May 19

Your Training is More Important than how much Protein you eat!

 

A popular goal among our Napa personal training clients is to increase lean muscle and achieve a more toned physique. There is a common perception that consuming an increased amount of protein in the diet will increase lean muscle mass. Having more lean muscle mass is desirable to obtain an improved body image perception of one’s body image.  This can be achieved by focusing on toning specific areas of the body and decreasing subcutaneous fat around areas that usually hold on to fat such as the abdominal region, hips, and back of the body.

We need to be careful about the information we see in social media posts, popular fad diets, and other popular articles in magazines.  A common trend that is talked about is  to eat more protein to create more lean muscle.   There is a flaw in this message.  Just like carbohydrates and fats, if protein is not utilized for its specific function to rebuild connective tissue, in this case lean muscle mass, it will have nowhere else to go except to be stored as fat underneath the skin. If we do not induce an environment that creates a stimulus for lean muscle to be metabolized and built, then an increased amount of protein will be stored as fat.

It is true that an increased amount of protein in the diet can lead to increased muscle mass.  However, what we fail to see in articles and other information that endorse high protein diets is how much resistance training should be included with the combination of  increased  protein in the diet.  We have covered the different categories of resistance training in previous articles which include anything from doing bodyweight kinesthetic movements, taking Yoga or Pilates classes, or utilizing weight training techniques to put muscular stress on the body. By putting muscular stress on the body, microscopic tearing of the muscle fibers will occur. When we get this microscopic damage to the muscle, the ability for protein to be able to rebuild the structural integrity of the muscle increases.  This results in functionally stronger muscles and improves the architecture of the muscle.  The combination of resistance training and increased protein will refine the muscles stressed by resistance training to become larger in size and help maintain a leaner overall physique.  To be able to utilize these effects of building lean muscle, participating in a resistance training exercise protocol of at least three times per week will positively influence this goal.

As the general population, we need to be careful of how we are absorbing this information and who we are comparing ourselves to when trying to obtain more lean muscle mass when becoming leaner is goal.  For example, there was a feature on the diets of Chris Hemsworth and Dwayne Johnson is Men’s Health Magazine.  Chris Hemsworth  plays Thor in the latest Marvel movies.  Dwayne Johnson, commonly known as The Rock, plays various “buff dude” roles in movies as well. The article highlights that they consume at least one gram of protein per pound of body weight.  For these two Hollywood actors who have the physiques of Greek god statues, they weigh anywhere from 200 to 250 pounds. Meaning they consume 200 to 250 g of protein.  That is a ton of protein to consume.  However, for these actors, this is a suitable amount. Thor and The Rock’s job is to maintain a physique of elite physical condition for that role in the movie so that they can look like a superhero or elite super soldier.  In order to obtain this physique, they must train anywhere from 8 to 10 times per week performing a form of resistance training.  As a consumer reading this information, we need to ask ourselves if we are willing to train and hit the weight room 8 to 10 times per week.  Nine out of 10 times, the schedules and lifestyles of the general population cannot meet this criteria. Therefore, the commonly perceived idea of an increased amount of protein to build lean muscle mass is not congruent with the frequency of training.

Existing as a society where we work an average of 40 hours a week at our jobs, tend to our families, and participate in social activities, it becomes increasingly challenging to go into a gym setting and perform resistance training at least 3 times per week.  When increasing the amount of protein in our diets, we are also in danger of consuming too many calories at one time.  A more realistic solution is to put a strong emphasis on balancing fitness and life. We need to make sure that the demands in life can equal the demands of our training expectations. By prioritizing training and ensuring that resistance training can be performed three times per week, that opens up the ability to increase the dietary demands of protein to achieve more lean muscle mass.  It’s imperative to use caution when increasing dietary protein beyond what is normally consumed.   We don’t want to fall into the trap of not exercising enough while increasing the amount of protein we eat.  This could lead to an increased amount of fat storage.

Aim to integrate balance for the longevity of our lives.  Ensure to perform resistance training at least three times per week. Participate in cardiovascular activities in your hobbies like playing recreational sports or taking walks and hikes with your friends.  Use your intuition before buying into fad diets, feature articles on celebrities, or social media advice.  A healthier option is to prioritize the focus of balancing out the demands of life, refining your training routine and achieving a balanced diet of carbohydrates, proteins, and healthy fats.  After a healthy active lifestyle and regularly occurring resistance training regimen have been integrated into your life, perhaps then you can address increasing the amount of protein in your diet to achieve more lean muscle mass.

