Difference Between Muscular Strength and Muscular Endurance
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- Опубликовано: 3 июл 2024
- Muscular strength and endurance are often treated as though they are opposites, when in fact the two qualities are quite closely linked. In this video I breakdown the differences between them, how to train to develop each one, and also reveal how one of the best ways to develop endurance is to train for strength.
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About me: I’m a Strength Coach and Personal Trainer, and I love my job. I have degrees in Kinesiology and Exercise Physiology, and have been helping people get stronger and move better full-time since 2009. Through working with all kinds of different people ranging from elite basketball athletes to active seniors, I’ve learned that the “secret” to effective training is to take a long-term approach. The day you stop training is the day you stop improving, so training programs must be structured in a way that keeps our joints healthy and mind engaged while we build a strong and powerful body. Through sharing information and training tips here, I hope to help more people train for the rest of their lives.
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Disclaimer: All information here is for informational, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be construed as personal exercise advice.
Muscular strength is how much you can lift. Muscular endurance is how many times you can lift it. Cardiovascular/cardio respiratory endurance is your wind, how well your heart and lungs can provide energy to do the other two things.
If you try and lift a thing and it is too heavy, that is a failure of strength. If you are doing repetitions of a movement and your muscles fatigue and you have to stop, that is a failure of muscular endurance. If you gas out and have to stop because you are sucking wind and your heart is pounding out of your chest, your endurance is lacking.
When i was in high school used to have very high levels of cardiovascular endurance however muscular strength and endurance was nowhere near as strong and powerful as currents of course bigger, heavier, and stronger guy however cardio wasn’t as great as I were in high schoolwhere in high school was smaller, lighter and weaker guy but good cardio levels.
Most common:
(advantage)Bigger guys usually have great muscular strength and endurance which physical strength where smaller guys have greater cardiovascular endurance due to lighter body weights..
(disadvantage) bigger guys cardiovascular endurance not as good as smaller guys due to body weight more muscles, heart need more oxygen to keep going which it not easy…. While smaller guys most of time are weaker when come to raw, or brute strength in muscular strength and endurance other words physically strength and power
You are full of it, and by it I mean knowledge ❤
Haha, thanks!
Daym
love the video. I'm 58 and do mostly high reps, endurance training. in the past when I did strenth training I found that I bulked up, added size and weight. I know there are many factors , like calorie in take and cardio. The NFL combine example is interesting but the stronger guys like OL are mcuh bigger than the smaller CB so it's all relative, too
Thanks for your comment. Good point about the combine. Both relative strength and absolute strength are relevant here. A smaller player may have higher relative strength, the larger players have higher absolute strength, the more relevant measure in this particular case. All the best with your training!
Great to have different perspective on the matter, thanks man
Thanks for commenting!
amazing video ,thank you 💪
Thank you!
This video was very interesting and very informative thank you a lot for this!!!!
Very informative and well explained.
Thanks for sharing that
Amazing, thank you so much
Thank you!
Great knowledge ♥️♥️
Thank you
Very interesting and informative
Thank you! Glad you found it helpful!
Very helpful
Thanks!
Great Video :D
Thanks a lot and your are too underrated.
I really enjoyed this thanks.
Thank you I appreciate you sharing that!
Can muscular strength and muscular endurance be developed and improved simultaneously, or will there have to be a periodization of one and then the other? My career field requires endurance far more than strength, but as your NFL combine example pointed out, strength plays a factor. You also point out that strength plays a factor in healthy aging which is an added benefit, however, maximal strength is not of great interest to me. Can a progressive overload approach be applied to a muscular endurance training program? Thank you for your time!
Great question. Yes, both attributes can be developed concurrently. As with all things, there is a trade off. If you want to be truly elite in one domain then you will need to pursue that at the expense of others. However it is reasonable to achieve an a good or even great level of both. It would still be best practice to use periodization - this is true regardless of the desired outcome. But that doesn't mean that strength needs to be pursued exclusively during a strength phase. You can have a phase that is more strength, or more endurance, where the goal is to push forward with one while maintaining the improvements in the other from the previous phase. You can also develop strength without ever training maximally or testing 1RMs. Doing heavy sets of 5-8 reps (for example) of the main lifts improves strength. All of this depends on the level of the exerciser, too. A beginner can improve on everything all at once, and they usually do. It's as you approach more advanced levels that specialization becomes more important.
What’s the relationship between recovery and muscular endurance? Are there stretches that improve muscular endurance either directly or indirectly?
