Feb 11

Healthy Plant Based Breakfasts

There can be a rumbling heard in our midsection after waking up from a 6 to 8-hour slumber.  Reasonably so, the body is yearning for sustenance.  As we sleep, our body breaks down cells to promote hormone rebalance.  With the various chemical balancing acts our body endures throughout our slumber, the first meal of the day is vital for an optimally performing day of human production.

A traditional breakfast that has been embraced throughout our culture is a bowl of cereal and milk.  The term “part of a balanced breakfast” was used in the Raisin Bran, Cheerio, and Frosted Flake commercials.  Remember Tony the Tiger?  “They’re GRRREAT!”  However, the processed, denatured, preservative filled cereal we have connected with in our past is closer to a recipe for instant diabetes.

Another popular trend that has become prevalent in our culture include the easily obtainable breakfast sandwich from McDonalds, Starbucks, or 7-Eleven.  Being able to swipe your credit card and have a multi-layered, mouthwatering sandwich in your hand before you go to work is remarkably convenient.  However, underneath your skin, in your blood stream, and alongside digestive enzymes circulating in your stomach, your body doesn’t see that olfactory gland stimulating breakfast sandwich the same way.  That scrumptious English muffin encasing the “just add water’ egg in the middle has been whipped up in a factory and filled with a form of salt for preservation that only my organic chemistry PhD peers can pronounce.  After they are shipped in bulk to a fast food facility, they are distributed into the hands of consumers through drive through window and lines of Starbucks.

The gluten-filled, salty, temporarily satisfaction inducing food is similar to smoking a cigarette.  Smokers know that cigarettes are bad for you, but the first few puffs elicit that numbing high for a few seconds.  Before they know it, autopilot kicks in and the entire cancer promoting death stick is toxic gas in the lungs.  A breakfast sandwich or a bowl of cereal isn’t much different when life threatening disease such as diabetes, high blood pressure, or cardiovascular disease are present from the regular consumption of these foods.  The first few bites of that breakfast sando tastes good.  Before you know it, the entire sandwich is past your teeth and in your stomach ready to be processed.  Insulin is now being produced and circulating through the blood due to the glutenous, high glycemic index processed flour of the bun.  Cells and connective tissue in the body begin to inflame and swell from the copious amounts of salt.  Before you know it, the body starts to get a little sick after consuming too much of these breakfast foods on a regular basis.  The quick fix breakfast solution taste good at first.   However, people can easily enter a viscous cycle of the drive thru and “wait in line” addiction.  If this gets out of hand, threats of metabolic disease ensue.

This is all curable with a solution that is about 10 to 20 yards away from your bed every day:  cook at home for breakfast in your kitchen.  Here are some healthy and easy to make dishes that have plant-based ingredients to help fend off cancer and metabolic disease:

  1. Pan seared sweet potato hash and eggs: Simply warm two pans to low-medium heat and put about half a spoonful of coconut oil in the pans.  Peel a sweet potato and chop in up into the piece of size of a penny.  Throw those sweet potatoes in a pan.  Put an egg in the other pan.  Season with salt and pepper.  Once the sweet potatoes are browned to your liking and the eggs is fully cooked, place the sweet potatoes on a plate and the egg over the top of the potatoes.
  2. Vegetable Hash and egg: This is pretty much cut and paste of #1.  Choose 2 to 3 of your favorite vegetables to sauté in a pan.  Personally, I enjoy carrots, cauliflower and bell peppers.  Take those veggies and seer them in a pan until they are cooked to your liking.  Top with your favorite style of egg.

The time it takes to drive to the McDonalds drive thru matrix or wait in line at Starbucks is equivalent or less than the amount of time it takes to cook a healthy plant-based breakfast at home.  You can probably even get your dishes done with time to spare as well.  If you compare the two times, you’ll be astounded.   If we can get out of the habit of getting our breakfast on the go and start cooking plant-based foods in the morning, we can significantly decrease the overwhelming threat of metabolic diseases, cancer, and obesity in our society.  Get in the kitchen and fire up that stove.  Cook some veggies and give your body the nutrients necessary to live to the fullest.

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 04

Napa’s Local Gyms: Ease Into Going to the Gym if you’re a Newbie!

The term “working out” conjures thoughts of a gym-like setting.  This visual can include gym regulars dressed in tank tops, Yoga pants, and sporting headphones.  Resistance training machines are uniformly lined up like parked planes in an aircraft bunker.  The sounds of the bass from hourly aerobics classes can be heard down the hallways as the groups of class participants funnel to the rooms.  Local gyms in Napa attract many participants aiming to improve their health and fitness.  Such gyms are significant catalysts when initiating a path to improve one’s fitness.  While gyms are effective starting points to a path of lifetime fitness, what if the busy gym setting is overwhelming for the novices?

