5 Ways to Boost Your Stamina
Whether you’re training for a marathon or chasing a toddler around the house, there are plenty of reasons to want more stamina. Often referred to as endurance, stamina is your ability to sustain a physical or mental effort for a long period of time. If you’ve been experiencing a personal energy crisis lately (outside of dealing with your utility bills), developing your endurance might be just the thing for recovering your zing.
Try these five not-so-obvious ways to boost stamina now.
1. Reduce Recovery Time And Resistance
To build muscle endurance, limit your recovery time between sets to 30 to 90 seconds. Want to kick things up a notch? Take the recovery time — and the weight — down a notch. Less resistance, more repetitions and resting for 30 seconds or less between exercises is optimal for building stamina, a 2006 article in the Journal of Strength Conditioning and Research concluded. In other words, embrace those circuit workouts!
2. Maintain Balance
Cutting your recovery time and pushing yourself during a workout are great steps toward having more stamina, but don’t forget that your body still deserves some R&R. “You want to train hard, but if you end up training hard every day, you might find that the intensity you put out gets lower and lower,” says Erica Giovinazzo, registered dietitian and CrossFit coach at Brick New York. If you find your marathon gym sessions are adversely affecting your performance, take it easy for a day. “Rest, go for a light run, bike ride, swim or take a yoga class instead of going all out,” suggests Giovinazzo.
3. Ratchet Up Intensity
“There is a time and a place for keeping a steady pace, but if you really want to increase stamina, then increase the intensity,” advises Giovinazzo. To accomplish that, she recommends doing short intervals at a sprint pace. “[It] could be running, rowing, biking or doing other kinds of exercises — such as burpees, squats or even push-ups,” she says. “Whatever [you do], you’ll know you’ve increased the intensity when you’re out of breath and feel that good burning sensation in whatever muscles are being worked.”
4. Throw out the old routine
After approximately two weeks, your body will start to become familiar to your usual training routine, so remember to switch it up every once in awhile. You need to vary the ways in which you use the muscles to avoid overuse and develop less used muscles.
If you’re usually running around a football pitch for 90 minutes and base your training session solely on running, why not try switching to cycling or swimming to really challenge your muscles? This can also be used to motivate you as doing the same routines over and over again can become pretty boring.
5. Stay hydrated
When training of any sort, you must keep hydrated to stay on top of your game. You can lose a lot of fluid when you exercise (up to a litre an hour). Therefore staying hydrated can make a big difference to increasing your stamina.
Water helps fuel all of your muscles and it’s advised to drink before, during and after exercise to boost your energy levels which in turn contributes to building stamina. It may also help to prevent cramp.
