Dec 15

Healthy Eating During the Holidays

“A narrow valley between hills or mountains.”  “The action of eating a large amount greedily; fill oneself with food.” The term gorge can be defined in many ways as nouns or verbs.  Regarding overeating and indulging in decadent food, the term “gorge” can fit our status appropriately during the holiday season.

The holidays bring a tradition of food usually not seen in other parts of the year.  “Comfort food” is a theme filling social media headlines, store specials on shelves, and traditional family recipes.  Why call it the sweets, breads, and chocolates we make at home for our friends and family comfort food?  I suppose it involves applying warm, rich, and filling food to alleviate the frosty, damp, and dark climate present during these holiday months before the winter solstice.  Not only does comfort food present itself in our homes but also our workplaces, children’s schools, or holiday gatherings.  We swim in an ocean of holiday comfort food during these last two months of the year.

Don’t get me wrong, I reserve a special place in my soul for holiday comfort food.  Pumpkin cheesecake, buttery mashed potatoes, and monkey bread have a magnetic attraction to my plate when I happen to be in the same room.  I’m sure many people have an intimate relationship with their comfort food of choice.  However, let’s shed some light on the term “gorge” and ensure we don’t fall into that narrow valley of engulfing holiday treats whenever they cross our line of sight.

Indulging in copious amounts of our holiday treats can significantly dampen our health.  Climbing out of a downward spiral of engulfing candy canes, panettones, and Hershey’s kisses can be a challenge if we fall into a hole of partaking in too many pleasures.  Two methods we recommend throughout our nutritional consultations with our personal training clients is to practice mindfulness about portion size and food absorption properties our bodies experience on days of physical activity.

To avoid overeating when these holiday food experiences are present, focusing on handful portion sizes is an effective tool to mitigate the effects of gorging ourselves when that meticulously decorated holiday plate gets dropped off by one of our office workers.  Limiting yourself to no more than a handful of food in one sitting can set a rate-limiting factor on the volume of food consumed in a short period. In addition, this tactic helps delay the conveyor belt-like action of shoveling food into our mouths when those holiday cookies and chocolates are begging us to mosey across the room to get our fill.

Understanding the body’s metabolic state is another potently effective tool to manage the effects of consuming sweets.  The body enters an insulin-sensitive state after performing rigorous exercise.  This means bouts of exertive exercise such as a Yoga class, Pilates class, or resistance training session, during a personal training appointment, allow the body to utilize insulin for muscle function.  In the case of muscles being stressed via rigorous exercise, the muscle cells allow insulin to bond onto damaged sites of muscle and absorb sugar throughout the bloodstream.  This sugar acts as an energy source within the muscles to grab onto free-floating proteins and amino acids to repair the damaged site of muscles caused by skillfully designed exercise-induced muscular stress.  However, lack of exercise does not develop this interaction.  Therefore, a lack of physical activity and exercise decreases the likelihood of muscular interactions with insulin.  This allows insulin to go to the next best thing: our fat cells.  Therefore, adhering to exercise compliance during this excellent holiday food tradition is critically important during times delicious and irresistible treats surround us.

To sum up, if you’ve exercised, you’re better off having a controlled number of sweets.  However, if you have not exercised, those tantalizing holiday treats have the potential to cause more harm than good and send you plummeting down the gorge of overeating.  Granted, in a perfect world, we shouldn’t consume treat items more than three times per week.  However, let’s be realistic with the currency of the situation.  This holiday spirit and sharing an overabundance of decadent food are only present once a few times a year.  So, let’s enjoy ourselves a little bit.  Just make sure to understand what the effects of overindulgence and falling into the comfort food gorge can do to our health and fitness.

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 08

Developing effective exercise plans

The journeys throughout everyday life impose trials on our bodies and minds.  Everything from sitting too much, making phone calls, or being hunched over a keyboard to the complete opposite of performing knuckle-dragging physical labor required for landscaping, painting houses, or framing doors in a home.  If the body doesn’t consistently recover from strenuous bouts of the physical requirements of life, joints and muscles will hurt.

The good news is that the body is equipped with a healing mechanism to mitigate pain and dysfunction.  The phenomenon exercise brings to joints, muscles, and chemical functions of the body is a panacea for bodily pain.  Simply sprinkle a little exercise on the parts of the body that hurt and “voila,” your torn rotator cuff, bulging lumbar disc, and arthritic fingers are cured.  It’s also essential to have a rigorous relationship with the truth about the wear and tear involved with the body.  Only half of this statement is true, the part where the body produces healing properties via exercise.  However, the magic pill of eliminating pain from our lives isn’t that easy to discover.

