Jul 29

Solving Sciatica Through Exercise

Back pain is no joke.  Limited movement, decreased functionality, and living with pain are just a few negative biproducts back pain imposes upon a person’s life.  Disruptions such as traumatic accidents, overuse, underuse, or injuries, to the structures surrounding the collections of bones comprising our spine, can turn a personal world upside down.  These words hit home when a friend mentioned he didn’t feel comfortable leaving his house due to sciatic pain in his lower back.  The sensation of lightning bolts shooting from his lower back downward to his lower extremities not only impeded his movement, but also marred his confidence so acutely that he had not ventured outside of his home for weeks.  Activities such as going to the store took a tremendous amount of physical, psychological, and emotional effort to overcome the pain he was experiencing.

Sciatica has a multitude of presentations.  It can be a slightly annoying hindrance.  In my friend’s case, sciatica dealt a paralyzing and crushing blow to standard everyday life routines.  The sciatic nerve system originates from a group of spinal root nerves budding from the opening between the lumbar vertebral joints in the lower back.  This network of nerves braids together and forms the sciatic nerve that runs down the posterior aspect of the thigh to the heel of the foot.  These nerves can be impeded by shifted vertebrae, tight muscles, or distorted connective tissues surrounding the membrane of the nerves.  The sciatic nerve that runs down the leg is huge.  During my studies as an anatomy and physiology student, we observed the sciatic nerve’s physical appearance in cadavers.  This nerve has the diameter of an extension cord you would find at your local Home Depot.  Therefore, any sort of compression on a large nerve will equate to large amounts of pain.

Compressive forces on these nerves can be caused by vertebrae narrowing their spaces which the spinal root nerves pass through.  Any sort of spinal compression contributes to disruptive pressure on the spinal root nerves.  Additionally, one of the biggest culprits contributing to sciatic pain is caused by tight gluteal muscles pressing down on the nerve in the buttocks region.  In particular, the piriformis muscle, one of the deepest groups of gluteal muscles responsible for hip movement.  The piriformis runs directly over the top of the sciatic nerve.  If the piriformis becomes inflamed, pressure will be applied to the sciatic nerve.

As I listened to my friend’s frustration regarding his sciatica symptoms, he mentioned how he wished he could go back to his everyday life activities of gardening, working on his car, and various projects around the house.  I asked him how much exercise he participates in throughout the week.  He let me know that he visits a local gym every now and again.  Curious, I asked him what his exercise routine was, before he injured his back, consisted of.  He replied, “I dabble with the weight machines and hang out on the treadmill.” I then asked if he ever included some simple body weight exercises such as squats, pushups, or planks in his routine.  “What’s a plank?” he replied.  Without delving in to deeply to the contributing factors of what may have produced these symptoms of sciatica, I could derive that a lack of an organized and purposeful exercise routine contributed to his painful story of sciatica.  It’s unfortunate that we discovered this too late.  He was exercising using a few pieces of equipment at his local gym, but he had lacked a program that could help prevent injury and increase functional mobility to his lower back and hips.  If he had a structured routine with the knowledge on how to prevent such an injury, perhaps this undesirable experience could have been avoided.

There’s nothing wrong with using exercise machines at a local gym.  In fact, more people need to join local gyms and embrace exercise as a critical component of their livelihood.  However, sciatica along with many other dysfunctions in the body are caused by a lack of direction in an exercise routine.  Choosing exercises with the purpose of decreasing the likelihood of debilitating injuries is critically important to living a happy, productive, and pain free life.  Squats, pushups, and planks utilize multiple muscle groups responsible for reinforcing the muscular architecture of an optimally functioning human body.  Now the trick is to identify what exercise gives the best bang for your buck.  These exercises have a small learning curve and are potently effective toward decreasing neuromuscular disfunctions such as sciatica.  Tune in next week for part two of some simple, yet effective, exercises to add to your fitness routine that will significantly decrease the likelihood of sciatica and other painful symptoms in the body.

 

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

Jul 12

BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals)

“I have a few big, hairy, audacious goals.”  These profound adjectives presented before the word “goals” caught my attention as I was meeting with a new personal training client.  “I call them BHAGs.  I use them as a tool to achieve my sales quota for my job.  If I don’t set those goals for myself, I underperform.  And I don’t want to get fired.  So, why not set my fitness goals the same way?”  Impressed by his serious approach towards achieving his goals, I was able to develop an effective set of tactics for this client because he already had a foundation established to meet his goals.  We simply needed to sit down, grab a pencil, and conduct an interview to collect and document how he was going to reach these benchmarks.

