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From:	Al Dente (114.oto.7.dmsp.com)
Subject:	Re: weight lifting routine
Date:	November 14, 2005 at 8:32 am PST

In Reply to: weight lifting routine posted by David on October 24, 2005 at 3:32 pm:

The most important thing for a beginner is to learn to do exercises correctly and to avoid injury.

I am glad you are going the free weight route. The process of controling and balancing causes all sorts of muscles to work together. Most exercises on machines don't produce this benefit.

I personally am a fan of circuit weight training; especially for beginners. You won't have large increases in strength and size you can get from station weight training but circuit training can improve strenght and done right can inprove stamina and even produce an aerobic benefit. The lighter weights used in circuit training also are less likely to cause injuries.

The general advice for circuit weight training is to choose exercises for your circuit that exercise the largest number of muscles in the smallest number of movements. Power cleans or dead lifts are considered better than squats because cleans or dead lifts hit more muscles. You can of course add exercises for specific muscles you feel need more work; in this case work from general to specific; e.g. you would do military press before tricep curls because military press hits several muscles including triceps while tricep curls only hit triceps.

Whatever you decided to do it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a trainer to show you the exercises so you can learn to do them right and avoid learning bad habits.

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