Tara LaFerrara
Appearances
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
Have you ever tried, you don't have to do this, but switching out that high intensity cardio with like a long walk outside?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
Yeah. So again, I'm not telling you not to do cardio. I just want you to look at it in a way that like, what is better for your longevity? And it's always going to be strength training. If we think about eating or just calories alone, the more muscle you have, the more you are burning calories at rest. So I am always going to be burning
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
a shit ton more calories at rest because I have so much muscle. And if you're looking at it from that perspective, I'm like, oh, I can actually eat more because my BMR is higher because I have more muscle mass. So if you want to just even like shift that perspective.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
When was the last time you had to make a big change? Today. What did you do?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
It's uncomfortable. It makes you angry. You hate it. It sucks. But guess what? In a month or two or three or four, you're going to feel so much better that you switched to something else. I hope so. And that's the thing I think that's so hard when you're switching that mindset or change. Mindset is something that's ingrained in us. There is a story that was told to us. Someone said something.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
Society tells us this thing for decades of our life. And you can't expect to just make that switch overnight. So if you are someone that's like, gosh, yeah, I know it. I know it. I have to change it. But how am I going to change that? Yeah. That is the basic difference of growth versus fixed mindset. I know it. I think I can change it, but I can't change it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
So if you don't have that growth mindset in mind in three months down the road, you're still going to feel crummy about the situation. But if you know you can stick in the crumminess or like, God, this is hard. It's not working. I'm not seeing the sweat. Nothing's changing for three months and then step out of it and be like, oh, I have more energy. I feel better about my body.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
I can work out less because I'm strength training. That is going to be how you actually make that shift. It's not going to happen overnight. Were you a cardio queen before? Oh, yeah. I used to do HIIT training six to seven days a week all the time, all through my 20s, every day.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
Strength training is always queen in my book. I'm not saying don't do cardio. I just recorded a podcast recently on this. Do cardio if it feels good, if you like it, if you enjoy it, awesome. Strength training is so much more valuable for women as we age. And I would highly recommend doing that over cardio. However, is cardio great for your heart health and multitude of other reasons? Absolutely.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
Yeah, great question. Now I work out four times a week, strength training. I maybe do a cardio session here and there, but it's more just to be around people and in a class. But I got into it because I had more education behind it. I saw my strength increase and I saw how much HIIT was hindering every other part of my life, HIIT and cardio training.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
So I noticed my sleep was better when I didn't do it as much. I noticed my skin was clearing up. I had more energy. I wasn't going for coffee at 3 p.m. every day. It was like a constant even keel. My memory was better and I didn't have to work nearly as hard. So I had this like seven day a week of cardio and then slowly start to peel back.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
But it was really like COVID 2020 time where I was like, why did I do that for so long?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
Yeah. I mean, the aesthetics is huge, obviously. And that's a lot of reason why people like get into fitness, right? They want to look better. But for me personally, like I never got into strength training to change my body. It was just solely about feeling better and not having to work as hard in the gym.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
Yeah, I really only take protein and creatine. I think that there's a lot of supplements on the market that are mostly BS and they just want your money and it's a billion dollar industry and they're going to sell you in the market. Yeah, yeah. And it's not going to go away anytime soon. So I always take supplements that feel best for me.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
I'm going to try things, but I just feel like most of the things that we can get in our food, we can stay away from with supplements.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
Not me personally. And I will say like if somebody is feeling that way, they can go back to like a prescribed is three to five grams daily. I personally have always taken five just because it has sat well for me. Also, it depends on the label, depends on who where you're getting the creatine from. You want like the purest form of monohydrate.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
Some of them have some sort of sugars or other natural flavorings to make it taste better. But if you know you're someone that, you know, gets some bloating with it, I would just go for like the most basic kind and you'll be fine. But I would say, yeah, start lower. Start at three grams instead of five grams daily.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
The recovery is night and day difference. I'm barely sore anymore at all. I do feel like it's helped the memory and cognition and then sleep. I mean, sleep's been a huge thing for me recently over the past couple of years to just get that locked down. And there's been a couple other things that I've done that have helped that, but I do feel like creatine is a big piece of that as well.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
I personally don't need it. I'm thankful enough where I sleep well without it, but I do feel like that could be a great supplement to try if you are someone that might need a little sleep aid.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
