Muscular endurance refers to a muscle’s or group of muscles’ ability to sustain repetitive contractions against resistance for a prolonged period of time. The more reps you can complete of a given exercise, the stronger your muscle endurance. It is only one component of physical fitness, which also includes muscular strength, flexibility, and power.
Muscular Endurance Types
Muscular endurance in strength training is defined as the number of reps of a single exercise that you can complete without stopping to rest. For example, how many full squats, sit-ups, or biceps curls can you do with a light-to-moderate weight before compromising form? Muscular endurance varies per muscle. In other words, squats may provide more endurance than biceps curls. It all depends on the muscles you work out.
The form of muscle endurance employed during cardiovascular fitness exercises such as running, swimming, or cycling is known as cardiovascular endurance or cardiorespiratory endurance. It differs from the concept of strength training. Endurance training for these forms of exercise strengthens the body’s energy systems, muscle fibers, and capillaries, allowing them to withstand long periods of exercise, such as completing a marathon.
Why Muscular Endurance Is Important?
Muscular endurance is essential in everyday activities like ascending three flights of stairs to get to work or lifting heavy boxes. In addition, muscular endurance aids performance in sports. Muscular endurance training has been shown in several studies to increase athletic performance. For example, a 2017 study published in Frontiers in Physiology found that cross-country skiers who completed this type of training performed better in double poling. When paired with normal resistance training, muscular endurance training helps persons with type 2 diabetes improve their blood sugar and insulin levels. It can also lower the chance of injury.
Muscular Endurance Measurement
Measuring your degree of muscle endurance is the first step toward improving it. This allows you to remember where you started while also making it less challenging to track your progress. Push-ups are commonly used to assess upper-body muscular endurance. To perform this exam, perform as many push-ups as feasible without breaking form. This might potentially be a timed exam to see how many you can complete in one minute.
Once you have your score, you may see how your performance compares to others your age and gender. In addition, you can detect changes in your upper body’s muscular endurance by watching this value over time. Muscular endurance testing can be done on your own, or if you work with a trainer, they may utilize this test to determine the appropriate intensity and weights for your activities. Push-up exams are also used by the United States Army to examine recruits’ muscular endurance.
Muscular Endurance Enhancement
According to some studies, an efficient muscular endurance training program employs smaller weights while performing a higher number of reps. This method could be the most effective for increasing local and high-intensity endurance. The techniques outlined below can be applied to a muscle endurance training workout for beginners, intermediates, or advanced athletes. They are based on the position of the American College of Sports Medicine on weight training and resistance training.
Muscular Endurance Exercises to Choose
Exercises should target big muscular groups (such as the legs or the back) or several muscle groups (such as the core and upper body). Include workouts that target one or two limbs or joints to add variation. To assist increase muscular endurance, the National Academy of Sports Medicine recommends performing workouts such as squats, bench presses, cable rows, and lunges.
Volume and Loading
The weight or resistance you utilize is the load (a 10 lb dumbbell or set the leg press machine to 110 pounds). The volume of an exercise is the number of times it is performed or the total number of repetitions. Choose a load that is less than half the maximum weight you can pull, push, or lift at once. This is classified as a low to moderate-intensity load. As a beginner or intermediate exerciser, strive for 10 to 15 repetitions for a set or two. If you are a more advanced exerciser, expect to do a few more repetitions every set, ranging from 10 to 25.
Rest Breaks
Muscle endurance training should be done with brief rest times. Rest one to two minutes between high repetitions (more than 15 to 20 repetitions) and less than one minute between sets of moderate repetitions (10 to 15 repetitions).
Circuit training is beneficial for developing local muscular endurance, and recovery intervals should be limited to the time it takes to go from one exercise station to another.
Frequency
A workout’s frequency of increasing muscle endurance is referred to as its frequency. This frequency is comparable to that used to grow larger muscles. According to the American Council on Exercise (ACE),
- Novice training: When exercising the full body, exercise two to three days a week.
- Intermediate training: Perform total-body workouts three days per week or separate routines for upper and lower-body workouts four days per week.
- Advanced training: If the workouts are divided by muscle group, use a higher frequency of four to six days per week.
Velocity of Repetition
The rate at which you contract your muscles during specific activities is referred to as repetition velocity. Depending on the amount of repetitions, you can utilize different contraction speeds.
- Slow velocities on purpose: Use when executing a reasonable amount of repetitions (10 to 15).
- Moderate to fast velocities: These are more effective when trained with a greater repetition count, such as 15 to 25 or more.
Kim’s Final Thoughts…
Muscle endurance training should be relevant to the action you want to undertake, whether it’s barbell squats or running a marathon. However, you probably have a limited amount of time for training each week, and you must decide whether to spend it on particular muscular endurance training or on playing your sport.
