Mike,
Great to hear from you and excellent question. I guess you may have heard one of my recent presentations because I hammer home the fact that calf training must have its place in everyone's program just like hammies and biceps.

For everyone that has read my posts over the years, you know I am a huge proponent of keeping the foot and lower leg strong. I believe that this is one of the weakest (and becoming one of the least mobile) areas of the body.

To address this, I not only have my athletes train barefooted during their warmups and lower body, but I have also added foot and ankle mobility drills to the warmup. I believe that this mobility and strength work is crucial not just for say jumping for basketball, but even more fundamental or foundational than that. You see, without great mobility and strength of the feet, I believe that proprioception (and hence balance and coordination) will suffer. This will not only lead to the decreased performance you see, but also to a greater chance of injury (not just in the foot with classic turf toe, achilles tendinitis, and plantar fascitis, but also ankle sprain, ACLs, and even low back injury!).

So, to ask if you are leaving something out when you hammer just the big muscles of the body, the answer is a resounding "yes". Just like we all pay attention to the rotator cuff with a thrower, how can we leave out the feet with a jumper? Almost sounds crazy when it is put down that way, huh? Actually if you think they arent as important to train as say the posterior chain or the bench, try cutting off an achilles and see how good the play of the team is. Again another demo of just how important this region of the body actually is.

My suggestion is to get some barefoot work in and check the mobility especially at the big toe and the ankle. If either are limited (especially the classic hallux rigidus or poor dorsiflexion ability) you need to address this and then start strength work afterward (calf raises, soleus work, tibialis anterior if you have time). This point brings me to my final rant for the day.

So, now you start throwing in exercises for the lower leg because I have created enough contrast to see that the exercises are important. But starting right in with them before assessing the athlete may be the wrong idea. As I said in a previous post, I am seeing too many athletes with numbers of range, strength and compensation issues just training around them and throwing just more and more weight on the bar. If the heels are up when your athlete is squatting, down plug a lift under the heel, fix the range! Do that for the knee, hip and low back too and then we are on to something.

In conclusion, the feet, calves, and lower leg are critical to work. If they got enough from just running or jumping, why dont the hammies get enough too not to train them extra? We must train them all (and that means both mobility and strength). To keep it economical fit in barefoot work and some lower leg work as a super set where you can. The 10 min a few times a week will pay off.

I hope this helps and continues to challenge how everyone is thinking out there.

Time to put your best foot forward!,
Martin Rooney