Question: best way for this person to lift his weights

Assuming your BIL doesn't have any health conditions or falls into a higher risk stratification that would require a doctor's clearance, that's not the plan that I would design for him.

If his goal is to improve his body composition (lower body fat % and higher % of lean body mass) and general overall improved health, it makes more sense to focus on a healthy diet that creates a caloric deficit combined with some low-intensity aerobic exercise.  If he wants to do some resistance training, he should start with sets of 12-15 reps with 30 seconds of rest between sets.  After he gains more experience resistance training, he could move on to a more strength-focused program (heavy weights/low reps/long rest), or a hypertrophy-focused program.

As for his brother, that structure is not the way to build mass (hypertrophy).  Sets of 6-12 reps with 30-90 seconds rest are typically prescribed for building size.

Losing weight is all diet and cardio.  As for the lifting I would tell him to google "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe.  It's a great beginner program and will take full advantage of all his newb gains.

You beat me to it. I, too, was going to suggest Starting Strength for your BIL. The thing with trying to gain muscle while dieting is that the body REALLY doesn't like this. To gain muscle, the body wants extra calories. On a diet, the body goes into survival mode - it doesn't care that you want muscle, it just wants to survive. In fact, the body is likely to break down muscle tissue to get amino acids. However, lifting weights will greatly help to preserve muscle tissue. So, at best, a person on a diet is lucky to maintain existing muscle mass. Any muscle gain is a bonus. As a complete weight training newbie, your BIL has a chance to gain a little bit of muscle because of "newbie gains." But he shouldn't go crazy with the weights. Heavy weight for lots of sets while dieting could cause overtraining, which will likely cause him to go on an eating binge, and the program all goes to heck. This is why Starting Strength is good. It focuses on some basic exercises, and only has you do 3 sets of 5 reps, not including warm ups. Although it is a strength routine, it does not recommend starting out with heavy weight. In fact, it says that the first workout should start with an empty bar, add some weight each set, and add weight each workout. This is a good way to go, especially when learning the movements. The reps are kept to 5, which is also good for a beginner because it is much easier to maintain focus and keep good form for 5 reps than it is for 10 or 15 reps. To sum up, the formula for weight training while dieting is to do heavy, low volume strength work to maintain muscle and let the diet and cardio take care of the fat burning. Once your BIL becomes more advanced, he can experiment with higher rep sets and circuits for metabolic conditioning. But this is down the road a ways.

As for the guy who wants to gain mass, he needs to lift big and eat big. What he is doing isn't terrible, and I like the fact that he's added a heavy set of 1-2 reps in there to gain strength. However, I wouldn't jump into a max effort set after just one warm up set. I like to do sets of 5 reps adding weight each time. Once I can't do 5 reps, I drop down to 3, keep adding weight, and so on until I get to a heavy set of 1-2 reps. For the guy who wants to gain mass, after he's done with his final heavy set, have him reduce the load and do sets of 6-12 reps for as many sets as he can do. When he's done, have him go home and immediately eat something with lots of protein and carbs. This is actually an important step. After the meal, have him take a nap if he can. I'm not kidding about the nap, either, but if he can't get a nap in then no big deal.

Thanks everyone for the info., and I will pass it along.  I don't know too much about weight training, only what I do, and I was thinking he wasn't approaching it correctly, but he's of the mind set that anything with more than 6-8 reps is for girls. ha ha

I will also pass along the info to his brother who is trying to gain weight. He's eating a lot and drinking lots of protein shakes and whatnot. He said he was following some program from some book that is basically what arnold schwarzenegger did.  I know nothing about it.

What's ironic is that there is no difference between muscle tissue in men and muscle tissue in women. Men have more testosterone which allows them to gain more mass, but muscle is muscle. There is no physiological reason why women should train any differently than men.

This is so true.  It makes me so mad to go to the gym and listen to trainers tell women to go high rep.  Look you don't have the same test levels as men so you won't put on the same mass.  Ugh.  Carrie I know bb'ers that put on a ton of mass on a 10-15 rep scheme and a ton that lift in the 3-8 range.  Everyone responds a bit differently.  Also does that book have Arnie's roid scheme?  Without it you won't get the same results.

I agree that it's frustrating to hear the trainers themselves pushing false information.  My BIL doesn't claim that our make-up is any different - he's even dumber than that, since he has no real reason for his thought process :-)  He also thinks that any man is basically stronger than any woman - he's just an idiot :-)

I thought the same thing about this guy when he said he was following Arnold's way lol.

It's not the most efficient means of strength training to promote muscle growth, which is your body's #1 furnace for burning fat.  It's most important for him to keep his heartrate in the target fat burning zone, which is why reps/breaks are critical.  Trying to lift the whole gym in 1-2 reps four times over is  bit unnerving for a beginner.  Honestly, one must conquer their nutrition first, and the"which way is the beach" and Arnold jokes can come second.

Nutrition should always come first but honestly it's a lot easier to lift progressively heavier with a marginal diet than to cut with a marginal one.  Also as a newb you can actually cut fat and add strength which becomes much harder as you progress.  So bottom line is you can/will progress in the gym while trying to get a handle on a diet setup that works for you.

The unnerving part is why you follow a program like starting strength or 5 x 5 which have plans set in stone and you just follow them to get results.  For instance if you download the 5x5 spreadsheet off of stronglifts.com, plug your data into it, it will spit out what weights to lift, for how many sets, and how many reps.  It's cheap, proven, and effective.

Where you replying to me, or just using my last post as a means to offer advice to Carrie? ...couldn't really tell from your post...