As a lifetime gym rat and student to the game of fitness, I understand my way around the gym.  However, a small percentage of the population knows what nooks and crannies of the gym are the most effective for a successful exercise session.  For gym rookies, thoughts might include, “What machine properly focuses on compound lower body movements, upper body pushing, or upper body pushing movements?”  “How do I use the rowing machine?” “What is that terrifying structure tucked in the corner where that gorilla has a bar on his shoulders?”  And, what does, “Can I work in, bro?” mean?  The gym is a great setting for success.  It has helped many of our personal training clients in Napa achieve some of the biggest goals in their lives.  However, there is an underlying intimidation factor that can pose as an obstacle deterring people from progressing forward in their fitness goals.

To resolve such issues, we recommend to our personal training clients in Napa to ease into regular gym attendance if they are brand new to that climate.  If we are beginning to get into an exercise program, we don’t need to attend a gym local gym 3-4 times per week right off the bat.  Starting out with one day per week of regular gym attendance will suffice.  Going from 1 day per week of going to the gym from zero, you will have a 100% improvement rate.  The other day of the week can be done utilizing bodyweight exercises in the comfort of your own home.  The daunting drive to the gym, finding a parking place, and seemingly overwhelming stimuli of rush hour gym times can be bypassed by performing a home exercise routine.

A quick and effective exercise routine we prescribe to our personal training clients to do at home in conjunction with their weekly gym attendance is a High Intensity Interval Training program, commonly know as HIIT.  HIIT is a mode of exercise that utilizes negative work-to-rest time ratios instead of counting repetitions.  For example, performing a set of body weight squats for 20 seconds and ceasing exercise for 10 seconds would be a 2:1 work: rest ratio.

This is an easy to learn HIIT routine that we give to our personal training clients in Napa to perform at home on off days from going to the gym:

  1. Chair Squats (20 seconds): Find a chair to place behind you in the standing position.  Push your hips down and back while ensuring your heels are on the ground until your butt touches the chair.  Once your maximum range of motion is achieved, squat back up to the standing position.  Ensure to contract your gluteal muscles until your hips are inline under your ribs.  Repeat until 20 seconds has expired and rest for 10 seconds before starting the next exercise.
  2. Straight Arm Plank: Position your body belly down, posting your fully extended on arms on a countertop or the floor.  The countertop will be less challenging.  The floor will be more of a challenge.  With your knees off the ground, weight situated on the balls of your feet, and hands just in front of your collar bones, hold this position for 20 seconds.  Ensure to flex your abdominals, glutes, and pec muscles while holding the position.  Limit any sort of drooping in the back and shoulder blades to avoid lower back injury throughout the movements.  After 20 seconds has expired, rest for 10 seconds and cycle back up to exercise #1.

We recommend beginning exercise participants repeat this routine 5 times.  However, as fitness levels improve, sets can be repeated from 6 to 10 times to impose a greater adaptation.

Committing to a membership to one of Napa’s local gyms is a fantastic method to improve one’s lifetime fitness success.  However, it might be a good idea to ease into gym attendance as to not over do it.  Gradually introduce yourself into regular adherence to exercise by not only going to the gym, but also performing exercise sessions at home using your own body as an exercise tool.

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 16

2020: The Year of Decreasing Pain

The first of the month of the year is underway.  One of the most popular fitness trends every new year is weight loss.  Refining dietary habits and ensuring to fill the activity rings on your preferred wearable fitness tracking technology are great tactics to help lose weight.  However, with all of these numbers and devices that we have to keep track of, sometimes we forget about how our body feels.  Newly motivated individuals diligently achieve 10,000 steps per day and make it to the gym to burn extra calories.  Before you know it, your body is sore and pain-like symptoms can demotivate us just as fast as we hopped on the fitness band wagon.  Grinding through pain and soreness from previous injuries or from a current exercise routine is never fun.  Living with pain can make our days less productive and make us grumpy.  Therefore, along with all the exercise, calories to burn, and steps we are motivated to achieve this new year, about it would benefit us by focusing decreasing pain as a key point of focus this year.  Prevention of pain and decreasing the likelihood of future injuries is a commonly forgotten critical success factor that can yield another year of success.

Posture is commonly the last thing we think about.  Our posture is affected by long hours at our desk, standing too long, sitting in the car as we commute, and the almighty cell phone that we tilt our heads down to stair at a million times a day.  These commonly forgotten positions contribute to pain in the neck, shoulder blades, low back, hips, knees, and ankles.  These detrimental effects of poor posture can lead to pinched nerves in the neck and shoulder, sciatica in the hips, and arthritic bone-on-bone contact throughout the body.

