Circuit Training & The Benefits That Come With It

Circuit Playouts go beyond just moving from one exercise to the other and moving as quickly as possible. The ability to train the body through different tempos and form is a top quality to acquire but at the same time, it's critically important to be aware of breathing and the speed to push through with the best intentions. It challenges your conditioning but it also challenges how you breathe and move throughout a single circuit to multiple rounds.

I have mostly done circuits in the 6-9 range of exercises and do my best to get in 5-10 rounds depending on my mood, the shape i'm in at the time and the difficulty the exercises are. If you're an athlete training for a sport say like MMA, Wrestling, Football, Hockey; you want to be able to move as quickly as possible with limited rest periods between circuits and be able to withstand even great stress. What this teaches is that if you can push through a tough circuit multiple times with very little rest, you can handle extremely well in a competitive environment. However, not all of us can have that luxury because for the average person, pushing that hard can lead to many physical problems and your oxygen levels become more depleted than accustomed to over time.

I believe circuit training can be very beneficial but for the sake of health purposes and a goal to build up strength & endurance over time, its important to focus on the 3 main factors to take on high levels of conditioning; breath control, muscular control (solid form) & tempo. If you move too fast too quickly, your body will shut down in a negative way and you'll need more time to recover, if you move too slow or the playout isn't quite right or not enough you won't make the progress you want. It's like the Goldilocks & The Three Bears concept, there's too much, not enough and there's that one that fits you perfectly. This is where experimentation and focus on how your body operates and is leveled to a particular easy or advanced playout.

Everyone is different so build up to what works best for you and adjust according to your level. On some days it's good to back off and do lesser rounds but on your energetic days you can go for as many as 10-20 rounds if you wish. I also believe in how your energy plays out in this type of training. Pushing to the absolute limit can really deplete your energy levels and you won't be boosting hormones at a great rate; matter of fact your hormones and testosterone levels can drop if you do too much. When your energy levels are leveled to where you can be energized during and after a circuit playout can have a great deal of benefits when done correctly. Circuits can be a powerful way to surge growth hormone, testosterone, strength endurance & energetic properties that lead to greater recovery and accumulate amazing muscle definition & natural muscle mass. It wouldn't matter if its weight lifting, bodyweight, cables or whatever; if you can use the energy to your advantage and use the right form of leverage to where you can be as strong going in as you are coming out of it you're still having a great deal of power throughout your circuit training.

Bodyweight circuits are the best in my opinion because not only can you do them practically anywhere but you learn the sensitivity at a greater rate of your body moves freely than by moving weights because with weights eventually you're moving with the weight instead of moving freely on your own. Be simplistic using pushing, squatting, ab play and some grip to get the most out of your training. You can supplement other exercises but stay with the fundamentals and you'll never go wrong.

Burning Fat With Sprints

 
    Trying to lose weight, burn fat, build muscle and all that stuff yet most would tell you to do an hour of cardio and weights. Hate to break it to you but it always happen that way, however; you can get things done in a far shorter amount of time and that's through High Intensity Training (HIT). We've all heard this before but does it really work? Hell yes it does but a lot believe you need to do it everyday. There's no way in hell you can go that hard everyday without either blacking out, burning out or just plain die from exhaustion. At best 2-3x a week should be the maximum, for beginners once a week is enough.

 
    Sprint Training is the focal point to HIT because it's a far shorter workout, you're resting more than training. Your body is filled with powerful cells and has a very strong sense of recovery. Although different people recover differently the principle still applies. Now when some mention sprints they think running either or up a hill or flight of stairs; it's not always running something it could be other things like skipping rope, battling ropes, moving like a wild animal; it's moving as fast as you possibly can for a short burst. Thirty seconds should be the peak. At first only a few seconds is all you can do which is fine it's a start. In my personal training when I do sprints, most of the time 30 seconds is the whole workout not one set at a time. When you go hard at a fast pace, you're opening the fast twitch muscle fibers that unlocks every muscle in your body that's firing.

