Jul 13

Just Dont’ Hurt Your Back

“All you have to do is…”  If only life were as easy as living the description behind these words.  If this were the case, we’d all be living on Mars. However, I’m sure we’re all aware that life is full of twists and turns we can’t necessarily predict.  In the case of the physical well-being of our spinal health, there are many motions our back allows us to do: twist, turn, bend, pivot, and remain still for a prolonged period.  We can perform all of these motions thanks to the intricate structure of our spine, the nerves that branch out from our spinal cord to our extremities, and the muscles surrounding the spine.  However, once we sleep funny, endure a few five-plus hour plane rides, or turn our heads the wrong way when looking behind us, a section of our spine can tweak out and dramatically derail the physical activities of our everyday lives.

The spine consists of five sections of uniquely shaped bones called vertebrae. These vertebrae encase our spinal cord.  The vertebrae’s specific functions depending on what part of the body the spine is associated with.  The cervical vertebrae of the neck are seven bones stacked on top of each other.  The thoracic group of vertebrae consists of twelve bones that connect the spine to the ribcage.  The thick, sturdy lumbar vertebrae are a group of five bones that are the strongest and thickest of the spinal bones residing between the ribs and hips.  The sacrum is made of five fused vertebrae connecting the spine to the hips.  Finally, the coccyx, or tail bone, has three to five coccygeal vertebrae.

It’s safe to say that most of the population has suffered from a form back pain.  We can’t “just” avoid a few motions throughout our day to ensure our back stays in good condition.  If one section of the back is tweaked, many maladies can ensue.  Ensuring the back is capable of enduring the stresses of our day takes planning, effort, and understanding of the muscles necessary to ensure optimal spinal health.

A combination of stretching, resistance training, and mobility exercises is critical to a healthy back free of injury.  In part two, we’ll cover a few movements that can be done two to three times per week.  Adhering to consistent exercise can significantly help strengthen our back, avoid injuries, and decrease the longevity of an injury if it were to occur.  Remember that weekly consistency of adhering to exercises is the key to a happy and strong 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.

Jul 06

The gym isn’t fun

The other day when I was out and about running some errands, I had the privilege to run into an old friend.  We had connected earlier in the week at the pickleball courts in Yountville.  He mentioned how fun the sport was and how his body wasn’t as stressed after a tennis session.  He added that the few hours he went to play pickleball gave him a great workout.  “I don’t like to work out that much anymore at the gym or a group fitness class because it’s just not fun anymore.  I get bored.”  He added, “But pickleball is something I can go out and play with my wife, my friends, and meet new people while still getting a great workout.  My calorie ring on my fitness watch tracked that I burnt nine-hundred active calories.”

Conversations we have with our personal training clients are similar. For example, an important question we ask clients who are just starting their personal training experience is, “What holds you back from achieving your fitness goals?”  Along with lack of time, not being sure where to begin, and fear of getting hurt, “The gym isn’t a fun place,” is a standard answer.

For some people, entering the same room day in and out is boring.  Visiting the leg press machine that’s still warm from the body heat of the person previously using it can be off-putting.  Waiting your turn for the lat pulldown machine as another gym-goer shuffles throughout their phone sitting on the equipment when you want to get in and out efficiently can be maddening.  Lastly, if there are no parking spaces at the gym, a knee-jerk reaction for a person who already lacks the motivation to get into the gym after a long day of work is to pull a one-eighty, drive home, and avoid the gym altogether. As a result, the gym can lose its appeal.  If it’s a person’s primary source of exercise, these variables can be hard-pressed to keep a person’s interest.

Circling back to my conversation about pickleball with my friend, he mentioned how fun and what an excellent workout his pickleball experiences gave him.  If something is fun, the desire to return to this activity increases.  This demonstrates a potent tactic to stay fit while finding something you enjoy.  For my friend, this new recreational physical activity keeps him outside and running around.

Keeping a fun physical activity is an effective method to stay fit.  However, let’s not forget, recreational physical activities like pickleball require light running, changing directions, and swinging a racket.  These are significant movements that apply stress to the body.  Whether it be a recreational sport, gardening, or playing catch with your kids, the body needs optimal condition to reinforce the longevity of these activities. It’s essential to support such a physical activity with strength training and injury prevention exercises to participate in an activity we genuinely enjoy sustainably. Therefore, a good ratio to hold yourself to is to perform at least one hour of strength training and injury prevention exercise every three hours you participate in your recreational physical activity.

