Strength Training Workouts – Build Strength and Endurance

What exactly is the difference between strength training exercises and strength training workouts?

That’s a good question, and I think I have an answer for you:

A workout is a specific combination of exercises that set out to accomplish a certain task.

Whether you’re trying to improve muscular endurance, build cardiovascular endurance, or simply get stronger, the exercises that make up that workout will differ. You will notice that a lot of exercises will repeat in your workouts depending on your goals, but the manner in which you perform these exercises will change.

I think it’s important for you to understand the difference between these types of strength training workouts. Knowing what you want to accomplish ahead of time will save you the time and stress if you’re not getting the results you expected.

Let’s take a look at some of the popular types of workouts you can do at the gym or even at home.

Muscular Endurance

The concept of strength endurance training is something that is commonly overlooked when people develop their strength training workouts.

The truth is, there are so many sports and activities out there that rely on proper muscular endurance for positive results. Sports such as hockey, baseball, and football all require athletes to have extraordinary muscular endurance to perform over the course of a game, season, and career.

It’s essential that your strength training routines focus on both strength training AND muscular endurance.

How to Improve Your Muscular Endurance:

The common misconception regarding strength endurance training is that you should increase your repetitions at a lower weight. While this can be true if you’re trying to tone your muscles, it really does you no favors in terms of endurance.

A good rule of thumb for your strength endurance training is to:

- INCREASE the weight your lift

- DECREASE the reps of each lift

- DECREASE your rest intervals

- INCREASE the amount of sets

By increasing the amount of weight you’re lifting, you’re allowing your muscles to work at a higher intensity which helps with endurance. Since you will be working at a higher intensity, your reps for each set will naturally decrease, especially if you increase the amount of sets you do.

In addition, by decreasing the amount of time between sets, you are training your muscles for a quicker recovery.

This recovery time is critical when it comes to strength endurance training.

Circuit Training

When developing your strength training workouts, consider using circuit strength training for both gaining strength and improving muscular endurance.

Circuit strength training is typically constructed of a series of exercises, one set at a time, with very short rest time in between them. The theory is that shortening the rest between exercises improves muscular and strength endurance.

A typical circuit can be anywhere from 8-12 exercises with no more than 1 minute of rest between them.

Another important aspect of circuit strength training is that each exercise should be performed for at least a minute. This is different from most exercises where you do 8-10 reps that only take 30 seconds to complete.

Circuit strength training is a good way for people who are looking for general improvements in their fitness. It won’t build muscle as well as other strength training workouts, but your strength and muscular endurance will certainly improve.

High Intensity Training

If you’re looking to improve both muscular strength and size, I’d consider a workout that focuses on high intensity strength training.

The basic principle of these workouts is simple: exercises are done at a higher intensity than most workouts.

These types of strength training workouts focus on the following principles:

- Focus on “muscular failure”

- One set of 6-10 reps depending on the exercise

- Slowly perform the exercise

- Repeat the exercise every other day

Reaching muscular failure guarantees that your muscles are broken down, typically resulting in an increase in strength and size.

It’s important that these exercises are NOT done daily. One of the keys to high intensity strength training is giving your muscles more time to recover.

Home Exercises

Don’t have the time to make it to the gym 4 times a week? Don’t worry, there are plenty of at home workouts that can improve your strength and fitness:

P90X

One of the most popular strength training workouts that you can do at home is P90X. Although it has many critics, P90X uses a concept of “muscular confusion” for developing strength training.

By switching the types of exercises you do with P90X, your muscles can’t adapt over time, resulting in an increase in size and performance.

P90X is available in a series of DVDs that you can do in the comfort of your own home; however, the full set can get quite expensive. In addition, there are some additional items you need to purchase in order to complete every exercise.

Many people have claimed to have success using P90X so it is definitely something that should be considered by anyone looking to improve both their strength and endurance.

Home Gym

There are a lot of people who have success simply using different home gym workouts available at retail stores and online retail stores.

Some of the popular home gyms include:

- Total Gym

- Bowflex

- Weider Fitness Equipment

- Body By Jake

- and many more..

Using your home gym for various strength training workouts can be still be beneficial, but some of your exercises may be limited. The same principles that I talked about earlier still apply.

For example, if you’re looking to improve muscular endurance, your home gym workouts should be done with more sets and less rest in between.

As you can see, there is such a variety of strength training workouts for you, it’s just a matter of your personal goals.

The key to any workout or exercise you do is staying consistent. It’s important that you develop weekly strength training routines that focus on a variety of areas (strength, endurance, core, etc.) The more consistent and diverse your workouts are, the better results you will find.

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