Apr 24

The Functional Strength of a Working Person

The local Napa gym attendees enjoy various times of for a workout. At 6 AM, dedicated fitness advocates can be seen migrating through the sliding glass doors of local gyms. Mid-morning Yoga classes are a popular event for people who might have days of throughout the week or work from home.  Small group fitness classes are offered at lunch times where the 8 to 5 workers can get a quick workout.  After 5 PM, rush hour at the gym includes swimmers, basketball players, and a rush of participants on the cardiovascular machines.  However, what happens when a chain of unfortunate events occur that deter a gym visit? Kids are at home sick from school.  Work goes to late.  Perhaps the toilet gets clogged and needs immediate attention just as you’re walking out the door.  Certain things are out of our control.  However, by focusing on specific tasks we do around our house, maybe we can derive some ideas to remain strong and refine our fitness when our normal fitness routines are halted.

If we look at the bodies of carpenters, gardeners, and vineyard workers, we can see their bodies are strong and able to endure quite a bit.  Shaking a carpenter’s hand, you can tell that their strong fingers and solid palms of their hands has bent some rebar in their day.  A master gardener or landscaper moves with good posture, able to bend down on one knee or squat down to pick potted plants and bags of soil from the ground.  Vineyard workers tend to our beautiful vineyards laced through the valley under the hot sun.  After their shift, you’ll find them on the soccer field for an hour or two scoring goals.  The strength of a carpenter.  The flexibility and resiliency o f a gardener.   The endurance of a vineyard worker.  There is something be said about the mental fortitude and physical abilities of workers from these trades.

Without mentioning the gym or strength training exercises, we can put together that moving heavy objects, bending, and turning while performing calculated tasks, and endurance while doing methodical tasks will administer fitness results a gym isn’t necessary for.

A carpenter needs to hold a 2×4 against another object and swing a hammer to drive a nail into the board.  The resistance of an 8-foot-long 10 lbs. 2×4 requires strength from the upper arms, shoulder blades, and core to stabilize this object for a prolonged period of time.  Swinging a hammer to put multiple boards together all day requires dexterity, control, and concentration.  The muscles involved in a gardener’s everyday tactics must be pliable and able to endure the continual demands of their work while their body is changing its shape from standing, to crouching down, and kneeling.  A day’s work of gardening includes bending at the knees, squatting down, and rotating at the core.   Therefore, a gardener’s body can build up strong and flexible joints through years of performing their everyday tasks.  The vineyard worker possesses a substantial amount of endurance to stand all day in hot climates as they complete their labor under as the sun’s UV rays radiate upon them.  The ability to travel an entire vineyard block numerous times throughout the day in heated conditions indicates a body that has an efficient cardiovascular and thermodynamic system.

If the local gym or workout classes are challenging to attend, look into projects and crafts that need attention around home.  Draw a connection between the muscles of the body and energy systems necessary to complete tasks.  After a full day of working on craft that requires focus from the body and mind, you’ll find that you can create a strong and active body without leaving the house.

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 20

Napa COVID-19: Curing the Sitting Disease!

Restriction put into place by the COVID-19 pandemic shunts physical activities we didn’t know how normal and important they were until they were taken from us.  Running errands and visiting the store isn’t as prevalent.  Getting a bite to eat or coffee with friends is prohibited.  Recreational team sports such as tennis, bocce ball, and pickleball have had their courts chained off to adhere to shelter in place procedures.  As we abide by the rules of social distancing, we may have adapted into a new habit.  The habit of sitting.

As we wake up and work from home, we go to the kitchen, sit down and eat breakfast.  This seems perfectly normal.  As breakfast concludes, we endure a treacherous and taxing commute a grueling 10 meters over to our laptops.   We might sit down, check emails, conduct project throughout the internet that has given society the ability to work from home.  90 minutes pass by, it might be time for a break.  Sure, a walk over to the coffee shop would be nice.  Hold up, we can’t do that.  So why not bypass that thought for a coffee break?  Why not check ESPN.com, peruse the endless stream of social media, or check out the COVID-19 updates on CNN?  Seems relaxing enough.  Getting yourself away from the tactics of your job might be a good way to break up the work-from-home grind.  However, you’re still sitting.  That coffee shop visit left a gap of much needed physical activity that proved to be a good filler for our body and minds.

