Aug 16

Upper Body Strength and Quality of LIfe

After a long week of work, chores, and the demands of being a human in today’s society, the weekends gifts us with a few extra hours to sit back and relax.  Kicking your feet up and tuning into a ball game is just one of the many bonuses the slower-paced Saturdays and Sundays allows.  There might be a few “honey-do” chores around the house involving tightening screws on the outdoor shed, exchanging a blown-out light bulb for a new one, or pressure washing the cobwebs off the underside of your roof might be requested since the demands of weekday endeavors aren’t as prevalent.  For those of you who have young children or grandkids, it should come as no surprise the weekend is a prime time for interacting with these young, energetic, and brilliant beings.

Your weekend lunch might start with assembling your favorite sandwich, entailing a masterful foundation of two slices of yeasty and spongy bread, mouthwatering choices of deli meat, mayonnaise, and pickles.  However, opening a jar of pickles might take more effort than first perceived.  Grabbing the glass jar with a hand in one orientation and shifting the top hand fitting onto the top of the pickle jar in another position requires a certain amount of strength, coordination, and skill within the muscles of the upper extremities.  Opening a new airtight jar of pickles can be difficult for individuals with deconditioned gripping muscles.

Parents of young children in their first years of playing overhead-throwing sports such as baseball, softball, or football might need to drain some of their energy.  One could imagine a game of catch isn’t too far away these weekend days.  “Mom or dad isn’t working today. Surely, they must want to wake up and throw a ball with me,” might be what is going through the youngster’s mind.  In contrast, the words, “I get to put my feet up and watch some YouTube videos and catch up on my shows on Hulu,” might be what’s going through an adults line of thought who devoted forty to fifty hours of their week toward their careers.  The last thing we want is to neglect our brilliant protégés by lacking the ability to play a little catch.  Playing a few games of catch requires using the fingers, hands, and wrists to catch and throw a ball repeatedly.

A factory-sealed jar of pickles, a loose screw on the cabinet, or a fifteen-minute game of catch with a small human shouldn’t be factors holding us back from enjoying the weekend.  Instead of viewing the challenges of opening an airtight glass jar as a rigorous bout of labor, reinforcing hand strength prevents this detour of enjoying a pickle on our sandwiches.  Sufficient wrist and finger strength reinforce our hands’ ability to wield a screwdriver and turn it ten times to tighten hinges in our kitchen cabinets.  For the parents reading this, strong wrists, elbows, and rotator cuffs are just as important as the ability to get our kids to school on time so we can get out and play some much-needed catch with them.

Exercises such as dumbbell bicep curls, pushups, and shoulder stretches are simple yet effective tactics that significantly improve upper extremity strength.  Perhaps achieving a few reps of dumbbell bicep curls two to three days a week can improve finger, wrist, and forearm strength.  Additionally, completing a set of ten pushups from the countertop two to three times per week has the potential to improve the strength responsible for extending the arms and holding them in front of the body.  Lastly, performing a doorway stretch for thirty seconds daily on each arm can prevent rotator cuff injuries and improve throwing performance.

Setting aside time to relax and unwind is an invaluable theme that seems to be forgotten far too often.  However, let’s not forget the body needs strength and endurance to get the most out of these leisurely times.  Ensure to input exercises that support our upper body strength and avoid injuries to our wrists, elbows, and shoulders by regularly adhering to routine upper body strengthening exercises.

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.

Aug 13

Back Pain and Everyday Life

The trials and tribulations of life present themselves in various ways where we can expect to prepare for them or randomly when we least expect it.  Our society consistently manages the scales of financial status, human relations, and psychological health.  A few top contributors requiring a substantial amount of time include paying the bills, maintaining a healthy relationship with our spouse, and finding time to enjoy our everyday lives.  Along with ensuring the rent and utilities are paid, mitigating quibbling of relationships, and getting enough sleep, yet another variable seems to fit directly into life’s top five critically important topics to maintain at an optimal level.  This item that seems to appear randomly and needs immediate attention is back pain.

The back is comprised of a network of bones, muscles, and nerves granting us the freedom and ability to thrive in the physical realm of our world.  The spine acts as a keystone in the center of our body.    Our spine possesses protective properties to the spinal cord.  Also known as a portion of the central nervous system, the spinal cord is an elongation of the brain responsible for sending electronic signals to our skeletal muscles and organs.  Without an efficient signal sent to the muscles and organs, one could imagine that the human body may not operate as effectively.  Therefore, if there is an alarm sounding off in the form of back pain notifying us that something isn’t right, it would be just as essential to address the issue of back pain in the same sense of urgency we address other high-priority themes that hold together the productivity of our time on earth.

