Feb 19

Going on Walking Dates for Physical and Emotional Health

The never-ending hamster wheel of stress hits us from all angles in portions of our lives where we spend most of our time.  An example might include spending eight to ten hours per day devoting our time and energy to our jobs, whether on our computers, phones, commuting in the car, or parked in chairs at the office.  Or, we might spend a superfluous amount of time absorbing electronic forms of entertainment, such as checking our phones every five minutes to see what text messages we may have received or what the hottest new thread of social media networks might be.  For parents of school-age children, the demands of ensuring children get to school or sports practice on time adds another set of tactics that can’t be left undone.  It’s easy for us to put other activities first before taking care of ourselves.  For those of us who have spouses, significant others, or friends that we enjoy hanging out with outside of employment and family life logistics, spending time with those people might be exactly what we need to separate ourselves from the perpetual fire hose of the stresses life imposes on us.  Scheduling a date to set aside your normal work life and taking a walk with a special person not only helps enhance physical well-being but also introduces much-needed time to decompress and enjoy social interaction with another human who doesn’t want your money, depend on you to make money for their business, and grants you freedom from worrying about other humans who depend on you.

Walking is an underappreciated form of fitness that optimizes human performance in a multitude of ways.  If we were to track the daily steps a server at one of Napa’s local restaurants takes, twenty thousand steps would be a minimum amount throughout an eight-hour shift of waiting tables. The physical demands of food servers, bartenders, and bussers require a sufficient cardiovascular system, a strong core to stand upright, and joints that can endure the stresses of being mobile for an eight-hour shift.  For workers who sit at a desk answering phone calls, working on reports, or answering emails, achieving ten thousand steps is a reach.  The desk worker, commuter, or stay-at-home parent might not have the same physical demands as a high-speed food server.  Furthermore, the type of stress an individual produces when completing the administrative logistics of managing schedules, answering phone calls and texts, and tabulating financial logistics produces a substantial amount of mental, psychological, and emotional stress.  By the time we come home to our families or loved ones, we’re pretty much a ticking time bomb full of enough stressful energy to unleash upon the first person in sight after stepping through the front door.

Research has repeatedly produced evidence that exercise is a panacea of solutions to not only enhance our physical well-being, but regular exercise also acts as a potent medicine to counteract psychological stress.  While going to the gym and adhering to gym sessions containing resistance training, entering a cycling class to get a sweat on, or following a Yoga instructional video produces significant adaptations toward enhancing fitness levels, it might be just another box to check off for an individual getting off an eight to ten hour work day.  If attending the local gym or participating in a spin or Pilates class doesn’t seem like the right fit, perhaps the simple act of walking with your spouse, friend, or child might be a useful alternative.  The combination of a leisurely walk with someone you get along with and look forward to sharing time with has the potential to decrease psychological and emotional stress while exercising muscles that might have laid dormant all day while working.

Scheduling walking dates throughout the week doesn’t hold the same expectations as completing a rigorous workout at a local gym or small group fitness class.  The demands of walking are more achievable than ensuring one must show up at a certain time for spin, Yoga, or Pilates class.  We can walk outside our dwelling and start moving forward at a slow pace with minimal expectations on when we’re going to start a walk.  The only requirement is showing up for a walk.  The chirping birds, trees waving in the wind, the bright sun, and the dimly lit moon don’t care when you join them for a leisurely walk.  So, take a walk when ever you want.  More importantly, if you find a friend who wants to join you on a walk with little to no expectation of physical exertion level and a flexible schedule, the benefits toward our lifetime fitness efforts are profoundly empowering.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Feb 13

Consistent Exercise and Pain Management Keeps the Spine Strong

Generalized “wear and tear” from enduring the stress of life for over fifty years elicits repercussions to our joints.  The articular surface of joints can get scuffed after being used for manual labor, the stresses of an athletic career, or recovering from a traumatic injury.  As the surface of joints wears down, they become rough and gritty, akin to the feel of sandpaper.  The result of the rough surface of joints can lead to arthritis and sensations of crepitus, such as the sound and feeling of two marbles grinding against each other.  This is commonly felt in the knee joints when traveling up a set of steps.  Along with the contributing factors toward the wearing down of the surface of joints caused by a person’s history of physical stress, a factor that comes attached to our lives no matter what our physical activity background is aging.  General age-related degeneration of bone and joint structure is something every human has as part of their life.  One of the most common joint injuries affected by the advancement of age occurs in the spine.

Consisting of over twenty bones, the spine is a complex of bones called vertebrae.  These spinal bones have a multitude of critically important functions to the success of our lives.  The spine’s most obvious observable attribute is the structural feature of holding the torso upright.  Acting as a vertical rod that connects the hips to the skull, the spine keeps a human upright to walk around and interact with the environment.  In addition to the important structural features of the spine, each section of the spine has unique functions.  The cervical section of the spine consists of seven vertebrae that attach the skull to the shoulder region, which have a distinctive shape meant for rotation of the neck, allowing for turning, rotation, and hinging of the skull.  Just below the cervical section are twelve thoracic vertebrae, which allow for attachment of the ribs.  Between the ribs and the hips resides a set of five lumbar vertebrae before the spine meets the sacrum and hips.  The lumbar vertebrae are the largest and most dense section of spinal bones, acting as a weight-bearing centerpiece to keep the body upright.

