We’ve stumbled upon this recent trend called Circuit Training. This is a strength training program specifically designed to burn off belly fat while maintaining muscle, not so much building muscle, but is it really effective? We can see the trend increasing and more and more belly fat programs such as Turbulence Training, Truth About Abs and Fat Loss Factor all include this kind of training.
This type of training is a higher rep range, lower rest times and multiple exercise regimen. You would pick 6-8 exercises with weights that you can perform 12-15 times on each exercise then move from one to the other without rest. Once one “circuit” is finished you repeat the same circuit 2-3 more times for a total body workout for about 45 minutes.
Each circuit usually includes “big compound” exercises to work the whole body each workout. This kind of exercise is then done 3 times per week on alternating days. This kind of exercise is effective because you are able to include both weight lifting, strength training and cardio in the same workout routine because of the low rest times.
It is also smartly designed, so that if you were to do an upper-body exercise, you’d alternate that with a lower-body exercise so you are “actively resting” the entire circuit. This is what gives you that cardio component in your training. This kind of training is becoming very popular and I heard a few guys talk about it today at my gym. They said they had tried it for a few weeks and already seen results with it.
I saw them do it in the gym too. They moved from station to station and completed their workouts fairly fast, about the same time as me and I do a more high load, low rep kind of training at the moment. I’ve tried circuit training last year and it worked great for me, so it probably will work for you too.
The real “founders” of circuit training cannot be determined, but one of the people who popularized it was Craig Ballantyne in his Turbulence Training program. Check it out and tell me what you think? Personally I really like it and he’s got a lean killer body to show for it!
