Usually, if someone told me "I want bigger calves" I would tell them to hit their calves HEAVY 3-4 times a week doing 2-3 movements slow and controlled pausing at the bottom and exploding up but in certain situations, I would give them this advice. As you may or may not know around the calves there are a few other muscles around the ankles and under the calf like the Soleus, Extensor Digitorum Longus and Tibialis Anterior, and just like the calves, we can grow those muscles.
I would only recommend this advice to people with absolute shit calve genetics like if you have chicken legs and super short insertions, if not I'd just do the slow and controlled advice. So what I would do if my calves genetics sucked is to train those surrounding muscles to give the calf an appearance of thickness. I have identified two ways to do so, walking/running on an incline (outside) and training your calves with sloppy form.
For the running/walking, I would say do it a few times a week either walking for 20-30 minutes at a decent speed while stretching the calves on every step or 10 minutes of incline running while again stretching the calves on every step. This will not work if you do it on a treadmill with an incline or if you do it on a flat surface or decline surface.
For the 'Sloppy Form' calf training I would do 2-4 times a week of just normal calf training at the gym but do not do it slow and controlled, do heavy sets moving the weight extremely fast and disregarding form for the most part. You may look like a retard in the gym but this will definitely grow those surrounding muscles. Be careful when doing this though, you don't want to snap your shit up so ease into the heavyweights.