It should go without saying that the health and well-being of our spine are critically important for the functionality of our everyday lives.  Degenerative joint conditions in the spine can include arthritis, stenosis, and compressed nerves caused by bulging or herniated discs.  These examples of spinal conditions can lead to debilitating symptoms of pain, numbness, and weakness throughout the body.  I wish I could give everyone magic spine-strengthening pills that would alleviate pain, and we can live in a world with an indestructible back, but we don’t live in a fantasy world. The truth is the body is prone to injury and gradual deterioration.  However, we don’t need to settle and give in to pain.  The detrimental effects of pain and debilitating spine injuries can be mitigated via strategically designed exercise tactics.

Two factors that affect people and can be rectified relatively soon via consistent exercise practice are staving off pain and increasing mobility. If the body is in less pain, fewer restrictions hold a person back from moving freely in their everyday life activities.

Aching, dull, or searing muscular pain in the lower back can create a psychological and emotional distraction, impeding people from wanting to pursue recreational physical activities.  Throwing a ball with grandchildren, gardening, or participating in sports such as tennis, golf, or pickleball can be limited due to the onset of lower back pain.  Fear and anxiety that someone might hurt their back further could veer a person away from participating in the physical activities they cherish.  As a solution to control pain when lower back injuries are perpetually presenting themselves, ensuring to stick to a schedule of pain reduction tactics is critical.  Pain-reducing tactics such as applying a heating pad to the lower back for twenty minutes, applying a topical anti-inflammatory ointment, or acquiring therapeutic bodywork can be helpful.  However, it’s challenging to tell if these tactics alleviate and stave off pain if they aren’t practiced consistently.  To ensure the maximum effectiveness of such simple pain relief tactics, paving out time somewhere once per day to apply these tactics has the potential to make a change.

Another relatively safe tactic we recommend to our personal training clients to manage back pain is increasing mobility.  Sufficient management of mobility means optimizing the body’s ability to bend, twist, and extend in a greater range of motion.  One of the most simple pain relieving techniques we conduct with our personal training clients is a knee tilt stretch:

Knee tilt stretch:  To perform the knee tilt stretch, start by positioning yourself flat on your back on the ground with your arms extended and your knees bent.   Tilt your knees to one side of the body as far as you can while keeping your knees and ankles touching.  After a brief stretching sensation is experienced in the lower back and outer hip, alternate this motion to the other side.  Repeat this movement for five to 10 repetitions on both sides of the body.

As humans advance in age, generalized wear and tear of the organs and tissues within the body can appear when we least expect it.  However, the older we get, the more we gain experience in the trials of life, usually resulting in becoming smarter humans.  Therefore, while our bodies might not be as new as they were when we were running around in our high school and college years, life experience grants us the gift of knowing that we should work smarter and not harder.  To reduce the maladies of lower back pain, ensure that pain-relieving and mobility tactics suit your needs.  Once that’s established, practicing these techniques daily can serve as the magic pill to reducing back pain and the likelihood of future injury so we can live happy, healthy, and strong lives.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Feb 07

Take Care of Your Feet

The gift of existing in the world as bipedal organisms puts the human race at the top of the hierarchy in the animal kingdom. With a set of hands with opposable thumbs and the ability to walk, our body’s engineering makes us one of the most sophisticated and successful species on earth.  While the skeletal structure of the human body is impressive in many aspects, one area that allows us to get out of bed, get in and out of our cars, traverse a set of stairs, and travel from our vehicle to our jobs includes a particular body part that is commonly overlooked:  our feet.  Until we get a case of plantar fasciitis, shin splits, bunions, lower extremity neuropathy, or a harsh case of sore soles of the feet after a long day of walking, we don’t necessarily understand how important the condition of our feet can be.

The connective tissue in the feet consists of a complex matrix of tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, nerves, and muscles. Made up of over twenty bones and a vast network of muscles, the human foot has many functional units, allowing us to walk, stand up, and conduct dynamic movements on our feet.  The tiny bones of the feet, including the toes, metatarsals, and heel, hold the load of our body when standing, walking, climbing stairs, or running.  Additionally, the neuromuscular signals throughout the feet harmoniously create coordinated movements in the toes, ankle, and lower extremities throughout most movements we conduct in our everyday lives. Therefore, appreciating the structural integrity and conditioning of the foot muscles can’t be overstated.

Foot pain can arise from sedentary activities in which the foot is stationary for a prolonged period.  The lack of blood flow and neuromuscular engagement can cause a decrease in muscular tone, hindering the ability of the foot muscles to maintain sufficient muscle mass and coordination.  A lack of physical activity can lead to a decrease in athleticism and coordination, which contributes to rolling ankles, stubbing toes, and the risk of falling.  Additionally, periods of inactivity increase the liklihood of  injuries due to the lack of muscular conditioning and the foot muscles’ inability to manage the stress of everyday life when walking and bearing weight on the feet throughout a normal day.  The combination of being on one’s feet for hours on feet lacking strength and muscular endurance, and is not used to taking ten thousand or more steps per day can lead to bruising to the sole, collapsing of the foot arch, or pain in the ankle and shin area.  If our goal is to recover foot pain and mitigate the likelihood of further maladies within the foot, intervention and maintenance routines must be consistently followed.

