Watch and track your favorite playlist.
Currently Playing: MUSCLE BUILDING With Bodyweight Circuits
For free programs, training courses, recipes, consultations, or to join the free community, visit https://www.kboges.com
In this video, I discuss some of the shortcomings regarding hypertrophy with using bodyweight circuits. While this is an extremely common approach to training, and it can definitely yield results, it is not the most efficient use of your time of recovery resources. When programmed with a high volume of sub maximal sets, you are going to have to perform many rounds of the circuit to get enough fatigue on the local musculature to require full motor unit recruitment and slow contraction speeds, necessary for optimal hypertrophy. However, the circuit structure has benefits, and when performed with high effort sets (close to failure) and with long rest intervals (to allow for full or near full recovery), they become a great option. And instead of having to perform TONS of rounds to get a good muscle building stimulus, you just need to perform as many rounds as necessary to reach your daily volume targets that allow you to meet your weekly hypertrophy volume targets.
Video Transcript
circuit training is a popular method of training calisthenics but it's not usually the most effective approach for building muscle and that has nothing to do with the calisthenics part of the equation and everything to do with how most people structure their circuit training which is usually multiple rounds of sub-maximal sets and very short rest intervals so it might be something like five pull-ups 10 push-ups 20 squats performed with minimal or no rest between the sets and then repeated for a bunch of rounds and no doubt this can get you in excellent condition and if you do enough rounds you can certainly get a good growth response from this but the more sub-maximal these sets are the more total rounds you're going to have to do in order to stimulate a good growth response and if your goal is to just efficiently stimulate growth while being stingy with your time and cautious around your injury risk you're just way better off performing your calisthenics with straight sets close to failure and with a full recovery between the sets this will allow you to accumulate a greater growth response with fewer total sets and fewer total repetitions and this means less time invested into the workout and a faster recovery now you can still do this in a circuit which is what I do but instead of some maximal sets and short rest intervals you just perform harder sets closer to failure with longer rests between the sets so you would perform a hard set of a pulling movement allow yourself to fully recover then perform a hard set of a pushing movement allow yourself to fully recover then perform a hard leg movement allow yourself to fully recover and then repeat until you complete the number of hard sets you need to complete in order to achieve and hit your daily volume Target and structuring your training like this allows you to get way more stimulation out of each set in the extended recovery time between each exercise ensures that your performance for the next exercise isn't compromised because you're too tired or out of breath from the previous one and the circuit-like structure allows for a greater time between sets of the same exercise so the local musculature can better recover allowing you to perform at high levels of your potential with each set and that makes for a powerful muscle building stimulus and when the sets are highly stimulating you just don't need a whole lot of them so I hope that makes sense if you guys have any questions let me know thanks for watching and I'll see you next time