John Basedow: Hi, once again, I am John Basedow, creator of the best-selling Fitness Made Simple video series. Now we are going to talk about getting set up so you can start exercises and building those awesome arms. As you can see all the equipment we have talked about in the first segment is here. We have a couple of dumbbells, a barbell and an adjustable bench. Now sometimes this bench is going to be at about a 90 degree angle or close to that for some of the exercises, other times it's going to be 180 degrees or flat.

You notice we are using today a lot of free weights as opposed to machines. Machines are great. I just prefer free weights a lot of times especially dumbbells because they tend to work both sides especially each arm independently. A lot of times when you are using machine the stronger side can start pushing up the weight and the weaker side act just as a guide. Dumbbells however give you equal development, equal results which is very key.

As far as rest periods we are going to only rest 30 seconds to maybe a minute between sets. Now that brings up another thing. For those of you who are beginning there are two terms you are going to have to learn and that's sets and reps. Sets means the number of times you are doing each exercise where reps are the number of individual repetitions that you do within each set.

For most of the exercises we are doing today we are going to 2-3 sets with 10-15 repetitions within each set. As far as weights you want to choose a weight that you can do about 10-12 reps with, with the 10th to the 12th rep being really hard to squeeze out. Once you can easily do 15 reps, it's time to increase the weight. I am going to be doing some weights that are a little bit less than what I would normally do on my own workout because I have got to keep my breath while I am talking to you and explaining an exercise routine.

Now coming up next, we are going to go over how to warm up before getting started building those awesome arms.