What health related fitness refers to the ability of the muscle or group of muscles to sustain repeated contraction against resistance for an extended period of time?

Muscular strength relates to your ability to move and lift objects. It’s measured by how much force you can exert and how much weight you can lift for a short period of time.

Examples of exercises that develop muscular strength and power include resistance training, such as weightlifting, bodyweight exercises, and resistance band exercises. Running, cycling, and climbing hills are also options.

Read on to learn more about the difference between muscular strength and muscular endurance, as well as muscular strength benefits, cautions, and exercises.

While muscular strength and muscular endurance are similar in some ways, they have some key differences. Muscular strength is determined by how much force you can exert or how much weight you can lift. Building muscular strength uses heavier weights for fewer repetitions.

Muscular endurance refers to the ability of a muscle to sustain repeated contractions against resistance for an extended period of time.

Activities that build muscular endurance include long-distance running, cycling, or swimming, along with circuit training and bodyweight exercises. You can improve muscular strength and endurance by doing repetitive movements until the point of exhaustion.

Muscular strength enhances overall health and boosts athletic activity.

• A strong body allows you to perform movements and activities that require power without getting tired.
• Muscular strength helps you maintain a healthy body weight by burning calories and enhancing your body composition, which is the ratio between fat and muscle.
• Building strength may also boost mood and energy levels while promoting healthy sleep patterns. This may boost confidence, provide a sense of accomplishment, and allow you to add more difficult or strenuous activities to your fitness routine.
• Developing muscular strengths helps to build strong, healthier muscles and bones. This helps to develop good posture and relieve back pain.
• You’ll have more stability, balance, and flexibility, making injuries and falls less likely.

To build muscular strength, size, and power, do exercises and activities that make you work your muscles harder than normal.

Since you’re focusing on getting stronger, you may want to try to intensify the exercises by using heavier weights and increasing your body resistance, even if it means that you do fewer repetitions.

Do these exercises at least two times per week. If you don’t have time for a longer session, squeeze in a few sets throughout your day.

Watch this video for a demonstration of some of the following exercises.

Squats

Sit into a chair as you squat to make this exercise easier. To increase the intensity, hold dumbbells or a bar at chest level.

Biceps curl

For this exercise, you’ll need dumbbells or a barbell.

Modified pushup

Once you’ve mastered the form of this exercise, try doing standard pushups with your knees raised and your feet extended behind you.

Forearm plank

This plank variation is a good option if you have concerns with your wrists.

Abdominal crunch

This exercise targets your back and core to promote stability and good posture.

Jumping jacks

This cardio exercise will help to get your heart rate going and your blood pumping while also building strength in your lower body.

Use caution when starting a strengthening exercise program if you’re new to exercise or have any injuries or medical concerns. Here are a few tips to help you avoid injury:

• Start slowly and gradually build up the intensity and duration of your workouts over a few weeks.
• Listen to your body and stop if you need a break or start to feel any pain.
• Allow for 1 day of recovery between working different muscle groups.
• Always use proper form and technique to make sure you’re getting the most benefits from your workouts.
• Use steady, controlled movements, especially if you’re doing heavy lifting.
• Give yourself time to rest in between sets.
• Use caution when working out any area of your body that’s prone to pain or injury. This may include your neck, shoulders, and back and joints, such as your wrists, knees, and ankles.
• Avoid being short of breath or holding your breath, which can cause your blood pressure to rise. For each movement, exhale as you lift and inhale as you lower.

If it’s an option, talk to a personal trainer to set up an exercise program if you’re new to fitness or simply want an expert opinion. Your trainer will help you build and maintain the motivation that it takes to stick to your exercise routine and get the results you want.

Working with a professional ensures that you’re doing the exercises correctly and efficiently. They’ll help you stay on track, make sure you’re using proper technique, and advance the exercises when you improve.

If it’s not possible to work with a professional, find a training partner. You can help each other stay motivated and make sure you’re both using proper technique.

