Seated versus Straight Leg Calf Raises: What’s the Difference?

The two classic ways to train your calves are seated calf raises & standing calf raises.

New research has provided some important new insights on these exercises, which you should be aware of if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your training time.

The aim of this article is to explain these new insights and provide you with the necessary practical take-homes that you can use today.

Relevant anatomy

There are two muscles responsible for the calf raise action (plantar flexion) that are of note here: your gastrocnemius and soleus.

There’s one key difference between them.

Your gastrocnemius crosses your ankle AND your knee joint.

Your soleus only crosses your ankle joint.

The relevance of this is that your gastrocnemius is put in a more shortened or more stretched position depending on if your knee is bent (seated calf raise) or straight (standing calf raise).

Turning the gastrocnemius off

Because the gastrocnemius crosses the knee joint, it is put in a more shortened position during a seated calf raise.

In fact, it is put in such a shortened position that it can’t meaningfully contribute to the movement.

This is known as active insufficiency.

Because of this, a seated calf raise trains the soleus primarily and excludes the gastrocnemius.

Historically, people have taken this idea and said that standing calf raises are a gastrocnemius exercise and seated calf raises are a soleus exercise.

However, this isn’t a very accurate picture of what’s actually happening.

New research

A December 2023 study [1] has analyzed seated versus standing calf raises in relation to how these two muscles, the gastrocnemius and soleus, are trained.

In a nutshell, what they found is this:

• Straight leg calf raises (ie standing calf raises) train the gastrocnemius and soleus equally

• Seated calf raises train the soleus just as much as standing calf raises; they just train the gastrocnemius less

• The muscle growth seen in the soleus is the same from doing only seated or only standing calf raises; it’s just that standing calf raises also grow your gastrocnemius

So, for a purely muscle growth perspective, this makes it hard to justify ever choosing a seated calf raise over a standing calf raise.

For instance, if you plan to do 6 sets of calves in a week, it would be better to do 6 sets of standing calf raises instead of 3 sets of seated & 3 sets of standing. The soleus growth will be the same, but the gastrocnemius growth will be much greater without the seated.

However, seated calf raises aren’t worthless. There is another reason why you may use one at some point.

A different use-case for seated calf raises

When it comes to being able to squat deeply, ankle mobility is an important consideration.

In particular you need to be able to get your knees far enough over your toes toward the bottom of a squat. Otherwise, you may feel unbalanced up the chain at your hips or back.

This motion is rarely limited by the gastrocnemius, as it already has been made shortened by the knee bending during the squat and is therefore not going to provide much tension.

A seated calf raise puts your ankle into a position in which its mobility demands are much more similar to what they are during a squat pattern.

In relation to what we are discussing here today, a tight soleus is a possible reason that ankle mobility could be limited.

Given that seated calf raises put tension on the soleus at the exclusion of the gastrocnemius, then building mobility on this movement will lead to better improvements in the specific ankle mobility requirements of the squat.

An example of how to do this could be using a weight you can control, lowering the weight until you feel an intense stretch in your calf, holding this for ~3-5 seconds, and then repeating this for reps.

It’s worth noting that there are other reasons why your ankle mobility during a squat may be limited.

However, if it has to do with a tight soleus, then there is really no better intervention than using a seated calf raise as described.

Conclusion

It is usually the case that one exercise isn’t inherently & absolutely better than the other.

Rather, one is better under specific circumstances.

For the purpose of building muscle in your calves, standing calf raises are the better pick.

For the purpose of improving squat mobility, seated calf raises are the better pick.

As always, if you have any questions that you feel went unanswered, do not hesitate to drop them in the comment box below.