Jan 02

Best times to eat

“Weight loss is made in the kitchen, not the treadmill.”  I overheard this comment during the start of my personal training career while working at a local gym many moons ago.  To a degree, this was an accurate statement.  The context of this conversation referred to the logic of consuming foods aiding weight loss by burning calories via cardiovascular exercise on one of the many units of cardio equipment available at most local gyms.  A popular tracking system to achieve weight loss is the concept of calories in vs calories out.  Burn more calories throughout the day then what are consumed.  As rewarding as it is to meet the goals of calories consumed versus calories burned on a Fitbit or wearable fitness technology, simply counting numbers on a digital tracking system isn’t the entire color that fills the big picture of managing weight loss for the long run.

Carbohydrates, proteins, and fat are the big three that are predominantly focused on the back of nutrition labels when counting calories.  These substrates are also some of the most viewed at data on our wearable fitness tracking gadgets.  Carbohydrates are essentially forms of sugar that when ingested, are meant to supply the body with energy for the various activities we participate in.  Proteins are the building blocks of our connective tissue such as our bones, ligaments, tendons, and muscles.  They fill in the gaps of stressed muscle sites to repair the spots damaged by vigorous physical activity.  Fats are lipids and oils that can either be used as energy at a low physical activity level or they can be stored as fat under our skin when they are consumed, and minimal energy is used in a rest and digest period.  If weight loss and management is our goal, it would benefit us to understand what their purpose is after they are consumed.

Nutrition has come a long way.  The brouhaha over the suboptimal properties of gluten in our diet has sparked awareness toward our consumption of bread, pastries, cookies, and pastas.  Gluten is present mainly in flour.  Flour is a processed carbohydrate originating from a wheat plant.  We can’t go out to a field, grab a piece of wheat, and start gnawing on it for a food source.  The wheat has to be gathered, baked down, powdered, cooked again, and then packaged.  Processed foods comprise some of the simplest forms of carbohydrates in the world.   Simple and processed carbohydrates don’t take long to be transferred into free floating sugar to our blood stream after consumption.  As a result, simple carbohydrates trigger an increase in insulin throughout our blood stream.  Any food that tells our pancreas to secrete insulin has a high glycemic index; the scale that is used as a reference on how much insulin is produced from a specific food.  Other foods that are high in the glycemic index are Starbuck’s beverages and breakfast sandwiches, granola bars, cereal, and rice.  Therefore, the more processed our carbohydrates become, the more insulin is being produced in our body.

Insulin can be a productive and unproductive hormone that acts as chemical messenger transmitting the message to utilize sugar in our cells as a form of energy or storage.   After completing a challenging workout, our muscles become insulin sensitive.  This means that our muscles will welcome insulin to their cells to be utilized as energy and grab onto free floating proteins and amino acids to repair the muscles stressed by exercise.  However, Insulin can be a double-edged sword.  If foods yielding a high glycemic index in a non-post exercise or sedentary state are eaten, the insulin will bypass muscle cells and travel to fat cells, telling the fat cells to absorb free floating sugar to be stored as forms of fat under our skin.  If our goal is to lose fat mass, an optimal time to consume our carbohydrates is after our workout routines.

Sedentary activity such as desk work, time commuting in the car, or sitting on the couch to watch the evening news is an ill-advised time to consume carbohydrates.  The skeletal muscles are doing little to no work.   There is no energy being expended to use the carbohydrates that have just been consumed while sitting.  A carbohydrate consumed in a “rest and digest” state will increase insulin in the blood stream, bypass skeletal muscle, and be transferred to fat storage.  If we go to the gym after our workday to hop the treadmill and burn three hundred calories, we will be burning those calories only while we are present at the gym.  However, the eating habits we may have executed throughout the day could have doubled, if not tripled, the amount of calorie absorption to fat during a low energy expenditure period paired with high glycemic index carbohydrate consumption.   Therefore, consuming carbohydrates in a rest and digest period will counteract weight loss effects in the form storing sugar as subcutaneous fat.

Wearable fitness technology is a useful tool to supplement weight loss efforts by tracking amounts of calories burnt versus consumed.  However, understanding how specific foods are metabolized in the body is an important factor to skillfully choosing when to eat certain foods at specific situations throughout your day.

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.

Dec 23

Appreciating your shoulders

Throughout our careers, we reserve days of tribute to pay homage to a person or group of people who have positively impacted our lives.  Teacher appreciation day, staff appreciation day, Veteran’s day, Mother’s day, and Father’s day.  These are residing in our calendar to give thanks to our parents, veterans of the military who risked their lives for our society, and the teachers and mentors who guided us throughout our academic careers.  Truly appreciating something takes into consideration the true value and impact the efforts something has impacted our existence.  However, we sometimes forget to appreciate a part of our existence that has accomplished the other ninety-nine percent of the work that has brought us where we are today:  our body.

