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If you’re looking to change your body shape, we’ve got you covered.

Here, Laura Hoggins, a personal trainer and author, takes you through your new workout plan.

Your New Workout 

Include a few compound movements in each workout, which work multiple muscles and joints at once. Do eight to 12 reps in each set.

“Women should lift heavy enough that the last two to three reps of a set are challenging but doable with good form,” says Laura.

You can use dumbbells or a barbell for these exercises:

SQUATS 

5

• Hold a dumbbell in each hand, letting them hang at your sides. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, chest up, and core tight.
• Initiate the squat by pushing your hips back, as if you are reaching for a chair behind you.
• Bend your knees and lower your body until your thighs are parallel to the floor (or as low as you can comfortably go while keeping your back straight and chest up). Keep the dumbbells close to your sides.
• Push through your heels and the middle of your feet to powerfully drive back up to the starting position.
• At the top, fully straighten your legs and squeeze your glutes for a complete repetition.

Try a goblet squat with one, heavier dumbbell held at the chest, or with a barbell on your upper back/neck.

DEADLIFTS

5

• Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Bend over and grip the bar with your hands just outside your shins.
• With the bar still on the floor, bend your knees until your shins touch the bar. The bar should be going across the mid-foot. Keep your hips low, chest up, and back straight. Take a big breath and brace your core.
• Drive through your heels, pushing the floor away. Stand up by extending your knees and hips simultaneously. Keep the bar in contact with your body (dragging it up your shins).
• Finish the lift by standing tall. Squeeze your glutes together and lock your hips and knees.
• To lower the bar again, hinge at your hips first, keeping your back straight, and allow the bar to descend down your thighs. Once the bar passes your knees, bend your knees to lower it to the floor with control.

BENCH PRESS

5

• In the gym, set up a barbell on a rack with a flat bench underneath it. Lie on the bench and, planting your feet firmly on the floor, grab the bar with an overhand grip slightly wider than shoulder-width.
• Squeeze your shoulder blades back and down (like you’re pinching a pencil between them). Arch your upper back slightly and drive your feet into the floor to lock in your entire body.
• Take a deep breath and push the bar straight up and off the rack. Move it forward until it is balanced directly over your shoulders. This is your starting position (see illustration above).
• Slowly lower the bar to your mid-chest, just below your collarbone. Keep your elbows tucked to a 45-to-70-degree angle from your body (avoid flaring them out wide).
• When the bar lightly touches your chest, press it forcefully up and slightly back (not straight up) until your arms are fully extended over your shoulders. Exhale, and then repeat the movement for the next rep.

Try with dumbbells if you are at home or are new to the exercise and want more flexibility or range of motion, for example.

BENT OVER ROWS

5

• Stand with a dumbbell in each hand, palms facing each other (neutral grip). Bend your knees slightly, then hinge at your hips so your torso is close to a 45-degree angle to the floor.
• Keep your back straight, chest up, and core tight. Let the dumbbells hang straight down, just below your knees.
• Lead the movement by pulling your elbows up and back towards the ceiling, drawing the dumbbells toward the sides of your chest/lower rib cage.
• At the top of the movement, squeeze your back muscles together (imagine pinching a pencil between your shoulder blades).
• Slowly lower the dumbbells back to the starting position with your arms fully extended, maintaining the bent-over posture for all repetitions.

Try with a barbell too.

OVERHEAD PRESS WITH SQUAT

5

• Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, holding a dumbbell in each hand by your sides (palms facing inward). Keep your chest up and core tight.
• Initiate the squat by pushing your hips back, as if you are sitting down into a chair.
• Bend your knees, keeping your back straight and the dumbbells hanging close to your body. Go down until your thighs are parallel to the floor, or as low as comfortable.
• Push through your heels and the middle of your feet to drive your body back up to the starting position. Fully straighten your legs and squeeze your glutes at the top of the movement.

Add on a couple of accessory lifts, which target specific areas and work only one side of the body at a time.

Think biceps curls or single-leg glute bridges.