An easy solution to counteract the effects of sub optimal posture is to frequently remind yourself to sit and stand upright.  Try to view yourself from a 3rd person standpoint and picture your body from a side profile.  Visualize your ears on the side of your head, the side of your arm, and the sides of your legs.  Now imagine an imaginary line traced perfectly through the center of this side profile image of your body.  This line should bisect the middle of your head, past the ear, through the middle of the arm pit, along the rib care, to the hips, and continue through the center of the thigh to the heel bone in your foot.  This is great practice to organize your body in alignment to have sufficient posture.  Maintaining proper stacking of the body will reinforce the bones of the body to be in alignment to protect against the painful symptoms caused by poor posture.

As we work hard in our professions and our family lives, age gradually progresses.  Along with father time moving forward, our bones, muscles, and joints start to deteriorate.  However, along with good posture, these symptoms of deterioration over time can be significantly slowed down so we can enjoy our lives to the fullest.  To decrease the compounding effects age and poor posture have on the body, adhering to a form of strength and conditioning regularly each week will fend off future pain.  Committing to group fitness classes, Yoga, Pilates, or private personal training sessions in Napa offer conditioning for the body to reinforce the muscles, bones, and ligaments to hold up strong for years to come.  During these exercise sessions, it is critically important to exercise larger muscle groups surrounding the shoulder joint, shoulder blades, core and hips.  Ensuring to exercise the larger muscles will reinforce the bones from grinding on each other and veer us away from pain caused by muscle weakness.

Take pain reduction and injury prevention seriously this new year.  With pain, we won’t be able to get our 10,000 steps in or burn 2,000 calories every day.  We all have a lot to look forward to.  So why not take care of our body so we embrace these experiences to the fullest?  Remember to focus your efforts on pain reduction and injury prevention to have a happy and productive 2020.

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 10

New Year’s Resolution: Be Kind to Yourself

Year 2020 is underway, and the new year resolutions are in full force.  What better way to make a new year’s resolution than focusing on the health of your body and mind?  Eating healthier foods, staying away from sweets, laying off booze, and making it to the gym are all fantastic methods to reinforce the wellbeing of our bodies.  While we focus on such healthy trends to aid us in our health and fitness goals of losing weight and decreasing the likelihood of metabolic diseases, sometimes we forget about how we actually treat ourselves.  Are we following these trends because of what the doctor says or millions of messages that we get from the news or social media?  Or, are we purposely taking time out to plan to be kind to ourselves?  If we want our mind, body, and spirit to be top of the line for the people we support, it’s important to look in the mirror and support that person first.  One of the easiest and financially effortless way to treat yourself to some much needed “you time” is to put the phone down, get out of the car, step away from the fire hose of electronic device shooting social media and news in your face, and focus on moving your body.

2019 may have produced a lot of success for us.  It could have offered us some challenges as well.  Stressful experiences can linger on our minds.  Personal or work-related mental hardships that may have been beyond our control take time to process.  Overcoming these events aren’t easy.  On the flip side, we could have had a lot of success.  Job promotions, welcoming a baby into the family, getting married, or graduating from school are all accomplishments that bring joy to our lives.  However, these are produced from experiencing mental, physical, and emotional challenges.  To help us cope with these times, we might stay up later watching Netflix or utilize alcohol as medication to calm nerves.  These detrimental biproducts of stress can cause an increase in stress hormones levels, increased blood pressure, weight gain, and grumpiness toward the people we care and love.  Even though success is a good thing, we can get tunnel vision and focus on the next obstacle to overcome.  Focusing solely on the next big project, financial logistics or the next semester at school can elicit more stress on ourselves in a vicious cycle. Putting ourselves last will significantly hinder our wellbeing after prolonged neglect.  If we neglect ourselves, we harm the environment we work so hard to support our friends, family and loved ones.  Decreased movement, low adherence to exercise, and limited time to ourselves will elicit symptoms of depression, irritability, and stress.  Luckily, the new year’s fitness resolutions are the perfect cure.

A popular phrase that we might be familiar with regarding exercise goes, “The hardest part about exercise is showing up and getting started.” The author of this article can relate to that statement.  However, when people finish an exercise session, they usually feel amazing.  Following exercise, we feel energized, confident, sleep better, waking up well rested, and have decreased pain from previous injuries.  The list can go on for another few pages.  Physiologically, circulating stress hormones decrease and positive mood enhancing hormones such as dopamine increase.  Fat cells begin to go away and lean muscle cells start to grow.  Add in a comment from your friends and coworkers about your positive mood and flattering physique after a month of regular exercise, you have a win-win situation when braving the first grueling minutes of exercise session and passing the finish line upon its completion.