Let’s not forget that recreational physical activity can be a primary form of maintaining our fitness levels.  However, remember that routine exercise has its place in ensuring the body stays strong, balanced, coordinated, and free of injuries.

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.

Jun 30

Digital Detox

The term detox can be defined as: a process or period in which one abstains or rids the body of unhealthy or toxic substances.  The one-hundred and thirty-eight gram, three by six-inch device the majority of the population wields in their hand every day have unquestionably revolutionized humanity.  Anyone can absorb knowledge from their phones by performing a quick Google search.  Going to the bank, shopping, or trips to the hardware store have been replaced by the revolution of apps available on our phones.

Thanks to our phones, our lives have become so efficient that we don’t have to worry about specific tasks.  However, while our ability to cross boundaries, thanks to our digital money makers improving lives, we also enter into a dependent relationship where we are bound to these small electronic tablets.  Even as I compose this article, I have my phone three inches away from my keyboard.

Cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and alcohol have been identified as potentially unhealthy crutches chronic users can’t live without.  Overusing these items leads to unhealthy afflictions such as cancer, increased stress, and suboptimal lifestyle habits.  There is always a case of a beer or wine within arm’s reach from the kitchen table for some of us.  Cigarette boxes and chewing tobacco cans fit effortlessly into our pockets, making the action of acquiring these accessory items as easy as retrieving our cell phones.  At times, people depend on these items.  Without them, emotions, thoughts, and energy expenditure unravel.  Life can become imbalanced without these items that reside within arm’s reach.  Would we feel the same if we didn’t have our phones by us?  I’d bet we would enter a state of distress if our phones were left in a location over a hundred miles away.

The dependence on external stimuli from our phones can induce tunnel vision.  When there is something humans find effortless and offers a substantial amount of behavior and emotionally stimulating sensation, it’s pretty hard to let go of that treasure.  When we can’t live without certain things, we can forget about other important things occurring in our lives.

We live in a world of saltwater oceans, cloud-streaked blue skies, and rolling hills formed by millenniums of earth’s natural evolution.  These attributes of our world gift us happiness, freedom, and unforgettable experiences.  Sometimes, it’s hard to make it through the day without checking our phone’s texts, emails, and social media’s current events.  Our phones offer entertainment platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and many others that show us pictures and video clips including people performing entertaining acts, animals doing funny tricks, and visions of sought after vacation destinations.  Instead of consistently using our tiny phone screens to look at these experiences, why not put the phone down and take these experiences in for ourselves to get the full effect.  Go outside, take a trip to the coast, and take walks at dusk and dawn to decrease our digital addictions.

Here are a few steps to detox from our digital addictions and focus more on the experiences we can take in to gift ourselves with easy to obtain experiences in our everyday lives:

  1. Put the phone on silent when eating: Whenever you’re at the table eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a simple snack, put your cell phone on silent.  Not vibrate.  Not “low ring.”  Not “one beep.”  Put it on silent.  You can even put it in another room.  These moments that allow for periodic experiences where we are only left to the extents of our thoughts can produce ideas that get blocked out by our myopic focus on the small screens of our phones.  Eating brings about tastes, feelings of relief from momentary hunger, and thoughts and memories from previous eating experiences of the past.  Don’t let our electronic devices take these feelings away.
  2. Use post-its: Do you have a computer?  Do you know how to use a keyboard to answer emails?  If so, perhaps you can limit yourself to answering email only from your computer interface.  I can name more people than the number of fingers and toes attached to my body that use their cell phones to type a long, drawn-out email. Nine times out of ten, feelings, emotion, and intellectual sophistication become omitted from an email composed on a cell phone. Why?  Because the screen size is ten times less than a computer monitor, our thumbs must be used on a touch screen with text size mirroring the surface area of an ants body.  No wonder we can’t think clearly in cell phone-produced emails; we can’t see.  Instead of spending more energy typing emails on our phones, make a quick note on a Post-it pad to reply to the party you wish to email and put it on your keyboard. The next time you sit in front of your keyboard, you can put your full efforts into addressing the individual you are reaching out to.  Plus, you won’t be looking at a tiny screen on a device initially meant to call people.
  3. Avoid answering work-related texts after dinner: Sitting down with our family, friends, or even by ourselves usually takes place at the end of the day.  This time of day typically involves a low energy level.  So why not let go of the stresses of all the hard work we endure throughout a full day of work?  The text messages about the various tasks that need to be completed can wait until the following day.  Take this time after dinner to unwind and decompress.