In the fitness industry, personal trainers see back pain as a primary culprit to impeding an exercise participant’s progress.  If there is an issue that barricades the productivity of someone’s everyday life that can be alleviated if attention is brought to rectifying the primary cause of back pain, then we know where to start.  We instruct our personal training clients to follow simple yet effective best practices to fend off back pain and mitigate the long-lasting afflictions back pain causes.

  1. Exercise consistently:  Before we go into the cutting-edge exercises that can be found on the interwebs or posts by social media fitness professionals, it’s essential to understand the concept of ingraining regular exercise as a staple in our identity.  Exercising for ten to fifteen minutes two to three times a week can redefine a human’s physical architecture.  Before choosing what areas of the body we want to tone and strengthen, identify a consistent and realistic plan to adhere to an exercise schedule.  Inconsistencies in exercise routines disrupt progressions toward fortifying the human body.
  2. Start with isometric exercises: The traditional sit-up, crunch, or fancy core machines at our local gym are effective but require a substantial amount of spine organization to be performed correctly and reap the full benefits of reducing back pain.  Before venturing into advanced exercises, a safe option would be to start with isometric exercises such as the simple straight-arm plank.  Isometric exercise is defined as a body position placed under tension without any mechanical movement.  Putting the body in a situation where it must remain unmoved by the external resistance of gravity requires muscular activation by simply remaining still under tension.  The straight-arm plank requires one movement that needs to be held for a short period.  Practicing this technique two to three times per week can reinforce the spine muscles to mitigate the harmful effects of back pain.
  3. Find a fitness professional and practice your technique: Exercise can be challenging.  Similar to being trained at job sites for specific functions, exercise requires consistent adherence to refine techniques so we get the most benefit without harming ourselves.  Seeking a personal trainer to meet in a one-on-one setting, a Pilates instructor, or physical therapist offers invaluable resources toward ensuring the execution of each technique is performed for optimal outcomes.

Understanding that back pain can slow down our ability to function optimally in our everyday lives is important.  Take some time to identify what back strengthening and injury prevention exercises fit your life.  By practicing back-strengthening exercises, we can avoid being held up by back pain and get the most out of life.

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

Aug 02

Procrastination and Exercise

The resident mockingbirds camping out in the neighborhood trees can be heard performing a symphony of bird songs.  Your bedroom window is slightly cracked, allowing the crisp and refreshing morning summer air to flow over your face as you slowly regain consciousness from a good night’s sleep.  As you notice the light becoming brighter shining in your room from the window, the sky starts to illuminate into more brilliant colors of azure blue and calming lavender purple undertones over the eastern mountains.  You know the sun is moments away from hovering above the horizon.  Your bed feels safe, stable, and comforting.  The intricate formation of your pillows supporting your head is something you look forward to every night after a productive day.  Perhaps you have your favorite cat-shaped stuffed animal that helps keep your arm in a stable position while you lay on your side to partake in the best slumber possible.  This seems like a flawless portrait of how you want your Saturday mornings to be after a rigorous and productive five days of living life to the fullest this past week.  However, it’s Monday morning at 7:30 AM.  And, you’re Yoga class is starting in thirty minutes.

This scenario of waking up to a beautiful morning after a restful weekend might not seem surprising.  Your bed is warm, you’ve taken it easy over the weekend, and your body is cuddled up, akin to how you felt when you were wrapped up like a burrito-blanket as an infant in your parents’ arms.  However, you have a boatload of tasks to accomplish now that the weekend has concluded.  Dropping kids off at school, getting ready to perform your best at your jobs, and handling the demands of being the head of a household throughout the week are just a few examples of the busy lives humans live in today’s society.  After the logistics of everyday life have concluded, we have a category that frequently hits the back burner; exercise.  Why would we want to get up an hour early, travel to the gym, and sweat?  After a long day of work, does it seem appealing to park in the lot in front of a local gym, change into exercise-appropriate apparel, and perform a bout of physically exhaustive movements?  Or, does it sound more enticing to head home, grab a beer, kick our feet up on the Lazy Boy recliner, and turn on the Giants game?

Sometimes the phenomenological life-enhancing benefits of exercise aren’t enough to peel us out of a warm cozy bed and devote an extra hour of exercise to our day.  Fending off cardiovascular and metabolic disease, improving bone mineral density, decreasing the likelihood of unexpected injuries, mitigating stress, or creating an overall healthier everyday life experience via an adherent exercise program is probably the last thing on our mind when all we want to do is remain cocooned in our blankets in bed.  When checking off the daily list of to-do’s, consistent adherence to exercise can quickly become an empty box left unchecked.

