Want to build/buy something...

That is interesting. I've found that there is a real difference between doing calf raises seated as opposed to standing, and seated calf raises aren't as functionally useful. I'd prefer to stand with a weight and do one leg at a time. Or something like a powerclean is really very good for the calves. But nothing wrong with being seated also.

I wasn’t thrilled with the sketch I posted yesterday, so I took a couple of snapshots that might better illustrate what I was talking about:
The knee bar is connected to the weight bar with screw-eye, S-hooks, and a short length of chain—experiment to get the correct length of chain.



The rope for this is one-inch nylon rope. Farm supply stores often carry this.
You can use it for “Rope Pull-downs” or for “Pull-down Crunches.”

Jay wrote:

That is interesting. I've found that there is a real difference between doing calf raises seated as opposed to standing, and seated calf raises aren't as functionally useful. I'd prefer to stand with a weight and do one leg at a time. Or something like a powerclean is really very good for the calves. But nothing wrong with being seated also.

You're probably right about standing calf raises. I like to super-set deadlifts, bent-over-rows, shrugs, and standing calf raises, but obviously I'm not using much weight when I do these.

Calf raises seated & standing affect different muscles, so it depends on your goals. Seated version affects mainly the soleus as the gastrocnemius is relaxed more when the knee is bent - check out the insertion & origin points of the gastrocnemius it actually crosses the knee, whereas the soleus does not, so in the seated version you are working mainly the soleus. So it depends on what you are trying to do. I don't think you should neglect doing calf raises in the seated position, but it is just a variation to throw in as the main 'work horse' of the lower leg is the 'gastro'.

As a side note the gastrocnemius is the big fat muscle you see on the back of your lower leg, the soleus is mainly underneath that muscle, so exercising both ways will add size to the calf area.

Looking at it anatomically if you need to push off from a flexed knee - maybe fighting sports, like wrestling or martial arts where you might be bent low & have to raise the heel from that position. Soleus strength would be especially important (I sure there is a really good example out there of a need to lift the heel in a bent leg position, but I can't think one a decent one right now, sorry)

Pete wrote:

...As a side note the gastrocnemius is the big fat muscle you see on the back of your lower leg, the soleus is mainly underneath that muscle, so exercising both ways will add size to the calf area...

OH... That explains it...
I've been doing three sets of thirty seated calf-raises with 150 on the bar for a long time, wondering why my legs get hard as baseball bats but don't change shape.
Time to get serious about standing calf-raises...goad those gastrocnemius guys into action!
Thanks.

Again remember that the gastrocnemius works both calf raising & knee flexion. To get the biggest possible calves you'd need to hit it both ways (saying that calves are also the muscle that seem hardest to grow of all muscles, not many guys with small calves build monsters...but it's not impossible, just very hard!)

Yeah, genes are a factor.
As I've noted before, gains in this sport are easier if one's grandmother resembled Arnold Schwarzenegger at his prime.