Do you find yourself gasping for breath and sweating profusely after walking/jogging a few hundred yards
Maybe you are thinking of entering an endurance event and want to boost your endurance and stamina
Whatever your personal circumstances may be, if you are wondering how to increase endurance, with a little know-how from the right sources, with just the right levels of consistency and dedication, you can easily boost your stamina and become fitter and healthier than you could have ever imagined.
When most people tend to exercise these days, they do so with aesthetics in mind, as they basically wish to ensure that they look as great as they possibly can, and there is nothing wrong with that.
However, in terms of leading a healthy life, there is so much more required than just simply looking good, as your stamina and endurance both play integral roles in determining just how fit and healthy you are.
By increasing your endurance, not only will you be fitter, but you will also be healthier, your athletic ability will improve, and you will feel better and perform better as a result.
Increasing endurance is about so much more than simply hopping onto the treadmill a few times per week, and to help emphasize this point, take a look at the following, as we provide you with a number of helpful tips based on how to increase endurance.
Cut back in your resting time between working sets According to Reda Elmardi from TheGymGoat.com, It doesn’t matter whether you are lifting weights, following a circuit-based workout, performing a Crossfit workout, performing calisthenics, or anything else, one proven strategy you can employ is to cut back on your resting time between working sets.
Say for example, you complete one round and would ordinarily rest for three five minutes before beginning round two, instead, aim to rest for between 90 and 120 seconds max.
By doing this you are forcing your body to work harder on recovering, plus you are getting it used to more physically taxing and demanding workouts.
Perform strength training with cardio A lot of people will set days aside for cardio, and days aside for lifting, and they will barely combine the two, as they feel that doing so could be detrimental to one another.
For example, they believe that performing cardio before lifting could sap energy and could leave them feeling weaker, but doing cardio after lifting will eat away at muscle tissue, rendering their previous workout absolutely pointless.
In the real world, however, studies have found that combining resistance training with cardiovascular training is a fantastic method of boosting your endurance and stamina.
You see, the more muscles that are being worked, and the harder they work, the harder the heart and the cardiovascular system will have to work as a result.
The heart is a muscle just like any other, yet we cannot train it directly, so we have to make it work for us instead, which we can do so via various exercises and movements.
Say for example, you perform a set of barbell curls, followed by 10 push ups, followed by a set of sprints on the treadmill, your heart would receive one hell of a workout and you would quickly find your endurance and stamina improving on a near daily basis.
Avoid carbonated drinks, especially when training As you’ve probably seen, there are a number of so-called energy drinks on the market that are marketed as being able to help provide you with extra energy and stamina to get you through your workouts, when in reality, drinking them whilst you train can have very detrimental effects on your body indeed, especially if you are trying to increase your endurance.
When we drink carbonated beverages, the bubbles created by the carbon dioxide in the beverages bloat our stomachs and make us feel very uncomfortable.
If you are full of air, the last thing you want to do is run for several miles at a time.
Not only that, but the Co2 also drains oxygen and reduces the amount you can breathe in and process.
The less oxygen, there is, the less efficient the muscles in the body will be able to work, because the cells that make them up rely on oxygen like cells in other parts of our bodies.
Instead, drinking water, or a still beverage enriched with amino acids and electrolytes, might be your best bet instead.
Perform compound exercises Compound exercises are basically specially designed exercises that work by targeting multiple muscle groups at once.
Machine-based exercises are typically isolation exercises that isolate just one muscle group, which, whilst being beneficial, is certainly not beneficial for people trying to increase their endurance.
By performing compound exercises, more muscle groups are recruited, so again, the body is forced to work much, much harder than usual. The harder the body works, the more your endurance will improve as a result.
Cut out junk food If you are serious about improving your endurance, one thing you should focus on is your diet, and for good reason.
Despite what people claim about the Michel Phelps 10,000 calorie per day diet and such like, athletes can not get away with consuming vast amounts of junk food as the junk would do their bodies no good at all.
The occasional treat is fine, but for the most part, if you are trying to get fitter and healthier, you should eat foods that boost your performance, rather than hinder it.
Forget about processed, salty, fatty, sugary, and artificial junk food, and instead consumes foods rich in protein, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that nourish the body and boost performance, rather than hindering it.
Fresh fish, lean meat, healthy fats, complex carbohydrates, and plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables are all fantastic examples of foods that can improve your performance, so make sure you include them as part of your training.
Perform endurance-based training Obviously, if you are trying to increase your endurance, one thing you should seriously consider focusing on is endurance-based training.
Rather than performing fast-paced, high intensity training for short periods of time, covering relatively short distances, instead, you should consider performing endurance-based training instead.
Try going for a slow and steady jog or power walk that covers several miles, or several dozen miles, and make sure you record your time.
From here, aim to beat that time, or the distance, the next time you perform the same workout or training session. You could even purchase a cycle and try your hand at long distance cycling.
Always beat your previous best In terms of how to increase endurance, another thing you should always aim to do, is to ensure that you constantly are beating your previous best, as endurance and complacency just do not go together with one another.
You should always be pushing yourself to your limits, and you should always be ensuring that you are beating your previous best.
That means that, if you ran 4 miles in 20 minutes during your last training session, for your next session you should aim to run 3.9 miles in 20 minutes, or 4.1 miles in 20 minutes.
By constantly pushing yourself to your body is always having to work harder and to adapt to certain stressors, which in this case, come via the training itself.
References:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/phano62.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17414804
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23760362
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