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Weight-training is one of the most effective methods to change and reshape your body. Compared with other workout methods, such as cardiovascular and aerobic exercies, weight-training provides several key benefits. Getting started with weight-training can be confusing. If you are unsure about your physical capacity to lift weights, or your abilities, you should consult with a physician or personal trainer.About.com has a fantastic article detailing the do's and don'ts of weight training. It details the specific reps, workouts and areas you should be focusing to attain your desired results.  After the link, you will find excerpts from this terrific article.

The benefits of weight-lifting:

1. help to raise your metabolism
2. burn more calories, as muscle is more efficient at burning calories than fat
3. strengthen bones, especially important for women, and helps avoid injuries
4. increase muscular endurance, allowing you to train longer and harder
5. improve coordination and balance

The Basics

If you're setting up your own program, you'll need to know some basic strength training principles. These principles will teach you how to make sure you're using enough weight, determine your sets and reps and insure you're always progressing in your workouts.

1. Overload: To build muscle, you need to use more resistance than your muscles are used to. This is important because the more you do, the more your body is capable of doing, so you should increase your workload to avoid plateaus. In plain language, this means you should be lifting enough weight that you can ONLY complete the desired number of reps. You should be able to finish your last rep with difficulty but also with good form.
2. Progression. To avoid plateaus (or adaptation), you need to increase your intensity regularly. You can do this by increasing the amount of weight lifted, changing your sets/reps, changing the exercises and changing the type of resistance. You can make these changes on a weekly or monthly basis.
3. Specificity. This principle means you should train for your goal. That means, if you want to increase your strength, your program should be designed around that goal (e.g., train with heavier weights closer to your 1 RM (1 rep max)). To lose weight, choose a variety of rep ranges to target different muscle fibers.
4. Rest and Recovery. Rest days are just as important as workout days. It is during these rest periods that your muscles grow and change, so make sure you're not working the same muscle groups 2 days in a row.

Before you get started on setting up your routine, keep a few key points in mind:

1. Always warm up before you start lifting weights. This helps get your muscles warm and prevent injury. You can warm up with light cardio or by doing a light set of each exercise before going to heavier weights.
2. Lift and lower your weights slowly. Don't use momentum to lift the weight. If you have to swing to get the weight up, chances are you're using too much weight.
3. Breathe. Don't hold your breath and make sure you're using full range of motion throughout the movement.
4. Stand up straight. Pay attention to your posture and engage your abs in every movement you're doing to keep your balance and protect your spine.

Your first step in setting up a routine is to choose exercises to target all of your muscle groups. If you need guidance, you can:

• Hire a Personal Trainer
• Try Home Workout Videos or,
• Work with an Online Personal Trainer.

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
• 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

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.

References in this Article:

1. http://exercise.about.com/cs/exerciseworkouts/a/weight101.htm