Prolonged sitting issues are at an all time high with the social shift of shelter in place.  As we remain indoors, we don’t move as much. Aside from getting up to get a snack and restroom breaks when working from home, activity levels are dramatically declining.  This inactivity introduces a gamut of issues negatively affecting our bodies and minds.  Not only will decreased physical demand affect the number of calories utilized, but significant parts of the body responsible for the structure stability for adequate movement are hindered.  The neck, spine, and hips take an immediate hit.  When sitting takes over the majority of the day, postural muscles of the back are not required as much as when we stand.  Shoulder blades muscles and along with muscles surrounding the thoracic and cervical spine aren’t required to be as active when seated.  As bouts of sitting progress, the shape of the lower body forces the muscles of the lower abdomen and hip flexors to shorten.  Blood flow throughout muscles won’t coarse as efficiently to inactive muscles, causing muscles to atrophy and weaken, increasing risks of injury.

We recommend to our personal training clients in Napa to take ensure they perform a critically important tactic before encouraging core specific exercises.  This is the encouragement to simply stand up and move.  Working from home, looking down at our phones interacting with social media, and advertisements for the next best miniseries on Netflix or Hulu hypnotizes us to sit down and stay married to our electronics.

Do you have some dishes to do?  Perhaps some weeds in the back yard are calling out your name on these 70-degree days in our forecasts.  I’m sure some youngsters around the house chomping at the bit to throw a frisbee or refine their baseball skills.  The prescription to cure to the sitting disease is literally and figuratively right in front of us.  It doesn’t require squats, pushups, or jumping jacks.  To cure the sitting disease, get up and enjoy Spring with some much-needed opportunities for movement within our home setting.

 

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 10

Staying Mobile during “Shelter in Place”

During holidays, we sit down with our families for a full day to catch up on a years’ worth of each other’s lives.  4-day weekends including holidays like Thanksgiving influence our culture to sit down, relax, and sleep in more than a usual day.  As shelter in place restrictions influence society to stay indoors to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, a correlation can be seen between the activity levels of our holiday habits and our current daily activity as we stay inside distancing ourselves from society.  However, as physical activity decreases and the location of our bodies acclimate to being closer to the kitchen, we enter a scenario of a prolonged Thanksgiving simulation.  We know tryptophan in turkey can influence a brief relaxing coma of lethargy upon us after a Thanksgiving feast.  With a warm house, a few pounds of food in our bellies, and some eggnog, you can expect to mold into the couch following this hedonistic tradition.

Imagine if Thanksgiving lasted 8 weeks.  We would wake up every day with the desire to consume comfort food with our family, sit on the couch, watch 3 football games, and meander around our homes at the speed of a sloth in Costa Rica climbing a palm tree.  It’s important to think about what would happen to our bodies if we had 8 straight weeks of Thanksgiving.  Not only would the lack of physical activity paired with an overabundance of delectable foods lead to pre-diabetic conditions and influence cholesterol molecules in our bloodstream to swell to the size of mini marshmallows, but our joint and muscles would become rickety, stiff, and painful.  An 8-week Thanksgiving is dangerously similar to the lack of movement threatened by our current culture’s activity levels.  This can lead to debilitating factors.  If we don’t move, we get stiff.  If we get stiff, we don’t want to move as much because it’s painful to move.  If this is abused too long, we might not want to get back up to our normal physical activities when society reverts to normal.

 

Common areas of joint stiffness from decreased human movement are the lower back and hips.  Nagging lower back and hip pain decrease people’s desire to move.  We can focus on alleviating these tight hot spots of the body by practicing stretching techniques a few times throughout the week.  These are two examples of some mobility exercises we instruct our personal training clients in the Napa Valley to do:

