May 19

Walking with Intention

Somewhere between the ages of six and eighteen months, humans accomplish one of the most remarkable feats in our species’ physical development.  We figure out how to crawl, and not long after, we push ourselves up onto two wobbly legs and begin walking.  Becoming bipedal is one of the defining traits that make humans unique.  Once we master this skill, walking quickly becomes so automatic that most of us stop noticing it altogether.  We wake up in the morning, walk to the kitchen, drive to work, walk into the office, and not a single thought about the miraculous coordination required of a sophisticated automated network of neuromuscular signaling for any of those actions enters our minds.

That is, until walking is taken away.  A lower extremity surgery that puts someone on crutches for months or a medical event that introduces a wheelchair into someone’s life can change a person’s world almost overnight.  Suddenly, the most ordinary tasks become significant projects.  Going to the bathroom, retrieving the mail, or moving from the couch to the dinner table transforms from normal daily activities into events that require planning, effort, and assistance.  The loss of walking puts into perspective how much we take this ability for granted.  It would be similar to the disruption that would occur if our cell phones, our cars, or our televisions were suddenly taken away.  Our world would look quite different without these tools we depend on every day.  For those of us who don’t have afflictions that hinder our ability to walk, we shouldn’t take the simple act of walking for granted.

Walking holds an impressive list of health and fitness benefits that often go unnoticed.  Taking a walk outside of normal daily activity burns calories, builds endurance in the lower-extremity muscles, and refines coordination needed for everyday functionality.  The act of taking one step in front of the other is more sophisticated than we tend to realize.  The hip flexes, the foot moves forward, the leg steps over any objects in the way, and then the leg drives backward to propel the body into the next step.  This coordinated sequence engages the ankles, knees, hips, and portions of the spine in a way that few other activities can replicate.

We coach our personal training clients to think about walking as a stimulus that the body responds to.  Similar to strength training, walking needs to be consistently trained so we can perform optimally in everyday activities for years to come. When the body is consistently engaged in walking, it responds by producing synovial fluid that lubricates the joints of the foot, ankle, knee, hip, and spine.  This consistent practice of walking provides healthy compressive stress to the bones, reinforcing their structure and mitigating the progression of osteoporosis.  Additionally, consistent intentional walking keeps the muscles and nervous system primed to continue walking for years to come.

When walking is removed from the daily routine, and a sedentary environment takes its place, the body adapts to that stimulus and becomes deconditioned.  Muscle mass decreases, the rate of synovial fluid production slows, and bone mineral density regeneration declines.  The body adapts to whatever we put it through.  The question is what kind of adaptation we want to give it.

A commonly overlooked benefit is the therapeutic value of walking with intention by putting the phone down, setting the earpiece on the counter, and stepping outside for twenty to thirty minutes through an environment that isn’t controlled by a two-by-four-inch screen.  Most of us spend a substantial portion of our day staring at a glowing rectangle, whether it’s a phone, a computer monitor, or a television projecting light into our living room for hours.  A twenty-minute walk through a neighborhood or a park puts us in an environment where the actual physical world is right in front of us.  We can hear the birds chirping, see the green trees and the blue sky, smell the air, and feel the day’s temperature on our skin.  These sensations are easy to miss when our attention is dedicated to the digital world.

Walking is a gift.  We were granted this ability before we could even form complete sentences as toddlers.  When we walk with intention, we get to combine the physiological benefits of stimulating the joints, muscles, and nervous system with the mental and emotional benefits of stepping away from the constant pull of the digital world.  Make some time this week to walk with intention.  Take twenty to thirty minutes to step outside, look up at the sky, and feel the world around you.  Walking with intention is a powerful tactic to help us 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.

May 08

Knee Arthritis and Knee Strength

It’s not unusual to hear that a person invests decades of their life giving their all to support their career and family. Whether logging years in a physically demanding trade or being active in high school, collegiate, or recreational sports, a common bodily signal tends to surface in one’s forties, fifties, and beyond. The knees start to send a message. That message usually arrives as morning knee stiffness, a grinding sensation when climbing stairs, or a dull ache that settles in after a long day on their feet.

