Over the last decade or so, obstacle course races and endurance events have gained popularity, with more people now signing up to take part in these events than ever before. On top of that, we all know how popular marathons are, and have been for so many years now, so the number of people taking part in marathons each year is also rising pretty sharply.
The main issue with marathons, obstacle courses, and any other type of endurance race or sport for that matter, is the fact that you need to be extremely physically fit in order to complete the race safely, and hopefully record a respectable time in the process. For these reasons, people often wonder how to increase endurance safely and effectively, and if you’re one of these people, make sure you read on as we’ll be providing an answer to that very question.
In reality, improving your endurance and your stamina is beneficial for a number of different reasons, and it is certainly about much more than simply running a race. By improving your endurance, you can potentially improve your entire life, so it is certainly well worth knowing what you’re doing, and how it can be done.
To make your life easier, and healthier, here is a look at 6 helpful tips based upon how to increase endurance.
1. Perform Cardio On Lifting Days
Most individuals who are regularly involved in sports and fitness, will have days dedicated solely for lifting, and days dedicated solely for cardio, and it is certainly rare that they will combine the two.
Because of this, most people will perform 2 – 3 cardio sessions per week, and 4 – 5 weight lifting sessions per week, which, whilst beneficial, is perhaps not necessarily the most beneficial way of training if you are actively looking to improve your endurance.
Basically, the idea here is that the more muscles you are working per workout, the more endurance and stamina you will be able to build. Also, remember, the heart is a muscle, so by performing cardio, you are actually working a very major muscle group in your body, which in turn, will help ensure that you build plenty of endurance as time goes by.
After performing a weight lifting workout, jump straight into your cardio and see how you get on. You may even wish to combine the two in a type of circuit-based workout, or perhaps even via Crossfit.
2. Take Less Rest Between Working Sets
When it comes to lifting, in between working sets, most people will rest for anything from 90 seconds, up to 5 minutes in some cases. However, studies have found that, when it comes to increasing your endurance, ideally you should reduce the amount of rest that you take in between working sets.
Ideally you should rest for 30 – 60 seconds max between sets, which will mean sacrificing the weight and using a slightly lighter weight. Don’t worry, however, because by the time you’re done with that exercise, your muscles should be on fire, and you should be struggling to catch your breath.
Again, circuit-based workouts are ideal in this instance, as you will constantly be moving from one exercise to the next, getting very little rest between sets.
3. Increase The Intensity
Another sure-fire way of helping to boost your stamina and endurance, is to ramp up the intensity levels of your workouts. It doesn’t matter whether you are lifting, playing sports, running, cycling, or anything else, when you are actually working out and training, you should have the intensity of a thousand angry men.
Okay, perhaps that is a little extreme, but if you are calm and quietly coasting through your workout, barely breaking a sweat, something will need to change pretty sharpish, otherwise you simply are not going to get anywhere fast.
Obviously you don’t need to scream the gym down and run around like you’ve been possessed, but you should try to perform each rep/exercise as quickly as you can, making sure to maintain a constant mind-muscle connection for the duration of the exercise. If you feel that an exercise/workout is too easy, find ways of making it harder.
4. Practice Endurance Events
They say that practice makes perfect, and if you’re looking to build and increase your endurance and stamina, you are going to have to ensure that you get plenty of practice when it comes to endurance training and events.
Rather than going for a short jog at a relatively fast speed, why not slow down the pace, pace yourself, and place much more of an emphasis on the distance, rather than the time.
As time goes by, you can consider covering even further distances, or perhaps simply increasing the speed at which you perform the activity at. You can try your hand at cycling, long-distance running, swimming, or even endurance-based gym workouts and exercises.
The bottom line is that, providing you practice endurance events, the more practice you get, the better you will become.
5. Mix Things Up
In terms of how to increase endurance, routine is your arch nemesis if you wish to truly test yourself and ramp up the stamina and endurance. After around two weeks of performing the same workout, the human body will quickly adapt to it and you will suddenly find yourself making less and less progress with each passing week, if you choose to attempt to stick to the same routine that is.
So, if you are always cycling a certain route, why not ditch the bike for a few weeks, and go for a leisurely jog, or even for a walk perhaps?
Failing that, you could hop on the treadmill and have a gym-based cardio workout instead, or you may even wish to ditch the aerobic activity altogether for a few weeks, and focus on circuit-training using weights and your own body weight. Studies have found that resistance workouts can be just as effective as aerobic workouts for increasing stamina and endurance, so don’t be afraid to mix things up and try something new that you’ve never tried before.
