Sep 24

I Only Worked Out Once This Week

As Simone entered the gym, she looked at me for an instant and immediately darted her eyes away from my line of sight.  “I know, I know.  You’re going to ask me if I did my fitness homework routine last week.” Then, following an exaggerated, drawn-out sigh, she exclaimed, “I only did one workout last week.”  I felt like a dad waiting at the door for his teenage daughter to come home late from prom past curfew.

After a brief awkward staredown between the two of us, we waited for the moment in which one of us would break the deafening silence.  “Did you have a rack of ribs and a pint of ice cream?  I bet you ‘tapped the Rockies’ and chased that down with a six-pack of Coors Light too.”  I jokingly asked.  Knowing each other’s sense of humor, we smiled and burst into raucous laughter.

I knew Simone didn’t make suboptimal food choices often.  In fact, as one of our personal training clients for over two years, she has made monumental strides in her fitness journey.  Two years of personal training, embracing a lean protein and veggie concentrated diet, and limiting herself to one night a week of drinking wine have refined her body to become a strong and healthy vessel.  She has built a foundation of converting fat mass into lean muscle mass, increased her overall physical strength, and forged a crucible of healthy habits in the time we coached her. Unfortunately, she was being a little hard on herself.  After some side-aching laughter, Simone remarked, “On top of that rack of ribs, I got a hankering for some Denny’s and made a late night run to ‘woof’ down some pancakes at 2 AM!”  Simone had to travel multiple times for work obligations the previous week.  This made paving out time for exercise sessions challenging.  We were able to turn her feelings of guilt into a comedy show because Simone knew she had one unusual week in which she deviated from her path to achieving her goal amount of exercise sessions last week.

Following Simone’s testimony of missing a few workouts the previous week, we discussed key points of how this missed week of fitness acted as a critical success factor for her health and fitness goals.  First, she experienced a productively healthy withdrawal symptom from missing her workout.  She didn’t throw her hands up in the air and admit defeat.  Instead, she had an emotion she didn’t want to endure again.  This feeling of missing her workout was akin to the feeling of being late for a flight.  She was genuinely fond of her workouts and felt an emptiness in her life when her exercise time wasn’t there. Simone was more likely to get two or more workouts this upcoming week because she didn’t want to feel this abnormal feeling of missing her exercise sessions.

Two years of consistently training twice per week with a personal fitness coach meant she completed around ninety-six workouts per year.  She also tracked how many nights she achieved clean eating habits and how much alcohol she consumed. The tradition of adhering to a minimum of exercising twice per week became her new normal.  These healthy habits rewarded her with a barometer of emotional feedback letting her body know adhering to fitness benefited her.  It didn’t feel right if she missed a workout throughout her week.  However, this is a good thing.  These additions of making exercise sessions part of the week are significant changes that install healthy adaptations to our psychological and physiological well-being.

It’s important to avoid being too hard on yourself for missing a workout or having one suboptimal day of dietary decision-making.  We are all human.  The wonderful thing about being human is that we wake up the next day with a fresh start.  Start exercising an average of one day per week.  Then, venture into making a promise that exercising twice weekly is the new normal.  Once that habit is installed, it will feel more like a gift and less like a chore each week.

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 14

Mindful Posture Decreases Shoulder Injuries

Not too long ago, we had to pick up corded phones and dial phone numbers that we either memorized or obtained via our contact book. We physically wrote names and phone numbers down using a pen and paper.  The necessity to carve out time in our day to venture to the grocery store at a planned time to acquire groceries, hardware, or electronics was far more prevalent.  Believe it or not, our computers and business phones mainly resided in offices away from our homes.  This was an era in which people physically moved more.  Technology wasn’t as present to offer the convenience we see in our modern age.

Fast forward to the present day, in the year 2022.  Humanity is fortunate to live in a world with computers and cell phones.  We can order our food online, chat with our friends in mere moments (utilizing text messages) or put in a full forty-hour work week from our home office.

