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Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle to consistently and repeatedly exert force over a period of time. Also known as stamina, this is particularly needed by athletes.
However, it's not just athletes who benefit from superior muscle endurance. Climbing stairs, carrying groceries or doing just any kind of physical work requires your muscles to perform well for extended periods.
Similarly, balance is required for a variety of daily activities. It promotes coordination and strength, allowing for unhindered, steady movement. As you age, the ability to balance yourself while walking decreases if the muscles supporting your hips and lower back become weak.
In this article, we'll discuss some simple exercises you can do to improve your muscular endurance and balance.
Simple Exercises to Improve Endurance and Balance
Check out these seven exercises, some of which are meant to increase your endurance and the others are meant to improve your balance.
1) Jumping Jack
The benefits of this exercise are many: from improving bone health to cardiovascular endurance, burning fat, reducing stress, building muscle - this exercise does it all.
It's an intense cardio workout that will help you build stamina and endurance. It can be made more powerful by simply increasing the number of repetitions.
Here's how you can do this exercise:
- Slightly bend your knees and leap into the air.
- Spread your legs approximately shoulder-width apart, and extend your arms over your head as you return to the beginning position via a jump.
- Perform as many repetitions as possible.
2) Burpee
Burpees are a great intense cardio workout, excellent at burning calories. This exercise will get your heart thumping in as few as three to four reps and keep it steadily in the workout zone for as many reps as you perform.
It improves circulation, lowers blood pressure and cholesterol as well as risk of heart disease and diabetes. Burpees strengthen your heart and build your stamina.
Here's how you can do this exercise:
- From a squat position, lower your hands to the floor in front of you, and kick your feet back to get to a push-up position on your hands and toes.
- Perform a pushup and a frog kick by returning your feet to their starting position with a hop.
- Quickly leap into the air, and return to your starting position.
3) Walking Lunge
Lunges work out all the major muscle groups in your lower body, including your thighs, glutes and hips. They also improve your balance and stability.
Walking lunges are great for increasing muscular endurance, as they give you a greater burn than static lunges.
Here's how you can do this exercise:
- Maintain an erect, shoulder-width stance while standing.
- Take a large step forward with your right leg, and lower your body till your back knee either contacts or comes close to hitting the ground.
- Push down with the foot in front of you and stand up.
- Perform the identical motion with your left leg.
- Perform 30 lunges in two or four sets (15 on each leg, per set).
4) Plank
What better exercise to challenge yourself and your endurance levels than a plank? This exercise targets all the muscles in your body, from your arms to your core and legs, but it especially targets your core.
Here's how you can do this exercise:
- Start in a four-point kneeling position, and place your forearms on the ground. Maintaining a neutral spine, step back one leg at a time till you're in a straight line from head to heel.
- Engage your abdominal muscles to support your lower back, and envision lifting your chest away from your elbows without rounding your back.
- Hold for as long as possible (target for intervals between 30 and 45 seconds), and release to conclude one repetition.
5) Banded Tri-Planar Toe Tap
Balance exercises help you with stability, coordination and ease of movement, all of which decline slowly with age.
Here's how you can increase your balance with this exercise:
- Place a resistance band just above your knees around your lower thighs.
- On your right leg, perform a single-leg quarter squat.
- Utilise your abdominal and hip muscles.
- Using the band's resistance, tap your left leg forward to the side, and directly behind you.
- Perform 10 to 20 reps.
- Repeat on the opposite side.
- To train for endurance simultaneously, perform three sets of 20 reps each.
6) Single Leg Cross Body Punch
Here's how you can increase your balance with this exercise:
- Hold two dumbbells at chest level.
- Transfer your weight to your left footm and assume a quarter squat position.
- Maintaining the strength and stability of your left leg, punch the weights across your body, one at a time.
- Do it on the opposite side.
- Perform one to three sets of ten to 20 reps.
7) Paloff Press with Rotation
Here's how you can perform this exercise to increase your balance:
- Stand in front of a cable machine.
- Using both hands, grasp the cable's grips at chest level.
- Right yourself, and extend your arms away from your body.
- Engage your core as you turn away from the machine, and maintain alignment along your body's centre-line.
- Maintaining an extended arm position, return to the starting position.
- Perform the same steps on the opposite side.
- Perform one to three sets of 10 to 20 reps.
Takeaway
Include these exercises in your workout routine to increase your strength, endurance and balance.
