12 | Bored of Delivering 60-Second Circuits? Try These 5 Creative Upgrades

You are all familiar with it, you know, 60 seconds of this station, 60 seconds, the next station, working your way around. It's classic for a reason. It's very easy to keep everyone moving at the same pace. it's really easy to set up. You don't need a lot of equipment, but if it's the only thing you're doing with your classes. You are missing out on a lot more creative ways of doing workouts.

So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through how to break out of just falling back on circuits all the time, and show you how to bring more variety, progression and connection into your workouts. And if you have a group who's like. I love circuits. I find anything else too confusing. Don't worry. I'm gonna show you how you can just, make little tweaks to your circuits to make them more fun, so that your clients will keep coming back, especially new clients. So let's get into it.

So let's first talk about what do we think about when we think of a bootcamp circuit? For me, I think of probably like eight to 10 stations, maybe a different piece of equipment on each station. one person, or if you've got more, you might have two or three people on a station. They're doing the exercise, they go on to the next one. I remember one place I trained at, they'd have like 20 exercises in their circuit.

and you would just get through one lap of the circuit because it was like two, three minutes per station. and yeah, it was pretty boring. I went to like a couple of the classes, but 'cause the exercises didn't really, it was in a gym, so they were using some of the gym equipment and he did the same piece of, did the same exercise with that piece of equipment each time. Um, yeah, it was kind of boring. It was like, I, I didn't.

See the point in adding this, like what, what benefit I already was training with weights. What benefit was this circuit adding to my, my workouts? So, yeah, I wanna point out that it can, it's pretty boring. It's a pretty boring format. And even if you go, oh, I'm gonna switch up. We'll do 45 seconds intervals and then 15 seconds rest. Or we'll do a workout where we just use kettlebells. If you've got enough, we'll do a workout where we just use body weight, like.

Yes, it will help, but long term it is going to be pretty boring, for your clients and for you. Like it's boring standing there looking at your phone or the shop watch or the, the clock on the wall and being like, okay, time swap. Okay, time swap. Like literally an app. Now most fitness apps do do that for you. So like you. That role of you has been replaced.

a machine can quite happily tell people when time is up and they can go onto the next station and it can even show them a video of the exercise. So what we as trainers need to be thinking about, and one of the things that's, it's worked for long before, this stuff, you know, technology and AI came along. So it's not a reason to be scared, but it's just. We as trainers need to start using our creativity in order to create something different for our clients each time.

And that's why people are gonna want to train with us. you're probably not targeting high level athletes who are looking for every aspect of their workout to be optimized. No. who you're probably training are people who just want to turn up. They don't want to think about. In advance what they need to do for their workout. They just wanna rock up to the workout, do a workout that's engaging, that feels interesting, that feels like it has a sense of purpose and accomplishment.

and then they wanna finish that feeling, that feeling great after that workout and go home and be like, wow, that was really cool. We did something completely different. That's what you want your bootcamp to be. So even if you are like, I still really like circuit training. I want to have circuits in my workout. In My weekly plan, like maybe you have it like once a week, but you wouldn't rely on every single workout. so what's the solution?

Let's look at your circuits and we'll look at how we can make little tweaks to them to make them more interesting. Then I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail today on how to do like something completely different, but you do want enough in there to keep clients on their toes. And that can be as simple as, I'll go through some examples that could be as simple as like, after they finish one round of the circuit, which maybe is just like a typical strength circuit.

They've then gotta do this like three or four minute high intensity interval drill. that's like very cardio based. So it's like, whoa, what's happening now? Like, I've just been doing all this other stuff and now my heart rate's up and I'm moving and oh, I gotta do this. And maybe there's a partner element or a team element to it. So it just breaks things up from working out. By themselves doing the same circuit.

and by making these tweaks to your circuits, what they end up doing is they end up creating a bit of a gateway to even more interesting types of workouts. Especially again, I know some people, they don't have an issue with this, their clients. This was my case. My clients loved doing all sorts of different things, all sorts of different workouts. But I know there are trainers who email me and say, look, my clients just won't do that stuff.