Exercise requires time, dedication, and strategy to get the most out of adding fitness as a component of health to our lives.  Factors such as lack of compliance, redundant routines, and damaging exercises play roles in producing effective exercise routines.  Intimidation or feeling awkward when entering a local gym can quickly prevent someone from developing an adherent exercise routine when using community gyms like INSHAPE or Plant Fitness as a resource to exercise.  Additionally, the body won’t adapt to become stronger if we become complacent in our exercise routine and perform the same movements over and over again.  Furthermore, “grinding through the pain” and forgoing exercise altogether won’t work either.  Pain and physical dysfunction doesn’t simply go away.  A body that heals is piloted by a person who devotes meticulous attention to detail by consistently nurturing the body and avoiding harmful factors that break down the body’s organs.

To get the most out of an exercise routine, a “laying of plans” is a potentially effective method to cultivate healing properties. To create a worthwhile plan, establishing at least a four-week layout helps develop a sense of direction in a fitness journey.  First, pick exercises that can be performed competently.  No one should be performing single-leg inverted pigeon stretches in a Yoga class when performing ten repetitions of bodyweight squats are a challenge.  Next, assign how many sets and repetitions are a safe and effective dose for the exercises you want to achieve. Finally, make sure these exercises are engaging and enjoyable.  Exercising isn’t effective if they make you drag your feet while doing them or have nightmares about performing planks the day before you plan a trip to the gym.  The likelihood of an exercise routine continuing past a few weeks is little to none if it drones on and becomes dull.  It’s essential to be picky when choosing exercises in your routine.  The most effective exercise in the world can quickly become obsolete if the routine becomes mundane or causes more damage than when beginning the program.

Increasing productive stress on connective tissue throughout an exercise routine is important in conditioning the body toward optimal strength and longevity. For example, when performing resistance exercises such as squats, plank, or push-ups, increasing the workload each week for three weeks imposes gradual stress on the bones, ligaments, tendons, and muscles.  This can be very productive when the training load volume is slightly increased each week.  Training load volume can be defined as the increasing amount of repetition, resistance, or duration of a specific exercise.

With this increase in the challenge for a three-week cycle, it’s a good idea to have an unloading week.  This is a week in which performing the same exercises, but with resistance equal to or less than the first week, will act as a destressing period for the body.  After completing this four-week cycle, the body, more often than not, feels stronger.  Additionally, after practicing the same routine for four weeks, the body will likely develop mastery and competency toward those specific exercises. This allows one to try another four weeks of new and slightly more challenging activities.

A variety of exercises is beneficial to the development of strong connective tissue.  Yoga, Pilates, group fitness classes, and organized, well-planned resistance training create significant adaptations to the body.  To get the most out of fitness routines, let’s remember to track our progress to avoid overuse injuries and develop strength in our connective tissue to last for the long term.

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.

Nov 30

Advanced Age Fitness: The Body Doesn’t Heal as Fast

The other day, I talked with a few friends at Napa’s new Las Flores pickleball courts.  Tyler was sixty-five years old and Todd was forty years old.  They knew of my trade as a professional in the fitness industry and asked what I was doing there.  I told them I wanted to get some much-needed exercise after a long day’s work.  We all related that playing a few pickleball games is a safe and effective workout.  After a bit of buffoonery and telling jokes, we chatted about some of the other recreational physical activities we loved to do.

Golf, surfing, and paddle boarding all came up.  Todd mentioned, “Man, after a few injuries and getting old, I notice that things don’t heal as fast after I head out to play.”  Tyler, who was twenty years older than Todd, added, “Tell me about.”  Todd quickly elbow-jabbed Tyler in the side, followed by a brief chuckle.

After a momentary pause, they both looked at me as if waiting for me to add something to the topic of maladies that cause physical pain  while participating in physical activity hobbies.  I said, “When’s the next time you’ll be on the court.”  A new conversation about our love of pickleball ensued, and the commiseration of injuries quickly subsided.

