Apr 22

The Art of Putting Socks On

They cover our feet.  They prevent blisters.  We even make an extra effort to wear the type that have      cute cats on them.  These soft, warm, protective layers of woven cloth are the next most worn object on our bodies, aside from underwear.  We are talking about the trusty pair of socks that envelop feet.  Socks are a compelling subject that shed light upon improving the lifetime fitness of our community.

Socks attach to an important part of our bodies:      our feet.  The action of putting socks on keeps us fit enough for everyday life activities.  Bending over to pick up objects from the ground requires      a certain amount of flexibility, strength, and coordination.     Without the strength to bend over and get back up, life can become challenging.

Enter the world of being an elite performer in the “professional sock league.”  A sport in which the general population in our society must have an efficient and effective performance of attaching socks to their feet.  In a seated position, putting a sock on generally requires the participant to cross their leg over the top of the other upright leg, hinge forward from the hips, and reach out in front toward the foot to encase the foot.  This tactic requires precision, using the dexterity of the hands and fingers to flatten out any imperfections in the landscape of the sock so it contours in a sleek and flawless fashion along the foot.  This action seems like something that shouldn’t be thought twice about.  In some cases, flexibility can be hindered significantly to where the thought of putting socks on is just as frustrating as driving on a one-way road behind a car that has a sloth as the driver.  These obstacles affecting the ability to put one’s socks on lead      to potential struggles in being able to reach down to the ground and perform normal everyday activities.

The usual suspects of symptoms that impede an optimal performance to pick up objects are back pain;      muscle weakness;      and limited joint mobility in the shoulders, back, hips, and knees.  These symptoms could be caused by previous back injuries, remnants of scar tissue caused by previous corrective surgeries, or inadequate levels of fitness.  We should be able to bend down to pick objects up off the ground competently throughout our everyday lives efficiently and pain free.  A productive way we can continue to bend down to the ground comfortably is to ensure we can put our socks on without complications.  The ability to manipulate our body to bend forward toward the feet is a critically important function to our quality of life.  Here are a few recommendations we give to our      personal training clients that help with the ability to put on socks everyday:

  1. Seated Upright Pigeon Stretch: While sitting in an upright position facing forward, cross one leg over the top of the other.  Gently press down with your hand on the inside of the knee that is crossed over the upright leg.  Apply gentle pressure downward until a slight stretching sensation is felt in the crossed leg’s buttocks and lateral hip region.  Ensure that the head is in optimal position by lining the back of the head up with the spine.  Hold this stretch anywhere from thirty      seconds to three      minutes to help with hip flexibility when bending forward.
  2. Seated Good Morning Exercise: While sitting in an upright position facing forward, ensure the back of the head is in line with the spine.  Maintaining a rigid back, “hinge” forward from the axis of the hip joint and move the torso forward as far as possible until a stretching sensation is experienced      in the hamstrings.  While maintaining the rigidity in the back and preventing any back flexion, return the back to an upright seated position.  This movement will assist in the utilization of the hip muscles responsible for strength and coordination when bending down.  Repeat this movement for ten      reps once a day.
  3. Put your socks on standing up: This is for those who want more of a challenge to improve their balance and coordination.  Forget sitting down and putting your socks on.  Bend down from a standing position, pick your foot up, and put the sock over your foot from a standing position.  The ability to stand on one leg and put a sock on is commonly overlooked as an elite fitness ability.  This can serve as a productive measure to maintain balance, coordination, and flexibility.

The act of putting socks on can be commonly overlooked.  Asking someone how well they can put their socks on can seem like a silly joke.  However, once that ability goes away, due to the various obstacles our bodies can endure from injuries and events in life, it’s quite a task to get back.  Make sure to spend a little extra time on your flexibility, coordination, and strength when bending forward.  Tracking your performance on how efficiently you can put on your socks is a good marker to see what you might need to improve on to ensure you can bend up and 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.

Apr 08

Posture and Cell Phones

Last week I paid a visit to La Taquiza, my favorite Mexican restaurant in Napa.  Their fish tacos and shrimp burritos remind me of eating fresh sea food by the beach in San Diego.  After a successful work week and a days’ worth of playing pickleball for 6 hours, I felt I could celebrate by venturing out to one of my favorite restaurants.

