How do I set different times for each exercise?

Build the session as a list instead of one interval. Each line carries an exercise name, its own work time, and its own rest, and the timer walks down the list and starts over each round. Set it once before you start, save it under a name, and let the voice cues call what is coming so you never walk to the screen to check the order.

How long should each exercise's work interval be?

Match the number to how the move fails, not to how hard round one feels. Fast-collapse moves like jump lunges and burpees stay honest at 20 to 30 seconds. Steady movers that hold their shape, squats for instance, carry 40 to 45 at a pace that is hard but repeatable, about an eight out of ten. Holds such as planks run to the end of quality, usually somewhere in the 30 to 45 range.

Do I have to reset the timer between exercises?

Only if it holds a single interval, and that workaround costs more than it looks. Every reset is a chance for rest to stretch, and someone has to operate the timer mid-session instead of training. A timer built for circuits takes the whole list in one setup. If yours cannot, pick a uniform structure that genuinely suits one number, an EMOM for instance, rather than resetting.

How long will my mixed circuit take?

Add up the work and rest for every station, multiply by the number of rounds, and add a minute to get ready. A round of jump lunges 30/15, push-ups 30/30, air squats 40/20 and a plank 45/15 comes to three minutes forty-five; four rounds is fifteen minutes flat. Do the sum before you start and the session fits the time you actually have.

Per-exercise intervals: programming mixed sessions

Most interval timers open with two questions: how long for work, how long for rest. Then they apply your answer to everything. For a tabata, or a straight 40/20, that is the whole job. A mixed circuit is a different animal, because its exercises do not fail at the same speed.

A kettlebell swing holds 40 seconds of quality work. A goblet squat is better at 30. Jump lunges and burpees go to pieces somewhere in round three, while air squats keep their shape to the end. “Can I set different times per exercise mid-circuit?” is a live question wherever circuits get discussed, and it is really two questions: can the timer hold a different clock per station, and do you know which numbers each station deserves? The first one is a feature question. The second is programming, and it applies no matter which timer you own.

What one interval costs

Run a mixed circuit on a single work number and one of two things happens. Either the number fits the strongest move and drags the fragile ones into the ugly zone by round four, or it fits the fragile ones and the steady moves never get enough work to matter. The compromise feels reasonable, which is why people accept it, but it taxes every station to pay one.

Uniform formats never face this. An EMOM makes every minute the same minute, which is a large part of why it paces so well. A mixed circuit took on the variety, so it has to program it.

Rest goes the same way. The gap a swing earns and the gap a halo needs are separate decisions, and one setting in the middle serves neither. The old workaround is running the timer per exercise and resetting between stations, and everyone who has done it knows the cost: you become the operator. Rest stretches the second nobody guards it, and the session loses its shape one station at a time.

Match the clock to the move

Work length follows how the movement breaks down, not how it feels fresh.

Moves that collapse fast, jump lunges, burpees, anything with a jump in it, stay honest between 20 and 30 seconds. Past that, the last five seconds are injury rehearsal on tired coordination. Steady movers that hold their shape, squats, rows, grinds with a bell, carry 40 to 45 seconds at a pace that is hard but repeatable, roughly an eight out of ten. The test is the same one behind the 40/20 format: if you are sprinting the interval, the number is wrong, not you. Holds, a plank, a hollow position, run to the end of quality, which for most people lands in the 30-to-45 range.

None of these numbers are laws. They are the defaults that keep round four looking like round one, which is the entire aesthetic of interval training.

The second number

Every station carries its own rest, and that rest is part of the exercise’s spec rather than a global setting. The gap after a jump exercise has to actually recover you. The gap after a plank mostly has to let you walk to the next spot; around 15 seconds covers the walk and nothing else, which is fine, because the plank was not the effort that emptied you.

Two habits keep per-station rest honest. Give the biggest, most powerful move the longest gap in the round, since that is the work you are protecting. And be suspicious of any rest long enough to survive a phone check: the clock question turns into ninety seconds of reading something unrelated while the muscles cool down.

Order is the free variable

Work and rest are negotiated with your body. Order is negotiated with nothing but a list, which makes it the cheapest programming you will ever do.

The main rule is that neighbors should not share a muscle group. Squats straight into lunges spends the same legs twice; squats into push-ups lets each half recover while the other works. Past that, put the most technical or most ballistic move first in the round, while you are fresh enough to be accurate, and let the holds come last, when accuracy has left the building and only stubbornness remains.

Budget the round

A circuit without a budget is a session that ends when the morning runs out of patience. The arithmetic is one line: add each station’s work plus its rest, multiply by the rounds, add a minute to get ready.

A bodyweight example, four stations:

Jump lunges, 30 work, 15 rest
Push-ups, 30 work, 30 rest
Air squats, 40 work, 20 rest
Plank, 45 work, 15 rest

That round is three minutes forty-five, and four rounds is fifteen minutes flat. The order alternates legs, upper body, legs, core, so every station starts while its muscle group is at its freshest of the round.

When the morning is shorter than the plan, shrink the rounds or the work numbers. Rest is the line item people cut first and the one the session actually runs on.

What the timer has to hold

All of this lives or dies in the setup screen. The session needs to go in as a list, each line with its own name, work, and rest, and the timer has to walk that list round by round without a reset anywhere in it. The voice carries the list, calling the next exercise by name so the order survives a mind gone blank mid-round. And the whole thing gets saved under its own name, because a circuit you tuned over three weeks is worth more than the ten minutes it took to enter.

The voice cues are what make per-exercise timing livable, the screen-off habit is what keeps your hands off the phone, and the kettlebell circuit published earlier is the same idea with one bell.

That is the whole craft: numbers that match the moves, an order that shares the work around, a budget you did while dry, and a timer that holds all of it while you train. Program it before the sweat. The person choosing mid-workout always negotiates down.