People with similar knee pain symptoms may be experiencing the early or advanced stages of knee arthritis. Arthritis is a degenerative joint condition in which the smooth cartilage that normally cushions the ends of the bones gradually wears down. Healthy cartilage allows the joint surfaces to glide smoothly during everyday movements such as walking up stairs, squatting down to pick something up, or kneeling. When that cartilage thins or becomes roughened, the bones experience increased friction and pressure where they meet. In the knee, this occurs where the femur, or thigh bone, meets the tibia, the larger bone of the shin. This deterioration can result from the natural advancement of age, the accumulated stress of a physically demanding career, overuse from years of athletic activity, or previous injuries that never fully healed.

It is worth noting that the effects of a demanding career or a vigorous athletic history do not always show up immediately. A person who ran marathons in their thirties or played collegiate sports may not feel the consequences in their knees until ten or twenty years later. The same is true for someone who spent years doing physically demanding projects around the house or going up and down stairs on a job site.  Additionally, sitting for years can contribute to the deterioration of knee cartilage due to the lack of stimulus from underuse of the joint.  If the lower extremities remain inactive from sitting for years over the course of a career, reduced blood flow to the supportive muscles and connective tissue in the joints can accelerate knee arthritis.

The good news is that the advancement of knee arthritis can be productively managed to offset the joint pain and dysfunction arthritis brings to the table, and it does not necessarily require cortisone shots, surgery, or expensive exercise equipment. Strengthening the muscles surrounding the knee joint is one of the most effective strategies for managing arthritis symptoms. When the muscles around the knee become stronger, they absorb a greater share of the forces generated during everyday movements such as walking, climbing stairs, or moving dynamically to get in and out of cars. This reduces the compressive load placed directly on the joint surfaces and decreases the bone-on-bone friction that causes pain.

The primary muscles that support and protect the knee joint are the quadriceps, the hamstrings, the hip adductors, and the hip abductors. The quadriceps run along the front of the thigh and are responsible for straightening the knee and keeping the kneecap tracking correctly during movement. The hamstrings run along the back of the thigh, flex the knee, and act as stabilizing anchors that prevent the joint from shifting too far forward. The hip adductors, running along the inner thigh, provide medial stability, while the hip abductors, located on the outer hip, control lateral shifting of the knee during weight-bearing activities. Together, these four muscle groups function like a set of reinforcing brackets holding the knee joint together from all sides.

One exercise we regularly prescribe for our personal training clients managing knee arthritis is the seated knee extension, which targets the quadriceps directly and assists in patellar alignment. When the quadriceps develop greater strength, endurance, and structural integrity, they help prevent the underside of the kneecap from scuffing against the surfaces of the tibia and femur, which is one of the primary sources of pain in arthritic knees. To perform the seated knee extension:

Sit on the floor with good posture. Extend one leg with the heel resting flat on the ground while keeping the other foot flat. Flex the toes of the extended leg toward the body and gently press the back of the knee toward the floor until a light muscular sensation is felt in the quadriceps. Hold briefly, then release. Repeat five to ten repetitions on each leg.

Following a weekly knee joint strengthening routine can reduce discomfort when climbing stairs, make getting up from a seated position more efficient and less painful, and noticeably reduce knee stiffness first thing in the morning and at the end of the day. When the muscles surrounding the knee grow stronger, the joint is better protected, which allows a person to be more productive and engage in the physical activities they enjoy. Developing stronger, more resilient muscles around the knee is one of the most accessible and sustainable ways to protect joint health and maintain an active, fulfilling 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.

May 02

Benefits of Prone Position Exercises

Injuries, joint conditions, and pain-producing areas among our personal training clients commonly occur in the lower back, knees, and shoulders. In terms of which area of the body is most affected by pain, the lower back seems to be public enemy number one, followed by the knees as the second most compromised area, and in third place, the shoulders. Experiences throughout life in physically demanding careers, previous athletic practices, or coming out the other side of a significant injury can have effects on the back, knees, and shoulders. While musculoskeletal pain is closely linked to dysfunctional body movements, there are tactics to mitigate and manage these conditions. Understanding what worsens the affected areas and which tactics provide relief is key to optimizing daily productivity when managing chronic pain.

When an exercise participant reports significant pain during our personal training sessions, one of the first things we teach our clients is what not to do during exercise. A common flaw we see in our personal training clients’ performance is letting the head tilt forward, with the chin closer to the chest and the eyes pointed downward, producing an excessive kyphotic curve in the cervical and thoracic spine. This suboptimal posture produces the rounded shape of a fishing pole with a fish on it. This excessive curvature of the thoracic spine, which is the twelve vertebrae beneath the cervical spine of the neck, creates a vicious cycle of complications in multiple areas of the upper and lower back. When the chin is tucked towards the chest, and a person’s gaze is downward, the shoulders tend to internally rotate towards the midline of the body. This inward rotation of the shoulders caves the chest in and separates the shoulder blades on the back of the body.

