Strength & Endurance

All activities, from the smallest task to the largest require strength and endurance. Strength is the ability of muscles to move a weight. Endurance is the ability to resist fatigue or getting tired quickly.

Most of us equate strength with power or weight lifting. But strength is also needed to move your body and parts of your body against gravity, as in sitting or walking upright (posture). In the classroom, postural strength and endurance is required to attend to what the teacher is saying.

A balance of muscle strength around each joint (mid-range control) is needed to grade speed of movement. If a child tends to rush through tasks and be clumsy or sloppy, it may mean that there is a lack of strength for mid-range control. This can affect the child’s ability to practice and learn higher-level gross motor skills such as hopping or playing ball. It can impact his ability to grade pressure on a pencil for writing and other fine motor tasks. It can interfere with his respiratory control for speech production.

Most daily activities of a child require endurance. Endurance allows a child to perform a task repeatedly over an extended period of time. This repetition is necessary for motor and cognitive learning. Endurance conditioning helps to enhance the heart and lung fitness of a child. (Did you know that lung development continues until about age eight?) Even if the needed strength and coordination are present to complete an activity such as walking, climbing up on a step or pedaling a bike, endurance is needed to walk around on a family outing or class trip, climb up an entire flight of stairs or ride a bike up and down the block without getting tired.

The physical therapist utilizes play activities that will improve a child’s strength and endurance in the muscles needed.

Rickard Rehabilitation Services, Inc.
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