Circuit Training Workout Regimens and Exercises

With its ability to promote muscle building and fat burning, a circuit training workout represents a terrific exercise regimen that can be done in a relatively short amount of time. However, I’ve recently been using circuit training exercises to improve my endurance and cardiovascular health. You don’t do a lot of resting between each exercise, instead moving through each circuits quickly. I like adding them in at the end of my workout to reduce fat and get my heart really pumping through circuit weight training.

One of the great features of circuit training is that you can incorporate any number of exercises into your routine. Below is a list of circuit training exercises that I currently use or have used in the past along with a few sample circuit weight training routines that you can add to your workout.

Since I perform my exercises at home, I split my circuit training exercises into a trio of types: bodyweight, dumbbell and barbell. This allows me to avoid changing weights so that I may quickly move from one exercise to another without rest. I use a 65 pound barbell when I am doing the barbell portions of these exercises. While this weight isn’t heavy enough for all the exercises I perform, it provides some resistance and helps add to my primary goal of improving cardiovascular endurance. I use 12 pound weights when I am doing my dumbbell portion. Again, this isn’t nearly enough for certain exercises listed below, but it allows me to perform fast reps, in contrast to the slow, heavy weight training I do as part of my core strength training routine. Bodyweight exercises are also great to add to a circuit training routine as you don’t need any equipment. The muscles engaged by each exercise are enclosed in parentheses.

As you can see from above, there’s a broad range of exercises that you can incorporate into a simple circuit training workout. It is not uncommon for me to complete upwards of 15-20 of such movements consecutively without a break. The movements make the end of my routines more interesting, and each one has a different impact on my muscles. I go through one circuit of exercises with 10 reps for each one. In the exercises I do back to back, I try to vary the muscles that are targeted.

It is certainly possible to perform circuit weight training routines that are briefer than 15-20 different movements. For example, legendary MMA fighter Randy Couture’s circuit training routine consists of bent over rows, upright rows, military presses, good mornings, lunges, squat push presses, and deadlifts. He does 8 reps per exercise and repeats 3-5 times with 1 minute of rest between circuits.

There are an endless number of circuit training exercises that you can include in your workout routine. Develop your own circuit weight training regimen by aggregating some of the exercises you like best. You can reduce fat and build muscle by adding a high intensity set, or even two, to your regular workout, which will also really help to increase your cardiovascular endurance.