One of the biggest culprits that hold us back from exercise is lack of time and distractions, such as cell phones and wearable technology that link us to the never-ending stream of news and conversations in our social circle.  To make time for ourselves, we can set these distractions momentarily aside by scheduling a time to exercise.  This time can made exclusively for you and no one else.  Our personal training clients in Napa take 75 minutes once or twice a week to complete their exercise routines.  During these training sessions, exercise participants are instructed to put their phones on silent and set them in a cubby 10 yards away from their fingertips.  This way they can focus solely on their much-needed exercise routine and their own wellbeing.  This setting where we set aside the necessities that tie us to our obligations in life don’t need to be in a gym setting.  What if we set our phones and watch phones aside when we went on a hike, a walk along the Napa River, a Yoga class, or a few games of Pickleball?  This time out of your car, away from your phone, or out of the office and classroom can act as an advanced form of mediation.  When this time is scheduled away from distractions, we get to focus on what gets overlooked the most, ourselves.

Let’s make 2020 an epic year for our friends, family, and loved ones.  Take some time out for ourselves away from the hamster wheel of “go go go.” Improve the health, strength, and happiness of the one who makes a difference in other’s lives.  Take some time out for you this year.

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 31

Decrease Shoulder Pain: Warm Up!

Over the weekend I had the privilege to attend a regional pickleball tournament in Rocklin, CA.  I not only got to participate in my new healthy addiction, but I also saw how such a simple form of physical activity and fun catalyzed movement of individuals with different skill levels, athletic backgrounds, and fitness levels.  As I prepared for my first match, I performed my normal dynamic stretching routine that I do before any exercise session or athletic activity.  This is the same dynamic stretching routine that we teach our personal training clients in Napa before beginning their training sessions.  As I warmed up the muscles of my neck, shoulders, back, hips, knees, and ankles, a fellow pickleball competitor commented on how I was moving my shoulders throughout the warmup.  “Wow, I was watching you move your shoulders around.  I never know how to stretch those areas.”  She continued to demonstrate how she stretches her shoulders, reaching her hand back behind her head as if attempting to scratch her back.  Then she started to perform the same stretches I was doing, emulating my movements to the best of her abilities.  As we bonded over preparing our shoulders for pickleball, I told her, “If you warm your shoulders every time you practice and play, your shoulders will be healthy for the long run.”

In my background as an exercise specialist, I have commonly come across the issue of, “How can I help strengthen, reduce pain, or stretch (insert body part)?”  My first inquiry to the knowledge seeker is, “What does your warmup routine consist of?”  The usual response is, “Warmup?  What warmup?”  You can imagine that my heart momentarily skips a beat and I have to refrain from letting my jaw drop to the ground.  If we can take anything away from reading this article for those  of  you wanting healthy, pain free, and strong shoulders, it is critically important to perform a ritualistic warmup for the major joints of the body before a bout of physical activity.

Various attachment points hold the shoulder together to ensure that it has sufficient mobility.  The shoulder joint is considered a ball and socket joint.  It has unique attachment points including the upper arm, collar bone, and shoulder blade.  Movements of the shoulder joint include adduction, abduction, circumduction, flexion, extension, protraction and retraction.  These are fancy terms for the shoulder being capable of crossing the arms in front of the body, reaching behind, and reaching overhead.  If we want to perform these functions efficiently, ensuring the stabilizing muscles of the shoulder receive oxygenated flow regularly is essential. regularly performed warmup routines come into play to make an immediate positive impact to the structural integrity of the shoulder joint.

These are examples of some simple, yet effective shoulder warmups that we perform with our personal training clients in Napa:

  1. Supine “Shoulder Angels:” Lie flat of the ground. Knees should be bent and feet flat on the ground.  Extend the arms at the elbows, ensuring the palms are facing upward.  Maintaining straight elbows and palms of the hands are facing up, perform a “snow angel” movement where the arms create two half-circle movements across the ground on the right and left side of the body.  You should feel a stretch in the arm pit region, chest, and rotator cuff region of the shoulder.  Repeat the stretch safely for 5-10 repetitions.
  2.  Straight Arm Horizontal Abduction and Adduction:  While standing, reach both arms out in front of your chest.  Ensure that the elbows are extended and the arms are straight.  Keeping the extended arms elevated underneath the collar bones, stretch them backwards until a brief stretch is felt.  This exercise can also be performed with the palms facing up or facing down to achieve more stretching at different attachment points.  Repeat the stretch safely for 5-10 repetitions.
  3. Protraction and Retraction: Elevate the arms to just below the collar bones.  Bending the elbow at a 90-degree angle, ensure that the fingertips remain facing forward.  You should look like a scarecrow with the hands facing forward and fingertips pointing in front of you.  While maintaining this “scarecrow” like position, glide the shoulder blades backwards against the ribs.  Reverse the motion forward.  You should feel a brief sensation of muscular activation at each end range of motion around the shoulder blade and chest region.  It’s important not to shrug your shoulders during this movement.  Repeat this exercise safely for 5-10 repetitions.

