7 Best Circuit Training Workouts

Circuit training workouts have gotten increasingly popular as a technique to burn fat, improve cardio, and increase muscle mass.

But do they really do all that? I hate to provide the reply “it depends”, but there isn’t any easy one to provide. How effective your circuit training is relies on the way it’s programmed and what your goals are.

For instance, you’ll be able to’t just throw a bunch of random cardio exercises together and expect to get results. However, with just a bit little bit of planning, you’ll be able to significantly improve the standard of your workout routine while hitting your training goals.

Obviously, when you’re circuit training you wish to fall into the latter category and get essentially the most out of your routine. To assist, I’ve created 7 different circuit training workouts and included all of the knowledge you would like so you’ll be able to even make your personal.

Table of Contents:

• What Is Circuit Training?
• 7 Best Circuit Training Workouts
• Circuit Training Workout Frequency
• Advantages & Drawbacks of Circuit Training
• Circuit Training Guidelines
• Programming Suggestions For Your Circuit Workouts

What Is Circuit Training?

Circuit training is a technique of resistance training that strings several exercises along with minimal rest in between. Rest can vary greatly from no rest period to 30 seconds, as much as 1 minute, depending in your purpose for performing circuit training.

While it’s traditionally utilized in boot camp style settings or “weight reduction” circuit training, the advantages are actually also evident within the strength training world.

7 Best Circuit Training Workout Programs

Let’s get right into it! First, I will feature 7 different circuit training programs. Afterward, stay tuned, as I’ll go over programming suggestions, the essential advantages (and drawbacks) of circuit training, and another great information it’s essential to pay attention to before performing circuits.

1) Landmine Workout 1:

Landmines are great if you’re in a bind and wish to knock out an efficient workout fast. That is an awesome workout that gets back to the training basics. 4 fundamental movements hit all of your muscle groups, meaning you will construct muscle in a time-effective manner.

For this routine, perform 3-5 rounds of the exercises listed above, with 6-10 reps per exercise. Rest for 0:30-1:00 between rounds, adjusting the remainder time based in your needs and fitness level.

2) Landmine Circuit Workout 2:

This landmine workout goes to contain more cardio exercises for a more intense workout.

For this routine, perform 1-3 rounds of 10 reps for every exercise with minimal rest. Adjust the weights and intensity based in your fitness level and goals.

3) Strength Workout 1:

This workout is quick and to the purpose for somebody who either has limited time or wants to modify things up.

For this routine, follow a rep scheme of three rounds and 6-8 reps per exercise. Rest for 1:00 between exercises to permit for recovery. Adjust the weights and intensity based in your fitness level and goals.

Notice I put front squat and deadlift in parenthesis. This implies you can use the front squat rather than the back squat in a few of your workouts, and the standard deadlift rather than the Romanian deadlift.

4) Strength Workout 2:

Using just two supersets and one tri-set, this style works great for improving your strength.

For this strength workout, perform 3 to five circuits, with 4 to six reps per exercise. Take 1:00 rest between rounds. Arrange each recent pair of exercises before starting the subsequent circuit.

Start with Circuit 1, performing one round of Deadlifts and Bench Press. Then move on to Circuit 2, performing one round of Back Squats and Overhead Squats. Finally, proceed to Circuit 3, performing one round of Chin-Ups, Dips, and Bent-Over Rows.

Repeat this sequence 3 to five times, adjusting the weights and intensity based in your fitness level and goals.

5) Conditioning Circuit Workout:

This circuit training workout is ideal to your cardio or conditioning day. Based on full-body movements for an intense conditioning experience, this workout is great for burning fat to enhance a strength or hypertrophy workout.

For this workout, you’ll be able to perform 1 to five circuits. Each circuit includes the exercises listed above, with the respective distance, duration, or reps indicated. Rest for 0:30 between rounds. Adjust the weights and intensity based in your fitness level and goals.

6) Cable Circuit Training:

I like doing this circuit following upper body training days because it includes much more upper body exercise that function an awesome workout finisher. It’s easy and effective.

For this workout, you’ll be able to perform 1-3 circuits. Inside each circuit, perform 8-12 reps of every exercise. Rest for 15 seconds between exercises and 30 seconds between circuit rounds. Adjust the weights and intensity based in your fitness level and goals.

7) Body Weight Circuit Workout:

For those who’re stuck, here’s a workout using just your body weight. You may notice that this has 8 exercises, which is advantageous as because you’re only using body weight, you will not be hopping from one piece of kit to a different.

For this workout, aim for an RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) of 8 with each exercise. You possibly can adjust the variety of circuits performed based in your preference and fitness level.

Remember, you’ll be able to go to failure on the last set if you wish to push yourself further. Customize the repetitions, sets, and intensity based in your individual goals and capabilities.

How Often Should You Do Circuit Training Workouts?

There isn’t any right frequency for doing circuits. It could be all some people ever do, while it’s only saved for special circumstances for others. Subsequently, I can not inform you exactly how persistently it’s essential to run a circuit per week.

