Muscular endurance refers to your ability to sustain work over a long period of time without extreme fatigue. It is an important training factor for many steady-pace endurance athletes, such as marathon runners, and power-endurance athletes, such as basketball players. With long-term training, your body becomes more efficient in exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide and using fat as a primary fuel source. The National Academy of Sports Medicine recommends that you train for four or five days a week for five to eight weeks to get significant results.
Steady-pace Endurance vs. Power Endurance
Steady-pace endurance is performing exercise for a long period of time with very little or no change in exercise intensity or rhythm. This helps you maintain work without excessive fatigue, which can lead to muscle cramps, dizziness, and risk of muscle and joint injury, says Coach Robert dos Remedios, author of "Cardio Strength Training." Power endurance is performing short bouts of high-intensity exercises repeatedly with short periods of rest between exercises. This method simulates activities that require such physical demands such as gymnastics, soccer, American football and martial arts. This allows you to recover faster with less rest periods and sustain high-intensity exercise longer.
Jump Rope
Jump-rope training not only improves overall muscular and cardiovascular endurance but also improves your posture, rhythm and coordination. The effects of jump-rope training can be transferred to almost all sports and activities because the exercises train the basics of athletic performance, says physical therapist and strength coach Gray Cook, author of "Athletic Body in Balance." He suggests that you start with the basic bounce-step exercise before progressing to other foot patterns.
Stand with your feet together and swing the rope beneath you. Jump over it about two inches off the ground at a rate of one jump per second for 30 seconds. Once you become proficient in this exercise, increase the rate to two jumps per second for 30 seconds. Perform four to six sets, increasing the rate by 10 to 15 seconds per set.
Circuit Training
Circuit training is performing a series of exercises --- between four to eight exercises --- that trains different movement patterns without rest between exercises. This method improves your muscular endurance as well as burns more calories in less time than performing each exercise individually, says coach Vern Gambetta, author of "Athletic Development." Each exercise should emphasize a movement pattern, such as squatting, pushing, pulling, lunging or throwing. For example, perform 30 seconds of body-weight squats, pushups, pullups, kettlebell swings, and jumping rope without rest between exercises. Then rest for no more than one minute and repeat the workout two or three more times.
Interval Running
Interval running is performing a short period of high-intensity running followed by a longer period of low-intensity running. This method can help you burn more calories in less than 20 minutes than doing an hour of steady-pace cardio, says exercise physiologist and professor Jason Karp, contributing writer for "IDEA Fitness Journal." You can adjust four variables in interval running: time, intensity, time of each recovery period and the number of sets. With so many combinations to manipulate, you can create almost infinite types of workout to suit your needs. For example, you can perform three or four sets of two- to three-minute high-intensity runs with a four- to five-minute jog between sets.
References
- "NASM Essentials of Personal Fitness Training"; Michael Clark; 2007
- "IDEA Fitness Journal"; Interval Training Advantages; Jason Karp, Ph.D.; April 2011
- "Athletic Body in Balance"; Gray Cook; 2003
- "Cardio Strength Training"; Robert dos Remedios; 2009
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