Workout Wednesday: Circuit Training

Over and over again I have told you about the importance of cardiovascular workouts in the pursuit of losing weight. You know that it is the best way to burn the maximum amount of Calories. You also know that strength training is important for a few reasons. Strength training increases your strength (duh!). This is important for those of you who want to see improvements in your performance in any sport like biking, rock climbing, swimming, really anything. Muscle growth is also important to increase your metabolism. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn on a daily basis. Circuit training brings cardio and strength training together.

So what is circuit training? Basically, it is a bunch of different exercises that you do back to back. Doing them one right after another allows your heart rate to get up for a longer period of time than traditional strength training would. HIGHER HEART RATE = MORE CALORIES BURNED. You can customize the workouts to strengthen the different areas of your body.

Here is a tip, instead of focusing on small muscles like biceps, triceps, or calves by isolating them in an exercise like bicep curls, work on a larger muscle group and work on the smaller muscles simultaneously. For example, instead of just doing a shoulder press (small muscles), do a shoulder press while lunging (large muscles). This will help you get more bang for your buck. Small muscles burn few calories, while larger muscles burn more.

Here is an example of a circuit training workout (do a cardio warm-up first to prevent injury):

• Jump roping (2 minutes) You don't need an actual jump rope to get the benefits of this plyometric workout
• Bicep curls while doing squats (2o repetitions)
• Crunches (3o repetitions minutes)
• standing rows (20 repetitions)
• Calf raises while doing shoulder presses (20 repetitions)
• And then repeat until you've been exercising for 20 minutes. Remember do not rest during the 20 minutes, this keeps your heart rate up and allows you to burn the maximum amount of Calories in the least amount of time WHILE strengthening your muscles.

Yesterday I bought Jillian Michaels workout DVD "30 Day Shred" which is based on this interval concept. I'll let you all know if I'm 'shredded' in 30 days!