Our phones and tablets offer us a revolutionary form of progressing as a human race.  However, it’s all too often that we forget we used to use a telephone that was connected to our wall in our homes.  Let’s not forget the purpose of these electronic devices.  They give us the privilege to acquire whatever content we want and an advanced form of communication.  At the same time, we can fall into an unhealthy rut of spending too much time on our phones.  Take some time for yourself by stepping away from your cell phone to experience the gifts the world offers us that we have right in front of us.

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.

Jun 22

Performing Exercises Correctly

When I was eleven years old, beginning my first adventure on the path of fitness, I was overwhelmed with the idea of getting to lift weights at the gym.  My arrival on the weight floor made me as giddy as a dentist’s child walking through a candy store.  The sensation of wielding a heavy object and manipulating it to move where I wanted to was fascinating.  After a few weeks of using my twig-like arms to perform nothing but bicep curls with five-pound dumbbells, I ventured down the dumbbell rack toward the ten-pound weights then, eventually the fifteen-pound weights.  I was on the road to becoming the reincarnation of Hercules.

Muscle and Fitness and Men’s Health magazines quickly became my version of comic books.  My dad would purchase the newest issue from the magazine rack at the checkout stand of the grocery store and throw it at the door of my room when he had the chance.  Each magazine included copious amounts of pictures of elite athletes, fitness models, and competitive bodybuilders.  This fitness magazine kept me intrigued as to what results I could obtain if I complied with the magazine’s exercise recommendations contained within each edition.

The workouts in my new favorite magazines included six-day workout routines.  Two days for chest and triceps, two days for back and biceps, and two days for legs. Gifted with this treasure map to one day look like Arnold Schwarzenegger pumping iron at Venice Beach, I hit the gym six times a week.

After six months of adhering to this program, I developed what some people would call muscles on my stick-figure-like eleven-year-old frame.  If you ever saw an eleven-year-old flex his gun (known as biceps back in the 90s), you probably couldn’t tell if anything was occurring.  The comparison was akin to the density of toothpicks and dental floss.  However, in my mind, I was a giant who didn’t think he was the man, I knew I was the man.  “Step aside Chuck Norris, there’s a new sheriff in town,” were my thoughts as confidence flowed through my spirit thanks to the navigation of what exercises to perform at my sacred place in the gym.  Not to mention, I was guzzling down the protein powder advertised in each magazine I purchased with my weekly allowance.  This program offered me the physiological improvement and emotional confidence I needed as a young, scrawny, and insecure eleven-year-old developing youngster.

Sounds like an excellent plan for an eleven-year-old who has the time to head to the gym six times a week.  Enter the world of what some would call “being an adult.”  Kids, mortgages, and careers introduce a new challenge to the time we allocate to our daily lives.  With these confounding lifestyle variables, heading to the gym six times a week to work specific body parts laid out in a magazine filled with the fitness models’ training protocols doesn’t seem as attainable as it once was when all we had to worry about was getting home before the sun went down.

As our time is occupied by life’s requirements, our efforts to get into the gym become a challenge.  We don’t have as much time as an eleven-year-old.  However, if lack of time impedes us from performing our much-needed exercise, perhaps we can bolster the quality of our exercise routines by utilizing what time we have available.  A solution to this problem is to focus on exercises that cover a significant area of muscles throughout each movement.  Compound exercises are identified as movements that utilize more than one muscle group throughout an exercise movement. For example, exercise techniques such as squats, pushups, and pulling movements use more than one joint in the body.  This means that multiple muscle groups are being activated at once.

Suppose we can focus on compound exercises and perform them with proper form to accentuate the muscles responsible for these large movements. In that case, we can accommodate multiple muscles groups in one action. Furthermore, performing large compound movements replaces the need to exercise specific body parts on designated days.  Therefore, if time is an issue, choose a compound lower body, a compound upper body pushing, and a compound upper body pulling technique.  These movements can be as simple as the squat, a push-up, and a dumbbell row.  By focusing on the flawless execution of each of these techniques, we can replace the need to hit the gym six times a week.

Allocating an hour to the gym two to three times per week gives us the physiological, psychological, and emotional adaptations to help us live a happy, healthy, and vigorous life.  Make sure to work smart and not hard in the gym to give our bodies, mind, and spirit the attention they deserve.  Set a timer, schedules a day in your calendar, and spend one hour two to three times a week in your preferred gym setting and focus on a full-body routine.  Perform compound movements with impeccably flawless technique to achieve similar, if not better, results than a young and clueless eleven-year-old who has more time than you.

