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Readers of WorldFitnessNetwork.com are a smart group of people. You are smart enough to know that your training is important and that you lifting weights will help you achieve your goals. You understand things about living strong that most people just don’t get.

And since you are already such a smart group of people, I already know that I don’t need to tell you that you should never workout naked. There’s no need for me to explain why it would be bad if your flip-flopping appendages were to get caught in the weight stack.

You guys are smart. You already get this stuff.

But there are a few other advantages to not working out naked that you should be taking advantage of. Here we go:

1. Warm up clothing: Wearing some extra clothing until your body warms up is generally a good idea, especially if it’s winter time or if you live in a colder climate. This extra clothing allows your body to retain more heat until it reaches the optimal temperature for going heavy on a workout.

Keeping your body warm is especially important for injury prevention. You are much less likely to pull or tear a muscle that is warmer. Wear that sweater at the beginning of your workout until you are nice and warm.

2. Protection: I’m not talking about that kind of protection… this is about why you shouldn’t workout naked… so get your mind out of the gutter. Any commercial gym these days will require you to wear shoes in case you drop a weight on your foot, but the right clothing will do more for you than just protect against accidents.

Anytime that you are ever placing a bar on your back, it is best to be wearing a T-shirt with sleeves. A tank top can work just fine on workout days that you’re not placing a heavy bar on your back, but skin gets slippery when it’s wet or sweaty. For this reason, a decent shirt is necessary on your leg days.

And I know that wearing a decent shirt is especially important for you since you are working out extra hard and getting really sweaty… and I already know you are a hard worker, not a sissy.

3. Shoes: The type of shoe you wear will probably reflect what your focus for the day is. Weightlifting shoes are great for anybody who is serious about getting the most out of a workout. Running shoes with gels or air in the soles absorb some of the force that you apply when squatting or doing other standing lifts.

Running shoes are, of course, important to wear when you’re running. The extra padding and arch support can be important for reducing the amount of shock placed on your joints. Also, having decent treads on the bottom of your shoes is very helpful when you’re working out your calves.

4. Wick Sweat Away: Getting sweaty is part of getting a good workout. Wear a shirt that is cotton or 50/50 to help with sweat. Also, think about all the nasty sweat that some big guy dripped all over the bench before you lay down on it. Wear a decent layer to separate you from all that dried sweat and any bacteria.

5. Support: Look, guys, you know you need the support of some good ‘ol briefs when you run. You can probably get away with boxers if you’re just lifting, but running requires a bit more support. Same goes for the ladies and their sports bras.

Pants vs. Shorts: Whether you want to wear pants or shorts to the gym a choice you can make. Obviously, pants probably make more sense for keeping warm in the winter or early in your workout. Whichever you end up going with, try to pick some workout attire that can stretch slightly so that it doesn’t grab onto your legs when you get sweaty.

The main thing is that you wear something that doesn’t get in the way of lifting and gives you plenty of freedom of movement. Of course, nothing beats a pair of spandex when it comes to having full freedom of movement, so you guys should really look into getting a pair of those as well. They really let you move and help to show off the definition in your glutes while you workout.

And if you really believed that statement about the spandex, please go ahead and slap yourself right now. You probably need a good slapping, and hopefully it will knock some sense into you.

The key to training each of your muscles is to understand their function and how they work. Your chest is no different. Here, we’ll go over your pectoral muscles, how to train them, and we’ll even dispel a few myths along the way.

Chest Anatomy:

The pectorals are your chest muscles. They begin at your sternum and connect to a tendon that attaches to the humeris bone in your upper arm. Each time your chest muscles contract, they essentially pull your upper arm bone forward and in front of you.

To get a feel for the full range of motion of your chest muscles, straighten your arms out to each side of you. Move your arms forward in front of you until your forearms cross. This represents the full and complete range of motion for your chest muscles.

We’ll just skip the rest of the anatomy lesson and get to what you really need to know. For your training, your pecs are essentially trained as a whole using exercises like the bench press, or you can use exercises that focus on your upper chest such as the incline bench press.

