Circuit training exercises are any exercises you do to create a circuit during a circuit training workout. To break that down,circuit training is a way to exercise that builds muscular endurance or burns calories with a series of exercises followed by short breaks. Each set of exercises you perform is called a circuit. After you perform a circuit, you take a break, then do another circuit.
A Circuit Training Workout
You create circuit training workouts using a pattern of exercise, followed by rest. You can perform one exercise for one or two minutes, then rest, or you can perform several exercises for short periods, then take a rest. Each exercise period is a circuit. You can emphasize more muscle fitness by using more weight or resistance to perform your exercises, or emphasize calorie burning with less resistance and higher intensities. The American Council on Exercise suggests you work at 40 to 70 percent of your maximum intensity during circuit training workouts.
Creating Circuits
Circuits should be consistent, using either the same amount of time per circuit or the same number of repetitions of an exercise. For example, if you are using more than one exercise to create a circuit, you can do 30 minutes of four different exercises to create two-minute circuits. If you want to improve muscular endurance, you can do 10 to 12 repetitions of one exercise before moving to the next exercise.
Circuit Exercises
You can use many different types of exercises to create a circuit training workout. You can use dumbbell exercises, calisthenics, resistance band exercises or body-weight exercises. You can do a different exercise each circuit during your workout, or you can choose several exercises and repeat them several times to create a circuit training workout.
Example Circuit Training Workouts
For an upper-body, muscular-endurance circuit workout, you might do 12 biceps curls, 12 chest presses, 12 triceps extensions, 12 flies and 12 kickbacks, taking a one-minute break between each set, then repeating this pattern one or two more times. For a full-body muscular-endurance circuit workout, you add deadlifts, squats and lunges to these exercises, performing only one set of each exercise. For a calorie-burning circuit, your routine might include 30 seconds of crunches, 30 seconds of burpees, 30 seconds of jumping jacks and 30 seconds of pushups, followed by a break of two or more minutes.
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