  1. Standing Bent Knee External Hip Rotations: While standing, lift one leg up to where the knee is about the height of your hip.  If you need to use an object to stabilize yourself, you can stand next to a wall for balance.  After you have achieved your knee to be the height of your hip, rotate your knee away from your body to until you feel a brief stretching sensation in your hip joint.  You should feel the muscle of the inner thigh, top of the thigh, and deep inner glutes being stretched.  Once you feel the stretch, lower your foot to the group and repeat this movement for 5 to 10 repetitions.  Ensure to keep the crests of your hips square in front of you and your core muscle slightly engage.
  2. Supine Knee Tilts: While lying flat on your back, bend both knees at a 45-degree angle toward your body. Keeping your knees together and feet flat on the ground.  Slowly tilt both legs over to one side of the body, ensuring to keep your feet stacked on top of one another and keeping your shoulder blades flat on the ground.  You should feel a brief stretching sensation in the lower back and outer portion of the upper thigh.  Once you have achieved a stretch, gradually repeat the same movement tilting your knees to the other side.  Alternate tilting the knees to each side for 5 to 10 repetitions.

By focusing on simple and effective movements that take very little time, we can decrease the likelihood of our bodies developing debilitating joint stiffness.  Remember, performing simple mobility exercises just 2 to 3 times per week can make a significant impact.  If you would like to further explore increasing the mobility of your joints, online Yoga classes are being offered by local Napa fitness professionals via Zoom video classes.

Shelter in place doesn’t mean its holiday season.  Don’t let the lack of cars on the road fool you.   Even though we aren’t venturing outdoors as much, it’s important to keep our bodies mobile in our everyday 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.

Apr 04

A Day in the Life of Shelter in Place in Napa

Enter the next chapter of social distancing, shelter in place, and for some us, unusual work-from-home hours.  Some of us are fortunate to continue normal work without the restrictions of.  Others are not so lucky.  For the population who are not used to being at home, we co-exist with other family members and housemates in the same boat.  It can be an unusual experience to see the inside of house more.  For parents, interacting with kids to ensure they are getting their schoolwork done and entertaining them is a new set of tactics we may not be quite used to.  Getting out of bed and commuting 20 meters to your couch to get straight to “work” can feel foreign as well.  These new actions that we perform while we isolate ourselves from the outside environment can keep us stuck in a little fishbowl and slow our normal lives down.

Before shelter in place restrictions, separating home from our normal work labor seemed natural.  Now, life has become unnatural.   Traditions of being off of work combined with “work from home” daily habits can enter a detrimental crossover into becoming sedentary.  Along with the society’s collective effort to stay indoors to support the master plan of decreasing the curve of Coronavirus cases, our motivation to be creative, remain physically active, and eat for improved health becomes significantly threatened.  If we sit down and watch too many streaming episodes on Netflix, we can expect to visit the doctor sooner than we are thinking after shelter in places restrictions are lifted.  We threaten increased blood pressure, introduce the likelihood of prediabetic conditions, and can become unnaturally overweight if we allow decreased physical activity to get out of hand

Fortunately, if we identify such issues before they become a problem, we can usually find a solution by preparing.  Shedding light upon how important it is to plan your day before it begins offers our mind and soul stimulation to think about what can be done tomorrow.  Additionally, if we have a written-out plan, perhaps we can have something to look forward to so that we don’t enter in the same groundhog day of working from home and looking at the inside of our house for hours.  Here’s a brief example of how planning out health improving tactics set our days up for success:

6:00 AM:  Wake up, drink a full glass of water, make some breakfast

6:30 AM:  Take a shower, brush your teeth, style your hair like you’re getting ready for an important job interview.

7:00 AM:  Take a 10-minute walk around the neighborhood.  Wave to a few people and smile.

9:15 AM:  Get a quick bodyweight exercise session in.  Perhaps schedule a virtual personal training session with one of Napa’s local fitness professionals.

2:15 PM:  Focus on an outdoor activity.  Maybe some garden boxes need to be built, the front porch can use some TLC, or a new piece of furniture needs to be refinished.

3:30 PM:  Take another walk.  Wave and smile at more people.

5:00 PM:  Start prepping dinner.  With only take out options available and virtually not restaurants open, you have the perfect opportunity to put on your Iron Chef thinking hat and start making some healthy meals.

7:00 PM:  TV free family night and another 5 minutes dedicated toward tomorrows list.