An issue resides in this splendor of convenience we have made for ourselves throughout technology innovations:  we move less and confine our bodies to one space for long periods.  One can devote hours looking at a cell phone, answering emails, or entertaining themselves with social or streaming video platforms.  The shoulders are an area of the body impacted by small movements when using cell phones, tablets, and computers.  Small movements such as elevating the arms on a desk and manipulating a mouse in a two-by-two-inch area put more demand on the shoulder than it appears.  Peering down at a cell phone to swipe and tap has similar afflictions to our neck, upper back, and shoulders.  The extension of the arm, tiny movements, and lack of physical activity strain the shoulder joints.  Imagine putting your car in drive and reverse five times in a minute for an hour.  The car gears would become stressed over time with seemingly small movements.

Shoulder issues can occur when muscles are inactive in one position over prolonged periods.  These static muscle positions can cause atrophy and decreased blood supply to muscles and connective tissue surrounding joints. In addition, small micro-movements paired with restricted body positioning, such as hunkering over a keyboard or looking at our cell phones, can threaten our shoulder’s integrity if exercise is neglected.  Hunching forward while the head is pointed down and the chest is collapsing inward is a classic example of severe shoulder protraction.  This action shortens chest muscles, induces shoulder rotator cuff impingement, and causes excessive rounding of the cervical and thoracic spines.

A solution our personal training clients see tremendous results from is by performing a simple and effective set of ten repetitions of shoulder blade protraction and retraction exercises.  Protraction and retraction refer to the forward and backward gliding of the shoulder blades along the rib cage.

To perform a set of shoulder protraction and retraction, start by standing straight up with good posture, ensuring your forehead is pointed forward, your shoulder is stacked over your ribs, and your hips are under your ribs. Next, elevate your arms below armpit height with your fingertips pointed forward, and the elbow bent at a ninety-degree angle.  Maintaining this arm position, glide your shoulder blades backward against the ribcage until a brief muscular sensation is experienced in the upper back muscles.  Reverse this movement by gliding the shoulder blades forward until muscular engagement can be felt in the chest and muscles around the armpits.  Repeat these movements for ten repetitions from one to five times per week.

Focusing on the stabilizing muscles of the shoulder assists in preventing strain on significant neck, upper back, and shoulder muscles.  In an era where physical activity can easily be watered down by innovations of technology, we can avoid underuse injuries by practicing efficient and effective forms of exercise regularly.

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 09

Just One More Healthy Deed

It’s normal to strive for a little bit more of something.  After a long day at the office, a top by the local fast-food joint or order from Door Dash seems like the simple solution.  Sitting on the couch and turning on the ball game while scrolling through text messages and social media sounds enticing.  Little do we know that a burger from Jack in the Box will give us heartburn and make us feel like we swallowed a brick.  Those “quick” texts and glances through Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok can turn into sixty minutes of staring at our phones like a zombie from Michael Jackson’s music video, Thriller.  What if we could fit a healthy habit before we commit to these simple solutions after a long day’s work?  If might seem like pouring a bucket of water into an ocean.  However, finding a way to squeak in an extra healthy habit significantly impacts our everyday health and happiness.

Making your bed after you wake up is one of the easiest ways to prepare for a good night’s sleep.  Regardless of the outcome of your day, you still have a warm bed welcoming your weary body for some much-needed rest.  This could take an extra five to ten minutes in your morning to fortify your day’s positive outcome. In addition, looking into other simple habits can snowball into performing more healthy habits. For example, could making your bed one extra time per week help you lose weight, decrease pain, reduce the risk of falling, or create more happiness in your life?

This same concept of performing just a bit more work contributes to our lifetime fitness journey.  Examples might include anything from a college athlete in the weight room putting on five more pounds to their one repetition max lift or a couple taking leisurely walks taking ten more steps before they turn around to go home.  These examples demonstrate how a little more effort moves us past our comfort zone.  The additional weight lifted by the college athlete may lead to lifting five more pounds on their next attempt or even ten pounds on their third attempt.  The couple taking nightly strolls who took those extra ten steps support their ability to improve their walking performance and eventually walk an additional block or even another half mile to their routine walks.  Devising methods to add a few more simple tactics can create a potent chain reaction to another healthy habit.

The extra steps we take on our walks, the one more set of squats, or the extra sheet that we flatten and place a pillow neatly on top puts us closer than we imagine to have the power to pave a stronger and healthier path in our 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.

Aug 31

Risk of Falling: Get a Grip

“Taking a digger,” “getting up close and personal with the stairs,” or “eating it” are comical phrases when relating to an event where gravity got the best of us, causing us to fall. Typically, these humorous situations can be laughed off and we can live as if nothing happened.

