Walk past any football training ground during pre-season and you will often see players moving between cones, hurdles, medicine balls and mini-goals, spending less than a minute at each one. This is circuit training, one of the oldest and most flexible methods in sports conditioning.
So, what are the benefits of circuit training for athletes? This article explains what circuit training is and where it came from, why its format suits the demands of football, what the research says about its main benefits, and where its limits are. It finishes with a simple football circuit you can try.
What Is Circuit Training?
A circuit is a series of exercises, called stations, completed one after another with little or no rest. Each station lasts for a set time or a set number of repetitions. When athletes finish the last station, they have completed one circuit, and they usually repeat it two or three times. Stations can include body-weight exercises, weights, sprints, jumps or skills with a ball.
The modern method was created in 1953 by R.E. Morgan and G.T. Adamson at the University of Leeds in England. Their original circuits used around nine to twelve stations with light loads. One of their main aims was to let people of different abilities train together in the same session while each worked at their own pace.
Why Circuit Training Suits Football
Football is an intermittent sport. Players jog, walk and stand still, then suddenly sprint, jump, tackle or change direction. To cope, they need strength and power for explosive actions and a good aerobic engine to recover between them. Research on professional players has found that those with a higher maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max) tend to recover better between repeated sprints.
Circuit training can work on several of these qualities in one session. Mixing strength stations with running or jumping stations keeps the heart rate high while different muscle groups take turns to work, which is similar to the stop-start rhythm of a match.
The Main Benefits of Circuit Training for Athletes
Strength and Fitness at the Same Time
Circuit training is one of the few methods that can improve muscular strength and cardiovascular fitness together. A 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis in the journal Sports Medicine, led by Francisco Muñoz-Martínez, found that resistance circuit training increased both maximum oxygen uptake and one-repetition maximum bench press in healthy adults, regardless of the exact protocol used.
Time Efficiency
Because rest periods are short, circuits deliver a lot of work in little time. A well-known 2013 article in ACSM’s Health and Fitness Journal by Brett Klika and Chris Jordan described a body-weight circuit of 12 exercises, each lasting 30 seconds with 10 seconds of rest between them. It became widely known as the “7-minute workout”. For athletes with busy match schedules, short and efficient sessions are valuable.
Easy to Make Football-Specific
Coaches can design stations around the movements players actually use: short sprints, changes of direction, jumps, passing against a wall or shooting at a mini-goal. Studies of youth players support this kind of combined approach. In one study, adding eight weeks of twice-weekly plyometric, sprint and change-of-direction training improved the anaerobic performance of under-15 male players compared with normal training alone.
Practical for Whole Squads
A single coach can run a circuit for 20 or more players at once, with each player at a different station. Exercises can be made easier or harder for individuals, so a player returning from injury and a fully fit teammate can train side by side. Circuits also need very little equipment, which makes them useful for grassroots clubs with limited facilities.
The Limits of Circuit Training
Circuit training is not the best tool for every goal. Building maximum strength usually requires heavier loads and longer rest; the American College of Sports Medicine suggests two to three minutes of rest between sets in multiple-set strength training. Pure speed work also needs full recovery, because tired players cannot reach top speed. Fatigue can affect technique too, so complex skills and heavy lifts are better placed early in a circuit or done separately.
A Simple Football Circuit to Try
After a proper warm-up, try eight stations of 30 seconds of work and 30 seconds of rest: squats, 10-metre shuttle sprints, push-ups, lateral hurdle jumps, plank, wall passes, lunges and dribbling through cones. Rest for two minutes after each circuit and complete two or three rounds. Beginners can start with 20 seconds of work and build up gradually.
Used alongside technical sessions, strength work and proper recovery, circuit training gives athletes an efficient way to build the all-round fitness that football demands.
