Is Circuit Training The Best For Strength & Conditioning???

 It’s one thing to focus on one exercise for a number of sets and reps, it’s another to do one exercise and move onto another and another until you’ve done your station to station of exercises. Circuit Training has been around a while and it has its pros and cons like anything else, but it holds something different compared to other methods or exercise schemes.

In weight training, you can go from barbells to dumbbells and machines in a span of a few minutes per round, with bodyweight you can switch from push-ups to squats, pull-ups, dips and lunges almost in the blink of an eye. You can even do it with animal movements or band work. It’s a matter of what your goals are and what you want to work with.

The first time I can remember attempting to do a circuit, I was 19 years old in a Gold’s Gym in Santa Cruz, CA and I was doing Bench, Deads, Leg Press, Pull Downs and something else, I think a crunch machine or something. I had no clue what the hell I was doing and I was doing weights consistently since I was a sophmore in high school back then but I never did anything like that until that point. In a nutshell, it was a very bad idea and I blame myself for it. I ended up so overwhelmed and my condition was shit to the point where I became so hyperventilated that I went into a stall in the restroom and nearly blacked out. I wasn’t completely aware of what was happening to me but I knew something was wrong and just let my body calm itself down. Once it did, I got the hell out of there and went back home which was only a 10-12 minute walk.

I didn’t attempt that kind of thing again for another year or year and a half until I was experimenting with bodyweight exercises after an accident I had. Sometimes, it’s hard to take those walls down and see what the possibilities are. Over the years, I tried many things and didn’t have a consistent routine which in most cases was never my thing anyway. I found a website that does bodyweight circuits and shows what can be good for beginners or vets in the game and I gave it a shot. I was in shape to do circuits again by 2012 or so and I loved the themes from this website. It’s called Darebee. Completely free with workouts, nutrition plans, programs and all sorts of stuff.

The superhero themes were the most fun to do and modified some of the exercises to what I knew from doing Combat Conditioning and other forms of bodyweight training to help me stay interested. One of my favorite workouts to play around with was a Batman Themed Workout which you can see below….

Modified exercises to suit me and at one point was able to do 10 Rounds in 45 minutes. One of the most brutal workouts I had done. That’s the beauty of Circuit Training, it gives you opportunities to keep momentum going doing one exercise after another instead of focusing on just one for an extended period of time. It’s a great test for your Conditioning & Strength-Endurance. In my opinion, Bodyweight is the very best for this.

So, for a few years now since I became a fanatic with the Dopamineo Bands, I took the type of circuit training I did from Darebee and molded it to Circuits with the Band and began doing hundreds to over 1000 total reps in various workouts focusing on exercises that work well and can switch from one to another without stopping. This amplified my cardio to such a degree that when it became consistent, I wasn’t getting tired doing them, they just made me feel stronger and helped lean me out more.

Below you can get an idea of what I mean….

Are circuits truly the best method for conditioning and strength building? The truth is a little more complex than that LOL. In reality, it all depends on the goals you have and there’s no one way to go about it. Now, if you’re into weight training and want to do circuits, I would keep the equipment to a minimum and it’s not always advisable to do this kind of training at the gym because of the unpredictability of people coming in and wanting to those machines and/or free weights. If you had a home gym set up, that’s the perfect way to do this and you can go from station to station without interruptions or having people wait on you.

If you want to see what a circuit where it combines heavy lifting and cardio style exercises in the same sequence, my friend, the late Bud Jeffries works a heavy partial squat, dumbbell swings and rolling. Although it’s more like a tr-set but you can make it a circuit style and the idea is to keep moving and testing your strength under fatigue. One of the things that made him one of the most conditioned big men of this generation. This is one idea, another would be doing a kettlebell style where you can combine Presses, Pulls, Squats, Cleans and even Push-ups if you’d like.

You can do circuits everyday if you’d like if that’s your goal but I recommend you do some hard circuits one day, lighter ones another and pace yourself. If you’re new to it, a couple times a week for a few weeks and bump it up to 3x a week is more than enough for most people. For a period this year with the Bands, I was doing a minimum of 500 total reps almost daily doing circuits, deck of card workouts and HIIT style from January to April and accumulated more than 60,000 total reps with the Bands. It’s not for everybody and I don’t recommend you do that, sort out what you would like to accomplish in your own journey.

One of the recent circuits I did was with bodyweight exercises doing Hindu Push-Ups, Hindu Squats, a Jumping Jack variation, V-Ups, Tables & Mountain Climbers. Would practice deep breathing in between sets or circuits. Did 10 Rounds which came out to 800 Total Reps. Sweated like a waterfall and felt great afterwards. Fitness can be so much fun when you set your mind to it.

If you’re not a fan of circuits, that’s ok, there’s plenty of other options and if you would rather focus on one exercise at a time for a set and rep scheme, go for it. Learn from my mistake the first time I tried a circuit. Get in condition first or have a better pace of what you use and the type of reps and rounds you do. I don’t want anyone going through what I did or worse, it’s not fun and it can come back to haunt you if you’re not careful. That’s one of the downsides to doing this is not learning what could go wrong when you’re not ready yet.

Do things that give you the tools to continue your journey with vitality and excitement. Some days may be lousier than others but see it as an opportunity to create something that will blossom later. Be amazingly awesome and keep killing it.

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