FITNESS BLOG
Cardio Gains
Improving your heart health is one of the most important aspects of getting in shape. Your heart and cardiovascular system are responsible for getting oxygen and nutrients throughout your body both in and out of the gym. Having a strong heart will allow you to train and recover more effectively from your workouts. The best way to improve your heart health is to live an active lifestyle and move frequently throughout every day. In your workouts, you can maximize gains in your heart health by doing cardiovascular exercise (or “cardio”).
Sheet Pan Recipes for Easy Meal Prep
One of my favorite ways to cook well-balanced meals with minimal prep time is to make sheet pan recipes. These involve baking or roasting all the ingredients together on a single baking sheet to save time and keep cleanup to a minimum. As someone who wants to spend as little time as possible in the kitchen, these dishes are a staple in my weekly meal prep! Check out these example recipes and the new Sheet Pan Recipe Collection for 70+ dishes to save time and mess at meal time.
Technique Tips: How to Bench Press
If you want to have a strong upper body, bench press is one of the best exercises to train. This compound movement targets multiple muscle groups, including the pecs, delts, triceps as well as stabilizing muscles throughout your core and legs. In this post, I give step-by-step directions for how to perform the bench press exercise safely with good technique.
Smoothie Recipes to Sneak In Your Veggies
Eating plenty of veggies is an important part of a healthy diet. If your goal is to burn fat, eating vegetables can help to reduce your overall calorie intake, combat belly fat, and boost your metabolism. If you’re trying to build muscle, it’s also super important to each plenty of vegetables. One of my favorite ways to sneak more veggies into my diet is to blend them up with fruit and other ingredients to make smoothies. Check out these recipes for getting in your veggies with delicious & nutritious smoothies.
Eat Your Veggies Challenge
It's OFFICIALLY October, which means some of my favorite vegetables are in season. So this is the ✨perfect✨ time to re-launch our community Eat Your Damn Veggies challenge. Our community goal is to eat a ton of veggies throughout this month! Show off your veggie dishes by posting a picture of your plate every day in the #eat-your-damn-veggies channel in my Coaching Corner Discord server. The people who post the most veggies by the end of the month will win a free download of their choice of either a meal plan or recipe collection from my website.
How to Eat to Build Muscle
When it comes to building muscle, exercise is just one piece of the puzzle. Proper nutrition also plays a crucial role in supporting muscle growth and recovery. In this post, I’ll share my training advice for how to eat to maximize your gains, including how many calories to eat, how much protein to get in, and how to eat a nutrient-dense diet. Click here to read more.
How to Test Your Maxes
In weight training, a great way to get a sense of your strength levels is to test your maxes. A max is the maximum amount of weight that you can lift in a set of between 1 and 5 repetitions of a single exercise. The most common way of testing maxes is to find a 1 rep max (1RM). This is the maximum amount of weight you can lift in a specific exercise 1 time. This number can be helpful for determining what weight you should train within your normal training sessions. Depending on the goal of your program, experts recommend training with different percentages of your 1RM with various rep ranges. Check out these step-by-step instructions for testing your maxes.
10 Exercises to Sculpt Your Shoulders
Many people mistakenly think that doing tons of biceps curls and tricep kickbacks will make their arms look more “toned” and strong. But in reality—it’s the shoulders that really make the arms pop! Training the shoulders is not only important for developing sculpted-looking arms. It’s also a key part of training for injury prevention. Check out my training tips for incorporating shoulder work into your weekly training routine as well as 10 example exercises with demo videos!
What to Eat Before and After Your Workouts
I tell my clients all the time: “What you eat is just as important as how you exercise—no matter what your fitness goals are.” To perform best in your workouts and maximize your gains, you gotta fuel your body with proper nutrition! What you eat before and after your workouts can significantly impact your energy levels, muscle growth, and overall progress. Click here to learn more about the general guidelines for pre-workout and post-workout nutrition.
Exercises for Reducing Belly Fat
I get asked a lot: “what are the best exercises for tightening up the abs? No *one* exercise is going to help you trim fat from your belly and tighten it up. You could literally do crunches every single day for months and not see an inch go away from around your torso. The good news is that there are some strategies that can help you burn your belly fat—but crunches aren’t going to do it for you. Read more here to learn how to eat and exercise to start making progress!