Falls could be a simple trip and tumble to the ground.  It seems like nothing ever happened after a brief dusting off the pants and clapping debris off our hands.  However, falling is no laughing matter for individuals with hindered balanced, deconditioned fitness levels, or degenerative bone disease.  A fall could be as minor as a scraped knee or as catastrophic as a broken bone.

Decreasing the risk factors of falling is critical to everyday life when recovering from injuries, balance is an issue, or with the advancement of age.  It’s no surprise a strong and fit body can shave off risk factors of falling.  Increased strength and lean muscle mass in the ankle, knee, hip, and back promote increased neuromuscular facilitation, overall body strength, and decrease the likelihood of fatigue when performing long bouts of physical activity.  A less common variable in the equation of decreasing fall occurrences and the severity of the result of falls is using our hands to grab onto an object both during and after a fall.

For those of us who had the privilege of seeing babies develop into mobile bipedal humans, you’ve seen the evolution of how a human learns to stand upright from a prone crawling position.  Babies just learning to walk will army crawl to an object, such as the arm of a couch, grab onto it, and pull themselves up so they can stand.  After mastering standing up and establishing their balance, they might peruse a hallway, using the wall as a safety guide as they slide an outstretched hand on the wall.  If the newly walking child falls in the middle of a room, they’ll crawl to an object or person, grab onto it with their tiny fingers, and pull themselves up to standing.

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a fully grown five-foot ten-inch tall adult who has just stumbled over a dog and fallen backward.  After assessing ourselves and understanding the severity of the fall, we’ll find ourselves on the ground.  Ironically, this is the same position as the youngster learning to walk: on the ground, wondering how to stand up.  One of the first things we use to get back up from a fall is our hands.  We might sit upright, using our hands to push off the ground to extend our arms, assisting our torso to sit up.  After establishing a seated position, a helpful bystander might extend their arm; asking you to grab their hand.  You might be alone after a falling scenario.  Finding an object like a rail, pole, or fence are objects we can use our hands to wrap our fingers around and pull ourselves up.

An equally vital variable during falls is our natural response to reach out to something to grab hold of to intervene with an in-progress fall by decreasing the velocity of our body as it drops. Again, the importance of using our fingers’ gripping ability to grab onto objects is critically important to this piece of decreasing the severity of falling.

Optimizing grip strength through exercise is a productive tool for falling events to support the performance of our impulse to reach out for something during a fall or grab onto an object to help us up after a fall.  Along with forearm, biceps, and triceps strength, training finger strength is essential for the ability to efficiently grab onto objects. Therefore, a simple and effective exercise to input into any exercise routine is the finger flexion and extension exercise.

To perform the finger flexion and extension exercise, start in a standing position and elevate your arms with your elbows extended at your collar bone height.  As your arms remain elevated and you demonstrate a pristine example of perfect human posture, spread your fingertips out as if you are putting your fingers in a set of gloves.  Hold this position at its maximum range of motion for one to two seconds.  After you experience a brief muscular sensation in your fingers, wrist, and forearms, reverse the action and squeeze your finger and thumbs toward the palms of your hand as if you are ringing out a wet towel.  Hold this squeezing motion for one to two seconds until a muscular sensation can be experienced in the palms, wrist, and forearms.  Repeat these movements for five to ten repetitions on both arms at once.

Optimal fitness levels such as strength, cardiovascular endurance, and balance help mitigate fall risk factors. However, let’s not forget to continue to exercise the very motion that helped us when we took our first steps as humans.  The ability to grab onto something and help ourselves up can get us out of some of the most troublesome situations.

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.

Aug 25

Muscles and a Balanced Diet Make a Successful Team

The scales of deciding to indulge in decadent foods and maintaining a healthy functional body continue to be an act of checks and balances for society.  Humanity has developed an array of resources to acquire delicious food at our fingertips.  As five o’clock PM hits, and we depart from our jobs or pick up our kids from soccer practice, a trip to the store to get some veggies and lean protein sounds laborious to most.  A simple act of tapping the Door Dash app icon on our phone to have a few sandwiches from our favorite burger joint in town delivered to our doorsteps sounds far more enticing. However, an issue arises with the convenience available on our high-powered two-by-four-inch computers nestled comfortably in our pockets and purses.  We can enjoy, too much, a good thing without putting much effort into it.