Challenging your muscles to work harder than usual on a regular basic can help you build muscular strength.

To stay on target and meet your fitness goals, it’s essential that you develop a routine that you enjoy. Change it up as often as you like to prevent yourself from getting bored and to target different muscle groups.

Along with weight and resistance exercises, amp up your usual activities, such as climbing stairs or carrying heavy bags, to build muscular strength and endurance.

Make a point to incorporate more of these everyday tasks into your daily routine so you can enjoy the benefits of a strong body.

Muscular endurance refers to how long muscles can sustain exercise. Improving muscular endurance can help enhance overall health and fitness.

This article explores the benefits of muscular endurance, the best training routines to enhance it, and how people can adapt these techniques into common exercises.

We will also look at tips to prevent injury during training and how to design an exercise program that could lead to long-term performance and health benefits.

Muscular endurance is the ability to continue contracting a muscle, or group of muscles, against resistance, such as weights or body weight, over a period of time.

Increasing the performance of these muscles means they can continue to contract and work against these forces.

Greater muscular endurance allows a person to complete more repetitions of an exercise, for example, pushups or squats.

According to the American Council on Exercise (ACE), the benefits of muscle endurance include:

• helping maintain good posture and stability for longer periods
• improving the aerobic capacity of muscles
• improving the ability to carry out daily functional activities, such as lifting heavy items
• increasing athletic performance in endurance-based sports

Muscular endurance tests measure how many repetitions of a movement people can do before the muscles reach a state of fatigue and cannot continue the exercise.

Many tests focus on measuring upper and lower body muscle endurance by measuring how many pushups, squats, or situps people can achieve.

A person can work with fitness instructors to measure muscular endurance or record how many repetitions of a particular exercise they can perform before reaching the fatigue state.

To increase muscular endurance, ACE recommend a combination of lower and upper body exercises, with strengthening exercises to target the whole body.

Moderate resistance training, with short intervals in between for rest, creates short bursts of tension to build strength.

Circuit or high-intensity interval training (HIIT) can be a suitable way to combine cardio and strength training into one workout.

Unless a person’s fitness goals involve training for a particular endurance-based sport, training for muscular endurance alone may not be the most appropriate strategy.

The best exercise programs mix strength and muscular endurance training.

Some evidence also suggests that exercise programs that people find enjoyable may be more likely to generate long-term benefits, as they may be more likely to stick with them.

A 2015 study comparing HIIT and steady-state training notes:

“Variety in the type of exercise is as important as the type of exercise. Particularly considering that the health benefits of exercise have to be viewed in the context of the likelihood that exercise is continued for several years, not just the weeks of a controlled study.”

When training to improve muscular endurance, what matters most is not the type of exercise, but how people design their workout.

People should take into consideration the following when tailoring a workout to boost muscular endurance:

• the number of reps
• the weight or resistant force on the muscles
• the number of sets
• length or rest periods

According to the National Strength and Conditioning Association, individuals training for muscular endurance should aim to complete three or more sets of 15 or more exercise reps with a load that is 50% or less of their one rep max (RM).

A person’s one rep max is the maximum load with which a person can complete one repetition of an exercise.

For example, a person may wish to use the leg press machine at the gym to build endurance in the legs.

If they have an RM of 300 pounds (lbs), they should aim to perform 2–4 sets of 15 or more reps with a load of 150lbs or less, with brief rest periods between sets.

As their muscular endurance for this exercise increases, they may wish to make the exercise more challenging by reducing rest times between sets, or increasing the reps per set, rather than increasing the load weight.

A person can apply the same principle of high rep and set volume, low–moderate load, and short rest periods to any exercise, such as bench presses, dumbbell curls, pushups, or squats.

People can choose exercises that suit their preferences and are challenging yet enjoyable enough to sustain training.

Example exercises

As we have already mentioned, there are no specific exercises that are better for training muscular endurance than others. The design of a training program makes it suitable for endurance training.