When our personal training clients report foot pain, the first tactic is identifying what issues worsen the pain.  If standing at the workplace seems to be the primary culprit for foot pain, perhaps strategically integrating periods of fifteen minutes sitting down with the feet propped up on a chair could help.  Paving out a portion of your day to set aside two or three fifteen-minute gaps in which a timer is set and the feet are propped on a chair off the ground is a simple solution that doesn’t need a doctor appointment or a list of fifteen physical therapy exercises that must be performed twice a day.

We recommend ankle and foot stretches and resistance training exercises to our personal training clients. While strength, muscular endurance, and mobility are unquestionably important in mitigating undesirable foot issues, it’s also worthwhile to understand a simple physics equation: force = mass multiplied by acceleration.  Mass in this equation is our body weight, and gravity combines with our body mass to anchor down to the ground.  If the body has excess fat mass contributing to the overall weight residing over the feet, the feet are going to have to support more force being pressed down upon the tiny little bones responsible for holding our body upright.  If adjustments toward lessening overall fat mass haven’t been addressed when foot pain is present, another low-hanging fruit toward resolving foot pain could be losing weight.

A simple and effective exercise tactic for strengthening the feet we conduct in about ninety percent of our personal training clients’ exercise prescriptions is plantar flexion, commonly known as calf raise exercises.  This tactic assists in maintaining the muscles that are responsible for bringing the heel up and down throughout walking movements.  Here is an example of a plantar flexion exercise:

Isometric plantar flexion:  While standing upright, lift the heels off the ground until a brief muscular activation sensation is experienced in the gastrocnemius muscles.  Ensure to press on the balls of the feet and avoid letting the feet roll out to the side.  Maintain this position for fifteen to thirty seconds.

Foot pain is no fun.  And, doctors and podiatrists are invaluable assets to the success and production of the human race.  However, when foot pain arises, we can resolve a few issues before booking a visit to a medical professional to assess foot pain.  A few first steps toward helping the feet could be as simple as resting more, ensuring we’re getting enough steps throughout the day, managing the composition of excess fat mass on the body, and ensuring the muscles of the feet get the attention they need throughout exercise sessions.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Jan 29

Am I Getting Enough Protein in My Diet?

“It’s challenging for me to eat enough protein throughout the day,” shared Nester during his training session.  “I’m only one hundred and fifty pounds, and the doctor recommends that I eat about half a gram of protein per pound of body weight.”  This would mean that Nester must consume around seventy-five grams of protein throughout the day.  A busy work schedule that includes massive amounts of phone calls, emails, computer work, and meetings posed a hindrance for Nester to sit down and eat.

“How much protein do you usually eat in a day?” I asked Nester.  “Sometimes around fifty grams or so,” He replied.  I was curious of what Nester perceived as fifty grams of protein,“What do you have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?”  Nester answered, “I usually do some toast at breakfast.  Lunch is a wild card. Sometimes I don’t eat lunch at all.  At dinner, sometimes I have to go out to dinner with my colleagues and clients and have something there.”

From my standpoint, Nester was so busy with his work schedule that his goal of practicing optimal dietary decision-making habits was on the back burner.  The obligations toward the successful operations of his work schedule unquestionably took priority before making skillful eating decisions to reach his protein goals.  If Nester wanted to rectify the issue of not getting enough protein in his daily diet, prioritizing awareness toward ensuring protein is consumed throughout the day regularly would need to happen.

Dietary protein is essential for nurturing the skeletal muscle in the body.  In the exercise arena, adequate protein consumption and consistent resistance training go hand in hand.  After a session of performing compound resistance training tactics such as squats, push-ups, and pulling movements for three sets of ten repetitions on each movement, the skeletal muscle becomes stressed resulting in microscopic tears within the connective tissue comprising the muscle.  The body’s natural reaction is to heal these microscopic tears via muscle resynthesis by adhering protein from the bloodstream onto the damaged site of muscle.  This action of protein resynthesis rebuilds the muscle to become larger and stronger during muscular contractions.   Therefore, consistently practiced resistance training plus adequate protein consumption produces structurally reinforced lean muscle mass.

After gathering information on what Nester ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I found a gap in his tactics for acquiring sufficient protein.  It wasn’t the intimidating number of acquiring seventy-five grams of protein in his diet that was the primary culprit.  Nester simply wasn’t eating enough food overall.

A simple solution we offer our personal training clients looking for nutritional guidance, like Nester, who are struggling to acquire adequate protein in their diet, is to ensure they eat enough throughout the day.  It’s all too often that we hear that people work themselves to the bone and never get out of their office chairs until the final minutes of their shift conclude.  Before they know it, they haven’t eaten anything besides a mixed coffee drink and pastry from Starbucks.  When it’s dinner time, anything will suffice to fill the hole of hunger.  In this case, the last thing on people’s minds is getting enough protein.

