Enhancing Endurance

Aerobic Endurance

Aerobic endurance describes the ability of the heart, lungs, and blood vessels to deliver oxygen to the muscles, and the ability of those muscles to produce energy during prolonged bouts of exercise. Anaerobic endurance on the other hand is the production of energy in the absence of oxygen during short high intensity bursts of exercise. It is important to understand what type of training you can use to produce aerobic and anaerobic fitness gains.

Your choice of exercise will depend upon availability but should be specific to your sport or personal challenge. For example, swimmers should spend the majority of their time in the pool and sprinters will spend a lot of time on the track. However, it is also important to include other forms of exercise or ‘cross-training’ in your programme such as a different sport, some resistance training or flexibility sessions to help reduce the likelihood of over-use injuries. Including an element of variety in your training programme will also help to keep it enjoyable and interesting.

Continuous Training

Involves performing an exercise activity without stopping for a given distance or time period (more than 8 minutes). This type of training helps to build a good base level of fitness prior to embarking on more intense types of training and will also be utilised by long-distance Runners, Swimmers, and Para triathletes to enhance their aerobic endurance.

Varied Pace Training

Also known as ‘speed play’ involves exercising continuously but includes changes of pace. This type of training helps to develop both your aerobic and anaerobic endurance and is a great option for any intermittent team sport athletes where regular changes in intensity occur.

Interval Training

Helps improve many aspects of fitness including strength, endurance, and pace. Training is broken down into intervals (periods of time or distance) over which an exercise is performed; these periods of exercise are separated by rest.

Four important factors need to be considered:

(a) Distance to be timed.

(b) Distance covered.

(c) Number of repetitions.

(d) Time between repetitions.

The faster or higher intensity the exercise intervals are, the more you will use your anaerobic energy system and the longer the rest intervals should be. This type of training is regularly used by sprint athletes.