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.

Mar 28

Staving Off Illness

Coming down with an illness is the last thing someone wants to be added to their life.  If we turn on the news, we get reminded of every last number and data point of how sick our world is.  A Pickleball colleague and I were practicing at the pristine Yountville Pickleball courts the other day.  The vineyard traced backdrop on the other side of the fence is enough to make anyone feel like they are on a blissful vacation.  During our practice session, my partner asked me if we had seen our usual January burst of personal training inquiries eager to achieve their New Year’s fitness resolutions yet.  I replied that our intake of the typical New Year’s surge of hungry exercise participants was less prominent than usual.  When my partner asked why these numbers weren’t our usual influx of inquiries, I noted that one barring factor was that people did not want to get sick.

My partner added, “One would think a small gym setting with an appointment-only based system and only four people  in the room would remedy the fear of coming down with something.”  I added, “Unfortunately, as we have a high intake of inquiries, some people wanted to put their participation on hold even though we offer an exclusive and private one-on-one setting.”

In an era where being free of sickness is one of the most highlighted themes in our everyday lives, prevention and avoiding presentations of disease is one of the most powerful actions we can focus on to ensure our health.  However, if we stay inside and lack the effort to initiate physical activity, the likelihood of sickness and many other suboptimal physical ailments get put on the table. Therefore, physical activity is one-hundred percent critical to living a healthy and disease-free life.

An adage my fourth-grade teacher told our class sticks with me.  “If you drink enough water, wear the right clothes, eat the right foods, and stay clean, you won’t get sick.”  By sticking to such simple guidelines set by a fourth-grade teacher, we have the potential to influence an active and disease-free life positively.

To put those fourth-grade lessons into action, here are a few guidelines that could help us stay away from sickness:

  1. Drink enough water: Our bodies depend on water for many functions.  Optimal blood pressure, the transport of vital nutrients, and fueling the function of immune cells in our body are just a few components adequate hydration contributes to.  Having a glass of water after each meal throughout the day is a simple and effective tactic to ensure our water concentration remains in an optimal state.
  2. Wear the right clothes: Is it cold in the morning?  Then bundle up:  wear a beanie, dress in layers, and make sure to stay dry.  Fluctuations in our body temperature can put stress on our body and cause our immune system to act erratically. Also, we don’t want to get a head cold or introduce any other symptoms that give us headaches, runny noses, or fevers.
  3. Eat the right foods: Has anyone ever woken up with a headache?  Perhaps from a few glasses of wine or one extra beer than you usually had last night?  Another common symptom is feeling cloudy-headed or having an upset stomach in the morning after having too much pizza, chocolate, or ice cream the night before.  If we can eliminate headaches, stomach aches, and the feeling of head fog in the morning, we won’t experience symptoms that make us feel like we’re coming down with the next cutting-edge virus.
  4. Stay clean: I’m sure we all know that going in and out of a gym can leave some amazing substances on our bodies clothing.  Sweat, dust, and whatever other gym funk our imagination can muster up is no surprise.  However, the substances present in a Yoga, Pilates, or a one-on-one personal training studio aren’t much different from the germs present at a restaurant, local bar, or grocery store.  No matter the setting, ensure to wash your hands, wash your clothes, and take showers to disinfect our bodies.  There may not be a perfect solution to avoid germs and viruses entirely.  However, by emphasizing the cleanliness of our bodies, we can mitigate how severely icky germs and filth might affect our health.

Our society is in the sense of awareness of avoiding illness for obvious reasons. Even a human living under a rock would know the severity of the Corona Virus crisis.  Data is at an all-time high of how a healthy diet, plenty of vitamin D, and a healthy and mobile body fend off the effects of illness.  These essential facets of human health offer significantly more benefits than pills, medicine, or vaccines.  We might need to roll the dice when we enter a local gym.  Who knows, you might come down with something.  However, a trip to the store, the gas station, or a restaurant isn’t much different in the exposure of what might get us sick.  Our willpower and perseverance to make a trek to a local gym, take a Yoga class, or participate in outdoor physical activity are equally, if not more powerful, than any medicine that keeps us away from the doctor’s office.

