Aerobics
Aerobic activities including walking, running, swimming, jump-roping and cycling among others. These activities will increase your cardio-respiratory endurance and muscle endurance at the same time. Think of the leg muscles that you use when walking or running for an extended period of time. Even on a short five- to 10-minute walk, you lift and lower each leg many times. These movements are repeated contractions and will help build your muscular endurance.
Bodyweight Exercises
A body weight exercise is one that uses only your own body without any added weights. Common examples include push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups. These exercises are a good way to not only increase your muscular endurance but also test your progress while attempting to improve muscular endurance. For example, if you perform push-ups to muscle failure three times a week eventually the number of push-ups you can do will increase. This means that the muscular endurance of your arms and shoulders has improved.
Weight Training
Weight training for strength usually consists of lifting heavy weights for a low number of repetitions. When your goal is increasing muscle endurance, however, stick to lower weights and high repetitions. This does not mean that the weight should be effortless to lift. Low repetitions means that you should be able to lift the weight at least 12 times but not more than 16 times according to the American Council on Exercise. If you can easily lift the weight 16 times then you need to increase the weight until you feel fatigued at some point between 12 and 16 repetitions. Let your muscle rest at least 30 seconds between each set and perform two to three sets of exercises. When weight training, it is important to give each muscle or muscle group a day of rest to prevent over-training or injury, which can slow down your goal of improving muscular endurance.
