Contours Express KD

Get Out of the Gym Fast With Circuit Training January 29, 2012

Many people who workout love the feel of iron in their palms. They feel if they are not pushing weight that they are not working out. When doing resistance training with weight, it can often be time consuming, taking an hour or more to do a complete workout. If you want to build muscle, drop fat and get out of the gym fast, try circuit training.

Circuit Training is a form of conditioning that combines both resistance training and aerobic activity. The main objective is to increase muscle strength, endurance, flexibility and coordination. Circuit training routines may be designed to focus on one or all of the objectives by manipulating type of exercises, weight and reps.

Some benefits of circuit training include:

- You can exercise different muscle groups to get a total-body workout.
- You can build strength and aerobic endurance.
- You can gain a moderate amount of muscle while burning fat.
- Workouts can be completed in as little as 20 minutes.
- You can make your workouts as hard or as easy as you like by modifying the amount of resistance and the length of the rest interval.

Each circuit training session includes 5-10 exercises. You can structure a routine to work the upper body, lower body, or full body. If you choose a full body workout, be sure to allow 48 hours in between each session for muscle recovery. Circuit training can be performed with a barbell, dumbbells, or bodyweight only exercises.

Each circuit is performed 2-4 times, with 1-2 minutes of rest between each circuit. By limiting your rest period, you are keeping your heart rated elevated for cardiovascular conditioning. If you are new to circuit training, you may only be able to complete 1 or 2 circuits, but each week your performance will improve.

If muscle building is your main focus, for each exercise, use a weight that will allow you to perform 6-10 reps. If endurance is your goal, decrease the amount of weight and increase your reps to 15-20.

A typical full body routine would look like this:

Circuit Training with Weights:

Deadlift

Bent-over Row

Upright Shoulder Row

Close Grip Bench Press

Bicep Curls

Squats

Crunches

Circuit Training with Bodyweight Only

Pull Up

Dips

Push Ups

Burpees

Lunges

Plank

With such a variety of choices, whatever your goal, whether it is building muscle or burning fat, you are sure to see results with circuit training.

Contours Express is specializing in circuit training which only takes 29-minutes. We are using real weights to get the real results.