Aside from the upper chest exercises, there isn’t really as much specialization for the chest as one might think. Let’s take a look at the different chest specialization areas you might have heard of.

• General Pecs: You will train your chest muscle group as a whole using the flat level bench. This includes the flat bench press, flat bench flyes, dumbbell bench press, etc. Dips will also train your pecs with somewhat less emphasis on the upper chest.

• Upper Chest: You train the upper portion of your chest using an incline bench. Exercises such as the incline bench press, incline flyes, and incline dumbbell bench press will all emphasize the upper chest.

• Lower Chest: The lower chest muscle is a myth. It’s simply not there. The decline bench press will work your chest from a different angle, yes. But there is no such thing as a lower chest muscle that is distinct or separate from other chest muscles.

• Inner/ Outer Chest Muscles: Again, there’s no such thing as focusing on your inner or outer chest muscles. Many people believe that flat bench flyes will work your outer chest while the peck deck flyes work your inner chest. This is more of an illusion that comes from the fact that each exercise places greater stress on your chest at different points in the range of motion.

The whole idea of working the inner/outer chest is flawed because it assumes that you can flex one end of a strand of muscle and not the other end. When you muscles contract, the whole entire muscle contracts, not just one end or the other. You cannot contract the bottom of your bicep without the entire bicep muscle getting shorter. It’s just not possible.

There are generally two main types of movements that work your chest muscles:

Pressing Movements: These include the bench press, incline bench press, and all of their variations and different angles. Dips are also included in the category. Pressing movements tend to directly involve the pecs, triceps, and deltoids in the movement. Secondary stabilizer muscles include your lats, posterior delts, and other back muscles.

Leverage Movements: This means chest flyes. Flyes can be done using dumbbells on a flat bench, using a peck deck machine, or using the crossover cables. Flyes are an isolation exercise. Do your pressing movements first in your workout, and add in flyes only when you’ve progressed to the point where you’re ready for more.

A training program that uses a flat bench pressing movement, an incline movement, and some dips will fulfill your chest training needs for quite a while. Stick to these basic movements before you get too carried away doing cable crossovers or other flye movements.

And of course, I know I probably don’t need to keep saying this to you, but don’t get too carried away with working only your chest and your arms. If you want to be a bodybuilder, train your whole body. Don’t be a boobie-builder.

Focusing only on your chest and arms is bad for your body’s balance and posture. Paying attention to building a strong back will balance you out and even give you greater stabilizing muscles that will increase your bench press and strengthen your pecs even more.

Image Credit: Petranek

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the more rest you take between sets, the more weight you’ll be able to lift when you do come back. This doesn’t mean that you should always take more rest between your sets… the right amount of rest for you will depend on your goals somewhat.

First off, let’s give little explanation on why you might choose longer or shorter rest periods between each workout. There are 3 different primary energy systems that your body uses to produce ATP, which is the primary fuel your muscles use for exercise.

These definitions come straight from this article on Wikipedia:

ATP-PC System (Phosphogen System) - This system is used only for very short durations of up to 10 seconds. The ATP-PC system neither uses oxygen nor produces lactic acid and is thus said to be alactic anaerobic. This is the primary system behind very short, powerful movements like a golf swing or a 100m sprint. Translation: Best for short bursts of intense lifts, like in power lifting or strength training.

Anaerobic System (Lactic Acid System) - Predominates in supplying energy for exercises lasting less than 2 min. Also known as the Gylcolytic System. An example of an activity of the intensity and duration that this system works under would be a 400m sprint. This is what you’ll partially use for bodybuilding and creating muscle mass, size.

Aerobic System - This is the long duration energy system. By 5 min of exercise the O2 system is clearly the dominant system. In a 1km run, this system is already providing approximately half the energy; in a marathon run it provides 98% or more. You use this when doing aerobic activity, so this system doesn’t really apply to our discussion here.