As I waited in line outside the restaurant in respects to the social distancing guidelines the restaurant enforced, I noticed a gentleman sitting down at the tables just outside the neighboring Starbucks.  He was enjoying a frosty coffee milkshake beverage and watching a video on his phone with the audio turned up loud enough to hear from my location about 15 yards away.  He sat slouched in his chair, head peering down to the phone in his lap.  His body slumped in the chair resembling a long piece of flimsy PVC pipe leaning against a wall at a 45-degree angle.  His feet projected out in front of him, knees extended, with his hips positioned right before the edge of the chair.  If his hips slid down any further, his butt would slide right off the chair forcing him to plummet to the ground.  The way he was sitting allowed his shoulders to slide down the backrest of the chair.  As his shoulders drooped down, his head was flexed forward at the neck about 45 degrees.  His body reminded me of the shape of a candy cane.

Optimal posture for a healthy functioning human requires our neck, spine, hips, knees, and ankles to be in proper alignment.  We recommend a cue to our personal training clients to help ensure the spine is aligned by visualizing the body from a side profile.  Draw a straight line downward bisecting the ears, arm pit, through the ribs, to the hips, then down to the knees, and finally ending at the ankles.  Maintaining this line that bisects these critical reference points while standing will put an emphasis on upright, strong, and reinforced spinal alignment.   Reminding ourselves to stand up straight will decrease the likelihood of injury, back pain, and hindered mobility.

What happens when we deviate from adequate posture and bend our bodies in a candy cane-like shape while peering downward at our phones for hours?  The neck stays flexed forward for prolonged periods, putting compressive forces on the bones of the neck as the cervical vertebrae scrunch together.  The seated position of the hips slouching forward while the knees are extended puts stress on the lower back near the lumbar and sacral vertebral junction point.  This suboptimal posture underutilizes the stabilizing muscles responsible for keeping the spine rigid and vertical.

A simple solution is to visualize the body from a side profile and line your neck, armpits, ribs, hips, knees, and ankles in a straight line.  Instead of peering down at your phone in a seated position, look at the phone while standing.  Additionally, use your arms to bring the phone up to eye level to prevent your neck from bending forward.  This horizontal line of vision from your eyes to your cell phone screen helps avoid factors that can lead to neck, shoulder blade, and low back pain.  Applying this simple tactic can save your neck and reinforce your posture to keep your spine from getting injured.

Not only is it important to remind ourselves to view our phones in an ergonomically correct body position, but it’s also noteworthy to notice the time we spend on the phone.  Do we need to look at our phones all the time?  There was a time where we only used phones for talking.  Now, we can’t go anywhere without brandishing our fancy phones from our pockets and looking at them.  Granted, they do offer us important advantages to our daily activities.  However, if we’re outside, put the phone down and enjoy the outdoors.  It will always be in your pocket or purse ready for you to interact with in your down time.  In the meantime, when you’re out and about outdoors, practice optimal posture by looking forward while standing up to reinforce your spine.

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

Apr 01

Exercise is an anti-depressant

“It gives you those positive endorphin things,” Mara explained after conducting her monthly fitness check-in.  An effective question we ask our clients after a 4-week period of regular exercise is, “What results have you experienced from this previous 4-week exercise phase?”  Our team of coaches knows to gather this information following a 4-week period of exercises from every client.  After interviewing Mara on what specific result she experienced, she explained that exercise is her “natural anti-depressant.”  Performing physical activity, attending Yoga classes, and personal training appointments proved to be just as potent of an anti-anxiety medication than a months’ worth of Zoloft.  The immediate sensation of feeling accomplished, rejuvenated, and proud of oneself after completing a challenging exercise session is a feeling that can’t be derived from a physician prescribed bottle of pills.

In an era where anxiety and depression circulate our climate like early morning fog, it’s easy to get emotionally overwhelmed.  The most groundbreaking news of the next country-wide economic struggle, intense political battles, or the latest natural disaster threatening humanity’s existence is available to view and listen immediately at the base of our fingertips.  25 years ago, the only way we could observe such events was by reading the newspaper headlines or by watching the 5 o’clock news on television in our living rooms.  Nowadays, our cell phones deliver this psychologically stimulating emotional content just as rapidly as a saline solution traveling through an IV stand hooked up to our bloodstream.   Additionally, cell phones don’t just simply turn off.  Nestled safely in our pockets or 6 inches away from our bodies on the arm of our couch or table while we’re out to lunch, cell phones are designed to stay on for 12 hours while.  Years ago, we at least made a habit to turn our electronic devices off while at the dinner table and before we went to bed. As technology has progressed to stimulate our ability to seek content from our phones, our stress levels have escalated as well.  It’s no surprise there is a correlation to increased stress in society with an increase in physician prescribed anti-depressant medication.