We should be able to perform our favorite physical activities pain free.  Scratching the back of your head, reaching for objects overhead, or reaching into the backseat of the car from the front shouldn’t be a taxing event on the body.  These problems occur from neglecting to the connective tissue that hold the shoulders together.  However, this can be cured with a routinized warmup before physical activities requiring shoulder movements.  Over time connective tissue, strength, and mobility can be restored.

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

Muscle Soreness is a Good Thing

There’s no better feeling than finishing an exercise session that challenges your patience and will.  Exercise routines such as resistance training, Pilates, or Yoga put demands your body that take true perseverance to complete.  The sweat, increased body temperature, and heavy breathing feel good after devoting an hour of valuable time to improve our lifetime fitness.  As we get home after a bout of exercise, our mind might be a clearer.  Our thoughts can decompress.  Most of the time we sleep better.  However, the next day we might feel the body moving a little slow.  Muscles experience slight soreness, joints are stiff, and our feet could be a little tender as we take the first steps out of bed.  This feeling following an effective exercise routine is called delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS.

Sore muscles are caused by minor pain signals from nerve cells surrounding the connective tissue around muscles that were stressed from exercise.  For example, when we train our personal training clients in Napa to perform 3 sets of 10 weighted squats, they often experience soreness in their glutes, quads, and hamstrings.  The muscles that were stressed from an organized exercise routine have had their cellular structure slightly disrupted.  This leads to microscopic tears in muscle cells and a brief inflammatory period.  This can cause slight discomfort.  More so, joints can feel the effects of soreness from workouts because of stress on the ligaments and tendons.  Muscle to bone attachments are held together by tendons while bone to bone attachments are held together by ligaments.

Living with pain is suboptimal.  However, it’s important to understand that the pain caused by DOMS is an important tool to reinforcing the architecture of the cells within lean muscle mass, tendons, and ligaments.  There is a difference between searing, shooting pain and DOMS.  For instance, if there was a random battery powered toy on the ground from the remnants of our child’s playroom that struck your shin, the shin would swell up, bruise, and hurt.  This is would be the effect of bruised bone that would take a week or so to heal.  In contrast, say you take a Yoga class from one of Napa’s elite Yoga instructors.  This workout could lead to muscle soreness in the chest, shoulder, core, and glutes.  However, this soreness would only last for a day or two.  This shorter span of soreness is caused by smaller tears in the connective tissue that heal faster due to controlled exercise.  The result of the connective tissue recovering following such a workout is stronger muscles, increased durability to the tendons and ligaments, and less pain the next day.  Additionally, now that the muscle has been reinforced following sufficient healing, soreness won’t be as pronounced following the next Yoga class.  This decrease in DOMS indicates that muscles are not as affected by physical stress due to increased repair stimuli and density in lean muscle mass.

It’s important to understand that the body needs to get sore to improve.  However, it’s also worth it to discern between the difference of being hurt and being sore.  Use exercise as a tool to continue to feel sore for the result of becoming stronger and increasing productivity.  To succeed, your intuition is a powerful tool to decide what exercise movements are best for you and your lifetime fitness journey.

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

Dec 19

Winter’s Here: Train to Avoid Slipping and Falling

As the winter solstice nears, the days grow darker.  Along with these dimly lit times, the weather cools down and brings rain. Fog shows it’s face and lack of sunlight to leaves dampness on the ground from the previous night’s precipitation.  With lack of light in the evenings, we humans don’t have the nighttime vision of nocturnal animals like mice or owls.  This introduces a climate of low visibility and a terrain with a slippery surface.  For bipedal organisms walking on two feet, like the general population around Napa, we now have a perfect recipe for a risk of slipping, tripping, or worst off, falling. We can relate this type of slick, dimly lit environment to ice skating in the dark.