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.

Jun 16

Should I take protein supplements?

It’s been a refreshing experience seeing the Napa community outside enjoying the sun and participating in numerous forms of outdoor physical activity.  The thirty-something-year-old parents can be seen throwing a ball to their offspring with their under ten years old kids.  Volunteer parent coaches stand behind the rambunctious youth as they teach them how to swing metal bats to hit a ball on a tee.  Walkers and joggers frequent the streets dressed in fashionable, cutting edge fitness attire and sporting earbuds as they track their steps to fulfill the requirements of the wearable technology wrapped around their wrists.  As I venture out to the pickleball courts, new participants meander onto the court, learning what this buzzing new psychical activity is all about.  Like the way birds chirp and soar throughout the air as the northern California climate basks its sun-filled, moderate temperature climate, people begin moving more.

As warm weather influences physical activity in our community, a sense of needing to condition our bodies via fitness correlates with this activity. As a result, we see an influx of motivated people who want to refine their fitness by reaching out for our personal training and nutritional consulting expertise.  Nutrition plays a pivotal role in supporting our health and fitness goals.  The community asks us a few popular questions: “How many calories should I consume?” “Are carbs bad?”  or, “Should I be paleo?”  While these questions hold validity to a successful portion in supporting our health and fitness goals, a particular question that strikes my interest is, “What type of protein supplement should I take?”

My immediate response to this question is, “Why do you need a protein supplement?”  This drives my curiosity about what type of physical activity this individual is participating in.  The words “protein shake” bring me back to my internship experience at UC Berkley when I worked with collegiate athletes in the weight room.  These athletes arrived at 6 AM to lift weights for an hour.  They met later that day for speed and agility for another hour.  In the evening, following their speed and agility training, they would meet out on the court or field for sport-specific training.  The conclusion of each of these training sessions was met with the athletes heading to the fridges located in the strength and conditioning center, where they acquired a bottled protein shake.

It came to me intuitively that these young collegiate athletes needed a form of protein supplementation.  Essentially, they were working out three times per day.  Their daily caloric demands superseded those of a general population individual who visits the gym three times a week to perform their own workouts under their own volition.  Perhaps the exercises of a general population person can be slightly more customized if people were to attend a group fitness class led by a fitness professional or a scheduled personal training appointment instructed by a certified personal trainer.  However, even if an exercise session from a general population gym member were boosted by the addition of a professionally designed exercise program from the best personal trainer in town, I would still be hard pressed to believe the physical demands of these workouts would match the intensity of a division one college athlete’s training and athletic activity schedule.

The truth is, we can get many of the vital nutrients responsible for exercise recovery and optimizing muscular growth through the foods we eat in our everyday diets.  Focusing on a diet balanced in carbohydrates and protein from whole food sources can offer more than enough matter to recover our bodies from the workouts we participate in at the local gym or a group fitness class.  Whole food sources are meals that we create on our own instead of powdered protein shakes or pre-packaged protein bars.  In fact, the strength and conditioning staff at UC Berkeley didn’t expect the athletes to get their daily protein requirements from the protein shakes they were supplied. Instead, the coaches made it apparent that it was critically important to eat a substantial source of protein during every meal throughout their days as a student-athlete.

If we wonder if we need to take a protein supplement, perhaps we should look at how much exercise we do.  Are we lifting weights five times per week under five strength and conditioning coaches?  On top of that, are we practicing a sport for two hours per day, five times a week?  If you are, some form of protein supplementation should be applied only if you have already proven that your diet consists of sufficient protein.  Until then, the body will benefit optimally by ensuring to eat meals that have a balanced amount of protein during each sitting.  Let’s not overdo it with worrying about protein shakes.  Focus on what’s in front of us first. After covering protein requirements with actual food first and we need some more, perhaps we can venture into looking for something to supplement our diets.

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.

Jun 05

Daily Hydration Tactics

“How much water should I be drinking?” After completing a seventy-five-minute training session, one of our personal training clients, Ken, asked. “How much do you normally drink each day?” I replied.  “Oh, about two of these.” Ken said after holding up a twenty-ounce portable water container.

Before delving in further to a conversation covering advanced lessons on human physiological water requirements, I wanted to know what tactics throughout the day Ken was conducting for drinking water.  It was immediately apparent Ken wasn’t staying as hydrated as he needed to.  Educating him about minimal guidelines on water consumption would be the low-hanging fruit Ken required to reap the benefits of optimal hydration.  Therefore, it was time to put on my exercise physiologist detective badge.

