Wellness Blog

Everyone would like to make their workouts more productive and efficient. Right? You may or may not have heard the term circuit training before, but it is the key to maximizing the time you have in the gym, especially if that time is limited. Lets start with a basic description of circuit training. The idea is to move from exercise to exercise with minimal rest in-between to keep your heart rate and metabolism elevated for the duration of the workout. This will maximize your caloric expenditure. Preferably the exerciser begins the next exercise immediately without any rest, but if you must rest, make it short and keep moving during that time by walking around. If you’re bold enough, pump your arms as well.

There are many ways that you can organize a circuit training workout. Circuit training is unique in that the exerciser is able to train muscular strength and cardiovascular endurance simultaneously. These workouts can include resistance exercises only, or a combination of cardiovascular and resistance exercises. It is important that exercises performed consecutively focus on different muscle groups as local fatigue will occur. For instance, when doing a bench press, the chest, shoulders and triceps are fatigued and thus this exercise should be followed by something like squats, which work the quads and glutes. This gives the muscles exercised in the previous exercise time to recover before moving on to other exercises that might utilize them. A circuit workout can be made up of a set number of predetermined exercises performed multiple times in order, or it can be more randomized by just doing a different exercise every time. Generally I think it is more effective and focused to have a set group of about four to six exercises, that are performed possibly three times each, in order.

Here’s a sample circuit workout (to be performed ONLY after a proper warm up):

Leg Press

Push-ups

Plank Hold

Pull-ups

Overhead Press

3 min run on treadmill

This circuit should be completed two to three times. The number of repetitions for each exercise may vary. Make sure that you are challenging yourself and pushing your limits, as that’s what matters most.

The benefits of circuit workouts are many, but mainly they save you time because you don’t waste any time resting and you’ll burn more calories when you keep your heart rate elevated throughout the entire workout.  The exercises are very efficient because you can strength train every major muscle group and still get a great cardiovascular training stimulus in one 30-45 minute workout. Plus it keeps your mind from wandering off since you’re moving quickly and the workout goes by much faster. Give it a try!

Live Well,

Marc