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.

Apr 17

Reasons To Do Push Ups

Possessing a developed upper shoulder, chest, and triceps region means more than having the ability to sport a tank top on a seventy-eight-degree, sun-filled day in northern California.  The musculature of the upper extremities has many valuable functions.  In particular, the muscles responsible for arm extension are at the top of the list of essential body parts for upper body strengthening exercises.  Much like Alaskan King Crab is in the upper echelon of the seafood world, the pushup movement sits on the throne of upper body exercises.

Muscles involved in performing an optimal pushup include the upper deltoid, pectorals, core stabilizing muscles around the anterior and posterior trunk, and the magnificent triceps, located on the posterior (rear) side of the arm.  We spotlight triceps in our personal training clients’ exercise prescriptions because of its application to important facets of our everyday lives.  Triceps are involved in various applications in our lives whenever we extend our arms in front of us or when pushing off against something.

Leaning against a wall to bend over and slide on loafers requires arm strength to hold oneself up while posting an extended arm against the wall.  Getting up from the seat of your car during a routine trip to the supermarket involves using the arms to push ourselves out of the seat.  A ritual all humans participate sometime throughout the day are visits to the bathroom, in which we push ourselves up from the toilet by posting our arms on our knees to stand up.  Performing these tasks without sufficient triceps strength could put us in a situation in which we avoid certain activities due to a lack of strength.

Specific populations view getting up from the ground as a daunting task.  Individuals with knee injuries, just getting out of surgery, overweight, or someone of advanced age can have an extra challenge dealt to them when presented with getting up from the floor.  These physical afflictions have correlations with decreased triceps strength.  If we shed light upon these activities, we can appreciate the importance of upper extremity muscle strength responsible for pushing the body away from objects.

An exercise technique we focus on with our personal training clients is the mastery of pushups.  This exercise applies muscular stress to a vast surface area of upper extremity muscles.  No matter the fitness levels, some form of push can be used to improve upper body strength for extending the upper arm’s ability to push the object away from the body with the arm.

Here are a few exercises we start with as a foundation with our personal training clients to build base level strength of the muscles of arm extension:

  1. Incline straight arm plank: The plank exercise is one of the most straightforward exercises to master and helps to obtain optimal upper body strength.  Aiming to hold a plank for thirty seconds while posting the body over the ground with a rigid spine indicates that the arms supporting the weight of the body for a prolonged period has optimal strength.  If you are unfamiliar with how to perform the plank, start by practicing the planking exercise on a stable, inclined surface. For example, a countertop.  While maintaining the spine in a rigid position and ensuring the body is straight, post the arms on the countertop and hold this position for fifteen to thirty seconds.  Over time, the body will become stronger.  As the body gets stronger, hold the position for a more extended period.
  2. Half Depth Incline Pushups: Mastering the ability to efficiently move your body up and down while in a face-down position requires optimal upper-body pushing strength.  As much as being able to push oneself up from a prone position is where we want our muscles of upper body pushing movements to be, understanding how to layer strength and build muscle is essential.   If performing a pushup from flat on the ground is a challenge, revert to the example of modifying the plank exercise and position yourself on an inclined surface.  Additionally, shave off another layer of difficulty by performing a pushup with only half the distance traveled toward the ground.

The thought of performing pushups can be intimidating.  Visions of Sylvester Stallone sweating profusely as his eyes are in a crazed red glare while doing four thousand pushups to train for his bout against Ivan Drago can flash through people’s minds at the very thought of pushups.  In other words, this movement can be intimidating. Of course, this exercise doesn’t need to be an example of a bout of Olympic-level human performance.  The pushup is an exercise that deserves more attention due to it’s convenience to perform, and it’s a direct application to its ability to help us operate efficiently and without pain in our everyday 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.

Apr 13

Consistent Healthy Decisions for Weight Loss

One of our personal training clients was preparing for a ten-day vacation to the beaches of the Algarve in Portugal.  As the aquamarine water surrounding cities threaded with historical roots awaited her arrival, she mentioned she wanted her body to feel and look spectacular for this monumental adventure.  Shedding ten pounds and trimming up her figure was a top priority as she envisioned herself enjoying one of the most sought-after beaches in the world.

