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.

Feb 19

Perform Resistance Training ONCE per Week= Fountain of Youth!

About every 3 months there is a new health trend in being promoted and spoken about.  I hear clients, friends, and family talk about the newest latest health theme.  Sometimes it’s intermittent fasting.  It can be The Whole 30 Diet.  Or doing the P90X or Insanity workout package.  These are all great!  However, what I see is there is a lot of drop off.  Why?  Simple answer, the 30th day hits in the Whole 30.  People get hungry during intermittent fasting, so they eat when they’re supposed to fast.  And, there are only 10 episodes to your exercise DVD, and then you have to repeat the same thing over again watch the same Trainer leading the exercises bounce around on the TV and tell you what to do.  I’ve even heard people say they can rehearse the same lines on the Exercise DVD.

What we need is a consistent schedule in which we can exercise.  I make sure I exercise at least ONCE a week.  That’s 52 times a year.  Unfortunately, that’s more than what half of the nation is doing currently.

A critically important component of maintaining Health and Wellness is adhering to a weekly exercise Routine.  This means participating at least once per week in a form of physical actively involving stressing the body through a mode of exercise.

We’ve heard repeatedly that exercise is the key to longevity in life.   The fountain of youth.  While it’s true that a body in motion stays in motion, what is the most important is ensuring that we perform some form of resistance training or strength training throughout the week. Strength training and resistance training can take many different forms. A lot of the times when I speak with clients, I hear that resistance training and strength training revolve strictly around going to the gym and utilizing either weight machines, dumbbells, or barbells. While this is true to some degree, resistance training and strength training come in various forms. Exercise modes such as Yoga, Pilates, Isometrics, Group Fitness Classes, Spinning Classes, running, and other recreational activities will fall within the category of resistance training and strength training.

Every day physical activities such as yard work, housework, or some other projects such as painting that leaves your muscles feeling sore is a form of physical activity.  At the same time, this is not a form of “training” to enhance the body.  Chores are work are “work”, not “training.” Focusing on a form of training that enhances the musculature of the body is what will elicit critically important benefits in helping the body stay stronger and healthier for a longer period of time. For instance, when going to a one-hour yoga class, you are putting the body in positions that you normally don’t find yourself in your everyday life. Holding a Downward Dog or Pigeon pose stresses the muscles of the triceps, shoulders, hips and core muscles.  Looking at another common exercise technique such as the Push-Up, we don’t find ourselves belly down on the ground posting up with straight arms and fully extended legs.  The position of the Push Up will put stress on the Triceps, Shoulder, Hips and core as well.  Sounds familiar to those Yoga exercises, right?   While these are not common positions we find ourselves in our everyday lives, these positions will train us to be stronger so we can perform chores without feeling beat up by the end our tasks because our muscles can endure more and our body is more durable!  It is the productive stress that we are putting on our muscles throughout exercise training that will cause an adaptation in strength to our bodies when we perform a form of Resistance Training.  Doing this once a week will make us stronger!

The important take-home message here is that it’s important to refine our physical well-being by challenging the muscles in a different form of resistance and strength training. A challenging the body in these different forms of resistance training, we will Alyssa and adaptation that will improve our strength, hormone concentration, and overall emotional well-being as well. They structured and standardized exercise routine will help to act not only as a Improvement for our overall well-being, but as a enhancer for our physical, emotional, and mental well-being!

If you have any questions about what an easy method of Resistance Training might be and how it could help you, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us at napatenacious@gmail.com or call us at 707-287-2727.

Feb 07

The Benefits of Exercise over Alcohol to Improve Confidence!

The benefits of exercise remain a critical component in improving our wellness in life. Progression in staying healthy and injury-free, improving ones overall fitness, and improving overall quality of life is a clear byproduct of putting in time and energy to a structured exercise routine. One technique for improving Life Time Fitness that we do with our Personal Training clients in Napa here is working on managing alcohol consumption throughout the week. Not only does alcohol elicit surplus calories to where they can be stored as fat on the body unnecessarily, but alcohol also affects other important functions in life.  In this article we’ll talk about how alcohol is commonly used as a extrinsic motivator that is aimed toward boosting someone’s confidence and how exercise can be an invaluable investment to supersede the usage of alcohol and increase one’s positive outlook on life.

