What is the ability of your muscle or muscle group to perform repeated movements for extended periods?

Fitness fanatics ubiquitously are aware, and can surely empathise with that moment, when they’ve reached the end of their stamina as they push themselves to try and get in yet another set of bicep curls or triceps extensions or even when they ride their bike a little longer.

The sheer fortitude required in pushing the limits of your body when it’s all but screaming at you internally to stop forms the very essence of endurance.

Muscular Endurance Definition

What is muscular persistence? Muscular endurance is the ability of your muscle or muscle groups to withstand repeated contractions for an extended period.

If your muscles need to contract in a similar pattern more than once, you are using muscular endurance. Multiple repetitions of an exercise, whether weight training, resistance training or increasing your cardiovascular endurance with activities like cycling, swimming or running are forms of muscular endurance.

Muscular Strength and Muscular Endurance

Are the two the same? No, but it is important to remember that you need to improve your muscular strength, to complement your endurance.

Strength training is absolutely vital to improving endurance. While muscular endurance is all about how long your muscle performs, muscular strength is about how hard it can perform. The stronger your muscle, the easier and less work it is to go the distance.

Strength and power training can also increase the number of fast-twitch muscle fibres that are in charge of defining a particular muscle.

Interested in strength training but not sure where to start or the amount of weight you should lift? Our previous blog about strength training program outlines a fantastic routine for beginners.

How to Improve Muscular Endurance?

Muscular endurance can be improved by applying multiple fitness styles or even a combination of those into your usual fitness routine. Some of these are:

1. Cardio Training

 A favourite in the fitness community, this one is considered to be one of the most popular and effective exercises.

Cardiorespiratory fitness activities like running and cycling help your muscles gear up for endurance and assist in enhancing your cardiovascular endurance.

2. Strength Training

The American College of Sports Medicine recommends incorporating lower intensity strength training to improve your endurance.

A lot of Personal Trainers swear by weight training with moderate to low weights with increased repetitions.

3. Circuit Training

 Another popular one, circuit training is known to help build your local muscular endurance.

Muscular Endurance Exercises

While not exactly a walk in the park, it’s still not a mission impossible if you really set your mind to increase your endurance.

An effective muscle endurance program includes a good mix of exercises that put to use one or two limbs or joints. Your training program can be tailored to suit your training level – whether novice to advanced.

Here are 5 types of exercises that you can include in your exercise program to improve your form.

• Planks

  Try 5 reps and try to hold as long as possible. Towards the end when your arms start quivering is your confirmation that you’re indeed pushing your limits. Give yourself a break in between reps.

• Pushups

  If you find this movement too difficult, start with your weight on your knees rather than your toes. Try to go for 5 sets with 15 reps.

• Bodyweight Squats

  Perform 5 sets of 25 reps while keeping your chest out, shoulders back and head neutral. You can widen your stance and point your toes outward for achieving maximum results.

• Situps

  Situps are great for working upper body muscles. Perform 5 sets with 25 repetitions in a controlled motion to maximise your muscle use.

• Walking Lunges

  Try 5 sets of 15 lunges on each leg while keeping your abdomen upright and your core engaged. You might have the urge to drop your torso but try to not give in to it.

Short rest periods are ideal for the training exercises that you perform. One to two minutes for high-repetition sets (20 to 25 repetitions or more) and less than a minute for 10 to 15 repetitions.

Endurance Training: Why is it Important?

Endurance training refers to exercising to increase strength, endurance, speed and stamina. But wondering why go through all that rigorous rigmarole? Easy. Because performing endurance training workouts has numerous health benefits.

Cardiorespiratory endurance alone, for instance, builds the vital energy systems of the body, including the lactic acid system. Additionally, it increases your metabolism, reduces fatigue and enhances your sporting performance.

The more you improve your endurance, the harder you can go for a more extended amount of time.

Prevention is Better Than Injury

Pumped to incorporate muscular training into your fitness routine? Fantastic! But remember, it is absolutely critical that you talk to your doctor and seek medical advice or consult a qualified Personal Trainer at the beginning of starting any new exercise plan, particularly if it’s been a while since you exercised.

Overexercising is real and has unpleasant consequences. Take precautions to prevent injuries as you begin or decide to train harder.

What are you waiting for? Get. Set. Go!

