The Best Weightlifting Routines

According to Michael Clark, DPT, CEO of the National Academy of Sports Medicine in Calabasas, California, the best weight-lifting routines should be based on your goals, whether you want to increase muscle size, improve endurance and strength, or lose body fat. You can use a variety of exercise equipment to train, such as cable column machines, kettlebells, medicine balls, dumbbells, and barbells.

Supersets

Gray Cook, founder of Functional Movement Systems in Danville, Virginia, describes supersets as doing two exercises that trains opposing movement patterns or body parts without rest between sets. This develops muscular endurance and strength while saving you time in your workout. The principle behind this training is to allow one muscle group to rest while the opposing group works.
An example of a superset would be doing a pulling and pushing exercise, such as a standing cable row and a standing cable chest press. Another superset would be to do a lower-body exercise followed by an upper-body exercise, such as a squat and a dumbbell shoulder press.

Strength Circuit

This training method develops muscular endurance and stamina by doing four to eight exercises that train different movement patterns or body parts. For each exercise, you should be able to do each for 15 to 30 seconds. If you can lift for more than 30 seconds easily, use more weight. If you cannot lift more than 15 seconds, use less weight. According to Cook, each exercise should focus on movement rather than body parts.
A sample strength circuit would include the dumbbell chest press, standing dumbbell row, kettlebell front swing, barbell squats, and kettlebell deadlift.

Interval Training

According to Cook, interval training is doing short bursts of moderate to high-intensity activity followed by a period of recovery. This method challenges your body and mind to recover and repeat the exercises, and improves endurance for field and court sports, such as basketball, soccer, and tennis. This can be applied to weight-lifting, as well.
You can mix a weight-lifting exercise with different exercise, such as medicine ball throws, jumping rope, or sprinting. An example of interval training with weights would be to do a standing cable chest press followed by 30 seconds of jump-roping, or do a barbell squat followed by 30 seconds of throwing a medicine ball.