6. Focus On Performing Compound Movements
When it comes to training in the gym, if you’re used to using a lot of machines as opposed to free weights, again, you may wish to switch things up and to try something new instead.
Most exercise machines will allow you to perform what is known as ‘isolation exercises’ due to the fact that, due to their construction and design, these machines work perfectly at isolating specific muscle groups and body parts. However, for increasing stamina and endurance, research has found that compound explosive movements could be far more beneficial, as they result in a greater energy expenditure.
Compound exercises/movements, are exercises and movements that target multiple muscle groups and parts of the body at once. Standing military presses, for example, are great examples of compound exercises because, although they primarily work the deltoids (shoulders) they hit different parts of the deltoid head, plus they work the upper and lower back, and they even engage your core.
By performing exercises which work multiple muscle groups at once, again, your body is working harder because more muscle groups are being used, so your endurance and stamina will begin to increase as time goes by.
Explosive movements, which require you to perform sudden movements to complete the exercise, are also beneficial as they recruit more fast-twitch muscle fibers, which result in increased oxygen transportation, resulting in greater endurance levels.
For anybody wondering how to increase endurance, explosive compound exercises and movements are vital.
Read More: Helpful Tips For Men Who Want To Take Their First Overseas Trip
“However, studies have found that, when it comes to increasing your endurance, ideally you should reduce the amount of rest that you take in between working sets.”
Well, isn’t that why people make a distinction between endurance and strength training?
By “compound movements” do you mean the ability to do a quarter squat while simultaneously using faggy purple weights?
Other than that, good stuff in this article especially about keeping rest time at 30-60 seconds between working sets. Would have liked the author to drop a line explaining the difference between working sets and max out sets and explaining that those long rest periods serve a purpose when doing overload stuff. Other than that, very nice.
Ultimately, the best way to train for an endurance event is to train for precisely that endurance event. Also, and importantly left out here, is to make sure your nutrition is appropriate.
I’m not really sure that high intensity work will necessarily help with endurance unless your endurance test involves spurts of intensive work (like say a Muay Thai match).
Spot on!
In fact the best way to train for anything is to train in precisely that!
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I’d like to see you pen an article on your routines(lolknee too).
I should have a lot of free time heading my way soon so maybe I will. I am thinking of starting my own blog and potentially podcasts. I’ll let you know.
Absolutely right. Its all about periodization too, so high intensity type stuff has its place…..typically late in the prep and usually used as a sharpener and incorporating an overall subcycle of peeling
back of volume.
Its something like this.
Long frequent sessions of whatever endeavor. Looow intensity so as there is very little recovery needed. This isyour base, or ffoundation that the rest of your work rests on.
Slowly incorporate medium duration sessions a tad above, low intensity. Think of it as comfortably hard. 10-20 minutes. Take enough days off to fully recover before next session.
Hit gym few times a week during all this, no need to lift super heavy.
Progress up to shorter bouts of a little harder intensity. Do sets or intervals of these. As you ratchet up the intensity of these you should be peeling back on total volume as to be peaking for your event. This phase lasts no longer than 2 months out from your event to prevent not timing your peak right. Its important to take notes on this phase if you plan on repeating the cycle to really nail down your peak.
Fitness article? That’s my cue.
Right, because we are already as good as we’re ever going to get.
I love mostly everything on ROK, especially on Game and Украина. But with these “fitness” articles I’m often less than impressed. If the webiste wants to educate men about training, then start talking about Sports Science, in terms of Energy Systems (Anaerobic, Lactate, Oxidative etc.) and real Olympic Lifting programming for Snatch, Clean & Jerk – instead of giving bro-science, generic advice like “compound lifts” or “do cardio”.
Also just want to say that I have contributed a couple entries to expose libtard journalist in the Kings Wiki so far. Let’s carry on folks, lift, approach, and read!
Every lifting program mentioned here is for Olympic levels of snatch…
I regularly lift Kratom and I can’t keep the bitches off.
I literally have to carry a large stick around to keep them away.
Amaaaazing!
Nice article man. Why was your response to lolknee ghosted?
I checked out your website and read five or so articles… the contents are right up my alley. Since your archives go back quite a bit, I still need to do some more reading before asking you anything too specific (which you might have covered). Most immediately I’m interested in whether you’ve ever competed in bodybuilding or physique?
