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.

Dec 28

Can Exercise Help With Stress?

We are living in a period where we are literally being depressed.  There are few definitions of the word “depress” when used as a verb.  Let’s look at 2 of these terms.  The first definition found on Google: “Make someone feel utterly dispirited or rejected.”  A second definition: “Reduce speed or activity in something.”

Living in the currency of the situation during the COVID-19 saga, I’m sure some of us can related to this feeling.  Perhaps we are forced to work from home when our normal jobs required us to get ourselves ready for the day and travel to an office.   Grocery store visits are more challenging due to bigger lines, longer checkouts, and having to avoid other shoppers.  Most importantly, due to quarantine restrictions and rules, we simply don’t leave our homes as much.  The normal activities we do have slowed down.  These situations can lead to feeling of having one’s spirit broken.

Exercise has been repeatedly proven to help with these feeling of depression.  Various studies show the physiological results of increased dopamine and serotonin.  Along with these hormones that brighten your mood, exercise helps manage stress hormones, such as cortisol.  Anti-anxiety medication can also be a productive enhancement to managing depression symptoms.  However, the feeling of completing an exercise routine gives us a mental boost that we produce from our own effort.  Once we can look in the mirror and notice the hard that has been accomplished, no medication or physiological study can match a sensation of accomplishment after completing challenging exercise session.

Exercise sessions can act as an advanced form of mediation.  Some people might argue that meditation takes people to another place.  With the overabundance of restrictions put on us due to COVID and the fire hose stream of news being poured upon us, the idea of going to other places might sound enticing.  Whether it be an online Zoom Yoga session, a YouTube fitness video, or a virtual personal training session, working out serves as a way to decrease distractions and focus on ourselves.  The sounds we hear, the things we see, and conversations get put on hold when we focus on training our bodies.  Whether it’s holding a plank for 1 minute, performing warrior 2 pose, or doing jumping jacks with other Zoom participants in virtual group exercise sessions, the stress of life is put on hold when we exercise.  Exercise is a way to get away from it all for a brief period.

Being held down is no way to live.  Sure, we should adhere to rules, stay inside, and limit our activities during shelter in place restrictions.  However, let’s not forget how we can take a break utilizing the gift of exercise.  The ability to improve our bodies is something we are blessed with.  Let’s use it to lift our spirits and help us endure the stresses that weigh on us.

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

Dec 24

Keep the Kids Moving

The innovation of electronic devices in our lives has brought us a long way.  Television is a tradition in which we watch our favorite shows, receive updates on current events, cheer for our favorite sports team, and use as an entertainment mechanism for our children.  The ever-evolving cell phone acts as a peripheral brain.  Not only do cell phones serve as a means of communication, but also as a link to social media, music, and video entertainment.  However, if these devices are overused, they can bring our lifestyles to a screeching halt the same rate as an addiction to methamphetamines and barbiturates.

The issue of college, high school, and junior high school kids developing an addiction to electronics links to another critical topic:  they don’t move as much as they should.  The introduction of virtual education as a result of the COVID pandemic contributes to the issue of decreased movement to the youth in our society.  Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, Youtube, and various other applications on the phone affix their eyes to the 3 x 5-inch screen.  The almighty PlayStation, X-Box, and P.C. video games we provide to our kids as “gifts” encourage them spend endless hours in awkward sitting positions interacting with a screen and a remote control.  Supplying our kids with a cell phone and video game platforms could be seen as a token of love and affection or a reward for being upstanding students.  However, in an era where the need to show up on time, pay rent, or provide for a family is important to our functions as humans in society, these devices could hinder the ability for our generation of kids to realize the importance of these values due to the distraction of screen time interaction with cell phones and video games.

The biproduct of too much screen time on phones, televisions, or computers can quickly produce a sedentary lifestyle.  It comes to no surprise that if you are parked in a chair for 10 hours, 6 days a week, the body suffers.  Decreased physical activity leads to increased fat mass storage, decrease muscular function, and the development of insulin resistance.  Is this a foundation we want to build for our kids to grow up happy, healthy, and strong?  If we don’t encourage physical activity in the current state our society’s youth, we are contributing to a future of lazy, overweight, and sick kids.

