Bent-knee calf raises target the soleus, a lower-leg muscle that's often more active than the gastrocnemius during running. Keep your knees bent while raising your heels, pushing through the base of your toes without momentum. Your untrained calves will fatigue fast.
Most of us know that we have a big calf muscle in the back of our leg that helps us raise our heels up. It's called the gastrocnemius, and it connects all the way from here all the way up to on top of our knee. But we have several other muscles that connect below the knee that also help us raise our heels and control what our foot is doing. There's actually some research that shows that one of the muscles called the soleus is actually more active when we run than the big old gastroc muscle. So a really great way to train that is instead of doing calf raises all day, simply bend your knees in this position here. We're then going to do that exact same motion. And what you'll probably notice if you haven't trained this is those calves fatigue out even quicker. When we're doing this, I want you to really think about pushing through the base of the toes, not just rising up on the toes, but really pushing and grounding through those toes. So we can't use momentum, and we actually have to use those small muscles in the back of the leg to propel ourselves forward. So give that a try and let me know what you think.