The desire to improve one’s fitness can be hindered by emotions of frustration, sadness, or even anger. “Why aren’t I losing weight?”  “This meal plan makes me feel miserable.”  “I’ve tried everything.”  These are a few examples of phrases that are caused by the trials of achieving challenging fitness goals.  It’s relatively easy to complain, berate, or make excuses when confronted with uncomfortable situations.  However, taking time out for yourself, being quiet, remaining physically still for a few moments, and recording thoughts takes effort.   Circling back to the example of the client who wanted to establish his BHAGs, treating our fitness goals just like a decision to generate money and keep our job can put us in a potently effective growth mindset.  In order to do so, we need to retrieve goals we value the most, document them, and develop an action plan to accomplish them.  Here are a few simples steps we conduct with our clients to collect and layout plans to achieve fitness goals:

  1. Sit down, be quiet, and grab a pen: It doesn’t take an overabundance of effort to wake up at your normal time, eat the same breakfast, grab your cell phone, open your favorite app, put your coffee in the same mug, get in the car, put in 8 hours of work, and come home.  Rinse and repeat this routine 5 times per week.  The challenge occurs when breaking that cycle.  These repeat patterns can put us in a sense of complacency, which pose obstacles in our abilities to establish and create new goals.  In order to put ourselves in a growth mindset, stepping into an uncomfortable and awkward situation can present an opportunity for new thoughts to flow in.  Try setting aside fifteen minutes to grab a writing utensil, something to write on, start a timer for fifteen minutes.  A microwave timer, oven timer, or watch will suffice.  You read that correctly, use your hands, fingers, and an instrument with led or ink to transcribe your thoughts onto paper.  Don’t use the keypad on your cell phone.   Put that electronic extrapolation of your life in another room where it can’t be heard.  Trust me, it will still be there when the fifteen minutes is up.  The cancelling out of distractions will allow the mind to extract valuable thoughts for setting goals.
  2. Make Monthly Goals: Society is fortunate enough to have calendars.  Twenty-eight days is a fair amount of time to establish some smaller goals that will help contribute to our BHAGs.  For instance, if our goal is to lose fifteen pounds in three months, perhaps an attainable monthly goal would be to lose five pounds within that four-week period.  Jot these monthly goals down, and revisit them after four weeks.  Perhaps you surpassed this goal and it’s time to set some more challenging ones for the next month.
  3. Weekly Tactics: Delve into your monthly goals and peel back the onion to achieve slightly more granular goals.  What can be done each week to support these monthly goals? At this point, focus more on how you can support your monthly goals, and less on the BHAGs.  Perhaps you need to exercise two or three times per week to support your weight loss goal.  Refraining from alcohol consumption four times per week can deter the allowance of excess calories toward fat storage.  Ensuring to get six to eight hours of sleep each night is another simple and effective weekly tactic to maintain the hormone and immune system balance to ensure we have a body free of illness capable of exercise in a well-rested state.

Every human has the potential to set realistic goals and establish them.  However, the challenge comes with having the courage to confront those goals.  Maybe we can accept the challenge to get away from the cacophony of cell phones, television, and the endless hamster wheel of stress.  Sit down, stay still, be quiet and jot down three fitness goals you’ve wanted to achieve.  Such a small number can produce phenomenal life changing results if we can take the time to write those goals down.

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

Jun 28

Injury Prevention for the Trip of a Lifetime

“Take life by the horns.”  A phrase some of the most inspirational people live by.  The ability to accomplish tremendous feats in life are cherished by many ambitious people.  Summiting Mt. Fuji, diving in the great barrier reef of Australia, or taking an ice breaker to visit Antarctica are just a few samples of milestones people strive to achieve.  It seems simple enough to a book a trip, use accrued vacation time, and set out to travel to such destinations.  However, let’s not forget the elaborate orchestration to actually get there.  These trips require a means of transportation and our bodies need to be intact to endure such journeys.  The logistics of travel are usually put first before anything else.  Let’s not forget how a beautiful vacation we look forward to can immediately go belly up due to disruptions to the wellbeing of our body.

As we venture to faraway locations, we leave behind our comfy beds, recliners, and ergonomically customized office desk chairs.  Stepping into an airplane, a sharply angled, thinly cushioned chair with less leg room that that a kindergarten student’s desk awaits us.  Time to contort your body to fit into this this Tetris-like opening.  Now that the body has been jammed into this narrow space like a can of sardines, expect to stay in this position for a prolonged period of time.  Before landing in the location where the wonders of the world await, you may need some time to recalibrate yourself back to the initial shape of your body after being packed into the metal tube flying through the sky that brought you there.