Sometimes by consuming alcohol as a recreational activity, confidence can be increased. The ability to be unhindered by any sort of inhibitions to say some things and act a certain way that you may hold back in a sober state are increased. Hence,  having a drink before going out to a social event might be appealing.  Once again, as stated in the beginning of this topic, alcohol can lead to deleterious defects in our Life Time Fitness and weight loss goals.

A benefit of some of the weekly goal setting tactic that we establish with our Personal Training clients is to abstain from alcohol a certain amount of days. We call these alcohol-free days or AFD’s. In addition to having alcohol free days, we also promote exercise to be done at least two to three times per week. When we eliminate alcohol and increase exercise, some of the benefits promote increases in emotional status and our physical well-being. After an exercise routine has been completed, a feeling of accomplishment is achieved. When we accomplish something, we feel good about it and those positive thoughts resonate into other aspects of our life. When we accomplish something we could feel a little more confident. In addition to feeling better in our emotional status, another aspect of confidence is the actual physical appearance that your body will achieve from abstaining from a specific amount of alcohol and from exercising the muscles on your body on a regular basis! We can see that there is a positive correlation in feeling more confident from conscious decisions that we make to improve our Life Time Fitness by abstaining from alcohol a certain amount of days and increasing weekly exercise adherence.

Imagine walking into a room 10 lbs. lighter than you were a month ago because you practice weekly exercise adherence and practice having a certain amount of alcohol free days per week. Your body will look better, your emotional status will be in a more positive and happy state, and other people will probably notice this. When other people notice this, more often than not this will be a positive feedback loop to being perceived as a more confident person.

Who needs alcohol to feel confident!?!

So the take-home message here is to practice a form of Lifetime Fitness that will increase your confidence. Life Time Fitness does not require the supplementation and alcohol, all it requires is a few goals of weekly exercise adherence that can be easily established to improve your overall physical appearance and increase your confidence.

Jan 27

Putting Yourself First: Wellness as a Priority!

The category of Wellness has to do with staying strong, healthy, and happy emotionally, mentally, and physically.   A critical component to staying “Well” is putting yourself first by taking time aside to exercise, set goals, and partake in your hobbies. Everyone has families, but you won’t be able to take care of your family and friends unless you take care of yourself first as a priority!

It’s important to exercise at least once per week to ensure that your body is able to perform in your everyday physical functions and remain free of injury. Adhering to weekly exercise could be as simple as making sure to take a fitness class once a week, doing a quick exercise routine involving lower-body and upper-body resistance training techniques, or just taking a hike or brisk walk.

Another component of staying well is to embracing one of your hobbies and contributing to it at least once a week. This could be anything from writing in your journal, gardening, cooking a new recipe every week, or even watching your favorite TV show if you’re too busy to do so. Hobbies are very important to fine tuning your mental acuity by separating yourself from the stresses of everyday life. Going to work, taking care of bills, or maybe managing certain relationships in your friendships and/or family can become a recurring theme in which it’s hard to get out of those mundane ruts of stress. It’s important to purposely setting aside time once throughout the week to tend to your hobbies will give you the opportunity to separate yourself from these stressful

One of the most important things that we work on with our Personal Training clients in Napa is to not only set goals, but also revisit those goals and manage them every 4 weeks. It’s very important to look at where you are in Your Life Time Fitness journey and see if the goals you have established are still conducive to positively influence your Wellness. If you’re not sure, take some time to think about where you would like to be in 4 weeks. A very serious question that we asked our personal training clients here at Napa tenacious Fitness is “What does success look like to you after this next month?”

Putting yourself first before the other mandatory stresses in life is a critically important component to Lifetime Fitness. Perhaps it would be a good idea to take some time aside to ensure that you are positively influencing your Wellness by making sure that you exercise weekly, contribute to your hobbies weekly, and really take some time to dig deep and assess your goals and make sure they are right for you.

Facebook
Google+
YouTube
Instagram