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.

Mar 17

Modification over Replacement

2022 is well underway as we venture into mid-January.  Fitness and health goals are some of the hottest topics at the forefront of our minds.  As individuals who live as leaders, parents, and teammates, it should be no surprise that our overall health propels our performance to get the most out of our days.

We make actions and decisions responsible for optimum physical, psychological, and emotional balance.  For example, what we eat and drink, how we take care of our bodies, and what situations we expose ourselves to during social settings all affect our health.  New Year’s goals are often predicated on losing weight, fitting into a pair of jeans, or visiting a sacred place such as soieering the beach of the Algarve in Portugal.  By inspecting further past the first layers of the desire to look good and shed a few pounds, the main tactics of these goals often equate to eating the right foods and taking care of our bodies and minds.

We utilize a tactic with our personal training clients who have goals in line with refining their physical and mental health by asking them, “What do you think might hold you back from achieving this goal?”  It’s important to identify obstacles, distractions, or possible sabotage mechanisms.  These factors could hinder a person’s path to success.

Let’s look at a common goal of losing ten pounds of unwanted weight.  A possible cause for the storage of ten extra pounds of body fat could be caused by enjoying too many spoonfuls of ice cream throughout the week, throwing back a twelve-pack of IPA’s in a week, or grazing on some cookies after dinner.  Next thing we know, we’ve consumed half a liter’s worth of ice cream, one-hundred and forty-four ounces of alcohol, and twenty cookies at the week’s end.  These are primary ingredients for high blood glucose concentrations, an overabundance of insulin, storing extra calories as fat, and getting sick.

We also ask our clients, “What can you do to address these issues?”  The knee-jerk response is, “Just stop doing those things.”  If only life were that easy.  We all know that’s not the case.  Whenever we hear the word “just” included in changing a habit that has been a part of our lives for years, we should assume modifying such a habit will take some rigorous effort.

If we accidentally pass an exit on the highway while going eighty miles per hour, we can’t just slam on the brakes, make a U-turn, and drive the opposite direction on a car-filled freeway to get to that exit.  Instead, we need to slow down, recalculate our route by identifying an exit to get off, and find another on-ramp to the freeway heading to our destination.  We’ll probably drive twenty miles per hour slower, so we don’t miss the exit again.  Therefore, if we told a client to “just stop” eating ice cream and expect them to lose ten pounds, we might get a result of a car slamming on the breaks while traveling past the speed limit on a crowded highway.  While halting suboptimal health activities is positive, going at it cold turkey takes an ungodly amount of willpower.  Slowing down, recalibrating, and thinking of rationale tactics are far more attainable responses than “just don’t do that.”

A few modifications to eating habits clients have expressed include the act of slightly tweaking patterns that already exist.  Here are two examples:

  1. Cookie free nights (CFN’s):  If you happen to be a late-night food grazer like yours truly, it’s satisfying to travel past the pantry, grab a cookie, and crunch down on the soft yet crunchy texture of a snickerdoodle from Napa’s Model Bakery.  However, if our goal is to shed a few pounds of fat, perhaps we can instill one, two, or even four cookie-free nights into our weekly healthy critical success factors.  By focusing on our goal of losing a few pounds for our health, we can use the tactic of achieving a few nights free of sweets each week.  This way, we aren’t just throwing cookies in dessert purgatory, never to see them again.  That would make for bland life.  However, if we meet our quota of a few nights free of sweets each week, we can acknowledge that we’ve accomplished a critically important tactic to our efforts of losing weight.
  2. Match nights out on the town with one day at the gym:  Getting together with the girls and perusing through the illustrious wine bars of Napa and snacking on our world-renowned appetizers featured at our elite restaurants is fun. However, taking this away from someone is similar to isolating a person on the distant islands of Tristan de Cuhna.  Perhaps we can match the occurrences in which we have an indulgent and fun night with the same number of visits to the gym, taking Yoga classes, or getting a home workout in on the Peloton.  Make efforts to achieve a one-to-one ratio of nights out to days dedicated to your fitness.