Short on time?

“I suggest pairing exercises together from opposite muscle groups (such as quads and hamstrings), or an upper and a lower exercise to get the biggest bang for your time spent in the gym,” says Laura. 

WASHINGTON — Halfway through President Trump’s inaugural White House meeting this term with congressional leadership days before a government shutdown, the red hats appeared on the president’s desk.

“Trump 2028,” they said, situated across from the seated lawmakers, Vice President JD Vance and several untouched Diet Cokes.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries leaned over to Vance, a potential 2028 contender, and quipped, “Hey, bro, you got a problem with this?”

The room chuckled in response.

“It was the random-most thing in the world, because we’re sitting there, we’re having a serious conversation, and all of a sudden these two red hats appear,” Jeffries recalled later at the Capitol.

“It was all so unserious,” the New York Democrat said, describing a roving cameraman capturing the moment. “We were there for serious reasons that it wasn’t really a big part of, you know, the discussion. It was theatrics.”

The moment was vintage Trump — grabbing the attention and seeking to throw negotiators off their game — but it also underscored the president’s disregard for Congress, a coequal branch of the government, and in particular his opponents across the political aisle.

From historic first meeting to viral trolling

What was once considered a historic occasion — the president of the United States convening his first “big four” meeting of congressional leaders from the House and Senate — was reduced to another viral souvenir of Trump trolling his opponent.

And after the more than hourlong session, the president failed to strike a deal with the leaders to prevent a federal government closure.

“We don’t want it to shut down,” Trump said at the White House the next day, hours before the midnight deadline.

This wasn’t just a routine meeting of the president and congressional leadership. It was the first time Trump had gathered the leaders of Congress, more than eight months into his presidency — and the first time he and Jeffries had officially met.

But more surprising was how little came from it.

Healthcare funds

During the White House meeting, Jeffries and Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer laid out their arguments for saving healthcare funding as part of the shutdown talks.

Trump said very little, doing more listening than talking, the leaders said.

“He didn’t seem to know about the healthcare premiums going up so much,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.

With the Republican leadership, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the conversation ranged across their views of the healthcare situation.

“Lively,” Thune (R-S.D.) later said.

The discussion included the Democrats’ demands to ensure subsidies to help people buy private insurance on the exchanges run by the Affordable Care Act are made permanent. The subsidies were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic and are set to expire at year’s end, which would cause premiums to skyrocket, nearly doubling in some cases.

The conversation also touched on the new rural hospital fund that is important to Republicans, set up under Trump’s big bill as a way to compensate for its cuts to Medicaid healthcare providers.

Johnson (R-La.) said Trump showed “strong, solid leadership. He listened to the arguments.”

Trying to catch the president’s attention

This is the best the Democrats could have hoped for — to have an airing before the president that began to turn the dial toward their demands. And it is what the GOP leaders had tried to avoid as each party tries to blame the shutdown on the other.

Johnson had suggested Trump back out of an initial meeting with the Democrats — after the president had agreed to one — arguing it would be a “waste of time.”

But Trump relented, and granted them Monday’s closed-door Oval Office session.

The Democrats have been here before. During Trump’s first term, the president repeatedly negotiated deals with the Democrats — “Chuck and Nancy,” as he called Schumer and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi — to fund the government, raise the debt limit and achieve other goals.

Those bargains Trump made frustrated his party’s lawmakers.

Republicans, aware of that history, are trying to steer the conversation in a different direction, saying they would leave the door open to discuss the healthcare issue with Democrats later — once the government has reopened. They also took issue with the characterization of Trump as unaware of the depth or magnitude of the healthcare situation.

“I’m highly skeptical the president was hearing about it for the first time,” Vance said afterward.

One Republican not authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting and granted anonymity to do so said Schumer’s suggestion that Trump didn’t know about the subsidy problem was exaggerated.

So far in his second term, the president has been able to accomplish his priorities either on his own, with executive actions and the Elon Musk-led cuts that tore through federal offices, or with a compliant Congress passing his signature tax breaks and spending cuts bill, known as the “Big Beautiful Bill Act,” that is also fueling his mass deportation agenda.

