The Calf Muscles In Yoga

Our calf muscles are probably not the first muscles to come to mind when we’re struggling with a pose in yoga. But they are an integral part of connecting our feet to our pelvis. We can feel the effects of tension or ease in our calf muscles far up the chain of movement in many yoga poses. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at where the calf muscles are, how they affect our yoga postures, and how we might stretch our calf muscles in yoga if they’re tight.

What are the calf muscles?

Before we can think about stretching the calf muscles in yoga, we need to know where they are. The calf muscles include two separate but related muscles, the gastrocnemius and the soleus.

Gastrocnemius

Gastrocnemius is the more superficial of the two muscles. It attaches at its superior end onto the femur. Because the gastrocnemius has two heads, it has two superior attachments at its origin. The medial head, or inside head, attaches to the medial epicondyle of the femur. The lateral head, or outside head, attaches to the lateral epicondyle of the femur. At its inferior end, it attaches via the Achilles tendon onto the calcaneus, or heel bone. Because the gastrocnemius attaches to the femur, it crosses both the knee joint and the ankle joint.

Soleus

The soleus is found deep to, or underneath, the gastrocnemius. At its origin, or superior end, it attaches to the soleal line (a small ridge) of the tibia and the head of the fibula. Like the gastrocnemius, at its inferior end, it attaches via the Achilles tendon onto the calcaneus. Unlike the gastrocnemius, the soleus crosses only one joint, the ankle joint.

The Achilles tendon

The Achilles tendon is a special structure formed where the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles join together at their inferior ends and become tendinous. It attaches to the plantar fascia around our heel bone and onto the bone itself. The Achilles tendon plays an important role in maintaining the necessary balance between stability and mobility at our ankle joints.

Why are the calf muscles important?

The calf muscles are part of many important functions in our body. One function that might surprise you is that they support circulation. Contractions in the calf muscles help send deoxygenated blood back up to the heart and lungs, preventing it from pooling in the legs and feet. It’s due to this function that the calf muscles are sometimes referred to as the “second heart.” Additionally, balance between the calf muscles and the muscles along the front of our shin is important for maintaining the functionality of our legs. Short muscles combined with imbalanced loading on our body during activities like sports can increase the likelihood of things like plantar fasciitis and heel spurs.

Our calf muscles are part of the three-dimensional set of structures that create our foot arches. They are essential for regular everyday movement like walking and standing. They’re also important for creating a good foundation on the ground for all standing yoga postures.

How do we relate to the calf muscles in yoga?

Everything is connected

Just like we talk about the mind-body-spirit connections in yoga, the different aspects of the body are connected, too. Tom Myers of Anatomy Trains describes the continuous line of superficial myofascia that runs from the bottom of our feet to the top of our head as the superficial back line. In our legs, this line of continuous tissue includes the plantar fascia on the bottom of our feet, the Achilles tendons, the gastrocnemius muscles, and the hamstrings. When do we lengthen the superficial back line? Whenever we forward bend.

We often talk about the hamstrings as restrictors to forward bending. And certainly, they are important muscles to lengthen to add ease to our forward bending. But they’re not the only culprits responsible for restricting our forward motion. Especially if we do sports that strengthen and shorten our calf muscles, like running, cycling, hiking, etc., our calf muscles can be short and tight. Tight calf muscles can impede our reach in standing forward bends, seated forward bends, and even downward facing dog in yoga.

How do we stretch tight calf muscles in yoga?

In order to stretch the calf muscles, we have to put some pressure into them. Paradoxically, the poses that tight calf muscles restrict in yoga are also the poses we can use to stretch them. If we want to stretch the calf muscles in yoga, though, the important part is how we do these poses to get the kind of stretch we’re looking for.

Seated forward bends

In seated forward bend, take a look at your feet and notice if they’re pointing away from you. If they are, you’re avoiding (albeit probably unconsciously) stretching those tight calf muscles in your yoga poses. If you can reach your feet, gently pull back on them with your hand to add some stretch to those calf muscles. You can put the same kind of pressure into those muscles by wrapping a strap around the bottom of your feet and lightly pulling on that, if you can’t reach your feet.

A second thing to take a look at in our seated forward folds is whether our feet are inverted. If you notice your feet are curved with your big toes drawn up toward you, that may reflect more shortness and tension on the inner portion of your calf muscles compared to the outer portion. Remember that we said the gastrocnemius has two heads, a medial portion and a lateral portion. Although the inverted foot pattern likely reflects a larger pattern that goes up into the hips, the calf muscles can certainly be part of that pattern.

To add a stretch to your calf muscles in yoga to help balance out the tension between the two sides, hold your feet while in your seated forward bend, and add some rotational pressure with your hands to bring them closer to neutral. Notice whether you can feel the difference in the amount and quality of stretch between the lateral side of the gastrocnemius and the medial side.

Standing forward bends

We can also add some pressure into our standing forward folds to stretch the calf muscles in yoga. In standing forward bends, our calf muscles will actually be eccentrically contracting as we’re folding forward to help us resist the pull of gravity. But once we’re in the pose, we can relax a bit, shift some of our weight into our hands, and allow our calf muscles to stretch.