Let’s switch gears and delve deeper into the components our body endures during an average exercise session.  As we put our bodies through challenging movements, we begin to breath a little heavier.  Holding downward facing dog or performing a plank draws blood to working muscles, influencing our lungs to gather more oxygen to replenish our blood.  Additionally, our heart starts to pump a little harder.  We also feel a slight sensation of discomfort in our muscles as they fatigue and slightly tremble due to the increased workload exercise imposes on them.  These are natural functions of the body brought about by physical stress.  This type of physiological feedback sends out chemical messengers through the blood called stress hormones so the body can operate in a “fight or flight” mechanism.  This “fight or flight” mode allows the body to perform intense movements to overcome challenging tasks imposed during exercise sessions.  Stress hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine are released during exercise to stimulate the body to open blood vessels and offer a boost in our energy to be able to perform strenuous activity throughout the exercise session.

One might think such stress hormones are harmful to our psychological and emotional wellbeing.  To a degree, stress hormones are suboptimal toward our quality of life when in a non-exercise setting.  Experiencing stressful news, our hearts races, we might breathe a little heavier, or we could break out in a sweat because we are in an alarmed mindset.  However, this type of stress is produced from an extrinsic source that affects our psychological wellbeing.  In contrast, the stress imposed via exercise is incredibly productive to our physical well being during exercise.  Stress hormones are secreted during exercise to assist the body in utilizing calories as a fuel source during exercise.  More importantly, if we utilize these hormones during exercise, there will be less free-floating stress hormones circulating throughout our blood at the conclusion of an exercise session.  Therefore, the next time we see or hear about the latest calamity the news or social media has to offer us, the likelihood of our heart racing, feeling lightheaded, and catastrophizing over an anxiety inducing event can be significantly decreased because our bodies can manage stress hormones more efficiently.  By physically training the body to endure stress, the body will adapt to efficiently managing how extrinsic stressful events affect our quality of life.

Perhaps those “endorphin things” Mara explained was actually the body’s sensation of how the absence of stress and anxiety felt.  Maybe there weren’t any endorphins at all, and Mara felt the burdens of worry, loss of control, and anxiety lift from her shoulders because she did something amazing for her body by exercising regularly.  Take a few moments for yourself.   Place the phone more than 30 yards away from your grasp and offer yourself the gift of exercise.  By freeing your body of the stresses that envelop our everyday lives and prescribing some exercise to yourself, you may not need to make that trip to the pharmacy to pick up anti-depressants.

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

Mar 24

A Reminder for Sunny Day Physical Activities

Following the winter solstice a few months ago, we have the privilege to look forward to our longer hours of daylight.  We get to experience the sun illuminating the ground sooner in the day and observe the sunset descends below the horizon later in the evening.  Daylight savings time is a few days away.  The brighter days influence our minds and bodies to interact at a higher rate in our everyday activities.  Similar to the California golden poppy when It sees the sun, we open up and take in the sun just like how poppies unveil their orange petals to the early March sunshine.  More sun in the sky usually equals getting more things accomplished.  The better lit conditions offer us an opportunity to get outside to accomplish projects, participate in recreational sports, and peruse some of the amazing hiking trails in the Napa Valley.

Sunnier mornings mean we can take advantage of some early morning walks.  The thirty-degree mornings are soon to be behind us, presenting us an opportunity to get a walk around the block before 8 AM.  The ability to see the sky and the hills surrounding our valley along with the chirps of songbirds stimulates our minds.  Not only will a walk get our bodies upright and moving before a day full of tasks, but this also might be precisely what the doctor ordered to de-stress and unwind from additional stressors in our lives.  A morning walk in celebration of the longer, brighter days serves as a perfect catalyst to approach the rest of the day with a sharp and clear mind.

Photosynthesis is going to be a popular trend to be a part of if you were a wildflower this upcoming season.  The various hiking trails in Napa are home to a multitude of wildflowers showcasing their vibrant colors as the sun offers them warmth and light.  The poppies, mustards, and blue bonnets grow rampant on the perimeter of Napa Valley’s hiking trails.  Hiking is a productive activity for the body’s cardiovascular and muscular system.  Inclined walking increases heartrates responses while decreasing the likelihood of injury.  If jogging isn’t in the cards for you, hiking is an optimal alternative as the demand to walk up hill decease percussive forces on joints while still productively stressing the cardiovascular system and muscles of the lower extremities.  Take advantage of the well-lit mornings and avoid the masses of people during peak times by embracing a sunrise hike along the wildflowers.

The days just past the mark of daylight savings time are an opportunistic time to engage in recreational physical activity.  Playing catch with your kids, throwing a frisbee with your friends, or learning about how fun and healthy endless hours of Pickleball is ripe for the picking in this phenomenal Napa spring climate.  The best part of participating in regular physical activity is that we do activities we don’t normally engage in.  Sometimes, we go years without throwing a ball, swinging a racket, or kicking a soccer ball.  Dynamic movements involved in recreational sports produce movements in the body that engage actions of balance, coordination, and endurance.  Additionally, when playing catch, the stresses of life become a distant whisper because you focus on yourself during this short period away from society.  The cell phones get put away, the televisions turn off, and the banter about the next crisis in society is hushed up as you play around. It’s critical toward our lifetime fitness to regularly participate in a safe and fun recreational physical activity.

