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I even more urge people taking this advice to read and go slow. It's super easy to hurt yourself if you end up with bad technique or go up in weight too fast--anything more than 5 lbs at a time is too fast. Read Starting Strength for some of the technical background and get some help from a friend who actually knows what proper technique looks like.

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I cannot emphasize this point enough. If you are new to the gym, please get a personal trainer (or someone who knows wtf they are doing) for a session or two to show you the correct form. It's more important that you are doing the exercise correctly with no weight than incorrectly with a lot.

This ^^ If you don't have strict, solid form, when you load a bunch of weight on the bar, you WILL get injured. It's inevitable. I recommend a relatively new book BY THE NUMBERS. Full disclosure, it was written by the former owner of my gym, but the reviews have been solid across the board.

Second on starting strength. Not only does the book have great info on how to properly perform each lift, but it also has quite a bit of info behind why we do each lift, physics and moment arms, and a little bit on nutrition and accessory lifts.

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