Many guys tend to ignore stamina in favour of building bigger muscles, forgetting that stamina is required to achieve their muscle gain goals and sustain overall fitness. Better stamina also means the ability to feel energetic throughout the day and avert the onset of lifestyle ailments including heart and bone-relating conditions. Here are five stamina building exercises that will help you...
- Invest time in core abdominal exercises: The abdominal region along with the lower muscles of the pectoral region and supporting muscles of the back form the core. For developing the core and abs, you need to invest some time on a daily basis. This includes doing ab crunches, sit-ups and freehand squats. These exercises are required for working various muscle groups in and around the core, making it stronger. A stronger core means you can lift heavier weight with lesser chances of injuries. It also means a more stable torso, which helps prevent back injuries.
- Indulge in Cardio Training: Cardiovascular fitness is regarded as the litmus test of your overall stamina levels. Even if you want to build muscles only and are not concerned about your cardio performance, you need more then basic cardiovascular fitness to develop and sustain muscle mass. Stamina generated from cardio training supplements your ability to exercise harder. Most gyms support some form of cardio training that you can choose from, including bicycling and treadmill running or swimming. Ensure that you have at least one, dedicated cardio training day in the week. Step climbing or step-ups are ideally suited as they work upon the core area, the lower body and help to raise the cardio output too.
- Ensure one weekly session of strength training: Muscle definition and lean muscle mass is developed best by lifting medium-range weights. However, you need to engage your body towards developing greater stamina. The body will gain the stimulus to develop a higher level of muscle endurance when it is tested beyond its realm of comfort. For this, once every week, lift weight beyond your capacity. You can mark this for the last set where you are hardly able to complete the rep. This testing rep should crack a grunt out of you. This means your vital capacity and your muscular strength have been pushed to the limit. Don't do this often or you might develop a serious injury.
- Pilates sessions work wonders: Pilates is perhaps the best thing to have happened to the stamina and endurance building niche of gymming. This is a globally-recommended, core-strengthening exercise that boosts your stamina levels. Pilates ensures that your overall posture, bone and ligament alignment and proper stretching of muscles fibers is ensured. This translates into better performance across all types of exercises. It also helps you relax better, helping you de-stress.
- Boost stamina levels with interval training: Interval training was devised to test and raise stamina levels. It involves smaller bouts of high-impact training, alternated with short periods of low-intensity exercises. This often includes combing weight exercises with body-weight or cardio exercises. For instance, freehand squats might be combined with military presses to combine upper and lower body workouts. The resting period between the two is minimal to raise the stamina levels. Cross training uses a similar concept but the combination of exercises is more demanding and the resting period is almost negligible.
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