Tag Archive: ACL

1. Body weight circuits

   28th October 2013 9:48 am Leave a Comment

   Some people scorn on these, or fail to find new ways to make them challenging.
   I did one this morning: 5 different exercises 20 repetitions of each, then 30 seconds rest. Repeat 5 times. Then do a different 5 exercises, same structure, and finally another 5 exercises.
   So you are doing 5 exercises, 20 repetitions, 30 seconds rest, 5 sets, three times. A total of 15 different exercises, at 100 repetitions each.

   The 30 seconds rest seems quite long at the beginning, but by the 10th set I needed the rest.
   I varied the exercises in each block of 5 with legs, upper body, abs, jumps/ burpees/ sprawls.

2. Circuit Design

   9:47 am Leave a Comment

   Starting off with circuits is quite easy. Do an exercise for about 10 repetitions, then move on to the next one. Beginners can rest between each exercise and then each set.
   To make the circuit harder, do more sets round or reduce the amount of rest between sets and then exercises.
   Harder still is to do all the reps of an exercise before moving to the next. So instead of doing 5 sets of 10, do 1 set of 50. Good fun until you get to the burpees, tuck jumps and pull ups.
   This reduces the overall time of your workout, so what can take some people 20 minutes, you can get done in 7-8 minutes.

3. Benefits of circuit training

   9:46 am Leave a Comment

   Circuit training has been around for a while and used to be popular in schools, the Armed Forces and sports clubs. Recently, this has not been the case for various reasons, one of them being an apparent lack of specificity. It is also due to the fact that certain fitness qualifications or accreditations focus on barbell platform lifts, and so the people who pass those courses tend to do those type of exercises with other people.

   However, as part of the Long Term Athlete Development Process whereby generalisation of motor skills is essential before specialisation, and as an easy to use, cheap, and very varied exercise mode, circuit training should be considered with the right populations at the right time.

   A recent study from Turkey showed an improvement in sprint agility and anaerobic endurance following a circuit training protocol of 3 days a week for 10 weeks. The subjects were healthy PE students, average age 24, so may not have been that fit to start with.

   This information is useful for all most intermittent type field sports as an improvement in sprint agility and anaerobic endurance could prove useful.