The crunchy, salty, and sweet taste of the treats we consume can bring about some of the most nostalgic moments of our lives.  Food and drink bring about emotions of comfort, joy, and salvation from challenging times.  We can’t just extract those from our lives on short notice.  However, we can learn to practice moderation, accountability, and control.  By applying slight tweaks to our occurrences in which we indulge in the food treasures our world presents us, we can still maintain what we enjoy but in a way that supports the healthful longevity of our physical, psychological, and emotional health.

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.

Mar 08

Drinking Enough Water This Year

2022 brings about many goals and aspirations for the next twelve months. For example, a few enlightening and exciting goals are learning new skills, picking up new hobbies, traveling to another country, or the pursuit of losing weight and redefining our bodies through a well-rounded fitness routine.

Twelve months offer plenty of time to set goals, lay plans, and accomplish them.  It’s essential to have a solid foundation of physical, mental, and emotional health to bring us to the finish line with an overwhelming feeling of accomplishing such an audacious goal.  Appreciating the work our bodies and minds endure when working hard at our jobs, managing sleep, and the energy we spend within our social relationships are all significant factors allowing us to live out our goals.  However, we aren’t going anywhere if we are sick, injured, or out of shape.

To develop a healthy foundation of physical, psychological, and emotional health, setting the groundwork of a healthy diet and sufficient exercise schedule are some of the most critical factors for optimal health.  Finding a local gym and showing up two to three days per week is a fantastic start.  Ensuring to avoid too many sweets and alcohol consumption are also pertinent tactics.  However, let’s peel back the onion even more to unveil one of the simplest, yet effective, tactics to refine our healthy lifestyle efforts:  the amount of water we drink.  If I were to reveal any secret to revising our health and fitness tactics without conducting a six-month lifetime fitness coaching course, it would be to drink more water.

Water makes up about seventy percent of our body. However, if we think about what our bodies are filled with, we might appreciate water more.  Blood is a liquid.  Any liquid needs water.  Our blood carries electrolytes, vitamins and minerals, hormones, carbohydrates, proteins, healthy fats, and most importantly, oxygen to our body’s cells and working organs.  A lack of water concentration in our blood leaves us with a thicker and more viscous consistency in our blood.

Imagine a creek stream that hasn’t seen any rain in a few months.  The flow of water slows down and resembles a pool instead of a stream.  When there is a blockage in our plumbing lines, the flow of water to a faucet is reduced.   Too much grease being poured down the drain of a kitchen sink causes the water mixed with the grease to form a thick, dense fluid that travels slowly down the drain.  These examples of water flowing in vessels associated with the delivery of water in our society are similar to the plumbing we have in our arteries and veins responsible for transporting blood.  Suppose we have a slow-moving stream of blood in our bodies. In that case, the delivery of vital substances to our bodies is significantly decreased, increasing the possibility of contracting diseases and becoming physically weak.  Illness and suboptimal physical strength can lead to a downward spiral which significantly hinders the ability to achieve the lofty goals we wish to accomplish in 2022.

Here are a few simple additions that serve as solutions to consuming more water in our everyday life activities:

  1. Drink a full glass of water first thing in the morning:  As we sleep anywhere from six to eight hours, we enter one of the most prolonged periods throughout our day where little to no water is consumed.  In other words, we wake up in a dehydrated state. Therefore, immediately after waking, fill a full glass of water to the brim and drink the entire glass.  By implementing this routine every morning, the body will be primed up for the day and avoid insufficient hydration levels.
  2. Drink a glass of water after each meal:  It’s easy to forget to drink water throughout the day.  However, if we consciously connect a glass of water with an activity, we might drink more throughout our day.  A ritual that will help us regularly consume water throughout our busy days might be to install the cue of drinking water right after a meal. For example, if we partake five meals per day, perhaps we can consume twelve ounces of water after each meal.  This equates to sixty ounces of water.
  3. Aim to consume ninety-six ounces of water per day: Thirty-two ounces are in a liter.  There is a wide array of bottled water companies that come in this size.  By simply buying one of these bottles, drinking it, refilling it, and drinking it again, we can efficiently drink sixty-four ounces of water.  Combine this with the water consumed from drinking a glass first thing in the morning and the ritual of drinking water after each meal; we can manageably meet drinking ninety-six ounces of water.