But you can get that without sitting on the Stairmaster for 30 minutes or going out for a run when you don't like it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 436: Tara LaFerrara: Why Strength Training Beats Cardio for Women's Long-Term Health
Yeah, so I do take a protein powder once a day typically, maybe sometimes twice a day if I need extra. But I usually put it first thing in the morning in a smoothie, overnight oats or yogurt, just so I know I'm getting an extra 25 or 30 grams there. I do eat meat though, so I get a lot of my protein source from meat and fish as well. So you eat everything basically? I do now, yeah.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
And really, it's consistency more than anything else. And I think that's what people really have the hardest possible time with is sticking to it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
back squat. And are we talking high bar or low bar? Are we talking about front squats, goblet squats? Like they're all very different. It also depends on like what you are more dominant in. So for example, I'm more quad dominant. So I've literally never felt glutes in squats, no matter what I put on the bar.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
And there's just so many more studies that show that you can get so much more from your glutes with hip thrusts.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
I am absolutely not in that camp and love deadlifts.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Yeah. So it's great because all of them are compound lifts, meaning they're using multiple muscle and multiple joints. You're getting a lot out of each of them just on their own. You're always going to get more out of a squat and a deadlift than a hip thrust though, because typically hip thrusts are just a little bit more hip dominant. You're not getting as much and they're more posterior focused.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Whereas squats and deadlifts, you can actually get more in your core and your back and your quads and hamstrings, like there's so much more you can get out of them. So what are they good for? I mean, squats are great for everything. We squat all day long. We sit on a toilet, we get up, that's a squat. When we're sitting in our chair, we get up, that's a squat.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
So longevity wise, squat is really just such an awesome movement for that. Deadlifts is great because you're always picking up something off the ground, whether it's a kid or a suitcase or a Just anything that you're picking up off the ground and standing up. This is more of a hinge movement, but there's so many different variations of it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
And that's why I personally love deadlifts because you can do a barbell conventional deadlift, but you don't have to. You can use a kettlebell. You can use dumbbells. You can use a trap bar. Like there's so many different variations that you can get so much out of. Hip thrusts is great, but to be honest with you, it's not necessary. I personally don't do a ton of hip thrusts anymore.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Number one, because the setup is a pain in the ass.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
But I will say there are a lot of variations that you can do through hip thrust, even a single leg hip thrust or a single leg decline glute bridge. You can get so much out of it with body weight or just lighter weight rather than setting up a whole bar and doing the whole thing.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
This is a question that's an unpopular opinion. I think a lot of isolation exercises are personally, especially if you are someone and I work with a big population of people that don't have a ton of time. So why would we do bicep curls and tricep kickbacks and calf raises when we're utilizing so many of those in a compound lift? For example, you can get so much from your arms by doing a row.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
So if we think about the main compound lifts, like a squat, a hinge, a push, and a pull, you're getting a lot of those muscles already. So not saying that they're unnecessary, but they're just overrated in my opinion. And again, if you're short on that time, the best possible way to do it is to do compound lifts.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Well, you already know the answer to this, I think, Jennifer, but you're asking me to tell them again. There are no specific ways to spot tone and I'm going to lean back into compound lifts. I'm someone that basically never does core exercises ever because I'm lifting heavy enough where I'm utilizing my core in those exercises.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
So for example, one of my absolute favorite like core quote unquote exercise is a goblet squat. In order to hold that weight in front of you, yes, you're using your arms, yes, you're using your legs, but to keep that weight in front of you, bracing your core is a huge aspect of this.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
And if we think about moms with their kids, they're holding them in front of them, like bracing your core and making sure that you feel strong there is a way to utilize your core without doing unnecessary crunches or V-ups or bicycles or something like that.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Yeah. You know, I'll be honest. I've been in this industry for 13 years at this point. And I think my audience knows me well enough to know that like, they're not going to get that from me.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
I see your stuff. I used to post a lot of stuff that was like, you know, a lot of parody accounts of like, do this one exercise and you get six pack abs. And I just like would make fun of them all the time because we know now in the fitness industry that that's not the case. But I think now being in it for a while, I have empathy because it is a confusing place.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
And if you want something so bad, you're going to believe anything you see. So I really take it with a grain of salt of like, If this, if you want to try this out, great. Did it not work for you? Let's figure out what the root cause of why it didn't work.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