I asked Ken if he drank any water first thing in the morning after waking up.  A brief “no” was the answer.  My second question was if he can recall what times throughout the day he drank water.  His response was “randomly.”  Third, I asked what other types of liquid he consumed normally in a day.  “Coffee, water, and wine” he replied.  Finally, I asked what his top three favorite foods were, he answered: “Oatmeal in the morning, salad and salmon for lunch, and steak and salad for dinner.”

These interview questions shed light on critical moments revealing opportunities to add more water throughout the day.  The first moment after waking is usually the most dehydrated period we are throughout the day.   We typically don’t consume to much water, after a six-to-eight-hour slumber.  If we drink water “here or there,” these random hydration periods are going to elicit a random hydration status.  The good thing is that Ken was consuming foods with high water levels.  Salad, salmon, and coffee have a high amount of water, contributing to overall daily hydration.  I asked these questions because these scenarios can be efficient reminder cues to consume water paired with everyday events.

Most of the time, we wake up and eat throughout the day.  So, why not pair a full glass of water with these moments?  It’s challenging to meet the recommendations for daily water requirements.  For instance, some guidelines suggest consuming your body weight in ounces.  Whereas other recommendations say ninety-six ounces, or one liter, is an optimal standard to adhere to.   Counting, tracking, and inputting data to ensure we meet our water requirements can get lost in the shuffle with all of the stimuli we endure throughout our everyday lives.  Sometimes, a viable tactic to support consuming more water is avoiding tracking things.  In fact, focus on pairing a glass of water with a particular recurring moment each day.

We recommend a simple and effective strategy to our personal training clients to consume a full glass of water first thing in the morning and after each meal.  This means right after you open your eyes in the morning, grab a bottle of water, a glass of water, or your fancy water tracking bottle and drink it.  Additionally, after you eat breakfast, drink a glass of water.  After you finish your lunch, drink a full glass of water. Finally, immediately following dinner, drink a glass of water.  Before you know it, you’ll be consuming four to five extra glasses of water measuring about twelve ounces each.  This could equate to an extra sixty ounces of water every day.

Hydration is critically important to many facets of our overall health, longevity as humans, and functionality in our everyday lives.  On average, many of us operate in a dehydrated state.  Calculating how dehydrated we are can be a burden to our lives, though.  Instead, focusing on improving our hydration status by regularly consuming water throughout the day is a far more attainable tactic to achieve than meticulously tracking things.  Let’s face it, tracking metrics can be mind-numbing. Instead, use the method of drinking water first thing in the morning and immediately after each meal as a way to invigorate our days without thinking about meeting a specific requirement.  You’ll feel lively, replenished, and ready to perform optimally in your daily 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.

May 26

Fear of the Gyms

As the weather gets warmer, daylight fills the sky longer, and the first quarter of the year concludes, people begin to settle into new habits.  New jobs, a fest set of classes at school, and new hobbies start to be ingrained in people’s lives.  Along with new year habits, exercises are usually a new tactic society wants to engage in as a regular part of their lives. So, what better way to leave the dark, cold and damp months behind us than by giving our bodies the gift of exercise?

As new inquiries reach out for guidance on exercises and personal training, we discover how raw some people’s relationship with exercise is.  A critically important initial interview question we ask our new exercise participants is, “What does your current exercise routine consist of?”  We get the former athletic and fitness veterans who say, “About two to three times per week. I do a few days at a local gym, maybe some Peleton at home, and I might do a Yoga class.”  When I hear this, I clap my hands.  Good for them.  Conversely, the other side of the new clients we interact with inform us that their weekly exercise status is “Close to zilch.”  This might be alarming, but the number of people who don’t participate in weekly exercise is surprisingly prevalent.

To guide individuals eager to improve health and fitness in a positive direction, we discover what obstacles impede them from achieving their fitness goals.  The popular response is time, work, kids.  Family and financial logistics should prioritize our lives to function as humans in our present society, optimally.  However, some people are just straight-up scared of exercise.  We hear statements from our community that make exercise sound just as terrifying as spilling your coffee on your Armani white button shirt before a job interview.

