Why Training With High Reps for Muscular Endurance Won't Wreck Your Gains
This is Your Quick Training Tip, a chance to learn how to work smarter in just a few moments so you can get right to your workout.
MAX OUT CULTURE dictates that the pinnacle of strength training is to be able to lift as much weight as you can for one tremendous effort. That’s how lots of guys measure themselves against their peers, and that goal serves as the basis for strength sports like powerlifting. It's also a surefire method to build strength. But for more well-rounded training, where performance and aesthetics are both points of focus, there's another aspect of weight training that working out solely for the one-rep max neglects: muscular endurance.
Muscular endurance describes your muscles’ ability to repeatedly exert force against resistance—in other words, the ability to continue performing an action (like a dumbbell curl) for multiple reps without tiring. When you’re training for muscular endurance, you’ll be reaching for lighter weights, which might make some guys used to the max out approach feel insecure. But you shouldn’t be discouraged when you’re working at the low end of the weight rack and pumping through sets of 12 to 15 reps instead of three to five. Building a balanced, healthy physique is not solely accomplished by gradually increasing load and keeping your working reps and sets low so you can handle the heavy weights.
If all of your training sets only consist of those low rep, heavy weight ranges, you might not be covering your endurance bases. It’s important for your muscles to account for both. If you’re only focusing on muscular strength right now, then you might need to change up the way that you train to start building some endurance.
What Is Muscular Endurance?
Not to be confused with cardiovascular endurance, which is your ability to sustain aerobic exercise, muscular endurance refers to the number of times you can contract a muscle before it fatigues. In the weight room, that means how many reps you can do at a given resistance—whether it be from iron, bands, or even your bodyweight—before reaching technical failure.
Unlike building strength and power (the other two pillars of strength training), increasing muscular endurance requires high (12-plus) rep sets using lighter loads (less than or equal to about 67 percent of your one-rep max) and minimal (30 seconds or less) rest.
Benefits of Muscular Endurance
In addition to increasing your overall exercise capacity—which, by the way, can pay dividends for your strength and power goals—emphasizing muscular endurance in your workouts can also help boost muscle growth by targeting the type I muscle fibers that strength and power-oriented lifting tend to miss.
In short, no matter what your primary objective is, you’ll benefit from occasionally working the lighter end of the weight rack.
What's the Difference Between Muscular Strength and Muscular Endurance?
Muscular strength is the amount of force your muscles can exert against resistance. As outlined above, muscular endurance is the ability to work your muscles for an extended period of time and/or reps.
In strength training terms, coaches generally recommend low rep, high weight sets to build strength (fewer than six rep per set, with two to five minute rest periods between sets) and low weight, high rep sets to build muscular endurance (12 or more reps per set, with brief rest periods of up to 30 seconds between sets).
How to Train for Muscular Endurance
Athletes often emphasize muscular endurance during specific phases their training programs, but you can reap its benefits by simply weaving more high rep/low weight sets into your weekly workouts.
As with training for strength and power, the key is to select the most challenging resistance or exercise progression that allows you to complete all of your sets and reps with good form.
You’ll need to go lighter than you typically do for strength-focused regimens when you train for muscular endurance, but don’t err too much on the side of caution. If you have more than two reps left in the tank at the end of your last set (i.e., you could complete two more reps with good form), you need to increase your load next time.
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