These Exercises May Help Your Stamina
Exercise plays a key role in developing stamina. Here are some additional tips and pitfalls in your training.
Stamina is a difficult subject for many. We know that training is an important concept when it comes to having enough energy and strength, but how can you reach your goals? How can you hike the whole mountain, kayak the length of the whole river, or finish that adventure race?
Most of us tend to think that endurance training is just running longer or performing more cardio activities, like HIIT training. This is only part of the equation. While we want to develop our cardiovascular system, we also want to develop our strength and power.
Building your lower half is important! Don’t skip leg day. If you want to build endurance to keep up in those grueling races or to cut down on your body fat percentage, try a few of the following techniques.
HIIT training (High-intensity interval training)
This type of training provides a real challenge to the cardiovascular system. By combining heavy workouts with cardio-type exercises, we can maximize our V02 max and CO (measures of fitness and endurance). If you focus on cardio workouts only, you can impede the endurance in the musculoskeletal system. Do a HIIT workout and see how you feel. You should feel “gassed” when you are done. If not, increase the intensity. Just be sure to give yourself a rest if you need it. There is such a thing as overtraining and too much muscle breakdown can impede you even further. A simple HIIT activity would be 10 burpees, 10 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, and 10 sit-ups with a very short rest break at the end of this series.
Consider nutrition
Nutrition is key to improving your endurance. By providing the muscle tissue with readily available carbohydrates, you can increase the amount of energy required to push that tissue. This is commonly referred to as “loading.” Many endurance athletes use this idea of loading to their advantage. What is happening is providing a steady supply of easily-used carbs to the system. This can be done in many ways and some forums discuss this. Be aware, that the closer you get to an event, the simpler the carbohydrates. Meaning, that for the normal gym-goer, a pre-workout mix would be carbs enough to get you through. For the marathoner, it is days of preparation with less consumption before the race to avoid gastrointestinal complaints and imbalances. To increase endurance, we also have to train our system how to use what we put into it. Avoid sugary foods, increase vegetables, and make sure you choose to recover. It has been shown that a carbohydrate and protein mixture within 30 minutes after working out helps recover muscle tissue after highly intense activity.
Rest breaks.
Building bigger muscles means more rest between sets, yes, but you also sacrifice the endurance of that muscle. By reducing rest times between sets, we build our cardiovascular system and train oxidative muscle, which helps endurance. Our muscle tissue has different fibers, fast twitch and slow twitch. These are also known as oxidative and glycolytic fibers. By training quickly with long rest periods, we are training fast-acting muscle tissue and this will hinder endurance activities. By stressing our oxidative system with longer activity and short rest periods, we train our endurance and will notice big gains in this area.
Do multi-axial exercises.
Multi-axial exercises are those that involve more than one body part. This includes compound muscle actions and is a mainstay for many strength coaches. Performing these requires a little more education and monitoring of lifting techniques, but the payoffs are great! These include such lifts as squats, deadlifts, cleans, and body-weight exercises. Exercises such as bicep curls, tricep pull downs, or leg curls can help you get stronger in isolated areas, but won’t likely do much to help your endurance in the long run.
Focus on muscle confusion
Muscle confusion is a term used by the personal training industry to create positive changes in our system. You may hear the term “cycling” often used in the industry. This is the method whereby your exercise routines change every few weeks to stimulate new growth or increase the endurance of the tissue. By changing the types of lifts or exercises every 2-3 weeks, and changing the variety or method every 2-3 months, we can create a system of cycling that forces changes to the muscle tissue with lasting results. For instance, if you are used to doing squats and lunges, change this to power cleans and deadlifts. If you are used to wide pull-ups and pushups, change this to corn cob pull-ups and diamond decline pushups. If you are a cyclist, try rowing. Try new things and you will see changes.
Focus on your heart
Stamina and endurance are all about how well we can oxygenate our tissues. If the heart is under or overworking, we can find that this decreases our endurance. We want a target heart rate of 50-85% of our maximum heart rate while training. Our estimated max heart rate is 220 minus our age. For instance, if you are 35, your max heart rate will be 185. Your target rate will be anywhere from 93 to 157 bpm (beats per minute). On the lower end of these limits, you will begin to develop basic endurance. Seek to increase your heart rate for longer periods over time. Endurance athletes tend to seek training at 80-90% of their max heart rate. We will develop better cardiovascular endurance if we can sustain activity at this rate. Wear a heart monitor, or use a smartwatch, for fairly accurate measurements, and remember, it takes time to build! Don’t focus too heavily on the numbers as too much strain can cause us to fail prematurely. When you train, you always want to feel a little uncomfortable but do not continue in pain. It is work! You want to stress the system just enough to spark its growth and, over time, if you are diligent, you will see huge changes!
Endurance training is all about dedication mixed with a little know-how. If you want to develop your body, you need to focus on the necessary elements for success. The principles above are just a starting point to developing a good, personalized system and are not meant to replace guidance from exercise professionals or your health practitioner. As is the case with beginning any exercise routine, use the advice of professionals to determine if it is right and safe for you.
Dr. Nicholas Daley is a physiatrist (Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation physician) with many years of experience in strength training and the development of exercise and nutrition programs for athletes. He has been a certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS). His current focus is providing care and wellness options for both athletes and non-athletes alike.
