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Recovery after Circuit Training
The particular responses of blood pressure and heart rate to circuit training, mean that each session of circuit training must have a good recovery phase. Your heart rate and blood pressure must be allowed to recover from the stress of exercise, or you may find that exercise will cause you to get fatigued, not fit.
The recovery phase should include some low-level activity, using the large muscle groups of the lower body. This will prevent pooling of all the blood that has been circulating around your working muscles in the large veins of your legs (called venous pooling). Avoid venous pooling by continuing exercise at a low level of activity for three to five minutes straight after completing the "hard work" of exercise (the conditioning phase).
This easy exercising allows the leg muscles to "pump" blood back to the heart, where it can be redirected to the skin to cool your body down, or back to the central circulation around your internal organs. We prefer easy walking as a recovery after circuit training. Pedalling slowly on an exercise bike is also a good recovery, but if you're in a class there aren't usually enough bikes for everybody.
If a person has worked at too high an intensity for their level of fitness, they may be too exhausted to continue exercise, even at a low level. If ever you feel faint or nauseous, stop exercising immediately, and lie down with your legs elevated higher than your heart for a minimum of five minutes, or until you feel recovered. Don't let yourself get to this state, or you'll just have wasted your exercise session. Learn to pace yourself. You will get fitter more quickly by exercising at a lower intensity, and being able to exercise for longer.
As soon as exercise stops blood pressure drops rapidly, so the low-level recovery exercises should flow on directly from the more intense conditioning exercises.
After the warm down part of the recovery, the instructor should lead a stretch of the major muscles used during the circuit. These "recovery" stretches will assist in recovery, and prevent a loss of flexibility by returning the muscles to their pre-exercise length.
Circuit sessions should be preceded by a preparation phase, to allow the heart to reach optimum pumping capacity, and to allow blood pressure to stabilise. As well, a good preparation will get your body up to operating temperature, make your muscles more elastic, and get your joints mobilised.
Preparation and recovery phases perform crucial functions, such as regulating the temperature of the working muscles, improving the elasticity of the body's connective tissues, and maintaining the mobility of the joints of the body. Without these crucial parts of an exercise session, you will lose the benefits of the work you put into the conditioning phase.
No piece of circuit-training equipment is absolutely better than any other piece of equipment, but some are better than others at performing particular tasks. For example, hydraulic circuit-training equipment has the least likelihood of injury, or causing post-exercise muscle soreness. This is because these types of equipment don't ask a muscle to apply force when being lengthened (called an "eccentric" muscle contraction).
Eccentric muscle contractions are a major cause of muscle soreness. However, you don't get as much of a strength improvement from hydraulic equipment, because your muscle miss out on the eccentric muscle contraction, which is where most of the strength gains occur.
Circuit training puts a greater strain on the body's water supply systems than other forms of aerobic training, so you should be sure you keep up a good supply of water to your hard working body. Drink water before the class, any time you feel even a bit thirsty during a class, and after the recovery phase.
You should never go anywhere without a towel. This is especially true for circuit-training classes. A small towel will be useful for wiping down benches after you use them, for padding certain pieces of equipment to make them more comfortable, and for wiping off sweat during and after class.
If you have any medical concerns, you should be asked to clear them with your doctor before starting the exercise program. Anyone with hypertensive (high blood pressure) problems should always get their doctor to advise their instructor on potential problems before starting circuit-training classes.
Some fitness organizations also include a fitness assessment in a circuit-training program. We think this is a great idea, but then we also think it should be part of all exercise programs. If an assessment is compulsory, then the cost of the assessment should be clearly stated when signing up for the program, or included in the cost of the membership.
A fitness assessment will give you an indication of your starting levels of fitness, and regular feedback on whether the circuit classes have been successful in meeting your particular fitness goals. If you are not meeting your goals, then ask your instructors to suggest some changes in your program.
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