So what you can do though, is you can start making tweaks of their circuits, which opens their eyes to like, ah, if I train outside my comfort zone a little bit, I can actually have a lot of fun and feel a real sense of accomplishment. Now what I'm gonna share with you today, as best I can through this audio, and for some of you who'll be watching the video for this format, is I'm gonna share with you some different ways to change up your, alright, so you might be now going, Hey Kyle.

Keep telling us about like, we can make this little tweaks and things, but. What are they? Well, that's what I'm gonna share with you now. I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We've got five ways that I'm gonna share how you can make little tweaks to your circuits, make little changes and keep clients really engaged.

the first one I actually just mentioned it, and this one comes from an article I'm gonna link to, which has been one of the most popular articles on the website and it's called Circuit Breakdown. And in it one of the bootcamp ideas, writers, Liz, she breaks down three different ways that she makes, keeps her circuits interesting and keeps 'em going. And I'm gonna mention Liz again 'cause she's got another cool circuit idea that I adapted, which I, I highly recommend.

So, yeah, this method that she recommends is do your typical eight station strength circuit, and then at the end of that. Run a shorter four to five station high intensity interval circuit. So it's like, it's quick, it's fast, they're getting their heart rate up. it's like a mini finisher at the end of each circuit. So that's the first way you can do that. or you could, instead of doing a high intensity thing, you can make it skills based.

So maybe at the end of each circuit they do something that you are working on. So maybe it's, maybe you've got a lot of clients wanting to build up their upper body strength, wanting to build up their pushup strength. So maybe they do this combination of very slow or isometric pushup exercises to finish off that round of the circuit. Again, just adding that something different. Now they're all doing it together. Everyone's in it together. They're not separated on their stations.

chatting away that, that's something I didn't mention earlier is like, how bad is it when you get too chatty? Kathy's on the same. Station and they're just chatting away instead of exercising. And you've gotta like separate them and be like, right, you go over to the opposite side of the circuit and you go here.

So working out ways that you can mix things up so that, of course you want your clients to get along with each other and chat with each other, but so it doesn't become, disruptive to the class. The next way, can we stop your circuits, is to do mini circuits or three person circuits. So mini circuits, I've got a YouTube video, explaining mini circuits. So it's four stations, and it's very quick. and you'll do three rounds at the station. So it's like 12 sets total.

So three sets on each exercise, and you'll mix up the timing each time and exercise each time. But yeah, it's very quick, very, fast. You're only teaching four exercises, so you don't have that delay. Of the eight station circuit where you've gotta demonstrate eight different exercises, you're just gonna demonstrate four, get into it, go. Then while they're having a rest, you can demonstrate another four exercises and go. and then the other one I mentioned was three person circuits.

And I learned this from a group called Motivate to Train, who used to run really fantastic bootcamp, instructor workshops here in Melbourne or all around Australia. They, have this great thing called a three person circuit. So this is where you will split your group into teams of three, and you want like a mixed level of fitness levels on each of them. Okay. I've got another article and actually have, I'm gonna do another podcast episode on how to divide your clients up.

so you wanna mix your groups into groups of three with a mixed variety of fitness levels in the group, you are then going to have three stations. and you set them up in row. So you have like a baseline that's gonna be your active rest. Then the next one up that's gonna be, maybe more your. An isometric or a cardio exercise, and then you'll have your third line, and that's going to be your main strength exercise. Okay? So you might do like ones that are like pushup variety.

So you might have, let's say your baseline, the active rest might be holding a plank just for as long as people can, resting as they need. Then level two, which is gonna be our isometric or our cardio, so might do cardio, upper body. so they might be doing, let's say, jumping jacks. Then level three will be our pushup variation, so that they're doing, and so in their teams I'll have one person who starts on that, the baseline on that, the active risk.

One person is on the cardio, the jumping jacks, and one person is on the pushup variation. When the person on the pushup variation does say like 10, 15 reps, they'll then run back to the start, tag their teammate, who's on the active rest, who will run up to the jumping jacks and tag that person who'll run up and do another 15 pushups. And they keep rotating like that. And you can do that for time, like an amrap or you can. do three rounds or four rounds.

It's so everyone's doing like four lots of pushups and then when three or four teams finish, everyone's gonna wrap up and finish. And that way the sort of fitter clients can really push themselves to be one of those teams to finish, and everyone else can just go at their own pace and get as much as they can get done. That's your three person circuit. Next. My favorite, and maybe there's a different name for this, but I've always called them drill circuits.