We don’t need a news report or a peer-reviewed article to present mind-blowing data to understand that four to five days per week of ordering sandwiches from Door Dash cause a threat to our health.  Foods such as burgers, burritos, and a value meal at Panda Express should be considered a privilege as a reward for hard work, not an everyday function.  If we click on the Door Dash icon as much as we click on our email app icon, there might be an issue with the number of decisions we make in consuming too much treat food over choosing optimal foods in our diets.

Maintaining a stable balance of consuming foods with a balanced amount of carbohydrates, fat, and protein can be a productive tactic to mitigate the harmful effects of consuming too many treat foods.  A helpful tactic we relay to our personal training clients is to try to have two healthy meals for every treat meal.  For instance, if we have a long day and Door Dashing a burrito sounds irresistible that evening, perhaps we can match that decision to acquire take out with two subsequent evenings of having a salad and a piece of fish or chicken for dinner.  This way, our choices to eat healthy foods double our decisions to acquire treat foods.

Let’s not forget about the importance exercise offers to the scales of staying healthy versus overindulging.  Skeletal muscles are the muscles we exercise when we squat and perform push-ups or planks.  These muscles utilize the substrates present in the food we eat to make our bodies move and reinforce their structure to hold them upright.  If we don’t feed these muscles with the fuel necessary to perform their functional purpose, they will operate akin to an airplane filled with regular automobile fuel.  In other words, our muscles malfunction when we make suboptimal food choices. Therefore, understanding the components essential to the successful functioning of the muscles in our body is critically important.  A big part of the components for successful muscular function comes from our food choices. Luckily, foods that support the development of lean muscle mass are foods that don’t have a lot of processed, high glycemic index carbohydrates, or unhealthy fats.  If we overindulge, our muscles suffer.  However, suppose we focus on eating foods containing raw ingredients, lack chemical processing, or meals made at home. In that case, we consume foods that absorb efficiently in our digestive tract, which fuel our muscles optimally, support the building of lean muscle, and decrease the degradation of muscle mass.

To help mitigate the effects of suboptimal substrates concentration in the body, ensuring exercise to the large muscles of the lower extremities, hips, chest, and shoulder blades of the body is essential.   As these muscles become stressed, their natural response is to absorb carbohydrates and proteins in the bloodstream to resynthesize the sites of the muscle cells stressed from exercise to become bigger and stronger.  The adaptation of muscle recovery allows the stressed muscles to match the demands imposed upon them from strenuous physical activity.  Additionally, the more lean muscle mass present in the body, the higher likelihood of the muscles utilizing free floating fatty acids as a fuel source during a resting state.  However, we can’t feed these stressed muscles optimally if we consume foods that are complicated for our bodies to break down.  In other words, that favorite burger with that buttery and fluffy brioche bun, ooey-gooey Vermont cheddar cheese, and unctuous grass-fed Kobe beef burger won’t necessarily feed our muscles in a way our body can easily process if consumed four to five times per week.  I’m sure we can imagine where the calories present in the burger might go as it passes our muscles faster than an airplane getting ready for take-off.

Napa has some of the best food options, if not the best, available when ordering take-out.  We’re blessed to be immersed in such a thriving culinary culture. However, by understanding that balancing these scenarios with nights of healthy eating and routine exercise, we can mitigate the effects of metabolic disease, contribute to the prevention of cardio arterial disease, and stave off obesity while living 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.

Aug 18

Sciatica is a Pain in the Butt: Part 2

Last week, we shed light upon a few noteworthy structures surrounding the sciatic nerve in the body.  This region of muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones, and nerves is referred to as the lumbopelvic hip complex, or the LPHC.  The combination of connective tissue present in the LPHC is significant for the integrity of the lumbar spine and hip region.  Appreciating the area’s intricacies can empower our ability to decrease debilitating symptoms of lower back pain, hip tightness, and, one of the most popular criminals in the LPHC community, sciatica.

Described as sharp, searing, or annoying pain originating from the center of the buttocks, sciatica is a condition that sends nerve pain down the back of the leg to the heel.  Discomfort is an understatement for severe cases of sciatica.  Symptoms of sciatica can originate from many root causes.  Compressed or shifted vertebrae, bulging discs knocked out of alignment, or deconditioned muscles surrounding the hip region all contribute to sciatica causing this “pain in the butt” condition.

