Muscular endurance in bodybuilding: definition, usefulness and technique

Muscular endurance in bodybuilding is a totally different type of work from classic mass gain or power gain.

Indeed , muscular endurance will make you work on a fairly high number of repetitions and will therefore not be suitable for everyone.

Muscular endurance

What is endurance in bodybuilding?

Muscular endurance is a type of work that will allow you to work on the resistance of the muscles as well as their endurance. This type of work is done either to keep in shape or to complement another sport.

Endurance in bodybuilding is not the most sought after objective, most practitioners mainly looking for mass gain, therefore muscle volume.

You can also work on muscular endurance when coming out of an injury , in order to get used to weights again without lifting too heavy to avoid putting too much strain on the joint or muscle that has been affected.

How to work on muscular endurance in bodybuilding?

Endurance in bodybuilding differs from mass gain as well as strength gain by the number of repetitions that it is necessary to do.

PTO is the type of work that will generally require the fewest repetitions , but it is also the training that will require the heaviest lifting , in general we will try to load the bar almost to the maximum.

Mass gain is the type of training that is between strength gain and muscular endurance. You will, on average, lift between 7 and 12 reps to really work on muscle development. The weights lifted will therefore be a little lighter, since you will have to lift the bar a little more.

The endurance work in bodybuilding is, for its part, the one where you will lift the least weight, in comparison with the two previous ones. Indeed, this type of work will require you to lift more than 12 repetitions , and generally it will turn quite often around 20 repetitions , this will therefore lead to a reduction in the weights on the bar in order to be able to execute the movement perfectly until the end and above all work in the right way.

Why work on endurance in bodybuilding?

You may be asking yourself the question of the interest of working on endurance in bodybuilding because, at first glance, this type of work is not really the most interesting for a bodybuilding practitioner, and yet the fact of performing this type of work will allow you to improve the synergy of the muscles to do work over time.

If you have in mind to do long weight training sessions to develop your muscles, this type of work being often reserved for really experienced practitioners, you will have to be quite tough.

Indeed, holding a one-hour session at full speed is sometimes quite complicated, so holding long sessions requires having top cardio, which is why endurance work is to be considered, in order to give your body all the the weapons he will need.

Muscular endurance: for whom?

Who can practice Muscular endurance in bodybuilding?

Endurance in bodybuilding can be practiced absolutely by everyone, man, woman, adult, child, it doesn’t matter, it’s even an excellent work to start bodybuilding . The light approach of this type of work allows the beginner to learn how to execute the movement well, which will undoubtedly ensure a truly optimal mass gain later on.

It can therefore be very interesting to start bodybuilding with a month of endurance in order to focus your sessions on techniques rather than weights, this will also allow, by learning the movements well, to reduce the risk of injury when the practitioner begins. to reach quite heavy loads.

Muscular endurance to keep fit

If you’ve been into bodybuilding for a while or you’ve been doing a lot of sports and you’re a little more limited now, either for work or personal reasons, muscle endurance might be the perfect job to keep the form .

Working in this way will allow you to continue to do sport, and therefore to maintain your body, while avoiding really tiring sessions of strength or mass work.

Where this training will become interesting is that it will above all allow you to avoid gaining weight , because when you stop a sporting activity, which is often linked to a well-defined diet, the body often tend to react accordingly and therefore make you gain weight.

Endurance work in bodybuilding will therefore allow you to avoid this kind of problem, of course you will have to think about adapting your diet afterwards in order to overcome this problem.

Muscular endurance for weight loss

If you have a small weight problem and you are looking to get rid of it, then endurance work can be very interesting for you, being toned in your training will not only eliminate the fat you have accumulated, but it will also help you tone your body a little more.

Do not hesitate to direct you to this type of work if you want to melt fat , while finding the diet that suits you so as not to undermine your training.

Muscular endurance after injury

If you’ve been injured recently, you know you won’t be able to get back to where you were, especially if you used to lift very heavy. This is why endurance work will really be ideal for progressively re-building the injured part by helping to improve the resistance of the muscle in question.

Indeed, doing long series will allow the muscle to increase its resistance as well as its endurance until it is completely recovered, this is what you find quite often when you do rehabilitation, movements sometimes accompanied by light weights to re-muscle the muscle slowly but surely.

Muscular endurance as a complement to another sport

You practice a sport like a combat sport or another type and you want to increase your muscular endurance or why the resistance of your muscles, then this type of training will be absolutely perfect for you.

Endurance work, associated with another sport, will create a perfect complementarity to improve you in your main sport, in addition to making you last much longer, you will have the possibility, by practicing this training, to have a body much firmer more easily resistant to various shocks.

Rest and endurance in bodybuilding

Just like the other categories, gaining mass and gaining strength, working on muscular endurance implies having a corresponding rest period. This type of work is less muscularly tiring than the other two but always with a view to optimizing your results , if you embark on this training, do not neglect rest.

Many people fall into overtraining because they don’t get enough rest, which usually ends in injury or a marked slowdown in progress .