Having a well defined athletic body and personality to match will get you the same as Usain Bolt, women don’t mind sharing the top dog…. Which goes to prove it’s all up for sale with women, just the currency you need to sort…
Workout and look good, depends on how you shape your body there will be a market of hanger ons, the Athletic look seems to be the more in demand.
As for the compound exercises they do work a lot better for overall gains, just don’t do the same thing over all the time, definitely mix it up, as you would with other things in life…
‘I couldn’t resist his lightning Bolt’
http://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/i-couldnt-resist-his-lightning-bolt/news-story/abd9bed544ef9a842a8ecb086e23ec36
“She said: “He stood in front of us and suddenly pulled up his shirt and
showed us his six pack. I had never seen anything like it. I just had to
reach out and stroke it.
“I felt honoured he had picked me — I could not quite believe it. I was a
bit scared but he was a fun guy and I enjoyed being next to him. We
spent most of the time kissing.”
“We used Google but I didn’t need a translator to tell me that he wanted sex.”
But despite learning of his womanising exploits, Duarte says she
would happily welcome Bolt back into her bed if he was to ever visit Rio
again.
The mum-of-two added: “Of course I would love to see him again if he visits — he has my number so can always give me a call.”
oh man look up her pics – she looks like total trash.
Amen. The best sprinter the world has ever seen and that’s all he can pull? A single mom with 2 kids. Damn.
She is a 6 tops, maybe a 7 in that doctored photo on the linked article.
#1 kratom
#2 kratom
#3 kratom
#4 kratom
#5 kratom
#6 regular cardi… I mean kratom.
OK, please explain this? I’m out of the loop on this…thanks.
Just a running joke.. many sponsored posts on this site feature a herbal “enhancement” product called Kratom. Think of it like guarana for the post-millennial generation.
i know this isnt related but i felt the need to post this. I was searching for something else and found this wonderful blog. It is feminism in its full uncensored glory. it is a rare thing to see it so unglued and so uncensored. make no mistake men….feminism is out to kill you. some gems from the article:
https://witchwind.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/utopia-what-would-a-womens-society-look-like/
also note she has 117 comments(comments closed now) so she is far from alone in this thinking
“I often muse about all the things that we’d need to change about patriarchy if we abolished men’s rule over women and the earth. Everything and every single aspect of social organisation is so much the opposite of how it should be”
“Mostly it’s about men stopping from doing harm. But stopping men isn’t enough because beyond that there is the entire world to relearn, to heal, and our entire society to rebuild. We would be faced with the immense task of replacing all the misogynist, genocidal, biocidal practices men have ordered our society with for eons.”
“If we managed to overcome men’s tyranny over us, how would we rebuild our world?”
“I dream for concrete, down-to-earth, simple and easily applicable measures of stepping out of patriarchy into a female-loving, biophilic world. This isn’t by any means a realistic plan of how to achieve it, but just reading it makes me feel happy. It makes it feel more real,”
“Before we do anything, the very first measure to adopt is to take all men out of all positions of decision-making immediately, and actually out of any kind of social, professional position whatsoever.”
“All of men’s (alive and euthanised) belongings, property, resources and land will be confiscated from men and handed back to female care and supervision – property rights over land will be abolished. You can’t own land!”
“So it would also be illegal for male adults to impose their presence on females, girls and children. Men would have to care for themselves on their own: food, laundry, etc. No male above his age of puberty would be allowed to receive any kind of service from a female.”
“Their life expectancy would probably drop to the age of 40, but that’s how things should be. Women’s life expectancy without men would rise to 130 years at least.”
“I’m not sure what to do about boy children. Obviously you know my opinion, but let’s say that’s up to the mother to decide”
“Fathers’ rights will cease to exist. There is no such thing as fatherhood — as we all know, it’s a myth. ”
one of my favorites….
“”It’s the inalienable right of each woman to control every phase of her reproduction and life creation. Abortion will be possible at any stage of pregnancy, however there will hardly be such a thing as undesired pregnancy since there won’t be any men forcing pregnancies on us any more. Abortion will nonetheless be recognised for the trauma, mutilation and loss of life that it is. The number of children and human population will naturally decrease to sustainable levels, so will the number of males born. Women will be free to experiment parthenogenesis or procreation with two female eggs.”
