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Increase Your Muscular Endurance
~ How to Get Started ~
Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle or muscle groups to repeat a specific movement many times or hold a specific position for a certain amount of time.
Basically, it's the muscles ability to perform continuously without fatiguing. Examples to improve this would be cycling, jogging and elliptical machines.
Don't get muscular endurance confused with muscular strength. Although they're related, they're also different.
NOTE: You don't need to be strong to have endurance, BUT put these two together and you'll benefit even more!
It's very important for people that play sports or participate in activities that extend for a long period of time.
How is Muscular Endurance Determined?
This is determined by how well developed your slow twitch muscle fibers are.
In your body there are generally two types of muscle fibers, slow twitch muscle fibers and fast twitch muscle fibers.
The slow twitch muscle fibers can't use as much force as the fast twitch muscle fibers can, but these slow twitch fibers can go for a longer period of time.
The fast twitch muscle fibers can use a very large amount of force but only for a short period of time. So basically:
*Slow Twitch Muscle Fibers = Endurance
*Fast Twitch Muscle Fibers = Strength
How to Increase Your Endurance Level
There are steps you can follow to increase your endurance levels. The training you do to increase your endurance should reflect on the type of activity/sport your participating in. Primarily any kind of cardiovascular activity.
Interval Training - this is an excellent way to train your body and build your endurance levels.
Change is Good - if you do the same routine day after day, with no variation, you'll eventually get to a point where you're not benefiting from it anymore. Your body is going to adapt to this and thats where you'll be stuck. So change is good for you. Keep your body guessing so you can push harder each and every time.
Avoid Overtraining - too much of anything is NOT good for you. Remember that! Your body needs rest to repair itself from what you're doing. Without rest your body's going to burn out and if that happens, how will you continue with the duration of your routine? If you overtrain, it can actually make you weaker. Your workout should give you energy, NOT make you feel even more tired.
Go Longer - since endurance means to maintain an activity for a long period of time, you'll want to do activities that can be done for an extended duration.
Your main goal is to be active. If you keep using your muscles, you're muscles will have no choice but to get stronger and this is where you increase your muscular endurance.
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