Fire Your Gym and Hire Yourself With Bodyweight Circuits

According to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA), there were 45.3 million members in 29,750 health clubs last year. The average health club membership costs between $400-$800 per year. This nets the industry 19.5 billion annually. Fitness machine sales are $3 billion annually. Gym members spend an average of 1 hour 38 minutes per gym visit, not including travel to and from the gym.

50,000 gym members a year find themselves in the ER, due to dropping weights, falling off moving treadmills and exercise balls, etc. This doesn't include those who go to their own doctor or those who choose to treat themselves.

What if there was a an efficient, effective way to work out, that yielded great results, took less time, and didn't require travel to a gym? What the fitness industry doesn't want you to know is that it already exists! You can fire your gym and hire the most incredible, versatile fitness machine ever made. Your body!

Enter bodyweight circuits. Bodyweight circuits involve rapidly cycling exercises that use your own bodyweight for resistance. Travel to a gym is not necessary because all the room that is needed is a space the length of your body, the width of your arm span, and as high as you can jump with your hands over your head. Though equipment is not necessary, sometimes you may want to use a chair, or a portable pull up bar (that you can get at stores like Walmart or Kmart), for exercises like pull ups, dips, elevated push ups or step ups. When you use your own bodyweight, you can always get to the gym because your gym travels with you. Your equipment is you!

What happens when you are in the gym? Most likely you do some type of cardio on a treadmill or an elliptical trainer. Then you have to get your resistance training in so you lift weights using machines or free weights or both. That's why the average gym visit is 1 hr 38 minutes. During a bodyweight circuit workout, you can build muscle, lose fat, and gain endurance, all at once. This is because in addition to resistance, your body is using composite movements (involving multiple muscle groups) instead of isolation movements (concentrating on one particular muscle group). Since you are cycling exercises, your blood flow is cycling from your upper body, to your lower body, to your whole body. This requires a lot of oxygen, which burns fat like crazy! It is also incredibly efficient. A good bodyweight workout is 10-20 minutes long. That's it!

Bodyweight exercises are extremely safe. There are no strain injuries like those sustained lifting weights. If you can't lift your bodyweight in a push up, you just can't do it. You don't get injured. You just modify the exercise to make it easier. Have you ever heard of a push up or a jumping jack injury? I certainly haven't. Exercises are extremely easy to modify so that you can make an exercise easy or more difficult. Using push ups as an example, a more advanced push up would be a Hindu push up or a push up with feet elevated. If that is too difficult you could do a standard push up. Is it still too difficult? Do the push up on your knees or with your hands on a step. Is it still too hard? Try leaning against a wall. Any bodyweight exercise can be modified to make it easier or harder, not to mention adding or subtracting repetitions or adding or subtracting how many rounds you complete in the sequence.

Now let's deal with the most common objections. Some people say, "Clint, I don't believe a person can get strong with bodyweight exercise. It takes weights to do that." Riddle me this. Why can't a 225-lb bodybuilder perform the iron cross on gymnastic rings and a 170-lb gymnast can? The answer is- the bodybuilder isn't strong enough! Pound for pound, the gymnast is stronger. Additionally, the gymnast has built functional muscle through composite bodyweight exercise. The gymnast has a lethal pair of "guns" for arms!

The last common objection is this one. Don't I need cardio? Bodyweight circuits won't give me cardio and endurance. Oh, really? Try performing this sequence continuously for 20 minutes. You will be sweating like a pig and breathing hard when you're finished!

5 pull-ups

10 push-ups (substitute Hindu push ups for more difficulty)

15 squats(substitute Hindu squats for more difficulty)

Bodyweight circuit training will get you in the best shape of your life. Are you ready to burn fat and build muscle faster than you ever have before? You can fire your gym and hire yourself and save time, and money. To find out more about bodyweight circuits go to commandfitness.blogspot.com.

Clint Grimes is a retired US Navy commander. He is currently a police sergeant in Southern California. He is certified coach in the California Interscholastic Federation and is currently the strength and conditioning coach for the boys' soccer and wrestling teams at El Toro High School in Lake Forest, CA.

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Clint Grimes

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