But Washington doesn’t run on the White House alone, and Congress is not a majority-takes-all institution — traditionally, at least. Turning most bills into laws generally has required the give-and-take of bipartisan compromise, particularly in the Senate, and particularly when it comes to the annual appropriations needed to keep government running.

Then came the sombrero taunts

Hours after the lawmakers left the meeting, Trump’s team posted a fake video that showed Jeffries adorned in a sombrero with a faux mustache standing beside Schumer outside the White House. It was widely seen as racist.

“When I was practicing law, there was a Latin phrase that was always one of my favorites,” Jeffries said back at his office at the Capitol. “Res ipsa loquitur. It means: The thing speaks for itself.”

“We had a full airing of our positions on Monday, which should have set the baseline for a follow-up conversation from the administration to try to reignite a meaningful bipartisan path toward funding the government,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the president’s behavior subsequent to the White House meeting deteriorated into unhinged and unserious action.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

Feedback is the seasoning that flavors the success of our favorite TV shows. Whether it’s from an executive, a trusted colleague or the actors, advice can shape tone, pacing, plotlines and character arcs — all of which can make or break a series. We asked some of this year’s Emmy contenders how creative collaborations provided the notes to their success.

“The Diplomat”

Allison Janney in “The Diplomat.”

(Netflix)

To create the unrelenting tension in the Netflix political drama, which was inspired by conversations with real diplomats, creator Debora Cahn turned to advice from “Homeland” showrunner Alex Gansa: “He said take whatever story that you’re planning in the last episode of the first season and do it in the first episode. And I was like, ‘Ooh, s—.’” The result hurls lead Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) into high-stakes chaos, none wilder than her clash with the vice president (Allison Janney) and a jaw-dropping Season 2 twist. “I was embarrassed to pitch it to the writers’ room. It was an unspeakably dumb idea and a bad cliche, but I had to get it off my chest. We looked for other things, but we kept coming back to it and realized that it did the thing that you really want a plot to do, which is it changes everything.”

“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”

Nicholas Alexander Chavez, left, Cooper Koch and Javier Bardem in “Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story.”

(Miles Crist / Netflix)

“In researching [the Menendez brothers case], [co-creator] Ryan [Murphy] mentioned, ‘I think this story is [Akira Kurosawa’s] “Rashomon.”’ That was the one note I was like, ‘Oh, I totally get this now,’” says co-creator Ian Brennan of the Netflix limited series. “We’re never going to know what the true story is, but that became a really good guiding light because we made sure that when we’re telling an aspect of this story that’s disputed, we’d go back and tell it the other way,” he says. “What we’re doing is based on as much truth as we can find, but I feel like you’re obliged to take some liberty. It’s not only to tell a story that’s entertaining but to get to those deeper truths that are sometimes occluded by the mundanity of some facts. It’s a painting, not a photograph.”

“Only Murders in the Building”

Steve Martin, left, Selena Gomez and Martin Short in “Only Murders in the Building.”

(Eric McCandless / Disney)

Creator John Hoffman says the idea for Hulu’s mystery-comedy came to him during the pandemic, when everyone was afraid to step outside their door. “This show is about lonely New Yorkers who found a connection between true crime and a death in their building,” he says. But his chief concern was injecting soul into the punch lines. “When I was talking about my ideas for how to make it more connective and humorous, I wanted the comedy to come from humanity as opposed to jokes and behavior. I was deeply surprised by everyone’s response, from the studio, the network and [executive producer] Dan Fogelman, that they wanted to lean into that more profound connective tissue that was more unexpected and dramatic at times,” he says. “There are a lot of personal things in that first season that I thought, ‘Well, that’s going to get me fired.’ But they accepted it.”

“Slow Horses”

Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses.”