A written-out list only takes a few minutes to compile   It doesn’t need to myopically focused and meticulously designed.  However, by keying in on a few key things that we used to do during our pre-COVID-19 workdays, we can get back in touch with reality.  Getting up and washing your face.  Waving at people.  Smiling.  These are all things that are slowly deteriorating as we are stuck inside interacting with social media and streaming devices.  We already have to stay in against our will.  Society doesn’t need to add to the damage of a culture with decreased physical activity by contributing to habits that add more sedentary time to our required shelter in place.  So, plan and aim to accomplish 80% of that plan.  Remember, having something to do, something to love, and something to look forward to willing keep that motor running past this obstacle and many more after we conquer this one.

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 26

Eating Healthy for Lower Physical Activity Days (COVID-19)

The saga of staying in doors and practicing social distancing as the COVID-19 progresses.  The majority of society has seen a decrease in normal, everyday physical activity.  While we are recommended to take brief walks while distancing ourselves from others while Shelter is in Place in effect, fear of rainy weather and disease transmission is a powerful deterrent to venturing outdoors.  As we camp out in the comfort of our homes, we have become closer to our kitchens, fridges, and pantries.  Easy to acquire granola bars, cereals, and packaged snacks aren’t as far away as usual when we were at our offices or worksites.  Cold and dreary weather offers the desire to acquire “comfort food.”  Starchy, salty, and creamy foods.  These items are meant to alleviate our stress during trying times.  Similar to having a cold beer or a glass of wine after an intense day at work.  However, the last thing we need right now is to have the tense environment in our community steer toward eating copious amounts of processed, high fat, insulin spiking food.  Fortunately, by adjusting our decision-making ability toward food, we can protect our bodies against diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and becoming overweight while decreased physical activity is imposed upon us.

Traveling through the grocery store the other day, I observed that the bread shelves were completely desolate.  Dust from flour packages were the lone remnants on the shelves that used to have home for cake, all purpose, and bread flours.  There wasn’t a package of pastas, rice, and noodles anywhere to be seen.  This was a routine grocery store trip for me to acquire under 10 items.  However, even if I wanted to make comfort food, I don’t think I could with the current inventory available.  This experience of seeing so many processed carbohydrates gathered up indicated to me that more people were loading up on comfort foods.  This indicated to me of the likelihood of people staying at home and consuming these high glycemic, carbohydrate heavy foods at a time of low physical activity could spell disaster for our communities likelihood of gaining weight and introducing pre-diabetic conditions as we are forced to stay inside and move less.

The apocalypse hasn’t knocked on our door quite yet.  It’s important to prepare for events that prevent us from going out by supplying our homes with adequate emergency resources.  However, it’s more important to understand that depending on breads, flours, and processed granola bar snack will set us further behind than where we were before the Shelter in Place order began.

As I strolled past the barren wasteland the panic shopper swarm left behind on the bread and flour shelves, I came to the produce section.  I felt like Little Foot in the Land Before Time after he ventured through the dessert and arrived at the land where everything was green, water was flowing, and there was fresh air.    There was an abundance of fresh vegetables available.  Carrots, broccoli, sweet potatoes, bell pepper, asparagus, and wide array of root veggies were strewn before my eyes.  As the PTSD subsided after seeing the bread and flour swarmed over like locusts, I noticed that these veggies proved to be perfect ingredients for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  In fact, the lack of processed foods, bread, and noodles offered a blessing to me as I was forced to gather the neglected fresh veggies.  Vegetables offer critically important nutrients that we need during this high stress period.  The water content, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients available in fresh vegetables are productive toward decreasing the likelihood of cancer and boosting the immune system so we can fend off disease.  This is literally and figuratively “just what the doctor ordered” as we have a real fight on hands against the Corona Virus.

As the fire hose powered water stream of news bombards our eyes and ears of how COVID-19 is affecting our lives, our bodies don’t need the extra stress elicited by poor food choices.   Decreased physical activity and the introduction of comfort foods in our homes equate to a plethora of metabolic disease. The last thing we need is a decreased immune system as a result of suboptimal dietary decisions.  At a time where the weather is cold and wet along with the threat of COVID-19 knocking at our doors, veering away from processed foods and favoring fruits and vegetables is productive plan to counteract the likelihood of becoming unhealthy in a time where health is priority.  We need to survive this struggle against COVID-19 and come out victorious.  It’s good to have a back up supply, but don’t forget about your present state of health.  Let’s make a collective effort to focus on our well-being at the present state of “right now.”  By practicing mindful dietary habits as we reside indoors with the Shelter in Place order, we are going to thrive after we bested COVID-19.

