Introduction

Way back in the late 1990's, I began to realise a few things in life. I had never considered health and fitness before, and I ate just about anything I wanted without thinking of the consequences. You just don't notice how you feel when your sat on the sofa watching TV, just finishing off that last bag of chips. You don't notice until you feel the benefits of an active lifestyle - and you start to feel healthy. 

Health is important at any age, young or old and you are never too young to improve your awareness of life. In my case I always wanted to build up the muscles in my arms; and since I had never really done any manual work before they were thin to say the least. So I started to look around for a few aids to start me off; books, magazines, the internet; and I soon realised there were many more gains which could be made with a little more effort on my part - which I really weren't bothered about before. Take illness for example, nobody likes being ill but relatively few people are willing to improve their immune system through exercise to help prevent it!

This is primarily why I wrote this guide, to describe just how easy it can be to improve your life through training, not just for bodybuilding, but for weight loss and general fitness. The information is as straight forward as I could make it, without the jargon or the waffle many books like to use. Unlike most e-books and web sites, this site diesn't promote anything - except health!. I also don't wish to promote one method of exercise over another, or bias your exercise opinions. The information is general and can be applied to whichever form of exercise you undertake - light, moderate or heavy. Some pages, such as the Relaxation section, can help in other ways too; such as to aid sleep, to help reduce anxiety or stress,  or simply to relax after a particularly long day. 

The guide is grouped into four main sections, with are then split into various sub-sections. If you are serious about weight training then you will need to read ALL the sections to understand the basics of your task, and to make the biggest improvements. You can skip around a lot at the beginning - and I know most people will pick out the essentials so they can dive straight in. Unlike most things in life, this is not a very harmful thing to do as it is more important to get you exercising than to worry about how to fine tune it. Don't go mad though.  If you feel pain or strain - stop!  Start at the beginning, and never use too heavy a weight for your body. The main areas beginners should check out are:

These are the essential chapters and must be read to establish the general idea of training and how to exercise correctly. Once you start, it is recommended that you read the whole guide from the beginning (every chapter in sequence) so you develop the best knowledge of training and how it will help you. It won't take long. To get a better idea of the benefits you should aim to achieve, read the Why Should I Exercise? section.

I hope you will find the guide useful and gives you a better knowledge of the subject, then it will have all been worth it...