In this post, I will dive deeper into what muscular endurance is and how it can help you understand how to measure, start and improve your fitness goals.
Next, I will guide you through a process, looking at your personal situation and finding a fun, flexible and achievable way to add activities and improve your muscular endurance.
To put everything together I walk through practical muscular endurance examples. These are not professional athletes, but 2 regular “busy” everyday people, who have put all the information together and created a routine that works for them.
My name is Hans. I believe that being healthy and in shape is an achievable goal. No matter what gender or age, everyone wants to feel good.
If you want to know more about my adventure you can find that here.
In a nutshell…
A few years ago I found myself stuck in an overweight body and a stressful desk job. I knew I wanted to get out, but I did not know how. I believed being fit was reserved for the selected few and was convinced that I had to live in a gym and give up everything to get in shape. Turns out that that is not the case…
I discovered that by getting educated and understanding key elements of personal fitness I can achieve a lot. It keeps me focused and motivated. It creates a clear path to walk on. It creates habits that can last.
To make sure that all the information you are about to read is as relevant as possible, I spent hours researching the topics for this post. I combined and cross referenced this knowledge with my own practical experience and research to create this ultimate guide post for you.
I hope that sharing what I know and discovered, helps you find that little spark you need to get you going on your own home gym adventure.
If you want to jump into specific topics faster, here is a quick index of what I will cover in this post
- What is muscular endurance and how is it different from muscular strength
- What are the benefits of muscular endurance
- What are the best muscular endurance activities
- Muscular endurance training is awesome
- Can you give some muscular endurance examples
- Final thoughts
What is muscular endurance and how is it different from muscular strength?
What is muscular endurance?
Are there different types of muscular endurance?
For strength related physical activities, lifting weights, push ups, pull ups and squats for example, musical endurance is the amount of times ( repetitions or reps) your entire body, a group of muscles or a single muscle can complete a physical action, without getting exhausted and needing to stop.
For activities such as running, biking, swimming or walking, muscular endurance is a measure of how your muscles, heart and lungs work together. Simply said, how long can you run, bike or swim at a challenging tempo without needing a rest. This is more commonly referred to as our cardiovascular endurance.
What are practical examples of muscular endurance?
For a strength athlete, muscular endurance is lifting weights multiple times. For a cyclist it’s continuously pushing the bike pedals around while climbing hills or crossing over long distances. And for a mom or dad, it’s carrying your 5 year old, hopping up a flight of stairs pretending you are T-rex at bedtime without having to take a rest and gasping for air a couple of steps in.
Muscular endurance is muscle specific.
A person might be able to effortlessly run up the stairs multiple times before being completely exhausted. That means they have great muscular endurance in their legs (quads and glutes). But that same person might find it nearly impossible to do 5 or more push ups. In that case their arms and chest (bicep, deltoids and pectoralis) muscles are lacking endurance and could use a little TLC.
What is muscular strength?
Give me a clear muscular strength definition please!
If muscular endurance is the amount of times we can repeat an action before being exhausted, muscular strength is the amount of force a single muscle or a group of muscles can output in a single maximum effort. In weight lifting this is referred to as the 1 repetition maximum, or 1 rep max.
What are examples of muscular strength?
A strength athlete putting in all his force and effort to lift 600 lbs off the ground just once. A boxer punching a heavy bag once to measure the strength of the punch. At home, mom has to go all out to lift the couch with one arm once, while vacuuming the living room carpet.
Similar to muscular endurance, muscular strength is muscle specific. Certain muscles or muscle groups in your body are stronger and are able to move larger amounts of weight, while others can not. The level of strength can also be different in the right or left side muscles of our body.
Are muscular strength and muscular power the same?
Muscular strength is not the same as muscular power. If muscular strength is a measure of force, muscular power is the combination of force over time.
- A martial arts athlete doing a high kick multiple times against a heavy big.
- You suddenly jump as high as fast as you can because a snake scared you.
