If you're a guy new to calf workouts, doing extra partial reps after hitting failure on full calf raises doesn’t give you more muscle growth — it’s just as good as sticking to full reps, and both methods boost calf size by about 8% in 10 weeks.

If you're into lifting and want bigger calves, doing either full reps or starting with partial reps (and finishing with extra partials after failure) twice a week for eight weeks can give you noticeably bigger calf muscles.

If untrained young guys do calf raises twice a week for 10 weeks and go all the way to muscle failure, their calf muscles get 8% thicker — adding extra partial reps after failure doesn’t help more if the total workout load is kept the same.

If you keep doing partial calf raises after you can't do full ones anymore, you might boost muscle growth in your calf because you're doing way more work—about 87% more—than stopping completely.

If untrained guys keep doing partial calf raises after they can't do full ones anymore, their calf muscles get slightly thicker — about 0.6 mm more on average — compared to stopping completely.

Doing calf raises through a shorter range of motion, when the muscle is more stretched, might build more calf muscle in young women compared to doing full up-and-down reps — especially in the inner part of the calf.