I asked what goals she wanted to achieve in the three months before she disembarked. She replied, “I want to trim some of this extra cushioning from around my muffin top, armpits, and the back of my arms.”  Three months seemed like plenty of time to accomplish such a goal.  Research supports that weight loss and converting fat to lean muscle mass are most effective following a ninety-day game plan of exercise adherence and compliance to a refined diet.

“What can I do to make sure I achieve these goals?” She asked.  To lay the plans of achieving the leaner body she desired, I needed to collect data on her current exercise regimen and dietary practices.

I asked, “What are you currently doing to support your efforts of ‘trimming up’?”  She replied, “I had a salad yesterday for lunch.  It had lettuce, spinach, arugula, white beans, green beans, and some grilled chicken on top of it.”

Admiring her description of choosing a healthy dish for lunch, I gathered some more information. “That’s a fantastic start. What did you have for lunch the rest of the week?”  It appeared this question caught her off guard. “Well, I’m struggling to recall.”  After a moment of recalling her lunch time meals throughout the previous week, she said, “Monday I had a deli sandwich.  Tuesday, I went to Taco Bell and had a taco salad because it was close to where I work.  On Wednesday, I had a veggie wrap from a local restaurant.  Not too bad, right?”

I wanted to congratulate her for including vegetables during each lunch meal.  However, the collection of eating out at restaurants every day and the consumption of processed carbohydrates in each meal weren’t exactly in line with her goals of shedding unwanted fat and gaining lean muscle mass.  Additionally, the struggle to recall what foods she chose for her lunches showed up as a red flag as well.  If it is challenging to identify what meals were consumed in a weeks time, there’s no telling what other food options might hinder her success.

Choosing meals throughout the week that have vegetables included is a great start.  However, it’s noteworthy to notice all of the items attached to each meal.  The deli sandwich contains two thick pieces of bread consisting of additional calories and insulin spiking flour.  A taco salad from Taco Bell has a large fried tortilla bowl comprised of processed carbohydrates.  The veggie wrap is encased by a flour tortilla adding extra calories and further compounds the influx of insulin into the bloodstream.  We could identify an obstacle that needed some tuning up right off the bat during the lunch hour.

I could perform a complete analysis of every meal she consumed for breakfast, dinner, snack times, and dessert as well.  Perhaps analyzing how much alcohol she consumed throughout the week would lay the groundwork for improving and supporting her weight loss efforts.  However, I didn’t even want to venture past what she had outside of lunch.  If her lunchtime meals were what she thought was fueling her success, my knee-jerk reaction as her coach was to feed off what she was doing well.  To ensure she sustained her optimal performance of her lunchtime meals, I informed her of some suboptimal choices she was displaying.

After a brief pow-wow on the detrimental effects of consuming high glycemic index carbohydrates for a few days in a row, the lessons sunk in.  It was time to focus on one of the most critical concepts in any fitness journey: consistency.  We decided to focus on one tactic: limiting herself to eating out at restaurants to only twice per week.  She would be assigned to create her lunches and bring them to work the rest of the days. In addition, she agreed to include only one handful of carbohydrates in each of her lunch meals.  For example, if she wanted to have rice, she would envision only a handful of rice on her plate.  This method would trigger less unnecessary carbohydrates stored as fat when left unutilized.  More importantly, this would be a critically important assignment for demonstrating that she will be in charge of what foods she is putting in her body if she consistently practices this tactic.

The fitness goal of obtaining a body with a high concentration of lean muscle mass is strongly desired and challenging. In addition, a strong and healthy body is an essential factor in feeling happy when on the vacation of a lifetime.  To maintain a lean and healthy body, identifying consistent healthy food decisions throughout the week is a simple and effective place to start.