An attainable solution that many people find useful is to ensure that they eat three to five times per day.  This could mean breakfast, a morning snack, lunch, an afternoon snack (if necessary), and a light dinner.  Furthermore, in each of these meals, including a lean protein source about the portion size of what can fit in the palm of the hand is a useful way to include protein in each eating period.  The average hand palm size is about two to four inches in surface area.  So, including a protein source such as one or two eggs, a slice of chicken breast, or a handful of raw unsalted nuts could suffice as an acceptable source of protein in each meal.  In Nester’s case, if he were to eat fifteen grams of protein in each meal throughout five eating periods, he could come very close to meeting seventy-five grams of protein if he simply included about a handful serving size of protein in each meal without even looking at a nutritional label.

Identifying and consuming adequate dietary protein is essential to optimizing fitness adaptations, such as managing weight and building lean muscle mass.  If tracking the amount of protein consumed daily is challenging, try to include lean protein in every meal.  By practicing this simple tactic of frequently eating protein in every meal, the body will be able to repair damaged muscle and assist in getting the most out of a consistent exercise routine.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Jan 23

Avoiding Exercises That Hurt

“How’d you feel after the last workout?” I asked Thor, one of our long-time personal training clients, before beginning his first of two weekly training sessions.  “I feel pretty good except for some knee pain I’m experiencing.” I looked at Thor with a gaze of concern as he continued sharing how his body reacted from our previous training session.  “I think it was from the last three months of doing squats.  Probably just the accumulation of doing all those squats throughout our training sessions made my knees cranky.”

I did my best to hold my composure as my heart increased by about thirty beats per minute, and a faint feeling came over me.  “Just the accumulation of doing all those squats?” I thought.  Why didn’t Thor tell us sooner that his knees were irritated?  The last thing we ever want for our personal training clients is to report back any painful byproducts from their training experience under our guidance.

I followed up with Thor, “Have your knees been hurting for three months?”  Thor nonchalantly replied, “Yup.  Like three to four months.”  After Thor added that a few months were“making his knees cranky” from the exercises we guided him through, my heart began to race more, and a sense of disappointment shrouded me.  I stopped interviewing Thor about his feedback from the previous training session and went directly toward a higher-priority threat. Why wasn’t Thor telling us he was experiencing knee discomfort?  Our job as lifetime fitness experts is to stave off pain for our exercise participants, not produce painful symptoms.

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner that your knees were hurting from the squats?” I asked Thor.  “Well, no pain, no gain, right?”  This time I visually squinted my eyes and pursed my lips in visually apparent disapproval of the subsequent statement.  I responded, “Actually, we’re aiming toward quite the opposite.”  I paused and put down my clipboard, “No pain should be a massive gain.”

Unfortunately, a stigma exists in our culture that pain and discomfort are attached to the thought of going to a gym, attending a small group fitness class, or hiring a personal trainer.  A common reason potential exercise participants sign up for our services is to receive external motivation from us and position our coaching services as a drill instructor-type figure, to forcefully put them through rigorous exercise.  In fact, during our initial consultations, when potential clients enter our fitness center for the first session, we ask them a very important discovery question, “What interests you in our personal training services?”  The answer is sometimes, “I need you to whip me into shape.”  When I hear this statement, my knee-jerk reaction is to tell them they need to enroll in basic training in their favorite military branch.  The term “whip” really shouldn’t be used in any gym setting.  And, while I am unquestionably grateful for the military services present in our society, fitness leaders aren’t drill instructors training soon-to-be soldiers for basic training.

It’s important to discover our lifetime fitness goals and demystify the image of embarking on a journey of strife and sheer anguish when entering a gym.  If our goal is to lose weight, then seeking out the help of fitness professionals should include understanding concepts of exercises that increase awareness of cardiovascular fitness, injury prevention, strength training, and revisions to productive dietary habits.  Refining the look and feel of one’s body should consist of a constructive approach to understanding that specific exercises target areas of the body meant to strengthen and reinforce the structural integrity of muscles.  Most importantly, ingraining fitness as part of one’s life should be a gift, not a daunting task that inflicts undesirable sensations of psychological and emotional distress to the point in which permanent physical pain results from doing what a fitness coach tells you to do.

If we’re looking to utilize physical activity and exercise as a productive supporter of our everyday lives, perhaps we can view exercise sessions as more of a gift to empower our lives, instead of an undesirable punishment session, leaving one crawling out of the gym.  Consistent exercise is meant to decrease excess fat mass, improve mobility and flexibility, and offer psychological and stress-reducing adaptations.  Similar to how including vegetables in our diet to improve our immune system, exercise provides a benefit to our lives.  However, would you like to have a bowl of brussel sprouts steamed to a lifeless husk after being in a steamer for an hour?  Or, would you prefer a roasted brussel sprout that is well seasoned, crispy around the edges, yet soft and supple on the inside with a dash of balsamic reduction?   We would probably choose the more gourmet delicious version of a beneficial cruciferous vegetable.

If exercise imposes psychological, emotional, or physical pain, then perhaps it’s time to reassess the purpose of the current type of exercise.  After a few classes of performing barbell back squats ruins the next day because your back and knees are so inflamed you can’t pick up your grandkids, perhaps you should stop.  There are modifications to exercise programs that can be applied to produce a more rewarding and desirable experience than “no pain, no gain.”  Ensure to use exercise as a tool to produce an improved life by trusting your intuition on what the best exercises are for your future.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Jan 16

Building Lean Muscles and Insulin Management

The storage of excess fat mass and metabolic conditions such as pre-diabetes can produce undesirable events in our everyday life functionality.  Not only does excess fat mass create threatening environments within our cardiovascular system, but carrying around more weight than our body can manage due to a surplus of fat mass combined with deconditioned fitness levels elicits stressful loads on the body’s joints.  After a set of blood panels ordered by our doctors reveals blood markers indicating pre-diabetes, individuals receive an immediate warning signal that the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes might be present if an intervention isn’t taken.