2022 will be an exciting new year of health, activity, and accolades waiting to be conquered.  To start the year off healthy, we can immediately make our lives bodies, minds, and spirits healthier.

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.

Mar 02

Exercise Improves 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.

Feb 24

Recalibrating Health for the New Year

A new frontier of experiencing the next set of twelve calendar months is upon us.  As we set out to journey through 2022, we can appreciate the successes, times shared with others, and challenges we’ve overcome from the previous year.  We tack another digit onto our age.  Our kids might progress to the next grade or graduate from college.  Tremendous lifestyle improvements such as being awarded a promotion at work, buying a new home, possibly retiring, or bringing a new child into the world may have been shining stars this last year.

The new year also brings challenges.  Crossroads in our lives could include kids going off to college and leaving parents as empty nesters.  Friendships and relationships may have come to an end. The opportunity to set audacious and exciting goals also opens voids made by the trials of life that could pose an obstacle for focusing on fulfilling our efforts for 2022.

Fortunately, the psychology hardwired into our human minds is a valuable tool to assist in filling voids and steer us to a successful path.  Additionally, our body’s physiology supports our visions and goals for 2022.  Perhaps a trip is planned to visit a faraway land never experienced before or we want to resume a hobby that has been on the back burner.  More importantly, we can’t forget about the integrity of our physical bodies to pair with a powerfully driven and motivated mindset to create an impact on our plans and achieve new goals for 2022.

Falling ill to a silly cold, metabolic disease, and an encyclopedia list of conditions that hamper our physical body pose obstacles to our path to having a prosperous new year.  To avoid suboptimal sickness markers, ensuring the body is aerobically fit with a sufficient lean muscle to fat mass ratio can’t be overlooked.  Suppose the body enters a state of injury, sickness from a random disease, or becoming overly psychologically stressed.  These suboptimal conditions significantly alter the likelihood of focusing on our goals.  We can’t enjoy a trip to Europe if we have surgery scheduled to fix an overuse injury in our backs.  Becoming consumed in the external stresses of life, such as financial logistics and intrapersonal relationships, can soak up all of our mental bandwidth, distracting us from our actual goals of working on crafts and hobbies to refine our well-being.  Lastly, the threat of a sedentary lifestyle, metabolic disease, and symptoms of obesity threatens the body’s immune system.  If we get sick or injured, our course gets significantly hindered.  The beauty of mitigating these distracting factors and enjoy 2022 is that our bodies are designed to grow and thrive.  Two great places to start building a good foundation of ensuring we reach our goals in 2022 is to eat the right foods and reinforce the functional units of our body through an adherent exercise routine.

A few safe and effective tactics to start when focusing on recalibrating our body includes exercising three central portions:  the muscles of the lower extremities and the muscles responsible for the pushing and pulling actions of the upper extremities.  Individuals newer to exercise programs are sometimes challenged with where to start when entering a fitness program.  If understanding where to begin a physical fitness regimen is challenging, focus on three main movements:  squats, push-ups, and band resisted pull apart.  By focusing on these influential and straightforward movements and performing thirty repetitions twice per week, an individual can sustain a foundation of lean muscle mass, an efficient energy system, and a healthy heart to keep our bodies operating at maximal capacity.

The substances we consume work synergistically to lay the foundation for our bodies.  Eating foods that are free of processed ingredients and rich in vitamins and minerals will fuel the cells in our body to operate as well-maintained motors to keep us on an efficient path in getting the most out of our workdays.  In addition, avoiding too many harmful substances such as copious amounts of alcohol, fast food, or unnecessary snack foods will keep us free of baggage on our journey to achieve our aspirations.  A few simple dietary tactics include consuming at least three liters of water per day, limiting alcohol intake to three days per week, and ensuring to have no more than a handful of carbohydrates at each meal.

2022 is going to be a powerful and invigorating year for all of us. So, let’s refer to our compasses and recalibrate our path to success in this new year by focusing on a strong body, healthy diet, and indomitable spirit.  We have plenty of life to live. Let’s go live it.

