Hard to Kill Programming Methodology: Part 7 - Strength Endurance

What is Strength Endurance and Why Does It Matter?

Welcome back to the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast! We’re deep into our Hard to Kill Programming Methodology series, covering both the strength and endurance continuums. Today, we’re diving into strength endurance—what it is, why it matters, and exactly how you can program it into your training for optimal results.

Strength endurance is the ability to sustain moderate to heavy loads for higher reps with minimal rest. If absolute strength is your one-rep max, then strength endurance is your ability to grind through 10 to 15 reps without breaking down. Some athletes naturally excel at absolute strength, while others have insane endurance, allowing them to maintain strength output over time. But why choose one when you can train both?

Key Characteristics of Strength Endurance

• Moderate to heavy loads (typically 60-80% of your one-rep max)
• Higher rep ranges (8-15 reps per set)
• Minimal rest between sets
• Bridges the gap between raw strength and endurance
• Crucial for improving work capacity and fatigue resistance

Strength endurance isn’t just for gym performance—it’s a real-world necessity. Think of carrying heavy groceries, moving furniture, or repetitive tasks like shoveling snow. If you can maintain strength over time, you’ll be stronger, more resilient, and harder to kill.

How to Train Strength Endurance

If you’re looking to implement strength endurance into your programming, here’s the best way to do it:

✅ Choose moderate to heavy loads: Aim for 60-80% of your one-rep max.
✅ Focus on high reps: Perform 8-15 reps per set.
✅ Train it 1-2 times per week: Don’t overdo it—this type of training is taxing.
✅ Progress week by week:

• Week 1: 60% for 15 reps
• Week 2: 65% for 12 reps
• Week 3: 70% for 10 reps
• Week 4: Deload to recover
  ✅ Track progress: Keep tabs on your 5, 10, and 15-rep maxes to measure gains.

Strength endurance improves Type 2A muscle fibers, bridging the gap between pure strength and endurance. Training this way can increase your work capacity, making you more athletic and explosive in every area of fitness.

Strength Endurance vs. Other Strength Modalities

Strength endurance is different from pure strength training (which focuses on maximal force) and speed strength (which emphasizes explosive power). Instead, strength endurance focuses on sustained power output over time.

🔥 Who Should Train Strength Endurance?

• Athletes who want to maintain explosive power over time
• Those looking to improve muscular fatigue resistance
• Anyone wanting to bridge the gap between strength and endurance
• Everyday people who need functional strength for real life

Final Thoughts: Why Strength Endurance is Essential

If you want real, usable strength—not just a big one-rep max—strength endurance is key. It enhances athletic performance, builds resilience, and ensures you can maintain power output over time.

💪 Want expert programming? Join Garage Gym Athlete and see how we integrate strength endurance into our Hard to Kill methodology. Get a free trial at garagegymathlete.com and experience elite-level programming for yourself.

🚀 Train hard. Stay strong. Be harder to kill.
And remember, if you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast, Jerred Moon here, and we are continuing our hard to kill programming methodology series. This is the seventh episode. So, so far we have gone through the strength continuum and we are now going through the endurance continuum. And so I appreciate everyone hanging out, learning more about programming today.

We're gonna be talking about strength, endurance. But big picture, if you're new, or if you're just picking this up, we have our own programming methodology at Garage Gym Athlete. We call it the Hard to Kill Programming Methodology, and it is evolving, it's changing. And so I'm going over what the base is on how we really blend performance and longevity.

And then I'm going to introduce some new ideas at the end of the series and let you know how the programming is going to evolve and how it's really getting better and what we've been testing. So today it is about strength endurance. So, so far in the endurance continuum, we've hit aerobic endurance, muscular endurance, and today I'll be talking about strength endurance.

So strength endurance, if I just want to put it in a, a simple, you know, format for your mind, like think about a one rep max. As like, that's the absolute strength and then think about a 15 rep max as more strength, endurance and what I found really interesting over the years in coaching athletes and, you know, noticing different people, male, female different athlete types is some people can have a really, you know, big one rep max, they can you know, squat a lot of weight, deadlift, they can pull like they just have a lot of power.

You know, built in either naturally genetically, or maybe that's the way they trained. And then some people have crazy strength endurance. So when it comes to strength endurance, they are able to knock out like 15 reps at a pretty high load. And it's kind of crazy. I've even seen some athletes who's one rep max and they're like 10, 15 rep max.

Isn't that far off? I mean, they're different, but they're not that far off. And I really think it's crazy to see that in different athletes. And you don't know which one you are, but if I had to choose one, if I'd rather have just a really crazy strong one rep max or higher, like strength endurance, I'd probably choose strength endurance because I feel like it's more applicable to really getting through life.

Kind of like muscular endurance, but able to do repeated efforts without fatigue with moderate loads is crazy. And that's exactly what strength endurance is. So let's talk about some of the, you know, key characteristics, what you should be looking at. So, like I said, the main focus for strength endurance is moderate to heavy loads for high reps or multiple sets with minimal rest.

And, you know, it can. It can help a lot of different types of sports. I think there's a lot of sports application for strength, endurance wrestling, basketball, you know, CrossFit style. They have a lot of strength endurance. Ultimately the entire purpose of training strength endurance is. It's going to improve your overall work capacity.

So it's great for people who want to maintain like a certain intensity for longer without gassing out. And while I love strength, I really think the endurance continuum building through it is, is very important. And so if you want to like, just. Think about how you can program this generally. And these are very general terms.