“The nuclear family will be abolished”
“And obviously no adult male would be allowed near children.”
“There will be no such thing as “teachers”….We’d learn anything we’d want from languages to sciences to art to music to medicine to building to witchcraft to swimming”
“non-patriarchal learning is truly riveting.”
“MEN’S INSTITUTIONS
All oppressive male institutions will be abolished after men have been retrieved from them. We obviously won’t keep these institutions. They will return to the nothingness that they belong, just as a distant, bad memory.”
“It would be illegal for men to hold weapons….For the remaining weapons such as guns or blades, women will hold exclusive right of use over them in order to defend ourselves from men, from the risk of them taking power over us again.”
“Women would be able to move freely.”
“Men would be permanently banned from any kind of medical practice. All woman-hating, genocidal institutions such as gynecology, psychiatry, obstetrics, big pharma, the torture of living beings in the name of “scientific experimentation” will be banned.”
“Perfect health would be the normal state of women anyway, as we will learn by experience and observation what we should eat and do to stay healthy at all seasons and times. Most women will have rediscovered our healing, divination and extra-sensory communication powers.”
“In order to keep all men and post-pubescent boys busy, we’d send them to clean up the vast amounts of detritus, pollution and toxic wastes men have littered and almost killed the world with….No man will be allowed to take any decision without female guidance. ”
….the grand finale her last comment:
“And seriously, killing animals you’ve raised yourself in a farm or keeping animals enclosed is cruel. I’m for the liberation of all farm and domestic animals. It’s up to them to decide whether they want to live with us or not, and they should be able to come and go freely. Maybe after a few decades, after the human population has stalled, male population has decreased, and after we’ve made serious efforts for reforestation and restoration of wildlife on the earth, it would probably be fairer to hunt animals occasionally. Right now, given the extinction rate of animal species, I find it criminal to hunt or fish. We don’t need to eat that much meat anyway.”
the whole article has many more just wow moments.
folks it is feminism in its raw uncensored form….do not be fooled. they want us dead. This is war.
This is sheer fantasy. What will they do about Muslims? 😂
Heal them?
Convert them to vegetarianism?
Tell them to stop being such naughty boys?
As you say, sheer fantasy… Total whacked-out nut jobs!
Halal leek soup with kuffar onions.
didnt you know? women will abolish all male institutions and they have magic powers too and smarter and stuff. i wouldnt expect you a dumb male to understand. should i even be talking you? why arent you making me a sandwich peasant sub-human-male?
“Most women will have rediscovered our healing, divination and extra-sensory communication powers.”
Yes you keep telling yourself that sweetheart… You’ll certainly need them to keep the terrors at bay once you’ve abolished the sex that enabled you to climb out of the shit in the first place…
what amazes me is the amount of detail and thought this poor thing passing off as a human went into to write this.
it really is amazing.
Borderline mentally ill….
hmmmm…. perhaps even beyond borderline
only borderline? I’m not sure I’d let out of a straight jacket myself.
then again….shes just being honest….speaking the truth and showing liberalism for what it really is.
yes…. mental illness
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae7bcf1e8c6289279a59fe94fdbdf0304a5ffdf4286aea84541b87114a501b9c.jpg
Borderline? I can pluck at least 3 serious mental issues just by reading that piece of poo.
that thing blogger wishes she looked like that….
more like
http://thebodyisnotanapology.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/fatfeminist2-e1432345833478.jpg
and her “boy”friend
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/0b/ea/00/0bea00cc0e54c9e4cd5909a778b19d2a.jpg
on another note looking up that picture i discovered there is a “i need feminism because” meme
ah i found a winner!!!
http://i.imgur.com/AXDlM6a.jpg
though the bearded guy was a close second
http://67.media.tumblr.com/3432bacf2fea8bf78c7ab70f2726468b/tumblr_n4lvyuoy0U1tu3iwso1_1280.jpg
Manlets….
Waste of fucking DNA…
yes….sadly they are everywhere
Man hating lesbians. Nothing more
men should die at 40. women live to 130. who is going to payfor this bitch’s social security and medicare ?
I can already imagine their world populated with women like these:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/14/36/ef/1436efcafc258833df1b551363837206.jpg
(tbh I don’t even know if that’s a man or woman but it sure is hideous)
Daddy of course!