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

Feb 08

Wound Up So Tight

“I’m wound up so tight, you could play me like a violin.” exclaimed one of our personal training clients at the beginning of an exercise session.  This client was a busy and successful insurance sales representative.  In a life that was “pedal-to-the-medal” and required a “can’t stop, won’t stop” attitude, he developed tension in both the physical and psychological aspects of his life.  Activities such as sitting at a desk to answer and make phone calls, browsing through hours of email, and myopically managing financial spreadsheets put a significant amount of strain on his neck, back, and hips.  Not only were the structural connections of his muscles tight, but he mentioned that his stress levels were through the roof.

We knew that a customized exercise prescription would help decrease pain and manage stress levels from his demanding job that required him to perform at an elite level.  Squats, push-ups, and planks are safe applications to start clients when entering a new personal training program.  These exercises are the easiest to master and develop competency to repeat in future exercise sessions efficiently. However, our first action plan was to develop tactics to unwind the stress for an exercise participant who can relate their tension to a violin string at the brink of snapping.

Imagine a crane holding a load of rebar.  The crane wire has a significant amount of tension applied to it.  The demands of that wire must be able to withhold two thousand pounds of an awkwardly distributed bundle of rebar.  The crane must skillfully put this load on the ground.  When the rebar rests on the ground, the tension on the crane wire subsides and the twine stretching within the wire reverts to its initial shape.   The crane operator must release this tension on the wire at some point.  If the rebar load is left suspended for too long, the metal twine of the wire can stretch out and deteriorate over time.  Crane operators know that a heavy load suspended for too long can eventually make their transportation wire snap.  Therefore, the haul must be lowered and removed from the crane wire as soon as possible.

The connective tissues comprising our ligaments, tendons, and muscles aren’t much different in their mechanical function than a crane wire holding heavy objects.  Our bones act as levers and fulcrums, working together with our muscles’ primary motors, manipulating objects, and moving them to the desired location. However, we aren’t a crane, and our muscles aren’t a collection of ultra-strong metal wire twined together. Instead, we are organisms filled with muscles, bones, internal organs, a complex nervous system, and a psycho-emotional computer database.  These factors are afflicted by the stressful overload of the external stimuli caused by our demanding lifestyles.

Our immediate response as fitness coaches is to optimize a client’s exercise experience whose muscles in their neck, back, and hips feel like strings about to snap. We concentrate our efforts to relieve tension.  Instead of prescribing this exercise participant with compressive resistance training techniques, our intuition encourages us to include exercises in the opposite spectrum of resistance training.  That means exercises like push-ups, squats, and planks aren’t our primary concern. Instead, the immediate need for this exercise participant would be to perform flexibility, mobility, and injury prevention techniques.  Exercises promoting blood flow and pain relief to the neck, lower back, and hips could include light isometric exercises, Yoga-like movements while laying down, or static stretching techniques.  In the situation of an exercise participant overloaded with physical and psycho-emotional stress, performing stretching, joint mobilization, and joint injury prevention modes of exercise can help a person with a demanding life perform optimally at their challenging career.

Listen to the cues our body gives us in response to the demands our life applies to us. For example, if we are lethargic and sedentary, perhaps picking up weights would provide us with the jump start we need to have more energy.  However, if we have been through a hyper stressful day, perhaps we should choose exercises that help us calm down and decrease any tension we may be experiencing.

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

Feb 03

21 Years Old, Independent, and Hungry

Finals week.  The week where time doesn’t exist.  The only thing present in a college student’s mind during the last few weeks of school are the insurmountable emotions of anxiety and pressure to complete a ten-thousand-word essay, solving of timed calculus equations, and a few in-class presentations in front of peers enduring the same mental hardships.  Finals week occurs in one of the most sleep-deprived and stressed-out demographics in our society, college students.  The challenges of college tasks put on students can be productive to a student’s career and life.  If this psychologically and emotionally fatigued group of humans can make it through the flaming hoops college professors apply to their life, they can endure the next set of challenges when it’s time to sign a mortgage, dive into a new career, or start a family.  Other than college, there are few times in a youngster’s life they are given the task to study and master content pertaining to the important sociological values advanced academia offers and then forced to demonstrate competency in the form of a timed test of a ten-page typed essay.  The demanding stimuli of college students is a great way to overload a human’s life in a pressure cooker of stress.

