How Can You Do Weight Lifting Exercises in the Gym?

First, before you start doing any weight lifting exercises, check with your doctor that you are able to. This is valid especially for people over 30 years old. When you start use the machine prepared for you in most gyms, like bench press, biceps, triceps, pull, pecs etc. It is more important with any exercise to do it correctly, than to lift heavy weights. Get somebody to watch and criticize you, to do it right, or ask a trainer to help you.

What are repetitions (reps) and sets?

When doing weight lifting exercises people use certain terms. Each repetition you do is the number of times you do the exercise without resting. Sets are the number of times you do the set of repetition. You need to have some rest between each set. If you do 3 sets of 15 reps, you've done 15 reps 3 times equals 45 repetition. Often trainers recommend if you want to build muscle to do 7 reps of a weight. If you can do 7 reps the weight you're trying to lift is too light, so increase the weight, and reduce the number of reps to 5, until you can do 7 reps again, then repeat.

What exercises can you do?

After doing the machines for a while until you can do reasonable heavy load, start going over to the dumbbells and barbells. The most important exercises are:

Bench press with dumbbells, free barbells or barbells in a Smith machine. Use a bench you can regulate the incline, so you can train with different angles. Also vary the grip from narrow grip to a wide grip.
Dumbell one-arm bent-over row trains your triceps
Barbell seated shoulder press with different grips
Dumbbell upright row
Dumbbell flies on a bench
Barbell or dumbbell curls trains your biceps.
Leg press with barbells or dumbbells

You should also try to do some more legs (squats and hamstring), core (abs and obliques), and upper and lower back exercises.

How many times should I do these exercises?

I would say you can do these above mentioned exercises up to 3 times per week, and then maybe add some core exercises. Remember the most important when building muscle is the resting time, so always take days off.

Jason B. Warren, a sports enthusiast who enjoys to write about different sports and how to do them. He's doing these sports himself.