Everyone talks about muscle size and muscle strength, but what about muscle endurance? Building a muscle that lasts is largely forgotten about, at least in the world of bodybuilding – and this would be a mistake.
Ignoring this variable will only have a negative on your performance and health. However, people either forget about it or confuse it with other types of endurance. So, what is muscle endurance? This article will break it down and lay out the best way to improve yours – check it out.
What Is Muscle Endurance?
Let's start by defining what muscle endurance is.
Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle group to perform repeated contractions over time without experiencing fatigue. It can refer to a wide range of activities, such as;
- Running a 10k
- Standing in line 2 hours
- Performing a plank for 2:00
- Performing 50 squats in a row
Some key points that makes it stand out from other training variables include;
- It focuses on duration of activity rather than maximum force.
- It typically involves lighter weights with higher repetitions (e.g., 15 or more reps).
- Muscular endurance is important for sports, daily activities, and injury prevention.
Muscle Endurance Vs. Strength Vs. Hypertrophy
Now that you have a better understanding of what muscular endurance is, let's compare it to two other important muscle qualities: strength and hypertrophy.
1. Muscle Strength: Muscular endurance is the exact opposite of muscular endurance. The muscle can produce maximal levels of force and occurs through neuromuscular adaptations. Essentially, the existing muscles work better together.
2. Muscle Hypertrophy: Muscle hypertrophy is the growth of muscle tissue. It's an architectural change to the existing muscle.
As you can see, these two qualities are vastly different from producing force for prolonged duration.
Muscular Endurance Vs. Cardio
As mentioned in the intro, many people hear the word "endurance" and automatically picture running a marathon. This is understandable, as that's the usual way people use the term.
However, muscular endurance is different from cardio.
You’ve seen that muscular endurance refers to your body's ability to produce force through repeated contractions over extended durations.
Now, that is obviously related to cardio, but they are slightly different. Cardio endurance is your body's ability to supply oxygen to your body for fuel.
You see, your cardiovascular system is a complex network that includes;
- Heart
- Blood vessels
- Blood
Technically, your lungs are involved, which make up your cardiorespiratory system, but you get the idea.
This system acts as a transportation system for your muscles and body;
- Nutrients
- Oxygen
- Waste products
Therefore, in terms of performance, “cardio” is talking about how efficient your body is able to deliver oxygen to working muscles.
Muscular Endurance Exercises
While a common answer might be running or cycling, the truth is that any exercise can be an endurance exercise.
The primary variable that determines whether an exercise is considered a "muscle endurance exercise" is whether the load is light enough to be performed for extended durations.
1. Running A 10k Non-Stop - This is an obvious one. Many people understand the cardio aspect but muscle endurance also plays a major role.
2. Jump Rope For 10+ Minutes - Skipping requires your legs, primarily calves, to repeatedly thrust your body into the air. This simple movement is especially difficult and requires high levels of muscle endurance to perform for extended durations.
3. Performing 50 Controlled Push-Ups -Emphasis on “controlled”. Knocking out 50 crappy reps in 30 seconds isn’t what we’re really looking for.
4. Water Or Snow Skiing - If you’ve ever gone skiing, you realize real fast you’re not just standing up as you go. You’re constantly in a slight squatting position which requires a lot of muscle endurance in your lower body.
5. Stand Up Paddle Board (SUP) - Similar to skiing, SUP is brutal on your legs, as well as your core, when you first start.
6. Traditional Planks - Have you heard that after some training, the traditional plank isn’t actually a great exercise to build significant muscle? Well, that’s because it becomes too easy and starts training muscle endurance after you can hold it for a significant amount of time.
How To Increase Muscular Endurance
Just like training for muscular strength or hypertrophy, training for muscle endurance has specific training variables and methods.
Here are some training variables to get your muscle endurance up to par.
General Recommendations To Improve Muscular Endurance
We'll first lay out some basic guidelines provided by the NSCA
- Load: Light loads of 60% or less of your 1 RM
- Sets: High sets of 3+
- Repetitions: High reps of 15+
- Rest: Short rest periods of 30 seconds or less
Additionally, aim to activate your muscles for at least 30 seconds.
However, these are not absolute, and alternative tactics can also be employed.
Performing A High Number Of Reps
As muscular endurance is the body's ability to perform repeated contractions for prolonged durations, it makes sense that performing high reps would be effective.
And it does.
For example, a study with cross-country skiers had them perform simulated skiing, similar to a Skierg, to improve performance. To do this, they used the following protocol;
- Sets: 4 Sets
- Repetition: 30 Reps
- Load: 42.5% - 47.5% 1RM
- Rest: 90s Interval
At the end of six weeks, the trainees increased their muscular endurance by 21%.
Perform Exercises For Maximal Time Until Failure
One way to increase endurance is to simply perform an exercise for sets of maximal duration.