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

May 03

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT): Efficient and effective… but make it safe!

A commonly discussed weight loss topic among our personal training clients in Napa entails what types of exercise will most efficiently shed fat from the body. Popular themes we see in health and fitness advertisements feature information on performing high intensity interval training(this is also known as HIIT in personal trainer lingo). HIIT is a mode of exercise that requires participants to perform strenuous exercise for an amount of time followed by a less intense exercise for half the amount of the intense period. This makes HIIT function as a 2-to-1 work-to-rest ratio. Another popular mode of exercise is steady state cardio. Steady state cardio is performing a mode of activity for a prolonged period of time at sub maximal exertion. For example, performing a 30 minute jog at 65% or less of your maximum heart rate. It’s important to perform exercise in an effort to control the amount of subcutaneous fat on your body, maintain healthy blood pressure and keep an efficient heart rate.   It’s equally important to understand how these forms of exercise function and how they can benefit you.

Fitness communities such as CrossFit clubs, boot camp classes, or small group personal training classes at local gyms frequently utilize HIIT to coach their exercise participants.  HIIT has become popular due to its marketability of the results it offers.  We see hyper athletic models and celebrities with very muscular and toned physiques. When the consumer sees that a model, actor and/or celebrity has a Greek god like body, they start to inquire about how this person achieved their results. When they find out that HIIT is a portion of their routine, the draw to follow this mode of exercise becomes more appealing.

Understanding the specific energy system of HIIT is critically important to being able to utilize this form of exercise safely and effectively. As stated earlier in the article, HIIT is a mode of exercise is performed at a high intensity of perceived exertion for a certain period of time followed by a lower intensity exercise. An example of this may include running for a perceived exertion of 80% of maximum effort for 20 seconds and then following it up with 10 seconds of walking at about 20% of your maximal perceived exertion.  Repeating this sequence of exercise for 10 cycles through would give sufficient heart rate responses.

Implementing HIIT in your exercise routine is a very efficient technique to burn fat. When HIIT is performed and the participant crosses over the threshold of exercising over 75% of their maximum heart rate, the after burn effect of utilizing fat as a fuel source after your training session is increased. Therefore, efficient time management is a benefit of utilizing HIIT as a form of cardiovascular exercise. For example, performing a 60 second run followed by a 30 second walk HIIT protocol 10 times is more time efficient than performing 30 minutes of jogging.  This brief form of exercise is preferable to people who don’t want to spend 30 minutes on a treadmill listening to music and looking out the window of your local gym. In addition, HIIT can be seen as more stimulating and not as monotonous as traditional steady state cardio.

While there are many benefits to performing HIIT, the downside is the increased likelihood of injury. When we perform activities at a higher intensity, there is more impact to the joints.  In addition, performing tasks at a more aggressive pace hinders the ability to concentrate on the fine details needed while exercising.  This can lead to a higher proposition of error. What would happen if someone were to roll their ankle or pull their quadriceps when performing a high-intensity run? When performing HIIT as a mode of exercise, it’s very important to exercise caution while doing so.

Both HIIT and steady-state cardio play a crucial role to achieving benefits from your exercise program. Depending on the specificity of goals and motivations for the individual, each can be implemented in an exercise program. However, it’s important to understand what your goals and motivations are. At certain times HIIT may not be in your best interest depending on the current physical state of your body. There are other options that encourage increased heart rate and blood pressure responses from exercise offering similar results. Performing recreational activities, hiking, walking with friends or performing some sort of hobby over the weekend that entails physical exertion will elicit healthy cardiovascular adaptations. It’s important to avoid following along with what is perceived as the next best thing posted in Hollywood or social media until you have researched it yourself. Choosing enjoyable exercises will lead to feeling fulfilled, happy and strong.  At the end of the day a balanced life of fitness and wellness is the most important.  HIIT and steady-state cardio are both very effective forms of training.   Just make sure that you can perform these exercises safely and enjoy them while you’re at it.

Apr 25

Stress at Work: Exercise is your Natural Stress Reducing Medicine

There’s an epidemic in today’s society caused by increased stress from our jobs.  This affects the health and wellness of our general population.  Over the past week, I’ve heard a very good piece of advice. When listening to a guest speaker at the Napa Kiwanis group, he said “There is a time in life where you find out that being lazy is just as important as being busy.” As an ambassador of Life Time Fitness, a theme that we work on with our Napa personal training clients is to utilize exercise as a source of medicine and meditation to decrease stress.  It’s important to set aside time for yourself. We all live busy and stressful lives in our own arenas. If we don’t allocate time in our schedules to step away from the busy part of life, we risk the harmful effects of becoming overstressed.