A few tactics we recommend to our personal training clients is to set realistic goals.  If you’re starting an exercise program, the last thing you want to do is go from zero to committing to five days of exercise right off the bat.  A five-hundred percent increase in adhering to an exercise program is a lofty expectation.  Instead, meeting your weekly exercise expectancy one to two days per week is more attainable.  Consistently completing an average of two days a week of organized exercise sessions have the ability to offer significantly positive results.  Additionally, exercise sessions don’t need to be hours long.  Performing safe and effective exercise routines for fifteen to twenty minutes in your home can produce optimal outcomes and create healthier versions of ourselves.

Additionally, it’s important to make exercise fun.  If running up dusty hills first thing in the morning seems like the portrayal of limbo in the afterlife, you probably shouldn’t do it.  Perhaps meeting your friend for a Yoga class and following it up with a quick coffee to chat for a few moments sounds more enticing.  Want to flip some tires at 6 AM?  Go right ahead.  If not, don’t sign up for a small group fitness class where picking up and flipping used and dirty tractor tires is part of the agenda.  Perhaps connecting with a friend who likes throwing a frisbee or hitting a few pickleballs at a local park might be more down your alley.  Having a buddy join you or looking forward to a fun activity makes achieving those exercise sessions more attainable and enticing.

Exercise procrastination is a simple action to accomplish. Gravitating toward the path of least resistance takes little-to-no effort.  That’s why it’s easy to stay in bed or drive past a few local gyms on our way home to grab a beer and kick our feet up for a few hours while staring at a fifty-five-inch screen projecting monotonous images.  Let’s not forget that setting aside time for something fun is easy too.  It might take less time and effort to achieve a small bout of exercise than it does to watch a docuseries on Netflix.  Let’s appreciate the fun and enjoyment physical activity brings us.  Adding a stimulating and healthy form of exercise throughout our day gives us the gift of enhancing our physical well-being to live happy, healthy, and strong lives.

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

Jul 19

Hot Summers and Hydration

As I drive north bound up Highway 29, I always take a deep breath and notice how nice I have it.  Vineyards lace the countryside with a gradient of vibrant green and umber rows of grape vines.  The eastern hills offer majestic rocky formations below the tip of the Stag’s Leap hiking trail.  To the west, the redwood tree groves bask in the glory of the untamable power they represent, covering the hillside with an iconic green color.  The Napa Valley truly is a beautiful place.  As one of the inhabitants who call this fantastic pearl of the Earth home, I know the summertime can get scorching hot.  A diligent habit of daily hydration is necessary to help Napa’s inhabitants in this one-of-a-kind paradise be productive and enjoy their overall quality of life while enduring warmer climates during the summer months.

It should come as no surprise adequate hydration optimizes human function.  Sufficient hydration levels maintain proficient blood viscosity, which promotes efficient blood distribution throughout the vascular system encouraging the delivery of oxygenated blood to our muscles, vital organs, and brain.  The amount of water in our blood also aids in the conductivity of our nerve cells when our brain sends electronic signal through our nerves to our muscles, assisting in coordination and balance.  The digestive system functions efficiently when proficient levels of hydration are present in the gastrointestinal tract, helping foods travel through the intestines and encouraging nutrient absorption in the different areas of the digestive system.

It’s easy to forget about the positive impacts optimal hydration offers our bodies, especially when a random heatwave presents itself to our area with short notice.  Our everyday habits of hydration at the moderate temperatures we are accustomed to become insufficient when the temperature increases rapidly.  Therefore, the threat of hydration becomes present even though our regular water consumption habits might seem proficient before an immediate heat spike.  Little do we know, the additional sweating we produce on hotter days equates to an immediate reduction in overall water composition in our bodies.  The compounding effects of increased perspiration throughout two to three days of high heat could influence the loss of three percent or more body weight in water each day.  With this rapid loss in water weight, the features our body thrives on during moderate temperatures deviate from their normal status, triggering a decrease in neuromuscular coordination, increased fatigue, headaches, muscle cramping, and possible gastrointestinal distress.

