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”).

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.

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!