While reading another fellow author’s article in the “Ask the Doctor” section of the Napa Register, the author stated that stress from jobs contribute to hypertension and the increased risk of heart disease. When we spend copious amounts of time in stimulating environments, stress hormones concentrations in our blood are increased.  In particular, the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline.  Having an increased circulating amount of these stress hormones can cause unhealthy levels of elevated heart rates and dramatic increases in high blood pressure even at low levels of activity.  Increased stressful stimuli can also lead to conditions of anxiety and insomnia.  Additionally, increased levels of stress from becoming too busy throughout our lives can lead to compromising social factors amongst our friends, family, and peers including symptoms of depression and lack of focus. Individuals who present symptoms of these statistics linked with high-stress jobs have factors that lead to cardiovascular disease and possible stroke scenarios.

There is a correlation between increased blood pressure, or hypertension, and being in a stressful environment.  When there is an increase in blood pressure during exercise, the body adapts by improving the structural integrity of the blood vessels by making the blood vessels more firm so they can manage an increased amount of blood pressure. The results are blood vessels that can carry a larger quantity of blood. When the blood vessels are able to carry a larger quantity of blood, that means that blood pressure will go down while resting. Therefore, by looking at the example of utilizing exercise to regulate stress hormones and create beneficial adaptations to the anatomy of our blood vessels, we can see how a regularly scheduled exercise routine will elicit results that will counteract the effects of a stressful job climates.  Exercise can be used as a natural “high blood pressure medication” for individuals affected by stressful environments.

In the realm of exercise physiology, stress hormones are used to assist the body in physical performance. For example, when we start to exercise and do a set of push-ups, our heart rate increases. As the heart rate increases, adrenaline is released in throughout the body. Adrenaline is produced to assist the body during exercise or strenuous physical activity by adding a naturally occurring stimulant.

Another hormone that is released during exercise is cortisol.  We hear that increased levels of cortisol are a bad thing. It is true that increased levels of cortisol can be linked to interactions in hyper stressful environments.  Conversely, cortisol also helps assist us in utilizing fat as a fuel source during prolonged physical activity, such as a brisk jog or bike ride. During sub maximal exercise (exercising at 60% or less of your maximum perceived exertion), cortisol and adrenaline are produced naturally to help the body perform throughout strenuous physical activity. However, when adrenaline and cortisol are produced in an environment that has low activity levels by external stressful situations, these stress hormones can become harmful and induce high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and retain subcutaneous fat.

The silver lining to this is that high levels of stress hormones caused by the stimuli of mentally taxing climates linked to our professions can be cured. One of the best ways to counteract the unhealthy increase of stress hormones and cardiovascular disease risk factors is to exercise regularly. As the body adapts to  utilizing stress hormones during acute physical activity, the demand for producing stress hormones in a non-physically active stimulating environment is decreased.  Educating the body on how to properly utilize stress hormones during physical activity is the one of the most revolutionary improvements exercise can offer to stressed individuals.

Instead of taking high blood pressure medication, why not reap the benefits of exercise to reduce high blood pressure? Instead of taking antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication, how about using exercise as a tool to replace the pills that are prescribed to battle the detrimental effects of stress and anxiety. As an alternate to depending on alcohol to soothe social anxiety, how about using a regular exercise routine as your  natural anti-anxiety medication.   Stressful environments in our lives  are inevitable.  We need to be a part of these highly stimulating professional environments that impose a certain amount of stress to succeed in our careers and interactions with others. It’s important to manage our stress appropriately so that we do not become unhealthy.

I promise you that adhering to exercise at least once a week will help us all as a society manage stress better.  We can become stronger, happier and healthier for the days to come by practicing regular exercise as tool to manage our stress.  Perhaps we can set the business of life aside and take some time for ourselves in the form of exercise.  Remember the phrase at the beginning of this article, “Being lazy is just as important as being busy.”

Apr 16

The Female Body: Will lifting weights make me bulky?

Body image is a very frequent subject that gets brought from our personal training clients in Napa. A popular question among our female clients that we get asked is,

“Will lifting weights and performing resistance training exercises make me look too bulky?”