It’s easy to relate to the aspects of life that challenge us.  As humans, we seem to focus on things that need to be fixed rather than the positive accolades we’ve already accomplished and the positive events on the horizon we are looking forward to.  In the case of Tyler and Todd, the effect of injuries and age was a remnant of history that might have affected their physical activity performance.  To their credit, after a brief note of the suboptimal feelings of the pain their bodies were experiencing from previous injuries and age-related joint pain, they redirected the topic of why all of us were in the same place outside of a pickleball court.  We all wanted to focus on the next logical step for us instead of commenting on our physical pain.  In this case, the next logical step was having fun and exercising.

Adhering to exercise programs and rigorous physical activity for improved health can be challenging.  Lack of time, loss of interest, and fear of hurting oneself further are common feelings of apprehension.  However, if we can focus on the “best next step is to progress our health further,” we can hone in on why we are exercising to make a more attainable task for the day.  For some, exercise is a tool to lose unwanted weight, recover from a previous injury, or fend off the long-term effects of metabolic disease.  In the case of the three recreational athletic fellows, sixty-five-year-old Tyler, forty-five-year-old Todd, and under-forty-year-old me, our next logical step was to get out and move so we could have fun.  If we want to ensure we can get out on the courts to run around to hit a perforated by while telling jokes to each other, we need to comply with an exercise routine so our bodies can support our performance.

Consistently sharing our problems with others around us is akin to discussing how a shoe in a dryer circles around and randomly bounces around repeatedly until the drying cycle is complete. Sharing experiences that aren’t perfect can become a mundane and stale topic.  There’s always going to be some theme in life that doesn’t necessarily work out how we want it to happen.  So, why share the issues in our life that will circle back and present themselves in another way?  Instead of highlighting a problem to our friends, family, or peers, perhaps we can share our “next logical step” to progress toward why we are participating in something that gives us joy in life.

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.

 

Nov 21

Benefits of inclined walking

Taking a morning stroll on one of our brisk winter mornings has been a tradition for many people as an energizing and uplifting start to the day.  This is an opportunity to hang out with your spouse, family member, or friend could be a neighborhood walk after dinner.  Walks are great ways to clear the mind and get some exercise in at two parts of the day when our minds are at their most profound activity.  Leaving our home or workplace briefly to embark on a walking voyage seems like a natural application to reduce stress.  Even though walking may seem like a feeble form of exercise, the compound effects of participating in regular walks have substantially positive effects on our fitness and overall quality of life.

The lower extremities possess the largest surface area of skeletal muscle in the body.  As these muscles perform physical activity, oxygen is required within the working muscle to produce energy.  The body receives oxygenated blood flow from the pumping of the heart.  Once muscles exert stress past their normal state of comfort, these rigorous demands throughout physical activity send a signal to our brain, telling our hearts to beat a little faster.  This feedback mechanism creates positive adaptations both to our lower extremity muscles and our heart’s cardiac muscle.

Not only will these exercise adaptations produce optimal benefits to our skeletal and cardiac muscles, but stress hormones are produced while performing slightly increased physical activity.  By producing these stress hormones during a bout of moderate exercise, the body utilizes free-floating stress hormones during exercise.  This means, stress hormones caused by external sources in our everyday lives that leave us feeling less anxious, nervous, or emotionally unbalanced are utilized during exercise.  So, we won’t feel stressed after we exercise more.

Another potently effective form of walking, to add to any fitness routine, is inclined walking.  Choosing a slightly inclined angle hill or one of the local parks with hiking trails are productive additions to add to a walking routine.  The inclined walking offers advanced forms of productive stress to the body that is not present in flat ground walking.  For example, walking up a hill might take fewer steps to travel the distance of flat ground walking.  As the body takes fewer steps up a hill, the muscles present in the lower extremities exert more force as the foot plants onto the inclined surface and propels the body upward.  The increased demands of the angle of an incline trek require the body to travel against gravity in a more challenging mode of movement.  Therefore, increased muscular demand of the ankle, knee, and hip joints must be utilized.  This more challenging exercise mode requires more energy to be used by the lower extremity muscles, which leads to more oxygen demand and ultimately increases the heart’s beats per minute.

Introducing an additional walking mode into an exercise program produces optimal benefits for various reasons.  The lower amount of distance traveled up a hill imposes less physical stress on the lower extremity joints while producing a more intense heart rate response when compared to flat-ground walking.  Additionally, the expanded function of muscular use during incline walking isn’t as present in flat ground walking.  Acquiring the strength and conditioning adaptions from incline walking can add another component to our fitness levels and improve our performance from flat ground walking.