Before visiting a doctor’s office, exploring x-rays and MRI images, and how surgical intervention can remedy extreme sciatica, perhaps looking at some low-hanging fruit solutions can be helpful.  This simple yet effective tactic can be achieved by educating ourselves about exercises to strengthen the LPHC.  If we reinforce the system of muscles, tendons, and ligaments in the LPHC, we will likely have less collapse of weak muscles and bones that push down on the sciatic nerve.

Underneath the gluteal muscles, resides the piriformis muscle.  Physical therapists and fitness professionals consider sciatica a common culprit in people’s lives.  A prevalent cause of sciatica is the compression of the piriformis muscles pushing down the sciatic nerve.  This deep gluteal muscle traces directly over the sciatic nerve path as the nerve travels inferiorly down the back of the leg.  The primary function of the piriformis is to lift the leg up and away from the body’s midline.  This action is known as hip abduction.  When this muscle gets inflamed, it increases in size.  Just like a traffic jam at the Jameson Canyon to Highway 80 eastbound junction. Pressure, stress, and pain ensues as this area of the hip gets congested, with a muscle that shouldn’t be as large as it is and is pressed down on the sciatic nerve. So, what happens when the piriformis pushes down on the sciatic nerve?  “Ow,” is what happens.

Identifying a common cause of sciatica, such as a deconditioned piriformis, is an efficient and effective first step to laying out a plan of action to solve the beginning periods of sciatica.  Now that we know the disruptions the piriformis can contribute to the development of sciatica, what can we do to support our piriformis muscle, so it doesn’t go into a state of distress?

We input efficient and effective rehabilitative movement solutions into our personal training clients’ exercise programs specifically meant to enhance the muscular strength present in the LPHC.  Targeting the muscles of the anterior and posterior portion of the lumbar spine muscles, such as the abdominals, deep psoas muscles, and hip flexors, help support the front part of the spine.  If we keep the front portion of the spine and hips, we even out how much force can be pressed down the spine.  Additionally, exercises emphasizing muscular engagement of the glutes allow for increases in strength adaptions to various other piriformis muscles, allowing the demands of our body’s hip movements.  This means that the piriformis won’t be the only muscle performing all the work.  Our gluteal muscles are responsible for moving our legs forward, backward, and side-to-side.   Balancing the strength of the piriformis and gluteal muscles allows the joint to operate as one unit.

Here are two exercises targeting the muscles of the LPHC and have the potential to alleviate sciatica:

  1.  Pelvic tilt against a wall:  Position your back flat against a wall and move your feet slightly in front of you to where you lean back against the wall.  Position your back flat against the wall and “roll the crest of your hips toward your ribs.”  This movement should stimulate a contraction in the abdominals and glutes.  Perform at least five to ten repetitions once per day.
  2. Supine Isometric Hip Extension:  This is a fancy term for what we commonly understand as hip bridges in Yoga class.  Lay flat on the ground with the knees bent at about forty-five degrees. Then, while pressing your heels into the ground and ensuring the lower back is stabilized, lift the hips upward until a muscular contraction is experienced in the glutes and hamstrings.  Hold this position for ten to fifteen seconds.  Perform at least one set of holding for fifteen seconds once per day.

A multitude of potential afflictions can impose symptoms of sciatica, impeding the productivity of our everyday lives.  However, deconditioned fitness levels are one of the most common causes of sciatica. Therefore, pain mitigation through exercise adherence and performing exercises that prevent pain are simple and effective tactics that will keep us away from developing this “pain in the butt.”

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.

Aug 10

Sciatica is a pain in the butt: Part 1

Nerve pain can be the most challenging forms of physical sensations to explain.  The compression of nerves can have many descriptions:  searing, “zinging,” or irritable feelings caused by a pinched nerve. A common nerve disruption is located in the hip region featuring a disturbance around the sciatic nerve.  For readers who have experienced sciatic nerve pain, one could agree that sciatica can make our everyday life activities a “pain in the butt.”

Let’s introduce ourselves to the LPHC.  Better known as the lumbopelvic hip complex, this is a term exercise physiologist nerds use when referring to the muscles, bones, ligaments, and nerves correlating with the lower back, hip, and upper thigh region.

