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How to Increase Stamina: 10 Ways

By Dr. Dana Lis

June 28, 2026

Stamina. It’s more than just having energy. It’s about having the physical, or mental, capacity to sustain prolonged effort without folding. In sport circles, we also call it endurance. When it comes to mental stamina, it’s often also called resilience.

While some people seem to possess natural stamina, stamina is usually something you develop over time. And yes, you can increase your stamina at any age.

Just know that further developing your stamina doesn’t happen overnight. We’re talking one to two months of consistent training to see a noticeable change. Overall, for serious muscular and metabolic adaptations that I see the athletes I train, it’s months to years of work. For some of these athletes, those improvements in stamina are the difference between being on the podium versus finishing in the middle of the pack.

For the average person, however, you may feel and see changes pretty early on. You can begin to make those neuromuscular connections after a few sessions, then it’s just a matter of maintaining that connection once it’s established.

There are multiple contributors to stamina, and below I walk you through the best ways to improve it. We’ll also discuss removing certain barriers to stamina development.

What is stamina exactly?

Stamina is the ability to sustain physical and mental effort over time while resisting fatigue. It reflects how your body uses and produces energy, transports oxygen, regulates its temperature, manages fuel availability, and tolerates stress, including internal and external stressors.

Physical stamina encompasses activities like completing a long shift at work that requires you to stand on your feet most of the time, doing an hour-long workout class, running a half-marathon, etc.

Mental stamina examples include showing the resilience to deal with work pressure yet still hitting your deadlines, concentrating well enough to study for a considerable time for an upcoming exam, or being mentally tough enough to deal with a difficult opponent in a sporting match.

Why do some people have less stamina?

The most obvious reason for someone having less stamina is being overly sedentary. Even if they don’t look “out of shape,” they may not have much stamina because they simply haven’t developed their muscular and cardiovascular endurance.

Most of us, for example, have relatively sedentary jobs these days. Whether we work at home or in an office, our work day revolves around a desk and computer. But because of work stress and long work hours, we still feel drained after the work day and may not feel inclined to exercise afterwards.

Other common reasons for not having much stamina include poor sleep, under-fueling (such as skipping breakfast), low iron stores, excess stress, age-related muscle loss and certain medical conditions.

In the athletic population, low energy availability is a huge contributor. It’s amazing how many athletes or people who work out frequently simply don’t eat enough calories to support their energy levels.

Stamina vs. endurance

While these are very similar concepts, there are some key differences. While endurance refers to the ability to sustain prolonged exercise or aerobic exercise, stamina is broader because it encompasses mental resilience.

Benefits of improving stamina

• Improved physical endurance: Perform activities for longer before becoming tired.

• Increased energy levels: Feel more energy throughout the day and feel less overall fatigue.

• Enhanced cardiovascular health: Regular stamina-building exercise strengthens the heart and lungs.

• Greater muscular endurance: Being better able to sustain repeated muscle contractions, making exercise and daily tasks feel easier.

• Better athletic performance: Improve speed, power and consistency in sports and fitness activities.

• Faster recovery: Recover more quickly between workouts or physical activities.

• Supports a healthy weight: Stamina-focused activities burn calories.

• Improved mental resilience: Boost mental toughness, helping you stay focused and push through physical challenges.

• Better metabolic health: Improve insulin sensitivity, blood sugar regulation and overall metabolic function.

• Enhanced quality of life: Everyday activities feel less physically demanding, helping you stay active and independent as you age.

How to increase stamina

1. Create muscle stimulus

Muscle stimulus is an important part of building stamina because your muscles must be challenged in order to adapt. Remember, it’s those adaptations that help you increase your stamina.

Each workout creates a training stimulus — whether through resistance, duration, intensity or repetition — that signals your muscles to become stronger, more efficient and more resistant to fatigue.

For stamina, the goal is typically repeated, moderate muscle stimulation over time. As your muscles adapt, they develop greater endurance by:

• Increasing the number and efficiency of mitochondria (the "powerhouses" that produce energy)

• Improving their ability to use oxygen and burn fat for fuel

• Storing more glycogen for sustained activity

• Becoming more resistant to fatigue during repeated contractions

• Enhancing coordination between muscles and the nervous system

2. Use the progressive overload principle

For the best type of muscle stimulus, employ the progressive overload principle in your workouts. Going to the gym isn’t what gets you fitter. It’s what you do in the gym. You want to stress the body so you’re pushing your body to adapt and gain more stamina.

