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.

 

Feb 01

Healthy Diet: Processed or The “Real Deal?”

In a world where nutritionists, exercise physiologists, and award-winning biologists have filled our archives of knowledge with countless amounts of valuable dietary and food documents to refer to. It’s challenging to know what decisions to make on choosing foods that best support our quality of life.  Scientists have proven that diets consisting predominantly of red meat supports our organs, blood, and brain.  History of cultures residing in the Mediterranean reveal people living happy and long lives consuming bread, pasta, espresso, and wine.  Sherpas calling Mount Everest their backyard live in some of the most extreme environments in the world are able to endure high levels of physical stress while conducting their everyday life routines a few thousand feet from outer space.  Some Sherpas claim their indominable body and spirit comes from their consumption of raw ginger and turmeric in their food and drinks.  The eastern cultures of feudal to modern day Japan depict the antithesis of meat eaters being at the top of the food hierarchy by demonstration where they have existed for millennia on a diet consisting predominantly of soy and raw seafood.

Whispers in our ears of too much or not enough of a specific food can be heard everywhere we go.  We’ll hear certain medical professionals state too much red meat, eggs, and cheese will clog our arteries with calcified cholesterol.  On the other end, cutting edge literature is stating that consuming vegetables, fruits, and seeds aren’t meant to be consumed by humans due to certain digestive enzymes we lack to break down the chemicals in plant-based food.  It’s probably no shock to some that soy-based products have gotten bad reputations due to suboptimal hormones that may or may not produce in our bodies with the consumption of soy-based foods.  And, wait a minute, people are saying alcohol and caffeine are good for your heart and stress levels?  These abundant rapid firing mixed signals can start sounding like someone might have chased that white rabbit down one too many holes and made a trip though Wonderland.  With so many signs and suggestions to go one way while another directs us to do the opposite, where do we begin?

As the internet articles, social media posts, and revolutionary trail blazer of scientific nutritional research’s published award-winning book and start podcasts, the world has become a prolific library of knowledge that smacks us in the face with terms, rules, and definitions like bugs bombarding a motorcyclist’s face shield traveling ninety miles per hour down Highway 5.  While this information is a potently cutting-edge ticket to a newer and brighter future for the choices we make with food, there’s just so much of it that we don’t know where to begin.  A safe place to start is to look for foods unhindered by the act of processing food if we aren’t sure where to start with our nutritional goals of losing weight, fending off disease, or supporting energy levels.  Processed foods are gathered, stored for long periods of time, cooked down, pulverized into a powder, emulsified with bonding chemical agents that only my peers who possess a PhD in organic chemistry can define, and wrapped in a package producing a shelf life that can last into the next ice age.

Can you recall the revolution of dial-up internet back in the nineties?  That beautiful noise of a phone dialing followed by the static mumble of an AM radio station that hasn’t been tuned in?  This was a long and drawn-out process to enter the world of the interwebs.  Nowadays, we simply double tap our phone screens and we can surf the web to get what we’re looking for in a blazing fast Google search in less time it took to power up our computer in the glorious days of the Curt Cobain era.  This example of slow processing compared to an efficient rapid act of processing relates to how we digest processed versus unprocessed foods.

By consuming overly processed foods such as the “just add water” meat in a Taco Bell Crunch Wrap Supreme, a bag of Doritos from the gas station, or a soda, we are telling our digestive system to break down these hyper processed foods at the speed of dial up internet.  Preservatives cooked down and then recooked sugars and chemically bonded fats aren’t easily identifiable by our body’s digestive tract.  The result is stressed out, inflamed, and slow-moving peristalsis of the smooth muscles that make up our intestines.  This afflicted state of our intestines significantly impacts our digestive tract’s ability to absorb vital nutrients and transport them to nourish our body.  Food influencing a challenging digestion process can cause bloating, inflammation of organs and blood vessels, and increased fat storage due to substates present in processed foods that are unable to disassociate into the body for nourishment and energy.