Pre-diabetic conditions and superfluous storage of fat mass often go hand in hand.  If an individual has a high amount of fat mass, too many foods that create an environment of fat storage are likely being consumed by the individual.  The storage of fat doesn’t just appear overnight.  Subcutaneous fat mass accumulated in the abdomen, hips, upper chest, and armpit area is developed over time when a human lacks movement and eats more calories than are used as energy in a day.

Low physical activity days produce a sedentary lifestyle.  When humans don’t move but eat foods high in starchy carbohydrates, the sugars present in carbohydrates that don’t get used as energy convert to fat.  Imagine a week in which sandwiches, pasta, and alcoholic beverages are consumed by a person four to five days per week, and the only physical activity performed is a walk to and from parked cars when visiting the store or to the workplace to sit for hours.  The result is likely a body that does not need to use carbohydrates in the system for energy, triggering a stimulus to store subcutaneous fat mass.

Insulin is a hormone responsible for shuttling sugar to a specific cell.  After consuming a food with a high sugar concentration, insulin is pumped into the bloodstream from the pancreas.  Hormones are chemical messengers that tell cells within the body to perform a specific function.  Insulin possesses beneficial and detrimental functions affecting overall health.  Skeletal muscles are the organs in our body responsible for mechanical movement, such as our quadriceps, gluteal, core, and biceps muscles.  When these muscles are stressed from exercise, their natural response is to heal and recover by overlaying protein and amino acids to the damaged sites of muscles to become bigger and stronger to keep performing demanding physical activities, such as rigorous exercise.  The anabolic reconstructive properties of insulin aid in the recovery of skeletal muscle following exercise.

After a muscle endures a demanding exercise experience, the cells are slightly torn and disrupted at the microscopic level.  Thanks to the naturally occurring regenerative properties our bodies are granted, the muscle cells’ immediate response is to recover by absorbing protein and amino acids from the bloodstream.  However, the muscle cell needs an energy source to efficiently grab onto proteins and bond them to the site of damaged muscle to fill the tears from exercise-induced stress.  Following an exercise session, including rigorous resistance training, foods that produce insulin can be beneficial.  Energy occurs from the breakdown of sugar.  Therefore, the insulin in the body aids in providing intramuscular fuel to utilize proteins to rebuild muscle.

A solution we offer to our personal training clients with goals to ween off prediabetes medication is to not only adhere to consistent exercise but also to make skillful eating decisions involving consuming carbohydrates around rigorous physical activity.  Additionally, when consuming carbohydrates, referring to a glycemic index scale assists in choosing carbohydrate sources with a lower insulin production rate.  Furthermore, if physical activity levels are low, it would be beneficial to abstain from consuming copious amounts of carbohydrates so the unused carbohydrates don’t get stored as fat.  Examples might include avoiding additional carbohydrate consumption over long sedentary days in a work environment, including desk work or commuting in a car or airplane.  One of the most effective ways to manage pre-diabetic symptoms and lose weight is to avoid eating carbohydrates before going to bed.

Let’s not demonize carbohydrates and insulin.  Carbohydrates are beneficial for fueling the body for exercise and demanding levels of physical activity.  Insulin has beneficial properties to the synthesis of lean muscle mass following bouts of rigorous exercise.  However, the choices we make when eating food with high amounts of carbohydrates and producing insulin should be decided at the most beneficial times after exercise and avoided when physical activity is low.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Jan 09

Venturing into 2025 with skillful dietary decisions

We’ve arrived at the quarter century successfully.  Starting the new year on a high note is on many people’s minds.  Managing finances, learning a new skill, or working toward the bucket list of visiting highly sought-after wonders of the world are a few examples of the monumental achievements people might be motivated to work toward throughout the next twelve months of 2025.  However, one of the most popular topics is usually to refine the way their body looks and feels.  Along with the goal of body refinement comes one of the most popular metrics people are fixated on: the digital representation of their weight on the electric scale.  Losing weight is usually at the top of the list of things to improve in the new year.

By now, we should be receiving email blasts and social media advertisements of New Year special discounts from most of our local gyms.  If we travel past small group fitness class venues such as Orange Theory or Crossfit locations, we’ll probably see a sign propped up facing the road with a message to passers-by that membership for the first month of the year is fifty percent off.  Professionals managing fitness facilities understand that people motivated by their New Year’s goals are eager to sign up and immediately take action to improve their bodies via exercise.  What better place to go than fitness centers offering discounts and literally waving you down while you stroll by?

Local gyms, small group fitness classes, and personal training centers play a huge role in offering professionally catered exercise sessions to people interested in losing weight and improving their overall health.  Napa is fortunate to have an abundance of fitness centers providing support to individuals looking to improve their health and fitness.  However,  there are a few obstacles shunting people’s abilities to achieve weight loss goals even with the help of the robust resources of fitness professionals in our community.

