Re: Workout regiment
There are a lot of different ways you can set up your routine, and everyone I've talked to seems to have a different philosophy on it.
First, we need to establish a couple of things. One, your goal. You've said you're trying to lose weight. Building muscle is actually a great way to do that, as muscle tissue burns something like 35x as many calories as fatty tissue at rest. In other words, the more muscle you build, the more calories you'll burn, even while sleeping. So I would probably start by doing 3 or 4 sets of 8-10 reps per exercise, 3-4 exercises per muscle group. That's a pretty good amount for increasing your strength.
Second, how many days a week can you work out, and for how long? If you want to get results fast, you should try to work out 5 or 6 days a week, but give yourself at least one day of rest a week too. You can start out slow working 5 days a week by only doing one muscle group per day. As you get into the swing of it, you might pair up your muscle groups so that you can exercise certain ones twice a week.
As for how to set up your schedule, here are a few things to keep in mind.
1. Every muscle group needs recovery time. You can't train the same muscle every day. The actual theory behind weight training is that exertion damages your muscles, and they heal a tiny bit bigger and stronger each time that happens. It takes a good 48 hours for that healing to happen, so you should only train the same muscle group at most once every third day, especially at the start. Self-propelled exercises (push-ups, sit-ups, etc.) can usually be done every other day, but starting out slow (once a week at first) is a good idea.
2. Form is everything. As someone suggested above, get some mirrors and watch yourself. Get some personal training at the start if you can budget it. Bad form can lead to serious injury and at best you won't get the results you're looking for.
3. Work your legs. A lot of guys ignore legs because they're going for that V shape and want to make their upper bodies look bigger, not fill out their legs. If you don't want your legs to get huge, you just have to work them differently. More reps with less weight will tone them without producing extreme muscle growth. More importantly, your legs contain many of the biggest, strongest muscles in your body. Working those muscles is key to increasing and maintaining your testosterone level, and testosterone is crucial to muscle growth.
4. Exercises can be broken down several ways, but the simplest of these is "push" vs. "pull" exercises. "Push" exercises target your chest and your triceps. "Pull" exercises target your back and your biceps. For the lower body, hamstrings (back of the thighs) pull while quadriceps (front of the thighs) push. It's not entirely that simple, but the practical aspect is this: You can't train your chest without using your tri's, and you can't train your back without using your bi's. For that reason, you may want to train chest and tri's together, and back and bi's with each other. Or, you may want to train your arms early in the week so that they're not as strong when you train chest and back, so your chest and back have to carry their own weight.
5. It's easy to figure out what muscles an exercise targets. Every muscle works the same way - by contracting. Whether it's a flexor or an extensor, muscles always pull. Therefore, every motion uses the muscles that shorten as you do it, the muscles you're moving toward. Curling your arm obviously shortens your biceps, so that's a good example. You should be able to figure out what muscle any given exercise works based on that logic.
6. Free weights are almost always better than machines. Free weights require you not only to do the exercise you intend to do, but also to stabilize the weights as you do it. Stabilization uses a lot of the smaller muscles in your body that you don't target with your normal exercises. For example, the bench press only really targets your chest, triceps, and to a smaller extent your anterior deltoids (front of the shoulder). (Using #5, that should be obvious.) But just by holding the weight bar straight above you, you're using lots of small muscles of the chest, shoulder, back, and core.
7. Core strength is key. In exertion, muscles recruit other muscles. Many lifting motions are called "isolation exercises" because they attempt to isolate only a very limited number of muscles, thus forcing those muscles to work hardest and grow stronger. But in real-life motions, your body is going to recruit every muscle fiber available that can contribute to the task. Since your core is linked to all your other major muscle groups, your core is going to get recruited often. So if you want to be all-around strong, strengthen your core. By core I of course mean abs, lower back, and obliques (sides).
8. Change-up your routine every 6-8 weeks. If you keep using the same routine all the time, your body will get used to it and you will hit a plateau. To avoid that, change up your exercises every couple of months. You don't have to change your schedule, but change out which exercises you do for a given muscle. Example: If you've been doing standing curls, static curls, and hammer curls for your biceps, try switching to seated curls, preacher curls, and cable curls.
9. Keep your metabolism up. Your metabolism can be active (anabolic) or go into starvation mode (catabolic). When you're in a catabolic state, your body will store fat and your muscles will break down. Your body cycles between these states every day, so you'll want to make sure you only train while anabolic. All you need to do is eat about an hour before you train. Don't eat right before training, or you'll be weak and risk some major cramps (the reason is that your blood will be traveling to your digestive tract, away from your muscles, to process your food. Your muscles will be starved during that time). You'll also want to eat or drink something high in protein shortly after lifting, as your body needs protein to rebuild the muscles you've just damaged. On the same note, don't train for more than about an hour and a half in one session. Your body will go catabolic from overexertion, too.
Given all that, you may want to start with one muscle group a day. Here's a decent schedule to get you started.
Monday: Arms
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday: Chest
Thursday: Shoulders
Friday: Legs and Abs
This schedule will exhaust the small muscles of your arms first. That way, your back, chest, and shoulders all have to work a little harder on their given days, so you should get results faster. One caveat: start out very slow on Friday if you're doing legs and abs together. If you work both to failure, you're going to be very uncomfortable all weekend, especially if you have to climb a lot of stairs.
Here's another example starting schedule, one that only goes 3 days a week:
Monday: Chest and triceps (push exercises)
Wednesday: Back and biceps (pull exercises)
Friday: Shoulders and legs
Of course, abs are left out here, so you'll need to work those on your off days. Fortunately, you can do a ton of ab exercises with no equipment at all. Just google a few. The other drawback to this routine is that Monday and Wednesday will be long days. You need to rest between every set (45-90 seconds is ideal). And if you're doing chest and tri's together, both are going to be tired at the same time. I find that doing opposed groups is much more fluid, as on Friday, because you can train one muscle group and rest the other at the same time. Just do a set for one muscle, then a set for the other, and alternate through all your sets of all your exercises. Fridays will be quick. But on Monday, since you're using your tri's during your chest exercises, you won't want to go immediately into a triceps exercises 5 seconds after you finish your bench press.
There's more to it but I think this is a pretty good overview. If you post some more information on what your overall goals are, what muscle groups you really want to target, how many days a week and for how long a day you can train, and what exercises you're comfortable with, I can give you some more detailed information to help you come up with a good routine, and then in another 6 weeks we'll update it.