And then kind of give that explanation on why crunches and, you know, tuck-ins and all that stuff actually doesn't work and why lifting heavy does.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
I think also the aspect of, you know, you're scared of lifting weights because you're going to look a certain way is really just another society media thing that like you are going to be this bulky human if you lift heavy bicep curls overnight, which we all know is not the case. But maybe sometimes those people need to go through it to figure it out themselves, too.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
I appreciate it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
That's a great question. And I like to use the RPE scale, which is rate of perceived exertion. It's a really great way to understand where you are currently at because everyone is so different. Now, you can use this with anything. So if you have something that you do currently, that feels easy.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
I mean, it could be something like you want to add a habit in your life, but you don't know where to add it or you don't know how to add it and be consistent with it. On a scale of 1 to 10, like how hard would that be for you to add it in? And then you can gradually start to add in a little bit more. You can do this with weightlifting. So let's say you can lift bicep curls.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
I'm using this example, but let's use a squat for a better example. Let's say you can do a squat for 10 pounds for 10 reps very easily. You're not out of breath at all. That's a really great chance for you to up the weight. Cool. cool, let's do the next set a little bit heavier. So now we're at maybe 30 pounds instead of 20. Okay, it was a little bit of challenge, but not that bad.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
We can still go up. This is why I really love rep ranges. So I do a lot of rep ranges in my training, eight to 10 reps. We can utilize that scale to find the one, the number in the middle. I like to call that like, you know, Goldilocks and the three bears, like this is the perfect weight for you. So it can always challenge you if you're on the lower end of the rep range.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
That means it's maybe a little bit too heavy. If you're always on the higher, it means you can lift too much or it means you can definitely lift a little bit more. Right. So you can use that perceived exertion to understand where you're at. And sometimes for newbies out there, it might take a minute to figure out what that level is.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
But if you utilize it in other situations, you can have a better understanding of how it will feel in the gym. Yeah. So how many reps should you be doing? Between 8 and 10? It just depends on the person and depends on their goals. I personally, like I have an app called Broadsit. We do a lot in the 8 to 12 rep range, but that is to build strength.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
If we're on the lower rep side, we're getting heavier and getting stronger. And then you can also do like a 12 to 20 rep range, which is more muscular endurance. Now, if you're someone that wants to have some body recomposition, you typically want to be in that 6 to 12 rep range.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
It just depends on the exercise. It depends on the program and really just depends on where you're at in the cycle of training. So this is a really great opportunity for people to be like, all right, what rep range do I want to stick with for at least four to six weeks? How did that feel and how can I shift my program around to make it work best for me? So it's a lot of trial and error.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Just like with nutrition and just like with business, like we have to try things out to make sure that they fit and they work really well for us in order to see that progress.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Yeah, for sure. That's like just another example of progressive overload, right? So we can use, that's why I always do at least a four week plan. So you see the same exercises.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
So progressive overload is just the gradual increase over time. And that does not necessarily have to be with weights. It could also be variation. It can be tempo. It can be shortening your rest periods. It could be adding sets or reps. The easiest way to look at it could be just adding weight week over week.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Now, if you've been doing this for a really long time, you're not going to be able to add weight to your workouts week over week forever. So this is a cool way to add in different variations, maybe single leg exercises, tempo and such. But hypertrophy is more based on like really muscle gain, like more of a aesthetic look, whereas progressive overload is just building strength over time. So
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Try not to, we can try not to confuse them too much because sometimes people, women specifically, hear hypertrophy. If they don't know what it is, they might think it's more on that like, oh, I'm going to get too big and bulky. But really, progressive overload is just progressing what you're currently doing and getting better.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Well, first, I always ask, like, are you actually in a plateau? Like, truly, are you there or do you not feel? You're like, well, actually, yes, I am. Truly, a lot of times, specifically with women, because that's all I work with right now, they think that they have pushed to their limit and they're actually not there just yet.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Absolutely. I've definitely been in them before. There's so many different ways to go about this. I would say for myself and a lot of my clients, we'll switch up variations. We might switch up the days of the week that they're working out. We might switch up some of the rep ranges, but the exercises stay the same realistically. We're not reinventing the wheel when it comes to fitness, right?