Entering the airplane environment is just the beginning of putting the body in shapes it’s not used to.  The spine, shoulders, hips, and knees are accustomed to our own unique everyday life activities.  We get a good night sleep because our bodies are familiar to the bed we are accustomed to sleeping in six to eight hours per night.  We get to freely move up and down from our office chairs at our own volition.  The airplane ride, hotel bed, and hours on our feet while experiencing the trip of a lifetime is a completely different set of activities the general population to our native land is not acclimated to.  This opens the opportunity for injury to the body even before stepping foot off the plane to our desired location.

To fully participate in the joys of these cherished travelling adventures, it’s critically important to keep our bodies physically healthy.  Muscles, tendons, ligaments, and other important connective tissue act as reinforcing brackets around bones, joints, and the spine.  Maintaining optimal strength assists the body from bending too far out of alignment when the body is placed in uncomfortable situations.  Ensuring the body is athletic enough to participate in walking long distances, hiking, and navigating through large crowds of people is necessary in lands foreign to our normal living conditions.  Therefore, balance, dexterity, and coordination are a key component to focus on before going on long trips.  Most importantly, having a strong fitness foundation to return to following the conclusion to a monumental trip is equally important because we need to prepare for the next breath-taking voyage we have on our list.

Strength and conditioning routines for long voyages are identical to the routine a college athlete performs to prepare for their athletic season.  Athletes train three to four times per week to prepare for their sport.   The only difference is that travelers are preparing to endure the stresses of traveling.  Why should it be any different for people who want to travel? In order to decrease the likelihood of injury and perform well, a structured exercise prescription is highly recommended.  Make sure to plan ahead for these trips with a balanced exercise prescription to ensure the body is strong and injury free to enjoy these life-changing experiences.

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

Jun 23

Pregnancy and Fitness

Brining another human into this world is a monumental event.  We have the ability to grant the gift of life to a baby allowing them to flourish, thrive, and partake in the wonders offered by the world.  Once we see a newborn baby enter the world, their eyes open for the very first time, their first breaths can be heard, and their first movements are witnessed.  Carrying a growing human within the womb is one of the most intimate relationships among two humans.  There is no other time in a person’s life when two human beings are so intricately linked than a mother carrying a child in her womb.  A physical and emotional bond develops as a baby prepares to join the elaborate world.  However, before, during and after pregnancy, this phenomenological genesis of new life dawns a substantial task the mother endures on a physical, mental, and emotional scale.

Additional weight gain during pregnancy can span anywhere from fifteen to thirty-five pounds.  Sometimes more depending on the circumstance.  Stress hormone concentration can increase throughout the body due to the new physical and physiological demands put on the body.  The saying, “you’re eating for two now,” is a valid statement which indicates a developing baby is taking in the nutrients present in the mother’s body.  This statement is similar to that of having to move in with a new roommate or family member on short notice.  Imagine having to share your room with someone you don’t know or aren’t’ prepared for.  This environment might stress you out.  Additionally, the immediate increase in hormones along with the change of chemistry in the blood can cause side effects such as nausea, fatigue, and headaches.  Lastly, a belly the size of a watermelon introduced over a short period of time can pose as a physical obstacle that puts a roadblock in normal everyday activities such as sleeping or putting on a seatbelt.  Normally, when people gain additional undesired weight that causes this many disruptions, it takes more than eight to nine months for such issues to materialize.  Pregnant mothers deal with these rapid changes immediately.

Along with lifestyle changes, the body has additional tasks imposed in a noticeably short amount of time.   Weight gain can occur as soon as three months.  Joints aren’t ready for this mass appearing on the body this soon.  This applies additional compressive forces on the lower back, hips, knees, and ankles.  These compressive forces push downward on bones, joints, ligaments, tendons, and muscles causing swelling, achy muscles, and nagging pain.  Non-acclimated joints afflicted by rapid weight gain enter the threat of developing arthritis and joint disease in the future.  Additionally, physical complications include increased abdominal mass and girth leading to anterior pulling on the lumbar spine and suboptimal tilting of the pelvis.  The chest area of pregnant women can increase, causing disruption in the cervical and thoracic spine along with shoulder blade pain.  Combining these physical challenges with a traffic jam of stress hormones similar to that of a Los Angles highway traffic jam, we have the perfect storm for a body enduring quite the challenge throughout pregnancy.

