How long can you go for?

Stamina is a measure of your endurance. The greater your stamina, the further you may be able to walk, cycle or swim. Your stamina relates to the fitness of your heart. The greater your stamina the greater the amount of blood your heart can pump.

An adults heart at rest pumps about 5 litres (or 5 orange cartons) of blood a minute. During exercise an unfit heart pumps around 25 litres of blood per minute but a super-fit heart can pump as much as 40 litres per minute! When doing this exercise though an unfit heart will be beating much faster than the super-fit one even though it is pumping less blood!

The more efficient your heart is at pumping blood, the longer you can endure exercise and the quicker you can recover from it.

Aerobic Exercise

Stamina is also known as 'aerobic fitness'. The type of exercise that you need to do to improve your aerobic fitness or stamina is known as 'aerobic exercise'.

Aerobic exercise should keep your heart working at 70-80% of it's full capacity. At this level you should be building up a sweat but still be able to hold a conversation with someone. This level of exercise should be kept up for 20 minutes and repeated 3 times a week. This will improve your stamina gradually and in a safe way. As you become more aerobically fit, you will need to increase the frequency and/or duration of this exercise in order to keep improving your stamina.

Aerobic Exercise Safety

If you start feeling dizzy, nauseous, very short of breath or tight in the chest you should stop the exercise. These are all signs that your heart is working too much.

Whenever you stop aerobic exercise, don't stop suddenly. You should cool down before stopping by doing something like walking around after running.

The health benefits of aerobic fitness

As your aerobic fitness improves, the chances of having heart problems are reduced. As you have more blood passing through organs round the body such as your lungs, liver, kidneys and brain, their performance improves too. You may find that you are getting better grades at school!

Aerobic exercise also burns energy, breaks down body fat and speeds up your metabolism. This means that your weight becomes more controlled and you look better!

Improving your stamina also makes you feel better. You feel more energetic, more confident and feel like you can accomplish more.

Sports that require good aerobic fitness

If you compete or take part in any of the following sports, aerobic fitness is essential for you and will improve your performance in that sport:

• Squash
• Tennis
• Football
• Rugby
• Hiking
• and many more...