Cause like I said, every single person is so much different. I've seen all these different types of people with crazy one rep max, crazy 15 rep max, crazy 10 rep max, all that kind of stuff. Generally, it's going to be around 60 to 80 percent of your one or max. And the rep range can be anywhere from eight reps to 15 reps.

Okay. So it's, it's quite a range, but really. If you want to test this out so that's like how you would program it. First, you need to know your one rep max, and then you can start to operate off of that. But I highly suggest that you also track your five rep max, your 10 rep max, and maybe go so far as a 15 or 20 rep max.

You know, depending on the level of athlete, like If you're a pretty seasoned athlete and you just heard me say 20 rep max and you're more on the strength side, that's probably getting a little bit too crazy for you overall, but I think strength endurance and training it if you can hit that 60 to 80 percent of your one rep max 8 to 15 reps and then also track your You're higher rep maxes.

I mean, you're 10, you're five, 10, you're 15, you're 20, and see how that's changing and evolving over time. You can really start to see how you're seeing progress over, over time. And really just got to put in the reps. It's very uncomfortable. I know I have pretty high strength endurance. One thing that we utilize in our one man, one barbell program is on the final set, we always just go for max reps.

And so we might end up being at like 75%, 70 percent of our one rep max right in that range. And the minimum reps are four, but then you go as many as you possibly can. And the more I did the one man, one barbell program back in the day when I was really focused on this I was able to do, you know, pretty crazy weights for.

Like I'm saying, like 17 reps with some pretty insane numbers. And so it's really fun. And like I said, it, it really plays over to anything that you want to do in life. So moving furniture, repeated shovel work. If you're, you know, shoveling snow, any scenario, call it calling for, you know, moderate to heavy efforts done repeatedly.

And you can do this in a lot of different ways. Like I think strongman training is a great way to do this. If you think about it, they have a lot of strength endurance. They also have a lot of raw power and like raw strength, but they also have a ton of strength endurance with some of the things that they're doing with the loaded carries anything with the Atlas ball.

So it's really fun training to do overall. And if you're looking to throw this into your current training, you only need to do about one to two sessions per week, and then you want to progress it week to week and then come down. So I talked about, you know. Small picture in a training session, hitting 60 to 80 percent of your one rep max rep range 8 to 15, training that 1 to 2 times per week and then progressing that week to week.

So you would do, you know, let's say 60 percent of your one rep max for 10 reps. The first week, the second week, you could go up to 65, 70, and then you could drop the reps down to eight, something like that. Or you could start on the higher end, 60 percent at 15, and then go to 70 at 10, and then go to 80 at eight reps for, you know, a three week wave.

And then typically what we do in all of our programming is we back down that fourth week and just kind of let the body de load. We still train, but we don't do anything. Crazy. Nothing is periodized anymore. Really it's. It's really just trying to get you know, the best application of strength with the most recovery that you can.

Now this is going to really get into type 2a muscle fibers. This is really where they thrive. It's bridging the gap between pure endurance and pure strength. So if we go back to the strength continuum, where I talked about strength, strength, speed, speed, strength, and speed. You know, I talked about the importance of all of those things.

Now, strength endurance can almost fit into those categories. It would be more on the strength speed of of things, but that has more to do with how quickly you're lifting something right that has to do with power, output, force, strength, endurance. Is not as much a time modality. It's more of just a repetition modality.

If you've ever done a 20 rep max back squat, it is incredibly taxing. Like it takes a long time. Like it can, you know, a typical lift five reps or whatever. Say that takes you 30 seconds, like 20 rep max can take minutes. You know, one minute, two minute, three minutes, depending on how slow you're going.

You don't want to rest at the top for long periods of time, but it can take a long time. It is incredibly taxing. It is very hard training, but I don't think that there's anything better to help you really become more athletic. And I know that's saying something, but I think this type of training, like aerobic endurance, a lot of slow Twitch involved.

And. You know, strength can be a slow, like pure strength can be slow, but then when we get into strength, speed, speed, strength, speed. So if your speed, if you're running, if you're doing sprints and you also have strength endurance, then you are going to be doing like really awesome things and. You know, you are going to be able to be incredibly, incredibly athletic.

And I think I would prioritize this over most anything else on the strength side. Now, just knowing what I know now, like, I just think it's so beneficial to be training strength endurance. So the only thing to know, it is very taxing and so keep that in mind as you program it or as you utilize it ultimately.

That's about it for this one. I think if you want to maintain that athleticism, this is super important. All of these things are important, but as we move into power endurance, which will be the next episode, power endurance is one of the only ones where I'm like, this is kind of optional. Like, if you want to be just a complete badass athlete, we'll get into power endurance, but that one I put on the more optional category and, and we'll get into some other things that are, you know, quote unquote optional when it comes to energy system training.

But strength endurance, if you want to be athletic, this is what you absolutely should be throwing into your program. So if you're like, I've kind of, you know, lost my athletic edge or, you know, you feel like you're just not as fast or as quick or whatever. This is what you want to do, not just because it's going to help you lift moderate loads without fatiguing.

It's going to help develop those type two, a muscle fibers. And this is just a great place to train them. And so that is very taxing. Like I said, so when you're utilizing a programming methodology like this, how I've stated it, make sure that you're getting adequate rest, recovery, nutrition, all of those things, and it will go a long way.

But that's it for this one. If you want to be part of our programming, head over to garagegymathlete. com. Sign up for a free trial. We'd love to have you for all of our athletes putting in the work. We appreciate you so much. Remember if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.