Don’t be afraid to hike up a few hills or visit a few moderately challenging trails around your area.  Performing just five minutes of inclined walking once per week can improve muscular strength, decrease joint pain, and add another fun and engaging adventure to a weekly walking 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.

 

Nov 16

Improving Balance with Exercise Progressions

There are many everyday life scenarios in which we find ourselves being pushed off our center of gravity.  Whether it’s a slight stutter step to the outside or tripping over an object on the ground, regaining our balance and center of gravity is frequent interaction with our environment.  Activities as simple as getting out of bed, stepping up and down stairs, or putting on shoes present situations that can cause us to stumble.  In the worst-case scenario, a seemingly basic daily activity hindering balance can cause a fall.

It takes one simple presentation of imbalance, resulting in our bodies traveling in a compromising direction.  These random instances that disrupt our balance can bring something as minor as a brief stumble.  In extreme cases, a fall can result in a significant injury and a drastic change to our everyday functionality.

Loss of balance leads to immediate, impulsive reactions to aid our bodies from sustaining an injury.  An example is reaching our hands out to brace ourselves when the body is unexpectedly propelled forward following a stumble or trip.  This response is meant to grab onto objects to break our fall or have our hands take the brunt of the force the body endures if it plummets to the ground, acting as a shock absorber.  Another immediate reaction the body performs is taking a few steps forward until our center of gravity is regained after we stumble on objects, such as a rock or crack in the ground.  The reaction of stumbling forward influences the body to regain upright posture by telling the lower extremities to move rapidly under the torso.  If the torso falls faster than the lower extremities, the body can be sent diving to the ground quicker than a redwood being felled in Mendocino county.

The threat of losing balance and falling is no joke.  The risk of falling can show itself after recovering from an injury to our lower extremities, adopting a sedentary lifestyle, or advancing age.  Examples of recovering from injury could include healing from a twisted ankle to the more extreme cases of recovering from hip replacement surgery.  For those of us having a career requiring multiple hours on the computer, commuting in a car or airplane, or taking phone calls all day at a desk, it should be no surprise that activity levels will decrease.  In this case, with lower activity levels, fitness and human performance can decrease by experiencing adaptations of increased fat mass, reduced strength, and deconditioning of athletic potential.

Additionally, the advancement of age presents the accumulation of multiple factors, causing moments where the body can be disoriented and lose balance. Therefore, it’s important to identify these risk factors leading to potential loss of balance and fall risks.  Fortunately, we don’t need to let the loss of balance become a life-altering issue.  Educating ourselves on exercises to fortify our balance and coordination is a solution that takes an investment of time to exercise.  However, the results help us mitigate the factors leading to loss of balance and the risk of falling.

We perform a basic progression to improve balance with our personal training clients.   The single-leg balance exercise is a simple and potently effective technique that rapidly enhances balance.  Below are a few progressions on introducing this exercise and continuing them after building competency and mastering each progress point.

  1. Hand supported on stable object isometric leg lift (beginning level exercise): Find a sturdy object to place your hand on while standing upright.  Such as the corner of a wall, a rail, or a post.  Lift one leg to where the knee is around hip level.  Hold this position for fifteen to thirty seconds.  Repeat this movement for three sets on each leg.  Once you feel this exercise can be performed without using a stabilizing object to hold on to, move to the next progression.
  2.  Standing leg staggered in front foot lift-offs (progression 1):  Position yourself in an upright stance and bring one foot out in front of the body to where the leading foot’s heel is about even with the middle of the stationary foot.  Ensure to position yourself next to a supporting object in case of losing balance.  This way, you can regain a safe standing position. Next, lift the leading foot slightly off the ground and place it back down in a safe and stable position.  Perform three sets of five to ten repetitions on each leg.  Once mastery and competency of lifting the foot and setting it down have been mastered, progress to the next exercise.
  3. Hands-free isometric leg lift (progression 2):  While standing upright, find a sturdy object that your hand can grab onto for safety.  Such as the corner of a wall, a rail, or post.  Without using the stabilizing object, lift one leg to where the knee is around hip level.  Ensure to spot yourself next to the supporting object in case there is a loss of balance to regain a safe standing position.  Hold this position for five to fifteen seconds.  Repeat this movement for three sets on each leg.