Great questions. The most important fitness quality for recovery is aerobic fitness. Recovery from exercise is largely driven through aerobic energy metabolism. It's one reason why people who are mainly strength or power athletes should also develop their aerobic fitness - to help them train as hard as they can in their desired activities. Would someone with well developed muscular endurance recover well? Probably. But the two aren't as directly linked. Stretching wouldn't have a meaningful effect on muscular endurance.
Hey Andrew, I have a lot of questions so I guess I’ll just fire them out.
I’ve heard people say that stronger muscle is smaller. Is this true?
How would Somone start training for strength?
Hi there, thanks for watching and for your questions. I'll do my best to answer them.
1) Kind of! Strength and hypertrophy (growth) are related, but distinct. It's not so much that stronger muscles are inherently smaller, it's that there are many other ways to develop strength other than increasing the size of the muscle. A muscles ability to produce force is in large part governed by the nerves that innervate that muscle, and the speed and efficiency with which those nerves communicate with given muscles. If you look up terms like motor units, rate coding, and rate of force development you can learn more about this concept. It is possible to train in such a way that you are increasing strength, largely through neuromuscular mechanisms, without specifically targeting hypertrophy. That said, usually at least some growth occurs in people who are totally focussed on strength. Powerlifters are a good example. Pavel Tsatsouline is a good example of an extremely strong person, who is much stronger than his muscle size would suggest.
2) This depends on what you mean by "start." In my view, most beginners would not be well served by diving right into what we would normally describe as a pure "strength" program. Spending some time getting proficient with fundamental movements like squatting and deadlifting is a pre-requisite for really developing strength in those movements. In the case of an intermediate lifter who knows their way around the weight room looking to transition to more of a strength focus, they would likely do well focussing on compound exercises and doing much of their work in and around sets of 5 reps. Working on different speeds through fundamental movements is also a good technique. I would look into conjugate training and the work put out by westside barbell to get a sense of what a true strength athlete trains like.
Hey Andrew, I came to your video because I was curious about the importance of training muscular endurance. I play an endurance sport (soccer) and I'm looking towards training for the season. At the moment I am training strength and my main concern is if I don't work on isolating endurance that it will hinder me. Right now I am squatting 295 of 6 sets for 4 sets and a lot of other things. Because my sport involves so much running do you think that I should be looking into something more along the lines of a rep range of 15-20 for 3 sets for my squat and other exercises? I intend on getting faster and being able to be consistently faster for the full duration of a match. What would you advise if you don't mind me asking?
Hello and thanks for your question. Although it's not safe or appropriate to give personalized advice in a forum like this, I am happy to share some general guidelines related to training for sport. Like most team sport athletes, soccer players need to be strong, fast, and have great endurance. Heavy work in the weight room, like barbell squatting as you mentioned, is a great way to get stronger. Sprints and plyometrics can improve speed. In terms of endurance, analyses of soccer have shown that the sport involves a lot of slow jogging/walking interspersed with periods of high intensity effort like sprinting. As a result, long slow distance running does little to improve soccer performance. Although it is good practice to work on different training methods and use different rep zones in the weight room throughout the year, doing high reps and lighter weight will not develop endurance in a way that transfers to sport. It's best to train each quality specifically and directly ie. using the weight room to get stronger, sprinting and jumping to get faster, and various tempo and interval runs etc. to build up conditioning.
@@trainforever1142 Thanks for the help man, I really appreciate your feedback. that's what I figured and I'm glad that someone has a similar opinion.
@@itsoj9437 My pleasure. Thanks for watching and for your question.
Hey, I’ve been doing calisthenics for about three months now, and want to know a little more about muscle failure. Right now, I am training pseudo planche push ups, around 5-7 reps. I do push every set to failure. I am aiming for both endurance and strength increase, so would failure be sub-optimal or fine? I think I heard you say failure isn’t as good for strength so, I need to know the reason. Thanks.
I don't know very much about that type of training. I have never even attempted a planche push-up. The rationale for steering clear of failure for strength is two fold. One is that you recover faster, leading to superior performance in the next training session, the other is strength is measured by successfully lifting the weight. You don't want to deliberately fail if the goal is to lift. Using your calisthenics example, as an experiment, one might try stopping one rep shy of failure on all sets and seeing if that leads to better results. Again, totally outside my area of expertise.
Relative endurance is absolutely relevant for ballet performance
That makes sense.