The health benefits and quality-of-life outcomes of a fit musculoskeletal system (musculoskeletal fitness) are reviewed in this article. The World Health Organization suggests health is a state of complete physical, mental or social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Physical health includes such characteristics as body size and shape, sensory acuity, susceptibility to disease and disorders, body functioning, recuperative ability and the ability to perform certain tasks. One aspect of physical health is the musculoskeletal system, which consists of 3 components; muscular strength, endurance and flexibility. Muscular strength (dynamic) is defined as the maximum force a muscle or muscle group can generate at a specific velocity. Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle or muscle group to perform repeated contractions against a load for an extended period of time. Flexibility has 2 components, dynamic or static, where dynamic flexibility is the opposition or resistance of a joint to motion, that is, the forces opposing movement rather than the range of movement itself. Static flexibility is the range of motion about ajoint, typically measured as the degree of arc at the end of joint movement. If strength, endurance and flexibility are not maintained, musculoskeletal fitness is then compromised which can significantly impact physical health and well-being. Many health benefits are associated with musculoskeletal fitness, such as reduced coronary risk factors, increased bone mineral density (reduced risk of osteoporosis), increased flexibility, improved glucose tolerance, and greater success in completion of activities of daily living (ADL). With aging, the performance of daily tasks can become a challenge. Additionally, falls, bone fractures and the need for institutional care indicate a musculoskeletal weakness as we age. The earlier in life an individual becomes physically active the greater the increase in positive health benefits; however, becoming physically active at any age will benefit overall health. Improved musculoskeletal fitness (for example, through resistance training combined with stretching) is associated with an enhanced health status. Thus, maintaining musculoskeletal fitness can increase overall quality of life.

Muscular endurance refers to how long muscles can sustain exercise. Improving muscular endurance can help enhance overall health and fitness.

This article explores the benefits of muscular endurance, the best training routines to enhance it, and how people can adapt these techniques into common exercises.

We will also look at tips to prevent injury during training and how to design an exercise program that could lead to long-term performance and health benefits.

What is muscular endurance?

Muscular endurance is the ability to continue contracting a muscle, or group of muscles, against resistance, such as weights or body weight, over a period of time.

Increasing the performance of these muscles means they can continue to contract and work against these forces.

Greater muscular endurance allows a person to complete more repetitions of an exercise, for example, pushups or squats.

Benefits of muscular endurance training

According to the American Council on Exercise (ACE), the benefits of muscle endurance include:

• helping maintain good posture and stability for longer periods
• improving the aerobic capacity of muscles
• improving the ability to carry out daily functional activities, such as lifting heavy items
• increasing athletic performance in endurance-based sports

How to measure muscular endurance

Muscular endurance tests measure how many repetitions of a movement people can do before the muscles reach a state of fatigue and cannot continue the exercise.

Many tests focus on measuring upper and lower body muscle endurance by measuring how many pushups, squats, or situps people can achieve.

A person can work with fitness instructors to measure muscular endurance or record how many repetitions of a particular exercise they can perform before reaching the fatigue state.

How to improve endurance

To increase muscular endurance, ACE recommend a combination of lower and upper body exercises, with strengthening exercises to target the whole body.

Moderate resistance training, with short intervals in between for rest, creates short bursts of tension to build strength.

Circuit or high-intensity interval training (HIIT) can be a suitable way to combine cardio and strength training into one workout.

Unless a person’s fitness goals involve training for a particular endurance-based sport, training for muscular endurance alone may not be the most appropriate strategy.

The best exercise programs mix strength and muscular endurance training.

Some evidence also suggests that exercise programs that people find enjoyable may be more likely to generate long-term benefits, as they may be more likely to stick with them.

A 2015 study comparing HIIT and steady-state training notes:

“Variety in the type of exercise is as important as the type of exercise. Particularly considering that the health benefits of exercise have to be viewed in the context of the likelihood that exercise is continued for several years, not just the weeks of a controlled study.”

Training for muscular endurance

When training to improve muscular endurance, what matters most is not the type of exercise, but how people design their workout.

People should take into consideration the following when tailoring a workout to boost muscular endurance:

• the number of reps
• the weight or resistant force on the muscles
• the number of sets
• length or rest periods

According to the National Strength and Conditioning Association, individuals training for muscular endurance should aim to complete three or more sets of 15 or more exercise reps with a load that is 50% or less of their one rep max (RM).

A person’s one rep max is the maximum load with which a person can complete one repetition of an exercise.

For example, a person may wish to use the leg press machine at the gym to build endurance in the legs.

If they have an RM of 300 pounds (lbs), they should aim to perform 2–4 sets of 15 or more reps with a load of 150lbs or less, with brief rest periods between sets.