Fortunately, the human body is equipped to survive such struggles through the beauty of lifetime fitness.  We consult with personal training clients who are planning to become pregnant, are currently pregnant, or are looking to recover their body after childbirth.   Similar to the adaptations a standard, non-pregnant person gains from an effective exercise regimen, a pregnant woman’s muscles aren’t much different.  An exercise prescription emphasizing on injury prevention, mobility, gaining strength, rehabbing previous injuries, and training for a particular event, benefit the general population to improve their overall quality of life.  Performing resistance training, taking Yoga classes, or engaging in a game of Pickleball utilizes stress hormones naturally to improve physical performance throughout these activities.  The result leads to exercise participants being more relaxed and having less psychological and emotionally stress following these bouts of physical activity.  It’s no surprise that executing a resistance training routine will strengthen muscles and lead to decreased pain in common problem areas such as the neck, shoulder, upper and lower back, hips, knees, and ankles.  It’s noteworthy to know that people sleep better when adherently participating in a routinized exercise program.  Decreased pain, lower stress, and better sleep sounds like something a pregnant woman, dealing with the newfound challenges she is presented, can certainly use.  Possessing a solid foundation to return to after childbirth, makes catching back up to the path of your previous fitness goals not so distant.

The challenges of pregnancy present themselves in various ways.  However, understanding that the body can still harness the benefits of a structured fitness routine throughout pregnancy helps the body ride through the mental, physical, and emotional undertow.  Remember to adhere to a simple and effective exercise program to prepare your body for pregnancy and for the road to recovery afterwards as well.

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

Jun 09

Weight Loss on Auto Pilot

A fellow reader of the Napa Register reached out with an interest in maintaining a healthy weight.  She shared that she had lost over thirty pounds at sixty-nine years old.  I commend this reader on her enthusiasm in refining her lifestyle to achieve a healthy weight.  Losing a substantial amount of weight is no easy task.  Pivoting eating habits, adhering to regular exercise throughout the week, and managing phenomenological lifestyle changes requires concentration and effort.  Weight management is challenging.  As we age, our metabolism decreases.  However, the advancement of our age and the slowing of our metabolism is usually not the primary culprit when it comes to gaining excess weight.  Every half decade, our lives change.  Relationships, jobs, and the location of where we live shifts.  These variables cause waves of change that take time to acclimate to. When these waves occur, our healthy lifestyle habits are threatened with disrupting situations.

As these lifestyle fluctuations occur, we might see a decrease in physical activity.  This could indicate a decrease in daily calorie expenditure.  Obligations toward our jobs, schoolwork, or interpersonal logistics requiring meetings, text messages, phone calls, and emails consume a significant amount of time.  As the clock ticks, minutes fade away throughout the day.   As these obligations occur, one of the first things that get hindered is our nutritional decisions.  It’s a well-known fact that the less we move and the more food we eat, the more likely we are to gain weight.  This weight gain is commonly in the form of fat in less than preferred locations on our body such as our arms, belly, and hips.

The good news is, nutrition is usually the lowest hanging fruit when looking for attainable solutions to gaining excessive weight.  Our tactics and decision-making abilities are a great starting point to refining nutritional habits.  Here are a few relatively simple tactics we teach our personal training clients as an effective preparatory meal consumption sequence:

  1. Identify your portion size: The human body was designed with two hands. Some people have larger hands than others.  However, each hand is a perfect measuring tool.  We can use these tools as a method to visually see how much food we should be eating.  No need to brandish the postage scale and measure how much mass of each food equates to how many calories are in our food.  Simply adhering to ensure the amount of food we consume at one meal equates the capacity that can be physically held in two handfuls serves as a mechanism to make sense of if we are having too much or not enough food in one sitting. Think about having more than two handful of food in your stomach.  Does that sound comfortable?
  2. Identify carbohydrates and proteins in each meal: Get those hands out again.  Supinate them so the palms face upward.  Ensure one hand is full of carbs and the other is full of protein specific food. In the hand wielding carbs, be sure to consume low sugar and low glycemic index foods that digests easily.  The other hand should be filled with lean protein.  Implementing this tactic ensures adequate carbohydrates to be used throughout the day for energy and protein responsible for lean muscle synthesis and repair.
  3. Drink a full glass of water with every meal: Water is essential for an immense portion of our nutritional well-being.  Without delving too deeply into the science of proper hydration, drinking a full glass of water after each meal will aid in digestion so nutrients from the meal are absorbed sufficiently throughout the blood stream and delivered to the organs of the body in an efficient manner.  Additionally, consuming water after each meal gives a feeling of satiation.