While it is true that performing resistance training as a mode of exercise creates lean muscle mass on the body, it is a common misconception that lifting weights will give a female the self image of having the body of a lumberjack.  For females who want to lose weight and achieve a slimmer overall perception of their body, the combination of performing resistance training, cardiovascular exercise, and adhering to a balanced diet are key components to achieving a leaner and toned body.

The way that we perceive our body in our own eyes when we look in a mirror is subjective. This means that we all have individual preferences in which we are trying to achieve to make ourselves feel satisfied with our body when looking at our reflection or in pictures. Before getting carried away with the idea that performing weightlifting exercises will transform a woman’s body into an NFL Linebacker, it’s important to find out where you want to go with your Fitness routine.  Some important questions to ask yourself might be:

” How do I  want specific parts of your body to look?”

Do you want to have a physique that looks like a ballerina?

Do you want to feel comfortable in a bathing suit?

Do you want to decrease the size of your arms, midsection, or hips and legs?

Does the perception of muscle on your body make you feel too bulky?

These are all very important questions to ask because they will set a starting point at what is needed to create the road map to achieve these goals. Acquiring and maintaining lean muscle mass in the upper extremities and lower extremities are critically important areas responsible for enabling individuals to have a leaner overall physique.

Having lean muscle mass on the body and decreasing the amount of subcutaneous fat we have surrounding the area of the arms, midsection, and hips go hand-in-hand. This is why it’s important to develop some sort of lean muscle mass. One of the most efficient ways to develop lean muscle mass is to concentrate on resistance training techniques. The definition of resistance training is the action of putting the body in a certain position and moving the body through some form of resistance. A commonly understood example of this may be the standard squat or push up.  By performing squats, the body is changing its shape and getting lower to the ground and then reverting its shape to an upright position and utilizing the leg muscles to return to its initial position by using gravity as resistance. The squat exercise can also be performed using weights. Squats utilizes a large variety of muscles of the lower body including the muscles of the glutes and thigh. The push-up exercise has a very similar adaptation to the upper body because it covers a wide variety of muscles.   By using gravity to push the body up off the floor, inclined surface, or wall, the muscles of the shoulders and upper arms are being sufficiently exercised.  It is important to keep exercises of compound lower body movements, compound upper body pushing movements, and compound upper body pulling movements in your exercise routine to achieve lean muscle mass. Exercises emphasizing these movements should be done at least once a week in the form of resistance training.

Performing resistance training exercises will yield different results for each individual. Performing squat exercises may make a person develop leg muscles that could be perceived as too bulky. This might give a completely different perception  for others performing squat exercises. The sight of having developed and slightly larger leg muscles may be enjoyable. Depending on the result that an individual gets from a form of resistance training is all based off of the satisfaction of the individual has of their own awareness and  image of their body.

A great way to figure out where you want to be in your life time fitness and exercise journey is to adhere to a balanced exercise program containing various modes of exercise. Different modes of exercise may include:

– performing resistance training utilizing body weight, resistance bands, or weights and weight machines at a local gym.

-Performing cardiovascular modes of exercise such as walking, hiking or running

-working on flexibility and Mobility by taking a Pilates or yoga class.

-doing an active hobby at least once per week. This can include anything from golfing, recreational tennis, recreational softball, or  joining a kickboxing class.

It’s important to note that balance is extremely important when adhering to forms of exercise. If you’re afraid of getting too bulky, more than one day a week of resistance training with weights might not be in your best interest. Instead, perhaps performing resistance training with weights and pairing that with a yoga class for instance and some sort of cardiovascular exercise, such as walking or hiking wood deter the effects of becoming too bulky from performing resistance training.

A equally critically important factor is your diet.  If your diet is not in check, your body will more than likely appear bulky because you are holding onto extra subcutaneous fat and you are consuming too many inflammatory foods that retain water. Therefore, getting a good grasp on your diet is another aspect to look at before assuming that resistance training with weights will cause the female body to become too bulky. Are you consuming dairy, too much protein, or inflammatory foods that take longer to digest such as breads or cereals.   I guarantee that decreasing or even removing some of these items will decrease “bulk”

Utilizing exercise to create positive environments for body image is an important theme among our personal training clients.  Understanding what may or may not be caused by exercising with weights is will help us engage the truth of what our exercise efforts are leading too.  Before assuming that lifting weights will make us look like Mr. Olympia, let’s see if our modes of exercise and dietary habits are balanced out.