When the shoulder blades slide forward along the rib cage, a position known as scapular protraction, the head of the humerus, which is the ball at the top of the upper arm bone, simultaneously rotates inward. This combination of hyper-internally rotated shoulders and protracted shoulder blades shortens the pectoral muscles along the front of the chest, pulling the torso into an even deeper forward curve. Prolonged staring at phone screens, looking at computer monitors during desk work, and leaning over a steering wheel while driving during long commutes contribute to excessive forward-leaning posture. Over weeks and months of repeating these activities, the body begins to accept this rounded, forward-leaning posture as its default. The result can lead to chronic pain, reduced range of motion, and decreased productivity in normal daily functioning.

A remedy to this forward collapse is to train the muscles that pull the body in the opposite direction. This means strengthening the posterior chain, which includes the muscles along the back of the body. Exercises that require the body to extend, reach back, and maintain spinal alignment help reverse conditions that cause forward collapse of the torso. One of the most effective and accessible ways to accomplish this is through prone exercises.

Prone exercises are performed with the body facing downward, either lying flat on the belly or positioned on the hands and knees. Both orientations naturally recruit the posterior chain, including the muscles surrounding the shoulder blades, the glutes, and the spinal extensors. These are precisely the muscles that become underactive and weakened when excessive kyphotic posture takes hold due to the cumulative demands of everyday life.

One of our favorite prone exercises to prescribe for our personal training clients is the bird dog. To perform a bird dog, begin in the prone quadruped position on your hands and knees, with your wrists directly beneath your shoulders and your knees directly beneath your hips. Maintaining a neutral spine, simultaneously reach your right arm forward and extend your left leg backward, as if someone is gently pulling your hand and foot in opposite directions. Hold this extended position for two to three seconds, feeling the muscles along the back of your shoulder and glute engage, then return to the starting position and alternate sides. This movement trains the muscles that draw the shoulder blades back toward the spine and extend the hip.

Prone exercises such as the bird dog do not require equipment, just a comfortable surface, a few quiet minutes, and the intention to invest in your body’s long-term health. Many of our personal training clients incorporate bird dogs into their morning routine before heading out for recreational physical activity or a long day on their feet. It is a simple and effective way to counteract the postural demands that the rest of the day will inevitably impose. We recommend performing bird dogs two to three times per week, completing two sets of ten repetitions on each side.

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.

Apr 24

Built to Last: Strong, Sharp, and Aging with Power

“Who’s that handsome guy?”  My grandpa remarked after looking at his reflection in the mirror after I gave him a fresh haircut.  It was nothing fancy.  I simply used his clippers, stashed in his bathroom drawer, to trim the back and sides of the scraggly, unevenly grown hair sprouting from his scalp in random places.  Like ninety percent of the men in our family, he was the patriarch in our family who had the iconic “solar panel” of baldness that creates a clearing of hair on the dome of his head, caused by male pattern baldness.

After a slight snicker, he asked if we could take a picture of him and me on his phone.  I knelt down next to his wheelchair and snapped a shot.  Immediately after the picture, I showed him how it turned out.  We shared the same awkward “McCawley-style” smile that didn’t look like a smile at all.  In fact, we both had the same smile, opening our mouths like chimpanzees and showing our teeth.  We never developed the trait of being photogenic and having the quintessential angle at the side of our mouth that created dimples.  However, one could see that we were happy and having a good time.  In fact, it looked like two guys who were having a night on the town in our teens.  My grandpa even remarked, “It looks like we’re about to go raise some hell on a Friday night.”  One can’t help but laugh after hearing a remark like that immediately after taking a selfie with a one-hundred-and-two-year-old man.

The fact that my grandpa actually knew what a selfie was made my jaw drop.  This guy was born in the 1920’s, lived through the effects of the great depression and the infamous Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, had to bail out a plane in World War 2 after a bomb was dropped through the wing of the plane when he was twenty years old, and had overcome prostate cancer on multiple occurrences.  “How could he even know what a selfie was?” I thought to myself.  For a human who was over a century old and had literally seen the world evolve from a time with no computers and rotary phones, to the creation of the iPhone, his ability to adapt to the world’s changes was amazing.  Even though my grandpa was stubborn, a tad ornery, and didn’t hesitate to simply walk out of the room the moment he disagreed with something, he sure enjoyed his one hundred and two years of life.

