Muscular Endurance Exercises: 4 Powerful Duos

There’s a cache of muscular endurance exercises you’re probably not doing and by doing so are shortchanging your gains.

Many of them will be familiar to you if you spent the smallest amount of time training, but by combining two techniques you’ll place tremendous stress on your muscles and force them to grow.

These are four powerful duos to build muscular endurance you need in your routine today to be better tomorrow.

1. Supersets with a drop set

A superset involves doing two exercises one after the other, for either the same body part or for antagonistic (opposing) muscle groups.

So, for the former, you’d superset push-ups with bench press if you wanted to give your chest a particularly brutal workout.

To kick it up a notch you can combine this with a drop set where you do 6-8 reps on the exercise, then reduce the weight by 60% and do another 6-8 reps.

It’s best to use a machine or easily adjustable exercise for the second exercise or you create lag time between the drop set and can limit the intensity. When done right, this will obliterate any energy stores you have in your muscles. 

Best superset and drop set combinations

For chest: Barbell bench press superset with flys drop set

For back: Barbell bent over row superset with lat pulldowns drop set

For shoulders: Dumbbell presses superset with front raises drop set

For quads: Barbell back squat superset with leg extensions drop set

For hamstrings: Deadlift superset with hamstring curls drop set

For biceps: Barbell bicep curls superset with cable rope curls drop set

For triceps: Close grip bench press superset with drop set

For abs: Sit-ups superset with weighted crunches drop set

2. Partial reps with negative reps

To understand what you need to do, you’ll need a breakdown of each technique, starting with partial reps. For these, you’d only complete a repetition through a limited range of motion, either the top, bottom, or middle of a typical repetition.

For negative reps, you’ll focus on lowering the weight very possible for the count of 5-7 seconds. This is a huge catalyst for muscle growth as it becomes tremendous stress to your muscles. Since there will be a lot of adjustments being made to the weights used, you should focus on doing this using a machine.

To start off you’d do the partial rep, then bang out a full range of motion rep, lower that rep very slowly for the count of 5 seconds, then repeat the partial rep again.

You’ll be able to use more weight for both the partial and negative rep than you would for regular reps, so don’t be scared to go heavy.

Best machines to use for each body part:

For chest: Bench press machine or Pec Deck

For back: Lat pulldown or seated row

For shoulders: Seated shoulder press

For quads: Leg press or leg extensions

For hamstrings: Hamstring curls

For biceps: Cable rope curls

For triceps: Cable triceps extensions

For abs: Cable kneeling pulldowns

3. Explosive reps followed by timed reps

At the start of your set, you’re always fresh and full of the power so this is when you’ll need to do your explosive reps. This involves completing your rep as quickly as you can, then immediately doing the next rep.

Trouble is, your explosive lower typically declines when you progress past repetition number 5, so it’s best to leave a little in the tank and stop at repetition four.

Next on the agenda is timed repetition where you look at a clock and stop counting, choosing instead to keep doing reps until the clock says stop.

For muscle growth, your body part should be placed under tension for roughly 40 seconds so this should be the minimum amount of time you should do your timed rep for.

Warning: this is not easy by any stretch so it’s best to schedule this duo at the very end of your workout as a finisher, rather than starting with it and not being able to continue your session.

The best explosive rep and timed reps combinations

For chest: Clap push-ups and regular push-ups

For back: Clap pull-ups and lat pulldowns

For shoulders: Medicine ball wall throws and dumbbell shoulder press

For quads: Jump squats and bodyweight squats

For hamstrings: Jumping split squats and hamstring curls

For biceps: Barbell curl throws and banded bicep curls

For triceps: Explosive parallel bar dips and regular dips

For abs: Medicine ball ab throws and plank

4. Centurion sets followed by forced stretching

What exercise do you think you can do 100 uninterrupted reps on?

There aren’t many but it’s still worth a try.

The concept is simple, complete 100 reps of a relatively easy exercise, bodyweight calf raises for example, then immediately afterward stretch that muscle for a full 60 seconds.

Stretching a muscle can actually yield some growth by allowing more flexibility in the fascia that encapsulates said muscle.

The stretching part may come as a very welcome source of relief because the 100 reps is a real grit your teeth affair thanks to the immense pain you’ll feel.

The rewards are a workout you’re guaranteed to feel the next day and a newfound endurance that’ll resonate throughout the rest of your workouts.

The best centurion set and stretching combinations

For chest: Kneeling push-ups and chest stretch

For back: Lat pulldowns and back stretch

For shoulders: Lateral raises and shoulder stretch

For quads: Bodyweight squats and quad stretch

For hamstrings: Single leg deadlift and hamstring stretch

For biceps: Light dumbbell curls with bicep stretch

For triceps: Light tricep extensions with tricep stretch

For abs: Crunches with abs stretch

Let us know how you did with this workout by tagging us @Cellucor! If you really want to take this workout to the next level, add in a nitric oxide supplement. Muscular endurance style training plus NO3 Chrome = a massive pump.

NO3 Chrome has been THE pump product for years, we keep raising the bar to help take you to greater heights.