Among the many health-related benefits you can achieve through a program of regular exercise are improvements in your respiratory and muscular endurance. Respiratory endurance and muscular endurance refer to the capacity of two different physiological systems within your body and are generally not trained in the same manner.
Respiratory Endurance
Your respiratory system -- your lungs, respiratory passageways and respiratory muscles -- provides for the delivery of oxygen into your bloodstream and for the removal of carbon dioxide. As your workload increases, the ability of your respiratory system to support the increased demand, particularly over extended periods of time, depends on having adequate respiratory endurance.
Exercises for Respiratory Endurance
According to the American College of Sports Medicine, aerobic exercise can help increase your respiratory endurance. You should get a total of at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise each week or a total of 75 minutes per week of vigorous aerobic activity weekly. Improving respiratory endurance requires exercises that raise your heart rate and respiratory rate for periods of at least 20 minutes. Running, swimming and cycling are all good examples of aerobic activities.
Muscular Endurance
Muscular endurance refers to the capacity of your muscles to contract repeatedly, over an extended period of time, against a resistance. Improvements in muscular endurance require that you develop the aerobic enzyme systems and mitochondrial organelles within your muscle cells to release greater quantities of energy more efficiently.
Training for Muscular Endurance
Improvements in your muscular endurance require that your exercise activities place your muscles under increased load and that they contract repetitively over a prolonged period of time. While running and cycling require your leg muscles to perform in this way, they do little to increase muscular endurance in other regions of the body. Use a targeted program of specific resistance exercises, with moderate weight and high repetitions, to improve muscular endurance throughout your body.
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