“”What is circuit training?”
Circuit training is a mixture of exercises performed for time or repetitions one after the other until they are
What is Circuit Training?
completed. These are done with minimal or no rest between exercises.
“What is circuit training good for?”
Well you can take your pick. Weight loss, strength development, muscle gain, increase speed and agility or developing lean muscle tone.
Circuit training is not for the elderly and ladies who go to curves.
If i was to give you a circuit training program that look like this
- 20m Bear Crawl
- Split Jump Lunges (10 each side)
- Close Grip Push Ups (25)
- Explosive Squats (25)
- Kettlebell Swings (30)
And i told you to do this with out rest in-between exercises and 60sec rest between sets and to complete the circuit 3 – 5 times, would this be a workout you would see being done at Curves?
Hell no!
But do you know what? Thats a circuit training program and you would do if you where looking to develop muscle tone and lose a few kilos. Awesome right?
Check out this killer circuit training workout. Not for the faint hearted.
“Are you limited to reps, sets and exercises?”
No. There is nothing stopping you from from making 1 circuit with 20 exercises. Obviously you would be careful of how many sets you would make it but there is no reason why you can’t do this.
Circuit training is great for a full body workout and you can set your circuit up to work upper body then lower body and repeat that all the way through. Why not do upper then lower then abs?
See how versatile a circuit training session can be?
“Now whats the benefits of circuit training over cardio and weight training?”
Ok so HIIT session burns belly fat long after you have finished your workout. For you who don’t know what HIIT is it stands for High Intensity Interval Training. So that means you perform an exercise at a high intensity then you rest then you repeat it.
Check out Burn Belly Fat with HIIT. This explains HIIT workouts in more detail
Circuit training is the exact same thing. You perform your exercises one after the other as fast as you can at a high intensity then you rest. Rest period should be 60 – 90 seconds.
To make things a little clearer. Imagine the body of an athletic sprinter? What do they look like? ripped to shreds right? Plenty of muscles right? Now what does a marathon runner look like? Lean? Yes, muscular? NO WAY! The body of your dreams? Well I’m not here to tell you what you want.
So as you can see circuit training is something that shouldn’t be over looked.
You don’t need to be a member of a gym or own fancy gym equipment to give yourself a circuit training workout.
If you scroll up above this post you will see a tab that says Circuit Training Exercises. Now when you hover your mouse over that tab you’ll see a drop down of around 20 circuit training exercises that you can do at home or in the park.
I wrote a post on the top 20 circuit training exercises you can check out here.
Each exercise comes with a short YouTube clip showing you exactly how to do the exercise properly.
There are some circuit training exercise there that you will need a kettlebell for but plenty are just bodyweight. Now if you can get yourself a kettlebell, which i highly recommend then your circuit training options will multiply 10 fold! Kettlebells are extremely versatile and increase the HIIT dimension.
So don’t ever think that circuit training is just for the elderly and people who make a terrible decisions and join Curves.
Grab a friend, check out the circuit training exercises above and start designing the body of your dreams.
To circuit training,
James Ramage
P.S – Keep your eyes peeled for my upcoming kettlebell series. These workouts will revolutionise your training.
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