The support acquired from our family, friends, co-workers, and veterans.  Our body offers us significant structural support to be able to play sports, perform physical abilities for our careers, and enjoy life.  There are many integral portions of our body that need attention.  One that needs particular appreciation is our shoulders.  Without our arms and hands, life would be quite a challenge.  From brushing our teeth to holding the steering wheel in our cars.  The shoulder joint offers significant value to our everyday lives.

The shoulder joints are a ball and socket joint.  The head of the humerus fits into the scapula and is connected by a suction cup like ligamentous structure called the labrum.  The intricate network of muscles attaching the humerus and scapula together, allow for multidimensional movements of our arms.  Circular, overhead, reaching out in front and behind, and lifting objects up and down.  These muscles act as primary motors creating an elite performing crane like tool to manipulate objects in our world.  There aren’t many objects in this world that perform so many unique movements other than the shoulder joints.  Therefore, reserving a day throughout the week to pay attention to our shoulders is immensely important.  Simply performing shoulder injury prevention tactics for the integrity of the shoulder one day per week can change our world for the better.

Muscles  attaching the scapula to the humerus comprise the shoulder’s rotator cuff.  The supraspinatus lines the upper border of the scapula which has tendons attaching the muscles to the upper portion of the humerus.  The subscapularis resides underneath the shoulder blade, tracing along the back of the body and adhering the inner part of the humerus close to the body.  The teres minor, trapezius, and serratus anterior muscles all have tendons that connect the posterior aspect of the humerus to the lower portion of the ribs and bottom of the scapula.  These muscles should be appreciated by implementing specific exercises to strengthen them because they are the supporting structures of the rotator cuff.  If these muscles don’t receive proper attention, they can suffer from atrophy and loss of blood flow to the connective tissue adhering the humerus and scapula to each other.  A loss of structural support and strength to these important muscles can lead to a collapse in the structure of the rotator cuff of the shoulder joint.  The end result of these neglected muscles of scapular stabilization can lead to rotator cuff tearing, shoulder labrum impingement, pain, and suboptimal performance in our everyday lives.

To prevent such problems from occurring, is to reserve a shoulder appreciation day throughout the week.  Don’t forget to appreciate the other parts of the body each week too.  Examples of exercises that can be included in your shoulder appreciation day, include shoulder internal and external resistance band exercises, performing scapular protraction and retraction, and the simple yet effective plank exercises.

We take time out each year to buy cards for mom and dad, the birthday boy, or the daughter who is graduating.  Those days are special.  However, let’s make sure to appreciate ourselves by taking three to five minutes out once per week to a few repetitions of shoulder injury prevention tactics to appreciate what our shoulder does for our lives so we can give back to those people who support us.

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

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Dec 16

Keep Picking Things Up!

If I were in a room full of thirty-year-old humans and asked the question: “Does anyone’s back hurt?”, at least half of the room would raise their hand.  A mentor I followed in my years as a student in the physical therapy field once told me, “Anyone past the age of thirty is diagnosed with arthritis.”  Once we get to our thirties, we have probably dabbled with high school and college sports, various forms of exercise, and more than likely experienced a few work-related injuries.  As the body endures this stress up to the thirty years of age marker, connective tissues surrounding bones can become damaged, bones fractured, and sedentary lifestyles unmask under use injuries from sitting too much.

Traumatic post thirty-year-old bodily stress can lead to back pain.  A thirty-year-old body isn’t as new as a twenty-year-old’s spry and springy frame.  Wear and tear of the body accumulates as age increases each decade.  Lower back pain is among the most common types of nagging pain as decades progress.  Back pain can significantly limit our functionality and lifestyle.

The function of bending over and getting closer to the ground is commonly overlooked on the impact it has on our lives when it is taken away.  Do weeds need to be pulled?  Those weeds will only grow longer and spread their seeds if no one bends down to remove them.  Do baseboards need cleaning?  Getting on our hands and knees could be painful.  Those spider webs and scuff marks from shoes can display our neglect to house guests.  Do your grandkids request to be picked and held by their favorite grandma?  This request from our favorite munchkin for some grandmotherly love could be immediately declined due to consistent back pain.  The last thing we want is the fear of bending over to lead to the idea that our grandkids think we don’t like them.

