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CFT boosts popularity of circuit training

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — The pitch in John White’s voice picks up slightly as the sweat begins to bead on his forehead.

No, he’s not in the middle of a workout; the certified personal trainer is speaking excitedly about his newest workout creation, a circuit training course featuring 20 stations that mix strength exercises with plyometrics and agility drills. He calls it the Combat Fitness Circuit Course. It was designed to help Marines prepare for the Corps’ Combat Fitness Test.

“I’m making it into a big workout area,” he said, swinging his arm across a small expanse of asphalt next to Camp Pendleton’s 14 Area Fitness Center. “It doesn’t cost anything.”

White, a former Marine and an exercise physiologist, is among the growing number of personal trainers with the Corps’ Semper Fit program who have developed home-grown circuit training courses with combat conditioning — and now the CFT — specifically in mind.

Circuit training, by its nature, incorporates variety, which fitness experts say should be part of any exercise regimen. Plus, it hits the entire body.

“There’s a lot more we can do than just the ‘Daily 7’ and the long run,” he said, referring to a regimen of calisthenics once mandated by the Corps. “If your body is doing the same thing every day, it’s really not getting the things it needs to improve.”

On his plot of concrete, White has painted boxes to mark the station for agility ladder drills. “That strengthens the knees,” he explained. “I found out that women soccer players have less injuries” doing such exercises.

Several white lines painted five yards apart mark a 50-yard course where Marines will run incremented sprints aimed at prepping them for the CFT’s first event: an 880-yard sprint. Another station, not yet marked, will stow heavy ammunition cans or weights for Marines to lift.

White’s vision for the course includes pull-up bars and sit-up bars — the type often found at exercise stations in local parks — along with a few unconventional items such as car tires. The latter are cumbersome, and tossing them about is good practice for the CFT’s casualty carry, he noted.

Circuit stations can be adapted for different exercise equipment — resistance tubes, Swiss balls, hand weights, stretch bands, weighted vests — and you can improvise with just about anything. The courses can combine static strength exercises, such as lateral pulls or bicep curls; cardio exercises, such as jumping jacks; and core exercises, such as planks.

Over at the School of Infantry-West, Joe Artino, the 52 Area Fitness Center manager, has designed his own 20-station combat fitness circuit using the indoor basketball court and an area outdoors. Marines get one minute to complete each station. There’s no rest, and the clock doesn’t stop.

It starts with Swiss Ball squats, then the fireman’s carry before going quickly through Supermans, bicycle crunches, bleacher dips, side straddle hops, bicep curls, the agility ladder, medicine ball twists and two-hand kettle bell swings.

After walking lunges, there are push-ups and planks, flutter kicks, Swiss Ball leg curls, squat thrusts, shoulder presses, mountain climbers, dumbbell raises, bleacher step-ups and — finally — jump roping.

And that’s the halfway point.

Marines must complete two full circuits, for a 40-minute workout.

Talk about taxing. And “there’s a lot of ways to manipulate this,” Artino said.

The beauty of such portable circuits is that the routines don’t have to become, well, routine. That’s key to keeping Marines interested and focused on developing their combat fitness.

“Mentally,” White said, “you don’t want to do the same thing.” When training starts to feel comfortable, then it’s time to ramp it up, he added. “Who wants to just get by?”