The longer lasting sunny days offer us the chance to dive back into outdoor activities.  Once we get involved in a project outside, it’s a challenge to get back inside.   This isn’t a bad problem to have if you’ve been cooped up inside due to the cold, gloomy, dark winter. The inside of your home is easier to get to than the outdoors.  Your sofa, TV, and cell phone will likely still be there when you return from an outdoor activity.  Activity under the sun in Napa is one of the best supplements we can add to our fitness routine.  Take advantage of this beautiful time of year by getting outside and playing around in the daylight to support your mind, body, and soul.

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

Mar 11

Nutrition: Am I eating enough food?

Balancing the scale of weight loss and improving fitness can be tricky.  Losing weight seems to be a priority in most individual’s fitness goals when first entering a fitness routine to improve their health.  The focus on decreasing the number the scale represents is commonly associated with an individual’s ability to restrict how many calories are consumed.  Calorie restriction is a useful technique.  However, limiting food is a minor component to refine our fitness and quality of life.  It’s noteworthy to address how much food we are eating and not necessarily the amount of food we are avoiding.

Maintaining lean muscle mass is critical to strength, injury prevention, balance, and living a productive life.  Skeletal muscle is defined as the muscles that attaches to bones and moves them in various planes of motion.  The term lean muscle mass refers to the concentration of skeletal muscle in our bodies.  The amount of muscle cells within each muscle, the muscular blood vessels ability to harness oxygen for energy, and the nerve to muscle communication dictates the functional quality of lean muscle mass.  If muscles lack physical tone, strength, endurance, and the ability to perform fine motor movements, this indicates suboptimal musculature.

In contrast, an optimal status of lean muscle mass elicits sufficient strength, adequate muscular endurance, and coordinated abilities to execute fine motor movement, achieve balance, an avoid injury.  Therefore, the muscular architecture of our skeletal muscle is essential to an effective fitness journey.  The development and upkeep of lean muscle mass is produced via an effective training program and plenty of physical activity.  In order to appreciate the development of lean muscle mass, we not only need to train efficiently and effectively, but we also need to ensure we are consuming enough food responsible for upholding the framework of our lean muscle mass.

Protein and carbohydrates are critical component to lean muscle mass synthesis.  Protein acts as the building blocks that lay the framework of the skeletal muscles sorrounding our bones.  Carbohydrates produce energy for muscle to grab onto free floating protein in the bloodstream and attach them to sites of muscle that needing repair.  This combination of substrates is exceptionally potent when muscle has been stressed after a physically exhausting bout of activity, such as a workout routine.

Muscles use carbohydrates as fuel throughout workouts to activate muscles and move bones throughout exercise.  Protein is also used as fuel throughout workouts after carbohydrates and fat have been utilized as energy.  This is important to know because without a source of protein before exercise, the body will breakdown the muscle in the skeletal muscle converting the muscle cell to protein so it can then be used as a calorie source of energy.  This process of protein breakdown within the muscle cell can cause more stress to the muscle than the exercise session is currently imposing.

Following exercise, protein attaches to stressed sites of muscle induced via exercise to resynthesize muscle to match the demand that strenuous exercise and physical activity imposed on the body.  Therefore, carbohydrate and protein are critical for lean muscle mass development when performing regular exercise.

This explanation sheds light upon how the body uses calories throughout exercise and after exercise.  The take home message is to ensure the body has a sufficient amount of protein and carbohydrate source before and after workout sessions to support optimal lean muscle mass.  The more lean muscle concentration on the body, the less fat mass the body will have.  The scale might reflect the weight of the body hasn’t decreased when lean muscle mass has been developed, but that’s because muscle cells are denser than fat cells.  There is more water and blood within muscle cells than in fat cells. Therefore, eating before and after exercise sessions is a good thing.  Not only is it recommended to eat before and after workouts, but consumption of a healthy form of carbohydrate and protein is critical for lean muscle mass development and fat reduction.  Make sure to consume enough food surrounding your workouts outs.  A body that has sufficient musculature will burn more unwanted fat and function properly to help us improve our overall quality of 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.