Consistent practice and awareness of the significance of bending over is a critical part of our daily lives currently and for the years moving forward.   Our lifestyle becomes severely limited without the ability to bend over.  Practicing how to hinge from our hips, bend our knees, and keep our back rigid reinforces the invaluable ability to bend over and acquire items at ground level.

The hip joint is similar to the structure of a socket wrench.  In fact, the hip is classified as a ball and socket joint.  Similar to how the square knob of socket wrenches insert into a socket bit to create torque on a bolt, the femur fits into the hip joint to create torque on our hips to propel our lower extremities under our torso.  This is a hinging mechanism that uses the powerful motors of the gluteal and hamstring muscles to take the brunt of the load when bending over to the ground and extending upright when returning to standing.  Prioritizing this hinging movement along with the bending of the knees limits unnecessary spine movement, making the spine tertiary mover and prioritizing its job of changing small angles of direction to align vertebrae.  The spine isn’t meant to be the shape of a rainbow when bending over.  Therefore, by learning how to keep the back the rigid while hinging from the hips can significantly decrease overuse of the spine and limit rounding of the back.

To perform a hinge from the hips, begin by slightly bending the knees, allowing the shins to flex forward.  Once the shins are “parked” forward, prioritize a rigid spine to keep the torso rigid.  Limit rounding of the lower back, shoulder blades, or tucking of the chin.  The spine should be as a rigid as a redwood tree in Big Sur.  Finalize the movement by rotating the hips around the head of femur as your torso articulates over the hip joint.  Similar to the socket wrench moving around a bolt.  Keep hinging until a brief stretching sensation is experienced in the hamstrings.  Revert to your initial position by hinging back over the hips and ensuring to keep the back in straight while activating the glutes and hamstrings to bring your hips under the torso and over the thighs.  This movement can be performed to pick objects up from the ground, picking up twenty-five-pound humans, or bending over to pull troublesome weeds.

Next time you see a rogue candy wrapper left over from the ghouls who trick or treated last week on the ground, bend over and pick it up.  Make sure to use proper technique in doing so.  It’s these repetitions of consistently practicing mindfulness of picking up objects from the ground that mitigates the debilitating effects of back pain while bending over as we progress through life.

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

Dec 10

Stop Light Exercises

Hours at the computer desk tinkering on your keyboard and mousepad.  Attending class while listening and take notes at a lecture.  Catching up on phone calls and texts at home.  Conversations at the coffee shop or on lunch break.  These activities are usually followed by a trip to our automobile where we sit down and venture home.  We sit down to conduct intellectual production in our everyday lives just to get ready to sit down some more.  Our rides home are usually accommodated with autopilot driving scenarios.

Nine out of ten times we have our way home mapped out immediately after turning the ignition on in our cars.   Our post-work ride home rituals follow a prolonged static body shape.  Our bodies re-enter a static position while we mosey on home in our mechanical carriages.  The time we spend on static body activities before our day ends, followed by more sitting in our cars, includes positions leading to underused joints and muscle groups causing injury, mobility restrictions, and annoying pain causing symptoms.  The front of our necks shorten as we peer down at phones for texting on our three by five-inch cell phone screens, typing emails, or writing important notes.  Shoulders roll forward as we lean our elbows on table tops during coffee and lunch conversations, shortening pectoral muscles and compressing the anterior compartment of the shoulder joints.  The low back can round as we stay static in any seating position, causing compression in lumbar vertebrae and shortening the area between the crests of our hips and ribs.  This can potentially lead to tight hip flexors and lower back pain.

Our beginning personal training clients present these suboptimal body ailments.  Usually, this is caused by repetitive prolonged time sitting in one position in our everyday lives.  The solution is to keep moving and avoiding stationary positions.  A fun and challenging tactic we prescribe to our personal training clients is “stop light exercises.”  Since we do nothing but sit and wait for car rides to be over, perhaps we can make the most of our time as we wait for red lights to turn green.  Since the wheels in our automobile aren’t moving, this is a great time to direct our concentration toward a few movements to give our body some much needed TLC.

Here are few exercises to perform while waiting at stop lights:

  1. Right and left lateral cervical flexion:  With strong posture and ears in line with the spine, gently tilt your ear toward your shoulder stretching out the side of your neck. Hold this position to where a brief stretching sensation is experienced for about a second.  Perform the same movement to the opposite side of the body.  Perform five to ten repetitions or until the light turns green.
  2. Scapular protraction and retraction:  With the forehead facing forward and ears in line with the spine, pull the shoulder blades backward along the rib cage until a brief muscular contraction in sensed in the muscles surrounding the shoulder blades and thoracic spine.  Reverse this motion forward gliding the shoulder blades forward along the rib cage.  “Flex and hold” the muscles around the shoulder blades in each position for about a second.  Perform five to ten repetitions or until the light turns green.
  3. Posterior and anterior pelvic tilts:  Sitting with strong posture in your car seat, line the midline of your ribs up with your ears and the middle of the crest of your hips.  “Roll” the crest of the hip forward toward the front of your rib cage and flex and hold the abdominal muscles.  Reverse “roll” your hips in the opposite direction.  Perform five to ten repetitions or until the light turns green.