A few months after this experience, my grandpa passed away.  I remember the laugh we shared that day after I gave him a haircut.  For someone who experienced a few suboptimal conditions throughout his life that could make anyone sad and frustrated with the cards he was dealt, he sure knew how to laugh, smile, and make others feel like they were part of something.

Research consistently shows that a healthy diet, plenty of sleep, and adequate exercise support longevity.  It should come as no surprise that, with advancing age, the likelihood of bone and joint deterioration and a few surprise medical conditions can present themselves when we least expect them.  Additionally, short-term memory loss, hearing distortions, and impaired eyesight are likely to occur more as age progresses.  However, something that is commonly overlooked when addressing lifespan, which my grandpa demonstrated, is our ability to be healthy by interacting with people and simply smiling.

Adhering to habits of eating the right foods, getting enough sleep, and exercising two to three days a week creates an advantageous environment for people to mitigate general age-related conditions.  However, an invaluable tactic toward getting as many healthy years as possible that can significantly expand our health span is taking some time to smile, laugh, and maybe crack a lame joke to make the people around you feel less tense.

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.

Apr 17

Strength, Coordination, and Endurance contribute to Everyday Balance

As members of the general population, we engage in a wide variety of physical activities.  Some of us participate in a broad range of hobbies and chores that keep us active, such as walking our pets, gardening, or completing home improvement projects.  For those of us who have children or grandchildren, our physical activities become increasingly complex.  At a moment’s notice, we can be climbing up and down a set of bleachers at a youth basketball game, or we can be summoned to play catch to warm up a vivacious young baseball player at a twelve-year-old’s baseball game.  Let’s not forget those of us who can’t call their day complete if we don’t make it out to the golf course, tennis court, or bike ride up the Napa Valley vineyard trail two to three times per week.  Interacting in environments requiring our bodies to move with minimal restrictions is critical to the success and fulfillment of the activities on our agenda.

A topic that can’t use enough attention that can either optimize or deter our physical activities is balance.  If we have optimal balance, we’ll more than likely have fewer issues holding us back from getting the most out of the time we invest in our physical activities.  However, if balance is compromised by conditions that impair the body’s ability to function properly during physical activity, our comfort zone narrows, and our ability to engage in the physical activities that bring us joy and a sense of accomplishment can be limited.

Balance can be defined as the ability to control the body’s position and movement to stay stable, respond to changes in one’s physical environment, and move confidently through daily activities.  Examples include stepping up onto a curb, moving laterally to navigate around obstacles while moving forward, or lifting up the feet to clear objects on the ground while maintaining control. When a misstep or trip occurs, the ability to quickly regain proprioception and reestablish stability becomes essential to prevent a fall.  Whether it be a gust of wind producing challenges to move forward, a pet or toddler running rampant on the ground that might take out ones legs and cause a tripping hazard, or waking up in the middle of the night to navigate through a dimly lit environment, the various components of proprioception, awareness, confidence, muscular strength, coordination and endurance are invaluable assets to a person’s balance throughout daily physical activities.

Strength provides the muscular support needed to control these movements. Muscular endurance allows that control to be maintained over time as fatigue sets in.  Optimal neuromuscular coordination allows the brain and spinal cord to efficiently send signals to stimulate muscles and be more reactive to the various presentations of the environment a person interacts with.  While many features of the human body support a person’s balance, themes of strength, endurance, and coordination are foundational to balance and can be attained by consistently practicing safe, efficient, and effective balance-focused exercises.

An exercise we instruct our personal training clients to consistently practice during their exercise session that emphasizes lateral movements, change of direction, and acclimating to stepping over objects includes the lateral step over:

Stand to the side of an object that is about mid-shin height.  Lift the foot closest to the object and step over the object, landing on the opposite side of the object.  Situate your balance on the foot that just landed, then lift the trailing foot up and over the box to land beneath your hips on the other side of the box.  It’s important to make sure the toes are high enough so that they do not scrape the top of the object.  Repeat this movement on both feet for five to ten repetitions.

