Why Two Calf Raises?

I'm talking about Standing and KOT Calf Raises

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Both should be easy for 10 reps, single-leg, with 25% of your body weight in additional load.

Ankle extension strength as a whole is overlooked and not adequately measured in modern training.

It's, "How much do you bench?" Not, "How much do you calf?"

Even for those who do train calves, without the INTENTION to reach adequate strength, they will almost always lag behind what they should be, according to a little something called GRAVITY.

Plantar fasciitis, shin splints, and other chronic injuries are epidemics, and the research money continues to pour into recovery modalities and surgical intervention, rather than observing the obvious.

Yes, I said OBVIOUS.

If it seems obvious, you're right. There's no secret sauce here, just common sense.

But despite finding and reaching a Standing Calf Standard over about 2 years of training and testing with myself and hundreds of athletes, I still had Achilles issues, as did some of the athletes I trained.

I found the Seated Calf machine resolved this, and ATG soon had more Seated Calf stations than bench stations. For a good year, no Achilles issues in myself or my athletes.

But as I transitioned into being an online coach, I realized not every gym has a Seated Calf machine. So I went back to Standing only, since I like to live as my members do, hoping that would be enough.

The Achilles pain came back.

Keep in mind, I don't live a sheltered life. As I sit here writing this, I'm still catching my breath from depth jumps off a low roof. Yes, a ROOF taller than I am (don't have any crazy ideas).

Through much trial and error, I realized how simple a KOT Calf Raise was.

The reason for its neglect is that is it also calls for awesome KNEES. For the average trainee, this would discourage the movement altogether, but ALL my new program lines are built on an unwavering foundation of the 8 Knee Essentials, thus allowing you to get the gains of the KOT Calf Raise since your knees can handle it. In fact, it gives added direct Knee Ability gains, almost like isometrics on steroids, both of which are well proven ;)

With the KOT Calf Raise now in my program once a week, the Achilles pains vanished and never came back!

More importantly, I've since received dozens of success stories from stubborn Achilles cases!

From a biological perspective, the Standing version emphasizes your "gastroc" - your upper calf, and thus is great for knee protection but does NOT adequately protect your Achilles.

Conversely, the same can be said for the KOT version, which emphasizes your "other" calf muscle: your soleus, which is lower and deeper than the gastroc, and thus is an utter miracle-worker for all sorts of foot and lower leg pains when you figure out how to bring it up to the level your body was naturally designed.

The human body was designed right. We just train certain things, ignore others, and then wonder why we have problems.

Now to conclude why these two calf raises are so important for your knees...

Purely hypothetically, if your calves were strong enough, you could run fast and jump high without even using your knees. So you can see that the better you get in the Standing and KOT Calf Raises, the more you reduce excess stress on your knees in the first place.

Weakness in soleus or gastroc means more force has to go UPWARD and get handled by your knees.

Follow the 20 Numbers and the universe will reward you for obeying its laws.

For anyone who missed it, this is a link to all 20 Knee Ability For Life Standards

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Yours in Gains,

Ben