Fast twitch, slow twitch, WTF?

[Tyler883]

Hi guys,
I think I have alot of fast twitch, or slow twitch muscle in my calves, but I'm not sure which one it is.

I can always get a good muscle burn on my very first set, and if I do more than 3 sets, I walk around for almost a week with that feeling that I'm going to get a muscle cramp. Yet, I never get that "mildly bruised" feeling in my calves like I do with my larger muscle groups like my chest, quads, and back.

So, is that slow twitch or fast twitch muscle? Should I change my workouts?

My calves are bigger than I need for a more proportional build, so I was thinking of hitting them with cardio, and indirect weight training only, does this sound like a good idea?

[~Leah~]

Sure go ahead and do that. You can train your muscles to have slow or fast twitch fibres, but that doesn't really effect your workout itself. I'd say if you feel like cramping up for a week after your calf workouts, you're clearly pushing yourself too hard, or have improper form, neither of which are good things. And pushing yourself too hard when you already think they are too big proportionally isn't great either. You should still train them directly, but just ease off.

That's just my opinion!

[calgarygts]

Your fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fibres are generally a genetic thing, which you can alter to a very small degree through training. That's why fast people are born that way, and slow people cannot become fast because they train hard. Having cramping muscles for a week has nothing to do with fast or slow twitch, more with your diet, rest and training. With a better diet, more rest and better training (ie. warmup, cooldown, stretching, etc.) you won't feel like that.

[calgarygts]

If you don't want them to be as big just stop doing calf raises.

[davidI]

Calf muscles generally have more Type IIa and IIb (Fast twitch fibers) since they are an endurance muscle. They become this way because you have trained them your whole life by walking great distances.

To recruit your Type I muscle fibers you will need to up your repetition range to 25+ to reach hypertrophy. Type IIa and IIb respond to 9-12 and 6-8 reps respectively.

Remember with fast twitch fibres are 'explosive' fibres and you can incorporate this into the movement.

I wouldn't worry about your quads being 'too big' unless you're planning on competing right now. Even if you planned on competing in the future you would just have to make the rest of your body catch up!