As their muscular endurance for this exercise increases, they may wish to make the exercise more challenging by reducing rest times between sets, or increasing the reps per set, rather than increasing the load weight.

A person can apply the same principle of high rep and set volume, low–moderate load, and short rest periods to any exercise, such as bench presses, dumbbell curls, pushups, or squats.

People can choose exercises that suit their preferences and are challenging yet enjoyable enough to sustain training.

Example exercises

As we have already mentioned, there are no specific exercises that are better for training muscular endurance than others. The design of a training program makes it suitable for endurance training.

However, ACE recommend the following exercises for building muscle endurance, which a person can perform at home without equipment:

Pushup

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A pushup works the triceps, chest, and shoulder muscles.

1. Start in a pushup position by lifting the body off the ground with the hands and toes, with the body in a straight line, horizontal to the floor.
2. Keep the hands flat on the floor shoulder-width apart and at roughly chest level.
3. Start with the arms straight, then bend the arms while keeping the body straight and engaging the core and glutes, to lower the body until the chest is close to the ground.
4. Straighten the arms to return to the starting position.
5. Repeat for 5–15 times, depending on difficulty, to perform one set

A person can also work the tricep muscles more by placing their hands close together and turn them inward, so the fingers and thumbs form a diamond shape.

To make the exercise easier, a person can place their hands on a bench or other stable, raised surface.

People can also modify a push up by placing the knees on the floor to make it easier, or lift one leg off the floor to make it more difficult.

Squat

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A squat works the glutes, calves, quads, and core muscles.

1. Stand with the feet just over shoulder-width apart with the toes pointing slightly outwards.
2. With the head facing forwards in a neutral position and back straight, extends the arms in front, so they are parallel with the ground.
3. Squat down by bending the knees, keeping the body weight centered over the arches of the feet and the thighs parallel to the floor.
4. Keep the back straight with the shoulders back and chest forwards.
5. Use the feet, legs, and hips to push back up to the starting position.
6. Beginners should aim for 5–10 reps, and they may perform the squat against a wall or end the movement in a seated position on a low surface to make it easier.

Abdominal crunch

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An abdominal crunch works the abdominal muscles:

1. Lie on the back with knees bent and feet flat on the floor.
2. Place the hands lightly on the back of the head and chin tucked.
3. Slowly curl the upper body towards the knees, keeping the lower back on the mat.
4. Slowly lower back down to the starting position.
5. Perform 10–15 repetitions for one beginner set.

Pike crunch

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Another example of an abdominal crunch is the pike crunch:

1. Lie with the back flat on the floor, with legs outstretched and arms above the head.
2. Lift the torso and legs off the floor to form a pike position.
3. Place the legs at right angles straight up in the air and reach with the arms toward the feet.
4. Slowly lower the legs and torso back to the floor.
5. Perform for 10–15 repetitions for one beginner set.

A person can also hold a stability ball between their ankles during this exercise.

Lunge

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A lunge works the abs, buttocks, hips, and thighs:

1. Stand up straight with the feet together.
2. Bend one knee, lift the opposite leg, step forwards on to it, place the foot flat on the floor, and bend the supporting leg, so the knee reaches the bottom.
3. Use the front leg to push back up to the start position and repeat for the opposite leg.
4. Perform for 10–15 repetitions on each leg for one beginner set

Plank

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A plank works the core and back muscles.

1. Start by lifting the body off the ground with the hands and toes, with the body in a straight line, horizontal to the floor
2. Keep the hands flat on the floor, with straight arms and wrists and the elbows directly underneath the shoulders.
3. Keep the chin tucked in, with the abs and thighs tight.
4. If the person is a beginner, hold for 30 seconds, rest for around 1 minute in between.
5. Repeat the plank at least three times.

A person can modify this exercise by resting on the forearms instead of the palms if they find it challenging to hold the plank position with straight arms.

Preventing injury

Tips to prevent injury during a workout include:

• warming up with dynamic stretches before exercising, for at least 5 minutes
• making sure to maintain proper posture and technique, and consulting with a fitness professional if unsure of these
• exhaling during movements requiring more effort and inhaling on easier parts of the exercise
• resting certain muscle groups at least 24 hours after working them out
• cooling down and stretching after exercise
• stopping physical activity if ill or injured

Summary

Muscular endurance is a muscle’s ability to continue contracting against resistance over a period of time.

People can improve their muscular endurance with strength and cardiovascular training.