- A cross fit athlete pulling the bar off the ground, and in one fluid movement pushing it up above their head.
These are examples of muscular power.
Why is muscular endurance important?
Muscular endurance is one of the elements you can use to measure your overall “fitness”. Regular measuring of key fitness benchmarks like muscular endurance, and muscular strength, keeps you focused. You can use the information to see progress, adjust and change if you don’t see progress, or seek precise and professional advice to advance to a higher level if you’ve mastered the basic concepts.
Knowing how you can use and measure muscular endurance will make your home gym adventure more enjoyable, specific and long-lasting!!
What are the benefits of muscular endurance?
This is a good, but tricky question. It would be great if there would be one definite answer to this. The truth is that benefits largely depend on your personal health goals. It also matters where you are in your fitness journey. Benefits are very different for a newbie at the beginning of his/her fitness adventure than for an amateur athlete a couple of years in or for the average Joe/Jane looking to improve their day to day energy level
Although not exclusive, these are some benefits associated with good muscular endurance,
- Be active longer without feeling fatigued or completely exhausted
- Improve your ability to play sports and enjoy them more.
- Being able to do more can boost your confidence and can be an inspiration to take on new physical challenges.
- Being active longer can eventually burn more calories in a given day. When supported by a balanced diet, this is a great way to support a healthy weight.
- Help you recover faster after a workout or playing a team sport.
- Improve muscle strength and bone density
- Stronger muscles improve keeping a good posture
- Good posture can reduce injuries and make you enjoy workouts
- Having more energy can help you to get more done in a given day
- Getting more done in a day will raise your feeling of accomplishment
If you are looking to improve your quality of life significantly, I’m convinced that this is a good place to start.
Even if your goal is not becoming a professional athlete, knowing what muscular endurance is and does, and how you can use it to measure and track your progress will give you the confidence and proof that you are on the right track.
Are you a passionate weekend road bike warrior who wants to keep up with the younger wolves of your race groups? Are you an Uber mom driving kids too and from activities, while hauling groceries around and trying to have some adult conversation with a friend? Or a dad, who wants to run with his kids on the beach instead of sitting around and feeling exhausted?
What are the best muscular endurance activities?
If you are really looking for the ultimate list of muscular endurance activities, check out this post.
If you are curious about the best personalised muscular endurance activities for you, stay on this page and keep on reading please.
To be perfectly honest, finding your best activities is very much tied into your personal health goals.
If you haven’t done so already, I’m sure that dropping muscular endurance activities in google search will give you pages upon pages of suggestions and opinions on this topic. This can be great to spark your imagination and get you started. But on the flip side, it can turn you off too. Seeing a bunch of suggestions that are not really your cup of tea can even be confusing and demotivating.
For example, let’s assume I’m not a water person. I can barely keep my head above water and I hate the idea of getting wet or cold. No matter how high swimming, kayaking, rowing and water gymnastics are on a list, the chance for me to be all excited about this will be very slim.
I don’t want to hate on water sports here. The same can be said for running, weightlifting, biking, soccer or any other activity. Yes these are great examples of muscular endurance activities. But if you don’t like them, none of them are relevant to your personal situation.
Not liking something doesn’t mean that you never ever will explore any of these sports and activities. They might not be right to get you started. And more importantly keep you moving.
Creating my personal endurance activities list
Since this is the ultimate guide I’m convinced that it’s of much greater value to give you a couple of ideas to come up with your personal list of activities and make it 100% about you.
The first question I would ask is, what do you like to do to move your body?
Doing something you don’t like sucks! Plain and simple. Sure, with enough willpower you could force yourself to do it a couple of times. And if you are really determined, you might be able to hang in for a couple of weeks. But I can almost guarantee that it will never become an enjoyable and active habit.
- Did you do any sports?
- What activities did you enjoy as a kid?