To mitigate a few of the side effects of an immediate heatwave, we suggest a few hydration tactics to our personal training clients who benefit not only from hydration habits during the hot summers in Napa, but also in their experiences traveling to other hot areas of the country and the world on vacations or business trips.  Here are a few simple and effective tactics to encourage optimal hydration during a noticeable increase in temperature:

  1. Drink two glasses of water first thing in the morning:  One of the best times to rehydrate and set the tempo for fulfilling adequate water consumption is immediately after waking.  We encourage a mad dash to your water bottle or sink to slam two glasses of water before any other activities in the morning directly after getting out of bed.
  2. Drink a full glass of water after every meal: Distractions and everyday life demands deviate us from our priorities.  During the blazing hot days when hydration is at risk, a dehydrated body and mind is the last thing we need.  As a reminder to consume more water, follow up your meals with a full glass of water before leaving the table and resuming your everyday daily life.  An extra glass of water here and there will increase the amount of water consumed when additional hydration is required.
  3. Eat raw veggies: That’s right, we get a lot of water from the foods we consume.  Along with the disease-fighting properties and countless benefits our body receives from including veggies in our diet, we absorb a high amount of liquid when eating raw carrots, cucumber, and lettuce.  Eat some salads and enjoy some cold, fresh, and crispy raw veggies as a snack during these hot summer days.

Professional nutrition industries and researchers suggest drinking water equal to the body’s weight in ounces throughout the day to accommodate proper hydration.  Society has taken a firm understanding of similar hydration suggestions, leading us to become a healthier culture.  Let’s not forget that an immediate heat wave can disrupt our usual habits of optimal hydration.  When the heat makes its way to our lives, ensure to tack another few glasses of water throughout your day to counteract the suboptimal effects on our hydration status during these beautiful Napa summers.

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.

Jul 06

Pain Reduction and Exercise Adherence

Shedding a few pounds to prepare for a desired aesthetic appearance before a beach trip to the Amalfi coast in a few months, increasing lean muscle mass, or decreasing circulating cholesterol or insulin levels because the doctor said so, making a trip to the gym covers a lot of ground to enhance a human’s overall quality of life.  One of the most prevalent goals we hear from our personal training clients just signing up for a fitness program at our gym is to live with less pain.  Sharp spasms along the spine and hips when bending down to pick up objects from the ground, gingerly walking through the hallway after getting out of bed for those first few slow and tenders steps in the morning due to plantar fasciitis or heal pain, or simply struggling to open a jar of mayonnaise due to wrist and finger weakness can seem like quite the struggle. Pain presents itself in our lives more than we think.

A visit to the doctor or physical therapist regarding pain symptoms, we can expect to be asked, “How many minutes per week do you exercise?”  Some of us can answer that question with a simple knee-jerk reaction, “three to four days per week.”  However, an impressive amount of our society struggles to achieve one hundred and fifty, ninety, or even thirty minutes of organized weekly exercise.  If we connect the dots of why specific individuals suffer from pain, more often than not, it’s due to a lack of adherence to exercise.

It goes without question that safe and effective exercise assists us in a myriad of improvements to our overall quality of life.  Increased energy, increased strength, and decreased stress are just the tip of the iceberg.  People who exercise regularly usually comment about how sore they are after a long bike ride through a scenic country road, hiking one of the beautiful bay area trails, or playing three hours of pickleball with their buddies.  These active individuals might not comment about the pain they’re experiencing in their joints.  If people don’t mention the discomfort of pain, this usually indicates that people aren’t dealing with debilitating symptoms of joint and bodily pain from lack of physical activity.  A regularly active weekend warrior or recreational athlete doesn’t have time to be in pain.  These active humans probably have an exercise routine forged throughout years of practice they adhere so they stay out of the doctors office and involved in the physical activities they love.

Extrapolating further on what a doctor or physical therapist usually prescribes to a patient reporting bodily pain, the dose of medicine prescribed might be some anti-inflammatories.  However, any medical professional will recommend that compliance toward a routine exercise program will offer the monumental life-enhancing properties medication can’t provide.  Whether it is heading to a local gym and exercising a particular body part three to four days a week, attending Yoga and Pilates classes every week, cycling at a spin class, or meeting with a personal trainer for weekly appointments, the effort toward adhering to a consistent exercise routine has significant potential to reduce pain-like symptoms throughout the body.  Not only will conducting safe and effective exercise strengthen joints and muscles where arthritis, inflammation, and remnants of past injuries or surgeries presents themselves, but the adaptation from regular fitness training sessions increases aerobic capacity for muscles to endure longer periods of strenuous physical activity.  A muscle with a high capacity toward fatiguing means areas of the body can perform their functions optimally.  This means larger muscles responsible for significant compound movements throughout our everyday life operate at a higher capacity, and the likelihood of strain or injury decreases.

These adaptations from exercise don’t happen overnight.  Research supports that significant advances in muscular performance take at least ninety days.  We can use the most cutting-edge exercise equipment or follow the most innovative exercise routine in the world designed by Mark Walberg’s personal trainer.  However, if such state-of-the-art resources aren’t utilized consistently, or an individual falls off from their exercise routine, you can expect to see little to no progress in the outcome of their fitness journey.    Therefore, it’s important to note that compliance toward an exercise program sits at the top of the totem pole of a fitness improvement routine when it comes to the goal of pain reduction.