Fortunately, the human body is constructed to overcome such obstacles.  If adults encourage regular exercise to the youth of our society, we can set a standard for the rest of their lives.  The bone structure, muscles, joints, and neuromuscular system of a teenager’s body are at the most sensitive state for adaptation.  Research supports that bone, muscle, connective tissue, nerve, and brain cells develops until the age of 25.  This means the imposed demand on the body via exercise will elicit lifelong adaptations to physically active youngsters.  The impact from sports, rough housing with friends, and sports specific training cause to bones increase in bone mineral density, ligaments to strengthen, and brain to muscular synapses to function more efficiently.  If kids participate in physical activity at their most developmentally sensitive years, they can permanently acquire these body strengthening adaptation for the rest of their lives.

The problem we see with kids and exercise is that there is simply not enough.  The benefit to influencing physical activity and exercise to the youth of our society influences them to be self-reliant, live longer, and to develop a physically, mentally, and emotionally stronger life.  The importance of exercise for our teenagers and college age kids has never been more important.  Exercise and physical activity for our kids super charges the brain, bone, neuromuscular, and personality development adaptations that will stay with them the rest of their 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.

Dec 16

The Importance of Standing Up

I visited my grandpa at his assisted living center last week.  He was elated to see my face because his assisted living community was prohibited from public visits due to COVID restrictions.  As we chatted about what projects he was tinkering with and the social interactions he had with his fellow residents, he mentioned a few maladies that weighed upon him.  He shared that in his advanced age, his lower back and right knee were hurting.

He elaborated on the mechanism of injury that occurred to cause his back pain.  As he was performing his daily exercise routine utilizing his TRX suspension trainer that he affixed to the wall on his patio, the strap came loose and he feel backwards, landing in an awkward position on his tailbone.  Discouraged the by event, my grandpa mentioned to me some exercises he did to help correct the injury.  “I might be 99, but your grandpa doesn’t give up,” he exclaimed.

As my grandpa updated me about his life during my visit, he wanted to show me a few projects he was working on.  Then something astonishing occurred, he effortlessly stood up from his chair.  Sure, this seems like a normal occurrence for the general population.  However, for someone who fell backwards and damaged their tailbone at the age of 99, let alone with a pain ridden deteriorating 99-year-old knee that has never been operated on, standing up without the assistance of grabbing onto a supporting object or pushing on his knees for assistance was quite remarkable.

As he shuffled across the room, I noted that his living premises were impeccably clean, tidy and organized.  “Grandpa, do you have a cleaning service that helps clean your place?” I asked.  “No, I would never hire a maid.” He answered.  Just as baffled from his ascent from his chair, I was increasingly impressed by the evidence that he organizes his living space all by himself.  Clean countertop, no dishes in the sink, toothpaste, floss, and early morning drinking glass clean and ready to go by his bathroom sink.

Despite injures, previous surgeries, or the advance of age, getting in and out of chair is critical to our longevity.  The ability to effortlessly get up from a chair gets the body moving in various settings.  In my grandpas’ case, getting up and down from a chair sets the tone for other events throughout his life.  Staying mobile enough to keep his dwelling organized even through his movement is hindered would not be possible had he not been able to effectively get up out seated positions regularly.  Additionally, if he can efficiently get up and down from his chair, this probably helped him get up from the ground after his accident that left him with an injured coccyx.

The first exercises we focus on with newer personal training clients who are underconditioned are lower body strengthening, balance, and core exercises.  During my visit with my grandpa, he inquired about what exercises would help his back.  Ironically, I went over an exercise that we teach the majority of our personal training clients who suffer from lower back pain, the posterior pelvic tilt.  I informed my grandpa that he can perform this exercise while sitting, standing, or laying on the ground.  I first reminded him to appreciate what good posture was.  I reminded him to line his ribs up over his hips and ensure his ears were in line with his neck.  This way his head would not hunch forward.  Then I told him to put his hands on the crests of his hips and “tuck his hips toward his ribs.”  He mentioned that he felt his abs and glutes activating throughout the movement.  I told him to do this at least 10 times a day in an effort to strengthen the muscles around his spine and hips.

It may seem like a simple task, but efficiently getting in and out seated positions is critical to our functionality as humans.  Perhaps we can use this as a guide to manage our fitness levels.  If we are impeded by pain, weakness, or lack of mobility to the point we are having trouble getting out of seated positions, perhaps it is time to take a look at what we can do to improve our health, strength, and 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.

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