CIRCUIT TRAINING...YES OR NO?

First of all what is circuit training and what is its purpose? Is it great for weight loss? Burning calories? Building muscle? Or maybe just a way to switch up your training? How about to increase your fitness levels?

The answer is it depends. It depends on many different factors. There are so many ways that circuit training can be done. For example, a circuit could be body weight only or include one or many pieces of gym equipment.

The first question you must ask yourself is why am I doing circuit training? If you are going to implement this into your routine, you need to know what you want to get out of it. Your likely reason is one or more of the following:

• Weight loss

• To burn lots of calories

• Improve your fitness levels

• Boredom with your current gym program

• Because it is popular

• Because your friends or family members do it

In reality circuit training can be both beneficial and detrimental to your fitness goals and your body. This style of exercise does indeed burn calories and can help you to lose weight if it is combined with good quality nutrition. A less known fact is that it can also help you to build muscle.

When doing circuit training, the session needs to be specific for your goals and what you want to gain from it. The length of the circuit, the exercises chosen, and the order that you do them in matters greatly.

A professional athlete can benefit from circuit training, but again, it has to be specific. Why? Because depending on the athlete, the exercises chosen usually mimics their sport or activity.

So what are some of the pros of circuit training? Lets see:

• Introduces your body and muscles to a different stimulus

• Builds mental fortitude

• Can increase your muscular endurance

• Can improve more than one of the energy systems in the body

• Can increase your metabolic rate

• Burns calories up to 72 hours after training

• Can aid weight loss

• Can help to burn body fat

• Mixes up mundane gym routines

• Can be done anywhere, depending on if you use equipment or not

• Is a fun way to train with a friend, partner or even your kids

• Can be used as a way to build and tone muscle

• Can be great for sports or an athlete if the exercises mimic the activity

Now let’s look at some of the cons:

• With poor exercise technique, you are building bad movement patterns on one or many of the exercises

• Can build a shaky exercise foundation

• Is an advanced method of exercise not suitable for many people, especially beginners

• Could leave you susceptible to injury

• Can build compensatory strength

• The circuit is usually random and not specific enough for your goals

• The exercises could be in the wrong order

• The longer the circuit, the more likely your exercise techniques diminish as you get more tired

• The longer the circuit, the harder it is to remember all of the exercises in sequence

• If you are doing a circuit based class, not everyone will have the same abilities, experience, fitness levels or goals. This means that it could be good for some, bad for others

• To get the most out of it, you need to have some understanding of exercise science

• The older you get the harder it becomes

So should you include circuits in your fitness training or not? The answer is yes but at the right time. Wait until you can do the fundamental body weight and free weight exercises with perfect form. This applies especially with circuit type classes.

Here are my tips to get the best out of them on your own:

• Decide what you want to get out of them

• Only pick exercises that you can do with perfect form

• Keep it simple and use the right exercises for the right job

• Pick 4 exercises that can flow from one to the next, or alternate between upper body and lower body. This will help to keep your form on each exercise as you get tired and is easier to remember

• Put your best effort into each round

• Start with a lower number of rounds and increase them slowly over a period of time as your conditioning improves

• Only use weights that you can handle for the reps or length of time allocated

• Always pay close attention to your technique

• If you are using the same piece of kit for the entire circuit, pick a weight that you can do on your weakest exercise

• If you play a sport or are an athlete, make the exercises specific and transferable to your sport

• Do them sparingly

• Seek advice from a fitness professional as to what type of circuits are best for your goals

If you follow my tips above, circuit training can in fact help you achieve your goals when used properly at the right time. However, if you are not smart about it, they can also easily cause more harm than good.