Filling latent periods of sitting with consistently practiced corrective exercise can assists in decreasing pain and propositions of injuries form prolonged sitting.  Simple adjustments applied in everyday activity such as driving are just some small, yet powerful, adaptations to refine our lifetime fitness journey.

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.

Dec 02

From the ground up

Diving to keep volleyballs from touching the ground; popping upright after sliding to kick out a soccer ball away from an opposing player; springing up off the ground after diving for an infield ground ball and gunning the ball to first base to throw out a runner booking it to first base; in high school, college, and post collegiate recreational sports, we get acquainted with the ground quite often.

Following our athletic career in our and teens and throughout our early twenties, physical activity in which we are on the ground seems to decrease in the events of our everyday lives. We might find ourselves in a profession where it is necessary to lay supine, kneel, or crawl on our hands and knees. Even with this necessity to be on the ground with our professions, these vents of being on the ground occur less and less as we age.  We can enter a recreational softball, volleyball, or pickleball league to remain active. However, we don’t practice these sports five times per week like we did in high school and college sports. Athletic activity decreases as we advance in age. Therefore, the experiences in which we get down and dirty occur less.

Entry level manual labor professions require some grunt work.  Grocery store and warehouse job tasks requires to stocking bottom shelves while bending down and reaching forward.  Car mechanics get down on both knees and twist tires off the rims of automobiles.  Skilled trade workers such as farmers, landscapers, and electricians squat down while working in small areas to reach, twist, and contort their bodies to conduct a wide array of tasks on the ground.

This working population move their bodies up and down without a second thought.  They do it all day for forty or more hours per week.  They have the muscular endurance and coordination to do so.  As times goes on, we advance in age.  We also receive promotions or expand our abilities to acquire the resources to get a younger and willing person to perform laborious tasks for us.  The resource of having a younger apprentice available can introduce a sense of complacency to perform floor level labor as we progress in life.  The interactions with kneeling, picking things up, and addressing small fixes that happen to be below waist level can become an afterthought.  Why would we want to change our electrical outlet when your grandson can do it?  Baseboards need painting?  They’re too close to the floor, no one will notice.  They can be left alone.  Weeds?  We can hire a landscaper to get those up.  A sense of complacency, with lack of bending down to get things done that are closer to the ground, can shunt our ability to get up and down off the ground if we don’t perform this activity as we age.

Research supports that skeletal muscle, neurological facilitation between cells, and athletic coordination decrease as human age increases.  This evidence has validity, but it’s not just the degradation of the cells within our bodies that shunt our body’s ability to be strong and productive.  If the activities that require us to change levels, bend down, reach into small areas, and get back up are decreased, we are more likely to forget how to perform these tactics.  Therefore, if we want to be able to get up and down off the ground for the longevity of our lives, we can’t neglect activities that include interactions involving squatting down, kneeling, performing activities while being down on our bellies, or even on our backs.  This includes simple activities such as bending down to tie your shoes, or putting your socks on, gardening, or picking up after your grandchild’s party.

We can focus on the muscles responsible for helping us get up and down off the ground effectively by participating in Yoga classes and visiting the local gym.  However, if we don’t stay involved in the environments that require us to get up and down from a crouched down activity that is close to ground level, our body and mind forget how to be comfortable in a position close to the ground.  Count reps and sets on the resistance training exercise routines you perform.  More importantly, don’t forget to count the occurrences you get up and down from the ground everyday to ensure you maintain this invaluable skill for us to live happy, healthy, and strong lives.

 

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

Nov 27

Grip strength as we age

Opening jars, turning a set of keys to the deadbolt to our homes, or just picking up bulky items throughout our day; hand movements make our lives functional.  The unique organization of fingers and thumbs at the end of our arms gifts us the ability to type, use our phones, drive, and make food.  Opposable thumbs are a unique tool to the human race, giving us a one up on over other animals.  What would we do without our trusty hands?

