Muscles Endurance

How to Endure your Muscles ?

Muscle strength is the ability to exert force. Muscle endurance is the ability to sustain an activity over a period of time. With adequate muscle strength and endurance, you are able to perform all activities, including those of daily living, with less stress. Adequate muscle strength and endurance allow you to walk, stand, or sit without becoming overly fatigued or experiencing back pain. In the absence of this type of fitness you tire easily, your efficiency suffers, and your productivity declines.

Muscle fitness and endurance are achieved through resistance, strength-building, and weight-bearing activities. These include lifting weights and can involve using exercise resistance bands or tubes as well as dumbbells; working out with machines that isolate particular muscle groups; and doing a range of exercises, including floor exercises that use various body parts to provide the resistance. (Exercise resistance bands can be obtained from Internet stores like Amazon and also from stores such as Target.) Floor exercises are done on the floor and work various muscles or muscle groups; an example of a floor exercise is doing sit-ups. The current trend in fitness is to use multiple groups of muscles at a time, rather than isolating a particular muscle group. Core fitness is the first order of business in strength and endurance training. Core fitness is the basis for being able to move without incurring injury and is required before seriously training all muscle groups. It focuses on developing strong abdominal muscles, and these exercises should be done daily. Examples of core exercises include sit-ups, reverse crunches, “bridging” (which involves pushing the mid body up from the floor using the legs and shoulders), and various other exercises focusing on the abdominal muscles. Learning to tighten the midsection of the body—known as “pulling the belly button to the spine”—is an important skill. Having a strong core reduces the likelihood of experiencing back pain.

Another advantage of striving for good, overall muscle strength is that over time it can build muscle mass. Men can do this more easily than women because they have more of the hormone testosterone. (They also start off with more muscle mass than women.) Muscles that are not exercised regularly atrophy; that is, they shrink in size over time—thus the maxims “use it or lose it.” (It’s not true that muscle turns into fat, but it is true that muscles shrink, and over time fat is gained.) As men and women age, they tend to exercise less and be less active in general; as a result muscle mass decreases, along with muscle strength and endurance. In addition, metabolism decreases along with muscle mass, leading to weight gain unless there is a corresponding decrease in caloric intake. The chronically sedentary person inevitably loses muscle mass without exercise and gains weight as the metabolism slows down. To attain muscle strength and endurance in particular muscle groups, you need at least two or three sessions of resistance exercise per week to yield improvement. A range of exercises that work the muscle groups should be selected depending on your goal. Building strength requires gradually increasing weight and stressing the muscles. Endurance involves doing multiple repetitions at low weight. That is, high weight with few repetitions builds muscle, while low weight with high repetition encourages endurance. The number of sets (a “set” is a specific number of repetitions—a set may include 10 or 20 repetitions, for example) you do depends on your goal. Start doing two to three sets of each exercise and gradually increase the number of sets or the number of repetitions per set. Proper form is key. Posture is important. You also need to move the resistance (e.g., the dumbbells) in a slow, controlled manner and avoid going too fast or jerking the weights. Maintain normal breathing and don’t hold your breath. Exhale during exertion. Resistance training should be rhythmic, performed at a moderate to slow pace, and involve a full range of motion. Working with a personal trainer who is observing you and making corrections as necessary ensures that you will get the most out of your workout. Some gyms provide an initial workout and introduction to the weights and machines with a trainer at no additional cost. If you want to keep working with a trainer, there is usually a fee. Weight training involving the large muscle groups should not be done on consecutive days, whereas exercises utilizing the smaller muscle groups can be. A day of rest between sessions involving large muscle groups allows the muscles to recuperate. Without recuperation time, the risk of injury increases. Some people do weight training five or six days a week, but they alternate muscle groups from day to day so that a specific muscle group is trained only two or three days a week. This is called a “split routine.” Those who want to do a full body workout, which involves working all the major muscle groups in one session, should do this only two or three times a week on non-consecutive days.