The Best Short Workouts With Free Weights

The best short workouts with free weights include exercises for large muscle groups, increase resistance, increase reps and make use of rest periods with abdominal exercises. Short workouts are an efficient way to do weight training when you have very little time. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) advises muscular strength is important for your health, your ability to perform activities of daily living and it will improve your quality of life.

Chest, Back and Abs

If you are running short on time, do not skip your session. Instead, opt for a quick workout with dumbbells and a flat bench. Though these exercises focus on the big muscles of your upper body (pecs and your lats), they also engage your biceps and triceps as supporting muscles. Work your abdominal muscles while your chest and back muscles are recovering.
You need to do three exercises for chest paired with three exercises for your back and abdominals. For instance, do a set of flat dumbbell presses, a set of one arm dumbbell rows then a set of basic crunches. Each set is completed one after the other with no rest between sets. Next, pair flat dumbbell flies, dumbbell pullovers and reverse crunches.
Your last triplet of exercises will be incline dumbbell presses, bent-over seated rows and v-ups on the bench. For the first set of each exercise, do 12 to 15 reps. Pick up a slightly heavier weight for your second set and do eight to 10 reps. Finally, get an even heavier weight to do only six to eight reps. Gradually increasing weights will optimally challenge your muscles in a short period of time by improving your muscular strength, muscle mass and your muscular endurance.

Legs and Shoulders

When you are short on time, it is best to do multi-joint exercises. For instance, a squat is a multi-joint exercise where you bend at your hips, knees and ankles. Pairing a leg exercise with a shoulder exercise allows your leg muscles to recover while your shoulder muscles are working. You can even do a quick leg and shoulder workout with dumbbells and a flat bench. Use light dumbbells for leg exercises to decrease your risks of straining your neck muscles while holding the dumbbells.
Pair dumbbell squats with dumbbell shoulder presses, straight-leg dumbbell dead lifts with upright dumbbell rows and stationary lunges with seated bent-over dumbbell flies. Complete three sets of 15 reps per set for each exercise in a pair.

Full Body Workouts

If you know you will only make it to the gym twice in a week and have only 30 minutes, you can still get an effective workout. ACSM advises you only need to do two sets of eight to 10 exercises a week, working your major muscles to maintain your strength. Choose two pairs of exercises from the chest, back and abs workout and two pairs of exercise from the legs and shoulders workout. Only do two sets of 12 reps for each exercise.
For instance, first work chest, back and abs: flat dumbbell presses, one arm dumbbell rows and crunches; flat dumbbell flies, dumbbell pullovers and reverse crunches. Then, do legs and shoulders: dumbbell squats with dumbbell shoulder presses and straight-leg dead lifts with upright dumbbell rows.