Nonetheless, listed here are a few pieces of recommendation:

1. You would run a smaller circuit every session for isolation exercises.
2. For conditioning, you’ll be able to run the conditioning circuit once every week.

5 Advantages Of Circuit Training

The common strength athlete misunderstands circuit training, pondering that lifting lighter weights is useless. In contrast, some bodybuilders rely solely on circuit training and supersets to succeed in their goals.

Remember, nearly every form of training has benefits in the proper situation. Listed below are a number of the advantages of circuit training when your routine is programmed well.

1. Time Efficient:

Much like high intensity interval training, probably essentially the most helpful quality of circuit training is that it will probably be a particularly time-efficient technique to train. As an alternative of taking your standard two minutes of rest between sets of an exercise, with circuit training, you chop that all the way down to 30 seconds.

Do a bit math, and you may see your total training time will be cut by 75%! That only applies when you use circuit training to your entire workout routine, but you get the purpose.

This makes it ideal for individuals who have “no time” to go to the gym. For those who do not have “an hour” to spend on the gym, what about 20 minutes?

2. Adds More Volume:

No matter what your ultimate goal is, circuit training will be used so as to add volume to any session. For instance, a standard practice by strength athletes is to perform their normal strength training exercises with a conventional rep scheme, i.e., 4×4.

Once those are done, they’ll then finish their session using smaller accessory movements and isolation exercises. That is an ideal method for anyone with muscle hypertrophy goals.

3. Improves Cardiovascular Health:

If desired, circuit training will be structured to be quite intense and resemble cardio exercise. Even if you’re just attempting to cut some day without work your total workout, getting the identical amount of labor done in less time goes to affect your cardiovascular health in a superb way.

The consequences that circuit training has on cardio can vary depending on what exercises you employ. Nonetheless, studies do show that circuit training can have a positive effect in your cardiovascular health¹. It could either improve your cardiovascular health or no less than maintain it.

One study compared the consequences of circuit training with heavy weights vs. a conventional program. It showed that measurements corresponding to bar velocity and strength were similar, however the effect of cardio was substantially greater².

It must be noted that the chosen exercises were questionable and do not reflect real-world application (bench press, leg extensions, ankle extensions), nevertheless it continues to be something to think about. Even when cardio is not your sole goal, by limiting your rest breaks you are going to be performing cardio circuit training exercises.

4. Improves VO2max:

In endurance sports, VO2 max is the first indicator of potential success. While it is frequently related to cardio exercises, VO2 max can also be required for the power to perform any stressful work. That is why many point to it as being the most effective indicator of overall fitness.

VO2 max is a physiological variable that measures your efficiency at utilizing oxygen. Once you take a breath and attract air, a better VO2 max means that you can utilize more oxygen to get more work done at the identical intensity.

When circuit training includes high-intensity movements and multiple muscle groups, studies show that it will probably significantly affect VO2 max. If that is your goal, be certain to maintain your recovery period to 30 seconds.

5. Improves Body Composition:

Circuit training might give you the chance to assist you to burn fat and improve body composition. In theory, doing more work in the identical period of time while following a high intensity circuit training formula means burning more calories, but that only applies when you actually do more work.

For instance, by doing the identical exercises with the identical rep scheme in a circuit workout style, you are just shortening your workout time without increasing the workload. 

For those who use the proper exercises and loading schemes as a substitute, the increased intensity of circuit training can assist you to burn fat.

What Are the Drawbacks of Circuit Training?

Now let’s talk concerning the not-so-beneficial attributes of circuit training. These will be either misunderstandings or actual drawbacks of circuit training, but either way, it’s good to find out about them.

1. Circuit Training Is not Higher For Strength Or Constructing Muscle Mass.

Circuit training is usually touted to be good for improving muscular strength or constructing muscle mass. While it will probably do that, it does not imply that it’s superior to a conventional workout split in actual improvements.

For those who herald the time aspect, you can possibly say it’s “higher,” but that is assuming it provides the identical advantages. There is no reason it could produce higher results, and if anything, it might produce inferior results.

I’m not saying circuit training doesn’t work! But when time just isn’t a problem, circuit training doesn’t offer any advantages when it comes to greater strength or muscle growth.

2. Most Circuit Training Workouts Require Multiple Pieces Of Equipment.

Depending on what variety of circuit training you wish to do, circuit training can require multiple pieces of kit. This is very true when you’re using machines.

Oftentimes, gyms may have a particular “circuit training section,” which has a wide range of machines that you simply are speculated to work through in a particular order. They do that to maintain the flow of traffic regular.

Give it some thought: For those who had 3 trainees doing circuit training but following no specific order, they’re either going to be using a ton of kit or interfering with one another. Some gyms offer circuit training classes as well to administer this coordination and exercise instruction.

Because take note, when you aren’t in a position to move through your exercises efficiently or are stuck waiting for equipment, it’s probably not going to save lots of you much time.

4 Programming Suggestions For Optimizing Your Circuit Training

I’d wish to over some general guidelines and specific scenarios so you’ll be able to optimize your circuit for an ideal workout. Following these rules, you will even give you the chance to create your personal routines!

