Thread: Anyone here use circuits? need some advice/critique

Anyone done or have been doing any type of circuit training?

I run a circuit on my leg day on some of my exercises. I don't do back squats or deads on a circuit. I've run circuits for upper before. For me I like to bust them into two circuits. Compounds like bench, rowing, shoulder press and pull ups are one. Then I ran a smaller one with curls, tris and sit ups after that with some other isolation on areas I wanted to improve examples would be forearms, neck, flies etc. I don't think you should have curls in yours as it would interfere with your compounds. For me at least... I wouldn't have dips in there either for the same reason.

IMHO

You need some low-rep heavy work in there or you're going to lose size. How about twice a week, a heavy whole-body workout, and twice a week, do your circuit-style training?

The whole-body could all be one workout, something like this:

3 sets of 5-8 of all movements
squats
deads
chins
push press
rows
bench
abs

You could train in antagonist pairs to save time if you like - set of squats, rest, set of deads, rest... then on to puch presses and chins in pairs, then rows and bench in pairs.

Follow it with a fast incline walk for 10 minutes if you have time.

Thoughts?

I'll throw one more thing out there. I am kind of a volume junkie. I also try to keep it close to an hour. To be honest, I'd run a circuit on my workout more but just leaving the plates on the bars and tying up the stations at the gym does not go over well.

I like my reps 8 or less. When I can get 10 I increase the weight so I can get only 4 or 5. With that in mind I still think of myself as a 5x5 kind of guy. BUT, Bottomline on that is that I go for 24-30 reps total broken into sets of 3-6 reps.

What I do now to make this work for me is supersets of two movements, push and pull. So it might be that I do bench and one arm rowing. When I do this I have the dumbbell right next to the bench.

Then I rest for 1-4 minutes and hit the next push pull superset. Some days I need all 4 minutes other days I don't. This is the most important to me. If I got in a fight with my wife and I'm drained from that or something else I don't ignore that. I must be psyched up for the next superset, sometimes it takes longer.

My whole workout of an hour or a bit more is better for my cardiovascular system then "cardio", IMHO. I have a knack for intensity so this works for me. I don't see anyone else don't anything close. I guess you might be over training by doing this if it's not for you.