Reserve some time to map out weekly exercise plans.  Decrease distractions, turn the phone off, and put yourself in an environment where you can perform safe and effective exercises.  Complying with a regular exercise routine and dedicating time to ourselves on a consistent weekly basis is critical to decreasing pain symptoms and improving our overall health.

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.

Jul 02

Exercising and Hangovers

“Why is it called a hangover,” said Ares, the god of war.  Hercules retorted, “Because when you drink too much booze, you’re going to hang your head over that rail and…”  I’ll allow the readers to use their imagination to envision the subsequent chain of events that occurred.

This interaction between these two mythical characters came from a scene in a 1990’s television series my mom and I watched weekly, Hercules:  The Legendary Journeys.  In an episode centered around how Ares was transformed from a god unmarred by injuries, illness, or any other affliction mortals endured, Hercules accompanied him to a night of debauchery.

They sang songs, flirted with ladies, and shared mischievous ventures while smiling ear to ear in raucous laughter.  Whiles Ares was in his human state, he still thought he was an invincible god.  Grabbing flagons of mead and bottles of wine, he consumed copious amounts of alcohol without thinking twice.  “Being human is amazing!  I never felt this way when I was a god!”  Exclaimed Ares.  After their night of partying like it was the first day of Marti Gras in New Orleans, they entered into a brief post-alcohol-induced coma.

The next day, Ares didn’t feel like a god capable of entering into battle and coming out the other end without a scratch.  Instead, he was tired, his eyes hurt when the sun shined upon him, and he was seen rolling around the ground, writhing in pain, followed by multiple prolonged trips to the restroom.  Being human was entertaining when Ares first started his escapade of drunken buffoonery. However, he learned the repercussions of indulging too much with a recreational substance and how too much of a good thing wasn’t that great the day after.

This episode came to mind during a personal training session I was conducting with our client.  Ferhago is a relatively fit CEO of a successful business in his mid-forties who enjoys training at our local Napa gym three times a week.  The energy, enthusiasm, and dedication he devotes to his training sessions are immaculate.  He’s so consistent, that a missed training session from Ferhago gives our coaching team the impression that the earth shifted.  However, a few hours before a training session last week, Ferhago sent me a text message, “I’m not sure I can come in today, I celebrated my wife’s birthday last night and ate too much ice cream and sweets.  I think I have a sugar hangover and feel like I got hit by a train.”

Impressed by Ferhago’s honesty, I could understand why he didn’t want to come in for training.  Ferhago abstains from consuming alcohol entirely for health purposes.  Even though he doesn’t consume alcohol, his “drug of choice” is tantalizing sweets like ice cream, cookies, and pies.  His regular rigorous exercise routine would be challenging if he felt anything like Ares did after his hangover.  However, my knee-jerk reaction was to go against Ferhago’s aversion toward training due to his sugar hangover.  I knew the best thing for Ferhago was to show up and train.

Overconsumption of sugar or alcohol gives the body adverse reactions.  Without going into too much scientific detail, the body essentially becomes poisoned after a certain amount of sugar or alcohol is consumed.  After we wake up from a bout of late-night drinking or treating ourselves to excess amounts of dessert, the next morning’s side effects are akin to how a starving octopus feels that has been out of the water for eight hours.  This toxic response puts our bodies in a state of stress.  As our bodies enter this damaged and stressed state, toxic chemicals course through our blood, and stress hormones run rampant.  Pain, irritability, lethargy, and gastrointestinal distress are the usual culprits following any hangover.

So, why did I encourage Ferhago to attend his regularly scheduled personal training sessions after he expressed he felt awful?  Other than our loyalty and tenacity we have invested toward Ferhago’s path to health, I knew that exercise has the potential to alleviate the suboptimal byproducts of hangovers.  Exercising puts our bodies through a state of physical, mental, emotional induced stress.  Our heart rate increases, our nervous system becomes stimulated, we begin to sweat, we grunt, we breathe a little heavier, and we use up calories.  After these bodily functions ensue from a rigorous exercise session, our heart rate subsides, we breathe at a normal state, and we start to relax a little bit.  Therefore turbulence our body endures throughout exercise evens out the physical, psychological, and emotional distress present from the byproducts of hangovers and we reacclimate to a relatively normal state of homeostasis.

I encouraged Ferhago to come in despite not feeling the best.  After seventy-five minutes of training, he not only performed at peak levels, but he felt energized, refreshed, and relieved he showed up for his personal training session.

