Building Strength Endurance

Hey everyone. I was wondering what some good ways to build strength endurance are?

I am not interested in getting very big at all, nor am I really into being cut like those dudes in 300 were, or Bruce Lee, and frankly I’m tired o hearing about those blokes.

How I look is of no big concern to me, because if I ever had the motivation, I could just do some Tabata sprints and HIIT and lose that extra stubborn 8lbs of fat on my gut.

No, what I’m interested in is increasing my maximum strength and increasing my strength endurance.

For instance, I can do 3x20 pushups and 3x30 body squats. I’d like to do 1 set of 100 pushups and 1 set of 200 squats. After that, I’d like to be able to increase the weight and build up to the same numbers, and do this over a long period of time until I can bench/squat with a lot of weight for a long period of time.

Don’t get me wrong, however, I will be doing a lot more than just bench press and squats! These are just my examples. I would like to be able to use every muscle in my body in the same way; lots of strength endurance.

I’d rather not get too big doing this, but if I gain some mass, it wouldn’t bother me too much.

So, strength endurance (IE, I can do 100 pushups a day) vs maximum strength (I can bench twice my bodweight once).

Is it advised to take the maximum amount of weight you can lift, and try lifting it more and more reps until you can do a lot of reps with it?

Or is “strength endurance” better left to bodyweight exercises?

You have to decide what you want, either max strength or endurance. You can’t improve both at the same time, unless you are a raw beginner.

But maybe I’m misunderstanding your question.

Do you want to get better at doing 200 reps of an exercise? Even with added weight, that would be classified as strength endurance. The energy system used depends upon time, not weight.

[quote]smallmike wrote:
You have to decide what you want, either max strength or endurance. You can’t improve both at the same time, unless you are a raw beginner.

But maybe I’m misunderstanding your question.

Do you want to get better at doing 200 reps of an exercise? Even with added weight, that would be classified as strength endurance. The energy system used depends upon time, not weight.[/quote]

ID say that cant do both to a point is BS. If you get stronger you will have generally better endurance as well. if you can max at say a 400 lb squat now and do 225 for hell 8. and you bump your max squat to say 450lbs then that 225 is going to be easier and your likely to get more reps.

Phill

I agree with you. I was considering “endurance” to be more in the 200 rep range, based on his question. But then again I don’t have a very clear idea of what he wants to know.

To what purpose? I suppose it matters a little as to what you want to do with it.

That said, if the only thing you are concerned with is Strength-Endurance, then you just need to do more of those things.

Try doing 100 pushups, in any number of sets in one sitting. No resting by dropping your knees or getting up. Then, when you can do them all at once, do more.

The same thing can be done with squats, but also try doing jump-squats and single leg squats.

You can also do something like, 20 pushups, 20 squats, 20 pullups, and alternate like that.

I am going to state the obvious, but I think the concept of progressive overload applies. I have never set it as a goal to reach 200 reps in these exercises, so if someone has I’d take their advice over mine. With that said, here’s my advise. If you want to increase your ability to do 200 reps in any given exercise, than find a weight you can do 200 reps. Overtime slowly increase the weight. For the body weight exercises you may have to start with however many reps you can do and just keep working at it until you hit 200. If you cannot do 200 in one set, than maybe do a set of 10X20 and then progress to 8X25, 7X29, 6X34, 5X40, 4X50, 3X67, 2X100, 1X125 + 1X75, 1X150 + 1X50, 1X175 + 1X25, 1X200. Good luck.

You don’t care to be big and muscular.
You don’t care to get cut.
You don’t care if you get alot stronger

Looks like your number 1 problem is your attitude. You say if you really wanted you could lose the last 8lbs, but if that was true you would’ve had the motivation a long time ago to “if you really wanted” do more than 3 sets of 20 pushups.

Other than the above advice bodyweight exercises tend to be better for high stength endurance because they work more of the muscles that balance each other, and stress your tendons less. That is not to say that you can’t do squat and bench for high reps just not as often. Example if your doing 225 for 3 reps of 20 every day or every other day, you WILL end up with shoulder problems because regardless of how you work your back it will not be balanced. If you don’t play sports this might not be much of a problem.

So 225 for reps once a week is good. You can do push ups almost every day which will help keep the endurance in your chest and will balance out the muscles necessary for the shoulder while benching. Do take a day or 2 off here and there even from pushups.

To go up more quickly you will need to do heavier weights. Atleast a 12RM weight for 3 sets but an 8RM would be even better. You can do that once every 7 - 14 days.

Unfortunately, you might get stronger if you do this.

I agree with everyone who has suggested improving your maximal strength. If you really want to be able to do 100+ reps of push-ups or 200+ reps of bodyweight squats, you’re going to have to make those exercises so easy that they don’t require you to recruit your high threshold motor units. Or at least that’s one way to go about it, which will also improve performance in lots of other exercises.

In other words they are going to need to be so easy that your slow twitch or at least fast oxidative fibers (FOG, or Type 2A) can handle the weight. That will mean that it will be a pretty low percentage of max.

Of course, also practicing high reps will eventually be important as well because your body still needs to get good at clearing lactic acid (and lactic acid threshold) if you want to be able to maintain strength for long periods of time.

I would personally suggest bringing your maximum strength up first and foremost. Then when you get to the point where you can squat a lot of weight and bench a lot of weight, start focusing on the strength endurance part.

A good way to really build up reps fast with Bodyweight exercises is GTG (grease the groove). Basically you do several submaximal sets (and by submaximal I mean like 50% of max)throughout the day, 5-6 days per week. This will really improve your neuromuscular system’s efficiency at performing the exercises, thus allowing you to perform more reps.

Good training,

Sentoguy