Exercise Tips: Circuit Training

What makes this form of training so revolutionary is that it is more than just a great workout. Circuit training can be done anywhere, and offers the most time-efficient way to get a workout done.

Circuit Training: Efficient strength training

The hallowed halls of Rugby School in England – the place where William Webb Ellis “first picked up the ball and ran” way back in 1824 – gave me my first introduction to the world of circuit training. When I was a student there, every afternoon after classes and before rugby practice, the school’s fitness addicts congregated at the gym for a half-hour circuit session. Exercises included minute-long intervals of pushups, sit-ups, dips, rope climbs, box jumps, chin-ups, wind sprints and balance-beam walks. Balance beam walks, you ask? Before you make too many comments, try maintaining your balance on a beam 10 centimetres wide, with exhausted leg and core muscles.

Circuit training is a quick and fun way to incorporate strength training into a running program, or to switch things up from the same old weight room routine. Many runners have done circuit training before, without even realizing it. Those fitness trails in public parks are a great example of a basic circuit. Stations are set up to jump from one to the other doing things like chin-ups, pushups, jumps and abdominal curls – all separated by a short run. 

It’s not hard to include this type of workout in your program. Every gym worth its sweat offers some form of circuit training in the form of an exercise class. In many clubs, the program will combine a number of weight exercises in rapid succession. Once a certain number of reps or time has been completed, you move to the next exercise. Workouts can be easily be enhanced with a few modifications. Don’t just go from, say, the leg press machine to the bench press machine. Run a lap between the two. If you want a break from running, jump on a bike or jump rope for a minute or two between each exercise. 

Circuit training at home

Circuit training can be done anywhere, including at home. Clear out some space to do pushups in one corner, abdominal curls in another, burpees or Russian splits in the centre of the room, and dips using a chair or couch,. Go back to the abdominal curl station for another set, fire off another set of pushups, and finish off the circuit by doing chair squats until your quads don’t like you anymore (see the key below for a definition of the different exercises). You can either do a circuit by time or based on a certain number of repetitions. Do each exercise for 30 seconds and recover for 10, or try to do 10 or 15 repetitions of each exercise. 

When you do a circuit right, it’s the toughest workout there is, but it works 

At a club I used to work at, I set up a circuit workout three days a week in the aerobics studio. I used exercise mats for abdominal curls and pushups. Wind sprints were done down the length of the floor. There was a chin-up bar in one corner, a flight of stairs that we could run up and down, skipping ropes, and benches for dips. All told, I set up 15 exercises, and paired off the participants so there was always someone to push and to keep them honest. By the end of the hour-long circuit, everyone was completely exhausted. This is exactly the way I always felt in that old gym in England. Mr. Ellis might have run with the ball and created a new sport, but I’ll always remember Rugby School as my introduction to one of my favourite workouts.

Glossary of terms: 

Dips: Put your hands on a chair at shoulder width. With your legs straight out in front of you, lower your butt to the ground (but don’t rest it there) by bending your arms to 90 degrees at the elbow. Push yourself back up. 

Burpees: Start from a standing position, bend down and put your hands on the ground next to your feet. Push your feet straight out behind you so you’re in a pushup position. Bring your feet back under your shoulders, straighten up, and jump in the air. One down, 14 to go. 

Squats (chair): Start standing straight up in front of a chair. With a straight back, bend the knees as if you were sitting down until your butt is almost touching the chair. Straighten up, again keeping your back straight.  

Russian splits: With your left foot in front of your right, bend your knees until your hands are touching the ground. Jump up in the air, straightening your back and switching legs as you go. As you come back to the ground, bend your knees until your hands are touching the ground again. That’s one.

Wind sprints: Short sprints that make you winded.