Get thee a squat rack, thus spake some damn body. Fact is, that bowflex you got for Christmas is well, less than optimal. I could rant on and on about how free weights are better than machines till the sun turned to a cold hunk of coal, but the simple fact is that believe it or not, in the end a good Olympic set and squat rack are going to serve you better in the long run. Why?

Most machines are made for a baseline height/weight individual. At a wee 5'5" I have a hell of a time fitting into most machines. The fulcrums that they use are either too long or….too long. The good machines that are adjustable to the individual are ungodly expensive, especially for poor bastards like us.

What about more adaptable machines like the aforementioned bowflex, you may ask? Part of the whole free weights vs. machines argument should be understood before we tackle that one. Weighted exercises have a "resistance curve" that is dictated by the position and direction of the weight in relation to your body. The old Nautilus and Universal stuff originally tried to take advantage of the strength curve by adapting - more load when you are in your "groove," and less in sticking points. This was thought to optimize training.

The problem is in practical application. Your natural strength curve is just that. Train on variable resistance machines and you learn to lift that machines curve - there is a problem with carrying over to practical applications, like lifting "real" weights. The other problem is isolation. Another selling point on the machines is that they isolate muscles or muscle groups, letting you focus training on targeted areas. Say you hop on a Nautilus curl machine and curl away. Using the Nautilus, you avoid using your shoulders, abs, lower back and a whole mess of other stuff you probably otter be. Doesn't seem terribly "optimal" does it?

The problem presented by the Bowflex and its like is not the fulcrum - the Bowflex does a pretty good job of mimicking a couple of dumb bells. The problem is once again that strength curve thing. The leaf spring thingies on a Bowflex don't approximate a natural load - try training on one for a few months, then test similar movements with free weights and you'll see what I mean. The other problem I've heard of with them is that the springs lose some tension in hot weather. You can handle more weight on them when it's toasty than in the cold.

That said, what is really needed to lift free weights safely at home? Ideally, a squat rack, bench, Olympic bar and weights. With that set up there isn't a muscle group that you can't work, and the cage allows you to squat and bench without a spotter if one isn't available. You can sometimes find squat racks used or have one made if you have a metal shop around.

Personally, if you have the opportunity to do so, I'd recommend giving a gym a try for a while first if you are a newbie to the game. If you are new to the iron game, you can learn from folks in the know - do not get snookered by shyster "trainers" though. It's a sad fact that many health clubs are more money oriented than well….health oriented. They would be perfectly happy if you signed up, paid a year, and never showed on their doorstep. Likewise many trainers haven't a clue as to what they are doing - their training career started when they got hired on at the club.

That said, I don't want to denigrate all personal trainers. People truly involved in the fitness biz are absolutely passionate about their profession. That's just the kind of folks attracted to the whole thing. When looking for a gym, try to find a local place. The Bally's kind of club is more shyster oriented, which is sad as their membership and facilities are sometimes amenable. The first gym I belonged to was a Bally's, in Tacoma Washington. If you can, find a gym for powerlifters or hardcore bodybuilding types. Not for the ready availability of Sustanon, but the lack of foo-foo. The more hard iron and fewer latest gee-whiz machines in a gym, the more serious the clientele generally will be. If a gym won't allow chalk or has a juice bar, BEWARE!

Once you've founded your new home, be it a thong infested monstrosity or the extra bedroom that also happens to include the cat litter box, what the (expletive deleted) do you do? Lifting weights is like so many other endeavors - lots of opinions floating around, all of which claim to be the gospel according to Milo. You have the Mentzer followers, Weiderites, periodization folks, and a plethora of muscle comics all of which are the be all end all for REAL training. In the beginning, try to get a hold of a good basic exercise book with illustrations of the exercises. There are a few around - get the most rounded volume you can find. Arnold's encyclopedia is one - for the meantime just learn the terminology and get a clue on the exercises. Understanding what is going on when fellow gym goobers are talking about their new Zercher lift PR's will be immensely helpful to you.

Swallow hubris and learn the movements right. Longevity is the key here - screw up and injure yourself and you'll at the least get discouraged, if not prematurely end your budding lifting career. Realize from the outset that lifting is not for the faint of heart. The new touchy-feely philosophy of exercise is great for getting folks off of their barcaloungers, but that's not what we're here for. When you start planning vacations around your lifting cycles and packing chicken breasts when you go back to visit your parents, you will have arrived.

Once you start reading more about lifting you'll be confronted with the aforementioned plethora of lifting philosophies. When it comes right down to it, most of them have something going for them, although some are better than others. For the time being, adopt one and stick with it. Too many trainees hop from style to style, not giving themselves a chance to really evaluate what they are doing. Just keep in mind that the more close minded its pundits, the less likely that a given style of training will last for you. With that in mind let's talk about training styles…

That said, the problem with HIT is inherent in its very ideas. At its most radical, any "volume" type work is detrimental to training effect. Problem is that your body adapts to how you train. This is known as homeostasis - the body tends to strive to maintain a status quo. HIT says that your body has limited recovery abilities and tries to maximize that in training. Problem is that your body's recovery ability will adapt, like anything else. Once your lazy bod figures out your infrequent workout thing, your progress will level off and you may even lose gains you have made. You may hear "one set to failure" as a catch phrase by HIT or heavy duty (for the Mentzerites) adepts touted as the thing to be. However the current poster child for this type of training, Dorian Yates will perform several sets of "warm ups" before that "one brutally intense set." The end result is that often they are doing as much as many of us, set wise.

A while back, Pete Sisco and John Little wrote a book called Power Factor Training. They tout partial movements in the strongest part of the range of motion as a way to gauge your workouts. Setting up the math, they tried to show that you could lift more total weight in your workout, thus making more progress. The big problem with training with a partial range of motion is that it tends to improve only the loaded range. Strength gains in partials don't carry over into full range movements, and doing them as a sole workout method may be detrimental to your practical strength. Remember that your body is naturally lazy - it adapts to what you make it do. This doesn't mean that partials are inherently evil. Doing partials in the WEAK range of a movement may help you break through a plateau. For instance if you have problem locking out your deadlifts, setting a bar on pins in a squat rack so you just do the top range of motion of deads is a good assistance movement, but not something to replace full range deadlifts.

If there's a constant in weightlifting, it's periodization. The idea of periodization is that as your body adapts to a training protocol, you need to adjust your training to force it to acclimate to new conditions. Periodization is a way to avoid homeostasis - the inherently lazy body thing. While I have used things like HIT in the past, they are tools. Periodization is the tool box. Periodization of training divides training cycles into meso-cycles, which last up to a year; macro-cycles, which last several weeks; and micro-cycles, lasting as little as one week. Meso-cycles are set up around a competition or projected testing period - goal setting, if you will. For more in depth information on periodization, Tudor Bompha's books Periodization of Strength and Periodization Training for Sports or James Fleck and William Kraemer's Periodization Breakthrough! : The Ultimate Training System. If you think I'm partial to periodization, you're durn tootin right I am. There'll be more to come on that..

Back when Ironman magazine consisted of more than ads for "effervescent" creatine and other such tripe, Steve Holman and company printed a lot of material on a workout planning system they called positions of flexion. In a nutshell POF splits exercises into 3 basic categories - stretch position, midrange, and contracted position.