Recovering from previous injuries and generalized age-related conditions can affect a person’s balance.  Additionally, it’s not unusual to see health and fitness levels decline due to a deconditioned state when focusing on an eight to ten-hour workday throughout one’s career.  Sedentary lifestyle conditions can persist for years, making it challenging to regain adequate health and fitness.  While complications from lifestyle, work life, and health and physical maladies can occur at any time, that doesn’t mean we have to accept the repercussions of decreased fitness and the toll these challenges take on our bodies.  By choosing simple, safe, and effective balance-based exercises and practicing them once or twice per week, one’s balance can be significantly improved.

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.

Apr 16

Functional Movement Training

What if getting stronger and preventing injuries wasn’t about doing more exercises, but about moving better? That’s the idea behind functional movement training.

Functional movement training grew out of physical therapy, rehabilitation science, and strength and conditioning. Instead of isolating single muscles, it focuses on training fundamental movement patterns your body uses every day (e.g. squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, rotating, and carrying). These movements build strength, coordination, balance, and real-world durability using free weights, bodyweight exercises, and multi-joint movements.

This approach gained popularity in the early 2000s alongside the rise of CrossFit, boot camps, and performance-based group training. This shift moved fitness culture away from aesthetics alone and toward performance and longevity. Functional training helped make compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, and presses foundational, reduced reliance on machines, and emphasized mobility and injury prevention.

Today, the industry has evolved from “training muscles” to “training movements.” At Napa Tenacious Fitness, we apply these principles to help our community move better, build strength, and support long-term health and performance.

-Written by Coach Vincent Nguyen

Apr 16

Dynamic Stretching vs. Static Stretching

There are two primary forms of stretching we use with our personal training clients: dynamic and static.

Dynamic stretching is performed before exercise.  Dynamic stretching can be defined as the act of moving through full ranges of motion to create short, repeated stretches that prepare the body for exercise.  A few examples include arm circles, hip circles, and leg swings.  These movements help warm up the body by mobilizing joints and activating muscles through a full range of motion in a controlled, purposeful way. This prepares the body for movement and reduces the risk of injury during training.

 

In contrast, static stretching involves holding a muscle in a fixed position for a set period (typically 15–60 seconds). This approach is most effective after a workout, when the goal is to help the body cool down and relax. Static stretching can improve flexibility and may help reduce post-exercise muscle tightness. A common example is the half-kneeling hip flexor stretch, which targets the front of the hips and thighs.

 

–Written by Coach Paul Atienza

Apr 12

Shoulder Injury Prevention via Muscles of Scapular Stabilization

Along with injuries and joint complications in the lower back and knees, shoulder injuries are among the leading causes of issues affecting everyday functional ability in the general population.  Upper neck and shoulder impingement, rotator cuff strains, and frozen shoulder are among a slew of conditions that can afflict people’s shoulder health, causing pain, weakness, and lack of productivity.  Completing a round of physical therapy to rehab a shoulder complication is invaluable to the recovery process of a shoulder complication.  However, after the shoulder has been rehabbed and the irritation has subsided, it doesn’t stay that way forever.  To stave off a shoulder injury that has been rehabbed by avoiding strenuous activities and complying with a physical therapist’s guidelines, a maintenance routine and consistent injury-prevention exercises must be followed to ensure this sensitive joint doesn’t get re-injured.

Shoulders are unique joints that enable humans to perform a variety of intricate and sophisticated movements, such as reaching overhead, throwing overhead, and reaching in various ranges of motion, including in front, to the side, and behind the body.  Think of actions such as putting one’s arms through a jacket, putting a hair tie behind the head, or reaching for a seat belt and fastening it.  These movements may seem simple.  However, the shoulder’s ability to move through a larger range of motion also reveals a less structurally sound joint.

A successful learning application we’ve found helpful for our personal training clients managing shoulder injuries involves understanding and appreciating the muscles of scapular stabilization that hold the ball-and-socket structure of the shoulder joint together.  The shoulder shares a similar joint structure to its cousin, the hip joint.  Both joints are ball-and-socket joints, meaning they both include a long, shaft-like bone with a bony knob at the end that fits snugly into a socket.  Similar to a gimbal mechanism that holds cameras on tripods and allows pivot-like movements, both joints have ligaments, tendons, and muscular attachments that connect the bones from the socket to the knob at the end of the bone, allowing a wide range of movement and providing stability.

