How to increase stamina or conditioning? People rarely talk about it, but stamina for what you’re doing is quite specific.
Not so long ago I managed to work my way up to 301 kettlebell snatches in ten minutes, which required incredible conditioning. Even though my endurance for that event was the best I ever had, I wouldn’t be so successful if I were running instead, for example. Since I wasn’t practicing running the results would be the same as before, as stamina is very specific to what you’re doing.
The reason behind this logic is that you need to learn how to relax your body in order to increase stamina for a specific activity. Whether its running, snatching or something else, when your body is relaxed you are able to go that extra mile and achieve better & faster results.
So, how can you increase your stamina? Simple – just work on the specific activity you want to become faster & better at. This way you will learn how to relax properly, become more efficient and subsequently increase your stamina.
But what about lung power and VO2 max? In case you are inefficient at one movement and efficient at the other, you’ll obviously reach the maximum capability faster with the movement you are inefficient in and vica versa. So it’s really hard to test that out.
In case you want to reduce your running time for marathon, you can do some specific things to improve your endurance. One thing that will help to achieve better marathon performance is to work on some sprints. This might sound strange since you’re training for a marathon, but your body will pick up more speed this way and you’ll be able to keep a part of that speed for the marathon and use it in a more relaxed manner. Of course you’ll still need to run for longer duration for your marathon training, but adding some sprints into the mix will definitely help you achieve better results.
Same thing goes for kettlebell swings, snatches and cleans which have an athletic capability to them which translates to many other activities. If you do bodyweight exercises or lift weights in combination with endurance training, I’d recommend you to vary your endurance training to cover a lot of basis, but still focus most of your energy on the specific goal you have with your bodyweight or weightlifting training.
To sum it up, if you are looking to improve your stamina in a specific exercise or activity, practice it as much as possible to learn how to relax your body and become more efficient. In case your goal is to improve general stamina, like sex stamina for instance, specific practice in that area will give you the best results, but getting in a better shape through strength training and conditioning exercises will certainly help as well.