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The calf muscles can experience cramping when pushed too hard. The Achilles tendon, which runs along the back of the lower leg, can become strained if the calf muscles are too weak and inflexible. Stretching the calf muscles before working out and after doing workouts that engage the calf muscles can help prevent injury and cramping.
The calf muscles can be stretched easily by standing a few feet from a wall and stepping inward with one foot while placing your palms on the wall. This will decrease the angle between the shin and top of the foot on your back foot, causing a deep stretch in your calf and Achilles tendon. Deepen your lunge and bend slightly at the knees to get a deeper stretch if necessary.
If you don't have a wall to work with, a simple calf stretch can be done by assuming a standard push-up position, with the body supported on the hands and toes. Put one leg over the other and push back with the hands to decrease the angle of the shin and foot. -
The calf muscles can be strengthened effectively with many different leg lifts. The easiest way to target the calf muscles is to do heel raises. Heel raises are done simply by using the strength of the calves to go up onto the balls of your feet and then lower the heels back down to the ground. At a gym, you can do heal raises with weight on your back or dumbbells in your hands to increase the difficulty, or you can stand on one foot. Some gyms have special heel-raise machines that allow you to attach a padded belt to a weight stack to add resistance.
Other exercises that engage the calves are the leg press and lunges. On a leg press machine, after pressing the weight up with the strength of the quads, you can point the toes out to work the calves. -
Depending on your fitness goals, you may wish to increase the endurance of you calves more than their raw strength. Simply running several miles can constitute a good calf workout. Running on hilly terrain will tend to be harder on the calves than running on flat ground. Running barefoot on grass or sand can also be a great calf workout, since when you run barefoot, the body's stride tends to favor landing on the ball of the foot or middle of the foot, using calf strength to cushion the impact.
Running up and down stairs is perhaps the most effective endurance workout for calves. When you run up stairs, only the front part of the foot touches the stair, forcing the calf to support the body weight then propel the body upward to the next stair.
