8 Exercises for Developing Your Team’s Stamina and Endurance
Boosting stamina and endurance are commonly sought out attributes amongst athletes all over the world. People who partake in obstacle courses, triathlons, and marathons are also looking to improve their endurance.
If you’re a coach that has been solely focusing on cardio or running exercises, you may be putting your team at a disadvantage. While cardio is most definitely an important element to improve on, it’s only one of the factors involved with improving overall endurance.
In addition to improving cardio, you should also look to develop your players’ strength. The stronger their muscles are, the more powerful they’re able to be when it comes to running, jumping, and climbing, and performing against opponents.
This post covers some of the best endurance exercises to build stamina that combine cardio and strength to improve your team’s physical abilities.
Mountain Climbers
Mountain climbers are a superb exercise that involves many muscles of the body being used all at once. It’s excellent for developing cardiovascular abilities, as well as your core strength.
When assigning this exercise to your teams, be sure to have them perform it at a good pace. You should also make sure to put a focus on engaging their core muscles as much as possible.
Burpees
Burpees are another great exercise that involves a lot of muscles being worked at the same time. It’s a more explosive movement compared to mountain climbers which means that you should be sure to emphasize this to your players.
Burpees increase the heart rate and work as an excellent cardiovascular exercise. It also strengthens the leg muscles.
As a coach, it’s important to make sure that your players are using good form when performing burpees. Performing burpees with poor form makes the exercise less effective.
Stair Climbers
Stair climbers are effective when it comes to improving leg strength and cardiovascular fitness. Coaches are provided with more variety when it comes to assigning this exercise to their players.
This is because you’re able to play around with more variables. For example, you can increase or decrease the intensity level depending on the speed at which you want your players to perform the exercise.
You can turn stair climbers into a HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) exercise. This involves having players perform stair climbers at a fast pace for a certain duration of time, followed by a similar duration of time where they perform the exercise at a slower pace.
This can be an effective way to boost endurance as it can be done quicker.
Box Jumps
Box jumps can be performed to develop strength in the legs. It’s an explosive movement that should be performed with a level of intensity. As a coach, it’s important to get this across to your players while they’re doing the exercise to ensure that they make the most out of it.
Depending on what you’re training your players for, you may decide to dedicate full training sessions to variations of box jump exercises. You can also use box jumps as one exercise that’s performed in one session along with other movements.
Sprints
Sprints performed using interval training techniques are incredibly effective when it comes to boosting endurance. Having your players perform sprints can be a great finishing exercise for a training session.
It doesn’t have to take up too much time, but it still allows players to perform the sprints with intensity. Sprints can help with cardiovascular abilities which will play a role in your team’s overall endurance capabilities.
Double Unders
Double unders are fantastic for developing speed and coordination. Performing double unders is a lot more intense compared to the standard way of using jump ropes for skipping.
Therefore, coaches may want to consider implementing double unders as a finishing exercise to a training session. They can be performed quickly and provide players with plenty of intensity for a tough finisher.
Punching Bag
Using a punching bag during workouts can be great for developing speed, power, and aerobic fitness. Implementing a punching bag into workouts can provide your players with a more exciting and different exercise.
It also involves many aspects of fitness and endurance in one hit which can make it profoundly effective when it comes to boosting endurance. It involves strength, stamina, and aerobic fitness which is what makes it such a popular exercise.
Respiratory Training
Developing stamina means that your levels of high fatigue take longer to reach while exerting yourself physically. Coaches may want to consider including respiratory training exercises in their routines as it can help to improve the breathlessness that players may be experiencing.
There are various devices that can be used to train the respiratory muscles and it doesn’t take up too much time. When players are able to breathe better, they can focus more on the game and not have to be so concerned about their breathing as much.
Recovery Times
Considering the recovery times that you give your players in between exercises is an important factor to consider. When it comes to improving endurance, you’ll want to be strict about keeping rest times short.
Ideally, players should rest just enough to catch their breath, but not enough to be given a complete break in between sets of exercises. The idea is to keep the intensity high for a long duration of time to get their bodies more used to being under physical strain for longer.
Conclusion
Combining strength and cardio is the key to developing your team’s stamina and endurance. Using the exercises mentioned in this post will help your players develop their muscular strength, as well as their cardiovascular abilities.
These exercises also involve explosive movements that enable players to move quickly and with more power. Introducing these exercises consistently into training sessions will yield results over time as long as they’re being performed consistently and with good form.
Hopefully, you’re able to use the information in this post to develop your players’ stamina and develop their sporting abilities.
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