Last week, while I was in San Francisco, I had the chance to swing by one of my favorite gyms, a place I miss and used to go often while I was there. It's run by 24 Hour Fitness, but it's unique among all 24 Hour Fitness gyms I've ever been to (and I've been to a lot of them). It's a concept they introduced about 10 years ago called Fit Lite. It was designed to compete with Curves and similar gyms and never really took off, and I believe (to my knowledge) they've closed or modified all of them except this one in Noe Valley. The gym is nothing special to look at; it's quite small. But then, that's part of the magic, in my opinion: nothing to distract you. There is a small set of cardio machines, designed explicitly for warmups instead of a full cardio workout. Then there is a series of about 20 machines/stations. Anywhere who's been to a Planet Fitness or Curves or other similar gym knows what I'm talking about: an ordered set of machines that you use each for a small amount of time (in this case 60 seconds). The idea is that you generally fit the whole workout into about 30 minutes. There are many advantages to this method: it was designed for busy people, and also for people (like myself) who feel confused and/or intimidated by weight training. The machines are simple and there is no cognitive confusion: just sit at machine #1, and get up when you're done.
There are some disadvantages to this approach, of course. First of all, while this style of circuit training does a much better job of muscle confusion than your average workout, it still has the drawback that at the end of the day the circuit is the same each time, which means that, unless the gym is clever enough to change up the machines, you will eventually adapt. It also can breed a false sense of accomplishment. Generally, when I circuit train in this way, I don't really workout all that hard. By myself, in that setting, I often don't push myself and instead do the same workout over and over. So I wouldn't say circuit training is a panacea. But, if you - like me - are more of a cardio guy, and if you can't get to a weight class but want at least some weight training, I think it's a great place to start.