The threat of losing balance can be reduced if we train our bodies to endure the risk factors thrown our way.  It’s equally important to choose exercises that increase our balance and practice them consistently.  After we notice we are progressing in a specific exercise, we can advance to the next exercise to improve our balance more.  These progressions take compliance, consistency, and focus.

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.

 

Nov 03

Treats and Healthy Habits

“If I’m going out, I’m going out riding a dragon.”  This is one of my favorite quotes regarding dedicating a day of treating myself to my favorite “guilty pleasure”: decadent food.  After a week’s worth of clean eating, practicing healthy lifestyle habits, playing competitive pickleball three times per week, and participating in meticulously designed exercise routines, I feel some delectable meals from Napa’s finest pastry shops offer me the reward of sending my love of eating through a phantasmagoria of treat food heaven.

Perhaps I could venture down the street to Model Bakery to order one of their world-renowned English muffins toasted to perfection and layered with fruit compote.  Or, maybe I should head to Sweetie Pies to enjoy a cinnamon roll and a masterfully designed scone while overlooking the Napa River. Finally, Winston’s is my favorite indulgence of all that is pure and sacred in the breakfast food world.  I always have Winson’s stowed away in my back pocket when I know I need to escape to the land of tantalizingly delicious donuts.  Oh, Winson’s, how I love your donuts.  I could die a happy man while taking a bath in your vanilla glazed donuts, maple twists, and sour cream citrus rolls.

Napa is a culinary mecca supplying our community housing the finest food on the planet.  However, it should come as no surprise that my favorite breakfast joints aren’t always the most beneficial to the health of the human body.  If we abuse these food choices, the body can endure suboptimal side effects, potentially compromising our long-term health.

The masterfully designed recipes of white flour, sugars, and fats comprising my favorite breakfast treat foods present a cornucopia of reactions within the body that can pose harmful metabolic effects when consumed without any sense of caution.  Gluten, high concentrations of fat, and insulin-producing sugars can slow down digestion, accumulate unhealthy amounts of lipids in blood vessels, subcutaneous fat, and even pose the threat of developing diabetes.

Similar to a person going back and forth to Hawaii on vacation every other week, the luster of the palm trees, breathtaking sunsets, and crashing waves on sapphire waters could become mundane if the trip is taken too many times.  Furthermore, indulging oneself in treat foods, such as the donut bender described earlier in this article, can make the concept of treat food not feel like a treat at all.  Instead, these delectable treat foods can become another cog in a vicious cycle to “fill a hole” of hunger.  Once a sacred experience of enjoying this fantastic food is indulged too regularly, it doesn’t become special anymore.  Furthermore, if treat foods are consumed too often, our appreciation for healthy food choices might become obsolete because we only identify treat foods as our primary food source.

Understanding the word “treat” is an important concept we teach our personal training clients during their nutritional consultations.  We all have foods we look forward to and fantasize about eating.  For me, it’s Winston’s donuts.  Identifying these foods as “treats” helps us distinguish between everyday, healthy food and what foods should be consumed sparingly.  Additionally, suppose we live by the principles of making healthy decisions three times more often than “treat” decisions in our dietary habits. In that case, it’s more obtainable to make healthy food choices.

For example, if Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are days focused on consuming bread-free meals and inputting a vegetable to every meal and Thursday is a date night in which we allow ourselves a few drinks at the bar and a decadent meal, we would be making three times the number of healthy choices to one treat choice.  Another method that proves helpful in managing treat-to-healthy food ratios is to allow oneself only three nights per week of consuming alcohol.  By laying a path for making healthy decisions, we can redefine how our body processes the substance we put into it. For example, if we put three day’s worth of Winston’s donuts, eighteen beers, and ten lattes in our bodies every week, our bodies will reflect those choices.  I’m sure you can use your imagination to envision the detrimental side effects that beer, donuts, and sugary Starbucks beverages yield to our digestive tract, metabolism, and appearance.  However, suppose we have three days of eating lean proteins, two-to-three servings of vegetables, and maintaining adequate hydration throughout the day. In that case, our bodies will reflect those healthier habits by experiencing increased energy, the ability to stave off illness, and feeling spry and ready to seize the day.

