Tight Calves? Try This.

You stretch them.
You foam roll them.

You do some heel raises, but sometimes even that makes them cramp.

No matter what you do, they’re still tight.

I feel you. I used to have tight calves. They were so tight that even massage felt awful. I wondered, why so many knots?

I found relief.

Maybe some of the things that helped me will help you too!

Why So Tight?

Sadly, I don't have a definitive answer for you, all I can say is it depends. This is because we are all different, we live in different ways, and we do different things. All of this influences how our bodies respond to the tasks and positions we put them in.

However, there are some things I can say. Most of us do not vary our positions enough — we sit or stay sedentary too long and do not get enough movement throughout the day.

In general, if your calves are tight then probably your glutes and hamstrings are not taking on their fair share of the work of holding you up and moving you through space. Your posture, both standing and walking, also influence the calf situation.

Posture And Glutes!

Stand up? Where do you feel the weight in your feet?

In your toes? Heels? Mid foot?

Do you lock your knees out?

If your weight is a bit more in your toes and/or your knees are locked (which is how I used to stand) than your calves are over stretched and over worked because your toes are doing a lot of work to keep you from falling forward onto you face.

I, and many of the folks I have worked with, have varying degrees of anterior pelvic tilt (ATP) in our standing posture. When we have ATP in our pelvis, our hip flexors and low back muscles are in a shortened position (and feel tight) and our abs and glutes are stretched and weak. In ATP our hamstrings feel tight, but are also in a stretched position. These stretched positions make it hard for these muscles to activate and essentially their intended "jobs" and because the body is efficient, it finds other ways to get us from point A to point B.

So What Does This Have To Do With Your Calves?

Your glutes and your hamstrings are mainly hip extenders. That is, they pull your leg behind you when needed, like when walking. However, if your glutes are sleeping on the job and your hammys are over-stretched because of ATP, then some other muscle(s) have to pick up the slack to help move you forward. This is where your calves come to the rescue, they use their power to propel you.

Yay for forward movement! Not-so-yay is that this makes your calves work too hard and thus become very tight.

Calm Down Those Calves with These Tips

What can you do to help your calves feel some relief from this tightness?

Here are a series of exercises that have helped me. I do these exercises most days of the week, if not every day. I invite you to try a couple of these exercises on an ongoing basis.

90/90 Breathing

This deep breathing exercise taps into a parasympathetic nervous system which helps us relax and can help signal the muscles to release some tension. And because your pelvis is slightly tucked under here it helps toward the pelvis out of an anterior pelvic tilt.

Watch a video HERE!

True Hip Flexor Stretch

This exercise, especially with the tuck of the pelvis, focuses on stretching the muscles of the anterior hip and working on counteracting ATP.

Watch a video HERE!

Double Or Single Leg Hip Lift

Start with double leg hip lift (first video below) and progress to the single leg version (second video below). In the single leg hip lift, make sure you keep the pelvis tucked under throughout each exercise.

Double leg video HERE!

Single leg video HERE!

How to Implement

A great place to start is to add these exercises to your weekly or daily movement practice. They could be as part of your warm up before your workout, or they can serve as a great way to start or end your day.

Be realistic in incorporating the exercises — choose a goal you can achieve, even if that means doing the exercises just once a week. Work up to more days once you are consistent with your first goal. Ultimately you’ll want to work up to having these be part of each day. Our bodies make changes over time and if we want them to move in a different way we need to do things consistently over time.

Feel free to keep foam rolling your calves, stretching, and doing heel raises; those things are good too. But see if adding these exercises helps.