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 08

Back Pain Solutions

Napa’s Highway 29 serves as a central transportation system for local Napans to travel north and south throughout the valley.  Reasons for travel might include heading to work up valley in St. Helena or Calistoga, heading south into Napa from St. Helena to drop kids off at school, or for tourists utilizing travel agencies and wine tours to visit Napa Valley’s sought-after winery experiences.

The two branches of primary transportation consist of Highway 29 and Silverado Trail. Therefore, appreciating the infrastructure of Napa’s two main highways is essential to the optimal function of people living in Napa.

If we view these two long roads from an overhead view, you’ll see they resemble straight lines connecting the north to the south end of the valley.  A screenshot from a Google Earth image of Napa Valley’s map reveals the long roads starting from the south of the county spanning to the north.  Zooming in closer, satellite images of Highway 29 reveals crossroads connecting the western Highway 29 to the eastern Silverado trail.  Additionally, roads from Napa County’s major towns of Napa, Yountville, and St. Helena funnel into the pillar of more extensive and longer roads, allowing speeds of sixty-five miles per hour.  These long roads allowing fast travel with limited stop lights are designed for the most efficient transportation of humans going from one end of the county to the other.  Napa County’s Highway 29 and Silverado Trail are the core of sending humans from the farthest part of Napa County to the other.

We have a similar structure to highways located in our body that transports messages to and from various locations in our body.  It’s located in the center of the body and has networks of cells that allow for the transportation of electric currents responsible for powering our organs, nerves, and muscles.  This centralized highway within the human body is the spine.

The spine has a wide array of nervous system networks that power our heart, digestive system, and extremities, to name a few crucial factors. The different portions of the spine innervate unique parts of the body.  For example, parts of the cervical vertebrae have “roads” of nerves that branch from the spine and travel down the upper extremities.  The thoracic vertebrae located in the rib cage region has pathways of nerves responsible for the function of the lungs.  The lower portion of the spine, at the lumbar vertebrae, have large nerves that travel down the lower extremities to power the muscles of the legs. A well-known main freeway that has many sub roads branching from it is the sciatic nerve.

Once there is a highway lane closure, Cal Trans workers have a detour put up. Or, there is a vehicle needing service on the side of a highway, the rate of travel for the humans in their cars slows down.  The spine is identical when there is a blockage in the nerves that travel from the spinal cord to organs and extremities. For example, a compressed disc or an inflamed muscle surrounding the spine can cause a blockage in one of the nerves sending signals from the spine to the path of travel the electronic signal is meant to go.  Common instances might include a tight neck sending tingling sensations from the armpit down to the fingertips or a tight back compressing sciatic root nerves budding from the lumbar vertebrae producing pain down the back of the leg.  If blockages in the spine occur like blockages in freeways, the signals sent from our spine to our nerves can’t efficiently give messages to the body.

Fortunately, our body isn’t dictated by the wear and tear of the asphalt of a freeway or how fast our beloved Cal Trans workers can repave a road.  The person responsible for the efficient travel of the messages sent from our brain to our nervous system is the person we look at every morning in the mirror; ourselves. Therefore, spine injury prevention is essential for the efficient travel of electronic signals sent from our brain to our body.

Engaging in routine exercise one to three times per week significantly reinforces the structural support of our spine.  One of the most straightforward exercises to bolster the bracketing around our spine is the straight arm plank exercise.  By holding a plank for fifteen to thirty seconds, the skeletal muscle surrounding each vertebra receives oxygenated blood flow; influencing the maintenance of muscle cells to help the spine support itself through physical stress. Likewise, engaging in a Yoga or Pilates class influences rotational, up and down, and side to side movements of the muscles holding the spine together.  By engaging in physical activity that keeps the spinal muscles active, we perform proper maintenance on our main freeway of nerves, similar to how a highway stays paved after a team of Cal Trans workers resurfaces a road.

Understanding the significance of a healthy back is vital to the quality of our everyday lives.  Like the way a road needs maintenance, so do the roads responsible for our nervous system traveling within our spine.

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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