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Of course, you can add in tempo and there's definitely some program design and science that we can put behind it, but like a squat's a squat, a deadlift's a deadlift, press is a press. So always know that that is there.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
This is hilarious because I feel like I've been seeing it all over social media recently. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I actually saw a post today. MindPub did a post today about this. Hip thrust for sure. And there's a lot of studies that have shown that you get more out of your glutes through a hip thrust than you would a squat. It also depends on what kind of squat you're doing. So are we talking...
Habits and Hustle
Episode 434: Tara LaFerrara: How to Build Glutes, Time-Wasting Exercises and the Truth about Belly Fat
Yeah. But again, I always think like, you know, people are just trying to, they see a lot. Social media is hard.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
Yeah, but then you have to look at like sometimes they put flavorings or something in those too. I mean, if you look at the grand scheme of what you consume, how can you take out just like small things that can make you feel better in general? So for me, my first thing was alcohol. I'm never going to give up a chocolate chip cookie, but I will give up alcohol.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
But also it's very important to note that there's a lot of people that say, oh, well, I just drink one glass or I just have this. What is that? That's not big of a deal. And it's like, no, you're right. It's not that big of a deal. But that one glass of wine will still interrupt your REM sleep. It will still hinder you the next day.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
Even if you think it does nothing for you or it actually makes you relax, it actually does the opposite in your brain. So important to note.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
100%. Mobility is in all of my training and I really just add it within the warmup and actually like in the strength programs. So it doesn't necessarily have to be this like extra thing, although it can be. Mobility is just the ability to move freely within your joints. So if we think about strength training is for our muscles, mobility is for our joints.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
So for example, sitting down on the floor and standing up, putting your arms overhead and not having to arch your back to get your arms there, being able to twist to the side without your lower back hurting. It's just to be able to like move a little bit more freely within your body.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
This is obviously very important as we age because we want to be able to, if we do fall, get back up on our own, be with our kids on the ground as they, you know, are growing up. Also be able to like take care of our own selves, like wipe your own ass at the end of the day. Right. And so as long as you are making sure that you add that within your training.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
I don't have enough information to give my opinion on that. However, I personally am not someone that would do that.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
In your training session.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
Yeah. So I like to look at mobility from a joint by joint perspective. So we think about our major joints that we use on a day-to-day basis in a lot of exercises are ankles, our hips, our shoulders, wrists, and spine, really, I would say are like the biggest ones. So for ankles, that's something that you can do a passive squat. I'm sure you've heard of it as like a yogi squat.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
A lot of people in Asia sit in these squats all day long. You'll see babies sit in a squat. So it's just heels and toes out and just sitting down.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
Yes. So that is hips and angles. You can kind of do both of those at the same time. You can kind of rock in and out of that. I do it while I'm watching TV or I'm on my phone or something easily while I'm doing something else. Really great one for hips is called a shin box switch. You can look that up, but it's basically 90 degrees on either side and you're just rotating your knees back and forth.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
So you sit on your butt, your legs are at 90-90 and you just shift your knees, but keep your heels and butt on the ground. This is great for internal and external rotation of the hips. So a lot of times we are moving forward, but it's nice to be able to move the hip joint side to side and around. So this is a great one for the hips.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
You can also do what's called the world's greatest stretch or runner's lunge with a little rotation. So you're in a high plank position, your foot's outside of your hand, bring one foot outside of your hand and then just kind of rotate your arm up towards the sky. So again, Google world's greatest stretch or runner's lunge reach. So great for hips.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
