How to Circuit Train Your Kids
When I bring up circuit training, there seems to be a knee-jerk reaction from parents to think of it as Cross-Fit. While Cross-Fit does work for certain populations, that is not what we are talking about here.
Circuit Training, or Vertical Loading, as some personal trainers may know it, is simply doing 1 set of each exercise you plan to do for the workout back to back, rather than doing 3 sets of one exercise, then 3 sets of the next. That would be Horizontal Loading, which is what people commonly associate with resistance training.
Circuit training is usually done with very little resting in between exercises, although it does not have to be. There is no need to push your child into a level of training that they are not comfortable with. If they can sustain shorter rest periods and they are comfortable doing so, by all means let them. But if they would rather take minute long breaks in-between, that’s good to.
Differences in Exercise: Children vs. Adults
If you are an athlete or an avid exerciser, you may be used to circuits that are a little too advanced for your children. For example, some of my personal favorites include exercises such as Kettlebell Swings, Plyometric Lunges, Power Cleans, etc. While these are excellent exercises for developing strength and power, they are also very technical movements that shouldn’t be introduced until a good foundation of strength has been developed. This will not happen until after puberty.
Which brings us to another question that comes up a lot, “is it safe for my child to be doing resistance training?” Yes and no. If done correctly, resistance training is an excellent addition to a child’s exercise regimen and will introduce them to exercises early on that they will master before their peers. The reason I will also say “no,” is that if you try to train a child like you train an adult, you may end up injuring them and/or doing more harm than good.
One very important thing to recognize when having a child lift weight is this:
Children’s muscles rarely get bigger or stronger with weight training.
So Why Does my Child Need to Lift Weights?
Just because a child’s muscles themselves are not get bigger and stronger, does not mean that your child won’t be able to move quicker or lift more weight. This is because the adaptations that a child receives from working their muscles is almost entirely from neurological function.
Without getting too technical, every muscle in the body has nerves running through it that activate when the muscle needs to contract. The nerves start out as quite uncoordinated and different muscle groups don’t automatically coordinate well together without practice. With even just a moderate amount of resistance/strength training, these nerves will develop quicker, more active pathways that contribute significantly to your child’s athletic ability. It is not genetics that make you athletic, it’s training.
Additionally, with these extremely well developed pathways intact already by the time your child reaches puberty, that will get bigger and stronger than their peers in a shorter amount of time and have a much less chance of getting injured when performing movements under heavy weight or technical movements because they will already be well-conditioned to handle that level of training.
Proper Circuit Training for Children
This all amounts to one thing, children should not be doing the heavy weights or low repetition ranges that are associated with strength or hypertrophy (increase in muscle size) training. The repetitions per exercise should be upwards of 20, usually in the 25–30 repetition range. This obviously will need to be done with a lighter weight or easy bodyweight exercises to be done until completion. This will help them develop the proper muscle memory to do the exercise correctly and effectively and also build their coordination.
Tips for Designing a Training Circuit for Your Child
1. Don’t do all the exercises in the same place. Have a large open area like your backyard or even just around your living room to physically move from one exercise to the next. This will make it more of an actual circuit and more enjoyable than just doing a series of exercise while standing in place.
2. Design a circuit of roughly 7–9 stations, with at least one of them being a “rest” station where your child takes time to catch their breath and drink water. Children often don’t feel the effects of dehydration as rapidly as adults do, so it’s important to have a set-aside time to rehydrate during each round. It will also be important to drink water following the entire workout as part of the recovery.
3. Do 2–3 rounds of each circuit, depending on time you have available, the difficulty of the exercises, and the level of fitness of your child.
4. Have a least 2–3 of the exercises in the circuit ones where you are not just standing in place. Cone drills, dot drills, ladder drills, and shuffling from one line to another are oftentimes the most entertaining and engaging exercises for children and are very effective at developing speed, agility, quickness, coordination, and balance.
