Are Muscular Strength & Relative Muscular Endurance Highly Related?

Muscular strength and muscular endurance are two different aspects of your muscles' ability to perform under physical stress. Together, they represent two key components of your overall fitness. In fitness testing and athletic training, muscle strength and endurance are closely related concepts, and you must know your maximum strength before you can accurately determine how hard you must work to increase your endurance.

Muscular Strength Testing

Muscular strength is your ability to use your muscles effectively during short-term periods of physical effort. Coaches and athletes commonly measure this ability with a procedure called one-repetition maximum, or 1RM. During a 1RM test, athletes typically lift as much weight as possible in a single exercise repetition. A safer, alternative method of testing used for less-experienced exercisers requires you to lift a smaller amount of weight for anywhere from three to five repetitions. Athletes and coaches use 1RM results to set the proper level of effort required to achieve different forms of muscular endurance.

Muscular Endurance Training

Muscular endurance is your ability to perform repeated actions with your muscles over an extended length of time. Athletes who rely heavily on their endurance to enhance their competitive performances include rowers, swimmers, cyclists and distance runners. Team sports such as field hockey and soccer also rely largely on athletes with high levels of endurance. During endurance training, an athlete will perform a relatively high number of repetitions at a certain percentage of his established one-repetition maximum. The precise number of repetitions and the required 1RM percentage depend on the type of endurance the athlete wants to enhance.

Types of Endurance

Athletes such as sprinters, tennis players and baseball pitchers rely on a form of endurance called power endurance, which requires sustained muscle effort for less than 30 seconds. To build this endurance, they train with weight that equals 50 to 70 percent of their 1RM. Athletes such as soccer players and medium-distance runners rely on short-term endurance, which requires sustained effort for 30 to 120 seconds. To build this type of endurance, they typically work at 40 to 60 percent of their 1RM. Athletes such as rowers and marathoners rely on long-term endurance, which requires sustained effort for more than 120 seconds. To build this type of endurance, they typically work at only 30 to 40 percent of their 1RM.

Considerations

When an athlete improves his muscular strength, he increases the amount of weight he can use for endurance training. In turn, this translates into an improved potential outcome for endurance-based performances. For this reason, athletes commonly work to enhance their muscle strength before they begin endurance training. To achieve their strength goals, they typically perform a variety of exercises with weights that equal anywhere from 85 to 100 percent of their established 1RM.