What is Endurance?

Physical endurance is the ability of a body to sustain prolonged physical activity over time without feeling excessively fatigued. We often think of physical endurance in terms of strenuous competition: marathon runners, distance cyclists, multi day hikers - those are the images that come to mind. Although all of those activities are impressive feats of endurance, it’s also important to think about it on the scale of your daily life. 

One of the things that frequently comes as a surprise for people recovering from an injury is how hard previously effortless tasks feel after having to take time off while injured. Standing to wash some dishes, driving a car, or sitting at a desk for work can feel like they sap all of your energy. The muscle endurance and stamina that allow you to move through your work day and manage your household are essential to daily function, but are often overlooked or taken for granted. 

Repetitive tasks like sitting in a chair at a computer desk or standing at a counter place significant demands on your body. Both sitting and standing require postural endurance in your core, stability endurance in your shoulders and neck, and most often some fine motor skills in your hands and forearms to complete whatever task you are doing. Not to mention the mental endurance of staying engaged and focused on a task in order to complete the work as needed. 

Like training for a marathon, retraining your baseline endurance is a gradual process that takes time and patience.  The first step is to figure out what your current activity tolerance is: How long can you stand, sit, drive, etc. before your body starts to hurt or you need several hours if not days to recover. Once you know that, the goal becomes to gradually increase by ~5-10% each week. While you are gradually increasing each week's sessions, make sure you let each increase become tolerable before the next progression. As with any training program, adequate rest, supervision if you feel you need it and good nutrition are important as you challenge your body to handle more.