Fitness classes and gym sessions usually produce an average of an hour of rigorous exercise when someone visits the gym.  Additionally, participants usually frequent these classes an average of two to three times per week.  Furthermore, a high concentration of brand-new gym-goers make up most of the attendants participating in January discount special packaged fitness classes.  Unfortunately, attendance drop-off can occur within three weeks of starting a new fitness program due to lack of interest, not having fun, or finding something more important to do than refining overall health.  Exercising twice a week is challenging for people who live busy lives as employees, business owners, or parents.  And, these three hours a week of exercise don’t account for the other events in our everyday life that pose obstacles to our weight loss efforts the other one hundred and sixty-five hours in the week.

Unless we have a professional dietitian by our side on our payroll for sixteen hours out of the day, we need to learn to depend on our own conscious decisions regarding the food that enters our bodies.  If our goal is to shed a few pounds of subcutaneous fat mass, the person we look at in the mirror every morning is responsible for the food we consume.  If we think a steady diet of visiting Panda Express and ordering their egg rolls and deep-fried chicken will be offset by three days a week of sweating at Pilates class or getting twenty-thousand steps in a day, we’re on another planet.  The truth is that an exercise routine can’t override a lackadaisical diet.  Perhaps more time should be spent on skillful dietary decisions as a priority as a foundation in our efforts to support weight loss goals.

A strategy that helps our personal training clients build a foundation of optimal eating decisions isn’t necessarily following an etched-out diet. Making better decisions throughout their day when consuming a certain food develops a sense of autonomy and self-government within individuals to empower their ability to intuitively decipher what will or won’t cause weight gain.  A powerful example that makes an immediate impact is to focus on what time of day carbohydrates are consumed.

Having starches and bread later in the day is usually where we see a hindrance in our client’s nutritional mindset.  Pasta, rice, and bread at dinner are a surefire way to hold onto excess fat.  When humans are physically active, carbohydrates are used as a source of fuel to keep the body moving through rigorous exercise.  However, when in a sedentary state of sitting or being inactive for a long period after consuming carbohydrates, the sugars in carbohydrate-dense foods are converted and stored as fat in the upper chest, abdominal, and hip regions.  As a solution to counteract the effects of excess fat storage from food, an effective tactic is to limit carbohydrate consumption around periods in the day that are more physically active periods of the day.

Routine exercise is undoubtedly one of the most important factors in refining human health and losing fat mass.  However, let’s not forget about the decisions we make that reside directly in front of us every day when we eat.  Don’t forget about exercise when conquering your New Year’s resolutions.  More importantly, build a strong foundation in dietary decision-making to supercharge your efforts in losing weight and making 2025 a healthy and strong year.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Jan 06

Reduce Shoulder Pain with Skillful Exercise Decisions

Upper extremity movements are present in a multitude of events in our everyday lives.  Reaching overhead to obtain a coffee mug from a high shelf in the cupboard, rotating and reaching backward to grab hold of a seatbelt and fastening it before disembarking in our cars, or simply putting on a jacket are a few examples of what our shoulder joints allow us to perform in a normal day.  However, when neck, shoulder, or scapular pain arises, a task as simple as putting on a hat or blow-drying one’s hair can be an undesirable experience of pain and discomfort.

The shoulder joint is a ball and socket joint.  Other joint types present within the body include hinge, saddle, or facet joints.  Along with its ball and socket sibling, the hip joint, the shoulder joint allows for impressive circular and rotational ranges of motion.  Equipped with the ability to project the arm forward, out to the side, overhead, and maneuver behind the body, the shoulder joint allows our arms to move through various planes of movement so our hands can grab objects to lift, pull, and push them to our desired location.  Additionally, the impressive range of motion of the shoulder grants humans the ability to perform athletic activities such as throwing and catching balls or striking objects with instruments such as golf clubs, tennis rackets, or pickleball paddles.

The free space within the bony framework of the shoulder allows for an increased range of motion for the upper extremities.  Unlike the dense bony fortress that the pelvic girdle offers the hip’s ball and socket joint, the shoulder joint has significantly less stability than the hip joint.  The clavicle, shoulder blade, rib cage, and humerus are attached by muscles, tendons, and ligaments that don’t offer strong bone-to-bone attachments like the hip.  This is why the shoulder has an increased ability to perform circular movements compared to the hip.

The scapula, or shoulder blade, has a large array of muscular attachments to the posterior aspect of the ribs, spine, and humerus.  These muscular attachments of the scapula to the humerus allow for the sophisticated movements of the upper extremities, each responsible for an impressive array of rotation, flexion, extension, adduction, and abduction.  Due to the lack of bone-to-bone attachments and the increased demand for the muscular attachments present in the shoulder, the increased potential for injury in the form of overuse and underuse of the shoulder stabilizer muscles is at a higher risk than that of the hip joint.  Therefore, the increased awareness to support the shoulder’s health for our everyday life functionality can’t be overstated.