Now that you have a good idea what these three systems are used for, we can have a discussion about how much rest works best for each goal.

3-5 Minutes Rest: This is useful for trainees who are trying to improve their explosive activities of a short duration. That means that longer rest periods are generally better for people who are training for strength and power and should be used together with lower reps (3-5 reps).

This is because your body requires approximately 3 minutes for it to restore the phosphagen (Creatine Phosphate/ATP) stores for your next set. Once the ATP-PC energy system has been able to replenish the energy stores in your muscles, you’ll be to lift a heavier weight for more reps. So, you should rest longer to get the energy to go heavy.

45-60 Seconds: Taking a shorter rest works better for hypertrophy and building overall muscle mass. The point here is not to lift the most weight you can possibly lift. Your purpose is to keep the stress on your muscles and work them again before they have the chance to fully recover.

This gives your muscles intensity over a longer period of time and allows you to keep your muscle “pump” between sets. This is best for the 8-12 rep ranges used by bodybuilders, and is optimal for increasing muscular mass and hypertrophy.

What about the time in between?

You don’t necessarily have to stay exactly within these rep ranges for building muscle mass or strength. There’s no switch that suddenly gets flipped at 3 minutes where your body suddenly begins to use a different energy system. Your muscles recover gradually while you rest, and each energy system works together and has some overlap.

And as always, this is a highly individual thing. Some people swear by using 60-90 seconds rest while bodybuilding, which can be fine for some people. Each person is a little different, and just as one person can run faster than another, one person can also recover faster than another.

Your recovery time will be influenced by a number of factors:

• The intensity of the set
• How much sleep & rest you’ve had
• Your nutrition
• Your Age
• Any injuries you might have
• The temperature of the room
• If you have a cold or other minor illness
• How intense your day job is

You get the idea. I’m trying to show you that there are so many factors that go into this and that every person’s situation is slightly different. Start with the guides given up above, and adjust them over time as you get to know your body and its needs.

If you’ve been going to a commercial gym regularly, you might have noticed that some guys will crank out a set of 15 reps for an exercise while another guy just does 3 reps on a different exercise. What’s up with that?

The reason you’ll see people using totally different rep ranges is that some people have different goals. Doing more reps in your weight lifting routine can serve a great purpose, and doing less reps can also be useful.

Which rep range you ultimately decide to use should be based on your goals and what you want to accomplish. Here, we’ll talk about a few points that will help you make the best decision.

Let’s take a look at what each rep range can be useful for:

• 1-3 Reps: Best suited to boosting your overall strength. The focus here is improving the maximum amount of weight possible for a single repetition. You’ll see powerlifters use these ranges frequently.
• 3-5 reps: Best for developing power, meaning that this rep range is good for the combination of both strength and speed. This is particularly useful for athletes training for sports performance. See stronglifts for more on strength training.
• 8-12 reps: This is the magic range touted by bodybuilders as being the most useful for adding lean muscle mass. Your muscles will enlarge the most in this range and feel a “pump” as you workout. Building muscle mass and looking/ feeling better is the focus of this site.
• 10-20 reps: Very useful for building mass in your legs. Your legs generally are able to handle more stress than your arms can handle.
• 20+ reps: Best for endurance. Not great for what you’re trying to accomplish if you’re like most readers of this site.

Big and Strong?

It’s not uncommon for a person to want to build both muscle mass and strength. These two qualities usually go together, but bodybuilders with massive muscles often can’t lift as much weight as a strength trainer with somewhat smaller muscles.

Using the lower rep ranges will make you stronger first, and your muscles will also grow as a side benefit. Staying in the 8-12 rep range will build larger, more massive muscles first, and you’ll get stronger as a side benefit.

You can see where I’m going with this. Bigger muscles aren’t always equal to stronger muscles. In general, your muscles will become bigger as they become stronger, but each rep range has a particular focus. Pick your rep ranges based on your goals.