So a drill circuit works like a regular circuit, except as the name implies, instead of just having an exercise at each station, you've got a whole drill. And so what do I mean by a drill? I mean like a drill is a game or an activity or a series of exercises that need to be completed, so makes for a great team workout where you'll split your group into teams. And they've gotta work their way around the circuit, completing different activities at each station.

So one station might be like a card, you know, a deck of cards based exercise. Maybe they have to do 10, pull 10 cards off the top of this deck and do the corresponding exercises and reps, you know, make it up. Another station might be, there's a hill there, they've gotta like run up and down this hill a bunch of times. Another station, might have a bunch of kettlebells and they've gotta do a kettlebell circuit at that station. So, you know, there's might be three exercises there.

They've gotta do three round of that circuit, then they're on to the next station. Love doing drill circuits. Just a great way to, if you're outdoors or even if you're indoors, to use your space and use different features inside your space. You might have benches set up, you might have a wall where you can do a bunch of wall based exercises. Just a really fun way to spread things out.

And, yeah, I highly recommend you give, give that one a go and I will, I'll link in the show notes as well to like a really good drill circuit that I like. so you can get an idea of that spinning off before I go to the next one before I go to number four. There's another, it's sort of a drill circuit. It's called, I call it Five Rounds Fit and it's based again, I mentioned that I would mention Liz again 'cause Liz sending this workout called the 5 10, 15.

And basically the way this workout worked is that you had a little circuit, a little amrap circuit, of three exercises. the first exercise might be jump squats for five reps, Then it might be, regular squats for 10 reps, and then fast feet or mountain climb for 15 reps. So you'd have these three exercises. The hardest one for five reps, the next hardest one for 10 reps, the third hardest one 15. And you keep doing that workout amwraps, that circuit Amrap style until five minutes is up.

Then you get one minute to rest. Then you're onto the next station where there's a new set of 5, 10, 15 exercises. So I took that and that's what I love about the collaborativeness of the internet. what if we did. All kinds of different drills or little mini things that you have to do within five minutes.

one station will be, we're gonna do something with Kettlebells and they're gonna do the 5, 10, 15 little circuit, but then the next station is gonna be an e mop, and I'm gonna make them do something like 10 burpees every minute on the minute. I wouldn't actually make people do 10 burpees. I don't really like burpees, but I'm on the spot here, so I'm going to. or like one session I slowed down. So I had them do one Turkish get up on each arm with a challenging weight every minute.

they just did five reps for the five minutes, but it was pretty challenging. Then in another station, I might have them do, then another, another station. It might be, I go, you go. So on this one they're gonna partner up with someone. Their partner's going to do 10 reps or 15 or 20 reps of an exercise. Then they're gonna do 20 reps of an exercise and they're gonna go back and forth until the exercise is done. Great.

One, maybe you've got deadlifts, you've got some trap bars, you wanna do some deadlifts, so you might have to work in a group of three. And they do five reps each. with the trap bar. So these are the kind of things you can think about. and I've got a ton of examples. we ended up filling out a whole section of the site on boot craft, because it's just such a great template, the five rounds fit template.

So yeah, that kind of shuffles in with the, so that kind of shuffles in with the drill circuits now. Number four. I mentioned this just now in five round fits. But another way you can mix up your circuits is to use, I go, you go. So I go, you go is where you take it in turns with a partner. So you might have one person go for 20 seconds and then the other person go for 20 seconds and then back and forth. So they're getting 20 seconds rest after each set of 20 seconds while their partner goes.

It gets people interacting, gets people cheering each other on so it's a normal circuit otherwise, and perhaps we're still doing 60 seconds of work, but we're doing it over two minutes and taking turns without partner. another way you might do it is instead of time. You might have a target number of reps. Maybe they've gotta do a hundred reps on each station, but they have to do it. They can only do 10 reps at a time, and then their partner's gotta do 10.

