by Ray Fauteux

Created on: June 30, 2008   Last Updated: January 08, 2009

These days, it's often difficult to find the time to fit in your fitness sessions. When the time you can allot to fitness is at a premium, circuit training is a good way to keep your strength training sessions short and effective.

I happened to be the local fitness center when a top coach was putting his swimmer's through a circuit training session in the weight room. I watched as they went quickly from one weight station to another.

This particular coach had helped many swimmers make it to the Olympic trials and was well versed on the benefits of circuit training.

I watched at they did six different exercises on different weight stations that were actually placed together for that reason. They each targeted a different set of muscles and that in itself is one of the benefits of circuit training. In a very short time you can a very complete weight workout.

In this particular sequence of exercises the coach had chosen, I could see how it was targeting all the muscles specific to swimming. They worked their biceps and triceps, their back and their shoulders. They were able to do the exercises in quick succession because they were not putting stress on one particular set of muscles over and over.

They spent a specified amount of time at one station. It was about one minute and they repeated the exercise for the entire minute and then moved on to the next station and started over again and worked a different set of muscles.

The most important factor was that the amount of weight they used was not overly heavy as they did many repetitions in that one minute before moving on to the next exercise in the sequence. The coach was not trying to build huge muscles. He was more concerned with endurance and muscle toning and circuit training is a great system for attaining that goal.

Even though they did three sets of the six exercises(3 circuits)the whole routine was completed from start to finish in around 25 minutes. This is another benefit of circuit training as it's very possible to achieve great results without having to spend a long time in the weight room. This is an excellent option for athletes who want to improve their conditioning for whatever sport they happen to be involved in without having to spend hours and hours doing in the weight room. It's also perfect for those who have busy careers and family lives, but still want to keep up their level of fitness.

For some people lifting weights "is" their passion, and that's great. However for those who are just looking for a weight training system that is not time consuming yet effective, circuit training might just be the perfect solution.

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