Do plenty of aerobic exercise such as running, swimming, cycling or walking. During aerobic activity, muscles require more oxygen than if you were standing still; the heart responds by pumping more blood,, which then carries oxygen around the body. In time, the cardiovascular system improves so that the heart can accomplish more activity in less time. After several months, your resting heart rate (the average number of beats per minute) will drop. This is a sign that your stamina has improved.
Don’t plod along at the same pace. Researchers at McMaster University, Ontario, looked at the effects of incorporating 30-second sprints to workouts on exercise cycles. The results showed that a sprint-and-recover group increased their stamina (measured as the time they could pedal to exhaustion) by almost 100%, from 26 minutes at the beginning to 51 minutes two weeks later, while there was no change for a control group. Martin Gibala, associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster, says even people who get all their cardio exercise from walking “should try to do intervals – one minute fast, one minute easy, or 30 seconds fast, 30 seconds easy – for 20 minutes three times a week.”
Do try a lunchtime workout to boost mental as well as physical stamina. Researchers at Leeds Metropolitan University found employees were more productive and got along better with their co-workers afterwards.
Don’t give up as you get older. A study published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness compared 20 male runners, aged 64 to 73, who had been running for at least 40 years, with 20 sedentary men of the same age. All the men were put through physical tests, including a maximal electrocardiogram (ECG) and a 24-hour ECG monitor. As expected, the runners’ hearts performed far better than those of the sedentary men.
Don’t neglect your iron intake. Dr Jere Haas, of Cornell University, put 41 women aged 18-33, all mildly iron deficient, on a four-week exercise programme. He found that those who were given a six-week course of iron supplements saw improvements in their aerobic stamina of up to 200% more than those who took a placebo.
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