Progressive overload is simply challenging your body over time — whether that’s by increasing weight, tempo, repetitions, range of motion or even total volume. The idea is that you gradually increase the demand placed on your body so it has a reason to adapt, whether that adaptation is improved strength, endurance, mobility or stability.

While many use this concept for strength training, it also can apply to endurance training, cardiovascular fitness and mobility training. That might look like running longer distances, improving pace, increasing time under tension in mobility work, or building tolerance and control through greater ranges of motion.

For many types of exercise and workouts, it’s not enough load. Doing light weights, doing a yoga class, playing a sport, etc. are valuable fitness activities but don’t necessarily build muscular stamina.

The less muscle you have, the less work you can do relative to your body size. So you need loads to build your muscles. After all, the foundation of aging well is maintaining muscle.

3. Consistently put in the work

A fitness class once a week is great, but two or three times is better. That weekend bike ride is wonderful, but doing cardio multiple days a week is better.

You don’t necessarily need to devote tons of time to your stamina-building activities, as you can do HIIT workouts that take less than 30 minutes, for example.

Building stamina requires consistency because the body adapts gradually to regular physical activity. Each workout challenges your heart, lungs, muscles, and energy systems, prompting them to become more efficient over time. These adaptations don't happen overnight — they develop through repeated training followed by adequate recovery.

Use a smart watch or heart rate monitor to monitor your activity, movement, heart rate and more to track your activity.

4. Do stamina-building exercises

You want to try and hit each muscle group at least once per week with a load, for example. Ideally that’s weights but you can also do bodyweight exercises.

For example, here are some of the exercises you can do for each muscle group:

• Legs: lunges, leg presses, stiff-legged deadlifts, leg curls, step-ups

• Chest: push-ups, chest presses, chest flyes

• Back: pull-ups, lat pulldowns, rows

• Shoulders: presses, lateral flyes

• Arms: biceps curls, triceps press

• Core: crossover bicycles, knee-ups, lying Supermans

You can combine those into two workouts — chest, back and shoulders; legs, arms and core — and do them every other day.

You can also do some fitness classes with weights, such as kettlebell or HIIT classes. Otherwise, hard cardio is also helpful, such as brisk walking, swimming, rowing and hiking.

5. Make it a habit: do something every day

To get your body to build adaptations and improve its stamina day by day, it’s important to be active every day. This doesn’t mean a hard workout every day, as you don’t want to overtrain. But you should shoot for doing something each day, even if it’s a brisk 10-minute walk.

Overall, have fun and plot out a week that may include three weight training sessions, maybe a class or two, along with certain cardio or sport activities. You probably have a lot going on, but to build stamina, you need to prioritize you.

Even try to break up your work day or a busy day at home with some stamina-building movement, such as morning cardio, a lunchtime walk, post-work strength training, etc.

6. Give yourself enough fuel

Remember, muscle is metabolically active. The more muscle you have, the more energy your body needs. It's a lot more metabolically active than fat.

So as you begin to work your muscle harder for the goal of building more stamina, make sure you’re getting in enough quality calories. It’ll also keep your metabolism going.

When you lift weights in a more intense way, you’ll feel invigorated and your body needs the fuel. Learn what to eat after a workout, such as more protein, fiber and complex carbohydrates.

7. Hydrate adequately

Hydration is a huge piece. First thing when you wake up, have a big glass of water.

Hydration plays a critical role in stamina because water is essential for nearly every process involved in physical performance. Even mild dehydration can reduce endurance, increase fatigue and make exercise feel more difficult by affecting the body's ability to regulate temperature, deliver oxygen and nutrients, and produce energy.

If you’re working out at high intensities for over an hour or in the heat, also consider using electrolytes such as Ancient Nutrition’s Rapid Hydration or Multi Collagen Advanced Hydrate.

8. Check for nutrient shortfalls

Several nutrients play essential roles in energy production, oxygen delivery, muscle function and recovery — all of which contribute to stamina. While a balanced diet can provide most of these nutrients, certain deficiencies or suboptimal intake may reduce endurance, increase fatigue and impair exercise performance.

Several nutrient shortfalls in women and men are relatively common and may affect stamina and exercise performance, including:

• Iron (especially among women and endurance athletes)

• Magnesium

• Vitamin D

• Vitamin B12 (particularly in older adults and those following vegan diets)

• Potassium

• Inadequate protein intake

• Low overall calorie intake, which can limit energy availability for training and recovery

Iron is one of the most important nutrients for stamina because it helps produce hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to working muscles. Low iron levels can reduce oxygen delivery, leading to fatigue, decreased endurance and reduced exercise capacity.

