9 Proven Ways to Improve Your Stamina
Is stamina built or had as a skill? This is the question that many ask when stamina needs to be an integral part of their daily life, exercise routines and yes, bed rocking ability. Stamina is confused with perseverance and agility a lot of times. While perseverance is mental positivity and agility is reaction time (again mental speed), stamina is something that combines both brains and brawns to allow the human body to work at the maximum strength level without getting tired for as long as possible. By having more stamina, you’ll have lesser need to stop and catch your breath between physical task. It ensures that your heart rate is under control and your breathing is unobstructed while you run, go up multiple flights of stairs or are playing a game of tennis. Here are a few practices and diet tips for improving stamina in your exercises and daily life-
1. Consistent exercise
Consistency is key to success in life, be it exercise, studies, diet or impressing a woman. Similarly, consistently exercising the muscles in your body, including the heart muscles, is necessary to improve stamina. Exercise releases endorphins which give electric energy to the brain, making you feel lesser exhaustion than you usually do. Exercising also changes the way you breathe and makes it easier for you to hold and control your breathing, so that you don’t pant and have a constant supply of power throughout your tasks. Try to include cardiovascular exercises in your routine to increase the capacity of your heart and lungs. With complex carbs in your diet for stamina, your explosive exercises like, running, cycling and swimming can show great results.
2. Balanced diet
A balanced and nutrient rich diet is crucial for improving stamina. Make a note to have more of whole foods from natural sources and remove processed meats, drinks and packaged foods from your diet. It is not necessary that you eat only and only proteins to gain stamina for your exercises. A balanced meal shall certainly contain good amounts of protein but should also have healthy fats, minerals, vitamins, fibre, and carbs. You might be sceptical about the last item on the list but carbs can’t really be removed from a regular diet. There has to be at least 1/3rd of carbs in at least one meal per day. Carbs fuel your exercises, unless you’re working out to lose fat. It depends what kind of carbs you eat, eat whole carbs, which means whole rice instead of white bread, whole wheat chapatis instead of refined flour rotis, multigrain muesli instead of corn flakes, and durum wheat pasta instead of any regular instant pasta.
3. Hydration
Are you someone who like to go for a bottle of coke for hydration instead of water? If yes, sorry, but you won’t have any stamina anytime soon. Water is one of the most important things to increase when creating a diet for improving stamina. Water keeps the blood fresh and increases its capacity to carry oxygen to the muscles. Better oxygen supply to muscles = less fatigue. There are thousands of research papers that prove that water is the best hydration option. You must have studied that 70% of the body is made of water. So, it is your duty to keep this quantity of water levelled in your body. Drink at least 3 litres of water a day if you want to feel clear in the head and energetic in your body.
4. Use caffeine
Yes, use, don’t abuse caffeine. Caffeine is liquid adrenaline; it has the ability to improve the energy levels for exercising and mental tasks. Coffee is one of the most preferred non-alcoholic drinks in the world. There are certainly good reasons for that. Starting your day with a cup of robusta after a good breakfast of eggs and toast can ensure that you can continue working out and handling mental tasks with same energy until lunch. Caffeine will help you increase the reps on your workout and aide extra miles on the treadmill. However, have a controlled amount if you don’t want to get all jittery and sleepless. A maximum of 250 mg of caffeine is enough to keep you performing well all day.
5. Eat some superfoods
There are certain whole foods that are great for improving stamina. Fruits like banana, oranges and watermelon are great for keeping your body feeling alive and releasing endorphins which make you feel less exhausted. Similarly, nuts and seeds are also great at providing energy slowly and constantly to the body. Nuts and seeds like, almonds, walnuts, flaxseeds and pumpkin seeds provide good fats to the body which is burnt during physical tasks, they also make the joints stronger so that you don’t start getting pain while working out.
6. Interval workouts
Interval workouts doesn’t mean that you take intervals between your workouts. It means that you have to do low impact workouts in between sets of high intensity workouts. For example, if you can run for 2 minutes, do not stop and sit to catch your breath, instead start walking fast or jog slowly before breaking into a sprint again. This will keep your heart going and you will slowly teach your body to control oxygen levels, improving the recovery time of your body between periods of physical strain.
7. Try breathing exercises
Breathwork has a magical impact on stamina. Breathe is the base of all life, even for plants. Being able to control your breath will help you regulate oxygen level in your muscles and give you mental strength. Box breathing, where you inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 2 and exhale forcibly for 6 seconds is one of the best examples of breathing and stamina exercises used even by the military.
8. Stretch and meditate
Stamina also depends a lot on focus and not having mental stress. Stress will always make you tired and can cause you to stop midway or not give your 100% to workouts. Yoga is one of the best ways to improve cellular breathing and blood circulation. Meditation is one of the ways to make your brain calm down and help it improve focus. Give 20 minutes to yoga and at least 15 minutes to meditation each day and you’ll find you can happily do more push-ups than you usually can.
9. Sleep well
Sleep is the equivalent of a power bank for the body. If you haven’t slept well even for two days, be ready to crash in the middle of the day for a 2-hour nap. If you don’t want that, ensure that you get the quality 8 hour night time sleep. The sleep humans get between 10 PM and 3 AM is the most important sleep to keep you energized and thinking clearly next day. It improves cardiovascular strength, keeps you fresh and regulates metabolism so that you can get the best from your diet for stamina.
Even if you don’t regularly go running after a dog, it is helpful to have stamina to run when the dog chases behind you. So, check your food choices, reenforce an exercise habit and make sure you sleep and wake up on the same time every day. For supplementation to your efforts you can add some herbal with Qraamen Dynamo Kit for stamina, strength and vigour.