Stamina is the resilience that keeps you going—physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s your ability to sustain effort over time, whether you’re powering through a tough workout, juggling back-to-back meetings, or simply trying to stay focused throughout the day. Without enough stamina, everyday life can start to feel like a constant battle.
You can improve all facets of your stamina. With the right combination of movement, nutrition, and emotional support, it’s entirely possible to boost your energy levels, sharpen your focus, and improve your endurance over time.
Your physical stamina is your ability to sustain effort over a period of time. Improving your physical stamina mainly involves cardiovascular training to increase your aerobic capacity, which is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during exercise. However, strength and nutrition also play a role.
Boost Your Aerobic Capacity With Cardio
A significant factor in physical stamina is aerobic capacity. Having a higher aerobic capacity means your body has more oxygen to use during exercise, which allows you to exercise for longer.
You can increase your aerobic capacity by doing steady-state cardiovascular activity about three days per week. This type of training is sometimes called zone 2, low-intensity steady-state, or aerobic base training. Examples include brisk walking, jogging, swimming, cycling, and rowing.
This level of training requires you to work at a pace that’s challenging enough to elevate your heart rate, but sustainable enough that you can maintain it for 30 to 60 minutes or more. During this exercise, aim to hit about 70-80% of your max heart rate. You should be able to hold a conversation, but with labored breathing.
Build Muscular Strength
While cardio lays the groundwork, strength training is another essential part of improving stamina. Building muscular strength helps your body handle repeated movements with less fatigue, whether you’re climbing stairs, moving boxes, or mowing the lawn.
Loaded resistance exercises with weights are the most effective way to build muscular strength. Examples include dumbbell presses, rows, squats, and deadlifts. Aim to resistance train about three times per week. As your muscles get stronger and more efficient, you’ll use less energy for the same tasks, making your daily routines easier.
Meet Your Nutrition Goals
Nutrition also plays an important role in physical stamina. What you eat to fuel your body will affect your performance.
You need adequate amino acids from protein to build muscle and recover from exercise, so it’s essential to meet your daily protein needs. A general recommendation is to consume 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight to best optimize muscle protein synthesis, the process that creates lean muscle tissue growth.
Aim for complex carbohydrates when meeting your carb intake. Complex carbs from whole grains take longer to digest, providing long-lasting, stable energy. Refined carbs, such as white bread, are digested quickly, causing a spike and then a crash in your blood sugar and energy levels.
Micronutrients also support your overall health, so make sure you’re eating a variety of fruits and vegetables to get adequate vitamins and minerals.
Stay Hydrated
Keeping hydrated is a vital part of maintaining stamina. Even small drops in hydration levels can lead to noticeable decreases in performance and endurance. Make it a habit to drink water consistently throughout the day, not just during exercise. By the time you start to feel thirsty, you have already hit a level of dehydration that could impact your performance.
Get Enough Sleep
Sleep is essential for your energy levels and overall health. Sleep is your body’s time to recover. During sleep, your body repairs tissues, replenishes energy stores, and regulates hormones that affect your physical and mental performance. Aim to get seven to nine hours of quality sleep per night for optimal recovery.
Mental stamina is what helps you stay focused during long workdays, remain calm under pressure, and keep showing up—even when motivation dips. It’s a form of emotional resilience. The benefits of training your physical stamina often carry over to your mental stamina, so you’ll be doubly rewarded for the efforts. Here are ways to build mental endurance directly:
- Practice mindfulness: Practices like meditation, deep breathing, and mindful walking help your brain stay present, focused, and calm, reducing mental fatigue and emotional overwhelm.
- See a mental health professional: If accessible to you, therapy approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) can build mental and emotional resilience. These therapies work by helping you better understand your thoughts, process emotions, and direct your behavior in more intentional, positive ways.
- Foster your relationships: Though not a direct method of training stamina, your social network plays a big role in emotional well-being and overall happiness. Feeling supported by the people around you can enhance your sense of contentment, self-worth, and stability—all of which contribute to greater mental and emotional resilience.
While lifestyle habits such as movement, sleep, and nutrition form the foundation of stamina, supplements can provide additional support. Some supplements that may help boost your stamina or support your efforts include:
- Creatine: Evidence suggests creatine may increase mental resilience and help offset the effects of poor sleep, both of which can support overall stamina. Creatine is widely researched for its performance-enhancing benefits in strength training. It works by increasing the availability of ATP, your body’s energy currency, to muscle tissue during high-intensity exercise. This can support strength training to boost physical stamina.
- B-complex vitamins, magnesium, and zinc: These all play essential roles in energy metabolism, oxygen transport, and muscle function, impacting your physical stamina and energy levels.
- Electrolytes: Electrolytes like sodium and potassium help maintain hydration, which is key in physical and mental endurance.
When trying to improve your stamina, monitoring your progress can help you stay accountable and make adjustments as needed. It can also help you see how far you’ve come.
There are many ways to monitor your physical stamina progress. You can track your strength and endurance by logging your workouts. After each workout, write down how much weight you lifted, how many reps you completed, or how long you stuck with your cardio session.
Since mental stamina is less tangible, it can be more challenging to measure, but it’s still possible to track progress. Pay attention to how well you can stay focused throughout the day. Are you feeling more productive? Less irritable? More consistent with your routines? Journaling or using a mood-tracking app can help you identify trends in your energy, focus, and emotional resilience over time.
The key to building stamina is consistency. Progress doesn’t always look dramatic, but small, steady gains add up. By monitoring those changes, you’ll see an upward trend over time. Plus, the more tuned-in you are to your growth, the more empowered you’ll feel to keep going.
Stamina is a trainable aspect of life, and improving it takes a holistic approach. Start by boosting your physical stamina through steady-state cardio, strength training, and proper nutrition and hydration. For mental stamina, practices like mindfulness, quality sleep, and a strong social network are key.
Certain supplements can help support both your physical and mental endurance. As you progress, be sure to track your improvements. Consistency is crucial, and over time, you’ll see your stamina grow in ways that enhance many areas of your life.
