Difference Between Developing Muscle Mass and Muscle Endurance

Difference Between Developing Muscle Mass and Muscle Endurance

Whenever most people are looking to perform muscle-building exercises they believe that the only worthy indicator of progress is the increase of muscle mass. While this is a widespread concept, it is quite an erroneous one; there is another important indicator of your progress referred to as muscle endurance.

Building Up Muscle Mass

This is the concept with which most people are familiar with: do the reps, pump the iron, watch your arms get bigger and your muscles gain definition. There is not much to explain here: you do your exercises, your muscles tear up and then rebuild themselves stronger and more massive. This process is done over and over again until the person reaches their desired appearance.

Most of the exercises which aim to increase muscle mass have you do short but intense movements, such as dumbbell curls for example. While this is the best way to increase muscle mass, it does next to nothing when it comes to improving your muscular endurance.

Why Muscular Endurance is Important

If you try flexing your muscles as hard as possible without stopping, you will notice that after a few seconds pass there will be a burning sensation in your muscles that keeps growing stronger and stronger until you physically can’t keep it up anymore. This burning sensation is caused by the lactic acid which is pouring into your muscles; muscle endurance is basically how long your muscles can work before the pain from the lactic acid becomes too much to bear.

The problem with working your muscle endurance is that the results will be much less tangible than if you focused on muscle mass; your muscles will only grow very little and you won’t feel the difference until much later… every step of your progress will allow you to last a couple of seconds longer. As you can imagine, this serves as the main reason a lot of people neglect their muscle endurance, but the truth is that if you are gunning for more than appearance then you will need to work it out to bring the best out in you.

How to Train Muscle Endurance

While there is a ton of exercises designed to help people increase their muscular endurance, none of them can be described as the best method. Simply make sure that the exercises you will be performing will force you to flex your muscles for prolonged periods of time. Above all, keep your workout adapted to your own capabilities; an injury can throw you off course pretty easily.

As mentioned before, there are innumerably systems and products which are designed to help you increase your muscular endurance and naturally I cannot say that one thing works while the rest are scams, because that is simply not true. When it came to me and my desire to work on my muscle endurance I looked around and decided that a special dumbbell called the Shake Weight for Men was the right thing for me.

It works by basically shaking back and forth when you squeeze it creating the perfect conditions where cardio and muscular endurance are needed. Apart from that, I found that it was a good deal in my situation seeing as how it’s pretty compact and not overly expensive and allows you to regulate the intensity of your workout. If you are not the type of person who works out very often and would like to get yourself into shape, I believe that this product can offer some valuable assistance.