Strength Training Beginner Help?

This response ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated so brace yourself. I'm not a trainer by trade, but I've been around the fitness world and made a ton of mistakes. Learn from them.

First step is to define what you want to get out of it. A lot of people do it for the vanity. Six pack, barrel chest guns. Nothing wrong with that, but if that's your goal the programming is different compared to a general purpose fitness program. There's also the strength route, or something that's sport specific. When you reach your goals, you're gonna ask yourself, what do I do with all this fitness.

Next part is to dial down your diet and make sure you get 8 hours of sleep. The sleep part is incredibly tough for me; I aim for at least 4 8hr days a week. If you plan to gain mass, go for more sleep. No matter what program you follow, bodybuilder, starting strength, P90, crossfit, you kill a lot of potential improvement by having a bad diet and not sleeping enough. I cannot emphasize this enough. Don't worry about supplementing til you've been training for a long time. Your body will tell you.

Learn this word: mobility. It's not just about stretching. It's about ensuring that your joints, muscles, tendons, etc can move at optimal range of motion when exercising. What happens when your not so mobile? Your form suffers. When your form suffers you move less weight than you could and your body compensates for the weakness. That can lead to injury. People at the gym who don't squat past parallel either A: don't know what they're doing B: don't have the mobility to move the weight they have loaded. If you google mobility you will immediately run into mobilitywod and its founder Kelly Starrett. Then your bases are covered.

Now for programming. Bodybuilder routines are everywhere. Every magazine has them. They usually fall into the category of back/bis, chest/tris, legs, shoulders thrown wherever. The generic rep range is 3x10. I'm not gonna knock it but I didn't improve as much as I did compared to now because I didn't cover the sleep and eat part. Then there are general purpose programs like p90 and crossfit. My primary source of training now is crossfit. Just by mentioning the word I'm gonna bring a lot of hate, but some people do crossfit in their garages and not at a box.

You did not mention about having a bar and most weight based strength programs need at least that and a squat rack. Instead you can do bodyweight exercises. Push/pull ups, burpees, squats, lunges. You can treat the dumbbell like a kettlebell and you open up a lot of kettlebell exercises. There are so many ways to string these together, play around. Forget the lat machine and get a pull up bar. If you can't do a pull up, get resistance bands. You'll need the bands for mobility anyway. To start off with I wouldn't run on your strength days.

About injury. You do this long enough, it's gonna happen. Knee inflammation, tweaked back, stiff shoulders. It will usually happen when you bite off more than you can chew. And your first bite is coming from a semi-deconditioned state to body weight exercises. You can get injured even from that if you don't cover everything else I mentioned prior.

I hope you were able to get through all that. Good luck and have fun.

Make sure you have a trained coach that can help you learn to lift correctly to avoid injury. If you can't afford to hire a personal trainer, check around the local gyms for small group weight lifting classes.

Good luck!

The best starting book that I've found is Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. He does a very good job of explaining, in detail, how to perform the major lifts and creating a beginner's program. I personally use Jim Wendler's 5/3/1 program but I prefer Rippetoe on form and Starting Strength is designed for beginners.