OKAY
Great video. Question for you. I like to do circuits that include things like kettlebell exercises, body weight, jump rope etc. I think they are useful for stamina for general health. I do also train for strength, but do you think doing these circuits are better, worse, or neutral compared to traditional cardio like running, walking, cycling, etc. I like doing martial arts, so I think being able to move in different ways is important. Similarly, is there any benefit to do higher rep exercises AND lower rep exercises, or should one focus on the lower strength-building exercises unless they have a specific purpose.
Hi there, thanks for your questions. I'll try to address everything you've raised here. KB/BW circuits and jumping rope are great ways to exercise for many types of people. Can't say better/worse/neutral compared to traditional cardio, it's just different. Those types of circuits can be a great way to develop unique attributes like power endurance. It's not a great way to work on zone 2 cardio, for example, which is great for recovery and cardiovascular health. Depending on the athlete, there may be room for both types of training in their program. Some athlete's need to prioritize running/cycling, others don't need to do much at all (fighters could be a good example of the latter). Higher rep training is useful for hypertrophy and single joint exercises. High weight, low rep training isn't a good option for isolation exercises. Hope that provides some insight. All the best with your training.
So what if i design my workout like following
Morning
1) running
2) cardio/squats/push-ups/ skipping
3) and football
And evening
Strength training in gym
My gole is to be physically active in sports and NOT to get bulky but as youve said and i also know that in sports strength play a vital role so will this work ?
Unfortunately I can't answer questions like this or give personalized advice in this format. I can say that whether or not this would "work" would depend in large part on what the strength training workouts look like and also the overall training load. Things like how many days off, how many football sessions each week, how long/intense the runs are, would all figure into the answer.
I can also say that most team sport training wouldn't include "cardio squats and pushups" in the mornings. Training for sport involves a lot of power work and also places a big emphasis on recovery. Exactly what exercises or training methods would be appropriate for a specific person I have no idea.
One potential flaw with your point, most athletes, such as in your data, are already training primarily for muscular endurance as opposed to strength, so they’ll see the greatest benefit from incorporating strength training.
Most gym-goers are the opposite, training primarily for strength and hypertrophy with no focus on muscular endurance. I realized this when I learned my wife, who does not barbell squat, could hold a bodyweight squat nearly as long as I could - and I can barbell squat twice my bodyweight. Obviously, being able to hold a bodyweight squat has huge real life benefits, more than squatting heavy.
If you were to update this video ever or a similar subject. I am curious about training for muscular endurance via isometric holds to failure. For example, squat hold, dead hang, push-up hold, plank. I’ve been incorporating that into my routine with success. My thought, based on some research I’ve found, is this training style improves a muscle’s ability to move blood (capillary growth perhaps) and remove energy byproducts to delay “the burn”. Many studies showing these exercises lower resting blood pressure, etc.
Thanks for your comment and for sharing these great insights. Isometric training is great. It can help improve both endurance and strength and has some unique benefits like improved strength at a specific joint angle and improved strength with relatively lower fatigue than traditional resistance training. Here's a link to a relevant review article: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30943568/
I'm not sure that I agree with the idea that most athletes are trained mostly for endurance. It would vary depending on the sport. Endurance athletes would be primarily trained for endurance of course, but more so cardiovascular endurance. When these athletes work in the weight room they tend to prioritize strength work to help their body withstand the training volumes required for success in their sport. And this brings up an important related point, that most people would benefit by having good levels of both strength and endurance, and what that looks like practically is having muscles that can produce a lot of force and an aerobic system that can deliver oxygen to working tissues efficiently.
I like the point you bring up about yours and your wife's relative squatting abilities. In terms of the maintenance of activities of daily living, such as a squat, I like to prioritize moderate loading of a goblet squat, or goblet box squat. We know that power deteriorates faster than strength with age, and that this loss of power is more associated with loss of functional independence than loss of strength or endurance. Using a bit of load and emphasizing intent to move is a great way to maintain power in a healthy aging context.
I appreciate the points you raised and the opportunity for discussion. All the best with your training.
Yes: when body weight is controlled for, the stronger person will likely be able to endure more.
So is endurance like the muscle equivalent of stamina? In the sense stamina is how long your lungs can go and endurance is how long your muscles can go.
I think we can treat stamina and endurance as synonymous, but in the world of exercise physiology and performance we refer to muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance. Stamina isn't an aerobic specific term.
What would you suggest,Crossfit or regular weightlifting (gym)?
That's a tough question to answer. Too many unknowns. Depends on the person, goals, training experience, access, etc. Crossfit can be great when it's well coached. A typical gym routine usually leaves a lot to be desired, but you can also put together a great program that could be done in a commercial gym setting.
