The photo in the multimedia slide, taken in a community college weight room, shows students in a typical weight training class. Weight training programs come in all shapes and sizes and attempt to achieve gains in muscular strength and endurance. Your personal fitness instructor, teacher or coach will show you how to optimize your training program to achieve your goals.

Muscular strength is necessary to move objects. Lifting boxes or pushing a lawnmower are examples of activities that require a certain amount of strength. The larger the object, the more strength you will need to lift or push it. Muscular endurance is the ability to exert your strength continuously and repetitively. A baseball pitcher need muscular endurance in order to repeat the pitching motion many times throughout a game without getting fatigued.

You will need varying amounts of strength and endurance to perform everyday tasks throughout your lifetime. As people age, they often lose their strength and endurance capacities. As a result, they have increasing difficulty performing typical everyday tasks that are necessary to remain independent. This lose of strength and endurance with age is not so much a result of age as it is a result of inactivity. As people get older, they often become less active. Strength and endurance, like the other components of fitness, are lost unless a person stays active.