However, ACE recommend the following exercises for building muscle endurance, which a person can perform at home without equipment:

Pushup

A pushup works the triceps, chest, and shoulder muscles.

1. Start in a pushup position by lifting the body off the ground with the hands and toes, with the body in a straight line, horizontal to the floor.
2. Keep the hands flat on the floor shoulder-width apart and at roughly chest level.
3. Start with the arms straight, then bend the arms while keeping the body straight and engaging the core and glutes, to lower the body until the chest is close to the ground.
4. Straighten the arms to return to the starting position.
5. Repeat for 5–15 times, depending on difficulty, to perform one set

A person can also work the tricep muscles more by placing their hands close together and turn them inward, so the fingers and thumbs form a diamond shape.

To make the exercise easier, a person can place their hands on a bench or other stable, raised surface.

People can also modify a push up by placing the knees on the floor to make it easier, or lift one leg off the floor to make it more difficult.

Squat

A squat works the glutes, calves, quads, and core muscles.

1. Stand with the feet just over shoulder-width apart with the toes pointing slightly outwards.
2. With the head facing forwards in a neutral position and back straight, extends the arms in front, so they are parallel with the ground.
3. Squat down by bending the knees, keeping the body weight centered over the arches of the feet and the thighs parallel to the floor.
4. Keep the back straight with the shoulders back and chest forwards.
5. Use the feet, legs, and hips to push back up to the starting position.
6. Beginners should aim for 5–10 reps, and they may perform the squat against a wall or end the movement in a seated position on a low surface to make it easier.

Abdominal crunch

An abdominal crunch works the abdominal muscles:

1. Lie on the back with knees bent and feet flat on the floor.
2. Place the hands lightly on the back of the head and chin tucked.
3. Slowly curl the upper body towards the knees, keeping the lower back on the mat.
4. Slowly lower back down to the starting position.
5. Perform 10–15 repetitions for one beginner set.

Pike crunch

Another example of an abdominal crunch is the pike crunch:

1. Lie with the back flat on the floor, with legs outstretched and arms above the head.
2. Lift the torso and legs off the floor to form a pike position.
3. Place the legs at right angles straight up in the air and reach with the arms toward the feet.
4. Slowly lower the legs and torso back to the floor.
5. Perform for 10–15 repetitions for one beginner set.

A person can also hold a stability ball between their ankles during this exercise.

Lunge

A lunge works the abs, buttocks, hips, and thighs:

1. Stand up straight with the feet together.
2. Bend one knee, lift the opposite leg, step forwards on to it, place the foot flat on the floor, and bend the supporting leg, so the knee reaches the bottom.
3. Use the front leg to push back up to the start position and repeat for the opposite leg.
4. Perform for 10–15 repetitions on each leg for one beginner set

Plank

A plank works the core and back muscles.

1. Start by lifting the body off the ground with the hands and toes, with the body in a straight line, horizontal to the floor
2. Keep the hands flat on the floor, with straight arms and wrists and the elbows directly underneath the shoulders.
3. Keep the chin tucked in, with the abs and thighs tight.
4. If the person is a beginner, hold for 30 seconds, rest for around 1 minute in between.
5. Repeat the plank at least three times.

A person can modify this exercise by resting on the forearms instead of the palms if they find it challenging to hold the plank position with straight arms.

Tips to prevent injury during a workout include:

• warming up with dynamic stretches before exercising, for at least 5 minutes
• making sure to maintain proper posture and technique, and consulting with a fitness professional if unsure of these
• exhaling during movements requiring more effort and inhaling on easier parts of the exercise
• resting certain muscle groups at least 24 hours after working them out
• cooling down and stretching after exercise
• stopping physical activity if ill or injured

Muscular endurance is a muscle’s ability to continue contracting against resistance over a period of time.

People can improve their muscular endurance with strength and cardiovascular training.