What’s the Difference Between Endurance and Stamina?

You might think endurance and stamina are the same, but they have some pretty important distinctions. The biggest difference is what they require from your body when you’re working out. Stamina demands maximum effort and intense bursts of energy, while endurance is how long your muscles can perform an exercise or activity, whether high or low intensity. 

What Is Endurance?

Unlike stamina, which may require maximum effort, endurance is your ability to perform an exercise for an extended period, whether you’re putting in 50% or 100% of your energy. It is what prevents you from feeling fatigued after exercise. Endurance is what keeps distance runners going as long as they do. It also keeps you going on a hike or holding a wall sit and even factors into everyday activities, like climbing two or three flights of stairs with groceries. 

When your endurance is good, you can sustain these activities for longer periods without feeling tired. Your VO2 max value or oxygen uptake is higher, meaning your body can handle activities requiring a lot of oxygen. 

You can take a few tests to measure your fitness and endurance. The Cooper test measures your ability to walk or run as far as you can for 12 minutes. You can then use the distance to measure your endurance. For example, your fitness is above average if you’re a man in your 30s and can run over 2,400 meters. If you’re a woman of the same age, running over 2,200 would be considered above average, too. 

A pushup test can also help you measure your endurance. Depending on your age, you have good endurance if you can do more than 10 pushups nonstop. 

What Is Stamina?

Stamina is your ability to sustain an exercise at 100% effort or near maximum output over time. Stamina will help you perform well in any exercise or activity and stay in the game long enough to finish. This is true whether you’re doing Crossfit and need to complete 20 max-effort burpees in a row or you’re a boxer and need to make fast movements combined with strength. 

Challenging activities may feel less taxing when you have good stamina because your strength, power and how you use oxygen are improved. Your body relies on glycogen or creatine phosphate more than oxygen for sustained energy. It’s about tapping into the energy stored in your body to perform exercises that require significant effort from your muscles. If you improve your stamina, you can do as many heavy bench presses as you want or push farther than others in a running or swimming race. 

To measure stamina, you can try tests like measuring how fast you can run or how many burpees you can do in 30 seconds.

How to Improve Endurance and Stamina

You can improve endurance and stamina by combining aerobic and anaerobic exercise. Some general tips to improve both include: 

• Stay hydrated: This can increase your energy levels and prevent you from getting tired quickly. It also maintains joint lubrication to improve mobility and maintain consistent blood pressure. 
• Exercise regularly: Work out for more than the recommended 150 minutes per week.
• Try the overload and SAID principles: According to the SAID principle, your body will adapt to your focus, so build a workout program that combines upper and lower body exercises to improve both. With the overload principle, gradually increase the distance or speed you run or how much weight you lift every time.
• Measure your target heart rate: Calculate by subtracting your age from 220. Aerobic activity like walking or running should be about 50%- 70% of your maximum heart rate, while more vigorous activity like HIIT is about 70%- 85%. 

Some exercises that build stamina include sprint intervals with maximum effort, increasing reps in weightlifting, and high-intensity bodyweight workouts. 

Exercises that can improve endurance include steady-state cardio, such as swimming, running, or cycling at a gentle pace for long periods. Other options are using lower weights but more reps in weightlifting and long-distance cardio. 

Building Endurance and Stamina

Although the two are different, building endurance and stamina can help you reach your fitness goals and make everyday physical activities easier. Stamina will help you work at maximum effort for longer and improve your energy output, while endurance can get you through long-distance activities, whether high or low intensity. Increasing them will improve your fitness level and boost your health.