Apr 10

Clarification of Carbs and Protein: What they do and Portion Size

One of the leading causes of weight gain and metabolic disease is the misconception  of understanding what proper foods are made up of and how consuming them affect the functions of the human body. Some examples include overeating, consuming too many carbohydrates that effect insulin resistance, and making detrimental food decisions by choosing poor sources of food.   There are many popular diets promoted by television and social media that prove to be very beneficial to the general population such as intermittent fasting, veganism, and ketogenic diets. Something that is missed in the description of these diets are simply going over what a carbohydrates and protein are. It’s very important to understand what these substrates are, where they come from, and how they affect the function of the human body.  Understanding substrate metabolism is critical to maximizing the benefits of weight loss and maintaining wellness in a person’s overall quality of life.

A common question that I get from personal training clients in Napa is,

“what are carbs?”

“why are carbs bad for you?”

The truth of the matter is that carbs are not bad for you at all.  It’s the abuse of carbohydrates that is detrimental to health. Carbohydrates are essentially sugars. Eating sugars have gotten a bad rap in the past due to the increase in obesity and other metabolic diseases, such as diabetes, throughout our nation. Consumers are eating too much processed sugary food such as cereals, candies and breads. Sugars are essentially a molecule that when ingested in the human body are meant to create energy. The human body needs energy to be able to perform daily human functions and operate on the cellular level to ensure that the body has fuel so that our heart can be, our brain can think, and our stomach can work to absorb food.

A common misconception of carbohydrates is that they are bad because they are sugars. Carbohydrates, as listed above, are critically important to the well-being of the human body. However, when ingesting a processed carbohydrate like cereal or bread, the body will not be able to break that down as efficiently as a carbohydrate from a raw state. Raw carbohydrates are things such as sweet potatoes, fruits, and other raw grains that are not cooked down, package, or processed. It’s when we get the burger at a fast food restaurant and ingest a white flour bun problems occur.  When bread is consumed in a regular occurrence, such as five to seven times a week, the body will not be able to absorb the large quantity of carbohydrates contained in the bun at one time. In addition, processed foods elicit a high insulin response in the human body. When insulin is released on a regular occurrence, we become more prone to diabetes.

Another popular questions that is brought up from some of our personal training clients here in Napa is” how much protein should we eat?” It’s important to understand what protein is and how it functions in the human body. Once you understand how protein works in the human body and how it can also help you lose weight, protein consumption can be a very good thing. It’s commonly perceived through diets that are advertised in magazines, television, and social media threads that a diet rich in protein will help you lose weight. This is true to a degree. Replacing carbohydrates with protein will help mitigate the harmful effects of increased carbohydrate consumption.  Proteins are meant to rebuild connective tissue throughout the body, mainly lean muscle mass.  It makes sense that replacing carbohydrates with protein will help decrease putting on extra fat. However,  we have to be careful with the amount of protein that is consumed in one meal. Just like carbohydrates,  if we consume too much  in one sitting, protein will be stored as unwanted fat just like carbohydrates will. The body can only consume so much at one time. That’s why we coach our clients to avoid consuming more than a handful size or protein during a meal. For example, when eating a breast of chicken, we coach our clients not to eat more than the amount of chicken that they can fit in a handful of their hand.

Overeating and weight gain have become increasingly more prevalent in our society.  However, there have been various methods to rectify the epidemic of obesity and metabolic diseases caused by becoming overweight.  New diets are constantly being featured in social media, magazines and websites that focus on specific methods to eat the proper foods.  It’s a great idea to try out new diets that promote a healthy lifestyle.  It is equally important to understand what the function of protein and carbohydrates are.

When our clients come to us on how to improve their Life Time Fitness, we need to approach it from various angles.  If you have any questions or suggestions on what you would like to learn more about regarding Wellness, Exercise, Nutrition or Hobbies , please feel free to reach out to Napa Tenacious Fitness at napatenacious@gmail.com or give us a ring at 707-287-2727.

Apr 04

Losing Weight by Limiting Over Eating, EAT MORE…Salads

The issue of how to lose weight properly can be handled in many ways. One such technique that is commonly understood to lose weight is to eat less food.  Not only is managing the amount of food that you consume very useful, but choosing the type of calories that you put into your body affects the amount of weight gain you get from absorbing fat is very is an effective technique as well. Consuming foods that have higher nutrient density such as protein and healthy fats versus foods that have starchy, high glycemic index carbs, will positively influence the body to transfer proteins into lean muscles and also utilize healthy fats as a fuel source without telling the body to absorb fats as subcutaneous adipose tissue causing unwanted weight gain.

