Ok, so in other articles, I’ve been talking about why circuit training is what I’d recommend to anybody who wanted to know how to lose weight quickly. But there’s another characteristic of circuit training that you should know about – it’s great for building work capacity.

What is work capacity? Well, put simply, it’s kinda like your gas tank. In a sorta abstract way of thinking, it’s the measure of how much overall work you can do. The bigger your gas tank, the more work you can do overall. You can work harder for longer, you can do more activity, stuff that used to be hard now doesn’t make you tired…that kinda thing.

And it can take a lot of work to build that bigger gas tank…and you’d better believe that kinda work burns calories (leading to you losing weight) like CRAZY.

But how does circuit training build more work capacity?

Simple – it allows you to do more work than you normally would, while still continuing to work.

Huh?

Look at it like this – let’s say you’re doing 4 sets of 4 exercises. You do all sets of an exercise before moving onto the next exercise. That’s 16 total sets, and 16 total rest periods.

Now let’s say you do them in circuit fashion, and do a set of each exercise back to back, and only rest after you’ve done a set of each exercise. Now you’re doing 16 sets, but only getting 4 rest periods.

Your strength workout just turned into a cardio workout because you’re literally resting only 25% as much.

But why not do all sets of one exercise, but just shorten the rest periods? Because you’re doing so much work for a given set of muscles within such a short period of time, that you’ll never recover, and you have to use such light weight, that you’re not getting the true benefit you need.

(More on that in a second.)

But if you stack different exercises back-to-back, then you attack one set of muscles, then while they’re resting, you’re attacking another set of muscles. Continue for each set of the circuit. But the entire time, your body is working, you’re continuing to breathe heavy, and your heart and lungs are being worked into better shape.

See how much more efficient that is overall? And how much better it is for you than normal boring cardio workout plans? (And how many more calories you’d burn?)

But – don’t think you can just stack a bunch of exercises together and call it a circuit. There is a science to it. How?

Think of this – let’s say you have a circuit involving nothing but barbell movements, and the exercises in the circuit are overhead presses, bent over rows, squats, deadlifts, and upright rows.

That circuit completely shoots itself (and any progress you might get out of it) in the foot. Know why? The upright rows.

When doing circuits – the right way – you should only be using one (two at the most) piece of equipment…in this case, a barbell. Well, do you really think that if your circuit involves upright rows, that you’ll EVER be able to use a weight that will be even REMOTELY challenging for squats or deadlifts?

Nope.

Circuits are a great way to train – one of the best ways to train, in my opinion (especially for cardio, burning calories, and losing weight) – but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re gonna end up wasting A BUNCH of time.