What is muscular endurance and how can you improve it?

It’s easy sometimes to think about fitness as a line that goes up. The more you work out, the fitter, thinner, and healthier you get, but the reality isn’t quite that simple.

Your body is made up of many moving parts, and how exercise influences those parts may vary more than you might think.

As a result, understanding the actual processes happening within your body when you exert it can help you to make more informed choices around how you exercise, for how long, which muscle groups you target, and how you can support yourself to get the most out of your workout.

One of these processes which is vital to understand is building muscular endurance. But what is muscular endurance? What are the benefits of improving it? And how do you develop it in a way that improves your overall health and helps you to hit your target body weight?  

What is muscular endurance?

In many ways, muscular endurance is exactly what it sounds like. It is a muscle, or a muscle group’s, ability to repeat a specific motion or movement, such as running, cycling or lifting, over and over again [2].

While developing muscular endurance is vital for athletes and people with regular sports or exercise habits, helping them to avoid injury and extreme fatigue, it’s also been linked to health benefits well beyond that.

In particular, studies have found that improving muscular endurance may decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease, lower blood pressure and levels of triglycerides and serum blood sugar, improve muscle blood circulation which helps to power up your cells and lower your risk of musculoskeletal injuries [4].

This makes developing muscular endurance a powerful way to take control of your body and improve your overall health.

Muscular endurance vs strength: What's the difference?

Often conflated, muscular endurance and muscular strength actually represent two fairly different elements of your body’s capacity when it comes to both exercise and daily life.

Muscular endurance is developed through endurance training which holds the intention of adapting both the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems to support an increase in both exercise capacity and performance [3].

We’ll talk more about cardiovascular endurance in a minute, but for now, know that both are best built by using lighter weights (or no weights at all), with a greater number of repetitions [1].

On the other hand, muscular strength is built through strength training and involves increasing muscle size and power as a result of neuromuscular adaptations [3]. Strength training tends to vary, but is ultimately developed by using heavier weights or creating greater resistance with fewer repetitions through resistance training exercise programs [1].

In other words, muscular strength is about building strength, while muscular endurance is about being able to move and work out for longer [1].

Muscular endurance vs cardiovascular endurance: What's the difference?

Working out for longer, like many aspects of exercise, is about more than just building capacity.

While muscular endurance is vital to this as it builds your muscle's ability to exert force consistently and repetitively, it also works hand-in-hand with cardiovascular endurance.

Muscular endurance creates changes in the skeletal muscle which increases mitochondrial biogenesis and capillary density, aiding your body’s ability to transport and use oxygen to generate energy.

It’s this transportation and use of oxygen that helps your body avoid muscle fatigue and prolong your workout [3].

Building up your cardiovascular endurance only further supports this. Defined as the ability of your heart and lungs to deliver oxygen to your working muscles, cardiovascular training, and building up cardiovascular endurance usually takes the form of moderate to high intensities of aerobic exercise.

During this, 3 physiological processes occur — first, the transport of oxygen from the atmosphere to the active muscles, second the consumption of oxygen by the cells of the active muscle, and finally, the removal of waste, including harmful waste, from these cells [4].

Cardiovascular endurance is built by aerobic exercise such as vigorous running, swimming, dancing and cycling, while muscular endurance is developed through targeted, repetitive exercises.

The best exercises for muscular endurance

Building muscular endurance is a crucial part of progressing any consistent exercise habit and maintaining mobility.

It not only helps you to work out for longer but has been found to support your overall health and breadth of movement. Muscular endurance is often best developed through workout plans that include high-intensity interval training, and target a particular muscle group.

One of the areas to focus on is in building a strong core. A strong core is essential to improving muscular endurance in any sport as it allows you to transfer power more efficiently.

On top of that, developing your core helps to improve your balance and posture, and has been found to be vital in injury prevention during exercise.

The best exercises for improving muscular endurance in your core include:

• Planking — these include knee planks and forearm planks, otherwise known as low planks, which are good places to start if you're new to this sort of exercise, as well as high planks, and side planks;
• Crunches — these include bicycle crunches, reverse crunches and oblique crunches, which get you working out different parts of the same muscle group;
• Elevated knee tucks;
• Segment rotation;
• Bird dog exercise.

The nature of building muscular endurance is that it should also complement, and work with, other types of exercise that you’re doing.

In particular, if you are doing exercise that relies on lower body muscles, such as running and cycling, you should focus on building lower body muscle endurance in your leg and glute muscles in order to support your more aerobic exercise.

The best exercises for improving lower-body muscular endurance in your legs and glute muscles include:

• Lunges — these include walking lunges, side lunges, rear lunges and curtsy lunges, among others;
• Squats — adding weights to your squats can be a great way to diversify this particular exercise and build in upper-body and arm work;
• Glute bridges.

If swimming or weights is more your vibe, you should look at strengthening exercises and building muscular endurance in your upper body and back muscles. Squats or lunges with weights can be a great place to start in this regard; however, there are more specific exercises that can help you to maintain good form too.

The best exercises for improving your upper body muscular endurance include:

• Push-ups. These can work out the entire upper body, as well as the core, making them a great way to build muscular endurance. If you're new to push-ups, try starting with wall or knee push-ups, or if you're more familiar with the exercise, why not mix it up with a clap push-up?
• Planking. This is another great way to work out both the core and the upper body.
• Bicep curl.

How many repetitions you do of each of these depends on your starting level of fitness and is ideally planned with the guidance of a medical professional or an experienced personal trainer.

How often to train muscular endurance

While research has traditionally recommended targeted exercise 2-5 days per week to improve your muscular endurance, recent studies have found that volume plays more of a role than regularity when it comes to endurance exercise [2].

In other words, a training program that involves an hour and a half of muscular endurance training 1 day a week, and a program that involves a half hour, 3 times a week, has been found to reap the same rewards.

This means that you can improve muscular endurance on a schedule that works for you, but make sure you don't underestimate the importance of rest periods.

Your body needs recovery time when it comes to any exercise, but particularly when building muscle endurance and muscle strength.

General recommendations suggest giving your muscles a 24-hour break after high-intensity exercise.

Are there ways to boost muscular endurance outside of exercise?

While muscular endurance itself needs to be built through an exercise program, foods rich in particular nutrients can support your body to get the most health benefits out of these exercises.

In particular, having a small, carbohydrate-containing snack an hour before a workout such as an oat bar, fruit, beans and legumes has been found to help keep energy up and lessen muscle fatigue, while recent research suggests nitrate-rich foods like beetroot, celery, fennel and leafy greens can increase endurance as they increase blood flow and oxygen to available muscles [5].

When it comes to health and well-being, improving muscular endurance ultimately results in better outcomes.

Not only does it help you to work out more and improve both athletic performance and physical fitness, but it also allows you to target particular muscle groups, improves cardiovascular health, and leads to a healthier, happier you.

If you need expert guidance in improving your muscular endurance, meet Compound, the digital clinic for performance health for men like you.

We’re equipped with leading diagnostic reporting and recovery tools and techniques, Compound's team of dedicated healthcare professionals and expert specialists is guaranteed to help you access the future of proactive healthcare and reach your health goals.

With the ability to create personalised programs for the individual, our multi-disciplinary approach to health optimisation and preventative care ensures you’ll unlock the barriers to everyday performance.

Our team of dedicated healthcare professionals and expert specialists are here to help you access the future of proactive healthcare, today.

This post contains general information about health and wellness practices. It is not intended as medical advice and should not be treated as such. Please consult with a healthcare professional before starting any new health regimen. This information is provided without any representations or warranties, express or implied.