Important to realize many feminist-dykes concur…
Calibrate accordingly…
They didn’t mention what they would do if a spider crawled up their wall when men are not allowed to be with women.
well they would obviously talk to the spider via their magic psychic powers at which point the spider would bow and worship them and somehow tied up a man with their now super spider web that they get from communicating with the holy womyn and offer said male as a sacrifice who is obviously to dumb to fight back.
the fact you did not instinctively know this tells me you are a man and as such as you are stupid. I mean it is basic common scientific knowledge afterall. we learn this in 1st grade unless you’re male because then you’re too busy picking your nose or something.
behind every great man is NOT a ball-busting shrew.
behind every strong-INDEPENDENT-woman is:
6 government women only programs,
5 women only groups,
4 White Knights,
3 pages,
2 grooms,
1 ex-husbands slave labor(child/spousal support)
you go girl
“behind every great man is NOT a ball-busting shrew.
behind every strong-INDEPENDENT-woman is:
6 government women only programs,
5 women only groups,
4 White Knights,
3 pages,
2 grooms,
1 ex-husbands slave labor(child/spousal support)
you go girl”
okay someone needs to seriously make a video singing this to the 12 days of xmas tune.
I believe I read one of her articles once. Is this the same bimbo that wants all men placed in concentration camps? Her shit is so laughable.
“I believe I read one of her articles once. Is this the same bimbo that wants all men placed in concentration camps? Her shit is so laughable.”
no idea….only read this one article. but wouldnt shock me considering this article
LOL it’s insane. How would they expect to take away the power from men and hope men would just sit there and let it happen, without any form of resistance or retaliation? It’s so naive it’s too stupid for words.
“LOL it’s insane. How would they expect to take away the power from men and hope men would just sit there and let it happen, without any form of resistance or retaliation? It’s so naive it’s too stupid for words.”
to be entirely fair most “men” today are passive as fuck and would probably sit by as that happened. not the first time in history a dictator has just casually rounded up folks with minimal resistance.
General Patton advised, among other more “logical” physical fitness routines, holding your breath whenever and for as long as was possible.
I wonder how much such cardiovascular/anaerobic training benefits.
As I’ve gotten to middle age, I’ve switched from primarily lifting and obtaining muscle mass and overall size, to cardio first, then immediately AFTER cardio diong strength training. I used to separate the two on different days.
Not only do I feel better, but my cholesterol, blood pressure, and BPM heart rate is down considerably. My joints feel better, muscles heal faster, and overall feel better. I can also still bang like I’m in my 20s and get more female attention than when I was closer to being a meat head. Frankly, I just got sick of the 24/7 lethargy, and joint pain, associated from a lifting-heavy exercise regiment. And I’d bet I’m probably way more lethal in a fight now, despite being about 10-20% less strong on low-rep lifting.
A lot of guys make the mistake of lifting at too high a percentage of their 1RM too often. Sets of 3-8 sure as hell make you stronger, but I’ve found that my upper body especially responds better to sets of 20-30 even. I think since we don’t walk around on our arms all day, we need higher reps to build the same foundation our legs already have.
Good points made about endurance excercise – life is all about endurance.
You’re like the Matt Forney of fitness, meaning you don’t look like a good ambassador for what you’re teaching at all Mr. El.
Good article, Reda El, I agree with all of this. Thanks for posting.
The first thing to evaluate is if you really have a need for endurance, because:
1) Endurance repetitive training (running esp.) results in much more articular problems than resistance training;
2) No benefits of improved cardiac function on old age – we’re all going to die anyway, but if you’re past 40 risks of cardiac events reduce greatly and major risk factors are not related to endurance exercise, just the usual suspects: smoking, obesity etc.;
3) Endurance training promotes catabolism (possibility of losing muscle);
4) Have you seen the face of relatively young endurance runners, triatletes etc? They look like old people, running around under the sun may be not good for you…
Not that I’m totally against any form of prolonged training, being a martial arts practitioner myself. However the negative aspects to endurance training should be considered before engaging a practice which could be counterproductive to your desired results. There is really a need for cardio? Sports medicine recommendations have been shifting from “constant” exercise to “intense” exercise, and I’d argue squats and deadlifts are as intense as they get. Recreational players are improving on the necessary endurance just playing their sport. Professional, blue collar workers are having enough activity already (in their case the thing to watch for is excessive physical activity). So why a person not concerned with these issues should go for endurance training? (rhetorical question)
Circle jerk.
adequate rest is missing. its the most important.
Too much rest- that’s why America is overweight.