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 22

Shelter in Place Napa: Staying Fit While Staying In

Napa is experiencing one of history’s most trying times with the introduction of a new virus that I’m sure readers are all too familiar with.  This new development has urged government and health officials to keep citizens inside their home, only being allowed to travel outside for “essential” obligations.  Until we arrive to the other side of this historic calamity, we are limited in our resources to maintain a healthy state of moving our bodies.  The media informs us that we are performing a disservice to our efforts to decreasing the spread of COVIC-19 if we go outside to often in the presences of others.  Working from home limits us from going to our jobs where we perform physical interactions.  Inability to interact with the world we are accustomed to doesn’t mean we should forget about the integrity of our body’s health and fitness levels.  With a few simple themes to focus on while we are tucked away from the outside world, we can maintain our well being and endure this storm to where we can come out healthy and strong when restrictions are lifted so we can resume our everyday activities..

How can we continue to move when our gyms, fitness classes, and boot camps are momentarily shut down?  Some of most simple exercises that target large groups of muscle activation are right in front of us.  We are actually standing of equipment, the ground.  The simple squat exercise can be performed at any time virtually anywhere in the dwelling you are residing.  To perform, simply point your feet forward and act as if you are “spreading the ground apart.”  Imagine that you are making a crack in the ground. Create torque on the ground by turning the right foot clockwise and the left foot counterclockwise.  You only need to apply about 10% exertion to this portion of the exercise to ensure your glutes and lateral portion of the thigh muscles are sufficiently activated.  This will cause the knees to drive out slightly.  After this is achieved, sit your hips down and back ensuring that your entire foot remains on the ground.  We don’t need anyone falling backwards.  After you feel a brief stretch in your hips and thighs, imagine pushing your heels through the ground and bring your hips back under your torso to stand up right.  Performing the simple squat exercise using your bodyweight alone works a large surface area of muscles that can benefit the body to have increased strength, decrease the likelihood of injury in the hips and knees, and help defend against lower back injuries, such as sciatica.

Another important theme that is right in front of us and ever present in our homes is hydration.  We all have water.  So, we need to drink it.  One of the easiest things we can do to supercharge our health while being on restriction from the outside world is to get proper hydration.  Euhydration assists in ensuring blood flows efficiently through the body, enabling nutrients and substates to be delivered to our cells.  Adequate hydration also helps with lubricating our joints, which is a key contributor to reducing joint pain.  With all the time we have inside, we can at least make sure to drink enough water.  A helpful queue that we give to our personal training clients in Napa is to drink a tall glass of water first thing in the morning directly after waking.  Additionally, another helpful queue is to drink a full glass of water after each meal.  We want to aim for at least 3 liters of water every day.  If we can easily track a component of staying healthy during the “shelter in place” saga. Staying hydrated is an easily attainable component that can significantly reinforce our bodies.

Last but not least, don’t be afraid to go out in your back yard and “smell the flowers.”  Sunshine, fresh air, and colors are what are going to get us through this.  If you’re inside all day, crack the blinds so some sunshine can come in.  The stimulus of the sun and a little fresh air are the things that are going to keep us looking forward to the other side of this hill.  If we don’t have something to look forward too, we won’t get excited.  Make sure to safely check out the outside world every now and again to keep your mind and spirit stimulated.

The human race has endured hardships similar to the Corona Virus before.  Natural disasters, war, and uprising in political beliefs have yielded similar results that urge us to seek safety.  We rode through those undertows and came out the other side.  We will ride through this as well to embrace the beauty of life as well.  We may not be able to control what makes a virus occur.  However, we can make decisions to keep our bodies and minds happy, healthy and strong by remembering to exercise, stay hydrated, and look the trees we are so blessed to have.

