Why Circuit Training Can Be Totally Kick Ass – Part 3 of 3

This is the third in a series of 3 guest posts by my friend, colleague, and master-trainer, Matt "Wiggy" Wiggins. Part 1 & Part 2.

When it comes to organizing a circuit, you've got to pick the right kinds of exercises – this we know.  And we also know that you want to put them in the right order.  It wouldn't make sense to do a set of overhead presses immediately followed by bench presses, as much of the musculature used is the same.  When you get to the benches, you're still gonna be fatigued, and that exercise will suffer.  You're better off putting a set of rows or other exercise in between to give the 'pushing' muscles that are used in both exercises a slight rest in between.

At the same time, I'm not (necessarily) a fan of putting super-huge, lower-body focused exercises like squats or deadlifts at the beginning of a circuit, as if you do, you pretty much kill the chance the rest of the exercises in the circuit have at being performed in any sort of real effective manner.  These exercises are not only very demanding, meaning they're gonna sap your energy stores for the exercises later in the circuit, but given that it's your lower body that supports your upper body (duh – lol), you really tax the ability to support/stabilize yourself.

For instance, say you're doing overhead presses and squats in a two-exercise circuit. 

(Yeah, most circuits have more exercises than that – I know.  This is just for explanation's sake, so stick w/me for a second, here.)

In an 'overall' sense, do you think you'd be better off doing the presses, then the squats, or the squats, followed by presses?  In either instance, the exercise done first will get more 'oomph' from you.  The question is, how much will you have to give to the second exercise?

If you do presses first, you'll tire some, but still have a bunch left in your tank in order to do squats.  It won't be as good as if you had done them separately, but still pretty good.

Now, what if you did squats first?  I dunno about you, but squats take it out of me pretty damn good.  You do squats first, and chances are you're gonna have very little left to put into the presses.  (Not to mention if you're doing the presses standing, do you really wanna try to do that when your legs still feel like jelly from a heavy set of squats?  I wouldn't.)

See what I mean?

Then there's exercise selection. 

Since you can't take up all the equipment in the gym, you need to be able to bust out multiple exercises with as little equipment as possible.  Now, how much equipment is "as little equipment as possible" is gonna change depending on the situation.  But when I'm designing circuits, I like to use no more than two different weights (say a barbell and a pair of DBs, two different pairs of DBs, etc), one piece of equipment (rack, bench, etc), and/or something that others can jump in on fairly easily when you're not using it (say a chin bar or set of dip bars).

Now, this isn't always ideal, as when you line up certain exercises, your strength can be vastly different, which would mean that you'd require different weights.  And this would then imply that you'd need different sets of weights.  For instance, because you can deadlift a lot more than you can row, you'd need two different bars.

I adjust this by altering rep ranges a little bit.

I never like to go *too* crazy, but like to keep everything in the 6-8 or 10-12 range.  However, if it means being able to utilize the same weight for more than one exercise, then don't be afraid to alter it a little.

For example, say you had both DB overhead presses and DB rows in a circuit.  To ensure that you could use the same set of DBs for both exercises, you could do a 1-arm DB clean & pushpress (which you'd be able to use a little more weight on) for say 6 reps each side, and then follow it up with DB rows (either one side at a time or both arms at once) for 8 reps. 

Or maybe do barbell cleans for 5, rows for 8, then deadlifts for 10.

Or maybe a 1-arm DB snatch for 6 reps each side, grab the other DB, and do DB bench press for 10.  Put them down, grab one DB, brace yourself, then do 1-arm DB Rows for 10 each side.  Finish the circuit up with 2-hand (one DB) swings for 20 reps.  Toss in jump bench jumps, burpees, and/or chins, and you'd have pretty much a full-body circuit that'd only need one pair of dumbbells, a bench, and maybe a chin bar.

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