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I know a few folks who swear by Bowflex. If that's out of your price range, you should be able to find a bench and some free weights pretty cheap on Craigslist or via yard sales as more and more people give up on their new year resolutions. The best part about going that way is that you can always expand your equipment a bit at a time, buying more weight plates or different types of bars as you need em.

Edited to add: What you eat will be an important part of your strength training. Find a plan online that works for you. Also consider trying to find a friend who will work out with you. That way, when you feel like skipping a workout for no real reason, you feel like you're letting more than just yourself down.

Edited, Apr 23rd 2012 12:36am by Poldaran

If you're building strength for competition weightlifting, sure. Free weights offer a more complete workout, which is better for most practical applications.

The big thing is getting enough protein to build up all of that muscle, most people don't get anywhere near the amount of protein they need. You should be eating about 100g of protein a day as a man if you're trying to build muscle, a typical burger is about 7g (and is rather horrible for you)...getting 100g without eating a billion calories can be tricky if you're not into certain foods. Body management is about 85% diet and 15% work, you can work out all you want, if you're not eating right most of that work is wasted. Expect to gain some fat, you should be eating more than you need while building muscle (your body won't build muscle if it doesn't feel it has the resources to safely do so.)

Also, what Ugly said. You basically need to deplete your muscles to the point of failure at times for proper strength training. You can't do that with free weights on your own as at some point you WILL drop the weights or lose balance due to muscle failure. If you lose the ability to hold a weight while that weight is in a bad position you can break bones, shatter joints, tear ligaments etc without someone to takeover. Now, if your goal is to just put on a bit of muscle there are a million (nearly) free things you can do but frankly my gym membership is $20 every other week and gives me access to all kinds of machines (no spotter needed, much safer.) Nothing beats a spotter and free weights for flexibility though.

Anything that's hard to do will build muscle, the trick is to challenge yourself. For building muscle you want to be doing small amounts of VERY hard to do things, lots of weight to the point that you're only capable of a very small amount of reps before you can't even pickup the weights anymore. Isolating muscles without machines/free weights can be tricky. Push-ups are great for toning for example, but they leave a lot of muscles out of the equation and you're really only lifting part of your body weight spread out across a number of muscles, there are muscles that are only used for fairly specific movements so they can be difficult to isolate without free weights or machines. Free weights don't have to be proper weights, heck you could move a pile of rocks a few feet and get similar results, proper weights are just safer.

Once you get to where you want to be you change it up and start doing light weight high intensity work (fast, "easy", no breaks) to burn off the fat you've put on and hopefully not lose too much muscle in the process. You should be eating less, more often at this stage so your body doesn't feel the need to store energy while getting fewer calories.

I'd vouch for the spotter idea. I had a soldier last year who thought he was big **** and wanted to impress people around him so he demanded no one spot him. So I sat back, cross my arms, and smirked to myself when he basically dropped 175 pounds across his nose. Just to be an *** I waited a few beats while he screamed for help to pull it off his face before actually doing so. Nearly broke his whole face. I wish I had my cell phone, it would have made a great ring tone.

Like said, you'll want to exceed your limits to the point your arms hurt and you have difficulty raising them, then rest and repeat. So someone else to help you along the way is imperative.

Agreed, but you won't get as far into failure if you don't have someone to help with those last few "I can't quite do it" reps. Not that that's absolutely necessary, results will just be a bit slower if you solo it. For the record, I solo it myself and I'm doing just fine but when I had a partner I did much better (of course, the partner was a trainer so there's that).

This was more along the lines of what I used to do. That and free weights were really cheap. Also really annoying to move when you're in that phase of your life when you're switching apartments every year or two.

Also,











I'm tremendously tempted to redo my signature. The flattery in this thread. You guys are awesome, rate ups all around.

You say that now, but just wait until I start spouting pages of terribly un-witty 1-liners. Each accompanied by a gigantic signature full of quote blocks.

Only if it is Korra.

100g of protein a day is a rather small amount to get, really. And I'm not so sure about your 7g thing. A plain McDonald's hamburger has 12, while their regular cheeseburger has 15. And that's before you get into their larger offerings(which, let's be honest, when was the last time you ordered regular cheeseburger?). A Big Mac has 25g, an Angus Bacon and Cheese has 45g and a Double quarter pounder has 48g! Not arguing that they're bad for you, just saying I don't quite see your 7g thing.

With options like 3oz trimmed top sirloin having 25g(which means more than half that 100g in a single 8oz steak), a 4oz chicken breast has 27g. 2 large eggs have a combined 12g. Really, it's not at all difficult to hit the 100g you've mentioned, even vegetarians should have little trouble hitting that.

That said, 100g is also not a set rule. Numerous sources I've read suggest it's more like .7g-1g(with the high end being far too much for most folks) per pound of desired body weight while keeping it at approximately a static percentage of your daily food intake(between 25-35% according to the live strong website). Even then, it really shouldn't be too bad(only 144g/day if we assume .8g/lb with a desired weight after training of 180 lbs with a total diet of 2304 calories/day at 25%).

That's assuming you're not getting protein from beans on the side, or any other sources. I get ~120g a day without trying.

Why is eating so hard? I'm sitting here shoveling tuna into my mouth after down a glass of protein mix because of you guys. I was going to have vegetable soup for lunch.

That's what I use for soup base ಠ_ಠ

Eating is easy. Not eating is hard.