(Apple TV+)

“[Executive producer] Graham Yost was always very clear that we should focus on adapting Mick Herron’s work and not just use it as a launchpad for some kind of offshoot,” says creator Will Smith of the clever Apple TV+ show, which follows a group of disgraced MI5 agents. “Whenever we got stuck in the room, Graham’s watchword would be, ‘Well, let’s look at what Mick wrote,’ and we would go back to the book and figure it out from there. So the tone of the books infused the scripts.” The outcome is a nail-biter of a tale with humor smuggled in like contraband. ”Our fabulous exec Jamie Laurenson and our brilliant [Season 1] director James Hawes both understood that nothing should ever feel like a joke, nothing should feel gratuitous or crowbarred for a laugh. It should all be thrown away, underplayed, said on the run.”

“What We Do in the Shadows”

The cast of “What We Do in the Shadows.”

“There’s a part of me that feels like it’s cheating, but it really helps,” says showrunner Paul Simms of the mockumentary shooting style behind the hilarious FX series, which portrays the awkward lives and bizarre pitfalls of centuries-old vampires. “If you’re writing a narrative show that’s not documentary format, people’s motivations have to come out in their dialogue. With this, you can have characters very directly and, in a very funny way, state their motivations.” Unlocking its full bite of wit were two keys. “One great thing about this format is that you’re not hamstrung by little continuity details in the edit. You can do jump cuts and jam in as much funny stuff without having to worry,” Simms says. The other, a network note: “From the beginning, FX and John Landgraf were saying the vampire stuff is fun, but it can’t be all vampire jokes. So our approach every season was to go in new directions and create constant tension.”

Travis Kelce is done fighting for his right to party.

Or at least the 35-year-old Kansas City Chiefs tight end is ready to start toning down his party-hearty image — which is kind of big news for a dude who is known for his wild, celebratory, off-key renditions of the Beastie Boys classic “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)” and is often seen out enjoying life with superstar girlfriend Taylor Swift.

Kelce made the revelation during a lengthy interview with GQ that was published Tuesday morning.

“I’m starting to phase out of wanting to be known as the party guy,” the three-time Super Bowl champion and 10-time Pro Bowl selection said.

“When you see me hanging out at the US Open with Taylor, it may look like the two of us are partying. But I’m just enjoying the fun of being at this really cool event that I always wanted to go to with the person that I love.”

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce attend the men’s singles final match at the 2024 US Open last September.

(Sarah Stier / Getty Images)

He added: “I’ve become way more strategic in understanding what I am portraying to people.”

Following the Chiefs’ loss to the Philadelphia Eagles at Super Bowl LIX in February, Kelce didn’t immediately commit to returning for his 13th NFL season and the final year of his contract with the Chiefs. He acknowledged to GQ that he has been thinking about his life after the NFL, although he didn’t offer any details on what that might look like.

Kelce already has a high profile off the field, thanks in large part to his relationship with Swift but also from his appearances in countless TV commercials and on his successful “New Heights” podcast, which he co-hosts with older brother Jason. Incidentally, that podcast is sure to hit, uh, new heights in its number of listeners this week when Swift makes her first appearance on the show.

Part of Kelce’s new outlook on his image seems to have been influenced by Swift and the way she interacts with her immense fan base.

“People gravitate towards how she performs and how she makes it feel like the entire stadium is in a little room with her,” Kelce said. “She is so good at mesmerizing everybody and making everybody feel like it’s an intimate situation. I think that alone — there is so much calm and coolness. She’s beautiful. She’s up there making everyone feel at ease.

“Whenever I get in front of a crowd, I feel like I’ve got to be like, Woooo! Like, excited, bringing the energy. Then I saw that coolness and that calmness and that relatability that she is so good at presenting. I really grabbed that. Like, Man, I can use that side of entertainment as well. It’s not just always being the guy that brings the energy and creates these exciting moments.”

Kelce added that he and Swift share similar outlooks when it comes to their respective legacies.

“Nowadays I just want to be respected and loved by the people that I’m surrounded by in my work,” he said. “I want to leave it better than where it was when I started. And I see her having those same values.”