The “lumbo” portion refers to the vertebrae of the lumbar spine.  A vertebra is a spine bone that encases the spinal cord.  These uniquely shaped bones have various spinal root nerves budding out from the side, which innervate organs and the skeletal muscle attached to the nerves junction point.  One could say these nerves act as highways of electrical signals relaying messages from our brain to body organs.  The lumbar vertebrae are unique due to their sizeable bulky structure compared to its neighbors, the thoracic and sacral spines which aren’t as structurally dense.  These five lumbar vertebrae reside smack dab in the middle of the body.  So they need to be thick and robust to carry the load of our torso over our hips.

“Pelvic” refers to the pelvis region of the LPHC.  The pelvis includes the sacrum and the fused bones of the pelvis including the ilium, ischium, and pubis.  The sacrum is a collection of spinal vertebrae fused to create the triangle bone attached to the lumbar spine’s fifth and last lumbar vertebrae.  Similar to the lumbar vertebrae, the sacrum possesses small tunnels allowing nerves stemming from the spinal cord to travel through the hip joints and down the legs to innervate the lower extremities.  The triangular bone of the sacrum acts as a key stone in which the boney crests of the ilium and what Yoga instructors refer to as the “sits bone,” the ischium, are fused too.

Lastly, we have the “hip” portion of the LPHC.  The hip joint is a sophisticated structure that makes a ball and socket joint.  The fusion of the ilium, ischium and pubic bone come together at one point to form this socket, allowing the knobby head of the femur to fit into.  The combination of this ball and socket joint and the head of the femur makes the hip joint.  A vast array of muscles, tendons, and ligaments connect, intersect, and overlap to allow for the integration of the unique movement of the hip.

So, why is it important to know about the LPHC and sciatica? First, let’s make one last introduction to a network of nerves that form a braid called the “cauda equina.”  Latin for “horse tail,” the cauda equina is a collection of nerves stemming from the lumbar vertebrae.  When viewing an anatomical image of the body, it indeed looks like a horse’s tail draping over the back of its hips.   This collection of nerves innervates organs within our abdomen and muscles of the hip, knee, and ankle joint.  In connection with innervating the lower extremities, we have the cauda equina’s roommate, the sciatic nerve.   The sciatic nerve is an extension cord-sized nerve stemming from the lumbar and sacral vertebra that passes through the hip joint.  Its job is also to innervate skeletal muscles of the hip, knee, and ankle joint.   Appreciating this body region is key to mitigating the beginning periods of sciatica and recovering from chronic cases of sciatica.

The network of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and nerves residing in the LPHC create a masterpiece of integrating nervous signaling and the conduction of various muscles firing at one time, allowing us to stand upright, rotate our torso, and move our legs in multiple ranges of motion.  If this region is damaged, the integration of these coordinated movements can become flawed, resulting in weakness, pain, and a decreased lean muscle mass around the LPHC.  The muscles connecting the lumbar spine to the pelvic region maintain the integrity of the vertebrae connecting the lower back to the hips.  The muscles around the hip keep the ball and socket joint in a neutral position and protect the hips from rubbing against the hip joint’s insertion point on the sciatic nerve.  Therefore, knowing the architecture of this region and understanding the muscles involved in keeping the LPHC in alignment aids us in staving off pain, decreased movement, and nerve damage.

In next week’s article, we’ll introduce ourselves to the muscles attaching to LPHC.  After we formally greet these muscles, we’ll find out what exercises these muscles enjoy doing that make them develop into solid and active motors to keep our spine and hips strong, healthy, and able to manage pain.

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.

Aug 03

Balancing the Scales of Diet and Exercise

The scales of deciding to indulge in decadent foods and maintaining a healthy, functional body continue to be an act of checks and balances for society.  Humanity has developed an array of resources to acquire delicious food at our fingertips.  As five o’clock PM hits, and we depart from our jobs or pick up our kids from soccer practice, a trip to the store to get some veggies, and lean protein sounds laborious to most.  A simple act of tapping the Door Dash app icon on our phone to have a few sandwiches from our favorite burger joint in town delivered to our doorsteps sounds far more enticing. However, an issue arises with the convenience available on our high-powered two-by-four-inch computers nestled comfortably in our pockets and purses.  We can enjoy too much a good thing without putting much effort into it.

