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Michael Meneghini: Your Calves Are Not Just for Walking
Michael Meneghini/LinkedIn
Sep 10, 2026, 21:29

Michael Meneghini: Your Calves Are Not Just for Walking

Michael Meneghini, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Indiana Orthopedic Institute, Professor of Clinical Orthopaedic Surgery at Indiana University School of Medicine, Senior Consultant at OsteoRemedies, LLC and Enovis, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Your calves are not just for walking.

They are a second heart.

Most people never think about their calf muscles until they cramp on a run or ache after a long flight.

But there’s a mechanism at work in that muscle every single day that keeps your entire circulatory system functioning.

Here’s what’s actually happening.

When you stand, gravity pulls blood down into your legs. Your heart alone cannot pull it back up efficiently. Your calves do that work instead.

Every contraction squeezes the deep veins running through the muscle and pushes blood upward toward your heart.

One way valves inside those veins keep it from falling back down. This is called the calf muscle pump, and it is one of the most underappreciated systems in the human body.

There is also something unique about the soleus, the deep calf muscle. It can stay active at a low, steady burn for hours without fatiguing, which is part of why simple movement, even while seated, matters more than people realize.

Studies have found that soleus muscle activation while seated significantly improved blood sugar regulation after a meal.

I did not become a hip and knee surgeon by ignoring the rest of the body. Every joint I touch in the or depends on a circulatory system working the way it was designed.

At IOI, our foot and ankle team sees this connection every day. Function starts from the ground up.

A few things to think about:

  • Move every 30 minutes. Even 10 steps meaningfully drops venous pressure in your legs.
  • Add calf raises to your routine. Simple, low impact, high return.
  • Stop sitting still for hours. Your soleus is designed to work quietly in the background. Let it work.

We spend so much energy optimizing what we eat and how hard we train. Meanwhile one of the most powerful tools for circulation and metabolic health is sitting quietly below our knees.

Do you do calf raises and stretch them out?

Did you know… I have a podcast called Unhinged with Dr. Michael Meneghini?”

Proceed to the video attached to the post.

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bleeding disorders calf muscle pump Cardiology Deep Veins DVT Health Hematology Hemostasis Hemostasis News Hemostasis Today IOI Medicine Michael Meneghini soleus
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