You do not have to join a gym or go to the pool regularly to develop and maintain good muscle tone. Effective training can be done in the comfort of your own home using your body weight as resistance, particularly in exercise such as push-ups and abdominal curls. Other method includes the use of some elastic exercise bands or weights for hands, wrists and ankle, which all are easily available in the market.

Apart from deliberate, specific exercises, the best way to ensure your muscles remain strong and with good endurance capacity is to use them on a regular basis. Performing tasks all by you, rather than the labor saving gadgets, or other people, is the best guarantee of muscle tone.

Try new activities, such as ice skating or ballroom dancing, so as to exercise more muscles. Every single time you use a muscle in a different way, you help your body remain healthy and strong.

Ideally, activities to improve strength and endurance should increase the muscles normal workload moderately. First increase the number of repetitions you do, and then up the weight; raise both steadily rather than attempt big increase too soon.

Also Take Care that when doing resistance exercises, don’t hold your breath or keep still for more than few seconds. That will only raise your blood pressure and we don’t want that. Instead, steadily breathe out when exerting maximum effort and breathe in as you relax the effort. It is advised that if you have a high blood pressure, it is necessary to consult a doctor before you start resistance exercises. Take Care

Keep your body ready for action and also prepared for strenuous or weighty tasks by regularly exerting your muscles. Strength and endurance training not only tones and conditions your muscles, but it also improves your fitness level.

Strength is the ability to lift, lower, push or carry an object of such mass, weight or resistance that the effort involved can only be sustained for a short time. For example, you need muscular strength to lift a heavy suitcase into the boot of a car, or to unscrew the tight lid of a jar or to push a piano.

Endurance, on the other hand, can be considered as the ability to sustain a level of activity for extended periods, such as carrying heavy shopping home or digging the garden. Improving muscular strength and endurance will provide important benefits to both your health and your quality of life.

On average, men and women are at their strongest when at the age of 30. After that, muscle mass and strength in the body, tend to goes into a steady decline unless people do something about it and make strength exercises an important part of their lives.

Regular resistance exercises can reduce and even reverse the steady decline in strength with age; no matter how old or unfit you are when you start.

As per the scientists at John Hopkins University at United States of America, an older adult who has been doing strength exercises for more than 15 years are as strong as or stronger than 20 years old guy who has been inactive. Studies conducted at a nursing home showed that even 80 and 90 years olds could double their leg muscle strength and improve daily activity levels by 35 percent after just 10 weeks of strength exercises. Just as aerobic exercises boost the heart and lungs, so strength exercises build up muscles. Unless muscle is regularly used, its tone diminishes and it becomes weaker. Unfit muscles always tire easily, and are prone to injury and limit the amount of activity your body can take. A Small amount of thought and effort can save your muscles.

Muscular endurance refers to a muscle’s ability to work repeatedly for an external period of time. Endurance is needed for tasks that do not pose much of resistance challenge but require repetitive movements for example, the repeated brush strokes required when painting a ceiling or a wall, the arm movements involved when polishing a car and the leg power used when climbing long flights of stairs, actually all require muscular endurance. The ability to maintain a good posture throughout the day, whether sitting, standing or on the move, is also dependent upon muscle endurance.

In order to build endurance, you need to do exercises that require the muscles not only to overcome moderate resistance but also to continue doing so for an extended period of time. In other words, while strength training involves heavier weights but fewer repetitions, preferably continued over 20 minutes. Before you start regular strength and endurance exercises, it might help to gauge your current level by doing the abdominal curl test (explained below) so that you can pinpoint and make a note of your improvements. Your abdominal muscles help you to maintain your posture during various physical activities and thus are good indicators of overall muscular fitness.

Abdominal Crunch Test And Abdominal Muscle Strength Rating Chart

The abdominal curl (or crunch) test is a good way to help you determine as how strong you are and also it determines your current level of muscular ability. As far as doing an abdominal curl is concerned, lie on your back with your shoulder resting on floor and your arms by your sides. After that lift your shoulders and head off the floor so that hands slide forwards towards your knees and then carefully lower your head and shoulders back to floor. Keep in mind that you have to breathe out as you curl up and breathe in as you come down. Do as many as you can in 1 minute and then compare the results with the standards given below.

In Women:

Age           Very Fit           Fit             Average          Unfit

40-50 35+ 31-35 24-30 Less Than 23

51-60 30+ 26-30 20-25 Less Than 19

60+ 25+ 21-25 15-20 Less Than 14

In Men:

Age                             Very Fit                   Fit                   Average          Unfit

40-50              39+                 35-39              29-34              Less Than 28

50-60              34+                 30-34             24-29              Less Than 23

60+                  29+                 25-29              19-24              Less Than 18