gather up the following inexpensive equipment and set up stations in your
exercise room, spare bedroom, (dry) basement, garage, backyard (in good
weather), or any other place you can think of:A sit-up mat or thick towel (for sit-ups, push-ups, crunches, Pilates
exercises)
One pair each of 5-, 8-, 10-, 12-, and/or 15-pound weights (for curls,
shrugs, upright rows, punches, and so on)A weight bar with however much weight you can handle for squats
A sturdy chair or ledge (for chair dips)A pull-up bar secured in a doorway (for pull-ups, hanging abs)
A stairway or step (for step-ups, single-leg squats, toe raises)Arrange each of these so that they’re 10 to 20 feet apart; a circle or square
can work, but so can a zigzag pattern, as long as you have some room to walk
quickly or run between stations. If you need to place the stations closer than
this — say, right next to each other — that’s fine. Just do jumping jacks, jump
rope, or run in place with high knees for ten seconds between exercises.To choose which exercises to do at each station, see the following sections,
check out Chapter 14 for illustrations of many of these exercises, or — for
detailed coverage of all these exercises — get a copy of our book, Weight
Training For Dummies, 2nd Edition (published by Wiley).At each station, you can do several different exercises, as described in the
following sections. However, you can easily forget what exercise you’re sup-
posed to do when you get to a station, so I suggest putting a sheet of paper at
each station that lists, in order, the one, two, or three exercises that you’re
planning to doing there.Arm-strengthening stations ..............................................................
Because the warm-up, cooldown, and movement between stations work your
leg muscles, many people emphasize arm-strength stations in their circuit rou-
tines, focusing as many as half of the total number of stations on their arms.This list is not meant to be exhaustive. If you get results from other arm-
strengthening exercises, put those on your circuit. This list is also not meant
to imply that you’ll include all these exercises in your circuit. You can pick
and choose from the list, as best suits your needs.If you don’t have the space to store weights, you can also use exercise bands
or tubes (see Chapter 20) to do many of the weight-intensive exercises.240 Part V: Cardio-Strength Workouts: Getting the Best of Both Worlds