This is a training blog post by Grant Lofthouse

The coolest thing about having your own private training facility and a pool of clients is that you get to test different types of theories and training methods.

Over the last few weeks I decided to set aside and dedicate the entire 12 weeks to circuit training only.

Circuit training can really be anything as long as you have 3-6 exercises lined up going from one to the next to the next.

There’s no ‘written in stone’ prescribed sets and reps but a typical circuit style workout would consist of medium to high reps of 10+ with minimal to no rest.

The typical circuit style workout that we did at the gym looked something like this…

1a.) Chinups – 5 x 8-10 x no rest

1b.) 1 Arm Shoulder Press – 5 x 8-10 x no rest

1c.) Walking Lunges – 5 x 12-15 x no rest

1d.) Superman’s – 5 x 20 x no rest

Each month I changed a few of the exercises to avoid boredom and kept the workout very simple and easy to track and test.

At the end of the 12 weeks I came to the conclusion that I circuit training sucks! and here’s 4 reasons why…

1.) Client’s got weaker.

Not by each month or week or day. But by the set! I took muscle fatigue and lactic acid build up into consideration but the results were gob smacking!

Clients would start off with say 10 pretty nice looking chinups and by their last set they would be somewhere around 3-4 slow, ugly butterfly kicking ones.

I would have accepted maybe a 1-2 rep decrease by the end of the last set due to the such high intensity of the workout, but not over 50%!

The whole purpose of training is to improve. Not go backwards. 

Bad pushup form

2.) Form dropped.

Due to the high intensity of going from one exercise to the next, to the next without any rest. Clients form dropped dramatically only a quarter of the way through the workout.

I didn’t matter how anal I was or how much I tried to cue them to keep things tight it just didn’t happen.

I believe this is because with circuit training… your heart rate is so damn high and you want to puke, you just want to get the shit over and done with so the body takes the easy way out by performing sloppy reps.

Now I proabably don’t need to point this out but when form slips, the injury risk skyrockets!

Even with basic exercises like pushups and lunges. By the end of 12 weeks I had numerous clients nagging about little injuries that they had never complained of before.

Training intensity should always be high, but not at the cost of bad technique.

3.) Limited exercise selection.

Due to the previous point above, I was limited to dummy free exercises like lunges and pushups.

Don’t get me wrong… they are fantastic exercises and we use them a lot at the gym. But there was no way in hell I would throw them under a bar and get them to squat 100 kilos on their back, and then go into kettlebell snatches and finish off with bench press.

That’s just an injury waiting to happen.

Again, due to the mentality of circuit training that’s always go, go, go. Clients were more worried about getting it done rather than how well they were performing the exercise.

4.) Results weren’t that great.

Yes they did get some results, but they weren’t any better than some of my other programs where we were lifting more weight, doing fewer reps and resting between sets.

So at the end of the day it wasn’t really worth risking strength, form and exercise selection.

And for the above reasons… that’s why circuit training sucks!

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