Our five fingered money makers provide many life enhancing attributes.  Toddlers learning to build Legos and refining their dexterity and fine motor skills.  Students from grammar school to college perfect the art of depicting their thoughts via pen and paper, typing, and now enter into the era of utilizing cell phones to text as their primary mode of communication.  Tradesmen such as framers, electricians, and mechanics have the unique ability to of build houses, wire the electrical infrastructure of a house, and the invaluable ability to make cars go “vroom.”  Hands are significant to life the same way wings make birds fly.  Hands take a beating throughout life.  After a career’s worth of putting our trusty mitts through stressful situations, they might get tattered and worn out.

Maintaining physical abilities to perform everyday tasks is important.  Hands deteriorate over time just like a car’s brakes do after a few years of driving.  As we advance in our age, we might develop painful symptoms in hand joints such as arthritis, broken fingers, or damaged tendons.  These maladies present obstacles to function in our normal routines.  The first natural approach to an obstacle is to move around it.  Unfortunately, maneuvering around hand upkeep can lead to a halt in our daily physical activities we enjoy so much hand pain isn’t as enjoyable as a November trip to Kauai.  However, if we let it deter our normal functions, it’s a hassle to regain the strength of our hands if unmaintained over time.

Risk of falling is another critically significant factor that can occur as we age.  After a hard-working career, physical activity might slow down during retirement.  As physical activity decreases so does balance, coordination, and awareness to the surroundings of our environment.  This presents the situation of tripping over objects and falling to the ground.  As my 100-year-old grandpa told me last week, “There’s nothing worse than plummeting to the ground and not knowing when you’re going to crash.”  He related this to when he bailed out of a flaming plane in World War Two and to a fall that he experienced a few years back.  He shared that both experiences were similar.

The normal reaction when a person falls is to reach out and grab onto something to either save themselves from toppling over or reducing the speed of the fall.  This is where hands can come in as an emergency breaking mechanism should a fall occur.  Society has adapted to decrease the severity of falls by ensuring there are ADA compliant rails around walkways and businesses.  These rails are a significantly important tool to be used as a resource if someone is at the risk of falling.  The ability to grab onto objects such as rails, handles, or a person’s coat sleeve decreases the catastrophic events a fall can impose upon a person.  Therefore, appreciating the ability to grab onto objects with our hands shouldn’t be overlooked.

We can reinforce our ability to grab, hold, and manipulate items with our hands via an adherent resistance training program.  Grab those weights and bust out a set of ten repetitions of biceps curls.  Perform finger, wrist, and elbow stretches.  Get in the garden and use that shovel to throw some dirt around.  Keep opening those jars without asking for help from your grandkids.  In order to maintain our ever so important grip strength, we can’t stop performing the duties that make our hands strong.

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.

Nov 22

Carving out time to exercise

Time isn’t just the name of my favorite Pink Floyd song.  It’s not just a digital number changing digits on our phones when look to see where we are in our day.  The interactions, significant emotional events, and energy spent on the various experiences in our lives are what fill these brackets separated by seconds, minutes, hours, sunsets, and sunrises.  Every human has twenty-four hours allotted to us in a day’s worth of numerically counted time.  Events we choose to spend our time on creates what we want to achieve.  It could be to better ourselves in our professions, interacting with our loved ones and friends, or simply taking time for ourselves to shut off the mind and relax.

Exercise isn’t usually identified as the top of the food chain when focusing on the time we have allotted in our everyday lives.  It may not be blatantly apparent but allocating minimal time to exercise significantly increases the efficiency and effectiveness of how we spend our time in our jobs, relationships, and for our own psychological, mental, and emotional well-being.

The benefit of an adherent exercise regimen isn’t the hottest news off the press.  The benefits don’t seem as important as what occurs during the bulk of our day.  Our professions, romantic relationships, being a student, or being a parent are the pillars that are getting most of our attention.  However, a strong body equals a strong mind.  The results of exercise deliver a potent rationale to better us as individuals to support the people around us we care about.  Owning a physically and mentally strong presence demonstrates a profound sense of confidence, exuberance, and safety.  The people we are associated with in our professions and interpersonal relationships need a steady rock to support them.  Therefore, having a resilient and composed body, mind, and spirit gives the aspects of our lives we work so hard for, something to lean on.  In some cases, the people around us may even want to change their methods to be strong as well by practicing tactics to improve their lifetime fitness journey.