Entering the sliding glass door of a new gym for someone utterly foreign to this environment can seem like a stepping foot into Jurassic Park.  Gyms impose an intimidating presence.  Taking a tour through the weight room floor after 5 PM could be horrifying for some.   You might find a “bro’d out” group of high school and college age young gentlemen wearing shirts without any sleeves and ear buds in listening to the latest jam.  The visual display of grunting like a wild gorilla while sweating profusely as they press a heavy weight over their head isn’t a rare sighting.  Travelling over to the group fitness class sector, you might come across a few ladies dressed in Lulu Lemon gym attire with the image that they may be entering a gymnastics competition.  One might think those outer brackets of the gym might be a little too advanced. Perhaps the center of the gym could be a little more welcoming.  But, think again, a trip to the center of the gym has rows of steel devices with cables, stacks of cast iron weights, and a seat known as the weight machines. For the rookie gym-goer, one might think they are making a trip to the dentist while sitting in a Transformer.  Jurassic Park, wild gorillas, gymnastic competitions, and large metal contraptions?  I’d be a little scared too if I stepped foot into that world.

What can we do to lower this curtain of gym anxiety?  This is an important question to ask novices in the exercise arena who have anxiety similar to the army of Spartans going into a sea of arrows that blacked out the sun in the movie 300.  One of the first steps is to understand that exercise does not need to be a rigorous event in the gym.  Granted, I have been a gym rat the majority of my life since my dad purchased me a membership to a gym when I was eleven years old.  I felt the gym was my safe place.  However, I can put myself in another’s shoes who view the gym as a jungle.

Performing a full-body resistance training routine using only three pieces of equipment will offer the life-changing responses necessary to a human’s life without having to step foot in the gym.  The trick is knowing what the basic and straightforward mechanisms of exercise can do.  These three items include the ground beneath your feet, gravity, and your body.  Fortunately, if you’re reading this article, you already have those items in your possession.

Exercises such as prolonged walking, hiking, or walking up and down sets of stairs offer your body cardiovascular and strength improving adaptations.  If you want to challenge yourself with a workout, find out what distance you walk, how many times per week, and how many sets of stairs you travel up and down each week. Then, multiply these factors by two.  If you’re only walking one block per day, walk two.  Or if you don’t walk at all, start walking one block.  If you hike once per week, hike twice.  If you don’t hike at all, take a trip to a local park with a slight incline and walk five to ten minutes.

The beauty of the body’s physiology is that it will adapt to the physical demands we expose it to. So, if you’re starting from ground zero, take a look around and see what you have to utilize for exercise.  If it’s a Peleton, a membership to the gym, or a ten pack of Yoga classes, adhere to using those resources at least once each week.  However, if you’re a little greener around the edges, know that you’re not alone.  Just know that your desire to improve your fitness can start right in front of you.

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.

May 12

Strength Training for Bone Health

The human body is comprised of a collection of skin, blood, muscles, nerves, and organs vital to our sophisticated interaction in our environment.  The supporting infrastructure holding these organs together are the complex collection of bones making up our skeleton. Bones are considered connective tissue along with our skin, muscles, ligament, tendons, and fat.

Connective tissue possesses collagen as a primary component to adhere cells to each other. This gives cells a rigid yet pliable property depending on their specific action.  Skin is the most pliable. Acting as a wrapping, it coats muscles and encases blood.  Muscles are elastic and are the primary motors offering movement to joints in various ranges of motion.  Tendons attach muscles to bones.  Ligaments are the nuts and bolts pinning our joints together.   These unique connective tissues are intertwined with collagen giving them the architecture necessary to have structurally supportive properties.  Cells without collagen portray more liquid, viscous, or gelatinous properties, such as blood and fat cells.  In contrast to the rest of the body’s cells, bones have the most tightly packed amount of collagen present in their cells.

This is valuable information for individuals afflicted by forms of arthritis, bone density deficiencies, or nagging aches and pains in joints.  Appreciating the adaptive properties bones acquire from exercise can help our society decrease the severity of arthritis, increase bone strength, and avoid devastating bone injuries.

We’re all familiar with the way scrapes and cuts on our skin heal.  After a few days, minor scrapes and scratches start to develop scabs that slough off, leaving a new path of skin where the scab once resided.  A commonly understood principle of muscular development, via exercise, is that stress applied to muscle causes microtears to the skeletal muscles.  Performing the same sequence as the way the skin develops scars, muscles cells use satellite cells and collagen within our system to lay over the top of microtears within the damaged sites of the muscles.  This repair process makes the muscle more dense and able to manage more stress.  Our bone cells are called osteocytes, which are connective tissue akin to their cousins, the muscle cells.  Therefore, bones recover similarly to an imposed stress demand similar to their cousins.

