When you immerse yourself in the world of fitness, you start to learn a new vocabulary. You now know the difference between proteins and carbs, what cardio is and how it works, what are the different kinds of training, and even the difference between supplements and substances you barely knew how to spell in the first place.
I bet that during your journey you have heard the words “endurance” and “stamina”. And I bet you can barely get the difference between both, because it’s quite blurry to be honest! However, understanding what they are and how to build them is going to help you not only improve your performance, but also reach your fitness goals faster.
Endurance and stamina, what’s the difference?
Let’s start by establishing that the concept for both is quite confusing sometimes. I would even say they are like cousins: related and similar, but not the same. Also, some trainers and fitness experts have different ways of explaining the meaning of each one, that’s why you will find small differences when you look for the concept of both terms.
Stamina
Overall, stamina refers to the ability to sustain certain physical or mental activity when you’re making an effort, hence, performing the activity at your maximum capacity.
Endurance
Endurance, on the other hand, refers to the amount of time you can perform a certain action, despite how much effort you’re making. Talking about your body’s function, endurance is also linked to the ability of delivering oxygen to your muscles while performing the action.
To further understand their meanings, it’s best to see an example:
- – Let’s say you are lifting weights. The amount of stamina you have will reflect on how many repetitions you can lift at the maximum weight you can lift. Or if you play a sport, it will reflect on how much time you can perform the sport at your best capacity without it flickering.
- – Using the same example, endurance will reflect on how many repetitions you can make while lifting the weight you usually lift, or how much time you can play the sport at a sustainable pace.
Stamina is about the maximum capacity, the best you can perform, while endurance refers to maintaining the same pace for longer periods of time.
Why are they important?
You need stamina to experience gain and improvement, as your body needs to make a greater effort once it gets used to a certain level of intensity.
Stamina is something you build as you’re losing weight, gaining strength or building muscle.
You need endurance to make sure your body has the ability of providing you with energy to sustain the activities you’re doing.
Endurance is needed when you want to work continuously without getting tired.
How to build stamina
You can build your stamina by working little by little, or what’s called the overload principle.
Overload principle: You gradually (little by little) increase the intensity or difficulty of the activity you’re doing. For example, lifting 35 kg for 15 repetitions when you’re used to lifting 30 kg; or doing 20 repetitions with the same 30 kg when you’re used to only 15 repetitions.
Isometric exercises: These kinds of exercises don’t extend or contract the muscles, but make them sustain a stressful position for long periods of time, see planks, low squats or static lunges.
Practicing sports: Especially when your only physical activity is done at the gym, practicing a sport in which you will be doing different movements will require a greater effort from your body.
Meditation and relaxation: Stamina is not only built in the body; it has a huge mental component. When doing any activity, your mind is commanding, responding and processing everything, from your movements to your pain and even the environment conditions. You need your mind to be able to handle all of these stressful situations to keep up with the rhythm, so activities like yoga, meditation and mindfulness help you strengthen your mental stamina.
How to improve endurance
If you feel like you’re constantly out of breath, or need to take a break more often than not, you need to work on your endurance.
Did you notice that breathing is an essential part of endurance? That’s because there are different kinds of endurance; like cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance and anaerobic endurance. Speed (how fastly you do something) and strength (how much weight you can lift) also rely heavily on endurance.
Cardiovascular endurance
Is the ability of your lungs and hearth to fuel the body with oxygen while performing an activity.
Muscular endurance
Is the ability of your muscles to work continuously without getting tired.
Anaerobic endurance
Is the ability of sustaining high intense activities that last short periods of time, like weightlifting or sprinting.
Endurance can be improved with:
HIIT: High-intensity interval training increases your aerobic performance, meaning that your heart and lungs will become stronger so you’ll have more oxygen running through your body to sustain the intervals.
High repetition, low intensity: Luckily, the other way around also helps improve your endurance. By doing more repetitions with a weight (intensity) you can sustain comfortably, you’re gradually building more strength and setting the groundwork for high intensity exercises.
Shorter recovery time: Decreasing your recovery time makes your body learn how to work when it’s tired, pushing for longer times even after the first signs of fatigue appear.
Longer workouts: The whole point of building endurance is to be able to workout for longer periods, so you need to slowly teach your body to do so by gradually increasing your workout times.
In the end, endurance and stamina are closely related! And if you pay enough attention, you’ll see that they are both rooted in patience and consistency to get better results.
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