In 2014, a study had trainees performing isometric planks until volatile failure during the week. They found that this simple tactic was significantly effective at increasing their muscular endurance.
However, there were 2 important caveats;
- A threshold existed, requiring trainees to perform planks at least three times a week.
- A dose-response relationship existed, with the greatest improvements observed in individuals who performed planks more than five times a week.
This is a simple method you can use to increase your endurance.
Lift Heavy And Improve Strength
This may seem counterintuitive, but improving your strength will naturally increase the potential for muscular endurance.
As you're likely familiar with the 1RM continuum, a higher 1RM can generally perform lighter loads for more reps.
As mentioned above, increasing your strength improves your neuromuscular efficiency, allowing your muscles to work more effectively together. As a result, the existing muscle can produce more force.
What this means is creating the same amount of force will be easier to do.
However, you need to pair this with muscular endurance training as well to capitalize on those gains.
EMOM (Every Minute On the Minute)
EMOM stands for "Every Minute On the Minute” and is a training method where you perform an exercise every minute.
Start a timer and perform a prescribed amount of reps of an exercise. Once you’re done, you use the remaining time in that minute to rest. On the next minute, you perform the reps again.
For example, a 10 minute EMOM performing 10 reps with 40-50% of an exercise is popular. Let’s say you do bench press, here’s how it would look if your max is 315lbs and so you used 150 lbs.
- Begin the timer and perform 10 reps.
- It takes 15 seconds so you have 45 seconds of rest.
- On the next minute, you perform 10 more reps.
- It takes you 18 seconds so you have 43 seconds of rest.
- Complete 10 rounds.
As you see, this will get progressively harder as you go.
EMOMs can be a very effective tool to improve anaerobic capacity and muscular endurance.
Circuit Training
Circuit training is a classic method to increase muscle endurance. It involves performing a series of resistance exercises continuously.
This requires the muscles and body to exert force for prolonged durations.
- Prolonged, Continuous Activation - Performing exercises back-to-back with minimal rest increases your muscles' ability to produce force for a prolonged duration.
- Short Rest Periods - Limited recovery forces your muscles to adapt to working continuously with minimal recovery.
- Multiple Muscle Groups - Full-body exercises with circuits are ideal, as they require more energy and place a large demand on your muscles' ability to perform.
- Elevated Heart Rate - Sustained intensity improves cardiovascular support for muscular work, allowing your muscles to receive oxygen more efficiently.
Benefits For Increasing Your Muscular Endurance
Increasing muscular endurance should be a priority for everyone.
1. Improved Strength Capacity - While not maximizing one-rep strength, increasing your muscular endurance still enhances your ability to sustain force production for a longer duration.
This helps you maintain strength across longer sets or during fatigue.⁵ For example, a weight that you used to only be able to rep 6 times, now perhaps you can do 7 or 8 reps.
2. Foundation for Hypertrophy - High-rep training causes metabolic stress, promotes cell swelling, and increases muscle fiber recruitment. Improving your body's ability to perform moderate loads for more reps means more muscle.
3. Help Maintain Good Posture for Longer Periods - As mentioned above, poor posture is a significant problem for a large percentage of the population. Part of this is weakness in postural muscles, as well as muscle endurance.⁶ Improving these muscles enables you to maintain proper posture and reduce the risk of injury.
4. Enhanced Recovery and Aerobic Capacity - Increased endurance improves your muscles' resistance to fatigue – it can work longer, harder without getting tired. This also results in your body's ability to produce ATP meaning more energy for repair and recovery.⁷
5. Capillarization & Mitochondrial Density - Endurance training results in more capillaries and mitochondria. Together, these result in better oxygen delivery and waste removal which supports muscle repair and long-term growth.⁸
Muscle Endurance For Maximal Gains
While not as popular as muscle strength or hypertrophy, muscular endurance plays a major role in your overall fitness and performance. While it doesn’t need to be a central training variable, it should have some role in your overall training.
As you’ve seen above, improving muscular endurance supports your training. Or, the contrary, decreased muscular endurance decreases your performance – we think you should improve yours.
References
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- Børve J, Jevne SN, Rud B, Losnegard T. Upper-Body Muscular Endurance Training Improves Performance Following 50 min of Double Poling in Well-Trained Cross-Country Skiers. Front Physiol. 2017;8:690. Published 2017 Sep 22. doi:10.3389/fphys.2017.00690 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5615216/#s5
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- The relationship between postural stability, core muscle endurance and agility in professional basketball players . Ann Med Res [Internet]. 2021 May 25 [cited 2025 Jun. 11];26(10):2181-6. Available from: https://www.annalsmedres.org/index.php/aomr/article/view/1805
- Porter C, Reidy PT, Bhattarai N, Sidossis LS, Rasmussen BB. Resistance Exercise Training Alters Mitochondrial Function in Human Skeletal Muscle. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2015;47(9):1922-1931. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000000605 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4478283
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