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Muscular endurance workouts
Posted by: Shawn
When we train specifically to gain strength and muscle size we train by lifting a heavy weight with good form for repetitions that will be less than 8. However when training for muscle endurance the techniques employed are different as we are trying to activate slightly different muscles fibers in the muscles.
Your fast-twitch or white muscle fibers are where your explosive strength comes from which is what we are training when lifting a heavy weight. On the other hand training with reps that are more than 8 in a set will usually be activating the slow-twitch or red muscle fibers in the muscles.
The American Council on Exercise has defined endurance as the ability of muscles' and lungs' to maintain their function for the complete duration of exercise, or an exercise movement. This could mean anything from completing the set to completing the marathon.
When training to increase your muscular endurance and you will do sets with weights of between 10 and 25 reps. Training like this you will be stressing both your heart and lungs as well as the muscles involved in performing the movement.
This means that any body-part can be trained for muscular endurance which we call endurance training or in bodybuilding terms high reps. These high reps can and should be done with both an increase in the repetitions as well as a decrease in the weight lifted.
It will depend on how you set up your training as you could do drop sets where you perform a movement with a weight that you could do 15 reps. If you fail on the last rep you would then reduce the weight and complete another 15 reps.
Here is a good example of a bodybuilding workout which is specifically geared towards the development of muscular endurance:
Bench-press 3 X 15-20
Dead-lift 3 X 15-20
Squats 3 X 15-20
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