We don’t need a news report or a peer-reviewed article to present mind-blowing data to understand that four to five days per week of ordering sandwiches from Door Dash cause a threat to our health.  Foods such as burgers, burritos, and a value meal at Panda Express should be considered a privilege as a reward for hard work, not an everyday function.  If we click on the Door Dash icon as much as we click on our email app icon, there might be an issue with the number of decisions we make in consuming too much treat food over choosing optimal foods in our diets.

Maintaining a stable balance of consuming foods with a balanced amount of carbohydrates, fat, and protein can be a productive tactic to mitigate the harmful effects of consuming too many treat foods.  A helpful tactic we relay to our personal training clients is to try to have two healthy meals for every treat meal.  For instance, if we have a long day and Door Dashing a burrito sounds irresistible that evening, perhaps we can match that decision to acquire take out with two subsequent evenings of having a salad and a piece of fish or chicken for dinner.  This way, our choices to eat healthy foods double our decisions to acquire treat foods.

Let’s not forget about the importance exercise offers to the scales of staying healthy versus overindulging.  Skeletal muscles are the muscles we exercise when we squat and perform push-ups or planks.  These muscles utilize the substrates present in the food we eat to make our bodies move and reinforce their structure to hold them upright.  If we don’t feed these muscles with the fuel necessary to perform their functional purpose, they will operate akin to an airplane filled with regular automobile fuel.  In other words, our muscles malfunction when we make suboptimal food choices. Therefore, understanding the components essential to the successful functioning of the muscles in our body is critically important.  A big part of the components for successful muscular function comes from our food choices. Luckily, foods that support the development of lean muscle mass are foods that don’t have a lot of processed, high glycemic index carbohydrates, or unhealthy fats.  If we overindulge, our muscles suffer.  However, suppose we focus on eating foods containing raw ingredients, lack chemical processing, or meals made at home. In that case, we consume foods that absorb efficiently in our digestive tract, which fuel our muscles optimally, support the building of lean muscle, and decrease the degradation of muscle mass.

To help mitigate the effects of suboptimal substrates concentration in the body, ensuring exercise to the large muscles of the lower extremities, hips, chest, and shoulder blades of the body is essential.   As these muscles become stressed, their natural response is to absorb carbohydrates and proteins in the bloodstream to resynthesize the sites of the muscle cells stressed from exercise to become bigger and stronger.  The adaptation of muscle recovery allows the stressed muscles to match the demands imposed upon them from strenuous physical activity.  Additionally, the more lean muscle mass present in the body, the higher likelihood of the muscles utilizing free floating fatty acids as a fuel source during a resting state.  However, we can’t feed these stressed muscles optimally if we consume foods that are complicated for our bodies to break down.  In other words, that favorite burger with that buttery and fluffy brioche bun, ooey-gooey Vermont cheddar cheese, and unctuous grass-fed Kobe beef burger won’t necessarily feed our muscles in a way our body can easily process if consumed four to five times per week.  I’m sure we can imagine where the calories present in the burger might go as it passes our muscles faster than an airplane getting ready for take-off.

Napa has some of the best food, if not the best, options available when ordering take-out.  We’re blessed to be immersed in such a thriving culinary culture.   However, by understanding that balancing these scenarios with nights of healthy eating and routine exercise, we can mitigate the effects of metabolic disease, contribute to the prevention of cardio arterial disease, and stave off obesity while living happy, healthy, and vital 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.

Jul 29

Getting Out of Bed and Exercising (Part 1)

As our digital noise device projects sound waves into the air on Monday at 6:30 AM,  birds can be heard performing their best Whitney Houston impression in their avian lingo.  Now that the gloom of the cold Napa winter has subsided, we enter a sunny, warm, and lively May. An astounding gradient of blue, orange, and the rare slash of the pink border of the horizon as the sunset hovers above the Napa Valley mountains.

The community of Napa is privileged to enjoy such splendors.  However, to take in these features of the Shangri La we live in, we have to elevate our bodies into a vertical position and mobilize ourselves..  These visions of rapture can come to a screeching halt if we can’t move in an efficient, pain-free manner throughout our everyday lives.

What sounds better at 6:30 AM?  A warm and cozy bed?  Or the Shangri La?  After a restful weekend and the introduction to a week full of rigorous work tasks, this crossroad we meet when getting out of our comfortable bed can put us on a psychological battlefield.