Similar to the decreased size of the humerus, clavicle, scapula, and rib bones within the shoulder joint when compared to the femur and pelvic girdle of the hips, the muscles responsible for producing force and reinforcing the structural integrity within the shoulder are smaller than the hips muscles.  For example, the gluteus maximus is roughly twice the size of the pectorals.  The shoulder muscles of the rotator cuff and scapular stabilization have a limit to the amount of power and structural stability they can maintain for upper extremity force-producing movements.  If the shoulder muscles become overworked, the risk for shoulder musculoskeletal afflictions can occur in the form of rotator cuff syndrome, frozen shoulder, or torn tendons and ligaments.  To prevent this, focusing on consistently practicing shoulder injury prevention movements is critically important to staving off debilitating shoulder joint injuries.

Some of us incorporate vitamins and immune system support supplements within our diets.  A few examples include taking B vitamins in the morning, some aged garlic extract at night, collagen powder in our smoothies, or increased turmeric in our diet.  These supplements are aimed at avoiding getting sick, decreasing inflammation, and influencing the reduced likelihood of advanced forms of arthritis.  If there were a magic vitamin we could take to reduce our shoulder rotator cuffs from developing pain, I wouldn’t be writing this article.  Consistent adherence to injury prevention, rehabilitative, and strengthening exercises for the shoulder joint is the “magic pill” that strongly influences the avoidance of developing chronic shoulder pain and injuries.

As a form of consistent practice to ensure our clients know a few best practices to decrease the likelihood of shoulder injury during our personal training sessions, we require all exercise participants to conduct a series of mobility tactics meant to activate the stabilizing muscles of the shoulder joint.  The same movements are performed before every training session in meticulous detail under our professional critiques.    An example of one shoulder movement prep includes scapular protraction and retraction:

Scapular Protraction and Retraction:   Lift your arms to about armpit level and bend them at a 90-degree angle.  While maintaining your elbows at a 90-degree angle and keeping your fingertips facing forward, glide your shoulder blades forward along your rib cage until you feel a stretch in the upper back and muscular sensation in your pectoral region.  Reverse the motion and glide your shoulder blades backward against your ribs.  You should feel muscular sensation in the muscles surrounding your shoulder blades.   Repeat this movement for five to ten repetitions.

The purpose of overviewing and rehearsing these regularly practiced techniques is not only to reinforce the structural integrity of the shoulder joint, but also so exercise participants never forget these techniques.  That way, they can take their “injury prevention vitamins” via consistent exercise every time they workout at our fitness center, or more importantly, under their own exercise settings during a home workout or at a local gym.  By consistently practicing injury prevention and mobility movements for the shoulder joint, we have the potential to have functional upper extremities to help us live happy, healthy, and strong lives.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Dec 26

Resistance Training and Osteoporosis Management

The six hundred and two bones comprising the human skeleton are sophisticated structures of living tissue.  Our bones are key components that allow us to interact with the physically active environments in which we participate in our normal daily lives.  Starting from the cellular level, bones are made up of a dense concentration of osteons, osteocytes, osteoblasts, blood vessels, and various other functional units responsible for holding bones together, creating a solid skeletal framework that allows our body to move.  Interlaced with organic minerals that lay over each other, like the composition of fiberglass, bone cells connect to form layers of hard mineralized connective tissue to shape solid skeletal structures such as the skull, vertebrae, humerus, pelvis, or femur.

The deep intrinsic structure of bone cells is organized in a spiderweb-like matrix of rigid minerals resembling that of a sponge that has openings allowing blood and liquid to flow through it.  If we could imagine a sponge that’s made out of super solid cement, this gives us a rough idea of what the image of the inside of our bones looks like.  Osteons are bone cells.  The word porous means something with little holes that liquid can pass through.    The degenerative bone condition osteoporosis indicates that bones have larger holes than normal in their inner membrane than a normal bone unafflicted by lack of bone mineral density.  Therefore, people with advanced forms of osteoporosis have more porous bones.

Individuals with symptoms of osteoporosis have an increased likelihood of enduring microfractures and stress in bones such as the spine, shoulders, and hips.  These small microfractures can lead to a decrease in bone size and density.  When the risk of falling is present, bones are more frail and break more often after untimely falls occur in individuals with advanced cases of osteoporosis.  While the detriments of osteoporosis are a reality some of us must deal with, we can increase the strength of bones and everyday life functionality by utilizing strategically planned exercise.

Similar to how a muscle grows after a few months of consistent resistance training, bones develop strength in their inner matrix of mineralized connective tissue to adapt to the stress imposed on them from exercise.  An example of resistance training we conduct with our personal training clients includes cues for them to move through challenging planes of motion using gravity, dumbbells, or resistance bands as a form of controlled resistance.  This stress induces productive microscopic tearing and inflammation of the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones.

The human body has an efficient healing system in which it is wired to recover to match and surpass the demands of an exercise routine by healing the stress imposed on the connective tissue to become larger and develop an increased density within the connective tissue to be dense enough to continue moving through future bouts of rigorous physical activity.  These adaptations don’t occur overnight.  Research has repeatedly supported that long-lasting adaptations from resistance training take anywhere from nine to twelve months of a consistently practiced exercise program to develop reinforced structural integrity within the muscle, tendon, ligament, and bone cells.   Therefore, it’s important to adhere to an exercise routine and, more importantly, to stick with it for the long run if fending off the detriments of osteoporosis and other degenerative bone diseases is the goal.

