Classic Bodybuilding: Don “The Ripper” Ross’s Mass-Building Routine for Stubborn Calves

 Classic Bodybuilding: 

Don “The Ripper” Ross’s Mass-Building Routine for Stubborn Calves

Don "The Ripper" Ross in competition shape.

     I have never had good calf development.  My calves were always stubborn and the hardest body part for me to grow.

     Those two opening sentences are completely true for my personal calf development.  But I also think they’re the truth for a lot of lifters and bodybuilders; there are probably an endless sea of trainees who have uttered the very same words.  In fact, there have been a lot of bodybuilders in general that have had an almost stellar physique in every way but with one lone exception: they had poor calf development.

     When I first started bodybuilding, there was nothing that would make my calves grow.  I would have swore to you up-and-down at the time that I had tried everything to make them grow, too, but they just didn’t seem to budge.  My legs grew.  My chest grew.  My back grew easily.  My arms grew—they were stubborn for sure, but they still grew.  But my calves didn't seem as if they had grown a ¼ of an inch even after a couple years of training.

     But then something happened.  I opened the pages of a November, 1991 issue of IronMan magazine and found an article from Don “The Ripper” Ross entitled “Mules to Jewels: Turn Your Stubborn Calves into Rock-Hard Diamonds.”  It was one of the most unique training plans I had seen up until that point—and it’s entirely unique to this day, I think, in the world of bodybuilding programs.  The premise is actually pretty simple—I’m surprised more bodybuilders haven’t tried it to bring up other lagging body parts using this method—but it was still unique.  And it was the one training program that finally made my calves grow.  Now, I’m not sure how much they grew, as I didn’t take any before-and-after measurements, but they were noticeably larger and much more detailed than before using Ross’s program.

     So if you’re having trouble with getting those calves to grow, I’m gonna lay out Ross’s program momentarily.  First, however, a little background on The Ripper, for those of you who may be unfamiliar.

     Don Ross—usually known as “The Ripper,” but also “Ripper Savage” and “The Bronx Barbarian” from his days as a pro wrestler—was a popular bodybuilder and, more importantly, I think, a popular bodybuilding writer from around 1979 until his death from a heart attack in 1995 at the age of 49.  I remember reading about his untimely demise in MuscleMag International  with the magazine cover headline “Don ‘Ripper’ Ross DEAD!”  I was saddened.  I liked Ross.  His articles—while not as influential on me as other bodybuilding writers at the time—still influenced me and helped to spur my interest in writing for the major bodybuilding magazines of the day.

     One of the things that I liked about Ross was that he wasn’t afraid to write bodybuilding programs that were controversial or just different from a lot of other writers.  And at the time, shortly before his death, when many of the training programs in the bodybuilding rags utilized mainly brief and infrequent workouts, The Ripper was still preaching hard, high-volume, and fairly frequent training.  I admired him for that.  I still do.

     Another thing that I believe made Ross unique was that he was both a good writer and a successful bodybuilder.  Those two usually don’t go together.  Most top bodybuilders, pro or amateur, doesn’t matter, never write anything.  Usually when you see something that was “written” by a pro bodybuilder in the ‘90s, for instance, it was never actually written by that bodybuilder, but by a ghost writer instead.  (There were some exceptions; the pro bodybuilder Dave Fisher comes to mind.)  Conversely, most of the writers for the magazines—myself included then—were not successful bodybuilders, but just good writers hired by the bodybuilding magazines to write articles.  So, yeah, Ross was different in that way.  Also, even though his bodybuilding programs might have been “hardcore,” they spoke more to the average bodybuilder because Ross was more of an “average” guy at the gym with subpar genetics.  Ross didn’t have what you would call “good” genetics, or even a very “aesthetic” physique, but he worked really hard to build his physique because of those factors, which allowed him, I believe, to have so much success as a writer who could really speak to the average reader.

     Maybe, in the future, I will do a more in-depth “Classic Bodybuilding” piece on Don Ross if I can find enough material.  For now, let’s move on to his unique calf-building program.

Mules to Jewels: Turn Your Stubborn Calves into Rock-Hard Diamonds

The program below originally appeared in this article (which I found in my attic earlier today).

     “Of all the bodyparts on the human physique, calves are often the most difficult to develop.  This tight-knit group of powerful muscles is highly immune to exercise, since we work our calves each time we stand or walk.  I don’t know how they got their name, but with their stubborn resistance to growth it would be more appropriate to call them mules.” ~Don Ross

     That is exactly how Ross opened the article, hence the title of the piece.  The article is long, and, really, quite good, as Ross gives several examples from his training, and the training of some of the other top bodybuilders from the ‘70s up to the time when the article was penned.  But for the sake of this essay, I will just focus on the actual program, since that’s probably what you’re most interested in reading about anyway.  (Ross took a few pages to work up to the program in print.)  He said that he got this routine from Vince Gironda, which I’m sure he did, but that also tells you something about the genius of Gironda.  Because I read a lot of Gironda material over the years, and he doled out plenty of leg-training advice, calves included, and I don’t ever remember him mentioning a program such as this.  It just tells you—assuming that he didn’t write this program in one of his many, many articles—just how much knowledge Gironda had that he never wrote about.  Anyway, here’s the program (all italicized words are Ross’s):

Day One

     Before starting this routine, do one or two sets of deep stretch warm ups with no weight, coming high on the balls of your feet for 20 to 30 reps.

     Heavy Calf Raises with Burn Reps.  Use the donkey calf raise machine for this, as it eliminates the pressure on the lower back from superheavy weights.  Do three sets.  Use the three toe positions, starting with toes in on the first set, out on the second, and forward on the third set.  Use a weight that will allow you to do five to six strict reps.  When you’ve done as many full reps as possible, continue to do partial movements as far in each direction as you are able to go.  Do these final “burn reps” quickly for a thorough pump.  Remove some weight for each of the three descending sets.

     Strydom Calf Raises.  (C.S.’s note: these were named after the pro bodybuilder Gary Strydom; pronounced “Straydom”.)  Use about half the poundage on the calf machine as you use for standard calf raises.  Position your feet six inches apart, toes forward.  Using slow movements, go very deep.  Hold for a half-second at the bottom, then rise as high as possible.  At the top of the movement, bend your knees and lift up even farther.  Hold for a half second, tensing your calves, and repeat.  This is even more grueling than the heavy exercise.  Try for 20 reps.  Use the same weight for each of three sets, doing as many reps as possible each time (descending reps).

     Seated Full Calf Raises.  By this time your gastrocnemius will be pre-exhausted.  Now it’s time to bring out the soleus muscles under the main calf bellies.  Use a light weight on the seated calf machine.  With your feet forward on all sets, do three sets of 20 deep calf movements, coming up as high as possible each time.

Day Two

     Calf Raises on a step or block—no weight.  Do one set of 50 to 100 reps in each of the three toe positions.  Start with slow reps.  As the reps become more difficult, speed them up.

Day Three

     No calf work.

     This routine should end all progress barriers and force new development.  Keep a picture of the end result in mind and think big.  Let nothing stop you—especially that muscle burn!  Be the master of those calves.  Make them grow and polish them into diamonds!