How to get into weight lifting?

Try checking out Strong Lifts, New Rules of Lifting for Women or Starting Strength.

Or get one of the trainers at the gym to help you out.

Try sitting on the machine and moving the handles. Most machines have handy diagrams and instructions to help.

Try sitting on the machine and moving the handles. Most machines have handy diagrams and instructions to help.

Good advice. I've progressed from there but that's where I started. Just reading the instructions on the wall. I've read a book on the subject since then but it would not have meant anything to me if I wasn't already lifting.

There's no need to complicate everything with machines, especially if you are beginner. Free weights, dumbbells, barbells are the best for you. You can also use resistance bands and even your own body weight. If you are beginner your own bodyweight will be pretty much all you need... and maybe a couple if dumbbells. Exercises such as pull ups for back and arms, push ups and dips for chest and arms, sit ups, crunches and leg rises for abs, squats, calf rises and lunges for legs, and you already have a full body workout right there, with no machines. Except shoulders, but for them you need just a couple of light dumbbells.

Don't need to mess with machines if you are beginner. Later, after a half year or year, when you get into it you can try some machines. And by that time you will prolly already know what motion works each muscle and will be able to recognize what each machine do without problems....

You can google "shoulder exercises with dumbbells" for example and you will find pictures and everything how to do them. Just make some little research on google. You will find all you need. ^^

Pick things up...then put them back down

To elaborate on this, pick them up and put them back down in repetitions of 8-10, for three sets.

It's called starting strength. There's templates. Stop complaining and figure things out for yourself

I have read New Rules On Lifting For Women before, so I have a basic grasp on the theory, but the program itself is WAY to complicated for me :-/ ugh! I just wish I could print out a simple spreadsheet where it says "do this" and you write down how many you could do and how heavy you went ect.

Wendler's 5/3/1 is as simple as you can get then. You can pretty much dl a spreadsheet which will say "do this" then you go out and do it.

I really want to lift heavy weights, become stronger and train hard.

But I simply don't know where to start! I will go to the weights section of my gym, look at the machines, and the free weights... and then just go to the treadmill as its the only thing I know how to use!

Halp?!

I was like that too. Spent 2 weeks on just the treadmill. then went over and did a few of the simplest machines. I am a YMCA member, and they always have a trainer who is available to show you how to use the machines if he is not with a client. I asked him how to use some of the machines, and he was happy to show me.

The Y also has regular free "classes" called fitstart that will show you how to use the basic machines, the cable machines, or the free weights. I just got done with a 3 week series on the cable machines...I am hoping to do the free weight class in the next few months.

After almost 9 months of being a regular at the Y, the trainer who is there weekday mornings ( when I am there) kind of knows me, makes a habit of saying hi and joking with me. I have given him *permission* to bust me if he catches me using bad form on the machines. he has told me to feel free and ask him if I forget how to do something we went over in the class.

Read the book "starting strength"

And just get over there and do it.

I felt like a tard my first time. I got in the squat rack and it was really hard to balance the bar on my shoulders and I was all over the place. And when I went to do bench press, the bar was too heavy for me so I looked really stupid. But the next time I went I got better at squats and I found a lighter bar for bench press.