Maintaining fun and interesting physical activities are important to our everyday life. Failing to stay active results in deterioration of the human body as father time continues tick his clock. Optimal doses of physical activity might include hobbies and projects around the house, recreational activities, or regular exercise. Golf, Pickleball, Tennis, or swimming are common recreational sports embraced by the general population. Tending to a garden, cleaning the house, and tending to everyday arts and crafts are fun activities that keep our bodies in motion. Popular exercises at local Napa gyms such as Yoga, bar classes, or Zumba classes are always a hit.
Adherence to movement keeps us going on many levels. The increase in heart rate response from physical activity keeps blood flowing through our veins and arteries, decreasing the risk of cardiovascular disease. Participating in opportunities for movement fend off the rust that advancements in age bring to the table, decreasing the accumulation of free radicals. Most importantly, staying active benefits our minds to be mentally fresh, able to think clearly, and serves as a form of meditation. As an ambassador of physical activity and exercise for all of society, seeing people participate in these forms of movement warms my heart. However, something that is commonly overlooked are injury prevention specific exercises.
There’s nothing worse that hurting oneself from a silly accident that will leave you sidelined from your favorite form of physical activity. Often, we have requests from new personal training clients in Napa to create an exercise design that supports a person to move past the obstacles a previous injury has inflicted upon their everyday life activities. Our focus is centered on regenerating the previously injured area. However, it’s important to carry out themes of injury prevention for commonly used joints that are prone to injury. Areas such as the neck, rotator cuff of the shoulder, lower back, hips, knees and ankles are specifically targeted to in a client’s exercise prescription to future proof a client from potential injuries in the future.
In addition to our clients concentrated 1-on-1 exercise routines, we promote a form of fitness homework that is a dedicated injury prevention day. Are you going out to golf more than twice a week? To decrease the likelihood of Golfer’s Elbow appearing, it would be productive to maintain your performance by spending time to focus solely on the forearm and triceps muscles to prevent severe cases of Golfer’s Elbow. Are you actively gardening, walking your dogs, or consistently cleaning your house? Lower back pain is a common injury that prevents people from doing these activities around the house. To prevent the low back from deterring the activities we enjoy doing around the house, a day dedicated specifically to performing a series of plank exercises and lower back stretches will strengthen the core and lower back so common activities around the house can be performed optimally. Playing with the grand kids on the ground? You’ll need some healthy, pain free knees to participate for at least another 5 years before they run off to team sports. Arthritic pain in the knees and hips are common occurrences that hold individuals back from interacting with their grandkids. Devoting a specific day once per week to strengthen the muscles surrounding the hips and thighs as well as exercises improving on balance assist us in being able be physically active and have fun with our grandkids.
Aerobics classes at the gym, Yoga classes, bar classes, and recreational sports have their place in keeping us fit, happy, and healthy for the years to come. So please don’t stop participating in these important activities. However, our bodies need to hold up to these forms of exercise. We also need to be able to remain active in our everyday lives that require our bodies to be resilient without nagging injuries holding us back. We can take one step further into our lifetime fitness efforts and spend at least one day throughout the week focusing solely on injury prevention. Dedicating time to areas that are commonly injured will help refine our efforts to living a strong, healthy and happy life for the years to come not only in our recreational activities, but also with the ones we enjoy spending time with the most.
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.