As muscles endure stress from exercise, the muscle pulls on the attached bone.  This pulling action causes stress to the osteocytes within the bones.  As the bones endures this stress, a message is relayed throughout the body to attract satellite cells and collagen to the point of stress.  The bone cells gladly accept this message and take in extra oxygenated blood, satellite cells, and collagen to the site of a bone, requiring more reinforcement.  Therefore, stress imposed by exercise triggers the synthesis of density within and around bones connected to muscles enduring rigorous physical activity.

Exercise adherence is critical to mitigating degenerative bone disease and the effects of catastrophic injuries caused by brittle bones.  The last thing someone wants, when having an advanced case of arthritis or low bone mineral density, is to fall and break a bone.  By reinforcing the integrity of our bone cells, the likelihood of fracturing bones during an unforeseen injury can be decreased.  Therefore, complying with an exercise program consisting of one to three days per week of strategically designed resistance training targeting the neck, shoulder, spine, hip, knee, and ankle joints can significantly increase the body’s ability to build strength in our bones.

 

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.

May 05

Exercise the muscles you don’t use

The human body is made to adapt to the stresses imposed on it.  Climate, physical labor, and tasks requiring mental capacity are a few examples of the jobs we endure throughout our everyday lives.  Two prime examples of categories of professions include construction workers and desk jockeys.

For example: construction workers lift heavy boards over their heads, hoist bags of concrete on their shoulders, or hold a gyrating jackhammer as it pulverizes asphalt.  As a result, the upper body musculature of construction workers is built strong, the circumference of their arms is akin to Popeye’s anchor-tattooed forearms, and their hands and fingers can catch bricks thrown from twenty feet away.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, the eight-hour desk workers can sit down in one spot performing administrative tasks on their computers and phone.  Their mental bandwidth can cut out all distractions as they support the other sophisticated aspect of our society. The ability to communicate, calculate, and decipher solutions to customer services, software, and administrative careers is an essential pillar to humanity, which requires individuals to focus on analyzing, archiving, and completing administrative tasks.

These trades require a tremendous amount of skill.  Not everyone can commute a few hours to a job under the hot sun or in the chilly morning demanding a human to endure the elements and fasten eight-foot-long boards to each other for hours on in. Additionally, completing intense physical labor in extreme heat or cold climates is impressive.  Personally, I’d have to take a few more breaks than my friends wearing hard hats and orange vests.

Furthermore, a person who can look at a stack of papers on their desk, sit down, and address the logistics required to decrease the height of the documents take a tremendous amount of focus and patience.  Wash that down with looking at a computer screen and performing duties on our phones. These desk working professionals have a serious set of skills in which an immense amount of tasks can get accomplished by sitting in one place for a prolonged period of time.

The skills of construction and desk working trades are a specialty acquired over years of experience.  Even though both of these trades reflect a masterpiece of how humans can perform, an aspect can hinder this remarkable display of human performance if left unattended.  These two styles of workers can develop physical and mental symptoms of overuse or underuse.

The construction worker might have enough strength to wrestle a wild bear after they endure ten plus years of manipulating boards, cement, and steel beams.  However, what happens when the lower back takes on too much load?  Or, the muscles responsible for holding boards overhead in the shoulder rotator cuff become overworked?  For the construction worker, it might be worthwhile to focus on the muscles that aren’t necessarily used throughout their days if they focus on the longevity of their career.  Perhaps exercises such as planks to strengthen the muscles around the spine, shoulder injury prevention exercises to strengthen the rotator cuff of the shoulder, or mobility exercises to support flexibility and mobility of various positions their bodies endure would benefit them the most.  If a construction worker is already lifting heavy objects for eight hours, do they need to hit the weights at the gym?  Maybe focusing on movements that aren’t utilized during their workdays could balance their overall fitness.

The desk worker can suffer from underuse injuries.  There are times when an astronomical number of tasks can be accomplished in one day when focusing on administrative tasks on a computer.  However, when humans park themselves in an ergonomically-sound chair, their body stops moving.  This means that muscles don’t activate throughout any labor except the wrist and finger flexors and extensor responsible for typing over one hundred words per minute.  The muscles of the neck, shoulder blades, back, abdominals, hips, and knees lay dormant in hours of hibernation.  The lack of physical activity promotes decreases in oxygenated blood flow to the muscle, the stiffening of the infrastructure of the muscle cells that hold together joints, and a reduction in the number of calories expended throughout the day.  For the desk worker, taking time away from what they do best and focusing on exercises that get them moving in everything but a seated position will be the key to a long and productive career.

