Muscular fitness is commonly defined as having two components -- strength and endurance. While muscular strength refers to the greatest amount of force exerted in a single effort, muscular endurance refers to the ability to repeat movements for an extended period. As a rule, as you increase one component, the other also increases, but sometimes increasing muscular strength can decrease muscular endurance.
Muscle Fiber Types
Your skeletal muscles are composed of two general types of muscles fibers -- fast twitch and slow twitch. Fast-twitch muscle fibers are responsible for muscular strength in activities such as sprinting or powerlifting, while slow-twitch muscle fibers are responsible for muscular endurance in activities such as distance running or cycling. Everyone is born with a specific composition of slow- and fast-twitch fibers with the skeletal muscles. As a result, if you have primarily fast-twitch muscle fibers, you have a significant amount of muscular strength with limited potential to improve muscular endurance.
Training Results
With a balanced training program, your fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers hypertrophy at the same rate. As a result, if your absolute muscular strength increases, your ability to perform repeated movements using submaximal efforts increases. For example, if your upper body strength increases by completing a heavy bench press workout, your ability to perform a muscular endurance pushup test should also increase.
Overload Principle
Using the overload principle for training should result in an increase in muscular endurance with strength. The overload principle is characterized by gradually becoming stronger with improved endurance through progressive training over three to four weeks. You can increase the intensity to achieve the overload principle by adding resistance, sets or repetitions or by decreasing the recovery time between sets and workouts.
Sample Exercises
According to Brian MacKenzie, co-owner of CrossFit Newport Beach and competitive endurance athlete, performing heavy functional barbell lifts such as back squats and deadlifts is one of the best ways to improve your muscular endurance for running and cycling. You can mix the heavy lifts with body-weight exercises such as lunges, pushups and pullups in sets of 15 to 20 to focus specifically on muscular endurance.
References
- Physically Trained: FM 21-20 Physical Fitness Training (US Army): Chapter 3 -- Muscular Endurance and Strength
- Spots Fitness Advisor; Muscular Endurance Training; Phil Davies
- Spots Fitness Advisor; Strength Training Section; Phil Davies
- CoachR; Muscle Fiber Types and Training; Jason Karp
- Muscle and Strength; Understanding Muscular Fitness; Doug Lawrenson
- Trimax Fitness; Brian MacKenzie of CrossFit Endurance ---The Most Dangerous Man in Endurance Training!; Max Wunderle
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