Many already know the fitness adage, “never skip a leg day.”

It’s definitely good advice. After all, focusing too much on the upper body causes imbalances, limits fitness levels, and caps muscle-building potential.

Unfortunately, many typical “leg days” include only of variations of squats, lunges, and deadlifts for the glutes, quads, and hamstrings.

But what about your calves?

The problem with exercising the calves is often two-fold. First, calf muscles are accustomed to everyday use and frequent activity. So actually working them out hard enough to produce strength and muscle gains can be very tough. Also, the variety of calf exercises is fairly limited. Mostly, you’ll be looking to perform calf-raise variations.

However, the above also means working your calves is always a good idea and is a very simple process!

To get you started, here is a progressive list of calf raise variations using only bodyweight and free weights as resistance. Depending on your strength level, each type can be repeated 20 to 30 times per set and three to five sets per workout.

Easy: Seated Calf-Raise – Sitting with bent knees, raise your lower legs onto the toes and slowly lower the heels back to the floor. Add a weight on your lap to increase difficulty.

Intermediate: Standing Calf-Raise – Standing on a flat surface, raise your body onto the toes and slowly lower the heels back to the floor.  Add weights in each hand to increase difficulty.

Hard: Hanging Calf-Raise – Overhanging your heels off a platform, raise your body onto the toes and lower until your comfortable limit is reached. Add weights in a backpack  or attached to a belt to increase difficulty.

Pro Tips: To better isolate each calf, perform either of the last two variations on one foot at a time.

Shaun Karp is a certified personal trainer in Vancouver, B.C. For more info call 604-420-7800 or visitKarpFitness.com. You can also find Karp on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.