Also with that rotation, we're getting into our T-spine. A lot of us sit on our phones or sit in a chair all day and we're rounded forward. We don't have a lot of lateral, like any spinal flexion extension and rotation. So anything that has to do with your spine would be really great. I could do it right here while I'm sitting with you, just kind of rotating in my chair, moving side to side.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
Shoulders is another really great one, again, with that roundedness of the shoulders. So instead of just pulling the shoulder blades back down and back, we can actually get into the joints by using a broom or a PVC pipe, moving it back behind us and back in front of us, maybe a band or something like that. So
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
Lots of different ways to move around your body, but I think mobility is really, it's about moving freely, but it's also about enjoying the process of finding the way your bodies can and maybe cannot move just yet.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
This is a hard, unpopular opinion for a lot of people, I'm sure. Alcohol is poison. It's straight up just shouldn't be drank. I don't drink it at all anymore. It's empty calories. It makes you feel like shit. Speaking of sleep, like it's going to make you sleep like shit. I work with a lot of women in perimenopause and menopause. It will make your symptoms 100 times worse.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
You can do it every day for one to five minutes a day. Like I said, you can do it while you're listening to this podcast. You can do it while you're watching TV, waiting for water to boil. I don't know. But I can do some wrist rolls right now, like while I'm just with you right now. So I would say absolutely every day if you can. If you remember to do a minute or two, that's awesome.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
And then also adding it before your workouts will be helpful to make sure that your movements actually feel a lot better too. Do you think it makes a difference when we work out, morning, night, afternoon? It depends on the person, as always. For example, if someone is having trouble sleeping, I would not recommend that they work out past like 4 p.m.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
So that is someone that I would be like, all right, let's try and work out in the morning or at lunchtime. For someone like me, I need to work out before 8 a.m. because that is the time that I have allotted and that's where I feel the best. So it really just depends on the person and what works best for them.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
Yeah, so when we think about motivation, we think about intrinsic versus extrinsic. Someone like maybe me or you have a lot of intrinsic motivation because we know how great movement makes us feel. We know we get the endorphins. We know that we can lift heavy and feel really good afterwards.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
But a lot of people always are searching for that motivation, but they don't actually have it within them just yet. So they might need some sort of external or extrinsic motivation to get there. So for example, it could be something like you join a program, you work with a coach to get some accountability, you go to classes, you get a new workout outfit.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
People always are searching for something, but no one's ever motivated all the time. Even though we might both be intrinsically motivated, I sometimes do not want to go to the gym, but I still go because I know that it's going to make the rest of my day feel better. And I know that it's just like doing a hard thing when you don't want to do it.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
You're going to do it anyway because it sucks, but you know on the other side it's going to make you feel better. like finding that little piece of like that extrinsic motivation is super helpful for people that are always searching for it. And then once they get to that other side, like that three, six month mark, they'll feel it so much more internally as well.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
Yeah, so I'm on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, all the things as my first and last name. Lots of A's, lots of R's. Tara LaFerrera. I also have a fitness app called Broads where we do strength and mobility workouts. And it's a program you can follow along with, Progressive Overload and RPE. Thank you so much.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
Like that is a proven scientific fact. If you want to feel better and healthier, I would say one of the first things you should do is maybe not even give up, but just lighten how much you are currently drinking.
Habits and Hustle
Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness
Yeah, of course. Thank you.