Adherence to exercise is one of the most critically essential concepts that offer a successful outcome when exercising for health purposes.  Whether you are a mythical god who partakes in recreational drinking or an average forty-something-year-old human who eats a few too many late-night treats, we shouldn’t let the byproduct of these occurrences slow down our consistent journey to remain healthy.

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.

Jun 22

The Basics: Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fats

Calories present themselves in many scenarios in our lives.  On the back of any container or package of food at the grocery store, you’ll find the nutrition facts displaying how many calories are in a serving size of the container’s contents.  After consulting with a doctor about our BMI, our doctor might ask us what our daily caloric intake is.  Counting calories also includes a critical tactic most of society constantly struggles with, weight loss. Understanding how many calories are in the foods we eat is a part of our society that influences our decisions to consume types of food and quantities of foods.

Underneath the largely displayed number of calories on nutrition labels, three main categories are broken down into grams present in each serving size.  The big three in a serving size of food include carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.  Understanding the functions of these types of calories can aid our efforts to lower our BMI, lose weight, build lean muscle mass, and ultimately support our ability to make optimal eating decisions.

Carbohydrates are essentially sugars.  We find carbohydrates in commonly consumed foods such as bread, pasta, and fruits.  Depending on where we are getting our sugar sources, sugar can be harmful.  However, it’s noteworthy to know our body utilizes sugars quite often.  During intense physical activity, the cells in our body use sugars in our bloodstream as energy to contract muscles, which move bones.  Additionally, most of our body’s cells benefit from sugar sources.  After reading this article, this doesn’t mean our next meal should be a Pepsi and Snickers bar.  However, suppose the body is engaging in physical activity such as exercise via a long hike, resistance training routine, or a session of pickleball with your friends. In that case, we will benefit from carbohydrate consumption because the body utilizes sugar as fuel during increased physical activity.  On the other hand, consuming too many carbohydrates over the rate at which our body can use them as energy encourages our fat cells to absorb excess sugar.  This means the fat cells will store the sugars as subcutaneous fat forms and grow in size.

Proteins are the building blocks of structurally supporting connective tissue cells, such as our bones, ligaments, tendons, muscles, and skin.  By consuming adequate protein, the cells present within these structurally supportive areas of our body are supplied with protein to aid in the regions that might need repair.  Foods like meats, fish, tofu, nuts, eggs, beans, and Greek yogurt are optimal protein sources.  Following a bout of rigorous exercise, our bodies become stressed, and our muscles develop microscopic tears.  By eating a meal with an optimal source of protein, our damaged muscle cells will harness this protein and use it to rebuild damaged sites of muscle to become bigger and stronger.

Fats are present in many foods, mainly meats and oils.  Beef, chicken, and pork contain fats along with the protein present in them.  Other prominent foods in our diet comprised primarily of fat are butter, milk, eggs, cheese, and cooking oils.  Fats get a bad reputation because the image of extra fat under our skin might not be the most enticing.  Our body often utilizes fat as a fuel source at low activity levels.  When our body operates during times of low energy expenditures, such as sitting down or leisurely walking, our body breaks down fats to convert them to carbohydrates, which we use as energy.  Once again, this doesn’t mean we should fill our fridges with cubes of butter.  However, determining what types of healthy fats should be present in your everyday diets helps create healthy eating decisions.

“You are what you eat” is an accurate statement.  If we consume calories from suboptimal choices, our body will look and feel that way.  Regularly eating items such as Big Macs, burritos, or Panda Express’ orange chicken will make us look and feel like the calories present in those foods.  On the other hand, regularly eating lean cuts of beef, chicken, fish, tofu, veggies, and raw nuts influences our body to look and feel like we consume those foods.  Take some time to understand what calories are present in our foods to reinforce healthy and balanced dietary habits.

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.

Jun 14

Challenges in Finding Time to Exercise

Doctor’s recommendations, news reports, and a multitude of research support the benefits of exercise.  A healthy weight, decreased stress, and increased overall mood throughout the day are enticing factors to be attracted to.  A plethora of reasons to exercise to support our overall quality of life can make a list of reasons to invest in routine exercise adherence that can fill up the word space of this entire page.  However, over half of our society struggles with ingraining exercise as a staple in their lives.  While the proof is in the pudding when it comes to unveiling the benefits of exercise, why is it so hard to devote at least fifteen minutes of daily exercise?

A pesky factor impeding us from exercising is time. Family obligations, personal appointments, and the forty-hour work week all require a certain amount of time, energy, and thoughts vested from us.  Picking up kids from school, making doctors or dentist appointments, or devoting a substantial number of hours toward our careers requires significant attention.  However, every human on this planet is granted twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week.