By identifying what a treat is versus what are optimal food choices, we can redefine the way our body processes food.  Sure, we can enjoy Napa’s fantastic food and wine.  However, let’s not remove the critically important term “enjoy” from this equation of making healthy dietary decisions.  To truly enjoy a treat, putting forth diligence and effort into managing optimal food choices must be done first. So, reward yourself with your favorite mind-blowing treat food after making a series of healthy choices so we can truly take in the gift treat foods offer while maintaining a productive path in our health and fitness journey.

 

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.

 

Oct 27

Out of Breath From a Flight of Stairs

I had the opportunity to visit our nation’s capital this week, Washington, DC.  My first time in this part of the country offered picturesque views of the trees changing colors, of leaves from umber orange to crimson red.  Businesspeople clad in warm coats, scarves, and beanies steadily kept a rigorous walking pace up and down the boisterous streets as horns honked at people jaywalking.  Museums, monuments, and memorials presented their historical significance and breathtaking detail as we toured the national mall.  This experience truly made me appreciate the history of America and the efforts it took our predecessors to bring us here to enjoy our present-day society.  Along with all the history, amazing sites, and jaw-dropping food, there was one more addition to this busy city that was far different from my hometown of Napa, California.  Washington, DC, has a lot of stairs.

These stairs presented themselves in various sizes, materials, and distances.  The height of the stairs could be anywhere from three to twelve inches.  Stairways to the footsteps of the capital could be thirty yards of only moderate elevation with a slight angle.  However, when visiting the Rotunda, the height of the steps dwarfed some of the other stairs.  Even though there may have only been thirty steps, the incline was akin to hiking a steep mountainside.  My mode of physical activity went from a leisurely walk up the outside of the capital to feeling like an Ibex on the side of a mountain in the European Alps.  I could see my fellow tourists running out of breath as they ascended the various flights of stairs.  This tour was not only an educational and enlightening experience, but it was also a test of physical strength and endurance.

My experience of seeing the physical demands of a larger city possessing a high concentration of working people on a mission made me appreciate an exercise we conduct with our personal training clients: the “step up” exercise.  This exercise is performed where the participant steps onto an inclined surface, anywhere from six to twenty inches, and steps back down.  One foot is placed on the inclined step, and the participant drives their heel into the step as one-foot trails to the top, followed by the same foot stepping down and the opposite foot descending to meet the leading foot.  We repeat the same sequence with the opposite foot for a set of five to ten repetitions on both legs.  This exercise helps strengthen the muscles surrounding the hip, knee, and ankle joints.

The muscles stressed in the step-up exercise adapt to have the potential to produce more force and muscular density.  Additionally, balance, foot dexterity, and coordination are improved. Lower-body muscular endurance for stepping movements increases as well.  These physiological adaptations aid in the prevention of injury, decrease nagging knee pain, and contribute to decreasing the risk of falling.  As a country bumpkin from Napa, California, who doesn’t have this elaborate layout of steps in my hometown setting, I found it fascinating how individuals in the Washington, DC, environment perform this exercise day in and day out.  Therefore, they must obtain these muscular adaptations by living their everyday lives in this busy city filled with steps.

Stairs aren’t going anywhere.  In fact, as more buildings are constructed, they get taller and usually have more floors.  This means there are going to be stairs in our future.  When we see a set of stairs next to an escalator or an elevator that only goes up one floor, perhaps taking the stairs would be a better option to benefit our physical wellbeing.  Part of living a happy, healthy, and strong life involves adherence to training our body through the productive stress of physical activity.  We can achieve significant adaptions that improve our quality of life by taking a flight of stairs.  If we get out of breath or fatigued after going up and down the stairs, perhaps we need to take the stairs more.

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.

 

Oct 21

Being Healthy Pays Off

Two of our full-time coaches called in sick a few weeks ago.  With a slew of clients eager to achieve their weekly and bi-weekly training sessions, myself and the remaining coaches, unhindered by the season’s illnesses, put in some extra hours to accommodate our beloved personal training clients.  The standard eight-hour day of coaching cascaded into ten to twelve hours of coaching clients.  We became slightly backlogged by adding in program design, onboarding our talented new coaches and apprentices, and the logistics of managing training schedules.  Two days later, we were back in full force.  All the coaches resumed their normal operations, exuberantly guiding our clients to succeed in their weekly exercise sessions.