We live in the era of information.  Over time, this research will continue to form a well-rounded understanding of what foods will supercharge our lives and what foods ruin our day.  In the meantime, a great place to begin is by choosing foods that have just one ingredient.  An egg, an apple, some almonds, or a simple glass of water.  These foods haven’t been through an assembly line at a processing factory.   Simple, undenatured, unprocessed, and raw food have the ability to efficiently log onto our Wi-Fi network in our digestive tract to be readily absorbable in our bodies to support our bodies to live happy, disease free, energetic, and stress-free 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.

Jan 24

Gardening and fitness

“Warm-up, proceed to strength training, and then venture to the cardio equipment. Finish up by performing a brief bout of regeneration and restorative working.”  During my first days of working at a large local gym, we handed out forms to new gym members containing these instructions as a welcome gift.  Each member received two complimentary personal training sessions to show them the ropes around the gym and offer an introductory program designed by a fitness professional to jump-start their journey to success and give them a sense of direction on the gym floor.  Intimidation, uncertainty, and over social anxiety of how to motivate oneself when diving into a new gym setting can be overwhelming.

The blueprint of this program laid out an efficient and safe routine for rookie gym participants.  The warmup routine was a five-to-ten-minute bout of submaximal exercise on a stationary bike, treadmill, or elliptical.  The strength training portion was a series of resistance training movements on weight machines including the leg press, chest press, and lat pull down machines.  The cardio routine included ten to twenty minutes of prolonged exercise on the one of the many cardio machines located on the upper level. Exercising at a six-to-seven rating of maximal perceived exertion scale out of ten, where the maximal age predicated heart rate was meant to elevate the heart’s beats per minute to sixty-five percent maximal capacity.  The session was concluded with three brief stretches in which the exercise participant held a stretch for thirty seconds.  For someone just entering a gym setting for the first time, this was as profoundly successful program to orient a gym newbie to feel comfortable in the boisterous gym setting.

As much as I support local gyms, they are not the only place to acquire functional fitness adaptations to support the longevity of our lives.  Many fitness components come in packages offered in physical activity through our hobbies and physical activities we perform around our homes.  What if we applied the introductory standard operating procedure that was included in the gym introductory orientations, I offered years ago to new gym participants as a similar mechanism of fitness in our home settings?  Let’s use the same format used to introduce first-time gym members and apply it to an hour’s worth of one of my favorite hobbies: gardening.

Please allow me to give you a brief orientation on how to use a gardening session as an efficient and effective fitness routine that is equal to, if not more effective, a trip to the local gym.  Get your overly exaggerated safari hat with neck protector attachment, UV sun protection long sleeve shirt, thick yet mobile gloves, Carhart pants, and trusty shin height boots ready to put on the same way you would prepare to put your gym clothes on before making the trek to the gym.  The warmup routine consists of the ear to shoulder neck stretches, arm crosses, and circles, hula hoop hip stretches, leg swings, and knee circles.  Performing five to ten repetitions of each movement shouldn’t take any longer than three to five minutes.  Now that your muscles and joints are loosened up, the heart rate is increased a little bit, and you’ve stimulated your nervous system sufficiently enough to resemble a brief smack in the cheeks to wake you up from a mid-day nap. Grab your favorite gardening shovel and prepare to squat, lunge, pivot, scoop, pull, and lift.

Weeds need to be pulled?  Assume a split stance as if leading off of first base getting ready to steal a base after a pitch, reach down, grasp the weed with a vice-like grip, and pull the dreaded beast out of its existence from your beloved soil.   By performing this act of weed obliteration, you are utilizing the muscles of the lower extremities while implementing balance and proprioception movements. Perhaps some culprit leaves have fallen from your walnut tree.  Time to show them who is boss with your elite raking skills.  Grasp the hilt and rake with two hands and prepare yourself in the universal athletic position.  Knees are bent, weight shifted to the balls of the feet, and eyes are positioned forward.  Perform ten to twenty repetitions of pulling the leaves toward you.  The act of raking and using muscles responsible for compound upper body pulling movements activates similar muscle groups that are targeted using the weight training equipment at gyms.  Conclude this task by squatting down with the same impressive posture and technique you would use when performing a kettlebell goblet squat at the gym.  Keeping the heels flat on the ground, bending at the knees and hips, and maintaining a rigid spine, pick the leaves up, and skillfully toss them in the compost bin.  Picking up these leaves and putting them in their final resting place of the compost bin emulates the same squatting movements we teach our beginning personal training clients.