- What sport or physical activity did you enjoy in college? – Although fun, if the only thing you can think of is beer pong, and party hard, keep on looking
- Did you try a new sport with friends on vacation?
- What did you do before you had kids, with your kids, by yourself or in a group?
- I doubt this will happen but you never know. If nothing truly comes to mind, what is something you always wanted to do, learn or explore in sports or physical activities?
The idea is to come up with a solid list of activities you would like to do, try or pick up again. And more importantly that will get you moving.
The second question to ask, can I get better doing this over time and with practice?
Everybody enjoys scratching things off the list, going to the next level, achieving the goal. It makes us feel good. Reaching goals. gives a sense of accomplishment. And of course you want more of the same. That is exactly the next thing to make your prefered endurance activity stick. Can you get to the next level?
Every day you can walk a block further without being winded. After a couple of weeks you can walk 10 laps under a certain amount of time. And then you start running every other lap.
I can do 1, 2, 5 and 10 push ups and not take a rest.
Holding the plank for 10 seconds will become 5 minutes after 3 months. I believe you get what I’m hinting at here. Small little steps and victories to ultimately improve your muscular endurance.
Time is also a very important item to point out. I’m the first one to overestimate the amount of time I can spend on my physical activities. I’m a master in setting unrealistic time frames that completely go against my day to day responsibilities. New year comes around and I’m convinced this year will be the year to get fit. In a sugar-induced high, promises of daily hours of gym visits are forged.
It all starts great but the next week the reality hits hard. Driving kids to school, picking up from dance class and soccer practice after school and meetings get scheduled over lunch hours at work. And all the good intentions are washed away within weeks.
The absolute brilliant thing is that building muscular endurance doesn’t require you to live in the gym 24/7. It requires consistency. Be honest with the time you can spend and make it fit in your schedule. It can start with 20 minutes a day, 5 to 6 days a week.
Doing short daily practices is a great and achievable goal for the first couple of weeks. And it goes back to the point made a bit earlier, scratching things off your list. I’m convinced small little steps are a great start for your personal health adventure.
The third question to ask, what do I need to make this happen?
I absolutely love this little anecdote. It’s about a dad trying to discover how to become a great athlete.
Hoping to know what the secret sauce was to get his daughter to the Olympic games as a swimmer, a dad approached a renowned coach. In his long and successful career, the coach had guided many young swimmers to different Olympic summer games. He groomed these young athletes to compete at the highest level in their sport. And helped some of them step on the stage collecting medals.
Eagerly waiting for his turn, dad and coach finally got face to face. Ready to absorb and put his words of wisdom into practice, the dad stepped forward and asked: “coach, in your opinion, what is the most important thing in becoming an Olympic swimming athlete?”
Without hesitation the coach responded: “Well there are many things for sure, but the first one on my list is, without a doubt, easy access to a pool.”
It sounds stupid simple, almost ridiculous, right? But there is some truth in the statement. Without getting to a pool, my chances of becoming a good swimmer are absolutely zero. Meaning no matter what activity you plan to do, if it takes too much effort, time or budget, your ability to keep on doing the sport and progressing can become more difficult.
Let’s dig a bit deeper to illustrate.
If the activity of choice requires equipment or a place to work out that you do not own or live close to, it will take time to commute, change and get ready. This can impact the amount of time you will be able to spend. After you are done, you most likely will have to shower, change and commute back home.
Let’s assume I’m attending a 45 min spin class in the local community centre gym. To get there I have a 15 minute commute there. After sweating for 45 min in a closed hot room, I take 15 minutes to take a shower and get changed. Followed by a 15 minute commute back home. Your 45 minute class became an hour and a half adventure. Not something that can be squeezed in a 50 minute lunch break.
Keep in mind that certain activities have different costs.
Running in the park is probably less expensive then picking up ice hockey again. Both great options, but what are the costs to get started again?
Also important is the budget you will have to invest to get better doing your activity. Is there a need for frequent change of gear, different memberships and classes? The financial cost of committing to a certain activity is definitely something to consider too when choosing where to start.
