How can I use the gym to get, and stay in shape?

I have access to a complete up-to-date modern gym with everything imaginable in it except a fitness instructor. I am a 48 yr old male, 5'10" - 195lbs. with a slightly showing gut. What I want to do is go into the gym using some instructions, and/or pictures and go from machine to machine per a scheduled routine. Can someone advise, and/or send me to a website, and/or recommend a good book.
Answer:
Try utilizing a full body or compound muscle workout. Just use the machines to start out if you're uncomfortable with the free weights but believe me, free weights are the way to go for muscle because they utilize the full range and the stabilizer muscles (whlie machines tend to isolate). Cables are good too in some areas. Here's a great site that lists many lifts you can perform.
http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/exercise1...Also, for your routines, try this:Full body workout:
Try to perform 6-8 different lifts, balancing between chest, back and legs. Try to do different exercises each day, cycling back every second or third day. For example, when working your chest on day 1, do bench press and pec flies, then on day 2, do dumbell press and cable crossovers. Compound muscle:
These are preferred because you give your muscle groups more rest time and you get the blood flowing to a certain area of your body, resulting in better gains. What you do is chest/back on day 1, legs and abs on day 2 and shoulders/biceps/triceps on day 3. These are compound muscle groups on each day. Choose 2-3 different lifts for each body part.You can perform cardio after you lift (5 minutes of warm up, 30 minutes of some good cardio and then 5 minutes cool down). I like doing this because after you lift, your body is in the fat burning stage (turns to the fat stores in your body for the needed energy), and so take advantage of it with some hard cardio. Each of your lifting sessions should be between 40-60 minutes. And you should rest at least one day between full body workouts, and for the compound muscle workouts you can do splits (lift on days 1, 2, 3, rest on day 4 and start up again) or you can just do it on certain days of the week (for example I do chest/back on mondays, legs/abs on wednesdays and arms on fridays - works fine for me and you give your muscles lots of rest time which is grow time). Check out additional sites in my sources to perform your own research. Good luck and choose a program you're comfortable with at first and then work your way up!

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