Remaining indoors to avoid the cold weather and stay dry is an effective way to avoid illness.  However, decreased physical activity can negatively impact our bodies.  It would benefit our bodies optimally by continuing to brave this cold, bleak time of year.  One of the best ways to fend off the threat of slipping and falling in terrain-altering conditions is to train the body to perform in slippery, dark environments.  Similar to how a snow athlete would train to perform in cold and snowy conditions, the general population should utilize strength and balance training to perform optimally during this wet time of year.  Here are some examples of a few techniques to decrease the likelihood of injuries from falling, tripping, or a losing balance:

  1. Perform static balance exercises: This is an effective technique to help people maintain balance.  Balance is critical for techniques requiring us to stabilize our limbs while dynamically stepping or walking.  Such as stepping off curbs or skillfully stepping over puddles.  A simple and effective static balance exercise is to stand on one foot while the other is elevated in the air for 15 to 30 seconds.  We recommend to our personal training clients in the Napa Valley to start off safely by standing next to an object to put their hand on, such as a wall.  To make this exercise more challenging, take your hand off of the wall and stand on one leg unassisted.  The next step would be to stand on one leg with your eyes closed.
  2. Increase your foot stride length and height: The winter weather introduces puddles and dark environments.  This decreases visibility which could lead to the need to step over puddles.  What if you accidentally clip an uneven part of the ground or there is some debris on the ground that can’t be seen? Walking mechanics with effective foot height and stride length decrease the likelihood of such obstacles effecting our ability to move in dark and wet environments.  To build stride mechanics, try marching in place.  Focus on maintaining an upright torso and alternate knees in a marching fashion.  Ensure that knees raise at least to hip height each march. Perform about 20 repetitions each leg.
  3. Improve Posture and Strength: Having strong and inline posture helps the torso to stay up right.  Most importantly, optimal posture allows the head to be upright.  As the neck is upright, we have better frontal vision which helps us predict hazards that impede our forward movement.  Poor, droopy posture in when the head is tilted down limits our ability to see what’s happening in front of us.  This introduces the threat of missing what is occurring in front of us and avoiding a possible fall threat.  The simple plank movement is one of the most effective exercises to improve postural strength.  To perform, lay face down on the floor.  Extend your arms and legs to where you are “planked out” on the ground and hold for 15 to 30 seconds.  Ensure not to allow the hips to sag and avoid any technique flaws that cause lower back pain.  This exercise safely and effectively targets the neck, shoulder, core, lower back, hip, ankles and knee joints.  If you’re not sure how to improve your posture and where to start, the plank exercise is one of the best places to start.

The cold, gloomy winter weather can introduce threats of falling.  However, to be productive in our everyday lives, we can’t let a little darkness and water slow us down.  There are plenty of gifts to be acquired to give to our loved ones as we do our holiday shopping.  Lots of hot chocolate and cookies need to be consumed on the Santa Wine Train with our kids.  Don’t forget all the beautiful lights that we only get to walk around and see this unique time of year.  Take advantage of this breath-taking time of year and exercise to prevent the threat of falling so we can enjoy the traditional holiday outdoor activities.

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

Nov 26

Regular Exercise Helps Us Avoid Surgery

Car accidents, unexpected injuries, and overuse injuries can lead to corrective surgeries to remedy painful conditions limiting production.  Corrective procedures via surgery are important to fixing physical ailments that affect our lives.  Doctors and surgeons promote orthopedic corrections to repair bones, joints, and muscles when connective tissues are damaged.  We also put our bodies in the surgeon’s hands.  Corrective surgery could elicit a great outcome.  However, Surgery can also result in the feeling of having a new limb on the body.  While surgery is meant to put our bodies in a more optimal state, we roll the dice if we will feel better than before when a significant procedure is performed on the body.  Bones, tendons, muscles, and ligaments that we have lived with our entire life are severed, shifted and put in different areas.  Scar tissue will develop as a biproduct of surgery in areas we aren’t familiar with.  Screws, rods, and cadaver connective tissue are used to repair the body.  These surgical procedures can yield some fantastic results, offering optimal recovery, more productive days, and decreased pain throughout our lives.  However, we are never the same after the body is manipulated and put back together.  Imagine waking up with a completely different, hand, shoulder, hip or knee.  If any of you have had surgery, you can probably relate.  We live all our lives with the same joints.  We know how they work.  Imagine how long it will take us to acclimate to a new limb or joint.

