Aerobic exercise increases your stamina.What are the benefits of aerobic endurance? Generally speaking, working on improving your aerobic endurance makes you fitter and able to cover longer distances but there are other benefits too. Training to improve your cardiorespiratory endurance increases your VO2 max, meaning your body becomes more efficient at consuming oxygen from blood, so you can burn more fuel and work out for greater periods of time. Your VO2 max is the maximum rate at which your heart, lungs and muscles can effectively use oxygen during exercise. When it comes to aerobic work, you’ve probably also heard the phrase ‘VO2 max’ being thrown about. Oxygen is important for endurance as it helps the muscles burn fat and carbohydrate for fuel to keep you exercising for longer. Weightlifters and gym goers often use the term ‘cardio’ for aerobic exercise and that’s because it uses the cardiorespiratory system – heart, lungs, veins, arteries, portal vessels and coronary vessels – to supply oxygen and nutrients to your muscles as they work. Your body relies on your cardiorespiratory system to work efficiently during sustained activity to supply nutrients and oxygen to working muscles.Īerobic endurance is also known as aerobic fitness, cardiorespiratory endurance, cardiovascular endurance or good old-fashioned stamina.

What is aerobic endurance?Īerobic endurance is your ability to exercise at moderate intensity for extended periods of time, like long-distance running, swimming and triathlons. So what’s the best way to improve your aerobic endurance, how often should you train each week to see improvements and how should you fuel your sessions? We’ve got all your aerobic endurance questions covered. This is because you’re working at an intensity that’s too high for your heart to deliver oxygenated blood to your muscles, meaning you can only keep it up for very short bursts of time – think sprinting and explosive power moves. During aerobic activity – meaning literally ‘with oxygen’ – your heart pumps oxygenated blood to working muscles to help them burn fat and carbohydrate for fuel.Īnaerobic exercise, by contrast, doesn’t use oxygen. What might be less obvious, is that endurance training is mainly aerobic exercise, that’s any exercise you can perform for more than a few minutes without collapsing in a puddle on the floor. If you’re taking on long-distance runs, triathlons, swims or cycles, it’s well known that endurance training will make sure you last the distance and meet your goals.

Building up cardio endurance