Nothing is worse than the sound of your alarm first thing in the morning. It doesn’t matter if you wake up to heavenly harp sounds or loud, obnoxious beeps—mornings suck.

There’s only one thing that makes mornings bearable: Coffee.

I drink several cups of coffee each morning and wouldn’t make it through the day without caffeine.

I’ll be the first to raise my hand and say I’m addicted to caffeine, which happens to be one of the most hotly debated substances in health and fitness. Is caffeine good or bad for you?

If it is bad, how much is too much?

This article looks at caffeine myths and tells you exactly how much coffee is too much.

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I developed an embarrassing habit when I began working out seriously a decade ago:

I would wait until the gym was empty to get my sets in on the bench press because I couldn’t even put up two plates a side.

The meatheads had me convinced that the bench press was the true marker of my strength, and because I was weak on that lift compared to the rest of them, my self-confidence suffered.· Continue

If you’re charging into the new year with high hopes of finally making a commitment to fitness, there’s one question that probably looms large in your mind: Where do I get started?

Some people will reactivate a gym membership that expired years ago, others will splurge on a new Fitbit for motivation, and many will conduct hours of fruitless research on fitness classes or fad programs.

Everyone is looking for that perfect beginner workout that’ll allow them to jump back into exercising consistently.

Finding the right intro workout can seem daunting, and tons of people who start this year on fire about fitness will feel overwhelmed and quit before ever picking up a weight.

If you’re feeling this way, listen up—getting your fitness back on track does not start with finding a beginner workout… because there’s no such thing.

In fact, the beginning of this process doesn’t involve a gym at all.

As this post will explain, a renewed commitment to fitness is all mental.· Continue

“We live in a time of extraordinary change—change that’s reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet, our place in the world.” – President Barack Obama during the State of the Union Address on January 12, 2016

President Obama’s words from early last year ring especially true for the health and fitness industry, which has experienced massive growth during the past decade.

According to the Global Wellness Institute, the worldwide “fitness industry” was worth $1.2 trillion in 2015 when combining the “Fitness & Mind-Body” subcategory with the “Healthy Eating, Nutrition, & Weight Loss” category.

(When you add in the other eight subcategories, that value jumps to $3.7 trillion!)

Sounds good, right? But before we start popping leftover bottles of New Year’s champagne to celebrate, we have to remember a basic truth regarding human nature:· Continue

When life gets busy, fitness always seems to be the first item dropped from our to-do list.

The holiday season is a perfect example. Between hangovers and massive family meals, it’s easy to forgo fitness especially when 2017 is right around the corner and you can just start fresh then.

But if you’re serious about making fitness a part of your life, you need strategies that can help you fit exercise into your schedule no matter how busy life gets.

Below are five hacks for getting your fitness in, even when life gets crazy.· Continue

On January 1, gyms around the world will overflow with the annual influx of fair-weather fitness fanatics armed with the same New Year’s resolutions they’ve had for the last decade.

These newbies will come out guns blazing for a couple weeks. They’ll show all the signs of wanting to make fitness a priority in their lives. Then, once the dust settles, they’ll be gone.

Why can’t the New Year’s crowd ever stick to their resolutions? What is it about their approach that leads to cancelled gym memberships while long-time gym rats endure?

The fair-weather crowd consistently falls off the wagon due to poor goal setting.

There’s nothing wrong with riding the wave of psychological momentum you get at the start of a new year and joining the fitness crowd at your local gym.

But if you’re serious about sticking with fitness beyond the first two weeks of January, here are seven steps to properly setting and obtaining your fitness goals in 2017.· Continue