Small Range Exercises: Your muscles get the most benefit from your workout when you use them through the full range of motion, but not every exercise you do will have the same range of motion.

Simple physics teaches us that moving an object through a greater distance requires more force. For example, when you squat, you move the weight a good distance throughout the movement. But what about when you do a set of wrist curls? How much does the weight move on a set of wrist curls? Probably not as much.

Since some exercises have such a small range of motion, they can benefit from higher repetitions. Exercises such as calf raises, wrist curls, shoulder shrugs, and ab crunches can all work well with a set of 15.

More for legs? Your legs will definitely tire out less quickly than your arms. Try a heavy set of bicep curls. You might feel fine after 7 reps and then totally die out by the tenth. Notice how your performance can fail very quickly with your arms. When you’re doing leg exercises, on the other hand, you might be surprised how many times you can crank out another rep after taking a few breaths.

Arnold recommends 6-9 reps for the upper body, and 12-16 reps for the legs. Experiment and see what works best for you.

Nothing is set in stone

Let me just say that none of this is set in stone. If you want to train 5 reps for your legs and it’s giving you good returns, then go ahead. If you want to try 15 reps on your arms, go ahead. The above rep schemes are just guides that most people agree work for certain goals.

But you definitely should experiment with different rep ranges. The goal of this site is to help you build muscle mass and lose fat first… strength is secondary here.

Still, even if you don’t care how much weight you’re lifting, try a good month with sets of 5 when your progress starts slowing down. Always training with the same number of repetitions can lead to staleness.

If you’ve ever been to a commercial gym for a month or longer, you know how it feels to share a gym with other people. A commercial gym is a lot like a community – we all have to share and learn to get along.

If you’re one of those people who has a nice setup in your own home gym, then go ahead and feel free to pass gas wherever you want to, and do whatever you want with your own equipment. For the rest of us who have to share a gym, there are a few unspoken rules.

Here they are:

1. Don’t forget to wipe when you’re done: You might not have heard this one for a very long time. But if you’re one of those guys that sweats profusely all over everything you touch, give it a little wipe with a towel when you’re done. There’s nothing wrong with getting sweaty during a good workout, but let’s keep it clean.

2. Don’t hog the bench: You might think nobody wants to use the bench, but just make it a good habit to put your keys or your sweater in a good place. You don’t need to take up an entire bench for 10 minutes just so you can put your water bottle on it. People will think you are saving the bench and actually need it for something when you don’t.

3. Don’t leave the weights out: Put the weights back where they belong when you’re done… I’m guilty of this one too. It’s easy to assume that the next person will want to use at least some of the weight that you leave on the bar, but that’s not always the case. Putting the weights back lets others know you’re done.

4. Don’t do bicep curls in the squat rack: The squat rack and the power rack weren’t made for bicep curls. They were made for exercises that require a rack, and you should only use them for exercises that require a rack. If you’re going to do bicep curls, you can do them anywhere. Don’t hold up someone who actually needs the rack for a squat workout.

5. Don’t stare: If she’s purposely flaunting it, you have a free pass, but don’t stare at people who get red in the face, make a little noise, or grit their teeth during a tough workout.

6. Don’t be afraid to ask for a spotter: Most people will be really cool about this and won’t hesitate to give you spot when you need it. Ask someone for a quick hand instead of putting yourself in a dangerous position.

7. Don’t be a jerk when someone asks you for a spot: I’ve only seen this once or twice in all the time I’ve spent in the gym. Help out other people and make the gym a great place to workout.

8. Don’t take what you don’t need: It’s annoying when you need a certain weight for a dumbbell on your next set and somebody else has 10 dumbbells lying around his bench and won’t share. Take what you need and put it back when you’re done.

9. Don’t get stingy: If you’re resting and someone else needs a piece of equipment, let them “work in”. If someone’s using something you need to use, ask them if you can work in and do a quick set while they rest. Be cool about it.