Most of us know what we need to do regarding exercise.  We don’t need a doctor’s referral to drive to a nearby local gym, attend a Yoga class, or walk throughout the stunning Napa countryside.  So, what can we do if we don’t have time?  Or, what happens if we get so overwhelmed by the confines of our busy life schedule that we say, “forget it” and omit exercise completely?

A solution we recommend to our personal training clients who struggle to find time to exercise outside of their weekly training appointments is to identify exercise-themed days throughout the week.  For example, on the days our clients have training appointments reserved for seventy minutes worth of one-on-one guided fitness coaching, they commit those days as “exercise-themed” days.  This means nothing can get in the way of their exercise appointment on the days they meet for personal training appointments.  No partying the night before, no hair and nail appointments, the kids are already dropped off at school, or childcare has been organized before this appointment to allow this exercise reservation.  Therefore, the factors that could stress us out and make a mad dash for the gym while racing the clock is tamed down because of the reserved appointment.

This practice of reserving time on “exercise-themed” days is also effective outside of the personal training arena.  For example, some of the residents of Japan reserve a few minutes as the sun rises every morning to practice Tai Chi on their front lawns.  They have dedicated that time to putting life’s endless hustle on hold so they can focus solely on themselves to achieve the health benefits of the ritual of physical activity.  The layout of time allocation in our days aren’t much different in the busy lives we live in our society.  The Earth spins the same at our present location as on every other continent where there is a twenty-four-hour clock present.  The only difference for these morning Tai Chi practitioners is that they have made a ritual to practice their preferred exercise, akin to how we make a ritual of standing in line during a morning Starbucks coffee runs.  We can implement this same practice our Tai Chi friends do by turning our phones and televisions off and putting our busy lives on hold.  Once we pave this time out of our day, we can consistently focus on exercise tactics gifting us a healthier life.

Whether scheduling a time to attend a dance class, play pickleball with a group of three other friends, or take a long walk, reserving the time to do so is always available. It’s challenging to do these things if we don’t commit to dedicating time exclusively for ourselves.  Let’s put our technological peripheral brains on hold for a few moments.  When you return from a brief bout of physical activity, computers, phones, televisions, video games, and other technological dependencies will always be there.  I promise they aren’t going anywhere.  However, our time stays behind us if we don’t allocate meaningful activities toward the twenty-four hours we have.  Let’s take some time out for ourselves to give the gift of exercise to enjoy a happy, healthy, and strong quality of life.

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

Jun 08

Hiking is Medicine

“Wait, stop.  Can you hear that?”  Standing at the end of the quarter-mile hike up to the peak of Westwood Hills in Napa, my friend instructed me to halt my steps and listen.  A wide-eyed look of bewilderment formed on my face, “Hear what?” I replied.  She looked at me with a smile of satisfaction, “Exactly.  You can’t hear a thing.”

My hiking partner made a weekly ritual of hiking at different locations throughout Napa at least once per week.  She made efforts to find locations at each hike in which she discovered moments absent of the cacophony of cars traveling on the street, the beeping of construction trucks backing up, or the chatter of society interacting with each other.  This method of removing herself from the hustle and bustle of everyday life impressed me.  Not only was she achieving an efficient and effective form of physical activity, but her weekly hiking adherence served as potent therapy to enhance her everyday life.

Lack of overall fitness and increased psychological and emotional stress threaten our health.  Decreased movement is an ever-increasing epidemic in our society which causes a potpourri of metabolic diseases, psychological distress, and disruptions in the fulfillment of our quality of life.  Additionally, the demands we put on ourselves to support our financial situations, careers, and relationships with the people we care about have the potential to put tremendous pressure on our mental well-being.

Anti-depressants and medication designed to suppress metabolic disease can be helpful in taming symptoms of being overweight or overly stressed.  These clinically distributed medications from our primary doctors are potent tools to alleviate the repercussions of stressful lifestyles and metabolic diseases.  However, if these medications are the only solution people depend on, the need for more medication in the future has the potential to increase.  Depending on prescriptions handed out by our doctor can enter into a vicious cycle that causes more harm than good if actions aren’t taken to apply our own forms of therapy by getting out and smelling the flowers.

An effective form of decreasing stress while introducing healthy demands on the body is physically moving ourselves to a location where themes afflicting our psychological and physical state aren’t present.  My hiking partner’s example of hiking to one of the highest points in Napa, where large groups of people are present and the business of society can’t be sensed, is a compelling example of putting oneself in an optimally stress-free environment.  The cell phones were left in the cars, the parking lot was one-thousand feet below us and a quarter mile away, and the only other people we saw were those who passed us for a split second on a small dirt trail with the same mindset as us.  Cars aren’t allowed up these trails.  Cell phones couldn’t get reception.  And the only noise in the air was brushing leaves against each other as gusts of wind passed through tree branches, the skitter of lizards and squirrels crossing our path, and birds singing.  Hiking truly is a potent anti-depressant and weight-loss medication.

