9 Proven Ways to Improve Your Stamina

Fitness pros offer tips to increase stamina, including what to do in and out of the gym to set yourself up for the best results.

Stamina is one of those elusive fitness concepts that you likely know is important but may not fully understand. It's often confused with endurance or perseverance. But stamina is a specific skill that combines physical and mental effort and significantly impacts your daily life and training.

It's defined as how long you can keep going without getting tired, whether physically or mentally. In the gym, this involves muscles generating energy near their maximum for an extended period. It's a crucial skill during intense cardio and strength workouts and allows you to work at or close to your maximum capacity.

Improving your stamina will benefit all aspects of your life, from everyday activities like climbing steps and chasing after your kids to increased performance in the gym. Building stamina also helps you perform longer without feeling fatigued and boosts cardiovascular health, which is essential for warding off the risk of heart disease.

While understanding how stamina can improve your life is one thing, actually knowing how to boost it is another. Here, you'll find tips straight from fitness pros to increase stamina, including what to do in and out of the gym to set yourself up for the best results.

Incorporate Active Rest

Reducing the time you spend resting during workouts is an excellent strategy for building stamina, says Abbey Christie, an NASM-certified personal trainer. “If you usually sprint 100 meters and then rest and repeat, try adding some active rest to your circuit by replacing the rest time with walking or light jogging between sprints. This raises the recovery threshold and allows your body to clear fatigue between sets by keeping the body moving."

Other methods of active rest include practice reps, mobility exercises, or core work. Practice reps are simply low-weight or bodyweight repetitions performed in place of complete rest times between sets. These, along with mobility or core work, will keep your heart rate up and encourage blood flow.

Spike Your Intensity

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) and explosive movements will do more to boost your stamina than multiple repetitions of low-intensity exercise, says Sean Alexander, an ACE-certified trainer and founder of Simple Approach Coaching. "Challenging your body to push through a higher intensity workout trains your body to be more powerful and efficient in the slower or easier version of the movement so that you won't be tired as quickly."

In other words, if you intentionally push yourself to go harder and faster every so often, you'll increase performance and efficiency during less taxing activities like those trips up and down the stairs to do laundry or chasing the kids around the playground.

Related: 5 Reasons Why HIIT Lovers Are Opting for Lower-Impact Exercise

Focus on Nutrition

Pay attention to your diet if you plan to increase your stamina, says Christie. “Take a few days to record what you eat and assess your current eating habits. When trying to improve your performance, your diet plays an important role in regulating your energy levels."

But what does the proper diet look like? Christie says a stamina-focused diet will have plenty of calories, complex carbs, and proteins, with adequate levels of fats, vitamins, and minerals. "Aim to get as many nutrients from whole food sources as possible to get the biggest bang for your buck.”

Related: Best Pre- and Post-Workout Snacks for Every Workout

Incorporate Skill-Specific Practice

Far and away, the most critical tool for improving your stamina is to get specific with the activity you where you would like to see an improvement in stamina, says Christie. "Your body is an incredible adapter, so specializing in one activity and working to improve your efficiency will give you much better results than just generally sustaining a strenuous activity."

For instance, if you want to get better at running, practice running. It may seem obvious, but people often believe complex methods are needed to improve results. Instead, be consistent. Aim for three to four weekly sessions for 30 minutes or more.

You also can make one of your training sessions longer or more intense than your other sessions that week. Try to build your duration, intensity, or frequency each week.

Use Breathwork

Controlled breathing exercises can enhance your stamina by expanding your lung capacity and oxygen intake. When you can breathe more efficiently, your muscles and lungs will receive oxygenated blood faster, which boosts your stamina. It also helps to reduce blood pressure and calm your nerves so you can work with less strain.

“Breathing is our body’s way of delivering oxygen to our organs and muscles while expelling carbon dioxide," explains Mike Masi, DPT, a doctor of physical therapy and sports specialist with Garage Gym Reviews. "Oxygen is a crucial ingredient for a process in the muscle that creates ATP (our body’s energy source). So efficient breathing becomes particularly important during sustained exercise to ensure enough oxygen is being delivered to our tissues."

Try deep breathing techniques, such as box breathing, which involves inhaling for four seconds, holding for four seconds, and exhaling for four seconds. Using controlled breathing practices is particularly useful if you've previously had an illness that affects your lungs. Always seek guidance and clearance from a healthcare provider before trying breath work—especially if you have a medical condition.

Try Caffeine

Caffeine is a stimulant found in coffee, tea, soft drinks, and thousands of weight loss and exercise supplements and is basically liquid stamina, says Alexander. "Many studies have shown that caffeine increases both athletic performance and mental focus—the two biggest components of fatigue."

That said, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns against consuming more than 300mg of caffeine per day to avoid adverse side effects such as sleep disruptions. Keep in mind that struggling to sleep would inevitably reduce your stamina and performance, so keep your intake in check.

Get Enough Sleep

Getting enough sleep is vital for improving your stamina and is the backbone of feeling and performing at your best. But lack of sleep can cause fatigue, decrease your focus, and reduce performance. Plus, sleep is essential for keeping your energy stores topped off. Aim for seven to nine hours of sleep per night to help your body recover and recharge.

"Getting enough sleep is crucial for stamina, as it enables muscle recovery, hormone release, and ATP production, the body's energy source, during essential recovery processes," explains Masi.

Related: 3 Simple Steps to Better Sleep, According to Health Experts

Stay Hydrated

Hydration makes a world of difference to performance and is critical for maintaining stamina, considering it essentially controls your blood volume, says Masi. "Without adequate hydration, you can impair your physical performance, become fatigued, and get muscle cramps. [Staying hydrated] is particularly important during intense exercise or in high heat."

Research shows that being dehydrated significantly impacts how well you can perform, including how intensely and for how long. Being under-hydrated also strains the cardiovascular system and reduces physical ability. Likewise, research indicates that insufficient hydration can lead to a decline in strength (by around 2%), power (by about 3%), and the capacity to perform at high intensities (by roughly 10%).

Worse, not being hydrated effectively increases the likelihood of muscle and bone injuries. But the tricky part is that most people can't tell how much fluids they need based on thirst alone. What's more, sometimes water is just not enough to quench your body's thirst needs.

Electrolytes, including sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are lost during intense or prolonged activity, especially if you sweat. Replacing these elements is vital for boosting stamina and warding off cramping.

Add Cross-Training

One way to boost stamina is to prevent fatigue, overuse, and potential injuries. Cross-training involves integrating various types of training into your routine, which helps prevent overuse injuries and improve your overall fitness.

"Cross-training is a great way to fill voids in your current exercise programming and make you a more well-rounded athlete," says Masi.

Many strength sports do not focus on improving cardiovascular fitness or endurance, and vice versa. So, according to Masi, inviting exercises that emulate other sports is the best way to cover this ground and reap the benefits.

Also, if you are a runner or cyclist, adding strength training to your routine can increase your muscles' ability to perform powerful, explosive, intense movements, such as sprinting to the finish line or cycling up a hill. In turn, your stamina will improve.

Activities such as CrossFit, which includes a range of cardio and strength-based movements, have been shown to boost stamina. Research shows that high-intensity CrossFit workouts combine aerobic and anaerobic work, enhancing cardiovascular health and anaerobic capacity for all fitness levels.

Related: The 5 Essential Cross-Training Workouts All Runners Need

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