A doctor’s visit can swiftly reveal the need for exercise.  Losing weight, recalibrating blood pressure, or decreasing pain in joints is at the top of the list during a doctor’s visit. The normal prescription for exercises is seventy-five minutes of vigorous exercises per week.  Get your exercise tracking log out, you’re going to need it.  A request to track exercise works for some people.  On the flip side, tracking more statistics and data can drive a person bonkers.  Numbers, variables, and statistics can easily overwhelm a grown adult as similar to a high school geometry teacher demonstrating the beauty of the quadratic equation during a two o’clock high school sixth period class.  If this is the case, don’t track variables.  Go for the simple low hanging fruit.  Start off by performing something that can be consistently done each day that doesn’t equate to the mental fortitude required to repeat a trigonometry algorithm.  Simply focusing on three exercise techniques performed only once per day offers significant improvements to the mind and body.  It doesn’t take too much time either.

Attainable examples of exercises we request our personal training clients to perform at home include planks, squats, and pushups.  We encourage performing a straight arm plank for thirty seconds, ten pushups, and ten squats every day.  These exercises aren’t demanding you to climb up an extra telephone pole, make fifty phone calls, or answer thirty more emails.  Performing the requested exercises of a plank, a set of squats, and pushups each day throughout a week takes less time than it does to watch an inning of the Giants game.  Performing the straight arm plank for thirty seconds, once a day, for seven days takes three and a half minutes out of the entire week.  Additionally, seventy pushups and seventy squats throughout the week equates to one hundred and forty exercise movements throughout the week.  Those numbers are substantial when looking at the perspective of additional exercise completed throughout the week.  These additional mechanisms of productive stress to large muscle groups and joints of the body might not be used regularly throughout the day.  Therefore, areas of the body that aren’t normally stimulated are the ones that need the most work.  Performing simple yet effective exercises in small doses over a week’s time frame nurtures the body and mind in ways that support our everyday life by increasing our strength, decreasing the likely hood of getting injured, and decreasing nagging pain.

Constraints of hours in our demanding schedule is an eternal balancing act.  Don’t the let the idea of “I don’t have enough time” hold you back from much needed exercise.  Appreciate the simple forms of exercise.  Look through the lens of what small amounts of exercise can offer your life.

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

Nov 08

Becoming a Recreational Athlete

Physical activity has been a facet of survival and progression throughout our existence as the human race.  Building houses and farming are examples of staples in our physical activities we have conducted through the millennia which propelled society to function efficiently as it does today.  The physically stressing demands of constructing structures and performing the labors of farming require extensive energy and time.  One could imagine our predecessors from hundreds of years ago were physically fit simply by performing similar manual labor tasks in their everyday lives.  Keep in mind, these grueling forms of physical labor were conducted before technology evolved to help make everyday tasks more efficient and less troublesome.  Drills, power tools, tractors, and skilled labor weren’t always available.  Therefore, our great, great, great, grandparents had to use their own hands and mental, emotional, and psychological gumption to complete everyday tasks that we can easily achieve in today’s day and age by flipping a switch or pushing a button.

In our current era, many tasks are done for us.  Construction companies build houses.  Farming companies gather food throughout the agricultural industry and deliver these resources to stores.  We use automobiles to get to and from our jobs.  We simply exchange money for resources at centers that have a system readily available to acquire what we need.  Thankfully, we don’t need a horse and carriage to go a few miles down the way to get a week’s worth of supplies to survive.  However, society is at a threat of taking these privileges for granted.  Our professions are less strenuous than what our predecessors endured.  A high number of jobs that create an income for us require sitting down and doing desk work, speaking on the phone, or communicating via car, ferry, or plane.  We are far more sedentary than Uncle Leroy was back in the 1600’s.   The physical stress from such rigorous daily work afflicted upon previous generations a few centuries ago could very well imposed fitter bodies.   Physical stress of plowing fields, building houses, with only nails and hammers could have promoted muscles, bones, and the neurological system development.   In order to successfully function and thrive in an era where physical activity among the human race was more of a necessity in their everyday lives.

In our current era, putting hours in throughout the week at a local gym, Yoga class, or on the Peloton is an important facet for society’s well-being.  Strong muscles, cardiovascular endurance, and flexibility are just a few components of the benefits of regular exercise.  However, if we don’t have a physically active profession, we spend forty plus hours per week at, our body can’t maintain its fitness levels like our ancestors did.   A lifestyle lacking physical labor shunts our body’s ability to adapt to physically stressful activities like building and farming involves.  Granted, society has evolved where we don’t need to build our own house, sow our own fields, or steer our own horse and buggy.  However, a gap of decreased activity has appeared that desperately needs to be addressed to reinforce the health and wellness of society.  A simple solution to address this issue is to find fun and invigorating forms of recreational physical activity.