Adequate protein helps repair and maintain muscle tissue after exercise, supporting the adaptations needed to improve stamina over time. Consuming enough protein throughout the day also helps preserve lean muscle mass and supports recovery between workouts.

Magnesium is involved in hundreds of enzymatic reactions, including energy production, muscle contraction, and nerve function. Low magnesium intake may contribute to muscle cramps, weakness and fatigue.

B vitamins — including thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), vitamin B6, folate, and vitamin B12 — help convert carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into usable energy. Vitamin B12 is particularly important for red blood cell production and nervous system function. Shortfalls can contribute to fatigue and reduced exercise performance.

Vitamin D supports muscle strength, immune function and bone health. Low vitamin D levels have been associated with muscle weakness and poorer physical performance, and shortfalls are common, especially in people with limited sun exposure.

If you experience persistent fatigue or difficulty improving endurance despite consistent training, it's worth discussing potential nutrient shortfalls or underlying medical conditions with a healthcare professional. You may want to get your labs done, for example, to see if they uncover any nutrition shortfalls.

9. Consider these supplements

Here are some of the best sports supplements that can play a role in your stamina-building plan:

• Creatine: One of the most well-researched sports supplements, it's best known for increasing strength and power. It can also improve stamina during repeated bouts of high-intensity exercise. Check out Ancient Nutrition’s Creatine + Collagen powder, including one with electrolytes.

• Protein powder: Adequate protein supports muscle building and recovery, allowing your body to adapt to training and gradually build stamina. For example, whey protein is rapidly absorbed (amino acids can appear in the bloodstream within 15-30 minutes) and rich in branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) and high in other essential amino acids. See Ancient Nutrition’s Whey Protein or Multi Protein, with multiple sources of protein.

• Caffeine: Caffeine is a well-studied performance aid that can increase mental alertness and focus, support healthy energy and support cognitive health and performance. Consider Ancient Nutrition’s Clean Energy powder with 74 mg of superfood-containing caffeine.

• Magnesium: Magnesium is an important mineral that many people come up short on. . Ancient Nutrition’s Active Peptides Magnesium Complex contains four forms of bioavailable magnesium and helps restore magnesium levels..

10. Sleep

Sleep is one of the most important factors in building stamina because it is when the body repairs, recovers and adapts to exercise. While workouts provide the stimulus for improving endurance, it's during sleep that muscles recover, energy stores are replenished, and the cardiovascular and nervous systems prepare for future activity.

Without enough quality sleep, your body has a harder time making the adaptations needed to improve stamina. Try to get 7 to 9 hours per night.

Frequently asked questions

What are the main reasons someone may have low stamina?

Low stamina is often caused by a combination of factors rather than a single issue. Common contributors include a sedentary lifestyle, low aerobic fitness, poor sleep, dehydration, chronic stress, inadequate calorie or protein intake, low iron levels, and insufficient recovery between workouts.

Aging-related muscle loss and underlying medical conditions can also reduce stamina. For active individuals, under-fueling can make it difficult to sustain both exercise performance and daily energy levels.

How long does it take to improve stamina?

Most people begin to notice improvements in stamina after 4 to 8 weeks of consistent exercise combined with good nutrition, hydration, sleep and recovery. Cardiovascular fitness often improves first, while muscular endurance and strength typically take longer to develop. The rate of progress depends on factors such as your starting fitness level, age, training consistency and overall health.

Can you improve stamina at any age?

Yes. People of all ages can improve their stamina through regular exercise and healthy lifestyle habits. While progress may occur more gradually with age, consistent aerobic exercise, strength training, proper nutrition, quality sleep and adequate recovery can lead to meaningful improvements in endurance, energy levels and overall physical performance.

Dr. Dana Lis is a globally recognized leader in the field of performance nutrition and a member of the Ancient Nutrition Wellness Roundtable (and a paid partner). As one of the few Registered Dietitians decorated with the renowned IOC Diploma in Sport Nutrition and a PhD. Currently, Dana heads into her seventh season as the Performance Nutrition Consultant for the Golden State Warriors. With nearly 20 years of experience, Dana has worked with Olympic and professional sports across various continents and a spectrum of disciplines. Dana continues to drive the nutrition field forward through mentorship, shaping best practices and challenging the status quo. This includes Performance Nutrition Professionals, which she launched with Jennifer Gibson, MS, RD, and which trains sport dietitians in the U.S.