Mar 08

Keep Exercise Routines from Getting Stale

Having time on your hands after a long career and a slew of grandkids can be a blessing.  However, after those years of working hard are over, the mind can become complacent.  Who needs exercises anyway?  Perhaps you’ve proven that after a successful 40 plus year career without injury or illness, you know what you’re doing.  With the advancement of age and a decrease in physical activity comes a plethora of probabilities to injuries and health maladies.   Maintaining a healthy regular routine of exercise improves our quality of life mentally, physically, and psychologically.  So, how can we start a routine after our working years have reached the finish line?  For some, this might be a foreign position where a sense of direction could be useful when choosing an exercise routine.  Here are a few key tips we give to our personal training clients who find themselves in a “where should I start?” moment at this point in their lives.

Choose a routine with no more than 3 exercises to start.  Additionally, to save time and get the most out of your exercise routines, choose compound exercises.  These are exercises that cover a wide group of muscles crossing multiple joints.  The squat exercise utilizes the hamstring, quadriceps, and glutes.  A push up engages the pecs, deltoids, pectorals.  The simple and effective plank covers almost all the muscles along the anterior portion of the body.  To achieve a benefit from these 3 exercises, you only need to perform one set of them once before your day starts.  Just 10 repetitions of the squat and push up along with 20 seconds of the plank can give you the muscle strengthening and injury prevention benefits needed to improve your life.

Pick a form of exercise you enjoy.  If you are retired with a set of grandkids, why would you want to engage in an exercise routine that resembles a military issued standard operating procedure?  Activities that are easy to look forward to are more likely to be achieved than a list of chores.  Do you detest crunches, aerobic step classes, or a 30-minute workout videos?  Then you should probably stop doing them.  While these forms of exercise may resonate with others, fitness is not a cookie cutter solution.  Adherence and consistency are to key components to a successful lifetime fitness journey.  Activities that are exciting and enjoyable significantly enhance the ability to keep the body in a rhythm of exercise for a long time.

Pick simple and effective exercises.  I have a friend in the advanced age population named Tyson who works his butt off around his homestead.  Plowing the yard, touching up the paint around the house, and pulling weeds in his garden is an everyday activity he does from when the rooster crows at the break of down until the owls come out to hunt mice at night fall.  He is in fantastic shape for his age.  When thinking about fitness routines to refine Tyson’s lifestyle, there is some pertinent information that needs to be gathered before offering exercise advice.  Would it be helpful to present a routine that lasts 60 minutes requiring him to perform 3 times per week?  Knowing Tyson, this routine would be thrown in the trash faster than a hummingbird’s heartbeat.  Tyson is pretty set in his ways and know what he wants to do, when he wants to do it.  However, Tyson could benefit from a simple, effective, and time efficient routine that would improve his performance in the upkeep of his projects that he holds so dear.  What would help Tyson have more energy?  What would fend off back, knee, and hip injuries that could impede Tyson’s work?  How could Tyson get theses exercise done without getting bored?

If I asked Tyson to perform this routine before he hammered out his physically active projects to complete those projects sooner, he might accept the invitation to do so.   What’s in it for him?  A structural sound, durable, high performing body that will get his homestead looking sharp.   He could finish this routine in less than 2 minutes.  After he sees that he can still get what he wants accomplished pain free while having increased energy, it might not sound that bad to a retiree with more time on his hands to do.  In fact, a routine as simple as 20 movements and holding a plank for 20 seconds could be permanently inserted to become an important part of his lifestyle.

If you don’t know where to start and are of older demographic, choose exercises that are simple and effective.  Start with a very modest number of repetitions to ensure you can receive the benefits exercise offers to improve our lives for years to come.

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

Feb 15

Ankles, Squats, and Balance

Training to improve balance is commonly overlooked.  Strong core, running, and getting steps in to fill activity rings in your favorite wearable technology are popular topics to talk about.  However, presentations of imbalance pose a serious threat to populations living with previous injuries, decreased fitness levels, and advanced age.  Deficiencies in the ability to maintain balance introduces detrimental possibilities to our health including risk of falling.

A learning objective we focus on for our beginning personal training clients is to teach them to appreciate how to utilize strength and power through the ankles, knees, and hips.  In particular, when performing squatting exercises.  Our coaches assess the squat effectiveness of the client’s squat performance by noting the performance their feet and ankles throughout the movement.  Are the heels lifting off the ground?  Do the arches o the feet collapse inward?  Is the exercises participant on the balls of their feet?  Each of these observations demonstrate a technique flaw when performing squatting exercises.  This indication of deficiencies in coordination while performing squat exercises serve as factors contributing to limited mobility, back, hip and knee pain, and decreased control of balance.