Highlighting forms of movement that fend off the stresses of life and offer cardiovascular and strength improvement exemplifies how exercise is medicine.  Perhaps we can utilize the resources of the beautiful world around us and leave the technological demands of our lives behind us for a moment to absorb the naturally occurring medicine present in the natural aspects of our world.

 

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.

Jun 01

Healthy Choices on Business Trips

It’s my first time visiting Denver, Colorado, for a continuing education trip to enlighten a few of my fellow coaches and me to become smarter, more skillful, and better informed on the best practices in the cutting-edge research being presented at the ACSM fitness conference.  Honing my skills as a fitness professional, mentor, and consultant to our beloved personal training clients and marking a sash on my belt in my journey to visit all fifty states in the US were just a few highlights of this cherished voyage we’ve been looking forward to.

Presentations featuring key topics such as “exercise is medicine,” “you can still teach old dogs new tricks,” and “the power of play” was the most sought-after topics to observe and take notes on throughout this four-day conference.  It was a rewarding experience seeing that practicing specific topics like adherence to a regular exercise routine, bridging gaps between patients graduating from physical therapy protocols and merging into a fitness routine, and tactics to avoid injury were all models of our current program we apply to our personal training clients.

One of the most alarming observations we noticed among our fitness professional peers was the number of chips, cookies, and sodas present at the conference that was given out as a complimentary meal.  While attending a national conference gauged toward enhancing the integrity of the overall health of our society, we were surprised by the selection of food available to the attendees.  As skilled coaches holding certifications in nutritional consulting, this highly processed and pre-packaged food was the last thing we wanted to ingest.  We encourage our clients to consume processed and packaged high-carbohydrate foods sparingly.  This unmasked a significant issue reported by a fair amount of our clients who travel to industry events that are out of state in convention centers or hotel conference rooms; the need for more selection of healthy foods available at these events.

With three more days of learning and interacting with my peers, the last thing I wanted was to feel sluggish, bloated, and overall ill from consuming nothing but chips, cookies, and sodas.  Therefore, I chose to abstain from the snacks available to attendees.  While I appreciate the gesture of free food and feel incredibly fortunate to have a source of free food as a resource, I ventured elsewhere to see what my options were.

After opening up Google Maps and searching for a restaurant that had lean sources of protein and veggie-based dishes, I found the only restaurants available were Bubba Gumps, Chik-Fil-A, and Starbucks.  Even though our hotel had some salad options, paying over forty dollars for a salad and a portion of salmon didn’t justify my protest of veering away from the free highly-processed food at the convention center.  So, what did I do?  I went to Target.

You read that correctly, Target.  Usually, people can identify the compartment store Target as a place to acquire sunscreen, toothpaste, and body wash.  However, Target is equipped with a reasonably priced selection of bagged vegetables and lean protein sources.  As I cruised around the refrigerated section, I discovered bagged raw baby carrots, raw broccoli in a steamable bag, and snap peas.  In another cold goods section, I found roasted red pepper hummus, one of our “go-to” snacks we recommend to our clients looking to add to their “skillful snacking” inventories.   Additionally, I perused past a few selections of Greek yogurt and blueberries.  One last trip through the dried goods section led me to the nut shelf.  Within the shelves of nuts, shaved almonds and shelled walnuts caught my eye.  After procuring those items, I passed by a small container of honey that cost under three dollars.  Could this accent the plain Greek yogurt, blueberry, and shaved almond dish I had in mind?  You know the answer to that.

I now had a dish of lovely raw veggies, antioxidant-loaded berries, and a few protein sources to create an award-winning, delicious, and filling meal during my lunch break in my hotel room between seminars.  On the menu were carrots dipped in hummus and a homemade Greek yogurt blueberry parfait with shaved almonds and honey.  I was comfortably satiated after a fifteen-minute food escapade in my hotel room.  I traveled back down to the convention center and attended the remainder of our meetings and seminars.

Could I be seen as an outcast who takes the extra effort to take a five-minute walk to the Target store next to my hotel and compile my meal?  Perhaps.  However, taking this extra effort to explore the food choices immediately available within a mile radius reinforced my habits of putting nutritious food in my body while avoiding the unhealthier options within arm’s reach.  If we can take that extra step to explore what options we have around us in circumstances where we might not have the healthiest resources available, we can maintain our healthy lifestyle efforts in environments where suboptimal food isn’t immediately available.

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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