Circuit Training is a hot trend in the fitness world right now. Visit any fitness website or open any magazine and you will no doubt come across a “killer new” circuit training workout.
Fitness magazines are especially jumping on this bandwagon, showing viewers how professional athletes and celebrity’s use circuit training to stay in peak physical condition.
There is one main reason that everyone and their brother is training in circuits…and it is because IT WORKS!
Circuit training is the combination of several exercises into a group, and performing them back to back with little to no rest. Usually all the repetitions of one exercise are completed before moving on to the next exercise. There are several ways, and many benefits, to incorporating circuit training into your workout.
Circuit training can be used if you are training for fat-loss, circuit training can be used to decrease your rest time, thus increasing your work load. By decreasing the rest time between your exercises your body is forced to operate while it is recovering from the previous exercise. This creates a sort of negative energy balance where your body is constantly trying to get back to normal. The goal is not to go so fast that your technique suffers, but fast enough that your body cannot fully recover. By the time you are finished with your circuit training workout, your body will be in a highly energy deficient state. This means that it will have a high metabolism until the energy stores are filled again, often taking up to 48 hours for a hard workout. This is known as Excessive Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption, or EPOC.
Circuit training is a great way to build strength and endurance in stabilizing muscles. Areas like the shoulders, upper back and the core muscles (abdominals, obliques, low back erectors, hip stabilizers and rotators) are very important for athletic performance and joint health. Targeting these muscle groups using circuit training allows you to build an amazing amount of endurance and strength for optimal performance. An example would be using three shoulder exercises (front raise, side raise, bent over raise) and performing them 10 repetitions each with no rest time in between. That is a total of 30 reps. Now because so many reps are being performed the sets will be cut down to only 1 or 2 and the weight will be very light, but you are still getting in a good amount of work.
Circuit training is also a great way to cut down on your workout time. By pairing exercises that target antagonistic muscles, you can work much faster while still giving muscle groups enough rest for high performance. For example you can pair a chest exercise with a hamstring exercise. After performing your chest exercise, you would go immediately to your hamstring exercise. This allows your chest to recover while you are working your hamstrings. The best part is, now the muscle gets enough recovery for optimal strength, but you are still working your cardiovascular system because your blood is pumping to a different area of the body for work. This almost makes traditional cardio obsolete. You are basically combining anaerobic, aerobic and strength training all into one quick workout. Talk about fat burning bliss!
Another good way to use circuit training is by pairing a dynamic mobility exercise, a low rep strength exercise, and a plyometric or explosive. This will train the muscle group to contract fast and forcefully. For example a good circuit is a deep bodyweight squat (x10), a front squat (x6), and a high box jump (x3). This develops the nervous system and trains these muscles to produce a high level of power during activities like sprinting, jumping and changing direction. Take note all you athletes out there!
Circuit training is so versatile, there are literally unlimited combination of exercises that you can pick. Use these basic rules to pairing exercises into a circuit for specific goals:
1. Pair upper body and lower body exercises when targeting fat loss or sport performance.
2. Pair different exercises targeting the same body part to build endurance.
3. Pair antagonist muscles (chest-back, biceps-triceps, quads-hamstrings) for muscular and joint strength.
4. Pair a low rep strength exercise with a plyometric exercise for explosive power (i.e. squat with a box jump)