What Happened When This Guy Trained Calves for 120 Days

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YouTuber Matt Morsia, better known to his subscribers as MattDoesFitness, has had to adapt his training in a big way this year fAfter a complete rupture of the Achilles tendon in his left leg. In a recent video update, Matt reflected on his recovery from injury, specifically his efforts to rebuild his calves after he rapidly lost muscle mass following surgery.

For the first stage, he limited himself to a few very small resistance exercises, including banded ankle flexion, dorsiflexion, inversion, and isometric work. “If that sounds fucking boring, that’s because it was,” says Matt. “Spending an hour every day for two months moving your foot against a rubber band was far from ideal.”

Once he was able to walk without crutches, that provided additional stimulation for Matt’s lower body, and at six weeks, once he was completely rid of the boot, he was able to start training his calves properly. “At this point, my left calf had literally disintegrated,” he says, “so to be able to put some load on it was an amazing feeling.”

From that point on, his calf routine included seated calf raises on machines, as well as standing variations. He would later incorporate dumbbell and machine calf raises into his workouts, as well as isometric grips. Four months after his injury, Matt’s calves are looking strong again.

“I’m quite happy,” he says. “Keep in mind I haven’t been training specifically to build mass, it’s more of a rehab style, the first couple months of the process was very light banded stuff, so obviously that was more damage limitation, trying to hang on to the muscle I had instead of building new tissue. Actually, just in the last month, six weeks, I’ve been able to train my calves to the point where I can really build them.”

Going forward, Matt and his physical therapist plan to increase the intensity of his lower body workouts and focus more on building muscle to achieve the goal he’s had in mind since the breakup: “I want to build bigger.” , the strongest calves the world has ever seen, and ensure that injury never happens again.”