Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle group to perform over a period of time. You can focus specifically on the endurance of your muscles when exercising to allow you to increase your functional status in your daily life. If you add endurance training to your existing fitness regimen, you will find that you will be able to walk farther, play longer and not feel so fatigued when performing physical activities.
Resistance Training
Resistance training takes place in many forms. You can create a program that focuses specifically on increased power. Or you can create a program that focuses on increasing muscle size. And perhaps the most functional type of weight training program is one that improves muscular endurance. If you train specifically for endurance, you will find that you can do so much more in your day without feeling so fatigued. Endurance will allow you to do things like walk an 18-hole golf course, rather than using a cart without being totally wiped out at the end of the round.
Frequency
Resistance training in any form should be done at least three days a week on non-consecutive days. When you are placing resistance on the muscles of the body, you are actually causing tears in the muscle fiber, and the gain in strength comes from the repairing of the tears. You need to rest the muscles for 48 hours to allow for proper rebuilding of the muscle. You can, however, resistance train every day, if you focus on different muscle groups each day. This would allow sufficient recovery time between workouts. Basic guidelines for endurance training for athletes are five to seven days per week and three to five days for the general population.
Intensity
One of the methods personal trainers use when designing programs that specifically improve muscular endurance is to lower the amount of weight a person lifts and increase the number of repetitions and sets. This allows the muscle groups to exercise for longer periods of time, which in turn builds endurance. To determine the resistance, personal trainers may do a form of muscle testing called one repetition maximum, or 1 RM. That is the maximum amount a weight a person can lift one time. Once that weight is determined, the weight an endurance athlete should train at to specifically improve muscular endurance is 85 percent to 90 percent of that 1 RM. For the general population, training weight should be between 70 percent and 90 percent.
Equipment
The types of equipment you can use when training for muscular endurance can be anything from dumbbells, pulley systems, weight machines, resistance bands, kettlebells or even your own body weight. You can also improve muscular endurance using cardiovascular equipment that can be adjusted to provide resistance. Examples of this include an exercise bicycle to which you can add resistance, a rowing machine or an elliptical trainer.
Specificity
If there is a specific activity you want to be able to do longer or improve upon, the exercises you chose should closely mimic that movement. For example, a baseball pitcher may want to improve the endurance of the shoulder muscles so he can effectively pitch an entire nine innings. His endurance program would focus on shoulder exercises that closely mirror the pitching of a baseball. Keep in mind there will also be strength and power exercises to focus on increasing the force at which he throws, but there will also be a specific component of his training regimen that would focus on his ability to repeat that motion. That type of training allows him to be as effective on pitch 99 as he was on his first pitch.
Time
When trying to improve muscular endurance, you should really focus on performing the exercises over longer periods of time and/or using more repetitions. When you focus on improving power or all-out strength, you will lift a heavier weight for very few repetitions. With endurance training, you drop the amount of weight that you are lifting to a level that you can lift 10 to 25 times for several sets. This trains your muscle to perform for longer periods of time. Athletes should aim for one to two hours of training and closely correlate their training to their sport, where the muscle movements mimic their sporting activities. For a healthy adult, training should take anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes.
Benefits
There are many reasons why someone would want to focus specifically on muscular endurance. Athletes that compete in endurance activities like long-distance running, swimming or cycling want their muscles to perform efficiently over the entire course of a competition. For the average population, endurance training allows people to walk farther or perform more activities during their daily life. In addition, increased muscular endurance reduces muscle strain, allows you to perform better during workouts, enhances lean muscle and therefore improves metabolism.
References
- "ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription," 7th edition; Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins; 2005
- "Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning," 3rd edition; Human Kinetics; 2008
- "Designing Resistance Training Programs"; 3rd edition, Human Kinetics; 2004
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