Muscular strength and endurance are essential for achieving your aesthetic, athletic and general wellness goals. Enhancing muscular strength and endurance leads to a reduction in excess body fat, which reduces the risk for hypertension and diabetes. Enhancing muscular strength and endurance also leads to greater proficiency in day-to-day tasks--carrying groceries, holding an infant, moving boxes, gardening and dancing--resulting in a better quality of life.
Step 1
Write down your personal indicators of muscular strength and endurance success. For example, a reduction in body fat, gain in lean body mass, increased push up score or your ability to run a triathlon.
Step 2
Ease into training with two or three days a week of total body strength training. Select weights that allow you to successfully complete three sets of eight to 12 repetitions for each exercise.
Step 3
Incorporate active recovery. Follow each strength exercise with 30 seconds of low-intensity, endurance-based exercises to keep your body moving. Choose exercises such as marching in place, jumping jacks, step ups or "butt kickers" (See Resources).
Step 4
Do interval cardio training two or three days a week. Begin with an easy five-minute warm-up on a cardio machine. After the warm-up, complete two minutes at a moderate intensity followed by one minute at a high intensity. Alternate two minutes of moderate intensity with one minute of high intensity for 30 minutes. Finish with a five-minute cool down. Use interval training to teach your body to quickly recover from short bouts of high-intensity activities.
Step 5
Add "steady-state" aerobic cardio training two or three days a week. For steady-state training, hold a moderate intensity for 20 to 60 minutes. During the week, alternate steady-state aerobic cardio days with interval cardio training days. Use steady-state training to enhance cardiovascular endurance, the ability to sustain a moderate intensity for a long period of time.
Step 6
Include strategic repetition strategies to maximize muscular strength and endurance after the foundation is set. To maximize muscular strength, perform three to five maximum repetitions of each exercise with three- to five-minute rest periods. To maximize endurance gains perform 15 to 25 maximum repetitions of each exercise with 30-second rest periods.
Step 7
Evaluate your muscular strength by keeping a log of the weights used during specific strength training exercises, such as bench press, leg press, row and squat. Evaluate muscular endurance by tracking the distance or mileage covered during cardio sessions. Reassess muscular strength and endurance measures every four to six weeks.
References
- "European Journal of Applied Physiology"; Muscular Adaptations in Response to Three Different Resistance-Training Regimens: Specificity of Repetition Maximum Training Zones; Gerson Campos et. al.; Issue 88; 2002
- "Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise"; Progression Models in Resistance Training for Healthy Adults; Nicholas Ratamess et. al.; 2009
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