LiftforHealth.com

Muscular Endurance

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Muscular endurance routines rely on body weight and light to moderate dumbbells and barbells. The number of reps for each set will vary with the type of exercise and your goals. Standard pushups will have a high rep count. For dumbbells and barbells, rely on your own instinct and goals when choosing a weight. If your primary focus is endurance, choose a lighter weight. If you want to balance endurance work with strength training, go for a higher weight and lower reps. The decision is yours.

For endurance training, choose a nice, comfortable cadence. Up, down, up down ... as long as your form is good and steady, with no bouncing or jerking. Avoid super slow movements since you aren't training yourself to move in slow motion. But don't move so fast that you develop bad form. For strength training, however, perform slow eccentric movements, taking about four seconds to lower the weight.

When doing muscular endurance training, you want to lift to failure. For heavy duty strength training, lifting to failure could easily result in bad form and serious injury. But doing pushups and pullups to failure will not injure you. Muscular endurance training to failure makes you better, stronger, and more perseverant.

A question about the number of sets: Should you do one set of an exercise, two sets, three sets? Use your own best judgment. If you find yourself overly tired and you can't recover the next day, then you are doing way too much. Find what works for you.

With that said, I offer several muscular endurance routines for your consideration.

Helpful sites with illustrations of many of the exercises used in the LiftforHealth.com program:

Dumbbell Exercises

Bodybuilding.com Exercise Guide