Smith Machine Calf Raise

Smith machine calf raises

Muscles involved:

Calves:

Soleus
Gastrocnemius
Plantaris (not present in everyone)

Smith machine calf raise setup

Place a raised platform in the squat rack.
Check that the platform or step is positioned far enough forward or backward. The nearest edge of the platform should be approximately directly beneath the bar.
Stand on it and check that the platform is stable when the balls of your feet are on the edge.
From the platform, check at what height the bottom of your chest reaches. Place the bar on the supports at that height.
Stand again with the balls of your feet on the platform and, by bending down, bring your head under the bar so that it rests on your neck and trapezius.
Straighten up and lift the bar off the supports.

Smith machine calf raise technique

When performing this exercise on the Smith machine, make good use of the machine's features. First, place the bar at the correct starting height, thereby preventing you from having to start from a full squat or from being unable to lower yourself fully.

Use the fixed safety catches instead of having to rotate the bar to disengage and re-engage it. The calves are quite strong, so this exercise can be performed with relatively heavy weight. However, you are standing with the balls of your feet on a raised platform. If it tips over, it is much preferable that the bar does not come down with it.

Bent legs or straight legs?

When training the calves, you can use the following rule of thumb:

Bent legs train the soleus. Straight legs also engage the gastrocnemius.

When training the calves, you should mainly consider a few properties of the gastrocnemius and soleus. These properties determine the effectiveness of the different calf exercises. One of the most important differences is between exercises with nearly straight legs and exercises with bent knees.

The soleus crosses only the ankle joint. Therefore, it does not matter to the soleus whether the knee is bent or straight.

The gastrocnemius consists of two heads that end in the same attachment as the soleus: the Achilles tendon, which crosses the ankle joint. However, both heads attach to the thigh bone higher up. The gastrocnemius therefore crosses two joints: the ankle and the knee. This means that the possible contribution of the gastrocnemius can be influenced by bending or straightening the leg.

With the leg straight and the foot at a normal angle, as when standing, the gastrocnemius can produce maximum force. When the leg is bent, the gastrocnemius is already partly shortened. If you then want to push off with the foot from that position (plantar flexion), the muscle can no longer exert maximum effort. The opposite happens when the leg is straight and you point your toes toward your face. The gastrocnemius is then overstretched to produce maximum effort.

If you want to train the calves as completely as possible with a single exercise, you should therefore do so with nearly straight legs.

Feet pointing straight forward

EMG measurements show that it is best to keep your feet pointing forward. Do not point your toes inward or outward. Pointing the toes outward appears to reduce the engagement of both the inner and outer portions of the gastrocnemius by nearly 10%. Pointing the toes inward has this effect only on the inner portion of the gastrocnemius.

Pointing the feet straight forward produces the highest activation of both heads of the gastrocnemius

Training heavy or light?

The soleus, which lies deeper than the gastrocnemius, can be considered the workhorse of the calves, responsible for prolonged but low-intensity efforts such as remaining upright and walking. The soleus can therefore consist of up to 90% slow-twitch muscle fibers.

The gastrocnemius also contains many slow-twitch muscle fibers, accounting for half to three-quarters of all its muscle fibers.

You can train the fast-twitch muscle fibers by training explosively and/or heavily. You then also target the muscle fibers with greater growth potential. However, you also target a relatively low number of muscle fibers.

Performing more repetitions and training with lighter weight targets the largest number of muscle fibers in the calf muscles.