While it is a good method to control the amount of lean proteins that are consumed during a meal, a common  issue that we get from our Personal Training clients in Napa is that they find themselves eating way too much of the healthy proteins in one sitting. For example, a standard serving size of protein is about 3 oz. of a certain type of fish, chicken, or nuts.  This will deliver anywhere in between 10 to 20 grams protein.  However, when omitting carbohydrates and eating lean proteins, we find that it is very easy to overeat the amount of protein that are in these healthy dishes. At times, our clients admit that they eat an entire steak as opposed to half a steak. When an entire steak is consumed, there will be about 50 grams protein and other saturated fats delivered into the system, which only half of that amount can be sufficiently utilized to be delivered to synthesize lean muscle mass. The other portion of this meal can easily be stored as fat tissue and cause unwanted weight gain.

To solve this issue and answer some questions about how to remedy the effects of overeating during one meal, we recommend to our Personal Training clients in Napa to eat vegetables before eating anything else that is on the plate. Some examples of vegetables can be anything from a healthy salad or some roasted vegetables.  By placing vegetables as the priority of foods that are eaten before proteins, the volume of the stomach will be expanded and the desire to eat excess protein will be slightly decreased.  Not only will the desire to be to overeat be reduced, but this now gives the opportunity to absorb healthy antioxidants, anti-fungals, and other beneficial vitamins and nutrients to the body.

Overeating can be an obstacle to losing weight. However, it’s hard to just simply eat less food. Then start starving ourselves. And that’s never any fun at all. However, by adding something else into a diet of eating lean proteins and consuming less carbohydrates, such as vegetables and salads before you eat your proteins, the journey to losing weight can be more efficiently influenced.

Mar 26

Back Injury Prevention Made Easy!

Back injuries are one of the most common injuries that the general population experience. These injuries include anything from lower back injuries, pain in between the shoulder blades, and neck strains. Nagging neck and back pain can be debilitating and cause lack of production in our everyday activities.  Back pain can be distracting and disruptive when we are living out our days at our place of work, spending time with friends and family, or performing some of our cherished hobbies we like to perform in our free time.

Why have back pain hold you back form shooting some hoops with your kids, your favorite sewing project or even reading?

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have a day at work and which we are pain free and feel strong in our back shoulders and neck?

And maybe we should also be able to lend a helping hand to our friends and family when they need to move something around the house or they need some help with another task?

Having sufficient strength and ensuring that your body is strong enough and durable enough to be able to perform these activities are critically important to being able to fulfill these events that we cherish so much in our everyday human interactions with our job, socially, and for ourselves.

Some of a few easy-to-remember techniques that we coach our Personal Training clients here in Napa are to align a few parts of the body to limit the amount of hunching in their posture. Here are a few easy to follow instructions on lining your body up and ensuring that you have proper spinal alignment to reduce the likelihood of injury occurring when standing and sitting:

1.  Start by making sure that your armpits are lined up over your hips. Make sure that you are not hunched forward, or your lower back is creating an arch.

2.  Pull your shoulder blades back and open up the area between your shoulders and your armpits. Kind of like you’re showing someone your name tag if you had one on.

3.  Line your ears up with your armpits by pulling your head back a little bit.  You can think of this as making sure that you are making proper eye contact with the person in front of you or visualizing your forehead being parallel with a wall in front of you.

These techniques may not seem like much.  However, we find that in today’s society being desk jockeys, sitting in cars all the time, and sitting in meetings, we forget about these very simple principles to ensure that our posture is an alignment. Neglecting to pull our shoulder blades back, stacking our armpits over our hips, and making sure that our ears are lined up with armpits, the body turns into a hunch like position and the muscles of spinal stabilization suffer what we call underuse injuries. One of the leading causes of back injuries today is due to the underuse and atrophy of some very important muscles of spinal stabilization.

So if you can take away anything after reading this article and you have been sitting for over 30 minutes, stand up!  Practice these three simple techniques.  Performing these three basic structural corrections will make a world of difference throughout your day and for the rest of your life.

When our clients come to us on how to improve their Life Time Fitness, we need to approach it from various angles.  If you are curious about how to more effectively focus on your Life Time Fitness goals and how to implement some of these tools listed, please feel free to reach out to Napa Tenacious Fitness at napatenacious@gmail.com or give us a ring at 707-287-2727.