In some circumstances, regular exercise focusing on conditioning and injury prevention to significant joints can delay and even fend off corrective surgeries overall.  Examples might include classic cases of arthritis causing pain to a significant joint.  Such as dull, achy, annoying pain in the shoulders, back, hips or knees.  A visit to the doctor might point you in the direction of getting rotator cuff surgery, a hip replacement, or a knee replacement.  This usually entails a bout of physical therapy prescribed by the doctor before making this decision to see if physical therapy can fend off the need for surgery.  However, even after physical therapy has been completed to degenerative joint conditions, the option to go under the knife is still present if pain and suboptimal living conditions persist.  A new joint, no bone-on-bone contact, and decreased pain sounds appealing to the person considering surgery.  However, after surgery people must deal with strict recovery protocols and limitations as the joint recovers 3 to 6 months after the surgery.  More importantly, if the treated area is not recovered correctly with professional physical therapy and monitoring, the joint may not function optimally or might be worse off then before surgery.  Surgery is an effective option and has its benefits.  However, we can also exercise to avoid the need to have surgery is an option as well.  Instead of deciding to go under the knife, perhaps we can consider utilizing exercise as a preventative measure to support our joints and increase oxygenated blood flow to help recover tendons, ligaments, cartilage and bones of arthritic joints.  Developing lean muscle cushions and reinforces joints.  If we must choose surgery, maintaining regular physical activity before surgery is going to make that road to recovery post-surgery that much easier.

We should treat exercise as the first line of defense.  Unfortunately, that is commonly overlooked because the quick fix solutions of having a magically re-installed tendon or joint seems more appealing when someone else is doing the work.  The human body can’t be fixed by taking it in to the auto-mechanic to change the spark plugs.  We’re more complex than that.  Researching safe and effective exercises will enlighten us how to decrease joint pain and avoid injury.  Exercising joints are surrounded by large muscles groups reinforces joints and decreases impact.  Hip and knee replacements can be avoided by strengthening larger muscles surrounding the joint including the glutes, hamstrings, and quadriceps.  These larger muscles act like shock absorbers.  When they are exercised, oxygenated blood flow is delivered to the connective tissue increasing bone mineral density and decreasing the breakdown of cartilage and bone.  Shoulder surgery can be avoided by strengthening muscles attaching to the shoulder blade, pectorals, and triceps.  The spine can be reinforced by focusing on core strengthening movements such as planks.  This helps decrease the likelihood of bulging disks and neurological damage to the spine.

Simply performing 1-2 days per week of 20-30 minutes of strengthening exercises  to the shoulder, core, and lower extremities can significantly help us avoid the need for immediate corrective surgery.  Undergoing a significant surgery to repair a troubled area of the body can be helpful.  However, exercise helps us to reserve the body we have been born with.  Treat exercise as the first line of defense before undergoing surgery.

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

Nov 17

Stay away from the pharmacy line: EXERCISE IS MEDICINE!

It isn’t a surprise that regular exercise benefits our society.  Multiple studies support evidence that at least 150 hours of exercise per week fends off significant illness such as cancer, diabetes, psychological and emotional disorders leading to depression, and an assortment of cardiovascular diseases.  When we go to the doctor with symptoms from a threatening illness, usually a prescription is administered to treat the symptoms.  When dealing with chronic symptoms, prolonged adherence to taking daily prescriptions can last 3 months to a year to treat certain illnesses.  How could we decrease the need to visit the doctor these diseases?  The answer is to administer your own medicine through exercise.

Scientific research has correlated poor eating habits and detrimental lifestyle decisions with the increase in metabolic diseases and cancer.  Sub optimal dietary and lifestyle decisions are commonly linked to decreased levels of physical activity.  When fatty, bready, sugary foods are consumed, people get bloated, lazy, and have gastrointestinal distress.  Smoking and indulging in copious amounts of alcoholic beverages into the wee hours of night stress the body, inducing poor sleep habits and increased stress the next day.  Sure, it’s fun to go out and have a few beers with the guys and watch the 49er’s game.  Or perhaps the ladies want to go out and share a bottle of Napa’s finest wines over a cheese plate.  However, if we stay too late and consuming much rich food and alcohol the body will hit a point of stress it cannot handle and start to deteriorate.  Feelings of lethargy, headaches, and stomach aches usually follow.  We can enter a vicious downward spiral from the biproducts of these decisions making physical activity painful and wilting motivation.  When the motivation to stop moving sinks, stress and sickness surface.

We see similar issues with our personal training participants in the Napa Valley.  As we consult with our clients, a popular goal is to refine lifestyle habits that support sufficient physical activity.  If we can reinforce the habits and decision-making ability of our culture to support physical activity, we will see a decrease in life threatening diseases.  Additionally, the dependency and need to visit the doctor’s office will significantly decrease.