Force produced from the feet travels to the knees and ultimately travels to the powerful hip joints.  It’s noteworthy to understand the ankles, knee, and hips are interconnected when it comes to having strong, injury free, and coordinated lower extremities.  An inward collapse of the arches of the feet lead to inward collapse of the knees.  This suboptimal deviation to the tracking of the knees impedes the ability for the strong rotational muscles of the hips from engaging properly.  A decrease in muscular engagements induces impediments to balance and strength.  This contributes to arthritis and a a multitude of mechanisms of injuries including falls.  Decreases in strength lead to underuse of the lower extremity joints.

Fortunately, the understanding how to properly perform a squat can significantly improve the muscles of the ankles, knees, and hips.  Improving the structural integrity of these joints significantly reduce pain, risk of injury, and the likelihood of tripping and falling.

Imagine our hip joints with the various muscles of the glutes, hamstrings, adductors, abductors, and quadriceps attached to it.  Now, think about a docked ship at a boat yard.  The nautical rope attached from the boat to the strong post at the shore is wound up tightly in a strong knot.  This causes enough rotational torque to allow tightness around the post preventing the ship from drifting away.  Our hip bones and muscular attachment are similar.

As our feet create force into the ground, our knees are allowed to extend.   The muscles attached to the knee activate as well, similar to the tension that is on the rope holding the boat from veering off to the sea.  More importantly, the isometric points where the ropes are attached to the pole at the shore is similar to the various rotary muscles attach to our hip bones.  The more torque we can produce from our feet to our hips allow us to keep our hips underneath our torso to have a strong center of gravity.  Without rotational force from our feet traveling up to our knees and eventually our hips, our hips will get “lost at sea” like a boat with a weak attachment point to the shore.

We can’t have a reinforced posture if our hips are not aligned under our torso.  Therefore, it is beneficial for our functionality to use the muscles that bring the hips underneath the torso to push them forward while standing.  Going back to our boat example, if the attachment point of the nautical rope from shore to the boat isn’t strong enough, the rope unravels, and we can farewell to our ship as it drift off to sea.  By creating power from our feet, knees, and hip muscles, our hips won’t be in a suboptimal position.  If our hips aren’t engaged by creating torque from the ankle, knees, and hip insertions points, our hips become loose and fall backwards.

It is critically important to have strong ankles, knees, and hips.  If not, the body will lose control and crumple over.  Boats need a significant amount of reinforcement to hold them ashore.  Our hips need similar reinforcement to stay underneath our torso to create a strong center of gravity and maintain our structural integrity.

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

Feb 02

Post Retirement Fitness Routine

Having time on your hands after a long career and a slew of grandkids can be a blessing.  However, after those years of working hard are over, the mind can become complacent.  Who needs exercises anyway?  Perhaps you’ve proven that after a successful 40 plus year career without injury or illness, you know what you’re doing.  With the advancement of age and a decrease in physical activity comes a plethora of probabilities to injuries and health maladies.   Maintaining a healthy regular routine of exercise improves our quality of life mentally, physically, and psychologically.  So, how can we start a routine after our working years have reached the finish line?  For some, this might be a foreign position where a sense of direction could be useful when choosing an exercise routine.  Here are a few key tips we give to our personal training clients who find themselves in a “where should I start?” moment at this point in their lives.

Choose a routine with no more than 3 exercises to start.  Additionally, to save time and get the most out of your exercise routines, choose compound exercises.  These are exercises that cover a wide group of muscles crossing multiple joints.  The squat exercise utilizes the hamstring, quadriceps, and glutes.  A push up engages the pecs, deltoids, pectorals.  The simple and effective plank covers almost all the muscles along the anterior portion of the body.  To achieve a benefit from these 3 exercises, you only need to perform one set of them once before your day starts.  Just 10 repetitions of the squat and push up along with 20 seconds of the plank can give you the muscle strengthening and injury prevention benefits needed to improve your life.

Pick a form of exercise you enjoy.  If you are retired with a set of grandkids, why would you want to engage in an exercise routine that resembles a military issued standard operating procedure?  Activities that are easy to look forward to are more likely to be achieved than a list of chores.  Do you detest crunches, aerobic step classes, or a 30-minute workout videos?  Then you should probably stop doing them.  While these forms of exercise may resonate with others, fitness is not a cookie cutter solution.  Adherence and consistency are to key components to a successful lifetime fitness journey.  Activities that are exciting and enjoyable significantly enhance the ability to keep the body in a rhythm of exercise for a long time.