Keep going until they've done 10 sets of 10. and then the last way. It doesn't even, this is the way for those clients who are like, no, don't make me count reps or do anything complex. But here's a way you can work something a little bit sneaky, and this is in this method, is you might do three rounds of a circuit as per normal, but you're going to mix up. Or you're going to increase or decrease how long they spend on each station, each round.

the first round, they might only do 20 seconds on each station. Then the next round they're gonna do 40 seconds, and then the final round they're gonna do 60 seconds. Or you might go the other way. You might go 60 seconds and make it sort of easier. that way clients feel like, oh, the hardest round's out of the way. Now it's sort of down, I'm kind of going downhill versus the other one where it's like, ooh, it kind of starts easy. but you are gonna be dying by the last round.

Okay, so to go back through those, the five different things you can try at the first one is to do little mini. hit circuits or skill-based circuits in between each of your main circuit. then there was the using mini circuits, so small, four station circuits or three person circuits. Then I talked about drill circuits, so like having a drill at each station that they complete. Uh, that's always gonna take longer.

Sometimes I didn't mention that, like a drill circuit, they might only complete one lap of the circuit in the whole workout 'cause. Each station might take five to 10 minutes. That's all right. then you've got the I go, you go. So like working in pairs or in threes with one person exercising while the other person rests. and then lastly, there was changing up at least changing the interval timing so you're not always doing 60 seconds. Experiment with some different times. Do some.

Circuits with shorter intervals and some with longer. Do some workouts where you increase, where you decrease, where you increase, then decrease. Play around with it. So before I sign off, why is this important? Why is it so important that we mix up our circuits? If you are just getting started out, you might be like, what's wrong with the circuit? Like we, we are hitting everything. I'm getting to include all my exercises.

It's because you want to start thinking about your workouts bigger than the individual workout. You want to zoom out and think about what is like a month, what is six weeks? What does 12 weeks of my workouts look like? And you want to be working towards your client's goals across all those different workouts. And that means training them in a variety of different ways. and then of course there's the like, just keeping things interesting aspect for you as a trainer as well.

Like I got really bored doing the same workouts over and over again, which is why I started coming up with different workouts and started seeking out other trainers who were coming up with interesting workouts. Yes, you can look at what is the most scientifically best way to train people, and you can just do that every session. And that's what I'm seeing, like a lot of the big franchises and things doing. But to be honest, it's pretty boring. And that's not for everyone.

It's for those clients who love seeing, Track every metric and every step and have everything tracked on my phone. Yes, they'll love it, but there's still a huge group of people out there who just want to move their bodies more and doing something like that just doesn't interest them. They need classes that are interesting.

They need classes, fitness options that are fun, that are engaging, where they get to chat to the other people, where they get to have a laugh, where they get to do something a little bit silly, where they get to try something new, where they get to feel a sense of accomplishment. All of these things are things you can give your clients with good session plan. And I do talk about this in my master class, how to plan workouts fast without sacrificing quality.

I talk about how you like, might structure that out. And then I go into even more detail in. Group flow, which I'm running the next round of that soon, which is a live course where I show you how to like, package up your sessions into something, that's much more marketable and have, how to have a bit of like, flow in your business, a bit of ebb and flow, a bit of time for promotion, time to just focus on training rather than feeling like you're marketing all of the time.

So if you're interested in either of those, I'll include the links, in the show notes here as well. And I mean, really the ultimate goal with this stuff is to get our clients results and also to keep them coming back. And I think if you are always looking at ways to how can you improve your sessions? How can you bring something new into your sessions? How can you keep your sessions fresh and interesting for you? Your clients will feel that enthusiasm and they'll want to try stuff too.

Finally, last thing before I go, I want to challenge you to take one of the things I spoke about today. if you go to my website and find this podcast on bootcamp ideas.com, I'll have a little reference summary that you can go back to. I want to challenge you to try one of these things in your week. If you always run your circuits 60 seconds each, or you find yourself falling back and doing the same kind of circuits a lot. Try one of these other circuits. Try a drill circuit, try some igo.

You go thrown in there. Try changing up and using a different interval timing than what you would normally do. And I think you'll find that not only will you like it, but your clients will like it too. And that's it for the warmup for this week. I hope you feel warmed up and invigorated and excited to get into planning your sessions this week.

I'm looking forward to doing a few more episodes like this on session planning, on workout ideas, Yeah, as I mentioned at the start, they asked for some help on these topics, but there was a few of you who asked for help on different workout topics. So I hope you guys enjoy that and I'll chat to you next week.