10. Don’t rack it wrong: We all hate it when we need a 5 pound plate from the rack but there’s a 45 pound on the same rack that’s blocking the 5’s. It only take a moment to put the weight on the right rack.

11. Don’t laugh: Encourage that little guy that’s struggling to bench 95 pounds. We all have to start somewhere.

I’m sure that there are some unspoken rules that I’ve left out. If there are any that need to be added, you can make them known in the comments section below.

The key to any beginner routine is to build a base of strength and to learn good training technique.

This is the World Fitness Network beginner through intermediate routine. This routine was designed to use the best exercises available to produce maximal results in the shortest time.

The beginner routine is meant to be adjusted progressively so that it helps you to smoothly transition into the intermediate routine. If you have prior experience and are already working out, you might be able to jump straight into the interemediate routine.

This routine will help you to do the following:

• Build a base of muscle and strength as quickly as possible
• Lose fat through an increased metabolism
• See results by training 3 times per week
• Avoid overtraining
• Learn proper technique on the most important exercises
• Transition smoothly into an intermediate routine
• Customize the routine as necessary

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Trying to figure out the perfect routine can be tough. It’s especially tough when you consider the fact that there’s no such thing as a perfect routine.

Instead, you’re going to have to assess your personal needs and decide which muscles to work on which days. A number of factors will go into this decision, such as:

• What your current training level is, i.e. beginner, intermediate, or advanced
• What type of routine motivates you to work out in the gym
• Which muscle groups are lagging or will require special attention
• What type of routine your training partner is on
• How your body is responding to the workouts you have in place

There are many ways you can divide up your muscle groups to achieve the best workout for you. There are so many combinations, in fact, that I couldn’t possibly cover them all here. Instead, I’m going to point out a few principles that can be used as guidelines to help you choose the routine that’s best suited for you.

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I saw something interesting the other day at the gym.

I saw an average-sized guy in his mid 20’s who was obviously trying to build up some muscle. He looked like he had some padding (weight) on him, but he didn’t look too out of shape. The thing that caught my eye is what I saw him doing.

He was using the cables to do cable crossover flyes. I watched as his arms wildly flapped up and down in an uneven way. His upper body lurched forward and downward with each rep as he strained to move the weight at all costs. I watched him move on to other exercises and perform them with a similar style.

Who knows, maybe he really didn’t know how to lift weights. But then again, like a lot of other people out there, maybe he was just too embarrassed to lift the proper amount of weight for his strength level.

If his goal was to avoid looking silly in the gym, he certainly didn’t achieve it. Honestly, I thought he looked a lot more like a monkey trying to figure out how to fly than someone who’s serious about getting in shape.

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Anybody new to the gym knows how difficult it can be to make sense of all of the machines and equipment that fill the workout room. Instead of trying to analyze each of the different machines in the gym, get to know the free weights first. The free weights will give you the greatest returns for the effort you put in.

Barbells are probably the most basic instrument for lifting free weights. They can come in many sizes, but the most standard is called the Olympic barbell (the top bar in the picture above).

The Olympic barbell weighs either 45 pounds or 20 kilograms (44.5 lbs) depending on which part of the world you live in. It’s usually used for the heavier exercises such as squats, bench presses, deadlifts, shoulder presses, etc.

The smaller straight bar shown just below the Olympic bar is great for many upper body exercises where having the weight closer to your body is beneficial. For example, if you were doing standing bicep curls, you may find that having the weights closer to their center of gravity (and closer to you) makes them easier to control.

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We will continue our series of Weight Lifting 101 posts here by introducing some new terms that you will have to become familiar with if you are going to succeed in changing the way you look. As you may have already guessed, working out with free weights is a little bit more complicated than doing cardio. It’s not as easy as just hopping on a treadmill for 30 minutes.

Since weight lifting is a form of anaerobic exercise, your muscles will not be able to maintain such a high level of intensity for long periods of time. Instead, you will break your exercises into a series of sets that comprise a certain number of repetitions. Let me explain what this means by defining the terms you’ll need to know.

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