Pick simple and effective exercises.  I have a friend in the advanced age population named Tyson who works his butt off around his homestead.  Plowing the yard, touching up the paint around the house, and pulling weeds in his garden is an everyday activity he does from when the rooster crows at the break of down until the owls come out to hunt mice at night fall.  He is in fantastic shape for his age.  When thinking about fitness routines to refine Tyson’s lifestyle, there is some pertinent information that needs to be gathered before offering exercise advice.  Would it be helpful to present a routine that lasts 60 minutes requiring him to perform 3 times per week?  Knowing Tyson, this routine would be thrown in the trash faster than a hummingbird’s heartbeat.  Tyson is pretty set in his ways and know what he wants to do, when he wants to do it.  However, Tyson could benefit from a simple, effective, and time efficient routine that would improve his performance in the upkeep of his projects that he holds so dear.  What would help Tyson have more energy?  What would fend off back, knee, and hip injuries that could impede Tyson’s work?  How could Tyson get theses exercise done without getting bored?

If I asked Tyson to perform this routine before he hammered out his physically active projects to complete those projects sooner, he might accept the invitation to do so.   What’s in it for him?  A structural sound, durable, high performing body that will get his homestead looking sharp.   He could finish this routine in less than 2 minutes.  After he sees that he can still get what he wants accomplished pain free while having increased energy, it might not sound that bad to a retiree with more time on his hands to do.  In fact, a routine as simple as 20 movements and holding a plank for 20 seconds could be permanently inserted to become an important part of his lifestyle.

If you don’t know where to start and are of older demographic, choose exercises that are simple and effective.  Start with a very modest number of repetitions to ensure you can receive the benefits exercise offers to improve our lives for years to come.

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

Jan 27

Rainy Day Exercise

Our glorious holiday season has wrapped up as December shifts to the beginning of January.  Historically, January offers grey and cloudy skies.  Peering out the window, we aren’t granted the bright blue sky and warm days we get in spring and summer.  The cold, foggy morning brings us consistent bouts of rain.  Bleak wet environments are the most desirable to venture outside to for most humans.  As these conditions repeat for a series of days, our outlook on the world can drop along with the temperature of this chilly, grey season.

Staying indoor can trigger harboring of emotions.  Similar to when we get outside to move around and get some sunshine to put a smile on our face, lack of movement can stress us out, make us mopey, and influence a negative outlook on our days.  Being cooped up inside can put our thoughts, feelings, and emotions in a hazy realm where we can muster over recurring thoughts.  If we could only have a warm sunny day to go out for a hike, frolicking in the garden, or walk our dogs without getting drenched.  Unfortunately, with wet gray, gloomy days, these activities aren’t so enticing.  Additionally, if the body doesn’t move, our physical activity becomes stagnant, yet the mind still wanders.  Along with the cold gloomy days and lack of movement, our minds can match this environment to produce cold and gloomy thoughts.

Fortunately, the human body is an amazing organism capable of adapting demotivating and psychological immobilizing environments.  By exercising, the body produces amazing adaptations to counter the lack of sunlight brought to us by the early January climate.  Regular exercise promotes mood enhancing endorphins and offers a sense of accomplishment at the conclusion to bouts of regular exercise as a gift to the body.  Alongside the physiological adaptation of gaining strength, improving balance, and managing calorie intake, exercise also serves as an advanced form of meditation.  Outside of exercise, there aren’t many instances in which time is devoted specifically to our ourselves where our busy minds get put on hold so we can tend to ourselves.  Additionally, exercises promotes the ability for our bodies to get a better night’s sleep.  Therefore, while it’s January is blowing its cold air on us, we can at least get some much-needed sleep and be happy and fit for the sunny days in the future.  The solution to depressing outdoor cold weather is exercising.  So why not get some exercise indoors where the climate is well lit, dry, and warm.

Some simple exercises we recommend to our personal training clients to do indoors are squats, planks, and pushups.  Here are some instructions on how to do execute them:

Zombie Squat:  We call this exercise a zombie squat because we instruct clients to keep their hands out in front of them as they were a zombie from Night of the Living Dead.  To perform, extend hands out in front of the body to where the hand is elevated below the collar bones.  While keeping the chest and head upright, point the toes forward and sit your hips down and back until you feel a brief stretch in the glute and hip flexor region.  Ensure to keep the pressure on the heels.  Pay special attention to ensuring the heels don’t come off the ground or to let the arches of the feet collapse in.  Repeat for 3 sets of 5-10 repetitions.

Straight Arm Plank:  Position your body face down while on your knees.  Straighten the arms our so your elbows are extended, and you are posting on your arms.  With the core tight, straighten your legs out and hold this position for 15-30 seconds.  Be mindful not to let the lower back sag like a rickety bridge from the Indiana Jones movie.  Perform 3 sets of this movement.

