Best Workouts for Endurance and Stamina Improvements
Stamina and Endurance are the bread and butter of every combat athlete in the World. In fact, the same stands for any other athlete out there. You can have all the skills in the world, but the lack of endurance will backfire on you at some point regardless of the sport. But what can do about it?
Well, the best advice we can give you is to add some of the workouts we have included in our list below. These workouts will boost your endurance and stamina in a very short time span, and improve the way you perform on the mats.
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1. Battle rope workout
Whether you are into fitness workouts or not, you likely know what battle ropes are. In recent times, this exercise has become very popular since the benefits are huge.
Doing a battle rope workout for just a couple of minutes per day will boost your cardio to another level. And it’s not just about cardio, it improves your upper and lower body strength as well. It will activate every single muscle in your body, and that’s what's great about it.
Battle ropes workouts are very good for losing weight and burning calories as well. Doing this exercise speeds up your metabolism and you can burn around 421 calories per hour. Some other studies have shown that you can burn around 112 calories per 10 minutes, which is a lot. But the exact number of calories you can burn really depends on your weight.
This exercise is also great because it targets the muscles left out by other exercises such as:
- knees
- ankles
- hips.
2. Uphill Running
Uphill running has been around since the invention of sports. And guess what, this grueling exercise is still one of the best ways to elevate your game. If you don’t have a hill to run, you can run up the stairs instead. It really doesn’t matter as long as you are going up.
The benefits of uphill running are huge as it helps you build muscles in your:
- Calves
- Hamstrings
- Glutes
Running uphill just once a week allows you to develop strong leg muscles, quads, lower abs, and bones. And also, you will feel gains in hip flexors and Achilles tendons as well. Or in the language of combat sports, this means more power, speed, and endurance.
Studies have also shown that uphill runners have higher levels of aerobic enzymes and resistance. And this is crucial for combat sports athletes as it allows them to perform at high intensity for a long period of time.
3. Heavy bag workout
Although it may not look like that at first sight, a heavy bag is one of the most versatile tools. It is often seen as a full body workout that will boost your endurance and help lose weight.
The best thing about it is that heavy bag workout is a mix of aerobic and anaerobic activity. You can move around the bag, throw light strikes, change angles, and exercise at low intensity (aerobic). Or, you can start throwing strikes with a lot of power to unleash as much energy in a short period of time (anaerobic). Now you can see a reason why every fitness gym has at least one heavy bag.
Heavy bag workout is a martial art exercise that:
- Improves balance and stability
- Boosts your endurance
- Burns a lot of calories
- Helps you relieve stress and anxiety
Heavy bag workout is actually created as a tool for boxers to improve punching power. It improves muscles in your shoulders, arms, back, and chest. And since every punch starts in the legs, you will improve the lower body segment as well.
On top of that, an hour of heavy bag workouts burns up to 525 calories per hour.
4 Running sprints
Sprints are one of those grueling anaerobic exercises that will take your soul. But the benefits of this workout are huge. Yes, you will suffer a lot, but with a big effort always comes a high reward. It will boost your endurance and stamina like nothing else out there. And adding this workout to your weekly plan makes your heart stronger.
When doing sprints, you have to use 110% of your energy and power on short bursts. This boosts your metabolism so when your workout is over, the body keeps on burning calories. We know this may sound odd, but sprints have the same effect as jogging for an hour.
Sprints are not just great for losing weight. One study has shown that it can improve protein pathways by up to 230%, which improves the strength of your muscles. Here is a brief look at all the benefits of sprint runs:
- Improves your cardio and stamina
- It Burns a lot of calories
- Boosts your metabolism
5. Swimming
We can all agree that swimming is one of the most enjoyable activities. In fact, studies have shown that it is the fourth most popular activity in the US. Although it is fun and enjoyable, swimming also has many benefits. In short, it provides athletes with all they need:
- boosts endurance and stamina
- helps muscles recover
- activates every single muscle in your body
- swimming is not hard on your joints
- rebuilds bone strength
First of all, swimming is great because it is not hard on your joints like running for instance. Going through water doesn’t put your body through huge stresses like when you are running on concrete. This means that you can swim as much as you want without worrying too much about injuries.
Next, swimming is one of those exercises that will activate every single muscle in your body. You will equally improve both upper and lower body areas, and make muscles stronger. While you are swimming, you are stretching and twisting, and reaching against liquid pressure. By doing so, you can improve muscle definition, strength and become more flexible. This is crucial for combat sports where athletes must be flexible and agile.
Swimming also has many benefits when it comes to overall health. Studies have shown that it improves bone mineral density, and rebuilds bone strength. it also lowers the risk of heart diseases such as high blood pressure or heart attack.
Why endurance and stamina are important for fighting?
Combat sports are a great example of how important it is to have strong endurance and stamina. You can have all the skills in the world and the power to knock every single person on this planet out cold. But this is all useless in the long run if you don’t have the ability to perform at an even pace over an extended period of time.
This plays a big role in pro boxing or MMA matches for instance. The worst thing that can happen to a fighter is to gas out in the middle of the bout. Once that happens, all your skills and power go right through the window. You become a sitting duck waiting for the opponent to finish the fight. It’s one of the most desperate feelings.
This is why a fighter with average skills can easily overwhelm a more skillful opponent with high pace and pressure. We have seen this scenario so many times in boxing and MMA. Having good endurance and stamina plays such a big role that we can say you can’t succeed in pro sports without it. And this is not just for fighting, but all sports in general.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional athlete or a regular bloke. Better conditioning makes everyone’s life easier. It will help you go through daily activities, deal with anxiety and maintain high-energy levels. It’s always good to know you have mental and physical abilities to deal with everything in life. With that, the growth in confidence will follow.
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