Before you know it, a bout of three gardening techniques led by a simple warm-up has prompted a strenuous bout of physical activity very similar to an exercise session at the gym.  The scheduling structure involved in an introductory session to a gym is very helpful to guide new exercises participants to a successful experience at the gym.  However, let’s not forget that we can apply this same structure of warming up our muscles and completing a task at home to support our fitness efforts.

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.

Jan 14

Exercise your way out of stress

“What are the top three stressors throughout your day?”  This is a question we include in our introductory paperwork we encourage our new personal training clients to complete.  Not only is this topic a great way to develop a productive and growth mindset oriented in an interpersonal coaching relationship, but this also offers valuable information on a data point that can substantially improve our everyday lives when embarking on a new fitness journey.

Ever since my genesis as a health and fitness professional, a question about stress has been included in some form of initial evaluations.  The topic of stress was a theme covered during my experience working with acute rehabilitative patients in the physical therapy setting, the general population as a personal trainer at local gyms, and athletes in the high school and collegiate sport arena.  Immediately following an extensive surgery, an elite athlete looking to have a productive season while juggling sixty hours a week of academic work, or the general population forty hour per week worker, stress has been a topic having profound effects on our well-being.

External stress can be debilitating physiologically, mentally, and emotionally.  Increased stress hormone concentration such as adrenaline and cortisol cause anxiety, depression, and decreased motivation.   Stress triggers fatigue, increased blood sugar concentrations, and inflammation of joints and muscles.  In the exercise physiology realm, increased adrenaline and cortisol can serve a productive synergy during exercise and athletic activity.  Stress hormones produced during rigorous physical activity aid in shuttling sugar into working muscle support absorption of oxygenated blood to cells so the exercise participant can perform optimally.  During prolonged physical activity, stress hormones can convert fats to be utilized as calories.  Intense physical activity and athletic settings put the body into a “fight or flight” mode, in which an increased stress hormone concentration can be beneficial.  During exercise and rigorous physical activity, a little bit of adrenaline and cortisol isn’t such a bad thing.

Conversely, high stress hormone concentration while sitting down and performing grueling hours of desk work, having a conversation with your spouse about finance, or wondering why your fifteen-year-old child is mysteriously absent from her fifth period class can cause adverse effects to mental health.  One could imagine such interactions could cause your heart rate to rise over one hundred beats per minute, induce a glamorous display of arm pit sweating, and perhaps cause your pupils to dilate to size of dimes.  This isn’t the most productive state to be in while standing in still in one position.  External stress stemming from the challenges of life can tell our bodies to react in a “fight or flight” state when we actually don’t need to fight for our lives or run away from anything.  The result is an increased amount of stress hormone causing an incongruency in the natural mechanism of how stress hormones most productively serves the body.

Fitness professionals inquire about stress because we have seen stress naturally decline as exercise adherence is increased.  It’s easy to schedule a doctor appointment and tell the doctor about symptoms of anxiety and stress related symptoms.  However, it’s the natural human tendency in our fast-paced society to deviate away from things that might be a little challenging.  As adherence to exercise increases, our ability to manage stress hormones throughout our daily interactions becomes more advanced.  Inducing a naturally “fight or flight” stress response via consistently practiced exercise, our body and psychology of our minds become attuned to what a stressful situation is.  Connecting with what is truly stressful allows the mind to efficiently manage external stresses.

Stress medications are important and useful in many applications.  However, the refinement of our mind and body starts with fitness.  By constructing a foundation of physical strength in our bodies, we can naturally handle the stresses of life without the use of stress medication.  Perhaps, taking the challenge to exercise one to two times per week before renewing a prescription of anti-depressants can create positive shifts in our lives.  Take some time out for yourself.  Put the phone down, put social media on hold for few minutes,  and share with your family, friends, and co-workers you’d like a few minutes to yourself.  Get out and move.  I promise the world will still be there after you focus on yourself.

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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