As much emphasis as you place on what muscles you feel working during an exercise, put an equal focus on being aware of your breath. Effective breathing not only helps maintain stability and control but also maximizes performance and reduces the risk of injury. Let’s look at the 3 effective breathing techniques to use while lifting.

One of the most common questions in strength training is: "How much weight should I use, and how many reps should I do?" Doing resistance training effectively is a delicate balance of adding enough challenge to your muscles, but not so much that you sacrifice proper form (or put yourself at risk of injury).  In today’s message, we’ll look in detail at how you can monitor your intensity while doing your resistance training exercises to maximize your gains while staying safe, using methods like RiR, RPE, and percentage 1RM.

Tightness in the muscles can be a real pain in the neck (literally).

Whether you work out or have stress, bad posture, or poor movement patterns, you probably have experienced tightness in your muscles at some point.

Tight muscles can be uncomfortable, limit your mobility, and even hinder your progress in the gym. Finding relief is key to keeping your body feeling and functioning at its best.

Here are my trainer tips on how to get relief from tight muscles and keep them from holding you back.

If you want a strong upper body, bench press is one of the best exercises to train. This compound exercise targets multiple muscle groups, including the pecs, delts, triceps as well as stabilizing muscles throughout your core and legs. In this post, I share my tips for fixing common errors with the bench press to perfect your technique, maximize your gains, and reduce your risk of injury.

What is the most intimidating weight-training exercise for you?

If you’re like many of my clients and followers, you probably answered: deadlifts!

You probably do this movement multiple times every day, regardless of whether you’re aware of it or not.

The deadlift is the movement of picking something up from the ground in a standing position.

Deadlifts are one of the more tricky exercises to master and perform safely. Most adults that I see have poor mobility and movement patterns, which puts them at risk of straining their backs whenever they pick something up from the ground (both in and outside the gym).

There are a lot of moving pieces involved in safely lifting weight from the ground—you have to keep your spine in alignment, monitor the degree of hip hinge to knee bend, engage the lats, and stay balanced, among other things.

Another thing that makes deadlifts difficult to master is the many variations. Some variations rely more on hinging the hips than bending the knees (e.g., Romanian Deadlifts and Conventional Deadlifts). Others incorporate more knee bending and a more upright posture (e.g., Sumo and Frog Stance).

Most people have a preferred variation according to their individual strengths, body shape (i.e., length of torso, arms, and leg bones), and individual preferences. However, it’s a good idea to master the correct technique of all deadlift variations for a well-rounded physique and mobility.

Let’s take a look at how to do one of the most common forms of the deadlift—the Romanian Deadlift. We’ll also troubleshoot some common errors with the technique so that you can practice the movement with perfect form.

Mastering the squat is super important for staying injury-free in the gym. It’s also one of the basic movements of the human body. Improving your squat technique can help you have better posture and move better in your everyday life.

Before adding any weight or resistance to the squat, make sure that your technique is spot on by checking your form against the tips below.

January is the perfect time to set your intention for what you want to do with your fitness in the coming year.

By the end of 2025, what do you want to achieve?

It’s important to get clear on your goals because that helps you to stay focused and motivated in your workouts and nutrition throughout the year. It also will allow you to craft a step-by-step plan for what to do every day, every week, and every month to move toward what you want to achieve.

The best way to set yourself up for success is to make your goal(s) SMART. SMART stands for:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Relevant

• Time-Bound

Setting a SMART goal can help you get clear on what you want and turn your goals from dreams into action.

Developing a strong core is an essential part of building muscle and improving your physique. That’s why it’s important to include exercises like crunches, planks, torso twists, and back exercises in your weekly workout plan. In this post, we’ll go over why doing core training is so important for health and fitness. We’ll also cover some basic techniques you can use to strengthen and stabilize your core.

Let’s talk about how to get the most benefit from your resistance training workouts so you can build muscle and get strong 💪

Cardiovascular exercise (or “cardio” for short) is a style of training focused on getting your heart pumping for at least 10 minutes. This type of exercise improves the health of your heart & lungs, which deliver oxygen and nutrients to your body & brain.

Do you sometimes feel sore after your workouts? It’s totally normal! If you push your muscles close to failure in your resistance training (like you should), microscopic tears will form along the muscle fiber walls. These tears trigger an “inflammation cascade” that can lead to tenderness or tightness in the muscles.

During resistance training workouts, pay attention to how hard your muscles are working in every set of each exercise. This can also help you to judge whether or not you might need to use more or less resistance (i.e. weight).