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.

Go to dopamineo.com if you're still interested in the Bands. Use my code POWERANDMIGHT to get a cool discount on your  order.

Free Workouts For Everyone

There's the old lyric "The best things in life are free" which has a lot of meaning especially when it pertains to life but in this case, we're going the fitness route. Believe it or not, you can find some of the very best workouts on the planet without spending a single penny and it's from one of the best resources on the internet. Sure there are great courses out there you can snatch up (not one where an 86 page book costs you $150 to learn how to jump rope) and these courses are the pinnacle like the Grind Style Calisthenics Series, Movement 20XX and others. 

Saving money is always a good thing whenever you can do it but sometimes you don't always know where to look to find that area in fitness where you can find a shit ton of workouts and exercise programs to suit your goals. This is where Darebee comes in. I've written about this site before and it bares repeating, it truly is at the top of the list of the best free resources for training. It's a series of mainly Circuit workouts ranging from complete beginner to elite athlete level and it just keeps growing. Consists of about 95% bodyweight style training and the rest has you using equipment like light kettlebells, sandbags, jump ropes and a pull-up bar depending on where you find them. 

Most of the exercises are about as basic as you can get but each workout you find can either be the easiest one ever or the hardest you've ever been put through. They can be tough as hell but you have options to modify the workouts or make them the best ones for you. I've done workouts that lasted a few minutes to nearly an hour long without a break and I'm telling you, they'll kick your ass. The site however goes beyond the workouts which already has over 2000 to choose from; there are specific collections that target certain groups of people that are themed such as Superheroes, Military, MMA, Anime, Video Games, Street Workouts, Jumping Rope and many more. There are sections that are based on scientific analaysis on breathing, running, water intake, recovery, when to go hard and a bunch more. There's even stuff on diet you can use and research on.

Darebee is a great starting point for those who want to get into fitness or haven't done it in a while. You can spend the rest of your life doing these workouts but they can also be a great add on to courses you can afford to grab. I would at times use small circuits from this place with my Suspension Training or Isometric Training. I would do them on off days as part of recovery and other times I'll go hard and time myself to see how I do without resting (or use the rest period to mark off a set and jump into the next one). I'll even make up a circuit of my own as inspiration like this one below...

10 Rounds Of The Following

5 Hindu Squats

20 Punches (In A Horse Stance)

5 Hindu Squats

5 Push-ups

20 Step-Ups

5 Push-ups

50 Standing Punches

Finished this in 23:33 totaling 100 Hindu Squats, 200 Punches In Horse Stance, 100 Push-ups, 200 Step-Ups & 500 Standing Punches. Great for conditioning. 

I love doing 10 Round Circuits because that gives a real rounded total. Darebee workouts mostly have you going up to 7 rounds which is still a great level to achieve especially if you're doing some really hard ones, I just prefer 10. Some workouts are more HIIT based which has you doing an exercises for x amount of seconds each until a time limit is reached and you repeat it for as many rounds as the workout calls for. 

I believe although it's a free resource of training, it encourages you to branch out for more to help guide you into another realm of experiences in your fitness journey. Some folks there use these workouts as add ons for when they go to the gym or as off day workouts, they are used as supplement training for athletes in high school and college, they have been used in classes in P.E, Sports Conditioning, rehab and many other ways. The only real pay you make with this site is the option to donate so they can keep it running or buy their workouts in PDF or Book form such as the Darebee Volume Series which each has over 100 Workouts to choose from. You can print out and make a book for yourself or set up folders in your hard drive that consists of all the workouts you want. I use to do that and if your internet is out, they're right there in your laptop, phone or tablet. 

The only investment here is your time and energy, it is a great option if you truly want to save your money for other stuff in your life. Are they the end-all-be-all, of course not, there are other things you should use if you want to advance in your training but that's up to you. You can still have the best workouts of your life using nothing but your bodyweight. Hell during a 6 week sprint training phase a few years ago, I would use some of the workouts in addition to the sprints, in that time frame, I dropped over 15 pounds and lowered my blood pressure by 32 points in both top and bottom numbers. These workouts can be life-saving and can get you fit in record time. Some of the best training I've ever done was because of Darebee Circuits. I've done them in hotel rooms, the park, in my den, out in the garage and at the lake. You can do many of them anywhere at anytime. 

You have options out there that won't cost you anything and these are awesome for when you really need to save money for special trips, paying off bills, when food is more important than a course and needing new clothes or furniture. We all can use a little help from time to time and these are part of that to help out a fellow human being. 

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