No information on fast twitch vs slow twitch muscle fibers?
I can see how you would expect that here. I wanted to share a new perspective on the relationship between the two, not present an exhaustive review.
I had been practicing push ups for 1 min. I can do 20 reps od full push ups. I used to be able to do 40 full reps when I was in my early 20s. I'm now in my early 40s. My reps is now halfed😔
20 full push-ups in your early 40s is excellent. I know it's tough when it's less then we could do when we were younger, but it's still an achievement. And we can still make progress and improve at this stage too. Good luck with your training.
what would be the most efficient way to make out on a physical fitness test (x amount of push ups)?
The best approach would depend on the person, their current abilities, training status, the exact nature of the test, the amount of time before the test etc. And as always, I can't provide personalized guidance here. Two things that would I would likely focus on would be increasing upper body strength with exercises like bench press, overhead presses, chin-ups, rows, and also doing a sub-maximal amount of push-ups often. For example if my max was 25, I would do 10 pushups a few times per day with great technique, every day or almost every day.
I have a question
I haven't started working out yet, I'm naturally strong (I guess) and I'm not really entirely interested in building muscle ONLY.
My friends like to focus on strength training and mostly weightlifting because (this is my opinion) they're relatively smaller guys,
and have a REALLY fast metabolism so they did that to bulk up. For me though, I'm not really interested in getting bigger but to be
strong over a longer period of time, like.... okay I had an idea for lifting dumbbells (don't laugh at me) I wanted to do 100 reps of 30 ib's
for one week, then gradually increase the weight weekly, all the way until I could do..idk 100reps of 60lb's. I understand that I have to build
muscle, and I also understand that I'm ignorant, but I don't understand why gradually increasing weight for endurance is a bad thing?
I got laughed at by the homies and they didn't really explain it in a way to prove their point, I just ended up doubling down. I'm like 6'4 - 245ish
pounds with an athletic build, and a good foundation of natural strength but by no means a buldging muscular build.
Thanks for your question. There's nothing wrong with gradually increasing weight for endurance. What you should know is that strategy would be consistent with building muscle, which you have said you don't want to do. To get stronger, and not prioritize muscle building, sticking to major compound lifts, doing high numbers of sets with low weights would work best. Standard example would be 5 sets of 5 for squats, deadlifts, bench press, etc. Whether or not this is a good approach for any particular person depends on a variety of factors, but if the goal is to get stronger without getting much bigger, I would start here.
I have no muscular endurance anymore I'm all strength bound I bench 440 but I cant rep livht weight for high reps like other people I burn out fast
How many reps can you do at 135 lbs?
🤩🤩🤩
Is it bad that I only want to do muscular endurance and nothing else
Nope, not bad. You can do what you want! People usually get best results by developing multiple qualities over a long period of time. The flip side of that is that most elite performers are specialists: runners run, lifters lift, cyclists cycle, etc. Its ok to be a specialist. Its usually not optimal for health and longevity, but for people with a performance focus, you can justify it.
How do you train explosive strength and functional strength
Explosive strength involves training explosively. Things like jumps, sprints, throws, and olympic lifts are among the more common and effective methods use. This type of training requires particular care and consideration as the movements are advanced, and injury potential is higher than more "traditional" training. Functional strength is a tough one to define. I tend to view "functional" training as training that helps you get better at your desired outcome, or in other words, matching your program to your goals. A well rounded strength routine ticking important boxes like mobility and single leg strength usually does the trick.
Plyometrics
Conclude in few words
Progressive overload
Could you please tell me how can I increase my push ups. I can do 15 max right now.
This is not personal exercise advice: One approach that I find works well is doing many sub-maximal sets throughout the day. For example, 5 sets of 8-10 pushups done at various points throughout the day, every day.
I weigh 100 kg and my heigh is 6 foot 3 inches.
What should be the rest period between the 5 sets ?
@@pradhumansinghbhati3023 In this approach, the sets are done separately, throughout the day. For example, at 8am, 11am, 3pm, 5pm and 7pm.
So how quickly will I be able to reach 16 rep max ?
When I get in the gym….and I’m doing a normal 10-12 rep set, my muscles give up on me even tho it’s not that heavy. It doesn’t start burning I just lose all my strength and can’t do anymore reps. Why is that? I believe it’s because i don’t have muscle endurance and I need to build it correct?
I really can't say. I would look at breath, technique, and developing capacity.
