Can Circuit Training Programs Increase Muscle Mass?

Most body builders, fitness competitors or athletes consider circuit-training programs to not be beneficial when it comes to increasing muscle mass. Circuit training has certain elements that can classify it as cardiovascular exercise. When trying to gain muscle mass, cardio is usually kept at a minimum and the diet is super clean. However, there are multiple benefits to incorporating circuit training into your muscle-gaining program.

The truth is that in order to increase muscle with circuit training, you just have to develop a program that is geared toward that type of result. For instance, as long as the intensity of the circuit is high enough, the body will produce HGH, which is the human growth hormone. This is the type of hormone that builders and athletes alike try to stimulate in order to increase lean muscle mass. The trick is that no circuit should last longer than 30 minutes.

Anything beyond that is either not intense enough, or will then become aerobic activity instead of anaerobic exercise. The reason that you want to avoid turning a circuit into an aerobic form of exercise if you are trying to increase lean muscle mass is because when the body approaches a certain level of endurance "catabolism" begins. When the body is in the stage of catabolism, the muscles are in a process of break down. The body is using the muscle for a source of energy as opposed to using fuel, fat stores, residual sugar in the body or carbohydrates as fuel for the exercise at hand.

With this information, you want to keep the circuits as intense and as brief as you can. A great way to bump up your circuit training is to include supersets, sprints, or intervals that utilize bodyweight or compound movements. Just as some people don't understand the efficiency of a well-designed circuit program, some people underestimate the valuable asset that one's own body weight can be in creating muscle gain.

Muscle is best developed when you can use your own body weight in a series of compound exercises such as a pull up followed by a squat, followed by a push up. Completing rounds of such intense bodyweight exercises in conjunction with short duration sprints, not lasting longer than a minute or two depending upon your cardiovascular ability, you will see excellent returns.

Compound exercise circuits are a great way to shock your body. Especially if traditional training is what your body knows, such as working one certain muscle group to fatigue before moving onto another muscle group, you will be the one to most benefit from a change in routine.

For example, if you switch it up and reorder the sequence in which you train the muscles, adding body weight compound lifts, in accordance with pulls and pushes, you will be recruiting even more muscle fibers in the process than you thought possible. Your body will let you know that is has been challenged the next day.


Circuit training, like any other form of weigh training, is great in a series of workouts, but shouldn't be consider the staple of your exercise regime. Variety, such as workouts in the 12 Minute Revolution [http://12minuterevolution.com], is the key to a stellar physique.

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