I get told all the time by trainers that weights are for bodybuilding and that it’s impossible to do conditioning with weights or to burn fat through weight training. The reason so few understand this is that they have never tried complexes.
Some definitions first. A circuit is a series of exercises done in sequence. You can take a break or not between them, you can use different weights, different equipment, etc. Circuits are very flexible.
Compounds are usually two movements that are done back to back with the same weight and the same equipment. The fact that they’re done with the same weight makes them different from supersets, which are usually done with different weights or even different equipment.
Here’s a compund exercise i like a lot — the barbell burpee. Just grab whatever you can pretty easily press and do a burpee with it, then a pseudo-clean and press, and repeat for whatever rep count you’re going for. Try this out and you’ll see that compounds already jack the demands up on the body over single movement exercises.
A complex is a step up from a compound. It’s a series of exercises done with the same weight, same equipment, in a back to back fashion. They’re very tiring and I highly suggest folks build up to them in this fashion:
circuits–>compounds–>complexes
The most famous coach for complexes is Javorek and I have his book. The man is crazy. 🙂 First of all, the book has almost no margins and uses like an 8 point font. It’s almost 300 pages long. You really get your money’s worth with Javorek. He has circuits and complexes for everything under the sun and has trained hundreds of athelets with these things. If you have any interest in complexes, make Google your friend and look him up. However, I have to say the reason I got his book is that the stuff you find on the Inet is a little confusing. But here are a few examples:
This is one of his barbell complexes. Notice there are 5-6 exercises and each exercise is done with the same barbell, same weight until you have completed all the reps. Finishing all that would count as one rep of the complex.
Now what the video doesn’t show is how exhausting these can be. Notice that the man held the barbell in his hands the whole time. Grip is a problem with most folks and complexes will fix that like quick. In fact, I used barbell complexes exclusively to prepare to study Olympic lifting in Singapore because I knew I’d be using the bare bar for two hours a day and I knew a) that my grip would give out if i didn’t improve it and b) that I needed to work my conditioning like crazy to make it through our 2 hour a day sessions. My coach there was very pleased that I had prepared so well since many others may have underestimated the challenge. So complexes can prepare you for any kind of long sessions you might face.
But they REALLY shine for fat loss!
Here’s a clip I did a long time ago (please ignore the crappy form, we’ve come a long way baby!) for fat loss clients who wanted to transition from kettlebells to barbells but wanted fat loss instead of muscle gain. don’t let the light weights on this fool you — this will fry you fast! Those rollouts get reaaaallllly hard after a few sets.
Complexes work so well for fat loss and conditioning because of the whole body demand of the exercises. This is about as far away from isolation/bodybuilding type weightlifting as you can get. You’re burning crazy calories because of the metabolic demands.
Complexes can be done for strength or other goals. This is the Klokov complex:
That’s a pretty awesome display of strength.
They can also be done with dummbells or kettlebells. Here’s the man himself teaching his dumbbell complex #2:
There’s a lot of ways to use complexes and they can make you strong and burn fat at the same time. I really wish people would look beyond what a lot of folks around them are doing and try out things like complexes and compounds because these tools are so much more efficient as far as time and results go. You can get a crazy workout doing this stuff in 20-30:00.
Try it out and let me know what you think.