Last thing to mention is flexibility.
It’s great to have a class or a place to go. But stuff happens. To give a very extreme example, the 2020 global pandemic has changed the way we interact as a society. Who knew that public life could be shut down for months at an end. That long established businesses could be wiped out. And even after all that going to a gym, taking a class or just getting together with friends has completely changed.
Global pandemics are not the only things that throw a wrench into established routines. Changing jobs, moving to another city, starting a family or picking up master degree studies while working a full time job… everybody has challenges big and small. But this does not need to be the end of your fitness adventure.
To summarize, the best muscular endurance exercise is an activity you will enjoy and you can progress in. Your activity fits perfectly in the time you can honestly commit to it on a day to day basis. It is easy to get to. It falls in the budget that you have available to spend. It is flexible and easy to adapt when your life circumstances change.
Muscular endurance training is awesome…
Believe me, I get it. From the outside, the health and wellness industry seems to change year after year. So many new ways to get strong, lean and fit. New methods, new training routines, new this and new that. And instead of starting, you get confused and do nothing.
The truth is that building a routine doesn’t have to be complicated. A basic understanding of the terminology can give you more confidence in starting to build up routines and workouts. You will be more focused when searching and researching what makes a good workout. And when in doubt, being able to ask specific questions will save you money and time if you’re asking for professional help.
Even with your preferred muscular endurance activity, you can create a very targeted and personal workout. This routine will fit your lifestyle, your age and your gender. The idea is not to try and over complicate things, but build a solid foundation.
The beauty is that you can choose what to do. There is no one way to do this. Instead of trying to keep up with the latest hot fitness guru, newest ab cruncher pro or most fancy and expensive gym downtown, why not create what fits best for you!
This is when muscular endurance training becomes a powerful tool in your home gym adventure.
You can do this with the most fancy, state of the art fitness equipment and build out your personal gym palace. Or you can train in the park, using a kids play structure as a pull up bar or step up. You don’t even need equipment at all and concentrate 100% on body weight exercises only. Freeing you from hauling heavy dumbbells, cables or kettlebells around if you can’t create a workout spot at home.
You can choose to do strength training for the upper body one day and do running or biking the next. You can isolate body parts that need more attention (remember, muscular endurance and strength are muscle specific) You can build a daily 20 minute ab routine and combine that with your twice a week running group easily.
You can create any type of workout to complement other activities. You don’t need permission from anybody but yourself. With a little bit of creativity and inspiration you can start creating the most time and location efficient, equipment or no equipment workout for your gender and age.
Can you give some muscle endurance examples?
If you are looking for a list of the most common muscle endurance examples, this is the post to go to. Here you can find the most common activities, but also a time and budget breakdown of what it would take to get started and get better.
I’m convinced that in the spirit of this ultimate guide, you are better served by looking at examples that you can learn from. After reading this article, you now understand the terminology, the differences and the benefits and you have a list of activities. It’s important for you to start taking muscular endurance seriously. But how does this all fit together? How do other people go about this?
Here are 2 practical muscle endurance examples for 2 regular people. They have put all of the above information together and create a personal and flexible endurance routine.
stay at home mom
Diana’s Situation
Diana is a stay at home mom. She just turned 34 years old and her main daily tasks revolve around her kids and the household. She lives in a suburban area, together with her husband and kids. The kids are 2.5 and 4 and spend most of the day at home. Any activity or store is at least a 15 minute car ride away.
To help with the family income, she has a part time job split over 2 weekdays and 1 weekend day. Her shifts start at 5:30pm till 9:30pm. On those working days she leaves at 5pm and is home at 10pm. Every evening she’s in bed by 11pm.
Diana’s activities
Before she had kids she used to be an avid runner. In summer she played beach volleyball and enjoyed swimming. She loved being outside, hiking and mountain biking. She has always been interested in working with weights but doesn’t want to become a bulky bodybuilder.
