There are 4 types of endurance

• muscle endurance
• anaerobic endurance (high intensity)
• VO2 max endurance (high intensity)
• prolonged endurance (lower intensity)

Each has unique benefits, and training protocols.

Muscle endurance

• What it is: how long a muscle can keep doing work at around 50% 1RM.
• Exercise examples: Push-ups, pull-ups, air squats, wall sits, planks
• Benefits: Your muscles have more endurance! This is a win in itself for many movements in every day life. Can gain muscle hypertrophy from the 6-30 rep range.
• What your body needs to improve: Increase ability to remove waste. Increase ability to buffer acid.
• How it does this: Increasing capillaries to muscles being worked, locally.
• How to train: Do the exercise you care about, as many times per week as you want. These are low strain low injury risk so there is no limit to volume
• How to progress: Do one more set, one more rep, less time in between, variations in exercise, every week.
• Training examples: 5 sets of max push-ups, 2 times a week. Add any other exercises you like.

Anaerobic endurance

• What it is: how hard can you go from 20 sec to a minute. This is high intensity bc you will reach your max heart rate when you train it.
• Exercise examples: Sprints, bike, swim, rower, cycle.
• Benefits: Your body is able to do the highest intensity work, harder and faster.
• What your body needs to improve: Increase ability to remove waste. Increase ability to buffer acid.
• How it does this: Increasing capillaries to muscles being worked.
• How to train: Do the exercise, and then take a break. Repeat.
• How to progress: Go faster, do more work, do more sets, take less break in between sets.
• Training example: Pick an exercise you like, and do it for 6 total minutes a week. IE if you like sprinting at the beach (me), do six 30 second sprints, 2x a week.

VO2 max endurance

• What it is: how hard can you go for 4 min to 10 min. This is high intensity bc you will reach your max heart rate when you train it.
• Exercise examples: Running, biking, swimming, rowing, cycle.
• Benefits: This is your peak oxygen consumption AKA VO2 max. VO2 max is strongly associated with longevity.
• What your body needs to improve: Increase muscle glycogen reserves. Increase oxygen delivery. Improve ability to remove waste systemically.
  
• How it does this: Increasing capillaries to muscles being worked.
• How to train: Pick an exercise you like. Do it as hard as you can one time for 4-10 min every week.
• How to progress: Go faster, do more work, do it more times.
• Training example: Run one mile as fast as you can, every week. Done.

Prolonged endurance ("Cardio"_

• What it is: performing an exercise for 30 min or longer.
• Exercise examples: Running, biking, swimming, rowing, cycling.
• Benefits: This is what we typically think of as cardio or endurance work. You are increasing the quality of your mitochondria (only way to use fat for energy), as well as increasing capillaries (vasculature) all over your body. Both of these are highly correlated with disease prevention, longevity, and general health. This is also a good thing to do on "off" or "recovery" goals
• What your body needs to improve: Increase muscle glycogen reserves.Improve breathing. Improve ability to use fat for energy.
• How it does this: Increases physiology of muscles, mitochondria efficiency, size, and quality.
• How to train: Pick an exercise you like. Do it for 30-60 min zone 3 or 60 min or longer zone 2 every week.
• How to progress: See if you can do more work or go further during every week.
• Training example: Choose an exercise you like, and do it for however long you want, at the intensity you want. This could be jogging or biking at zone 2, 2x a week for an hour.

The best part is, you can decide which kind you like best, and it will