As a nasty bug latched hold of our sick coaches, the other coaches took all the proper precautions to ensure our gym was free of the sickness that possessed their bodies and to ensure they recovered efficiently and effectively.  They updated the coaching crew on their body temperature status every four to six hours to see if their fever broke.  The helpful representatives of local COVID testing stations happily shoved swabs up their nostrils to check for the latest strain of the coronavirus.

After a few days of our sick teammates feeling like they got tossed out of a high-speed train, their fevers broke, headaches subsided, and the faucets of their runny noses turned off.  Additionally, the coaches holding down the fort returned to regular working hours.  Two days of disruption caused by an illness were effortlessly shrugged off like a rookie linebackers attempt to tackle Bo Jackson.

As ambassadors of health and fitness, the coaches at our fitness studio participate in regular exercise sessions three to four times per week. Additionally, one would be hard-pressed to find one of our coaches scrolling through their phones or in front of the television, vegging out in their free time.  Instead, they participate in their favorite recreational physical activity outside training clients.  This is the quintessential fitness coach’s optimal state of homeostasis.

Exercise puts the body through bouts of physiological stress.  Stress hormones, heart rate responses, and blood pressure increase during rigorous exercise.  These reactions momentarily cause stress hormone production along with a slight reduction of the immune system.  The key word here is “momentarily.”  This controlled dose of exercise prepares our body to handle sources of external stress.  Such as physical weakness, psychological and emotional distress, and suppressed immune system threats.  An invoice for a hefty utility bill, a phone call that your child ditched school, or a heated business discussion can induce the same stress.  This type of external stress can produce just as much, if not more, physiological and emotional distress than a controlled exercise bout.  It should come as no surprise that the more stressed we are, the more likely we will forget to take care of ourselves.  In this case, we might become ill. However, adaptations to the stress imposed on the body via regularly organized exercise sessions ingrain the ability of the body to manage external stress.  Additionally, if the body is in optimal physical condition, it wants to recover and return to a healthy state of homeostasis.  Just like our personal trainer friends.

Illness throughout our lives is inevitable.  Unfortunately, everyone gets sick.  However, if we include regular exercise and incorporate recreational physical activity into our lives, we don’t have to be sick for very long.  That’s why it pays off to be healthy.

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.

Oct 08

Fit for Travel

Our world offers majestic mountain ranges, azure and sapphire oceans, and unique cultures, offering us awe-inspiring food and human interactions.  We have a seemingly unlimited number of options for those of us possessing a strong desire to explore the world.  How people interact with each other, eat, and function in every life is unique to the different regions of the world.  For those who love travelling, diving into such experiences gives us a feeling of fulfillment like no other.

Taking a trip halfway across the world evokes an overwhelming sense of excitement.  The thought of taking a brief hiatus from our everyday lives of working and putting other stresses on hold is enticing.  However, travelling logistics can prevent us from thoroughly enjoying an adventure we’ve been anxiously awaiting to embark on.  We have to go to an airport, endure airport security screenings, wait in a terminal for an hour or two, jam ourselves in an airplane in close quarters with other humans, and remain in static positions for hours.

After we land, we must reorient our body to its natural shapes and hit the ground running.  A potential long wait through the rental car line and another commute to a hotel might ensue.  If you’re lucky, checking in at the hotel might be fast but, then again, it may not.  However, let’s not forget about our fifty to eighty pounds of luggage we have to haul in and out of rental cars, to an elevator, and ultimately throw onto our bed to unpack and organize.  The mountains, oceans, and food of far way lands are waiting for us.  However, some physically and psychologically demanding tasks are required to arrive at our prized traveling experience.

Adhering to a fitness routine to maintain a healthy and mobile body is essential to these adventures.  The ability to move fluidly, contort the body to fit unfamiliar situations, and being able to stand for long periods are critical parts of enjoying these adventures.  Similar to how professional athletes approach their season in elite athletic and physical condition to manage the stresses of a four-to six-month season or a ten-to-twenty-day trip to an unfamiliar land would benefit from a similar mode of preparation.