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 12

Easier to Stay in Shape than to Get Into Shape

The start of 2020 marked a great experience.  I took a trip to Hawaii for the first time in my life.  As I flew into the Honolulu airport in awe of the sapphire blue water, diamond dusted beaches, and amazing jungle foliage, I knew I was in for a monumental trip.  The first few days were filled with beach hopping.  I was able to play Pickleball with the locals and jumped in and out of the water right next to the courts in between games to cool off.  I had the chance to experience Hanauma Bay and snorkel alongside all of the marine life.  I’ve never experienced such warm, clear water.  Being a native of Northern California, our waters are darker and colder.  Overall, this was an unforgettable, breathtaking experience.  That is, until the ear infection of the century unleashed a pincer attack of pain, loss of hearing, and an altered equilibrium on both my ears the last day of my epic vacation.  I had the privilege of flying back home with a dual internal ear infection that would affect me for the next 4 weeks.

As I landed back in the mainland, I knew I was going to be sidelined from my normal activities for a few days.  My job a fitness professional and my normal exercise routine needed to cease so I can recover.  This meant no lifting weights, home exercise, or Pickleball.  I couldn’t even coach my personal training clients in Napa and demonstrate exercises because my hearing was so off that it sounded like a person directly in front of me was 20 meters away.  I needed to lay low in my bed at home to fully recover.

As weeks passed, my health began to improve.  My hearing was starting to return, and my head didn’t feel like I got a left hook from Mike Tyson.  I could gradually start to get back into my normal fitness routine and recreational physical activities.  Fortunately, my physical performance wasn’t hindered as much as I initially perceived.  Maybe I performed a few less repetitions and lifted less weight than normal at the gym.  Perhaps I played only 1 game of Pickleball the returning week.  However, even after 4 weeks of doing very little, my fitness levels were still there.  I contributed this accelerated recovery to my previous disciplined adherence to ensure I was exercising and participating in recreational physical activity 3 to 4 times per week regularly throughout my life.

Exercise adherence is the key to longevity.  Performing resistance training at one of the Napa Valley’s local gyms, regular recreational physical activity, or going to a Yoga class 3 to 4 times per week is critical to keeping the cells in our body functioning correctly.  Even if a person is sidelined due to illness, injury or some other unfortunate turn of events in their life, the body knows it will return to the physical activities it has been conditioned for.  If we pave this groundwork of exercising regularly, we can stay on the path of staying in shape if we have to take weeks, or even months off of our regular physical activities.

“It’s a lot easier to stay in shape, then get back into shape.” This is a quote Mark Wahlberg uses when describing his regimented exercise program.  We don’t’ expect everyone to wake up at 2 AM in the morning and exercise 5 times per week like Wahlberg.  However, we can at least relate to his mantra of staying in shape.  If we keep the mind set of staying in shape, we can protect against unexpected occurrence that take away our normal exercise time and we need to rest or remain inactive for a period of recovery.  We never know when the rug will be snapped out from underneath us.   But when that happens, we still have the foundation of fitness if we continue to practice regular exercise 3 to 4 times per week to “stay in shape.”

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 05

Maintaining Fitness Outside of the Gym

A new membership to Planet Fitness, weekly scheduled walks with friends, a season of recreational physical activities such as volleyball, pickleball, golf or hiking.  The resources needed to stay involved in our lifetime fitness journey seems simple enough to use as tools to improve our everyday lives.  The convenience of entering a local gym to utilize their equipment for resistance training give local gym attendees a place to exercise.  Fitness classes offered at these local gyms offer group energy and the social aspect of being part of a fitness class where everyone is achieving similar fitness goals.    Participating in recreational physical activities are fun and offers the chance to put the stress of life aside to focus on yourself.  The regular adherence to these resources offers our bodies much needed strength, cardiovascular endurance, and stress reduction.

However, what happens when work throws overtime and extra deadlines at you to where you can’t make your gym workout you were looking forward to?  Perhaps you come down with the flu.  The last thing you want is to infect your recreational teammate or weekly walking buddies.  Perhaps your kids need to be picked up from the new season of soccer games.  The unlikely random occurrence of family members passing through town can be graced upon us as well in which we feel obligated to spend a few hours of the day with.  These are examples of obstacles that can get in our way of our time that we devote to our lifetime fitness efforts.

Time is one of our most valuable tools for a full proof plan to make our lives healthier.  The last thing we want is for our most valuable asset to be taken away from the random obstacles of life that disrupt our schedule.  Fortunately, there are solutions to reinforce our fitness efforts when the times we have reserved for our fitness are taken away.   Some quick fix solution we offer our personal training clients in Napa is to focus on simple “low hanging fruit” exercises when we see our time we have reserved for our fitness about to disrupted.

