Pick Your Poison

For beginners, you want to choose about 8-10 exercises, which comes out to about one exercise per muscle group. The list below offers some examples:

• Chest: bench press, chest press machine, pushups, pec deck machine
• Back: one-armed row, seated row machine, back extensions, lat pulldowns
• Shoulders: overhead press, lateral raise, front raise
• Biceps: bicep curls, hammer curls, concentration curls
• Triceps: tricep extensions, dips, kickbacks
• Quadriceps: Squats, lunges, leg extension and leg press machines
• Hamstrings: deadlifts, lunges, leg curl machine
• Abs: crunches, reverse crunches, oblique twists, pelvic tilts

Check out the strength training and cardio workouts available at Workout Central

Sequence of Exercises

• Make sure you choose at least one exercise for each major muscle group.
• The muscles to work include: Chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, quadriceps, hamstrings, calves and abdominals.
• If you leave any muscle group out, this could cause an imbalance in your muscles and possibly lead to injuries.

Most experts recommend starting with your larger muscle groups and then proceeding to the smaller muscle groups. The most demanding exercises are those performed by your large muscle groups and you will need your smaller muscles to get the most out of these exercises. But, don't feel limited by that. You can do your exercises in any order you like and changing the order is a great way to challenge yourself in different ways.

How Much Weight To Use

The easiest way to determine how much weight you should use on each lift is to guess (not very scientific, huh?):

1. Pick up a light weight and do a warm up set of the exercise of your choice, aiming for about 10 to 16 repetitions.
2. For set 2, increase your weight by 5 or more pounds and perform your goal number of repetitions. If you can do more than your desired number of reps, heavy up again for your 3rd set.
3. In general, you should be lifting enough weight that you can ONLY do the desired reps. You should be struggling by the last rep, but still able to finish it with good form.
4. It may take awhile to find the right amount of weight for each exercise.
5. In general, you can use heavier weights with larger muscle groups such as chest, back and legs. You'll need smaller weights for the shoulders and arms.

Next Page Choosing Repetitions and Sets