Endurance... It's What's for Dinner!

So you might think that endurance in training is just one of those god given abilities to perform repetition after repetition with no end. Wrong! The ability to perform with endurance during training comes at with three main factors. All three being alterable.

1) Practice: When you practice an exercise religiously or repetitiously and perform the exercise with drudgery it is because you are getting bored while sticking to the same old weight. While practice essentially does make perfect during weight training it is almost inevitable that the trainee will hit a plateau/roadblock where there seems to be no growth of the muscle fibers. Ya know how people say "Practice makes perfect"?.. well this is true.. but you never hear someone say "Practice makes change"..Practice does not make change because you have to make change happen yourself. Simply put, build your endurance on certain exercises and when it starts to become easy give your muscles a shock by changing the weight, movement in which the exercise is performed pr the number of repetitions performed. Providing your muscles with this type of change is a good way to first see change. So remember, practice does make perfect but sometimes does not leave room for change.

2)Diet: Hear ye! Hear ye! Gym rats and plebians! I bring you tidings of great news. In order for you to optimize your workout and get the most out of what you are doing in your training routine all you simply have to do to curb your results immediately is EAT before you train. Alot of people go to the gym to workout and do their "routine". True? Well sometimes do you find yourself going to the gym and you think to yourself "This is not gonna be a good day to do this exercise because I am so tired!" or "My routine is going to suck today because I just do not have the energy"... LISTEN HERE PUNK! The reason you do not have the energy or feel unmotivated could be largely because of what you are putting into your body before you are workout. Less food pre workout= less productivity. Endurance, being the sole reason why people are able to do the amount of exercise they do repetitiously can be accredited to the diet of the person training. Ladies and gents I strongly urge you to grab a power bar, peanut butter fold-over, granola bar, cup of yogurt, diced fruit and for the bodybuilders...(a cup of oatmeal, with one serving of peanut butter and honey) yumm!! The reason you should eat before you go into the gym is because your body needs those carboydrates/food that I mentioned in order to kick start your body's supply of B12 in the blood/metabolism. By giving your body food before you workout you are giving yourself an opportunity to work harder in the gym. More hard work=faster gains= understanding of how important food is= =). Try submitting your pre-workout to a healthy snack or two and see what kind of difference it makes.

Example: I was training a woman doing our normal leg routine and she had mentioned to me after theprevious session that she wanted to turn the intensity up a notch because she had a revelation about the new way she wanted to look so I said to myself "alright well I think she can handle it so I guess I will take her through a series of ball lunges... no
biggie!"..boy was I wrong... 15 minutes into the session her legs were cramping up and she felt as if she was going to pass out. At this point I had a little revelation of my own. Eureka! I know why my client was having these shortcomings. After a short Q & A I came to find out that my client had absolutely no food before she came to her session with me. I had heard the magic words! It just so turns out that the day she almost died from myleg routine just so happened to be the ONLY day she had absolutely nothing to eat.

Genetics: Ok, Yes, FINE! I will admit it... different people naturally do have the ability to perform better then others. The main reason being their genetics. For me personally I found out that I received the short end of the stick after going through a little trial and error with my workouts for a good three months until I had enough. Here is how the story goes..

I was trying to achieve the impossible while doing EVERYTHING possible. It was two months into my ROUTINE when I decided that I wanted to bulk up (at this point I was doing cutting exercises so I decided to transition to low rep/high weight/high caloric diet). I was doing everything right... changing up my routine, lifting heavier to get stronger and bulk up and even eating ungodly amounts of food to meet the caloric intake to make gains (hence the food baby! :) ) and was seeing absolutely no results. In a matter of fact I was more tired after my lifts and looked like a pathetic piece of sludge. Even my sleeping patterns were horrible! I brainstormed.. after much thinking I only gave myself and headache and decided to submit my case to a licensed professional. The following week, after having enough shortcomings, I visited with my doctor, had some blood work done and came to the conclusion that I had a lack of B12 in my blood. This meant that my bodies natural supply of energy was out of whack and there was essentially nothing that I could do to change that.... JUST kidding... my Doctor administered a B12 shot and had me take B12 pills in order that my bodies supply of B12 would be restored back to normal... What is the point of this story you ask? Well my workouts were suffering and I was suffering physically and making no gains. Once my bodies genetics were restored to normal my workouts were restored to normal and I was able to make gains in strength and size.

My point from the story being this... before you, the trainee, think that your endurance sucks just because of some other circumstance. THINK AGAIN! The difficulty in training could lye right in your genetics or in your diet. If you do experience chronic fatigue problems then I would recommend talking to a doctor to get your blood tested. A simple solution to temporarily fix the fatigue problems would be taking in more carbs (eat more), purchase B12 and B6 supplements and of course get your daily exercise.. All these play into the endurance factor when exercising.

So now that I have taken you through a synopsis on endurance here is what you need to remember as the viewer/trainee in order to get the most out of your training and optimize your endurance levels. First, train hard but do not train repetitively, switch up your routine! By changing your routine you are creating building blocks to get to a higher level of endurance. Second, eat before you workout! Take in good carbs such as fruit, power bar, protein shake vegetables etc... Eating before workout drastically enhances performance. Third, remember that sometimes you can't be the crazy soccer mom with all the energy in the world... sometimes faults arise because of simple faults in our genetics so curb your genetics and do something for your health and your workout by consulting a doctor or simply purchasing B12.

Live healthy! Be healthy! ;)

Chris Kittredge
Director of Personal Training M.O.S.E.