Overactive calves are something that is surprisingly popular inside our clinic. It’s never the reason they joined our program, but as we go through the training, I’d say roughly 95% of our clients report some level of overactivity here.
Here’s what’s happening.
The calf muscle (gastrocnemius) is trying to do what the hamstring won’t.
Try this.
Stand up, and just start leaning forward. At some point your calves are going to snap on to try and keep you upright. If your body was working properly, the hamstrings would be doing this job.
Our lives have become too much about going forward. The most popular exercises are about forward propulsion. Our visual system is pulling us forward. Everything is forward. Nothing is backwards.
The biggest “backwards” muscles are the ones that the best athletes in the world (at least the ones that I’ve worked with) develop at a high level. Hamstrings and abdominal obliques.
It’s very common for runners to have calf tension or cramping. Again, this is the calf trying to be the hamstring. The calf is propelling you forward when the hamstring should be…but it’s asleep.
Should this inspire you, you may go to the gym to start working on your hamstrings only to realize that your calf is still trying to do all the work.
That’s because of a unique feature of your anatomy. The attachment of the hamstrings and calves (gastroc) are tangled together. The fascia is continuous. If the calf is already dominating, it will continue to do so.
If you’re doing hamstring exercises that you predominantly feel in the back of the knee, we would want to find some that you can get deeper into the hamstring belly instead.
For example: In this exercise…
You’ll likely feel it in the back of the knee with your leg straight. But with a slight bend in the knee, it will shift to the hamstring belly. That’s what we want.
The moral of the story is, train your hamstrings and train them a lot.
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