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.

Mar 30

Importance of Sleep

Quality sleep should be one of the top priorities for supporting health and fitness goals. You can train hard in the gym and eat all the right foods, but if you’re not getting adequate sleep, your body and mind can suffer. Without sufficient rest, the muscles you work out during training sessions cannot properly recover, which inhibits muscular growth and development.  During sleep, the body increases growth hormone production, which is essential for muscle repair, connective tissue rebuilding, and overall recovery from training. Even one or two nights of poor sleep can reduce attention span, slow reaction time, and impair decision-making, all of which directly impact work performance and daily productivity.

Research supports that optimal sleep plays a critical role in physical recovery and cognitive performance. Studies published by the National Sleep Foundation demonstrate that inadequate sleep can impair muscle recovery, reduce strength output, and negatively affect focus, decision-making, and physical and cognitive reaction time.

A healthy recommendation for good-quality sleep is to get 7-9 hours of sleep nightly.  The progress made in the gym is reinforced during rest and recovery, not always during the workout itself.  When you prioritize sleep, you give your body and mind the time needed to reboot and recover.

 

–Written by Coach Paul Atienza

Mar 30

Exercise Tip of the Month: Lateral Split Squat

Commonly seen Lower-body exercises at the gym might include squats, lunges, and leg presses. However, one overlooked movement that is critical not only for refining lower-body strength but also for reinforcing the structural integrity of the stabilizing muscles of the hips, knees, and ankles is side-to-side movement.

The lateral split squat targets lower-extremity muscles involved in powering medial and lateral (left-to-right) movement. By loading the hip abductors and adductors while requiring balance and coordination, lateral lower-extremity exercises reinforce side-to-side strength and stability.

The demands of single-leg mechanics and shifting the body’s center of gravity laterally promote muscular adaptation in the lower extremities to optimize changes of direction, balance, and coordination.  Exercises involving side-to-side movement help improve confidence in everyday physical activities that require lateral lower-extremity movement.

The lateral split squat challenges balance and proprioception, recruiting the stabilizing muscles of the hip and knee that are critical for long-term joint health and injury prevention.  If an imbalance occurs, such as stepping off a curb or needing to quickly move out of the way of something approaching you (such as a person or vehicle), the ability to shift one’s body to one side or the other is beneficial for avoiding potential injury.

The next time you’re planning a lower-body workout, consider adding a few sets of lateral split squats. You may be surprised at how much your hips and legs benefit from moving in a new direction.

–Written by Coach Vincent Nguyen

Mar 27

Posture Awareness During Squatting Exercises

“Make sure you look forward,” I cued Tina, one of our personal training clients, as she was performing a set of “zombie squats” during one of her training sessions.  Her eyes darted toward me momentarily to receive the instruction and then returned to looking straight ahead.  She immediately rotated her head upward, with her chin and face projecting toward the gym’s ceiling.  The back of her neck looked like a capital “C,” her cervical spine contorted unnaturally.  “No, look forward, not upward,” I added.  After a grimace of irritation toward my secondary exercise correction cue, she looked straight ahead, as if her line of vision was perpendicular to the surface of the wall in front of her.  What followed was a harmonious composition of hip, knee, and ankle movements that allowed her body to descend and ascend throughout the squat while maintaining optimal posture.

We utilize a zombie squat in our clients’ exercise prescriptions to teach them the nuances involved in performing a squat proficiently.  A commonly understood definition of squatting is the act of lowering your hips downward and backward to sit on a chair.  Sitting down and back is a cue we use when teaching our personal training clients how to squat correctly.  We add an extra component in the zombie squat, which involves extending the arms in front of the body while performing a squatting movement.  This action of bringing the arms in front of the body resembles the dancers in Michael Jackson’s music video “Thriller,” who are portrayed as undead humans, or zombies, who have come out of their graves, extend their arms in front of them, and perform a masterfully coordinated dance with Michael Jackson.

Postural awareness and coordination are needed to conduct a squat proficiently.  Cueing exercise participants to extend their arms out in front of them to emulate the actions of a cast member from Night of the Living Dead isn’t prompted just to get a chuckle out of our coaching staff.  The act of extending the arms in front of the body during squatting exercises serves as a reminder to keep the torso from collapsing forward.

Along with the lower-extremity muscles responsible for coordinated movements of the hip, knee, and ankle, the paraspinal muscles along the lumbar and thoracic spine, the muscles of scapular stabilization, and the neck stabilizers need to be engaged.  If these additional stabilizer muscles aren’t engaged, the head can tilt forward, the shoulder can slump forward, the lower back can round, and most of the weight of the body can transfer forward, causing the heels to come off the ground while squatting.  This lack of engagement of the stabilizing muscles of the torso during a squat can lead to a slew of suboptimal muscle and joint dysfunction, including neck, back, and knee injuries.  Therefore, it’s imperative to understand the preparatory actions that need to be engaged before performing squat-specific exercises.

Having participants extend their arms anteriorly during squats reminds them to keep their torso upright.  We use the cue “park the shoulder blades down and back” to ensure the muscles that attach from the base of the skull and the thoracic spine to the shoulder blades are activated.  When the muscles of cervical, thoracic, and scapular stabilization are engaged, the vertebral column is less likely to bend throughout squatting movements.  Furthermore, we use the phrase “act like you’re balancing two plates of scalding hot tea on the back of your hands” throughout the squatting movement.  This cue helps clients ensure their center of gravity doesn’t shift forward while in the “zombie-style” extended-arm position.  Optimal torso posture, along with a balanced center of gravity, allows the strong muscular motors of the hips to perform most of the work.  This shifts strain off the back and knee, directing more force to the hips.  To perform the zombie squat:

In a standing position, extend your arms in front of you to just below armpit height.  Keeping pressure on the heels and the feet flat on the ground, rotate your hips outward until you feel a slight muscular sensation in the outer hip and glute muscles.    In a slow, controlled motion, gradually lower your hips and back as you bend your knees.  Lower your hips until the crests of your hips are slightly above the level of your knees.  Reverse the motion by pushing your heels into the ground and using your glutes to push your hips under your body until you reach a standing position.  Repeat this movement for five to ten repetitions.

Daily activities usually involve sitting, looking down at our phones, or hunching over tables and desks to type, write, or eat.  Consistently practicing exercises that reinforce optimal posture can reduce the likelihood of muscle and joint dysfunction, while also enhancing our productivity and everyday 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.

Mar 25

Coach Alec Goes the Distance

On Sunday, March 1st, 2026, Napa Tenacious Fitness’ own coach, Alec Cornwell, participated in the Napa Valley Half Marathon. This was his first half-marathon, and he completed it in 1 hour, 56 minutes, and 57 seconds, exceeding his expectations and finishing strong. Coach Alec’s main preparation consisted of one long run over the weekend and two maintenance runs on his days off from the gym. Alongside his runs, he incorporated two to three additional exercise sessions per week, including strength training, joint mobilization tactics, and injury-prevention techniques, to stay strong and avoid setbacks as he prepared for the race.

The race itself was pleasant, with a couple of low rolling hills and great views of the surrounding vineyards and wineries on a foggy Sunday morning in Napa Valley. However, crossing the finish line was the most fulfilling moment for him, serving as a testament to the hard work, dedication, and consistency he put into preparing for and completing the race.