Shifting weight management to autopilot is a challenge.  However, we have the proper tools equipped to our bodies available to assist us in optimal dietary decisions.  We can utilize our hands as tools for portion size and balance protein and carbohydrate consumption. Drink water at every meal as a ritual to stay at a healthy weight, have sufficient energy, and support our body.

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

Jun 01

Give Pain Your Full Attention

Hinges, knobs, handles, screws, nuts, and bolts are instruments used throughout our daily lives.  We see them as we open doors to our homes and cars.  Metal hinges held on by screws attaching doors to planks of wood ensure a door operates efficiently.  Handles attached to our kitchen utensil drawers are fastened by screws.  The gliding mechanism of those drawers slide in and out on tracks that hold wooden drawers to them.  These objects are able to function with the exclusive ability to hold something in one place while another part of the object moves.  The revolutionary invention of this hardware is responsible to our success as a race.  Just like us, these pieces of hardware have an age.  Similar to the anatomical joints of the human body, the longer these instruments exist in this world and the more frequently they are used, the sooner they will deteriorate.

Ball-and-socket, hinge, saddle, these are just a few names of the classifications of joints responsible for the elaborate movements of our body.  You’ll see these types of joints in our neck, spine, shoulder, elbows, wrists, fingers, hips, knees, ankles, and toes.  They are responsible for attaching bones to each other and allowing them to move dependent of one another in various planes of motions.  These joints are masterfully engineered features to our physical abilities.  However, our joints are at risk if they are left unattended.  Similar to an old beat-up door you might find at a dodgy gas station, requiring a shoulder check from an NHL player in order to jolt the door open, our joints can resemble an old, dilapidated structure like the gas station door as well, if neglected.

Our personal training clients seek our services to design custom exercise prescriptions with many goals in mind.  A common goal is to increase strength and decrease pain throughout important parts of the body affected by previous injuries or surgeries.  Joint pain symptoms such as arthritis, limited range of motion, and sensitive post-surgical areas aren’t uncommon reports.  It’s true that exercise helps with joint pain.  Look at what physical therapists have us do after a physician prescribed set of physical therapy sessions.  Usually, a physical therapist will treat the site of injury with three to four small exercises to the affected area along with the application of e-stim, ultrasound, and heat and ice therapy.  Physical therapy sessions can go until insurance hours are up or the area of injury demonstrates it is healing enough to return to normal physical activity.  Usually, following a month of physical therapy, we can return to everyday life with lower pain than what was imposed by the initial mechanism of injury.

If you have an injury bad enough it causes a visit to the physical therapist, chances are that pain is going to come back and send a reminder to not overdo it.  These injured sites might be asking for additional attention from you anywhere from a year to five years down the line.  The physical therapist administers exercises to be done for the longevity of our lives to decrease the likelihood of an injury to come back and haunt us in the future.  These physical therapist prescribed exercises aren’t just homework that needs to be done for the week after therapy is concluded.  These are meant to be implemented regularly for the rest of our lives.  Granted, there are uncontrollable circumstances contributing to exacerbating an injury.  However, performing 10 sets of injury prevention exercises or applying ice to an area one to two times per week is going to significantly decrease the likelihood of that injury returning to elicitin pain on your life with a vengeance.  Plus, it’s not like this physical therapy homework is asking a lot.  The physical therapist isn’t asking you to write a paper on quantum physics.  They simply request that these maintenance exercises be performed for ten minutes at a time and about two to three times per week.

Keeping our body weight at a manageable number will decrease the toll put on the lower back, hips, knees, and feet.  Performing compound lower and upper body resistance training will reinforce joints and keep lubrication consistently flowing around the bones of joints.  These are examples of simple maintenance routines that give past injuries a chance to endure the stresses of life. If we spend devote maintenance time to our body, chances are our bones and joints won’t resemble a graffiti covered door to gas station next to a rest stop on I-5.

Injuries present themselves randomly throughout our lives.  They hurt, slow us down, and can be depressing.  However, we need to offer them attention when parts of body tell us they are in pain.  Following the events of a significant injury, the body may never be the same as it once was.  Just like maintaining the hinges on our doors and drawers around our house, there is a solution to pains in our body.  Pay attention to the joints that might need some refinement and we can live happier, stronger, and healthier 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.