We coach our personal training clients in Napa to focus on 3 simple exercises:  squats, pushups, and planks.  Simply performing one set of squats in the comfort of your own home is enough to get blood flow going to the lower extremities.  10 repetition of squats will improve mobility of the hips, knees, and ankles.  Pushups from the knees, on a countertop, or with knees extended off the floor activates the muscles of the upper extremity and core.  Planks need to be help for only 20 to 30 seconds to reinforce the muscle of the core and postural muscles of the upper and lower back.

The beauty of such simple exercises is that they can be done anywhere:  your house or waiting around outside.  Why not take some time to perform these simple filler exercises?  Just because you can’t make it to the gym or your regularly scheduled recreational activity doesn’t mean that we should forget about our fitness efforts for the day.  It’s critically important to keep the body in a strong and athletic mode even when our schedule gets erratic.  Performing simple exercises like the squat, pushup, or plank regularly will offer compounding strength and postural improvement results down the line when performed regularly throughout the week.  The time we devote to the gym and regular physical activity is very important.  However, ensuring to focus on getting some exercise in when time is limited is commonly overlooked.  It’s this small attention to detail that keeps us strong so we can pick where we left off in the gym and normal physical activities when the busy times subside.

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 25

Food and Wine: Too Much of a Good Thing

Food is something the Napa Valley is truly blessed with.  Alongside our delicious food comes delightful pairings of beer, cocktails, and wine.  We feed our glutinously hedonistic approach to setting our taste buds to lightspeed by pairing the Napa Valley’s award-winning wine with our world class food.  It can be irresistible to ignore such culinary delights with restaurants like R+D Kitchen, Morimoto, and the eateries at The Oxbow featuring their iconic food that will leave a monument of unforgettable tastes in your memory banks.

The food from Napa is amazing.  I take in pride in the pedigree of food culture I’ve been raised in while growing up in Napa.  However, we enter an issue with our unparalleled food and wine we have been blessed with in our valley.  Alongside our beautiful food comes butter, cream, flour, and fat.  Lots of fat.  The words duck fat and bacon come to mind.  Duck confit or pork belly, anyone?

The bread set at our tables while we are out to lunch, dinner, or just a social gathering before we order comes from our local bakeries.  Bouchon, Model, and ABC know what they’re doing when it comes to making a baguette.  Hard to resist when you’re probably not making that in your home kitchen.

Lastly, we Napans live in an ocean of the world’s finest wines.  Similar to how the people of San Diego live a stone’s throw from their breath-taking beaches.  The combination of a juicy filet mignon from Cole’s Chop House with a glass of award-winning cabernet is enough to send your palate on a one way to trip to Turks and Caicos.

The combination of food and wine from Napa is a pretty picture for those of us who enjoy the celebration of food.  However, just like many things in our lives, too much of a good thing can lead to destructive situations to our well-being.  Many locals work for the food and wine industry.  It’s common to dine at local restaurants and pair lunch with beer, wine, or a cocktail.  While promoting food and wine might be part of the job, an underlying vicious cycle is present with eating too much food and drinking too much alcohol.  The leading cause of cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, and obesity is caused by suboptimal eating decisions.  Eating bread, pasta, or risotto more than three times per week imposes the threat of diabetes due to the insulin spiking properties from starchy carbohydrate based food.  The increased concentration of insulin throughout the week from frequent high glycemic index carbohydrates will decrease insulin sensitivity and increase insulin resistance, which is essentially pre-diabetic conditions.  Foods with high fat content and cholesterol from animal sourced protein increase the concentration of fat and cholesterol circulating in our blood stream, promoting the build ups of plaques in arteries and increasing the likelihood of cardiovascular disease.  Drinking wine can easily be an Olympic sport in the Napa Valley.  Before we know it, we can be consuming as much as 18 glasses of wine per week.  The overindulgence of alcohol can not only decrease fat metabolism and cause additional caloric input, but it also leaves us in a foggy, lethargic state of mind that can last a week and compound over years.