We appreciate both the people who swing hammers and the ones sitting in a chair for eight hours.  Take some time to respect how skilled we are in our careers.  We all have unique skills that allow us to contribute our talents to society.  However, we want to be the best we can at the tasks we perform in our everyday lives.  Look at the movements we don’t participate in throughout our days.  We can improve the function of our bodies to supercharge the physical activities we perform in our careers by adding exercises into our fitness routine that targets areas of the body we don’t use in our days at work.

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.

Apr 25

Relationship with Exercise

A doctor’s appointment sometimes includes completing a questionnaire asking how many days we perform strenuous physical activities per week.  Our three-by-five-inch digital leashes, known as phones, have fitness ads on any entertaining platform installed to the device.  Celebrities, pro athletes, and our favorite social media icons flaunt their aesthetically pleasing physiques, making viewers think, “I want to look like them.”

A multitude of research supports the rationale that exercise helps us function as humans. Therefore, complying with an exercise program including themes of injury prevention, weight management, and strength training can help us move better, experience less pain, avoid becoming overweight, and fend off against a potpourri of disease.

These factors and many others serve as motivation to exercise.  None of the above examples are a terrible thing to use for inspiration to improve health and fitness.   Any stimuli to increase human activity is beneficial in today’s era because there is a high magnitude of sedentary professions.  We might observe a few workouts picked from a social media article, fitness blog, or a friend who is into working out.  These workouts might include running, participating in a Peleton biking class, joining a Yoga class, or performing resistance training at a local gym.  They’re all incredibly effective.  Sometimes, we do this during the first two weeks after initiating a program. Then, a few weeks later, we might stop.  Why is that?

During the conclusion of one of our personal training sessions, I interviewed a client about her goals for her next four-week phase.  This is an excellent opportunity to ask goal discovery questions because people enjoy sharing what they want to achieve and work toward in their fitness journey immediately following a successful four-week exercise prescription.  However, this client expressed some struggles.

First, she shared, “I need to work on my relationship with exercise.” Then, as we discussed her efforts more she asked, “Should I run more, lift weights, or hike more?  I can’t come up with a reason to do these things.” She continued, “I know all of those activities are good, I’m just not motivated to do them.”

This isn’t an uncommon problem for society’s relationship with exercise.  There are times when people show up to an exercise class, a personal training session, or peruse around the weight room of a local gym.  For some, the perception of stepping foot into one of these fitness arenas complete the nagging task of filling in the fitness category in the doctor’s questionnaire.  However, there’s far more to staying healthy and active than just checking off a box that you’ve done what you were told in a doctor’s office.  An active lifestyle offers far more gifts than a simple check mark at the doctors office.

A helpful tactic that this client and I spoke about was finding out what gifts exercise brings her.  After asking her why she does the Peleton class, she answered, “I think it’s fun.  It’s interesting for me to see my rank increase in a class full other individuals my age.”

I continued to ask her why she thought running was helpful, “I think it tones my core like no other exercise.  Plus, I would like to be able to run if it was necessary.  For instance, if someone stole my pet lizard.  I’d want to run after them and be able to catch them” she energetically replied.

The third question I asked was why she liked to come in for her personal training sessions and perform weightlifting exercises.  “To be honest, lifting weights and doing these weird exercises you guys have me do is challenging.  I get the idea of why to do them, but I don’t necessarily understand the full benefit.  I guess that’s why you guys are here to teach what these exercises are doing for my body and to make sure I don’t hurt myself.  The main reason I keep coming back to the gym is that I always feel better after I leave.”  She continued, “Sometimes work is stressful.  I have to be on Zoom calls for hours, take notes, and have challenging conversations.  By the end of the day, I’m fried.  So coming to my personal training session, putting my phone on silent, and getting coached shuts that stress off.”  She concluded with, “And, that feels good.”

“Fun,” “like no other exercise,” “feels good,” and “I feel better when I finish.”  These are all descriptions of how devoting time to exercise can be beneficial.  It doesn’t take much effort to focus on stress, hardships, and look for what’s missing in our lives.  We have to work hard every week which isn’t easy. However, if we can pick out the feelings at which exercise gives us little presents to enhance our lives, perhaps we can understand the reasons behind putting ourselves through a physically challenging experience.  If you have struggles adhering to an exercise program, pick out a few keywords of how exercise will make you feel like what you’re doing has value.  Sometimes the answers to simple questions starting with “why” can clarify our struggles while opening a path to success in our lifetime fitness journeys.

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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