Improve Muscle Endurance
This will serve as a guide for showing you how to improve muscle endurance. You'll note that the exercises stay the same, but the methods followed and sets and reps change. The idea here is to improve the endurance of your muscles through weight training exercises, improving muscle stamina.
There are two variants of this muscle-endurance-improving work-out. The first is a regular weight-training regimen where you'll perform your exercises in a normal, bodybuilding fashion. The second is through the use of circuit training. With circuit training, you're causing the heart and lungs to work in concert with the individual muscles that you're training. It's an excellent method for improving muscle endurance.
For the first method, do your usual body-building routine. Instead of doing 2-3 sets per exercise, do 5-6 sets. Drop the weight and do 15-25 reps. You'll note that you get a tremendous pump doing this; more blood is flowing to your working muscles. This increased bloodflow brings more muscle-building nutrients into the muscles and forces more oxygen into the muscle cells.
For the second method, use your same set of body-building exercises. Only this time, do one set of each exercise (squat, then bench press, calf press, barbell row, shoulder press, for example) in rapid succession. Complete the circuit, rest for a minute, and repeat up to 6 times. Again, do 15-25 reps per exercise.
You'll find that this sort of training will produce gains not only in muscle endurance, but your muscles will grow, too. Critical in-cell development will occur, making each muscle cell bigger, which ultimately leads to bigger muscles. Most professional bodybuilders follow a routine like this when they're trying to cut weight and “rip up.” One of the key benefits to this endurance training is increased muscle mass.
It's win-win. Follow this routine 3 days per week (note that you're doing a full-body exercise routine each work-out), and supplement with cardio on your off days. Cycling and running are two of the best cardio/aerobic exercises that complement muscle endurance training.