The shoulder joint has a shallower socket than the hip joint.  This shallow socket allows a greater range of motion than the hip socket, enabling us to use our arms and hands to grab and manipulate objects more intricately than our lower extremities can in everyday functionality.  While a greater range of motion is beneficial, this means there is less bone-to-bone attachment, and the shoulder joint has an increased demand on the ligaments, tendons, and muscles that attach the head of the humerus to the shoulder socket.  Therefore, the shoulder joint is less stable than the hip joint and has unique properties that require special attention to the muscles, tendons, and ligaments that hold it together.

The scapula, or shoulder blade, is of great significance to the structural integrity of the shoulder joint.  Residing in the top and lateral portion of the ribcage on the back of the body, an intricate layout of muscles originates and attaches to the shoulder blades.  The muscles of scapular stabilization attach to portions of the spine, rib cage, and humerus to power the movements that allow the arms to travel through their large range of motion.  Since the shoulder has limited bone-to-bone attachment, the structures that serve as a reinforcing framework to hold the shoulder in place are muscles.  Therefore, education on which muscles connect the scapula to the humerus and on which exercises reinforce the strength, endurance, and structural integrity of the scapular stabilization muscles shouldn’t be overlooked.

A simple and effective exercise we conduct with our personal training clients to prevent shoulder injuries is scapular protraction and retraction, performed at the beginning of every training session.  To perform the scapular protraction and retraction movement:

Lift your arms and bend them at about a ninety-degree angle.  Make sure your arms are in line with your armpits.  While maintaining your elbows at a ninety-degree angle and keeping your fingertips facing forward, glide your shoulder blades forward along your rib cage until you feel a stretch in the upper back and a muscular sensation in your pectoral region.  Reverse the motion and glide your shoulder blades backward against your ribs.  You should feel a muscular sensation in the muscles surrounding your shoulder blades.   Repeat this movement for five to ten repetitions.

The shoulder joint enables humans to be productive in their everyday lives by using their upper extremities to perform complex tasks.  It’s easy to underestimate the value of our shoulders until an unfortunate injury impedes the simplest movements, like putting on a shirt.  By incorporating and consistently practicing shoulder injury-prevention techniques at least once per week alongside a safe, effective exercise routine, the likelihood of developing a shoulder injury decreases significantly, helping us be more productive in our everyday 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.

Apr 08

The Formula for a Better Workout

“That’s just bad math,” my physics professor told me, clearly unimpressed, as I struggled through a long equation involving solving for potential energy involving force production in overhead throwing athletes in the lab. “Use PEMDAS.”

She had a way of delivering that line with just enough irritation to make sure it stuck. At the time, I remember thinking she had very little patience for bad math. Looking back, she was right.  I should’ve trusted that she knew what she was doing.   Her career before teaching involved launching rockets into space at NASA.

I immediately thought back to grade school. Parentheses, exponents, multiplication, and division. Once I slowed down and followed the correct order of operations, the problem became simple. I fixed my work, submitted the lab, and got full credit.

That lesson stuck. When you do things out of order, you get poor results.

The same idea applies to exercise.

During my time at Napa College, physics taught me how to think through complex problems step by step. Today, as fitness professionals, we do something similar for our personal training clients. We guide them through their workouts in the right order so their bodies can perform efficiently, safely, and effectively.

Exercise is not random. It is a sequence.

When you jump straight into intense movements without preparing the body, the result is often stiffness, poor coordination, or even injury. When you follow a structured approach, your body responds better, moves more efficiently, and produces stronger results.

Think of it as your workout version of PEMDAS. Or, as my professor might say, a way to avoid bad math.

 

Our  Order of Operations in our Clients Exercise Prescriptions

  1. Start with dynamic stretching
    Before anything else, prepare the body. Dynamic movements like arm circles, hip circles, and leg swings help increase blood flow, improve joint mobility, and activate the muscles you are about to use. This is your body’s way of waking up before the real work begins.
  2. Perform compound movements first
    Exercises like squats, lunges, push-ups, and presses require the most energy, coordination, and focus. These movements involve multiple joints and muscle groups working together, so they should be performed when your body is fresh and ready.
  3. Finish with assistance movements
    Once the major work is complete, shift to simpler, single-joint exercises like biceps curls or triceps press-downs. These require less coordination and allow you to target specific muscles without the same level of intensity.

