Can You Have Muscular Strength Without Muscular Endurance?

You should never copy another person's weightlifting routine for several reasons. Besides being dangerous because their workout may be too difficult for you, it is also unwise since your workout goal and their goals might be different. People lift weights for general fitness, as part of a weight-loss plan, to increase muscular endurance, to improve sports performance or to increase strength.

Definitions

Muscular strength training includes maximal strength training and hypertrophy training. Maximal strength training increases your ability to lift heavy objects or weights. This type of training utilizes sets of one to five repetitions. Hypertrophy training increases muscle tissue size. Eight to 12 repetitions best achieves this goal. Because there are so few repetitions to perform, you can lift heavy weights. This is the opposite of muscular endurance training. Muscular endurance training increases your ability to contract your muscles many times before they reach fatigue. You must use light weights or you cannot perform the 12 to 25 repetitions that is best for muscular endurance training.

Adaptation

Since the body adapts only in the way you place stress on it, training only for muscular strength with heavy weights and low reps gives you only strength, not endurance. The opposite is also true. This is why bodybuilders bulk up, whereas long distance runners are lean even though they both work out frequently. It is therefore possible to train for strength only.

Warnings

Training for muscular strength without first training for muscular endurance puts you at risk for injury. Muscular endurance training is part of stabilization endurance training. Stabilization endurance training targets not only your major muscles, but also the small stabilizer muscles that assist your larger muscles and support your joints. This training prepares your muscles for lifting heavier weights. Yours are only as strong as your weakest link. Without stabilization endurance training, your small muscles, tendons and ligaments are at risk for injury when you lift heavier weights for strength training.

Pyramid Training

Pyramid training allows you to get the best of both worlds. You can train for strength and endurance in a single workout. This way you do not have to sacrifice your workout time to train for endurance when you only want to increase strength. Other types of weight training use the same weight limits for each set. Pyramid training has you increase the amount of weight you lift on each set, which conversely causes you to decrease the amount of repetitions you perform. This results in you performing sets for muscular strength and endurance during one workout.