Diana’s goals
After she had kids, life happened and all these activities fell away. Dealing with the stress of her household and a part time job, Diana feels she is tired faster. Her growing kids are getting heavier to lift and she can not follow them around as easily anymore. She wants to feel less tired all the time, and keep up with her family. She wants to get strong to be able to lift up her kids and common household loads effortlessly and safely.
Diana’s time and location restrictions
With her young family at home, and all facilities a 15 min commute away, Diana can not start a class or go to the gym. She can commit 40 min in the morning before the kids are awake, and 30 min after lunch time.
Diana’s muscle endurance exercise routine
Diana decides to pick up running again. It’s easy to start, she can start training by running in her neighbourhood. There is a highschool close by. Early in the morning she jogs to the school running track and starts running laps.
Her first goal is to run 5 laps in or under 15 minutes. Slowly adding more laps as she goes. Together with the steady run to the track she spends 30 minutes on running. She has another 10/15 minutes to get a shower and start the regular day.
She commits to run on the 3 days she has to work. But is flexible to move them around if she can not make it that day. The goal is to run 3 times per week.
For her strength training, Diana finds a simple calisthenics routine for beginners on YouTube. The video is targeting her core muscles. The routine takes her 12 minutes and the only thing needed is a yoga mat. If the exercise is too light, she could add small weights to up the difficulty. For now a mat will do. She commits to do this routine every other day. It’s flexible enough to even practice before going to bed.
Conclusion
Diana’s running routine fits her busy stay at home schedule. She can add more days to her running routine, she can switch up the lap endurance running and do more sprints for strength. There are many ways and ideas to make this enjoyable and different. She can create a routine for every season and with consistency work on her endurance.
Her strength routine is flexible and short enough to fit in 12/15 minute blocks during her day. There is enough room to change exercises, add more reps and weights to make the exercise more challenging and over time get more comfortable with weights and weight training.
Busy office professional
Paul’s Situation
Paul has been a 9 to 5 desk job man for the past 23 years. At 47 he has worked in numerous firms, climbing his way up the corporate ladder. He is good and efficient at his job but outside of getting more responsibility and managing a bigger team the core of his day has always been in and around an office.
Paul’s time and location restrictions
From Monday to Friday, he gets up at 7:00, together with the rest of the family. After a quick breakfast no later than 7:45am, his day continues with a commute to his downtown office. Depending on the season, the bus and subway trip takes him 1 hour. During that time he catches up on the watch list of his favourite streaming service.
The walk from the transit station to his office takes roughly 10 min and by 9 am he is sitting in his office and goes through his daily task list. Outside of walking to and from meetings, Paul spends most of his time sitting down behind a computer screen.
During his 45 min lunch break, Paul watches another episode and eats at his desk. All meals are take-out (and delivered to the office) or a pre-packed meal. Except on Friday when he and some colleagues take a lunch break in the local restaurants or pub.
In the evenings, the commute and routine reverses. He arrives home at 6:15pm. At 6:30pm his family of 5 starts dinner. By 8:30pm, after helping with daily household chores, he ends up on the sofa. Getting lost for a couple of hours in personal emails, social media, internet browsing, and streaming. Between 10:30pm and 11:30pm he goes to bed.
Weekends are filled with driving the kids from and to activities, grocery shopping and the odd house cleaning or repair chores. Over the years Paul has steadily gained weight. Little things, like sprinting for the bus, or taking the flight of stairs are not that easy and get him out of breath.
Paul’s activities
Paul started playing rugby in high school and continued in college. Training was a combination of running and field drills and weight room practice. In the Fall and winter season he trained with the college wrestling team. After starting his professional career, Paul kept on going to the gym. But when their oldest was born, training sessions became more rare and eventually dropped all together. During all those years of inactivity, Paul kept his gym membership going. Every New Year’s resolution is to go back to the gym and start lifting again.