Mar 13

Have a RAD Day! (Reduced Alcohol Day)

Ahhh yes, alcohol. The beloved beverage that creates a time of relief, joy, excitement and just serves as that catalyst of having a good time. There’s beer, wine, mixed drinks…your Moscow Mule, Cosmopolitan, Dark and Stormy, Whiskey over the Rocks.

How many times have we heard, “Wow, that sounds like a stressful day.  Here’s some red (wine), you need it.”

Whatever it may be, all of these drinks create an enticing interest for us to strive for after a long day’s work so that we can relax and look forward to getting a nice buzz on.

As you probably know, one of the top influencers that cause weight gain is alcohol! Alcohol brings in a bunch of calories that really cannot be used whatsoever. Therefore, the body learns to store calories from alcohol as fat. Not only are these access calories, but alcohol also goes through a process of fermentation which takes longer for the body to break down. In addition, alcohol also poisons the body in which it stresses the body and slows down the ability to absorb other nutrients do to the detrimental effects that alcohol brings to the body. When alcohol poisons the body, your metabolism is shunted… which means that it slows down.

The body’s natural response is to fight against the introductions of toxins. Therefore, the body recognizes alcohol, and your body gets stressed out. When your body gets stressed out, it goes into survival mode. Which means that fat gets stored. The control center inside of your brain, without getting too technical, senses that the human the brain is controlling is being poisoned.

Then the brain thinks, “Well this person is going to die if I don’t do something about it.  I better make this body live a little longer!”, Now the brain tells the body to absorb fat and tells the body to live as long as possible.  It’s kind of like packing up your emergency supplies for the next natural disaster.  The only exception in this case, is that the body is telling you to pack up fat underneath your skin.

Needless to say, there are various detrimental effects of alcohol. Yours Truly, the writer of this article, really loves to drink beer. However, I know that consuming high amounts of alcohol on a regular basis will contribute to overall weight gain, muscle deterioration, and increased stress levels.

Something that we promote to our Personal Training clients in Napa are something that we call Alcohol Free Days, or AFDs. Another thing that supplements our client success is something that we call a “Reduced Alcohol Day,” or a RAD. A RAD is something that we identify as a day in which you limit yourself to 1 or 2 drinks, as opposed to 3 to 4.

A great technique to reduce the detrimental effects that alcohol may cause toward weight gain, is to not just give it up completely, but control it. Society likes to partake in alcohol as something that we really enjoy. Something that should be utilized as a tool to kick back and enjoy the finer times in life.  Not something that will decrease our overall Wellness and Fitness!  This being said with alcohol, we can avoid abuse by tracking the amount of days that we have an AFD and also the days that we have RADs. On those other days we can partake in alcohol freely. Just don’t over do it of course.  We don’t want to wake up in a gutter somewhere at 6 in the morning and be late for work.

So why not give it a shot? Try to incorporate some AFD’S, and more importantly based on the title of this article, a RAD! Buy adhering to a certain amount of reduced alcohol days per week, you can positively influence your Life Time Fitness goals!

 

So, to sum it all up, I challenge you. I challenge you to have one AFD per week, and one RAD per week.

If this method proves successful for you, please feel free to reach out to napatenacious@gmail.com or give us a call at 707-287-2727 to let us know that it worked!  If you have any other questions, Team Tenacious is here to help you kick more ass in your Life Time Fitness Goals!

Mar 04

Don’t Split Hairs when you Have a Forest to go through… Adhere to Physical Activity 3 times per week!

Some important aspects of a life time of happiness, strength and health are:

“Do I exercise at least 3 times per week?

“Am I properly hydrated?”

“Do I get enough sleep throughout the week.”

Sometimes when we see advertisements on different programs that are targeted to decrease weight loss in 30 days, improve your diet in a short amount of time, or entering a 28 day fitness challenge, we see this as an immediate solution to some of the issues that give us weight gain.  We get questions a lot from our Personal Training Clients here in Napa asking if we’ve heard of “The Perfect 30”, the newest 21 day cleanse, or a (insert # of days) (insert promo name) challenge!  I’ve seen the 21 day “Dad Bod Challenge!”

We see challenges like this happening all the time on TV, social media, and “limited time offers” from local organizations quite frequently! When we get done with that 30 day Quick Fix solution, what happens after that? More often than not, nothing.  We don’t continue to refine our wellness and fitness after the small month long challenge is done and a relapse of gaining weight and loss of physical activity is observed once more.  Joy.