For us adults, we know that exercise and a healthy diet improves our everyday lives.  Adherence to exercise decreases physical pain, allows us to manage stress better, and gives us some much-needed time away from the daily grind.  However, our young future leaders of this world, enduring the college grind, may not have the time or skills to think about foods that are beneficial to the body or the ability to manage their time to adhere to a regular exercise schedule.

A few of our post collegiate graduate readers might be able to relate to a college student’s life.  After twelve hours of attending classes, listening to a PhD lecture for an hour and seventy-five minutes, debating, tinkering with test tubes filled with explosives, or solving physics equations, it’s time to go home.  In a physically and psychologically fatigued state, getting the chopping board and vegetable cutting knives out to produce a gourmet healthy meal with lean proteins and fresh veggies is likely the last thing our young college buddies are probably thinking of.  Top Raman, potato chips, or a pack of Oreos sounds far superior to steamed broccoli and baked salmon at this time.  Might as well tap the Rockies and crack open a Coors Light as well while playing some video games to unwind.  The simplicity of collapsing onto the futon, unwrapping a thin plastic wrapper, and grabbing a round, cream filled, chocolate cookie that fits effortlessly into your mouth seems much easier that using the stove or oven to cook something healthy.  Who wants to do dishes anyway?  There is studying to be done, friends to hang out with, texts to be answered, Tik-Toks to be absorbed, and video games to be played after a long day at school.

The development of insulin resistance, lack of activity, and copious amounts of alcohol lead contribute  to diabetes, the threat of becoming overweight, and addiction to the recreational barbiturates.  These habits can contribute to decreased motivation at a young age and carry over to their post-collegiate life.  This vicious cycle of a suboptimal awareness of nutritional habits poses a significant threat to a population of humans with a heavily influential status of neuroplasticity.  Students living the dorm life away from home don’t have their parents stacking their pantries with nutritionally dense food or having home cooked meals available after coming home from soccer practice.  A solution to avoiding lackluster habits in this scenario of human independence during college is to enlighten college students to food choices that will not only benefit their lives in the future, but also improve their performance as student.

Here are a few options college students might be able to divert their attention to instead of going for those tantalizing Oreos after a long day of school:

Premade Salads:  Local grocery stores have premade salads available in a variety of flavors.  These packages include raw veggies, seeds, nuts, and protein such as chicken or tofu.   Dishes? Not to worry.  A secret trick to mix the salad dressing in solves the crisis of using a soap and sponge.  Simply obtain the premade salad dressing packet included in the bag and disperse the contents into the salad bag. Shake it like a bartender shakes a Manhattan.  Open the bag from the top and tear about halfway down.  You now have a disposable bowl-dish. Once finished, discard the contents into the recycle bin.

Scrambled Eggs:  Most college dorms have a hot plate or stove top.  If you can ask your parents for any type of gift to sustain your health through the trials of college, it’s a skillet.  Scrambled eggs are one of the most efficient ways to ingest lean protein into your body.  Simply heat up the skillet and apply butter or oil ot the pan’s surface.  While the skillet is heating up, crack an egg or two and scramble away with a fork.  Pour the contents into the skillet and scramble with a spatula.  The single form ingredient of protein in an egg will satiate a starving scholar at any hour of the day.

Rotisserie Chicken:  Almost every store has pre-cooked rotisserie chickens available.  In fact, buying one of these and utilizing the meat on the chicken for a meal will last a developing young human two to three days by supplying them with easy to consume protein.  It doesn’t taste half bad either.  The beauty is, clean up isn’t rocket science.  Simply discard the bones and the container that came with it in the dumpster outside when finished with the chicken.

We can acknowledge when left to our own resources at a young age, we make unique decisions.  College students are a population that have little understanding of how to acquire food.   Perhaps a little enlightenment of what foods will benefit our future leader’s quality of life in conjunction with a successful education would help our species thrive in a healthier, stronger, and aspiring upcoming era.

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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