Paul’s Goals
Overall, Paul has a very sedentary life. Despite being busy, he does not have a lot of energy and feels sluggish all the time. His days and weekends tend to blend into each other. With teenagers at home, his responsibilities or more driving around to activities and parties. And not necessarily playing and caring for young kids so much.
He has good intentions to start doing something for his health and lifestyle, but doesn’t know where to start. His goals are losing the extra weight and get strong again. There is a friendly rugby league in his area and he would love to start playing. But running to the bus already gets him out of breath.
Paul’s personal muscular endurance exercise routine
Paul decides to start a 3 day split weightlifting routine at the gym. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday he extends his 45 minute lunch break to 1hr and 10 minutes in his schedule. Freeing up enough time to go and do a 45-50 min work out session.
Instead of watching TV on his commutes, Paul starts brushing up his knowledge on workout routines. Based on his previous training experiences he specifically wants to prepare for rugby training.
After he has a good idea of his routine, he purchases 5 training sessions with a dedicated strength and power lift trainer to make sure he has proper form. He can also ask very focused questions about the routine he has in mind and tweak with new exercises and suggestions from his trainer.
During his research he also looks for 12/15 min yoga and stretch videos. On the days he doesn’t train, Paul decides to work on his flexibility and follows the short video’s at home. If certain days don’t work in his schedule he can easily move this part of his practice to a different time or day, making it very flexible.
On the weekends, Paul decides to do a run at the local track and field oval. The idea is to get slowly back into running to make sure his cardiovascular endurance is good enough to start rugby again.
Conclusion
Paul is structuring his muscle endurance routine towards his main goal of playing rugby again with strength training and flexibility as a focus. He can use the weight training to gradually get stronger and aims at doing more reps every time to measure his muscular endurance. He’s also changing the exercises after every couple of weeks, to keep it interesting and make sure he trains all the muscles groups as evenly as possible.
Paul combines this with stretching and yoga that he easily can fit into different time slots at home. He can vary the length and the exercises to make this more challenging too. The running can be mixed up with sprints or long distances to improve his cardio.
Final thoughts
I hope this post gives you a clear idea what muscular endurance is and how it contributes as a key element in measuring overall fitness.
Guess what, I am not the only one who believes, cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance, together with muscular strength are very important tools to improve overall well being.
I created this guide for a reason. I love to come back to it, re-read and study more if I feel the need to refresh my memory. And I hope it will do the same for you.
As you see, creating a targeted workout routine to improve is not magical at all. Personal trainers ask very similar questions and go through checklists to create personal workout programs. If you understand what kind of questions to ask yourself, and which terminology is important to understand, it’s very possible to build a personal routine.
Not only are you able to build a routine, you can fine tune and tweak the workout to fit in your personal schedule. Make it to fit the best or most convenient location for you to train and create it specifically to your gender.
You can even go further and switch it up according to seasons. I’m certain that a December muscular endurance workout looks very different for a 42 year old dad in Melbourne, Australia, compared to a 42 year old dad in Montreal, Canada.
The big idea is, you should use your newfound knowledge as levers and dials to fine tune and adjust.
A word of caution…
I assure you that there are going to be moments that things will get hard. The excitement of starting something new is slowly going to wear off and some days you won’t feel like going out and making an effort. That’s when discipline and grit take over. I’m convinced that even the most passionate professional has their off days.
And I’m here to tell you that is okay.
Once you understand what to look for and how to measure you can set better goals. When you see progress, your adventure should become an exciting and purposeful fitness journey you are looking forward too.
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If you are excited to start finding your personal muscular endurance activities to fit in your schedule, but you don’t know where to start, I’ve got you covered!! It would be my pleasure to send you this easy printable PDF document. Just let me know where to send it too and it will be lovingly delivered to your best email address.
If you are looking to know more about muscular endurance activities and examples I’m sure you will enjoy these articles next.
Until next time and be well.