An optimal place to start implementing resistance training if starting from a novice or inexperienced skill set could be to start with exercises that only use gravity as a source of resistance and position the body in a challenging standing, seated, or lying down position.  A few examples commonly understood as “body weight resistance” type movements include exercises featured in Yoga and Pilates classes.  When entering a beginning Yoga or Pilates class, instructors usually teach the basics of getting up and down off the ground, bending over while keeping the back straight, and utilizing the strong core and hip muscles as a point of emphasis in an exercise session.  Additionally, it might be worthwhile to seek the guidance of an exercise professional who understands the progressions of body weight exercises, how to perform them safely, and has a solid foundation of knowledge regarding the limitations of osteoporosis and how to navigate around risk factors.

While some shudder at the term osteoporosis, understanding how to manage risk factors of the advancement of bone density loss and decreasing the risk of falling via strategically planned exercise offers a sense of hope.  If we can learn the exercises we enjoy, seem safe, and offer muscle and bone-strengthening adaptations through consistent practice, we can live happier, healthier, and stronger lives.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Dec 14

Slower Exercise to Recover and Keep Going

“I’m not sure I should come in for my training session today.  I might have lifted something the wrong way when I was bending down to prune my roses.  Now, I have some tightness and pain in my lower back and right side of my hip.  What do you recommend?” read one of the emails from Revy in my inbox on a Monday morning a few weeks ago.

Revy is one of our personal training clients who frequents our fitness center twice a week.  Her attendance is among the upper percentile in terms of showing up ready to go for her twice-weekly training sessions.   Fueled by a light pre-workout meal, a bottle of water, and the assurance that she would show up fifteen minutes early to complete her dynamic stretching routine that has been etched into her memory banks, one could say Revy is the ideal personal training client.  The coaches fight over who trains Revy because she listens and comprehends the exercise tactics we cue her to perform with intense concentration, purpose, and an eagerness to receive positive feedback.

As a woman just entering her sixties and embracing a life of retirement, Revy has embraced a fit and active lifestyle as the key to paving a path of adventure and fun to fuel the aspirations of traveling, hanging out with her friends and family, and recreational activities she’s always wanted to delve into.  However, after training for over eighteen months, Revy experienced something unusual she hadn’t felt after the positive outcomes she garnered from consistently adhering to her fitness routine.  Following two hours of pruning rose bushes, raking up leaves, and filling up her brown compost bin, she woke up with back pain that severely disrupted her daily activities the next day.

After reading Revy’s email, I felt sympathetic toward her discomfort.  She has worked diligently to ensure the condition of her body is nurtured and operating at full capacity thanks to her efforts to eat healthy and exercise regularly.  However, I understand that certain events are out of our control, and outliers in the course of everyday life can present a shift in the normal rhythm we’re accustomed to.

I trusted Revy’s intuition that exercise might make things worse.  I told Revy I was confident we could adjust her training regimen to avoid exacerbating the injury.  Furthermore, her program would be revised in an effort to alleviate her pain and rehab the site of her injury.  This meant the coaching team knew to incorporate lower back injury prevention, stretching, and less compressive movements in her exercise prescription.  As a productive intervention, we incorporate isometric and eccentric modes of exercise when participants report an onset of pain from an unlikely event in which they endured a musculoskeletal injury.

Isometric exercise can be defined as a mode of exercise in which the surrounding joints aren’t moving but are still under tension. A common example is the straight-arm plank. This position is commonly understood as positioning oneself in the starting position of a push-up and maintaining that position for a specific period of time. We usually instruct our personal training clients to hold a plank for twenty to thirty seconds to start.

Once planks can be maintained for a proficient amount of time, about forty-five seconds to a minute, we progress to the next mode of exercise, eccentric movements. Commonly understood as a slow-lowered or “negative” portion of an exercise, eccentric muscle contractions can be identified as the lengthening of a muscle fiber.

A commonly perceived normal exercise routine consists of a one-to-one ratio of lifting a load and lowering it at the same speed.  Performing this mode of a normal one-to-one ratio of time in the accent and descent of the push-up is commonly understood as the traditional way of exercising.  This isn’t what we wanted to do for Revy.

We knew that Revy’s body was in a state of distress.  Instructing her to perform three sets of ten repetitions for her compound lower and upper body movements might exacerbate the injured area because the rate of muscular contraction and physical exertion could potentially overstress an already stressed area.  Therefore, performing three sets of four repetitions of slow-lowered descent exercises would be beneficial and avoid the risk of pushing past Revy’s limitations.  We put Revy in a successful situation by reducing her repetition count but lengthening the duration of the repetition.  This way, she would still be performing exercise but in a modified style that decreased the mechanical movements of her joints yet still applied productive stress to her muscles.  The likelihood of straining the area further decreased by reducing the amount of movement on the joints in her back and hip.  Most importantly, Revy could still attend her beloved training sessions to stay consistent in her journey to be fit and strong for her everyday life activities.

It’s worthwhile to refine one’s fitness habits when an injury occurs.  The last thing we want to do is either “push through the pain” and make things worse or just quit exercising altogether.  We can still keep moving when an injury presents itself.  After an unexpected injury occurs, take a step back, reassess what we can do, and keep pressing forward by consistently adhering to a ritual of regular exercise.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

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