reckonerSmith machine calf raise
A standing calf raise with the Smith bar across your upper back and the balls of your feet on a step. Standing with straight knees trains the whole calf, and in a twelve week trial standing calf raises grew the calves more than seated ones1.
Sink to a stretch, rise onto the toes.
- Pattern
- Calf
- Trains
- Calves
- Kit
- Smith machine, sturdy surface
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Simple to learn
- Recovery cost
- Very low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Neck, ankle
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set a step under the bar
Put a sturdy step or plate under the bar so the balls of your feet sit on its edge and your heels hang free. The step is what lets the heels drop below your toes, which is where the stretch comes from.
Bar on your upper back
Get under the bar as for a squat, bar across your upper back, stand up and unhook it. Knees straight but not locked, so the calf does the lifting rather than the knee.
Sink to a stretch
Lower your heels as far below the step as they will go and pause a beat at the bottom. The pause takes the bounce out of the next rep.
Rise high and pause
Push up onto your toes as high as you can, pause a beat, then lower slowly into the stretch again.
What goes wrong
Bouncing at the bottom
A bounce makes the rep feel easy and quick. It uses the spring in the tendon rather than the muscle. Pause in the stretch before rising.
Bending the knees
A little knee bend helps a heavy bar up, so it feels strong. It turns into a small squat and takes work off the calf. Keep the knees straight.
Half reps
Short reps near the top let you use a lot more weight, so they feel like progress. Use the full range from deep stretch to high toes.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 40 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 10 at 40 kg | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 11 at 40 kg | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 12 at 40 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 13 at 40 kg | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 14 at 40 kg | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 14 at 40 kg | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Standing or seated calf raise?
Standing, if you pick one. Standing calf raises grew the gastrocnemius and the whole calf more than seated ones in a twelve week trial, while the deeper soleus grew about the same with either1.
How do I stop the bar digging into my neck?
Set it across your upper back on the muscle, not on the bones of your neck, the same place it sits for a squat. A pad helps.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
Not by itself. In most gyms the calf machine and the leg press calf raise cover it, so the engine never chooses this one. Choose it in the lift picker or as a swap for a calf raise. Neck and ankle are recorded against it.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Kinoshita, Maeo and colleagues, Frontiers in Physiology, 2023. Triceps surae muscle hypertrophy is greater after standing versus seated calf-raise training fourteen untrained adults training one leg standing and one seated for twelve weeks, with lateral gastrocnemius growth 12.4 against 1.7 per cent, medial 9.2 against 0.6 and whole triceps surae 5.6 against 2.1, and soleus growth similar