Stamina isn't just something that affects professional athletes; in fact, it affects us in more ways than you might think from fun, outside events like going for a stroll around the city to orthodox, everyday events like walking up a flight of stairs. Stamina is built over time through a series of rigorous training events, and this is how sports directly impact stamina.
Significance
Whether you're participating in a sporting event or helping a friend move, your stamina will play a role in how effective you are in your task. In the book "The World of Sport Examined" by Paul Beashel, Andy Sibson and John Taylor, stamina is directly affected by the efficiency of your lungs, heart, blood vessels and working muscles. If you are helping a friend move and your muscles contain a high amount of stamina, you will be less likely to drop boxes or tire out quickly due to fatigue. When participating in a sporting event, having better stamina than your opponent will give you a competitive advantage late in the match.
Misconceptions
Playing sports by itself may build stamina; however, that isn't how sports affect stamina at the highest level. Stamina is affected most when you are training for your respective sport. The time spent going through drills, working out in the weight room and running sprints is what builds stamina. In fact, there are many sports in which the endurance training winds up being far more physically taxing than the actual sport itself. For example, baseball training can be grueling, consisting of several hours of sprints, drills and exercises. The game of baseball, however, is one consisting of anaerobic movements, meaning that you rarely sprint for more than a few seconds at a time.
Features
Sports training done to build stamina consists of a long line of continuous and interval training exercises, according to Beashel, Sibson and Taylor. During each exercise, players must keep their heart rate between 60 and 80 percent of its maximum. They must also push themselves just beyond their perceived exhaustion limit. For example, if you feel your current exhaustion limit would be running one mile, you might push yourself to run an additional 1/4 mile. Once your body adjusts and your endurance improves, you would push yourself to run 1.5 miles.
Considerations
The method in which each sport builds stamina will be relative to that specific sport and the flow of the game. For example, an endurance-based sport like soccer will build your long distance jogging stamina considerably more than a high-impact sport like American football. Football, on the other hand, will build on muscular endurance through weight training quite a bit more than soccer will.
Mixing It Up
After doing the same exercises for an extended period of time, your muscles naturally adjust to the movements. This prevents your muscles from being worked to their limit. Mixing in new exercises confuses your muscles and helps keep things fresh. Even at a young age, athletes will sometimes participate in drills not associated with the sports they currently play for the benign reason of introducing a new form of exercise to the body, says Scott B. Lancaster and Radu Teodorescu, authors of "Athletic Fitness for Kids."
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