A challenging habit to adhere to is prioritizing 2-3 days of physical activity throughout the week.  How are we supposed to prioritize that?  We can make a weekly schedule where specific days are exclusively dedicated to some form of physical activity.  When choosing physical activities, look at exercises you enjoy doing such as gardening, playing pickleball, hiking, swimming, or taking long walks in the sunset with your loved ones.  Don’t just get a year long membership to the gym because everyone else is doing it.  Avoid the exercise sessions and physical activities that feel like a chore.  The most important factor to getting involved in more physical activity is to find the activities that are gift to us.  If we identify that activities and movements we hold dear, we might think twice about going out until 1 AM to be in an environment consisting of suboptimal food, smoke, and booze.  Why would you want to feel like a train wreck when you have obligations to the physical activities you truly enjoy?

The proof is in the pudding when figuring out methods to decrease the development of cancer, depression, and cardiovascular disease.  One of the first lines of defense against such conditions is physical activity.  If we prioritize physical activity and exercise, there won’t be as many visits to the doctor or the excruciatingly boring line at the pharmacy.  By putting exercise first, we can live healthier disease-free lives yet still be able to have a few nights to splurge.  Utilize exercise not only as a multi-vitamin to fend off disease, but also as a tool to keep us in line to enjoy our lives to the fullest.

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

Nov 14

Plans to Keep Moving when Sick and Hurt

Unexpected injuries and unwelcomed illnesses hold us back.  Heart conditions, the appearance of cancer, as well as upper and lower extremity injuries hinder people’s lives and their ability to perform normal physical activities.  These cases are emotionally scarring because physically active recreational sporting activities and extracurricular social experiences become limited.    Not to mention that recovering from an injury, progressing through chemotherapy treatment, or dealing with the stress of the uncertainty of the recovery is unnerving.  Even though unfortunately health issues hold us back, there are still opportunities to support the return to activity while on the mend.

When there are upper or lower extremity issues affecting movement limiting recreational physical activities, there is always another part of the body that can be refined.  A motivating story involves one of my Pickleball mates.  Jordan had an upper extremity injury that put him on the sideline for about 2 months.  This person is an active Pickleball player who I enjoy playing with 4 times per week.  Unfortunately, he has been sidelined due to this unfortunate injury.  However, he showed up the morning after his surgery and observed the various Pickleball athletes playing every morning.  Additionally, he would arrive with ankle weights strapped around the tops of his shoes to strengthen his lower body while his arm was immobilized in a brace.  He would also act like a ball machine for other players sitting out in games to work on their strokes by pitching balls to refine their technique.  Some valuable lessons to take away from Jordan’s story is his continued motivation to refine his physical activity craft, and awareness to strengthen other areas of the body while his upper body is out of commission.   The take home message from Jordan’s journey to recovery is there is always a road to recovery following significant injuries.  Sure, we will have to sit out for a little bit.  However, this doesn’t mean that we still can’t prepare and stay involved in the activities we enjoy for the day we return during recovery.

Another motivating experience involves a fellow Pickleballer who had to go through a few rounds of chemotherapy to treat a form of cancer.  Fabio was diagnosed with a form of cancer.  He knew that chemo was apparent.  To prepare for this, he kept playing Pickleball for 2-3 hours, 4 times a week before his series of chemo treatments initiated.   Fabio knew that the effects of this treatment would significantly debilitate the physical functions of his body.  But he didn’t let that slow him down.  He had a mentality that he was already returning after recovering from this harsh treatment before it started.  As the chemo treatments pursued, Fabio’s ability to play Pickleball faltered and his attendance lowered to twice a week. Then once a week.  Eventually, we only saw Fabio once every other week. Finally, Fabio had to sit out for 2 straight months. We didn’t his face for about 2 months until his return from a fully successful cancer treatment.  Fabio showed up to our weekend Pickleball at Las Flores, around 30 lbs. less than his normal body weight, frail, without a voice and a glaze in his eyes.  He picked up his paddle and started to do some light hitting.  After about a half hour, Fabio played 2 straight games.  We need to give credit to society’s advancement in medicine and treatment for cancer for Fabio’s recovery.  However, we can’t discount Fabio’s plan to stay in the activity he enjoyed.  Fabio planned for a treatment to go underway by staying active in his recreational physical activity before, during, and after a critically significant treatment.

If we catastrophize about the effects of an injury or serious illness, it will slow us down.  However, just like the injury prevention exercises we do with our personal training clients in Napa, it’s important for us to have a proactive mindset when we get dealt an unfortunate hand relating to a debilitating condition putting us out for a few months.  If we can set our feet after an unfortunate event, plan a return, and work to carry out that plan, we can continue to keep moving forward just like my dear friends Jordan and Fabio.

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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