 
    There's just no way your body can move fast without every muscle firing because if you did it in isolation and only working a specific set of muscles those muscles would be far drained and you'll be looking like a goofball. Whether it's running, swimming, battling ropes or whatever, most likely your whole body comes into play because it needs to work in unison. Hitting the body that hard produces natural growth hormone which creates a level of burning fat, building muscle and releasing more cells to the bloodstream. Think about all those dumb lethal injections people do to stimulate growth hormone when in reality you can produce it naturally and have it be 10x more than the latest pill or needle in your arm or wherever. Unless your hormones are so low that exercise wise it won't come no matter what you do than see a doctor about it but generally your body is meant to naturally grow from within, it's a beautiful piece of work.

 
    Think of it like this, who in the hell has a lot of time these days to get in awesome shape? You work like a madman, got a family to feed and you think an hour and a half everyday is going to get you somewhere? So why not have shorter workouts that produce far more than standard cardio. It's building your body without the hassle. Even if you spent a few short minutes a day doing a crazy style of Yoga can help you and progress even by the smallest fraction. On your "days off"; stretch, breathe deeply and recover. There are days where you hit hard one day and go a 180 the next or you go hard and the next day you do about half or a third of the previous day. Listen to your body and get a feel of how you recover, your level of energy and the intensity you bring yourself. Don't always listen to some shmuck that ghost writes, do what's best for you. Shorter bursts produce better results in my opinion but it's also just as important to recover and let your body repair itself. Practice it and you'll start to see changes you never knew was possible.

 
Have a great weekend everyone. Be Awesome.

The Most Natural Steroid

             It doesn't take injections to build a healthy and strong body. A lot of people feel that if you’re in shape you look beautiful and have big muscles and can do anything. Unfortunately that’s not always the case. Sure there are some kick ass looking people out there but that doesn't always mean they’re in great shape from within. What most don’t realize is that how you train the body from within puts a whole new emphasis on what comes out as you see. Some athletes take steroids to amp up their game and most end up looking like a cartoon character than a healthy human being. There are more natural ways to gain lean healthy body mass and still have great strength both inside and outside.

            When it comes to growth hormone, it’s that component that gives us natural mass and great beautiful skin that also keeps our metabolism high which means more fat burning and more natural muscle. When our growth hormones are compromised especially as we age it becomes even more important because if we just let things go and be a past thing and believe we can’t have a beautiful and lithe natural muscular body then our bodies will become frail and we’ll lose bone density and become old and withering. To prevent this, it’s been said that intense training at a short amount of time helps keep the metabolism high and the fat loss more stable.

            Sprint training is one of the fastest fat burning methods that have ever been done. When you do sprints right and you can do them on a track, a hill or maybe you can sprint in place you don’t last very long, maybe no more than 30 seconds at a your best clip. You can do this up to no more than 2-3x a week. The reason why you don’t need to do them everyday is because they jack up your system so high that you have no choice but to rest and recover. Believe it or not when you sprint, the majority of your workout is resting. Build up and if you’re ballsy enough for 1 day a week, do one sprint at a very long distance say a maximum of 200 yards. This type of training alone can increase your growth hormone by more than 500%, that’s 10-15x more than the latest injections or artificial steroids.

            A very important factor to remember is that to get the best out of building lean body mass and healthy muscle is to do plenty of leg training. Our legs are the very foundation to how our bodies generate the sexual energy in our system. Think about it, our lower body has more than half the strongest parts in the human body. I’m not saying you should neglect your upper body but yet I've seen more than my fair share of men and women who have a great upper body but have flamingo legs. Paint them pink and people will mistake them for a freaking bird lol. Train the legs often and have fun with them. Some of the strongest legs on a human come from Ballet, try it sometime, it’s not as easy as it looks. Animal training has plenty of leg work like Frog Jumps, Duck Walks, Bear Crawls, Kangaroo, Rabbit and others. Squats are very powerful in building muscular strength and vitality as well as virility. Great leg training increases sex drive, incredible energy and mighty endurance to keep going in what you love to do.

            Build strong and powerful legs and you’ll see how far you get in your endeavors. For men you can build natural testosterone and have muscular and mighty thorough bread legs, for women, you can have those firm, tight and enduring legs that will make men’s heads turn. Strength & Vitality at it’s best.