Exercise is a form of productive stress that helps the body become stronger and more resilient. Like any equation, the outcome depends on how you approach it.

Follow the right order of operations, and your workouts will feel better and produce better results.

And if you ever forget, just remember what Professor “Bad Math” would say.

Avoid exercise-related “bad math” and organize your exercise routines in a harmonious order of operations.

Apr 03

Weight Loss and Optimal Eating Decisions

We’re entering the fourth month of the year, and New Year’s resolutions are in full effect.  Learning new skills, progressing toward new professional goals, and refining one’s overall sense of psychological and emotional well-being are among the areas people most often seek to improve in New Year’s resolutions.  Let’s not forget one of the top New Year’s goals, arguably the most common: losing “x” amount of weight.

Thanks to screaming-fast internet connections, optimized electronic payments, and the geniuses who made smartphones, the logistics of living in a world where food is available at our fingertips on a moment’s notice have granted us the ability to get any food we desire.  Mobile food-ordering applications like Uber Eats and DoorDash have made it increasingly easy to get food at a moment’s notice.  After sitting at a desk for four hours without food, it’s easy to understand how someone would get hungry.  A quick tap on the phone in the DoorDash app can solve that problem.  Within seconds, a list of restaurants appears in the phone app interface, and the user can tap an item that looks tasty with one finger without even reading the menu description.  One or two clicks later, the magic happens. The order is finalized, and “poof,” your food is at your doorstep.

This feature of mobile food-ordering automation is an invaluable asset that helps us be more productive in our day-to-day activities.  For example, if a car mechanic has been wrenching on an automobile maintenance project for hours and is making tremendous progress, breaking the workflow might not be the most beneficial.  With the convenience of mobile food ordering, a person can stay productive and maintain concentration by ordering a burrito from one of Napa’s local Mexican restaurants without driving across town, parking in a busy lot, and waiting for food to be served.  Mobile food ordering helps people work more efficiently when time is their most valuable commodity.  However, the overabundance of convenient food options can lead a person to become dependent on choices that may not support weight-loss goals.

Reducing calories, monitoring alcohol consumption, and achieving a set number of steps per day strongly support weight-loss efforts.  However, one commonly overlooked theme in weight loss is decision-making.  Choosing which foods are optimal for specific physical activity contexts throughout the day is a commonly overlooked tactic that can’t be overstated when the goals are to lose subcutaneous fat mass, increase lean muscle mass, and mitigate the risk of metabolic disease.

During our nutritional consultations with our personal training clients, we focus on simple, effective tactics that require situational awareness in making optimal dietary decisions.  The themes of “rest and digest” and “fight or flight” are invaluable lessons that link the body’s current physical activity status to how it utilizes substrates from the food a person eats.  An example of “rest and digest” can be compared to sedentary states of movement, which are periods throughout the day that require little to no energy usage and movement, such as sitting at a desk, commuting in a car, or having multiple meetings throughout the day that require sitting in a chair and talking on the phone.  The opposite state of movement is “fight or flight.”  This is when the body is in a state where the heart rate is increased, the blood is pumping, and the body is enduring exertion that requires more caloric expenditure to produce energy and muscular engagement.

A valuable weight management tactic that has been successful in our personal training clients’ nutritional consultations is to pair the type of physical activity with foods that suit each activity.  Carbohydrates are used for energy during “fight or flight” activity.  Consuming carbohydrates during exercise or rigorous physical activities, such as mountain biking, hiking, or recreational sports like golf, tennis, or pickleball, is optimal for physically demanding activities.  However, if carbohydrates are consumed during “rest and digest” situations, they can be converted and stored as fat mass because there is no need to break them down for energy.   Proteins are used to repair muscle and are optimal for “rest and digest” activities.  Feeding the body foods high in protein, water, and fiber during sedentary periods supports the development of lean muscle mass.

Our society has been granted the gift of mobile food ordering that previous generations and other communities around the world haven’t had the privilege of enjoying.  These features of acquiring food are a tremendous asset to our productivity.  However, it’s far too easy to acquire calorie-dense foods that may not support our weight management and the prevention of metabolic disease.  Dietary decision-making is a challenging aspect of weight management because it requires people to practice autonomy and self-governance amid the multitude of food options available to them.  Perhaps we can still leverage these revolutions in food delivery services to further support our goals by ordering food that aligns with our current physical activity levels.

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.