The Importance of Endurance Training

Endurance training: What is it, and why do we do it?

Currently, the gym that I manage: Kosama in Cedar Falls, Iowa (if you haven’t heard of it and live in Northern Iowa, check it out here: http://www.kosama.com/cedarfalls, it’s basically the bomb 😉 ) is doing an Endurance focused 8 week challenge, and sometimes the question is why are we focusing so much on our endurance right now?

Well here’s why:

There are different types of endurance training: muscular strength endurance, local muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, or a combination:

Local muscle endurance is the ability of a single muscle to perform sustained work
Cardiovascular endurance is the heart’s ability to deliver blood to working muscles and their ability to use it over a prolonged period of time
Muscular strength endurance is the muscles ability to perform a maximum contraction time after time

Most of the time when people think of endurance training they think of running for miles on end and calling that a workout. This does not have to be true. Sure, you can train endurance with a focus on cardiovascular benefits only, but your muscles can, and should be trained with an endurance focus too.

Why Muscular Endurance is Important
According to the American College of Sports Medicine, increasing muscular endurance will limit injuries and lower the risk of overuse of active muscles.

Livestrong.com also notes that improving your muscular endurance can help you in sustaining longer and better through daily activities and also helps improve bone and joint function

how to train muscular endurance: while lifting, perform sets with reps of 12 or more

Maybe you’re someone who just likes to sweat during your workouts and therefore don’t like the idea of lifting at all! Well let me tell you, cardiovascular or muscular endurance training, you can still work up a hell of a sweat! (See exhibit A above)

Muscular or cardiovascular endurance, it doesn’t matter, what does matter is that you make sure to incorporate one, or both of these forms into your regular training regimen. If you still have questions as to why, take a look below:

10 Reasons for Overall Endurance Training