I knew a guy who’s max bench was 315 pounds, he weighted maybe 225 pounds, he couldn’t do 20 pushups in a row
It's a difficult comparison to make because of the technique specificity of bench press. So much of what can be lifted in bench is a function of things like limb length, the size of the arch, ability to use advanced techniques like leg drive etc.
Interestingly, if you plug 315 lb x 1 into a RM prediction equation, the estimate 10 RM is about 220 lb. Obviously we don't lift our entire bodyweight in a pushup (we don't lift our forearms, and the lower limbs don't move much) but the scenario you describe doesn't sound outlandish. Things like body composition and aerobic capacity would also play a role.
Who are the 7k people that voluntarily watched this
Can world class powerlifter do 100 reps push ups?
Good question! I don't know for sure. I'd expect some can and some can't, and that probably lines up with body size. And not sure about 100 reps, but I would expect most people with a well developed bench would be able to perform well in a max pushup test. I take your point though - there is a limit to this model, but my point is in part that strength better transfers to endurance than endurance does strength, so for an average trainee who might not have a specific objective, it makes sense to prioritize strength.
This debate is seriously pointless. What matters is not the weight or the rep but the volume aka rep multiply weight. Whoever does more volume will have high strength and endurance regardless low rep or high rep, low weight or high weight
Research is pretty clear that high intensity training, as higher weight as %1RM and low reps, is more effective for building strength than other rep ranges, even if volume is matched. Different loading schemes can elicit similar results for hypertrophy if volume is matched, yes, but this is not true for strength.
Also, what debate? I'm just talking about how strength and endurance are more closely related than most people realize.
@@trainforever1142 your so called "studies" can never be replicated on a consistent basis. The medical industry is notorious for always being inconsistent in the last step of the scientific method, which is achieving the same result after each experiment. why do you think such many drugs failed the FDA's placebo test? Why do you think so many food nutrition studies also contradict each other?
The replication of results in so-called studies is by far one of the shakiest across the entire fields of science, only matched by psychology.
Your so-called "muscle" studies is no exception. Plenty of "studies" have shown the opposite. Each human is built differently. There is no way to isolate all extraneous factors. You should really stop spreading misinformation.
@@IamAWESOME3980 I'm not sure what the medical community, FDA, drugs, or nutrition has to do with the present discussion, but here's the systematic review and meta-analysis that pretty much settled this within the strength and conditioning community.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28834797/
This isn't one study but rather the synthesis of results from 21 studies. The lead author, Brad Schoenfeld, is regarded as one of the leading researchers on strength training and hypertrophy.
If you have a study that shows low load high rep training results in similar or superior gains in maximum strength I'd love to see it.
I still think, with enough absolute endurance training, your max can be weaker, and still have more endurance.
I think that's right. The specificity principle dictates the same. My point is more that the two are related, rather than fundamentally opposed. And for most people, skewing their training towards the strength side of things will provide unique benefits while also developing endurance adequately. If someone's main training objective is to do as many pushups or pullups as possible, they should prioritize that.
i think you’re full of it.
Any particular reason?
Sorry but this is just BS. Muscular endurance is absolutely crucial for health and performance. Just ask any grappler when their grip gives out or they can't finish a guillotine choke due to lack of strength-endurance. There are sports that are basically strength-endurance sports (e.g. kettlebell sport) and sports that include elements of strength-endurance like CrossFit and Strongman (e.g. log press for reps).
The least you could've done was include some info on how to train this quality, especially for those of us who already train maximal strength.
It's a perspective, not an absolute. The idea is to challenge the classical rep range continuum, for which evidence is mixed at best. Recent article on the subject:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927075/
Excerpt from conclusion section: "Evidence for a load-specific effect on local muscular endurance remains equivocal. Early work suggested a potential benefit of light load training on muscular endurance, particularly when testing on an absolute basis. That said, the evidence for such an effect is rather weak and seems more relevant to the lower body musculature. Alternatively, research investigating the effects of load on relative muscular endurance is conflicting and, for the most part, does not seem to support recommendations drawn from the repetition continuum."
Have a great day and good luck with your training.
Muscular strength is how much you can lift. Muscular endurance is how many times you can lift it. Cardiovascular/cardio respiratory endurance is your wind, how well your heart and lungs can provide energy to do the other two things.
If you try and lift a thing and it is too heavy, that is a failure of strength. If you are doing repetitions of a movement and your muscles fatigue and you have to stop, that is a failure of muscular endurance. If you gas out and have to stop because you are sucking wind and your heart is pounding out of your chest, your endurance is lacking.
Actually helped me a lot, thanks travis.