May 19

Thoughtful and Strategic Weight Loss

One the most popular fitness goals among our society is weight loss.  The weight that is measured on the scale is a numerical unit of the amount of force produced on the ground dictated by the overall mass of a body.  This means a combination of our bones, muscles, blood, and visceral organs.  Let’s not forget the star of the show when the term “weight loss” is in on the stage: fat.  These are parts of our bodies that comprise our overall mass.

A visit to our physician’s office usually has a body mass index (BMI) chart describing how tall one is linked to how much one weighs.  This diagram is meant to inform someone if they are overweight and the amount they are above, or below, a healthy weight amongst a group of individuals of the same age, weight, and height.  If we are overweight based on a physician’s parameters, it’s important to link the pieces as to why and what variables may cause this condition.  Once we know the problem, solutions can be proposed to design a plan to achieve a healthy and functional weight.

Muscle and fat are primary components contributing to the number on the scale when we weigh ourselves.  Skeletal muscles are the connective tissues surrounding our bones responsible for making us move, be athletic, and perform daily functions as humans.  This type of tissue is dense with blood and a vast array of cellular components responsible for a sophisticated symphony of neuromuscular engagement as we move throughout our everyday lives.  These various parts of skeletal muscle make up a fair amount of mass reflected on the scale when we weigh ourselves.  The muscle cell’s cousin is the fat cell.  Also referred to as adipose tissue, fat cells are responsible for storing unused sugars and insulating the body’s organs.  They cover more surface in certain areas of the body then our muscles when they get too big; like our armpit region, chest, abdomen, and hips.  Fat cells are larger than muscle cells.  However, there is a significant difference between these two cells when it comes to functioning in our daily lives.

Blood flow throughout our arteries and veins are important facets to the health of our bodies.  Oxygen rich blood fuels the energy systems for cells present in our brain, heart, and visceral organs.  The more functionality our brain, heart, and organs have, the more efficiently and productively our bodies function.   Our skeletal muscles are incredibly vascular with blood coursing through the intricate canals of their cells.  Increased volumes of blood and water within skeletal muscles indicates increase in density.  The skeletal muscle adapts to regular exercise, increasing capillary networks present within the muscle.  Therefore, more lean muscle mass can potentially make an individual weigh more when measuring weight on the scale.

In contrast, skeletal muscle’s polar opposite cousin, the fat cell, isn’t very vascular and doesn’t perform as many demanding tasks.  In fact, they basically stay in one place attached underneath our skin, growing in size if we eat too much junk food, drink too much beer, or park ourselves on the couch and watch streaming shows on Netflix for 20 hours a week.  Fat cells aren’t as vascular and don’t have many intricate networks of blood, motor unit cells, or neurons like skeletal muscle.  Therefore, they don’t weigh as much per unit of space even though they cover more surface area.

It’s noteworthy to keep tabs on our weight records on the scale.  However, be mindful about the body’s composition.  Are you performing resistance training two to three times per week?  Are you limiting copious amounts of alcohol consumption to only 3 glasses per week? Are you staying away from late night eating?  These are topics to consider when managing the balance between fat and muscle in the body.  A sedentary lifestyle with unmonitored dietary decisions will write the blueprint for an overweight body due to an overabundant concentration of fat cells.  Whereas a body with a steady weight in which adequate exercise and regular physical activity is present will result in a balance amount of lean muscle mass to fat content present in the body.  It’s not a bad idea to look at the scale and track our weight.  Just make sure to understand where that weight is coming from and be mindful on managing the pathways that increase or decrease lean muscle mass and fat.

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

May 11

Exercise to focus on yourself

Many daily obligations require our time, emotions, and energy.  Relationships, jobs, and family can easily occupy a substantial number of hours throughout the day.  We all have twenty-four hours in our day.  The revolutionary finance expert Warren Buffett has the same amount of time in his day as an eighteen-year-old associate starting his first job at Target.  The difference is, they both decide to allocate their time throughout their day differently into categories they find important to themselves.  They both spend time, emotions, and physical energy on what makes their days fulfilling.  Warren may want to check his stocks for six hours first thing in the morning and then play racquet ball in his basement for two hours with his friends.  The eighteen-year-old Target associate might want to look at their phone and chat with friends via social media for two hours, followed by stocking shelves at Target for eight hours, and finally end their day with a two-hour course at the Napa College.  Warren and the eighteen-year-old have the same amount of time, they just spend it differently based on what is important to them.  Similar to Mr. Buffet and our eighteen-year-old hard working Target employee, we carefully choose where to spend our hours in a day.

