Circuit Training to Build Muscle Or Lose Weight? :

A member of my health club saw me working out the other day, and asked what I was working. I responded that I was doing a high intensity full body weight circuit training routine. "Circuit training, isn't that just for women that are trying to lose fat?"

I have trained a lot of clients, with many different goals, but my main focus is training people that want quick fat loss. Now, as you should know, muscle tissue is what burns fat, so in both male & female clients, it is necessary to build some lean muscle tissue in order to help them reach their long-term goals.

The great thing about circuit training is that it can be used to build muscle, which in turn burns fat throughout the day. So circuit training can be used to both build muscle and burn fat.

I know most men probably think of pink dumbbells and steps when they think about circuit training, but let me give you a clearer picture of what circuit training is.

Circuit training is simply taking any workout system, whether it is bodybuilding style training, functional training, strength training or cardio training, and doing those exercises consecutively as opposed to resting between sets and exercises. The benefit to training like this is two-fold:

1) It reduces the workout time dramatically. Let's face it, most people simply don't have the time to spend an hour & a half in the gym anymore. Everyone wants to have everything "right now," and that includes their workouts.
2) It creates a cardiovascular response in addition to a muscular response. What does that mean? It means that you can get the benefits of what is traditionally called "doing cardio," while doing a strength routine, or bodybuilding routine, functional routine, etc.

So circuit training isn't just a "cardio fat loss" training method, or a "women's fat loss" method of working out, although it can be used to meet both ends. You can take a bodybuilding style "one body part a day" routine and condense it into one big circuit, or a couple "mini-circuits," and reduce the workout time, get your cardio in, and still gain the muscle building effects of that type of weight training.

As I mentioned, I mainly train people for fat loss, so I take a hybrid approach to training, where I combine many different types of training to constantly keep my clients' body adapting. You can take a hybrid approach to circuit training throughout a workout or week, as I do both for myself and my clients, and include elements of core training, functional training, strength training, agility training, and sometimes even bodybuilding type training, and have amazingly creative and effective workouts, workouts that build muscle and burn fat!

In conclusion, circuit training isn't just one type of training, and certainly isn't just for one gender. It is a method of training that both men and women should employ to provide effective and efficient results, whether the goal is building muscle or burning fat.