Don’t worry, the bed will still be there at the end of the day.  It’s an intimate object lacking a conscious brain.  It won’t get up and leave us for another human. So give your bed some TLC. Make your side of the bed so it’s ready to receive you in its magnificent sheltering and soft glory and get on with your day.  After a day of getting important tactics accomplished, that bed will be increasingly inviting when it’s time for some shut-eye.

We can all relate that sitting in bed and fiddling with our phones for a few minutes is far easier than getting out of bed and preparing for a day’s work on Monday.  However, remaining in bed for that extra five minutes can immediately be turned into fifteen or even twenty minutes. So there goes a period of your morning in which you can make a significant pivot in your productivity and mental mindset for the upcoming day.

It might sound crazy, but having the courage to get out of bed to achieve exercise can transition from letting valuable extra bedtime minutes in the morning transform into a potent ingredient of success for our physical, psychological, and emotional well-being.  The benefits of performing the challenging task of getting out of bed to exercise in the morning produce an invaluable impact on surpassing some of the challenges we might experience throughout the day.

The productive stress imposed upon the body elicits adaptions to optimize our sleep-wake cycle.  Additionally, the stress hormones produced via exercise assist in mitigating the pressure we might experience from extrinsic stresses of life such as financial, family, and emotional hardships.  Lastly, this valuable time to ourselves in the morning can prove an advanced form of meditation where we can focus on our own thoughts and move away from the firehose of news and social media information projected at us during our time in bed looking at our phones on Monday morning.

Exercising first thing in the morning at the beginning of the week might sound nuts, but the bi-product of such a tactic presents an astronomical improvement to human performance.

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.

Jul 23

Just Don’t Hurt Your Back (Part 2)

Some of us don’t realize how vital lower back health is until an accidental injury debilitates us.  Quick tweaks to the back can occur from the simplest motions throughout our everyday lives.  From lifting up a bag of groceries, to chasing around our kids, to the simple act of getting out of the car can impose a painful back injury altering productivity of an average days functions.  Strained muscles, pinched nerves, or compressed disks are injuries one usually doesn’t hear about until it happens to themselves.

To prevent catastrophic back injuries, we must appreciate the spine’s structure.  Like a building, the spinal column consists of architecture holding it upright.  These brackets that hold our spine together are muscles, tendons, and ligaments.  A rickety old building might have a few rusty nails, loose screws, and rotting wood.  Our spine isn’t much different if it lacks a structured and adherent exercise routine.  Below are a few exercises that reinforce the connective tissue holding the bones of our spine in place:

  1. Standing posterior pelvic tilt: In a standing position, place your hands on the crests of your hips.  Actively “tuck” the crests of your hips toward your rib cage.  This motion should shorten the area between your ribs and the crests of your hips while simultaneously straightening the lumbar spine.  Muscular activation should be experienced in the abdominals, lower back, and glutes.  This exercise is important for activating the psoas muscles attached from the ventral portion of the spine to the hips, the abdominals connecting the lumbar vertebrae to the hips, and the glutes attaching the posterior aspect of the hips to the back of the femurs.  Performing two sets of ten repetitions supports muscle strengthening and neuromuscular adaptation to support the lumbopelvic hip complex.
  2. Straight arm plank: The plank is an isometric exercise.  The term isometric means that a muscle is put under tension for a prolonged period in which it remains in static contraction.  This form of contraction is a basic form of resistance training that avoids the risk of injury due to its limited demands of coordinated movements.  The isometric force allows for stress that will elicit an adaption to match the demands put on the group of muscles supporting the spine and hips.  In the case of the muscles surrounding the spine, this isometric exercise is akin to the stabilizing factors the spinal stabilization muscles demonstrate when we stand upright.  Therefore, performing an exercise that mimics standing will aid us in standing up right longer.  To perform the straight arm plank: find an inclined surface and lean forward with your arms extending and holding up your body.  To increase the challenge of this exercise, decrease the elevation of the surface you are supporting yourself on.  Performing this exercise for fifteen to thirty seconds, two to three times per week can significantly benefit your back strength.

Possessing a strong, functional, and injury-free back is something we are not simply born with.  To avoid lower back injury and decrease the time we are out if an injury were to occur, consistent exercises meant to strengthen our back must be done two to three times per week.

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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