Push Up:  With the same starting position that you had from the plank, lower your body to where the elbows just cross the border of the back of the body, then push the body up to the straight arm plank position.  Ensure that the knees stay extended.  Avoid injuries to the shoulder by decreasing the amount elevation traveled toward the ground.  If there are sensations of pinching, uncomfortable pain, go with the less is more principle.  Decrease the amount of movement traveled by descending a quarter of the way to the ground.  Once you feel comfortable with your strength, perhaps you can progress by increasing the amount of distance traveled downward on each push up movement.  This movement can also be done from an inclined surface to modify the difficulty level.  Repeat this movement for 5-10 repetitions for 3 sets.

The body is capable of reversing the quintessential raining day blues.  All we need is ourselves, the ground, and few minutes to move.  Pick a few indoor exercises that can be completed indoor.  Get the body prepared for the sunny days so we can soak in the sun and be active.

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

Jan 11

Posture Makes Perfect

“Is there anything you can do to help this pain in my neck.”  This is a common request that comes from our newer personal training clients just starting one of our exercise prescriptions.  This comment is usually paired with the participant turning around and showing me the spot that hurts.  As they struggle to reach their hand back to indicate where the pain is originating from, they turn around and offer me a final eyebrow furrowing grimace of disapproval to the way their body is acting.

We see the goal of “reducing neck and back pain in” often in our initial interviews with beginning personal training clients.  These symptoms usually come from people with a profession requiring multiple hours of sitting and looking down at objects.  In particular, phones and computers.  Doctors, therapists, and teachers look at files, papers, and charts all day.  Accountants, executives, and administrative assistants answer emails and enter data in a seated position for hours at a time.  Dental assistant, nail salon technicians, and optometrists look at one myopic object and use their tiny tools in their craft.   Activities in these lines of work lead to suboptimal posture.

Looking at objects for a long period of time stimulates standing in in a drooped over position with a neck that resembles a candy cane’s shape.  Shoulder posture is usually overlooked as they begin to hunch forward resembling some of the zombies on Michael Jackson’s thriller music video.  Sitting for hours in a chair puts compressive forces on one of the most common sites of injury in the lower back by the lumber and sacral vertebrae.  Sometimes the problem doesn’t lie within the compression of the joints.  In most cases, the underuse of the structural muscles that hold us upright in optimal alignment is the issue we should pay the most attention to.

Fortunately, if you are a human these solutions can be remedied without the use of surgery, pain medication, or a “hocus pocus” impulse purchase over social media to cure all the pain in the universe.  Our muscular system which encompasses every bone in our skeleton is a masterpiece of architecture designed to hold us upright and manage the multitude of physical stresses we face in our everyday lives.  In particular, the threat of poor posture.  A foundational theme that we always teach our newer personal training clients is the importance of strengthening the muscles that attach to the shoulder blade, or scapula.  Acting as a key stone to the highway of muscles that attach to and intersect the upper back and shoulder joint, the scapula has anchor points on the top, right and left sides, in the middle, underneath, and at the bottom.  The various muscles originate from other critically important locations in the body assisting in reinforcing the structural integrity of the torso and cranium.   The latissimus dorsi originates at the lower back and attaches to the lateral portion of the scapula and humerus.  The trapezius is a large, inverted rhombus shaped muscle with multiple attachment points to the from the spine, rib cage, scapula and humerus.  The subscapularis muscle is a muscle located underneath the scapula responsible for reinforcing the rotator cuff of the shoulder. The lower back, ribs, rotator cuff, upper back, and neck vertebrae are just a few noteworthy sites that are reinforced by the muscles of scapular stabilization.  Therefore, it’s critically important to focus on the health and activity of these muscle groups to evade nagging neck, shoulder, and lower back injuries.

We don’t need an anatomy lesson on what holds what together.  However, understanding the importance of the muscles around the scapula helps us to appreciate how critical this is to our livelihood.  A cue we teach our new personal training clients is to “park the shoulder blades.”  We instruct clients to pull their shoulder blades downward as if they are performing the antithesis of a shrugging motion.  Simultaneously, we cue the retraction of the shoulder blades which means to pull the shoulder blades inward toward the spine.  The combination of these two movements activate the muscles responsible for keeping our body in proper alignment and reinforce optimal posture throughout the day.

An issue we have in our everyday jobs that pose a threat to the integrity of our posture is that we simply forget.  Who is going to remember to “park their shoulder blades” for 8-10 hours a day?  I teach people to this movement for 40 hours a week and I forget.  However, adherence to exercise is something that we can more easily manage.  Take some time throughout the week and spend special attention on the muscles attached to the shoulder blade.  If we can exercise 2-3 times a week and strengthen the muscles of scapular stabilization, we can alleviate the many problems associated with neck and shoulder pain.

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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