Recreational sports such as golf, bocce ball, or pickleball are simple, fun, and enthralling activities that promote coordination, skillfulness, and mastery of a technique, and promote cardiovascular improvements for the body.  Hobbies around the house such as refinishing furniture, gardening or throwing a ball for our dogs are just a few examples of recreational physical activities that involves lifting, squatting down, getting up off the ground, and maintaining an athletic skill.  By adhering to recreational physical activities on top of our forty-hour work weeks, we can promote physical adaptations to our body similar to how our ancestors did in their everyday lives performing manual labor.

Time at the local gym and fitness classes keep us fit, active, and give us something to look forward to.  However, let’s not forget the fitness component participating in a recreational physical activity can do for our body throughout our weeks.  We don’t expect to be performing such physical activities like harvesting boysenberries like some of our grandparents did in the 1920’s during the dustbowl.  Remember to keep our bodies moving so we don’t miss out on the healthy adaptations our bodies receive from recreational physical activity.

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.

Nov 02

Tight Hips=Tight Back

Our veteran client, Freddy, was beginning his weekly exercise routine.  He expressed his back was feeling tight.  He immediately knelt with his back facing an exercise bench.  Putting one foot on the bench and the other foot positioned in front of him as if he were genuflecting in a position meant to stretch his quadriceps and abdominal muscles, Freddy explained, “The chiropractor tells me if my lower back is tight, then my hip flexor muscles must be tight.”  Impressed by his knowledge of the anatomy of his hips and back, Freddy had successfully troubleshooted how to alleviate pain in his low back outside of my exercise instruction.  Focusing on the well-being of our hip flexor muscles is a great solution to alleviate common lower back symptoms in which our society struggles with on a daily basis.  Good job Freddy.  The chiropractor gets a gold star as well.

The hips connect to the spine in a fashion which allow the hips to tilt forward and backward.  This motion of rolling the crest of the hips forward and backward is called an anterior and posterior pelvic tilt.  Imagine the crest of the hips rolling toward the belly button and shortening the space between the crest of the hips and the ribs.  This is a posterior pelvic tilt because the pelvis is rolling toward the back of the body.  In contrast, visualize the tail bone lifting and the crest of the hips on the front of the body rolling forward, opening the up the abdomen and creating an arch in the lower back.  This motion makes the body look like the shape of Donald Duck’s body, where the buttocks protrudes backwards and a pronounced arch in the lower back appears.  This is called an anterior pelvic tilt because the crests of the hips are rolling to the front of the body.  These motions are noteworthy to focus on because the overuse and underuse of these movements cause imbalance to the structural integrity of the spine and hips.

During a hyper posteriorly tilted hip scenario, the vertebrae of the lumber spine are pulled forward as the crest of the hips roll toward the ribs in the front of the body.  As the crests of the hips roll toward the navel, the hip flexor muscles originating from the higher part of the femur, attaching to the ventral portion of the spine, shorten.  This causes the lower back to round and the torso to collapse forward, making the body look like the hunched over Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.  The intricate pathways of the nerves budding through the spine are at the threat of becoming impinged, causing neuropathy, pain, and lack of mobility.  Overuse from sitting hours in a desk, commuting in a car, or flying in a plane are common causes to this type of underuse injury.  This sedentary type of environment can simultaneously contribute to the underuse and deconditioning of the core, hip flexors, and paraspinal muscles.  The body’s malleable features have similarities to the properties of porcelain during its molding and curing process.  If we stay in in shape, where our hips are posteriorly tilted and our lower spine becomes rounded over a prolonged period of time, our bodies remain in that shape when we stand up.

To counteract this effect of tight hip flexors and abdominal muscles, the simplest solution we utilize is to prescribe exercises reversing the actions that have produced this situation.  First, the best way to cure tight hips is to simply stand up more often.  The hips aren’t bent at ninety degrees when standing.  Therefore, standing up lengthens the hip flexors and deep abdominal muscles.  This also tells the paraspinal muscles to activate during standing as opposed to their dormant state during sitting where the seat and back rest replace the function of paraspinal and the vertical abdominal muscles.

Strengthening the hip flexors, like our friend Freddy, is important.  However, mobility of the pelvis is an equal, if not more, effective solution to prevent future low back injuries.  People who have experienced lower back pain have probably made a visit to one of Napa’s great physical therapists.   If anyone has paid a visit to the physical therapy office, they have more than likely been instructed to perform anterior and posterior pelvic tilts to decrease lower back pain.

To perform pelvic tilts, start from a standing position.  Place your index fingers on both of the crest of your hips located in the front of your body.  Roll the crest of the hips forward in a slow and controlled motion until a brief sensation in the abdominal muscles is felt.  You may even feel a slight stretch in the lower back.  After that movement has been completed, roll the hips in the opposite direction, feeling a slight exertive sensation the paraspinal muscles.  Use caution as to avoid crunching the back to where this movement causes pain.  Keep in mind, these pelvic tilts are meant to mobilize the hips to avoid stiffness in the lower back and hips.  Perform five to ten repetitions daily at a ten percent perceived exertion of maximal intensity to help loosen up the hips and lower back.