These small promotions like  cleanses and “The Perfect 30” are the “splitting hair” activities I am referring to.  Why split hairs for a short amount of time when we have an entire forest in front of us to go through.  If you sit around and split hairs, you’re wasting your time when you could be moving forward and making some real progress toward maintaining a healthy life for the long run.

A better approach would be to focus on the big “forest” of life that is in front of us. This means focusing on the broader, more robust parts of life rather than all the “quick fix” advertisements and promotions.  Focusing on the simple fact of performing challenging physical activities on a weekly basis will give us positive influences to our Life Time Fitness goals.

Some of the things within this Forest of Life Time Fitness, include a weekly exercise routine. Instead of focusing on just 30 days of doing some sort of fitness challenge that requires you to check in 5 days a week at a boot camp class, it might be a better idea to just ensure to exercise 3 times a week on a regular bases for the rest of your life. This could include anything from taking a hike, gardening in the back yard, chopping wood, going to the gym and doing a few of the resistance training machines, or making sure that you walk at least 2 hours a week. Focusing on weekly exercise adherence will give you a life time of impact to your health and wellness. Ensuring that you do some sort of physical activity throughout the week AT LEAST 3 times, will cover a lot of the struggles in the “forest” of weight loss, injury prevention, and ensuring that we are emotionally and physically well.

Even though there may be various other distractions in our life that tell us we are unhealthy in one way or the other, focusing on a big broad topic and adhering to creating solutions for the “forest” will help us positively influence the issues right in front of us. Counteracting the detrimental effects of age, injuries, and weight loss is going to be a lifelong challenge. So, let’s embrace it as a lifelong challenge of going through the forest of Life Time Fitness, and focus on exercising a total of three times per week. Instead of stopping for a while trying split hairs and dabbling with a 30 day “Quick Fix” solution to solve a problem, why not adhere to traveling through the forest of life on a weekly basis and promote adherence to exercise as a serious part of your journey.  There really aren’t any Quick Fix Solutions when it comes to the threat of injuries, illnesses, and weight gain. However, we can absolutely ingrain Life Time Fitness to make sure that we don’t let these threats get the best of us by making sure that we adhere to a weekly exercise routine and perform some strenuous physical activity at least 3 times per week for the entirety of Our Lives.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about our approach to creating strong, happy and healthy lives through Personal Training and Life Time Fitness Coaching, feel free to reach out to us at napatenacious@gmail.com or give us a call at 707-287-2727.

Feb 25

4 Pillars of Life Time Fitness: Wellness, The Fitness Continuum, Nutrition… and PLAY!

Improvements in Life Time Fitness include focusing on some major categories that will significantly help benefit one’s health through a regular fitness program. Something that we promote with our Personal Training clients here in Napa, is to focus on something we call The 4 Pillars of Life Time Fitness. Within these pillars, we feature 4 critically important themes responsible for positively influencing our Health and Wellness Goals.

Wellness: Wellness can be defined as the ability to maintain oneself in an optimal level of feeling well physically, mentally, and emotionally. This could mean anything from being injury-free, free of illness, and being emotionally happy and healthy.

The Fitness Continuum: We utilize the continuum of fitness as a way to discover where a person is currently in their stage of fitness. This could mean that you are just starting out exercise and fresh into a new program, maintaining your Fitness and exercising about one to two times per week, improving your current fitness level 3 months into a program of exercising 2-3 times per week, or trying to become more athletic. It’s very important to figure out where you are in these four different stages of the Continuum of Fitness. By figuring out where you are in these stages of the fitness Continuum, you can now plan on where your journey of fitness will take you next.

Nutrition:  Another component that is very popular among finding solutions to weight loss, is nutrition. Focusing on your nutrition as a critical pillar to support the overall structure of Life Time Fitness is another useful angle to focus on to maintain a healthy weight and ensuring that your body is being fueled with the proper nutrients that will support its functions.

Hobbies and Play:  Lastly we focus on the category of Hobbies and Play! When we talk about the category of Play, we want to make sure that we are including some sort of Hobby in your plan to get healthier! While it’s important to make sure that we eat right and exercise regularly, it’s just as important to make sure that we are partaking in recreational activities that entail us to use our bodies in recreational ways.

When our clients come to us on how to improve their Life Time Fitness, we need to approach it from various angles.  If you are curious about how to more effectively focus on your Life Time Fitness goals and how to implement some of these tools listed, please feel free to reach out to Napa Tenacious Fitness at napatenacious@gmail.com or give us a ring at 707-287-2727.

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