The Benefits of Muscular Endurance
At first glance, muscular endurance doesn’t sound that important, especially if your goals are to build muscle and get stronger.
But, muscular endurance plays a crucial role in your body’s ability to function optimally. Without it, no matter how strong or muscular you are, you’ll never reach your true potential.
Here are the top two benefits of having muscular endurance.
It Allows For Longer and More Demanding Workouts
Research has repeatedly shown us that training volume – the amount of work we do at the gym – is a determining factor for strength and muscle gain, among many other types of adaptations.
In other words, putting in more effort and doing more working sets at the gym leads to better results. Intuitively, this makes sense – you get what you put in.
And muscular endurance allows us to do just that – do more work before we reach exhaustion.
If your muscular endurance is lackluster, you will be held back by it. You’ll get tired sooner, be able to lift less weight for fewer sets, and your gym results – no matter what your main goal is – will be a fraction of what they could be.
You Can Burn More Calories, Lose Fat More Easily, and Keep Your Heart Healthy
This is a ‘three-in-one’ type of benefit, and it’s a significant one. Being able to do more work (be it lifting weights, running on the track, or something else) within a given workout leads to burning more calories.
Now, just because you burn more calories, doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically lose fat. But, it does mean that you can eat more food throughout the day without gaining fat. And, if you also deliberately reduce your food intake, you can get pretty lean.
Think of Olympic swimmers, for example. These guys are the definition of muscular endurance, and I’m sure you’ve seen how lean they are. Because they do such vast volumes of work (swimming in a pool for hours), they also get to eat enormous amounts of food and stay lean all year round.
And as a final thing, putting controlled levels of stress on your heart through training keeps it healthy and free from any diseases down the road. Even if you couldn’t care less about that now, you’ll surely appreciate your efforts in a few decades.
