by Shane Christensen

Created on: June 26, 2008

The most common strength training mistakes are evident soon after entering any gym and watching novices exercise. As an observer, you'll notice immediately that the exercisers are either lifting poundages that are too low, performing exercises that are unnecessary, or they're executing the specific move in an incorrect fashion.

The first thing a person needs to address when looking to embark on a strength training regimen is what specific exercises are required to reach the desired goals, and to realize that the body only gets stronger when it is FORCED to do so. Simply going into the gym and throwing around some light dumb-bells might get you sore and winded in the short term, but if you're serious about making substantial gains then you have to perform the right exercises, which are known as compound moves and involve more than one muscle group during their execution.

An example of this is the meat and potatoes of upper body exercises, known as the bench press. This exercise is a compound move that involves virtually every upper body muscle, but primarily incorporates the triceps and pectoral muscles, and if done correctly the physical effects will be noticeable sooner rather than later. The mistakes some lifters make is that they use incorrect hand position on the bar, and then they lower the bar to touch their chest.

Your hands should be placed in a natural shoulder width position, and this is achieved by simply raising your arms up and placing them on that corresponding position of the bar. If you go too narrow, that targets the triceps and too wide hits the pecs, so for a truly balanced lift you want to be somewhere in the middle so that everything is worked equally, and you'll be able to a heavier weight for maximum benefit.

And one of the most important ingredients when looking to improve bodily strength is knowing that lifting too light is just as bad as lifting too heavy. Which of course begs the next question, what is the right amount to lift and how do you find out? The answer is very safe and easy to find out, especially if you go to a gym with cable machines.

For bench pressing, simply go to a press machine and select a weight that you think you can lift 12 times. If you finish all 12 and feel like you can do more, increase the weight so that getting to 12 is the absolute maximum you can do. Use this weight as your initial starting point in your strength training regimen.

And along the lines of machines, it's important to realize that there is nothing

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