Learn the basics for safety when beginning aerobic step exercises in this free exercise video on basic aerobic steps. Expert: Riki Butler Bio: Riki is a certified personal trainer and holds a degree in Health Science Education. Filmmaker: Michael Carter
Any calf slimming exercise should aim to tone down excess fat in the calf muscles and shape up the calf. The calf muscles essentially comprises the Gastrocnemius and the Soleus muscles. Both these muscles needs to the well trained to shed the excess fat on your calves.
Also Cardiovascular exercises like aerobics, walking, running, swimming etc. can produce amazing results in slimming down your calf muscles
The great thing about Cardiovascular exercises is that they also burn fat. For a cardio exercise to be effective it should be done at least 20 minutes in any workout day.
Stretching the Calves is also a good way to tone them up!
If you can stretch the Calves between each calf exercise as well as after each calf exercise program you will get amazing results and prevent any kind of injury. Perform minor calf stretching before and after you start your workouts. My favorite is toe stretches using a block or step.
If you already have big calves there is not much you can do to slim them down. Overall body weight loss would help. But if you calves are muscular already there is not much that can be done about that
It can only be compensated by proportionate development of other parts of the body. I.e. build up your leg, shoulder and back muscles to get a more v tapered look.
And design a training program that suits you the best, comprising exercises like military presses, squats and lat pull-downs with at least 10 reps per set. You can train calves a maximum of twice per week. If calves area weak spot train them first thing during a workout to make sure you have the energy to train them correctly!
This rule applies for upper body workouts and not leg workouts. If you are training legs, perform your calves exercises after your leg workouts (that is your thighs and hamstrings)
Another great exercise for toning up the calves is skipping. skipping is an effective calf slimming exercise , it wont build bulk, it will tone your calf muscles up and might very well help to shed extra fat on your calves (provided you are on an overall fat loss diet).
The other Calf slimming exercise is Squats. Calf raises helps to work the calves and shape it up. For optimum results place the ball of your feet on a wooden block. If the weights in the calf raises are kept light, the muscle will shape up quickly and will become leaner and harder. Since the calves consist of two muscles, both of them should be shaped up. Standing calf raises can also be performed with or without a barbell to effectively slim out your calves the standing calf raise shapes up your calves especially the Gastrocnemius muscle.
Don’t forget to use the Sitting calf raises which is an excellent calf exercise which targets and shapes up your Soleus muscle- for the famous diamond shape calves look.
Remember to always take your sets to positive muscular failure. You don’t need many sets so long as you train your calves hard. Two to three sets is all you need per exercise! Use these simple tips and you might be surprised to see your calves tone up and take on that sexy slim well proportioned shape you want.
rob maraby