It’s a good idea to prepare a few months in advance to condition the body to manage the stresses of travel with a foundational level of fitness.  We know a twelve-hour flight across the ocean will impose stress on the body.  To prepare for this physical stress, regular stretching and mobility can mitigate the stiffening of the body.  Yoga, Pilates, and stretching classes are helpful tools to aid in preparing to put the body in the restrictive position of a plane seat. Recreational activities such as walking cobblestone streets, hiking rugged treks, or swimming are common activities while traveling.  A resistance training protocol to exercise the upper body, core, and lower extremities two to three times per week can assist in the body’s overall strength, endurance, and structural integrity while participating in these fun activities.  To fully enjoy these experiences, setting a foundation of optimal health and fitness is critically important.

Before we go on these monumental adventures, it’s a good idea to prepare the body a few months in advance to condition the body to manage the stresses of travel.  We don’t want nagging pain or determinants of our physical abilities to slow down the trip of a lifetime.

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.

Sep 28

Isometric Exercise: Progressive Regressions

A few themes in life slow our progress throughout our fitness journey.  Common obstacles compromising our adherence to physical activity are lack of time and distractions to our focus.  Long weeks of traveling for work, making sure “little Johnny” gets to his soccer practice, or finishing a landscaping project at home require significant time and energy.  Chronic pain symptoms from previous injuries or recovering from an illness can engulf our mental capacity.  These events are mentally draining.  Lack of time and mental fatigue can impede gym visits or attending a weekly fitness class.

Research supports regular exercise aids in alleviating chronic pain and positively impacting our quality of life.  However, when we simply don’t feel up to it, the very thought of exercises is similar to working an overtime graveyard shift after a full day’s work.  Long days at work elicit physical, psychological, and emotional fatigue.  Additionally, living with afflictions caused by chronic pain or illness makes exercising challenging.

An exercise tactic that serves as a productive buffer from letting these obstacles steer us away from exercises is to choose exercises with less intensity.  Isometric exercise is a simple and effective form of training involving holding one body position under tension for a period of time.  A widely understood exercise is the straight arm plank exercise.  This exercise is the act of holding the starting position of push up.  The body is placed into a shape where the muscles must maintain that shape under the resistance of gravity and remain that shape for a prolonged period.  The triceps, pectorals, core, hip, and knee muscles are held in a static position. By performing isometric exercise modes, we can still improve our body’s overall strength.  Muscle, nerve, hormone, and emotional adaptions are still acquired after performing isometric exercises.  Isometric exercises are less sophisticated and more manageable to perform because they lack mechanical stress on the muscles to contract for various repetitions and require less oxygenated blood delivered from the heart to the working muscles.  Hence, it will be less physically demanding.

Below are a few examples of isometric exercises:

Isometric wall squat and sit:  Lean up against a wall and slide your back down the wall until muscular engagement is experienced in the glutes, quadriceps, and hamstrings.  Once a manageable tension is acquired, hold this position for ten to thirty seconds.  To make this exercise more challenging, decrease the angle of your hips to your knees by sliding your back down the wall further toward the ground.  For safety, ensure you are on a surface with friction or wear shoes.  No one wants their feet to shoot out from underneath them and fall on their butts because they did a wall sit wearing socks.

Isometric wall press:  Lean up against a wall and squat slightly to where the knees are bent at about a ten-to-thirty-degree angle. Ensuring the lower back is flat against the wall, press the back of your hands into the wall as if you are trying to “push the wall away from you.”  You should experience muscular engagement in your shoulder blades, triceps, and the back of your shoulder rotator cuff.  Hold this position for ten to thirty seconds.

Straight arm plank:  This “don’t leave home without it” exercise acts as a Swiss army knife that has proven to be a potently productive exercise to any human’s exercise routine.  Why?  Because any human on the Earth only needs two tools to reap the benefits of this exercise:  1) Their body 2) The ground.  To perform the straight arm plank, post your arms straight into the ground underneath your eyebrows and plant the balls of your feet into the ground.  Ensure to straighten the knees and keep the spine rigid.  You don’t want your back to resemble the bridge Harrison Ford crossed in The Temple of Doom as he was chased by an army of heart-eating villains.  While posting in this position, focus on using the abdominal muscles to maintain a rigid spine and the triceps to keep the arms extended.  You should feel muscular engagement in the shoulders, triceps, abdominals, and glutes.  Hold this position for ten to thirty seconds.

The demands of life impose a significant amount of stress in which our intuition sometimes tells us exercise is probably not the best thing for us.  While pushing our bodies past our capabilities isn’t the best-case scenario, we can find forms of exercise of lower intensity to give us the health benefits we need to continue being productive and happy.

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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