Instructing patients how to perform a posterior and anterior pelvic tilt is like the first chapter in a Physical Therapy 101 course.  Therefore, it’s critically important to work to maintain the hips in a neutral position.  We love our physical therapists in our community.  Let’s continue to support them but not making too many visits to their offices for a lower back injury we might be able to avoid altogether with some adherence to exercise.

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.

Oct 18

Upper Back and Shoulder Blade Strength

“Can you make a brace for me?”  One of our personal training clients, Frances, inquired jokingly.  “Just so my shoulder blades and back can stay in place without me doing any work.  Maybe just some brackets and a few deck screws to pin my shoulder blades in place so they don’t droop forward?”  Frances added.  This comment came after performing a set of the horizontal band pull apart exercise.  This exercise strengthens the muscles attaching to the scapula, thoracic spine, and posterior portion of the humerus.  By holding a resistance band in front of the body about clavicle height, retracting the shoulder blades, and maintaining extended elbows while performing ten to fifteen repetitions of pulling that band apart in a composed and controlled motion, a series of muscles attaching to the scapula and upper back are exercised.  To ensure we get the most of this exercise, we give the cue to “park the shoulder blades” against the rib cage to ensure the muscles of scapular stabilization are engaged throughout the movements.  On a serious note, I informed Frances, “You already have a brace.  It’s those muscles that connect your shoulder blades to your arms and upper back.”

To appreciate the importance of the upper back and scapula region, it’s noteworthy to realize how the musculoskeletal architectural of the region.  The scapula, or shoulder blade, has very few bone-to-bone attachment points.  In fact, it’s sometimes referred to as a “floating bone” due to the limited number of attachments to bones.  Instead of having strong insertions to joints of bones, the scapula has various muscles attached to it responsible for smooth and efficient movement of the shoulder rotator cuff joint and stabilization to the upper back and neck.  If there is a lack of strength in the muscles of scapular stabilization, nagging and debilitating injuries can occur.  Example of such injuries might be damage to the rotator cuff region, upper back and shoulder blade pain, or nerve pain associated with afflictions to suboptimal upper back and spine strength.  Ensuring to pay particular attention to the integrity of the muscles surrounding the scapula allows us to reach overhead without pain, stand and sit up straight, and avoid pain that can ruin our day.

Movements associated with muscles attached to the scapula include full rotation of the rotator cuff, the gliding forward and backward of the shoulders, and stability to the thoracic and cervical vertebrae.  We never know how much we use these movements until a simple strain to one the muscles attaching to the scapula occurs.  A tweak to the neck can make turning around to look for cars as you are backing out of the Wholefoods parking lot a daunting a task.  The last thing you would want is to throw out your arm and go through the parent shame of having to sit out while playing catch with your child before a baseball game.  It’s worthwhile to remember that injury prevention to this area is critically important to the functions of our everyday life.

Circling back to Frances’ comment about his inquiry of having a brace installed to his upper back for stability purposes, the muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones, and various other connective tissue that we were born with are perfect pieces of hardware serving as structural support.   The upper body consists of the rib cage, skull, and thoracic and cervical vertebrae.  Each of these bones have attachment points offering structural support responsible for the physical forces we endure in our human performance.  The muscles responsible for neck movements have attachment points from the base of the skull to the upper portion of the scapula.  Muscular attachment points originating at the shoulder joints travelling to attach to more than five attachment points of the scapula function to move the arm in a multidirectional fashion along with preventing the chest to cave forward. If these muscles are maintained in optimal condition via exercise, we can prevent postural issues and pain throughout the upper back and shoulder region.

A cue we give our personal training clients as a reminder that we have our very own pre-installed brace for our upper backs is to “park the shoulders.”  This cue is meant to remind the exercise participant to retract the shoulder blades backward and down the rib cage.  After performing this movement, the chest is opened up and the shoulders are moving in the opposite direction of shrugging your shoulders.  By “parking the shoulder blades,” collapsing forward of the chest is decreased and the bracing structures responsible for scapular and thoracic reinforcement are activated.

Pain and weakness throughout the body is a reminder we may not be utilizing our built-in human braces correctly.  Use your built-in braces that have already been installed in our masterpiece of a skeleton to reinforce the body to live a pain free, healthy, and strong life.

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

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