACHIEVE GREAT CALVES strength with no side effects when done properly. It is now used by physical therapists and is quickly becoming one of the favorite techniques of bodybuilders for developing weak body parts. As you do more reps waste build up tends to overcome the flushing out and you feel a burn. Well multiply that by 10 with BFR. The burn is intense but the waste buildup sends a strong muscle building signal. Here is how it works…when you occlude or restrict blood OUTFLOW from a muscle you amplify the “pump” effect. Just like you get with a normal pump, blood rushes to your muscles except this time the speed of blood outflow and amount of blood outflow is restricted. This stimulates muscle growth in a few different ways. Lastly the low oxygen levels in an occluded muscle recruit more fast twitch muscle fibers and since fast twitch muscle fibers are the ones that GROW the most you see faster improvements. There is also evidence that BFR training may “train” some of your slow twitch fibers to act like fast twitch fibers resulting in MORE growth potential. One way is through cell signaling. The extreme pump causes cell swelling which tells the muscle cells to “grow.” This happens to a smaller effect with a regular pump but with a BFR pump its amplified. BFR is a simple but effective technique HOWEVER it must be done properly. Use the wrong apparatus or tie off a muscle too tight and you could cause problems. Use BFR training once or twice a week for best results. Click HERE for a demo on BFR training. The second way is through the waste build up that occurs. When you exercise waste by products build up and get flushed out with each rep. WWW.MINDPUMPMEDIA.COM 8 TECHNIQUE 3: TRAINING FREQUENCY When you train a muscle with sufficient intensity in the gym you are in essence sending a signal to the body. Training is a stress on the body and the body aims to ADAPT to this stress by becoming more resilient and STRONGER. The stress of intense exercise causes some muscle damage which is why you get sore and this is likely why you adapt from it. That being said it’s important to note that recovery and adaptation can be TWO SEPARATE THINGS. Sound crazy? Read on… Think of how many times you have hammered a body part in the gym and gotten really sore. You rest and wait a week to hit it again and when you do you’re EXACTLY where you were before. Why?? It’s because you waited too long!!! There is actually something that happens in the body that is a We all like to think of muscle recovery as the process by which our muscles build but this is false. Recovery is HEALING while ADAPTATION is building. Although they can and often do happen simultaneously they aren’t interchangeable. Damaging muscle sends two signals to the body…one is to recover while the other is to adapt. This is a problem because often they may have different time-lines. 9 good measure of whether or not muscles are building. It's called muscle protein synthesis and it rises quickly after a workout and peaks at about 48-72 hours…and then it DROPS FAST. That’s right, the muscle building signal drops until its back to baseline EVEN IF YOURE STILL SORE AND RECOVERING. The way around this is to train more often and hit the muscles more FREQUENTLY before that muscle-building signal flattens out again. I know what you are thinking,…”I don’t have that much time or energy!!” Well I’m here to tell you that you DON’T need more time or energy. I’m not asking you to add more volume at all. I’m asking you to add FREQUENCY. Take the total amount of sets that you do with your calf training and simply split it between three workouts. In other words, if you train your calves once a week for 12 sets a week on Monday; then split it between Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In other words do 4 sets each of those days. Now you will spike that muscle building adaptation signal on Monday and right before it starts to drop you spike it again on Wednesday and so on. This means you are ADAPTING all week long, aka BUILDING. This simple technique doesn’t just work on calves by the way. It works with all muscle groups! Use it for lagging body parts or if you want to maximize full body muscle growth do it for everything. There you go. Be consistent with your calf training and apply the above techniques and you will be surprised. Your calves are probably not stubborn at all, they just needed the right stimulus. 10 SAL DI STEFANO Sal was 14 years old when he touched his first weight and from that moment he was hooked. Growing up asthmatic, frequently sick and painfully skinny, Sal saw weightlifting as a way to change his body and his self-image. In the beginning, Sal’s body responded quickly to his training but then his gains slowed and eventually stopped altogether. Not one to give up easily, Sal began reading every muscle building publication he could get his hands on to find ways to bust through his plateau. He read Arnold’s Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding, Mentzer’s Heavy Duty, Kubrick’s Dinosaur Training, and every muscle magazine he could find; Weider’s Muscle and Fitness, Flex, Iron Man and even Muscle Media 2000. Each time he read about a new technique or methodology he would test it out in the gym. At age 18 his passion for the art and science of resistance training was so consuming that he decided to make it his profession and become a personal trainer. By 19 he was managing health clubs and by 22 he owned his own gym. After 17 years as a personal trainer he has dedicated himself to bringing science and TRUTH to the fitness industry. Sal is co-founder and highly instrumental in the creation of a revolutionary muscle development system know as: Muscular Adaptation Programming Systems or MAPS. FIND OUT MORE HERE 11 Slow down. Calm down. Don’t worry. Don’t hurry. Trust the process. MIND PUMPMMEDIA 3 techniques to achieve great calves