If you’ve decided to run a marathon or cycle a century, you might want to consider adding self-talk to your training regimen suggests a recent study in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

To figure out whether you might be able to talk yourself out of exhaustion during endurance activity, researchers had 24 participants cycle at 80% effort until they were exhausted, then they either participated in self-talk training or nothing at all. When they cycled again two weeks later, those who had motivational self-talk training had significantly reduced rates of perceived exertion and enhanced endurance performance.

How can you self talk your way to a personal best? Start by talking to yourself like a motivation coach; then think more about how you’re feeling and how the activity is affecting you. From there, use your inner voice to monitor your body and your pace, and give yourself instruction and commands.

Don’t shy away from resistance training just because your goal is weight loss; remember, you are looking to lose fat, not metabolically active muscle, which will actually help you on your way to your fat-loss goal! Building muscle will help increase your base metabolic rate, so you will burn more calories all day long, even when you aren’t exercising.

I would recommend that you begin with lighter weights in order to gradually strengthen your muscles and joints. As you get stronger, you will be able to increase the intensity and duration of your cardio workouts, which will in turn increase your calorie burn during – and after – each session.

Start by working with a resistance that you can handle in good form for 1 to 2 sets of 15 repetitions. To protect your knees, begin with body weight–supported (e.g. seated or machine-based) exercises like the leg extension, hamstring curl and leg press. Also, do a few sets of standing calf raises to strengthen your lower legs and ankles, and add some push-ups against the wall to strengthen your upper body. Perhaps most importantly, remember to stretch after every workout to help improve flexibility and reduce muscle soreness in the days following your workout.

Who says guys are the only ones who can sport great guns? Women with well-developed arms are strong and sexy, and we’ve got just the routine to whip yours into shape.

This four-move program uses supersets to increase the intensity and the burn, and help build beautiful arms, front and back. Perform the moves in each superset one after the other with no rest in between, then rest no more than 60 seconds between each superset to tone, tighten and trim in all the right places.

Go through the routine three times and your guns will be firing on all cylinders!

Want to minimize the look of your lower body and create curves where you genetically have none? Then developing a V-taper should be a priority. A V-taper can be achieved by building the muscles in your upper back and shoulders and tightening the muscles in the waist and lower back, creating the illusion of broadness up top to balance out your lower half and make your waist look smaller.

Do these exercises as a routine, or spread them out within your workout week to help sculpt your own v-taper. Green indicates exercises that should be done heavy with low reps for building, and blue indicates those that should be done with lighter weight for higher reps for tightening.

With her thousand-watt smile, graceful but strong physique and easy confidence, it’s hard to imagine Lori Harder as an overweight and insecure teen. Now 34, the Michigan native was actually in her early 20s before she decided to improve her outlook by bettering her body. Year after year she made slow but significant improvements, until at age 26 she entered her first physique competition. She since made history as the first woman to win Ms. Bikini America, Ms. Bikini Universe and Ms. Figure America in the same year.

Recently, Harder has put her competitive ambitions on hold to build her motivational speaking business and has tailored her training to fit her busier schedule. With fewer and shorter workouts on her docket, she somehow looks better than ever. Her secret? Intensity.

“When I started competing I was doing traditional bodybuilding splits,” she says. “But I started using compound movements and found that I could get away with three days a week if I really kicked butt when I was there. It’s a different look for me — longer and leaner — which works well for my taller frame, and I’ve kept it up.”

Boxing is an incredible workout. It’s a tough sport, which is why fighters are extremely conditioned. Their performance depends on it. Sweat-clad athletes with bulging veins and six-pack abs are often the picture of an elite boxer at work. While you may not have a goal of stepping in the ring any time soon, you can still cash in on this incredible form of training to shake things up and maximize your calorie burn.

The Gear: You’ll need a heavy bag (many gyms have one), boxing hand wraps, and a pair of bag gloves. Wraps are necessary to protect your knuckles from scrapes and injury, and to offer wrist support. Bag gloves pad your hands and wrists.

The Workout: A HIIT-style boxing workout usually consists of a warm-up and calisthenics followed by 3–5 rounds of timed boxing intervals with rest or active rest between each round. This workout is a surefire way to keep things interesting and keep your heart rate sky high.