Circuit Gyms: the latest fitness scam that promises everything and delivers nothing!
25 August 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
The boxing bell rings and Alan Katz starts pounding away at a punching bag. After 30 seconds the bell rings again and it’s off to arm curls at the next station. In 20 minutes, he’s completed a series of cardio and strength training stations that experts say is in an excellent way to stay in shape. The Blitz in Tampa, Fla., where Katz exercises three times a week, is among the growing number of gyms promising an express circuit workout, which involves a laid-out course of about a dozen exercise stations. The concept - around for decades but popularized in the market by Curves for Women several years ago - is finding favor with the mass of Americans who say they just don’t have the time to exercise. “What’s beautiful about it - you’re catching everything in 20 minutes.
Experts like Jackie I suppose….circuit gym/boot-camps are the latest fitness fad that is being foisted on the public as the ultimate solution to the fitness paradox. Promise them everything and they will come – for a while. This latest bit of fitness misinformation is being passed off as yet another ‘ultimate fitness solution.’ A reasonable argument could be made that circuit training is a valid cardio format: the completion of a quick circuit including weight training, boxing, free-hand exercises, ad infinitum can and will elevate the heart rate. That would be nice in and of itself and were circuit/boot-camp procedures presented as such – another valid arrow in the fitness cardio quiver – I would be fine with it. But to present circuit training as a total fitness solution is laughable: a physiological impossibility presented as gospel in order to lure clients. The ultimate winner will be the gym owners. Its just another in a long line of fitness fads introduced with more hype and hoopla than the Edsel or New Coke and it is destined to die an ignominious death because it can not and will not come close to delivering what it promises: physical transformation. Where this fitness format flies off the road and into the weeds is by overreaching in its claims. Proponents boldly profess that this format deliver all the benefits of a comprehensive fitness regimen (cardio, diet and progressive resistance training) and it cannot and will not. In reality the resistance portion is insufficient to trip the hypertrophy switch. To reiterate that which longtime readers of this blog are aware, to trigger hypertrophy (muscle growth – the rationale for resistance training) the muscle must be subjected to sufficient stress and trauma. Hypertrophy is not a gradual process. Just as you cannot be slightly pregnant you cannot have gradual or partial hypertrophy – the training event must be of sufficient intensity to trigger growth. It either does or it doesn’t. Couldn’t you lift sufficiently poundage or perform enough repetitions in a circuit program to trigger hypertrophy? No. By purposefully introducing the element of muscle fatigue into the workout you prevent crossing the switch-trigger threshold. Sorry.
“I come out of there and I know I’ve done everything. It’s a no-brainer,” said Katz, a 47-year-old suburban Tampa resident. As a working father of two teenage girls, time is a scarce commodity. Despite the national obsession with fitness, about 85 percent of Americans do not belong to a gym, according to the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association. The most frequently cited reason for not joining a gym? A lack of time and intimidation, said Brooke Correia, the industry group’s spokeswoman. “The majority of these people are open game for the industry,” Correia said. It’s no surprise that circuit workouts - cheap, low-key and easy to understand - are popping up in strip malls coast to coast. About a third of the country’s estimated 30,000 health clubs are now express workout facilities, according to IHRSA. While Curves found an audience among middle-aged and older women, the spin-offs are branching out to other groups. Cuts Fitness for Men, which opened in 2003, now has 90 locations across the country. With a tan-and-blue color scheme and “Cheers”-like camaraderie, founder John Gennaro said members are typically between 30 and 60 and often watch a baseball game together after their workouts. The Blitz, a boxing-themed circuit gym, has 75 locations nationwide. This fall, President Scott Smith is planning a foray into the 18 to 35 market with a coed, military-themed version called “Commandos.”
A no brainer? Nautilus redux…from a gym owner standpoint, the circuit gym approach is a goldmine: it allows folks to rotate through in unbroken succession thereby maximizing the use of gym equipment. The reason gym owners loved the old Nautilus one-set-to-failure system was that you could line up a dozen machines and march clients through from one station to the next. Perform one set (sitting on each machine and performing a single set) on each device and you were done. Gee, exchange the Nautilus machines for circuit “stations” and we’ve got old wine in shiny new bottles. Do you know why there are no more Nautilus studios? (At one time it seemed every mall in America had a Nautilus gym) Because Nautilus didn’t work: it didn’t produce the results it claimed and after a few years the most stalwart Nautilus client said, “Hey wait a minute, I haven’t gotten any appreciable results. I’m not renewing my membership!” Once the collective consensus was reached that Nautilus didn’t deliver what was promised – bye, bye Nautilus! The boot-camp/circuit training fad will pass in time, morphing from all-the-rage into forgotten nothingness. Why? It won’t deliver the results claimed. Other than the cardio benefit, nothing of any real significance will occur. Why? While circuit training might provide a decent cardio workout, the resistance portion is lame (at best) when compared to a standard weight workout and it ignores the critical nutritional leg of the fitness triad. It’s a hyped-up goldmine for gym owners. In a few years this fad, like every other fitness fad of years gone by, will end up on the trash pile of fitness history.
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