The gym is noisy and there is a whole lot of sweating going on. Pain, perspiration and many hours are being invested in dreams of a new lean body and good health. Take a look around. Advanced lifters, working with form and focus, apply good technique and concentration. The intermediate trainees are more random in their workouts but they have experienced some early success and work hard.

In the third and largest group are beginners and usually they are completely lost. They don't understand the principles of resistance training, don't have a plan and don't know how to perform the basic movements. They go haphazardly through the motions, flirt with injury, see minimal improvement and usually drop out.

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY! The fundamental principles of weight training are simple. Here are the top five that will take you a long way toward becoming lean, strong and fit.

1. FORM AND FUNCTION. You have to understand the movement and the purpose of each exercise. Books or online videos are good learning tools if you pay attention to the details. Forget about the "muscle mags". The best and most thorough way is to hire an experienced, certified personal trainer to teach you how to lift. With each exercise, make sure you understand exactly which muscles you are training and learn to feel them work.

2. SLOW DOWN. This is related to form but deserves special attention. Throughout the entire exercise, you must be in complete control of the weight. Most trainees perform the movements too quickly. When you swing a heavy weight out of control you increase the risk of injury, but you also allow inertia to do the work instead of fully challenging the muscle.

TEMPO is important. Because most trainees use a weight that is too heavy, they perform the exercises with rushed and jerky movements. SLOW DOWN. A good norm is to lower the weight to a count of three (3), raise powerfully to a count of one (1) and pause in the contracted position for a one (1) count before lowering again. This can be expressed as a 3.1.1 cadence.

3. COMPOUND EXERCISES. Trash your body building magazines that show champions doing hundreds of bicep curls and focus on exercises that develop full-body strength and conditioning. Also, you probably want to burn calories and lose weight. This is done by emphasizing basic, compound exercises. These are the ones that work the body's largest muscle groups in conjunction with one another.

Primary muscles are the quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteus, back, chest and shoulders. The primary compound exercises are squats, deadlifts, bench presses, rowing and overhead presses. DO NOT waste time doing isolation exercises for biceps, triceps, forearms and the individual small muscles of the shoulder. These are worked adequately as part of the large compound movements.

4. USE THE CORRECT WEIGHT. Beginners use too little weight and then, if they are bold, progress to using weights that are too heavy. The definition of the correct weight is one that challenges you to work VERY HARD on the last repetition of your exercise but allows you to do so in PERFECT FORM. If the weight is too light you will not overload the muscle sufficiently to stimulate growth. If the weight is too heavy you will cheat, swinging and swaying and allowing inertia to do the work for you.

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