It’s important not to demonize from the good food and wine we are blessed with and that has given Napa success.  We wouldn’t enjoy all of the features Napa offers if the people withing the industry had not worked so hard to offer this amazing food and wine available at restaurants and wineries.  To help mitigate indulgence, there are healthy tactics to develop a balance between our good food and wine and the well being of our bodies.  Our personal training clients in the Napa Valley learn to manage such struggles by developing weekly tactics to maintain balance of their alcohol and food consumption and the integrity of their body.  Examples include setting a weekly goal to have one to two days a week of being alcohol free.  Declining bread at lunch and dinner helps decrease extra carbohydrate consumption.  The awareness to always ensure there is a colorful vegetable on the plate helps fill the stomach as to not overeat.  Developing systems and tactics to ensure we are not overindulging is a critical component to anyone’s success who is regularly in the environment of good food and wine.

We are fortunate to be in this unique, amazing place of the world.  Let’s cherish the resources we have in the amazing food and wine culture by truly appreciating it as a gift.  By doing this, we can improve our well-being and live strong, happy, and healthful 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.

Feb 18

A Balanced Visit to the Supermarket

The turning and skidding of tires in the parking lot fills ears with caution.  Humming car engines ominously traveling behind patrons passing through cross walks and exiting their vehicles on to the asphalt.   Curbs, steps, and trash find themselves in front of fellow shoppers as they step onto uneven surfaces.  Gazing forward, you observe people traveling on foot in your direction at moderate speed.  Some have carts full of groceries.  They might be looking down at their cell phones, oblivious of your presence.  There might be a young child frolicking in front of the store.  Running into you and knocking you off your balance is the least of their concern when they have only been on this earth for 5 years or so.  Why should they care if they hurt themselves yet?

As you pass this gauntlet of distraction and cacophony, the sliding glass doors into your preferred store of choice awaits your arrival.  If you don’t use caution and calculate the proposition of errors from the obstacles in front of the store entrance, your movement can be hindered if something randomly distracts, startles, or collides with you.  You haven’t even entered the store and physical challenges are already present.

Some light needs to be shed on the deceivingly simple task of going to the grocery store.  A simple visit can be a test of our coordination, balance, and ability to detect danger.  The various obstacles and distractions occurring even in the parking lot on the way to our food headquarters can be a mind field for the risk of tripping, falling, and an overall stress inducing time.  Unfortunately, there are cases of such scenarios occurring on a daily basis because of the hustle and bustle of our culture.  Being in a rush to get to the store, electronic distractions, and too many people being in the same place at the same time can introduce potential risks of falling and injuries.

Fortunately, we can prepare ourselves to prevent risks of falling and managing random mechanisms of injury by training our balance, strength, and hand eye coordination.  Here are some exercises we coach our personal training clients in Napa to help prepare the body for stressful distracting situations that can randomly occur throughout our day:

Strength:  We have mentioned this before in previous articles that the plank exercise is one of the most simple and effective forms to induce just enough stress on the body for a short amount of time.  The plank exercise stimulates over half the muscles in the body, which will allow the muscles worked in this exercise to become stronger and increase endurance.  To perform, simply lay belly down on the ground, straighten the arms with the elbows extended, and straighten the knees out so they are not touching the ground.  Hold this pose for 15-30 seconds.  Ensure that the lower back does not sag, and your core muscles are tight.

Balance:  Lift one leg off the ground and balance on the supporting leg for 10-20 seconds.  Make sure to alternate between legs.  To make this exercise a little safer, you can stand next to a wall to support yourself if you get unbalanced in the middles of the exercise.

Hand-eye coordination:  Find a ball and toss it up in the air about 1-2 inches and catch it.  To increase the challenge, bounce the ball against the wall and catch it.  Attempt 5-10 catches each hand.

Performing these exercises at least once a week can make a significantly improvement on our ability to ensure adequate equilibrium throughout unbalanced scenarios, recover from a collision with another body, and react appropriately to unpredictable movements that occur in our path of movement.

We should have the ability to withstand the raucous activities of a supermarket parking lot.  In fact, being able to pause in the middle of a grocery store and balance on one leg at any time should be attainable.  If we can achieve the ability to stay balanced on a foot any moment for 10 seconds, reaction time, strength and balance are sufficient enough to help us manage obstacles that might get in our way.  It’s critically important to stay balanced and alert of danger not only in the grocery store, but in our everyday 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.

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