Circuit training is a style of workout performed with different stations or exercises at a usually high intensity with little rest between each station or exercise.

Circuit training is a form of body conditioning that involves endurance training, resistance training, high-intensity aerobics, and exercises performed in a circuit, like high-intensity interval training. It targets strength building and muscular endurance.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Improves muscular endurance
• Improves fitness and heart health
• Offers a full body workout
• It’s time efficient – can do strength and cardio in one session
• Can promote weight loss
• Good for motivation
• Good for all levels

Sets and reps are the terms used to describe the number of times you perform an exercise. A rep is the number of times you perform a specific exercise, and a set is the number of cycles of reps that you complete. For example, suppose you complete 15 reps of a bench press, that equals 1 set.

No matter how many reps you’re completing per set, most fitness experts recommend performing between two and six sets for each exercise. Although even 1 set work, pushed to the right level has shown to be beneficial if time is an issue.

STRENGTH TRAINING POINTS

Gym lore says that rep range determines whether you’ll build strength, muscle, or endurance. However, load, speed, and “time under tension” are actually more important than the number of reps.

Your body reacts best to what’s new, so it’s worth employing various training styles.
Of course, the rep range you choose requires scaling your weights: You can lift heavier weights if you’re doing fewer reps.

Whilst rep ranges are a useful guide, we must keep in mind that training our bodies is a physiological process that relies on adapting to a specific stress. It is the quantity and quality of that stressor, and subsequent recovery, that determines progress, rather than a specific number of repetitions.

So, the quality of the exercise, the weight you are lifting and hitting that failure feeling is most important. For beginners lifting a big weight and hitting 6 reps may be daunting but doing a lighter weight for 20 reps is more manageable.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Makes your body stronger (not bigger)
• Burns calories + speeds up the metabolism
• Decreases body fat %
• Decreases your risk of falls + improves co-ordination
• Lowers your risk of injuries
• Improves heart health / lowers blood pressure
• Strengthens bones
• Boosts your mood and improves brain health

8 sets of 8 is a high volume, fast tempo, size building workout. It is not designed for strength development – it’s purely for bodybuilding or “cosmetic” improvements. 8 sets of 8 will also help you get leaner.

The short rest intervals stress the cardiovascular system to the point where calories are burned, the metabolism is stimulated, hormones are stirred up and fat is melted away.

Here’s how it works: You will select three or four exercises per muscle group and perform 8 sets of 8 on each exercise. That’s 24 to 32 sets per body part. You will work two or three muscle groups per session and rest only 15 to 30 seconds between sets.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Improve cardiovascular performance
• Promote a lean body
• Can be time efficient
• Boosts mood and mental health
• Can promote weight loss
• Good for motivation
• Effective for burning calories and building size

Developed by Izumi Tabata, Ph.D., at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Tabata is based on timed interval method.

Tabata is a type of HIIT workout that aims to yield the most benefits in a short amount of time. For each exercise, you do eight rounds of 20 seconds of maximal strenuous exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest x 8 cycles through.

This equates to a 4-minute workout. This can be done with just one exercise i.e., burpees OR combined with a few different exercises to make a ‘Tabata Circuit’.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Improves fitness
• Maximum results in minimal timeframe
• EPOC effect – ‘afterburn’ so the body continues to burn calories after the session
• Good fat burner
• Convenient and flexible sessions – you can perform a Tabata workout anywhere doing any exercise
• Increased anaerobic and aerobic fitness

Giant sets are doing 4 or more exercises back-to-back with no break. During these sets you can either pair exercises that are non-competing, in other words opposing muscle groups, or you can target the same muscle.

For example, you might do an overhead press, a lateral raise, a rear-delt raise and an upright row for shoulders — then rest a few minutes to catch your breath and repeat.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Improve muscular endurance and cardiovascular performance
• Increase athletic performance
• Can be time efficient
• Boosts mood and mental health
• Can promote weight loss
• Good for motivation
• Effective for burning calories and building strength

Fartlek is a Swedish word and roughly translated means ‘speed play’. Fartlek training involves varying the intensity or speed of your run to improve your fitness and endurance. Fartlek sessions are usually performed for a minimum of 45 minutes and intensity can vary from walking, right up to sprinting.

A fartlek run can be as simple as picking up the pace in between a stop sign, traffic light, etc. mixing up a variety of varied speeds and efforts levels. An interval workout is a short, repeated bout of hard effort followed by a recovery period of very easy running.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• It’s a great test for strength and endurance
• It improves speed and race tactics
• It improves the mind over matter game
• It improves your ability to put on a spurt in races and overtake a competitor when tired or knock seconds off your finish time
• It is great for getting into the racing mindset as a fartlek session mimics the surges of speed you may put on in a race
• Incorporating these surges of speed helps runners to gauge and learn how much they can push their body over shorter segments while at the same time keeping enough physical and mental energy in reserve to go the whole distance and complete a race
• There is a lot of flexibility within the workout
• A fartlek session can be completed alone or with another runner or in a group

A drop set is an advanced resistance training technique in which you focus on completing a set until failure — or the inability to do another repetition. Then, you lighten the load by 10–30%, and repeat, with little to no rest in between sets.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Promote muscle growth
• Build muscular endurance
• Efficient with time
• Boosts mood and mental health
• Can promote weight loss
• Good for motivation
• Good for fast-twitch muscle fibre recruitment

It’s not as complicated as you might think. Interval training is simply alternating short bursts (example 30 seconds) of intense activity with longer intervals (example 1 to 2 minutes) of less intense activity.

Whether you’re a novice exerciser or you’ve been exercising for years, interval training can help you make your workout routine more exciting. Consider the benefits.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• You’ll burn more calories
• You’ll be more time efficient
• You’ll improve your aerobic capacity
• You’ll keep boredom at bay
• You don’t need necessarily need any special equipment
• Great for motivation and keeping the mind active while training