Time demands of our careers, family, and friendships can easily overlap our own ability to fulfill factors we aspire to complete in our everyday lives.  Sometimes, we don’t get to fulfill our own goals throughout the day because we give so much time to other obligations surrounding us.  We need six to eight hours of sleep.   After waking, we usually spend eight to ten hours at our jobs.  Add two hours devoted to our relationships, friends, or children, and we’ve already used sixteen to twenty hours out of the twenty-four hours available.  This leaves us with four to eight hours to focus on other parts of our lives outside of the time we give to work, relationships, and our kids.  If there is only 25 percent of the day remaining, it would be beneficial to spend that remaining time to focus on yourself.  Taking time out to refine our physical, psychological, and emotional well-beings will not only help decrease stress, but make us elite performing individuals for our jobs, spouses, friends, and children.

Many of our personal training clients endure similar issues where they aren’t able to exercise due to obligations in their career and personal lives.  This is where setting appointments to meet for exercise sessions with personal trainers benefits them.  These appointments act as productive disruptions throughout their busy days by setting their phone on silent and carving time out of their core obligations to focus on themselves.  During exercise, they allow themselves to be mindful of their exercise technique, phase out peripheral distractions, and focus on each repetition they are assigned to do.  This focus on performing exercises efficiently and effectively can serve as a form of advanced meditation.  During this mindset, there are very few things that can distract exercise participants from focusing on anything other than themselves.

Making time for yourself to exercise has many benefits.  It might seem counterproductive because the thought of taking time away from our jobs and family priorities might be unproductive.  The various exercise participants we have coached improve their abilities of being a productive employee, an amazing spouse, and a strong-willed parent by adding two to three days per week of exercise to their life.  If we spend too much time focusing on our priorities at our jobs and families, we open up the possibility of diminishing returns.  We might get irritated with our family.  We could have a really bad day at work because we’re fed up with a recurring issue that takes time to resolve.  Exercise not only promotes the body to be strong, injury free, manage pain, and decreases the likelihood of cardiovascular disease, but the results of an adherent exercise program produces a body that can withstand mental, physical, emotional stress.  There are times where your spouse needs you to be that rock to support them during challenging times.  Our children always need an energetic, bright-eyed, bushy tailed parent to be their role model.  Additionally, exercise promotes the management of stress hormones throughout the body.  By inducing a stressful environment via resistance training, yoga classes, or hiking, the body can adapt to the stress we are imposing on it.  This results in our ability to deal with stressful situations in our everyday lives.

Taking time away from our jobs and families seems like the last thing we want to do.  However, if we can shift our mentality to take a little time out to see how we can continue to be a faithful and loving spouse, a diligent and levelheaded employee, and a healthy, strong role model for our children, perhaps we should take some time out of our day to focus on ourselves and give ourselves the gift of 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.

May 01

Fitness and Parenthood

Once we start making waves in our careers and our lives progress past college, a popular next step is to hunker down and start a family.  The times we had to take fitness classes, join a recreational volleyball league, or hit the gym three times per week can quickly fade away due to the obligations of family logistics.  After coming home from a long day of work, the kids are fresh out of school chomping at the bit to be escorted to their baseball or gymnastics practice.  Immediately after practice, it’s time to come home and cook dinner.  So much for taking time out to exercise.

Some of our personal training clients, just entering parenthood, endure similar issues.  Time constraints devoted toward our youngsters’ activities overwhelm the availability to perform the normal fitness routines we were once accustomed to.  Joining a yoga class a few times a week or getting a resistance training session in at the gym right after work can be flooded by parenthood duties.

A solution to this issue is usually directly in front of our eyes when our obligations toward our children supersede our bandwidth to focus on our own fitness goals.  Don’t forget these energetic youngsters will interact and play with any human in front of them.  I can recall when my son was 6 years old. He longed to venture to the park and perform his best howler monkey impression on the monkey bars at a moment’s notice.  Reluctantly, I ventured to the park, bitter I had to miss my normal workout routine I cherished so deeply.   Little did I know, interacting with this supercharged chimpanzee was equally, if not more effective, of an exercise session than my coveted gym workouts.

The visit to the park included repeated climbing up and down stairs of the playground structure as my heart raced and sweat poured from my brow.  Trudging through the park chasing this crazed child fatigued my ankles, knees, and hips far more than that of an inclined treadmill machine.  I also used the same muscles involved in performing pull ups, pushups, and the rowing machines at the gym attempting to reproduce my son’s agile movements across the monkey bars.  After an hour of raucous laughter and chasing each other mindlessly through the labyrinth playground structure, we decided to brandish our baseball mitts and play catch for 10 to 15 minutes.  In playing catch with my son, I got to relieve my days playing outfield on my high school baseball team.  I discovered I had an invigorating cardiovascular reincarnation of my physically active teen years right before me, motivating me to accomplish about as much needed physical activity.

