Circuit Training: A full body workout

By Mark R. Hailey

ACE Certified Personal Trainer

 

For some people a health and fitness club can be a confusing and intimidating place full of grotesque and medieval looking equipment of an endless variety.

 

Walk into most gyms, and more often than not, the first thing you will encounter are rows and rows of the most bizarre looking machines on the face of the earth.

 

Banks of twisted metal operated by pulleys, cables, cams, and weights. If it wasn’t for their well lit, gleaming white enameled frames they could easily pass for the instruments of punishment and torment employed in the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition.

 

Fear not, in this case, those torturous looking contraptions are there for your benefit. They are all part of a fitness program called Circuit Training.

Each piece of equipment, no matter how strange in appearance, serves a specific purpose, and that is to either isolate and place resistance on an individual group of muscles or to raise your heart rate. In other words, for each muscle group that you have in your body, including your heart, there is a piece of equipment to handle it.

 

If you are new to a gym, or fitness in general, Circuit Training is often one of the first forms of exercise a club will expose you to.

 

A fitness trainer can comfortably take you through the various machines; teaching you about weight adjustment, seat positions, resistance training, body mechanics, proper form, muscle endurance and cardiovascular strength. By completing the circuit you have begun your first training program

 

In a circuit program you move from station (machine) to station performing a variety of muscle and cardiovascular endurance exercises with brief rests in between. The number of reps that you perform are a little higher than in free weight programs (10-15), and the number of sets are lower (1-3). Some gyms play an audio tape that instructs you to move from machine to machine, while others leave you to your own accord.

 

The focus of Circuit Training is on overall body strength and endurance, not the development of an individual muscle group. To avoid overworking the muscles you should set the resistance of each machine at 50 to 60 percent of the weight you would use if you were following a strength training program. This reduced resistance avoids muscle fatigue before you complete the stations, and allows you to work the circuit a greater number of days in the week. A properly designed circuit program will give you a full body workout.

 

All the disciples and fundamentals about exercise can be learned through Circuit Training; then utilized in the free weights should you wish to include them in you fitness program.

 

Don’t be intimidated by that forest of gleaming metal.   Once you understand the role of each piece of fitness equipment and how it can effect your body, intimidation can be transformed into inspiration.

 

After awhile, the only torture you will feel from these machines is waiting for the person ahead of you to finish.

 

© Copyright Mark R. Hailey