1. When You Need To Cut Down Workout Time:

For those who are in a situation where it’s essential to do circuit training to chop down the entire workout time, your essential priority is optimizing the training load for every muscle group. To do that, you could order the exercises in a way that they do not interfere with each other.

Exercise programs will be designed with different splits, or the way in which you order your exercises. The 2 essential splits ideal for this are an upper-lower split and a push-pull split.

Here’s a transient overview of various splits with circuit training.

• Upper/Lower Split: This implies you will likely be doing pushing exercises and pulling exercises on the identical day, i.e., chest and back. Subsequently, you’ll alternate between these:
  – Bench Press –> Pull Ups –> Overhead Press—> Bent Over Row
  – Back Squat–> Romanian Deadlift –> Leg Press –> Hip Thrust
• Push/Pull Split: This leaves you doing an assortment of upper body and lower body exercise on the identical day. Alternate through them:
  – Squat–>Bench Press –> Lunge –> Overhead Press
  – Deadlift–>Pull Ups –> Romanian Deadlift –> Bent Over Row

Nonetheless, when you can, I’d advise you to coach upper-body pushing exercises with lower-body pulling exercises and vice versa. This provides the least interference and can optimize recovery time. Further, this is comparable to how you’ll perform a full-body workout.

For recovery time, use the maximal amount you’ll be able to while still having the ability to get in your complete workout.

2. Using Circuit Training For More Volume:

For those who are using circuit training for volume, you must still attempt to alter the movements, so that they don’t interfere with one another if possible. At the identical time, it is not going to be as essential as these are generally smaller exercises.

Once you do that, I strongly recommend you employ the cable machine. You possibly can stay in a single location and perform dozens and dozens of exercises like face pulls and hammer curls.

And sometimes I throw in circuit training like this after performing 3-4 big compound exercises. Don’t be concerned a lot concerning the recovery time here.

3. You are Performing At Home Circuit Training:

One very useful application of circuit training is using a full-body workout at home. When training at home with bodyweight-only exercises, you might be generally limited in what you’ll be able to do.

Further, understanding at home just is not similar to understanding on the gym. For a lot of, it will probably be a bit boring. One technique to make these exercises more difficult while also making your workout exciting is adding circuit training to your house workout.

4. You Want Strength Training Exercises In Your Circuit:

When using circuit training with strength training exercises, you will not alter different muscle groups, and check out to make use of 1-minute rest between exercises. Since this is frequently 2 minutes, you’ll greatly reduce the workout time while allowing adequate rest.

When doing strength training in a circuit, you could be extra cautious with the hundreds and your rep count.

Even when you do alter between upper body and lower body exercises, you are still going to accumulate general fatigue. Before you jump into using your normal weights, run a few circuits to see how your body adapts to the stimulus and when you can handle it.

When your circuit workout for strength has quite a few exercises, we recommend using multiple circuits as a substitute of 1 large circuit. For those who rest for 1:00 between each exercise, that is half of a traditional rest period, so you’ll only must pair two exercises in multiple circuits to save lots of time.

Circuit Training Programming Suggestions

To place all of it together, let’s lay out the variables you wish to include.

Not all circuit training workouts utilize little to no rest. Nonetheless, the remainder period should never be greater than 1 minute, or it defeats the aim.

Most rest periods will likely be on the shorter end, from 0 to 30 seconds. Remember that your rest period includes any time needed to swap weights or equipment.

When selecting what number of exercises to do, I wish to practice on the lower end of 4-6 exercises. Having more will be confusing in addition to disturbing to other people within the gym. For those who do have multiple exercises, break them up into 2 circuit workouts.

While there are some instances if you run through a circuit only once, you can do nonetheless many sets you’ll normally do. On average, this will likely be 3. If you’ve got time, you can bump this as much as 5, nevertheless it relies on your goals.

• When doing a final set of isolation, you’ll be able to do 1 circuit to max.
• All other circuits can run the traditional amount of circuits.

The hundreds you employ will be similar to you’ll normally as well. It’s also possible to plan on doing fewer reps within the later sets because of fatigue. You need to only be overly concerned with this if you’re doing exercises like back squats and bench presses.

You are in a position to use any exercise you wish to with circuit training. The determining factor will likely be what variables you are attempting to improve or why you are using circuit training, as we went over above. One strategy you’ll be able to utilize is including strength training exercises with cardio body weight movements, like mountain climbers.

Nonetheless, I strongly recommend using the cable machine for smaller accessory movements and isolation. You possibly can pair this with body weight exercises or free weights.

When writing the order of exercises, your essential goal is to have them have minimal interference with each other. This generally means swapping muscle groups.

Circuit Training Workouts: Final Takeaways

There you’ve got it. I just gave you the low down on circuit training in addition to a number of assorted workouts to suit every need and training goal. Be happy to make use of any of the workouts as is or use them as a framework to create your personal.

When used right, circuits will be instrumental in following an efficient workout plan, either by adding a recent stimulus, allowing you to get in a workout in a short while, or as a technique to assist get in volume and cut down on training time.

So long as you understand what circuit training is and how you can do it appropriately, it should be a pivotal training method in your repertoire.