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[Greatoliver]

I think most injuries are from people pushing themselves too hard or ignoring pain (same thing  ). Stretches before exercise don't reduce the risk of injury, and I think lower the power of your muscles. What I would advice is having a warm up session, where you take it at an easy pace, and get your heart rate up.

Streches are important for after tho. At the end, do a warm down, so basically take it easy so your heart rate drops, and stretch out any muscle that seems tight. Doing this through the day helps too.

As to getting a bit fitter, you're right about the solution, which is just go on the cardio stuff, like the treadmill/bike. These will build up your aerobic/anarobic fitness, and that's what you want to do.  Once you're at a stage where you can maintain a certain rate for a period of time, you can start mixing things up, like doing bursts of intense work inbetween less work, tho that's only really needed once you're comfortable.

For upper body strength, try doing a smaller weight, with something like 10-12 reps, 3 times. That will mean you will get a bit stronger, but is not going to be too intense. For the actual exercises, try and work every muscle set so that your workout is balanced. If you read around on the internet, you get quite a good understanding of common exercises and what they do. Also, stuff like pressups are good, cos they are using your body, so it's like you're improving your ability to use your body....

As said above, don't worry, you won't become ripped unless you start really hitting the weights and looking at your diet a lot, so don't worry about putting on loads of muscle - if anything, you will get lean definition.

Finally, it will take time, but the great thing about it is that there are effects from the start, like sleeping better.

I hope that helped!

[nenjin]

You sound about where I am. My lower body is awesome, because I played soccer and focused on leg machines. But I've got a pretty pathetic upper body. Even after two years of strength training focused on increasing my upper body, I found it was tough to increase my max weight in those areas. But I wasn't putting 100% effort into it, I admit.

3) My goals are oriented mainly towards increasing my abilities, not making changes to my body (though obviously that's a side effect). My biggest issues as I see them right now are a complete lack of upper-body strength (for stuff like climbing, say), and pretty terrible endurance when it comes to anything, but especially things like running/bicycling. I end up out of breath and in pain after a few seconds (running) or a couple minutes (cycling). I want to change that.

Muscle endurance is one thing. You can increase that by low weight, hi-rep exercises. Cardio, however, is a different story. When it comes to cardio I prefer straight running, mostly because I prefer that kind of impact on my ankles than bounding on a treadmill. I'm sure someone will disagree with this, but weight rooms are generally not the place to go if you really wanna work on your cardio. Swimming is a great cardio builder....and as long as you have a pool, you might as well bone up on your swimming. (In case you fall into a river after a carp attack.)

There seem to be a decent variety of cardio and weight machines available, so I guess right now the key is picking which ones to use, and figuring out how much weight/repetitions to do on the weight machines.

One of the trainers/staff in the weight room should be able to at least give you a general idea of the sets you need to do...if they don't just straight up build you a workout plan right there. I recall the formula (which I'm not advising you to follow) was something like...

Find a weight you can do only three reps of before you're exhausted.

That's your max.

Subtract 25% of your max weight, and do that 9 times. That's a power set.

Subtract 35% and do two sets of 10 reps. That's the median.

Subtract 50% and do two to three sets of 20 reps. That's a toning and muscle endurance set.

Stretches before exercise don't reduce the risk of injury, and I think lower the power of your muscles.

I'm not a fitness trainer....but I really disagree with that. Especially for people who are out of shape. Pre-workout stretching helps prevent serious muscle cramps, and helps increase your muscle extension. It may decrease the power of your muscles a little, but I think it helps your muscle stamina than just going straight into a workout.

Put it this way. Would you let a hotrod sit for 20 years, then turn it on a do a brake stand? No, because it's a machine, parts get brittle, gunk fills tubes and it puts stress on the motor to go to 100% immediately. So you turn the car on, let the engine warm, let the goop liquefy, let the parts get a little more pliable, pump the gas and rev the engine a few times....then you do a brake stand.

Seriously though, unless you're already in the habit of working out, being in shape and being "stretched", you should do the pre-exercise stretches. The post-workout stretches are really helpful too. I think if you're really committed, you'll do both and be better for it. He doesn't sound like he's trying to set weight records or anything.

I don't have any good links, because I learned all my stretches in high school and it would take a while to write them all down here. But keep looking, especially on Youtube, I'm sure there are workout stretch demonstrations there.

[Greatoliver]

You sound about where I am. My lower body is awesome, because I played soccer and focused on leg machines. But I've got a pretty pathetic upper body. Even after two years of strength training focused on increasing my upper body, I found it was tough to increase my max weight in those areas. But I wasn't putting 100% effort into it, I admit.

Maybe look at your diet as well? If you really want to put on muscle mass, you need to increase your protein intake and calorie intake quite significantly... I wonder if that could be a reason? Depends also on your workout etc.

I'm not a fitness trainer....but I really disagree with that. Especially for people who are out of shape. Pre-workout stretching helps prevent serious muscle cramps, and helps increase your muscle extension. It may decrease the power of your muscles a little, but I think it helps your muscle stamina than just going straight into a workout.

Well, I agree that stretches are a good thing, but I would argue that not in front of a workout.  "Evidence" has supposedly shown that stretches before exercise do not reduce the risk of muscle cramps etc. That is because of not warming up properly, rather than not stretching.

To expand, warming up is increasing heart rate and blood supply to your body, which is essentially what cramp is about. Stretches don't do either of these things. I've been taught at school to do SAQs which are stretches incorporated into movements... Examples being lunges, and rotating arms, heel flicks etc. These are in the place of static stretches.

Also, doing a set on a very low weight is good too. That lets blood flow to the muscles you will use in the next exercise e.g. bench pressing with no weights on.

Static stretches should be used outside of the gym tho, and I would advise them. It is good to increase muscle extension, and for some reason they just feel good  I think tho, it doesn't matter too much... As you say, they're not trying to break records 

For reps/sets, as a general rule, try to make sure you do 24 reps of each exercise in total. e.g 4 sets of 6 reps for strenth, 3 sets of 10 for muscle growth/endurace.

[smigenboger]

I'd recommend stretching before working out. The one day I didn't stretch my inner thighs before using the squeeze machine, I hyperextended that area and didn't recover for two days. Stretchiness is a great ability to have, and doesn't really impact your strength unless you go absolutely overboard on it. I'd at least stretch your hamstrings and your neck/shoulders, especially if you are working out to prepare for something else.