Our normal routines can be disrupted by our obligations as parents.  However, some of the most motivating exercise partners are sitting right next to us as we drive our kids to the park for a session on the monkey bars.  Our kids are bright and energetic beings of brilliant exuberance.  Be resourceful and thrash around with them to maintain your fitness when you feel like you don’t have time 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.

Apr 25

Healthy Eating: Blood Sugar Crashes

“ Sugar is the devil.”  “I avoid sugar like the plague.”  “Sugar is poison to the body.”  To a degree, most of these statements pose a compelling argument.  However, sugar within our bloodstream is critically important toward the nourishment and functions of the vital organs in our body.  If we lack sugars in our blood, our brain, heart, and visceral organs can lose their ability to operate at full capacity.

Have you ever seen a toddler consume copious amounts of Halloween candy after a heavy night of trick or treating?  Boisterous activity, raucous laughter, and ill-advised–     yet comical–     decisions usually ensue shortly after this intake of refined, processed, sugary food products.  After the maelstrom of hyperactive buffoonery ceases, the child usually slows down and becomes lethargic.  With droopy eyes, they will most likely crash into an unconscious realm of peaceful slumber.  This event is commonly identified as a “sugar crash.”

This crash may sound familiar to some of us.  This sugar crash is something most of society deals with on a daily basis.  An influx of sugar in the early parts of our day can lead to a situation similar to the post-Halloween candy coma the toddler endured in the earlier example.      It’s important to understand why these crashes occur after we consume foods high in sugar.  The hormone insulin contributes to chemical reactions in our body that can lead to erratic blood sugar activity that will lead to decreases in energy throughout our days.

Insulin is a potent anabolic hormone.  A hormone is a chemical messenger that gets secreted from endocrine glands in our body.  Each hormone has a specific message it sends to a cell, telling that cell to perform a function.  When we consume foods with high amounts of ultra-concentrated processed sugars, insulin is released into our blood     stream.  The insulin hormone bonds      to cells and with the messages to absorb sugar for immediate energy use.  As insulin is produced, stress hormones such as epinephrine and adrenaline are produced as well.  These stress hormones put the body into a “fight or flight” response, promoting the cells in the body to use energy as soon as possible.  The “fight or flight” response is a mode the body enters when it needs to move right away, such as getting out of danger.  For example,           if you see that you are going to be hit by a car while going through a cross     walk, the body releases the stress hormone adrenaline      giving an extra boost of energy to      get out of danger and      dodge the car.

The body detects simple forms of sugar as fuel that should be used immediately.  The stress hormones released into the body’s muscle and nerve cells relay a message to harness high amounts of blood sugar immediately with the overall mission to enter a “fight or flight” state.  As the body enters “fight or flight”, the goal is to use sugar in the blood to get out of threatening situations.  When the body utilizes these stress hormones in conjunction with insulin, a high number of sugars in the blood     stream are metabolized at one time, leaving a low blood sugar level after large amounts of insulin are secreted.

However, when we are sitting down at our desks enjoying a breakfast sandwich before performing four      hours of desk work, we’re not necessarily in the mode of avoiding danger.  Answering texts, replying to emails, and making phone calls isn’t really a threatening position that needs immediate energy.  The glorious baked bread encasing the breakfast sandwich is a masterfully designed structure of starchy, processed, and simple carbohydrates.  Once that bread is consumed, the body senses these simple sugars as a message to use them immediately for rapid energy release.  Following the digestion of the bread, the secretion of insulin and stress hormones releasing into the blood     stream ensues, shuttling sugar within the blood to be absorbed into cells for energy.  What is left is a decreased supply of sugar and the byproducts      of stress hormones that have been used for immediate energy.  Similar to how we may feel after running up a flight of stairs, the body will be fatigued and lethargic after this high dose of concentrated sugar being consumed.

It’s noteworthy to shed light upon what sugary foods do the body and how they interact with our everyday life activities.  Perhaps we can take some intervening methods to manage the amount of processed sugars we eat throughout the day.  Take some time to figure out what foods are around you that might have processed, refined sugars in them and replace those foods with natural occurring sugars such as fruits, veggies, and lean protein sources.

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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