Fitness

Sean McCawley, Fit for Life in Napa Valley: Exercise procrastination

Published

10 months ago

July 29, 2023

Sean McCawley, Fit for Life in Napa Valley: Exercise procrastination

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 a.m. And, your Yoga class is starting in 30 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 500% 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 a.m.? 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 55-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, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Click to comment

Fitness

Local woman starts new fitness center – Addison Independent

Published

5 hours ago

May 10, 2024

Press Room

Local woman starts new fitness center – Addison Independent

KARRIE SINKS, A longtime fitness enthusiast, has just opened her new business, 802 Pilates Health & Fitness, in The Centre shopping plaza off Court Street in Middlebury.
Independent photo/John Flowers

MIDDLEBURY — Fitness has always been important to Karrie Sinks. The Middlebury native and current Weybridge resident got into sports at an early age, displaying her varsity soccer, basketball and softball skills for Middlebury Union High School before graduating in 1998.

Exercise has remained a big part of her life into adulthood, a joy she’s shared with her three children and legions of others who participate in Middlebury’s Parks & Recreation Department programming. Sinks has spent many years with the department coaching kids’ sports and leading dance/Pilates for children, contributions for which in 2022 she was honored with the town’s Robert E. Collins Award.

“I love sports and the way they make me feel,” she said during a recent interview.

Sinks flirted with the idea of buying a gym at age 23, but the time wasn’t right. Now in her early 40s, with her children firmly ensconced in school, an introduction to “Inferno Hot Pilates (IHP)” reignited her interest in running her own fitness hub.

Two months ago, she opened one — “802 Pilates Health & Fitness,” in The Centre shopping plaza at 260 Court St., in a space previously occupied by H&R Block, and then Middlebury Sew-N-Vac.

“You don’t get rich doing this. It’s more for the love of doing it and the community you build,” she explained. “It’s always better together, and you always challenge yourself.”

Sinks is certified as a personal trainer and in Pilates — including Level 1&2 IHP. She explained IHP involves a high-intensity Pilates workout in a room heated to 95 degrees, with 40% humidity.

“You get in there and it’s hot, right off the bat. It’s fast-paced and helps you build long, lean muscle,” she said, adding the high temperature helps IHP practitioners get into the workout “zone” quicker while promoting perspiration — which is intended to help the body detox.

But 802 Pilates isn’t a one-trick pony. It offers a variety of other workouts for folks of all ages, including “barre” — not to be confused with the Vermont city — which employs ballet-like movement to engage and tone muscles.

The new enterprise also has several yoga offerings, including hot yoga, yoga dance and restorative yoga.

There’s “kids’ dance,” along with Hip Hop for children aged 9-12.

“This class fosters creativity, coordination, and confidence in a supportive environment,” reads a description of the Hip Hop sessions. “Get ready to bust a move, make new friends, and unleash your inner superstar on the dance floor.”

But Sinks stressed you don’t have to be a fitness superstar to benefit from 802 Pilates. She’s all about the self-improvement journey that people take upon launching their personal fitness regimen.

Her motto: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

She wants to cater to people of all abilities and is committed to getting seniors into the action. Sinks is planning what she calls “Silver Sessions,” consisting of “gentle exercises focusing on enhancing mobility, flexibility, and overall well-being.”

It’s been a busy couple of months, and that’s fine with Sinks. She currently teaches 16 classes during a typical week, which includes sessions with private clients. She’s a versatile teacher, but also has a great supporting cast. Her roster of instructors includes Neon Crystal and Bobbie Hutchins (both for kids’ dance), Vanessa Dunleavy (yoga/dance), Deb Orosz (yoga) and Lily Hunt (group fitness and barre).

“My idea was to bring strong, knowledgeable people from this community to part of the team,” she said. “I might be the owner, but I’m not ‘the boss.’ I think you’re always stronger as a team than working as a boss with people underneath you.”

802 Pilates offers monthly membership rates and a drop-in option for $35 per class. It also currently offers passes for eight or 12 classes. Sinks is developing a new promotional package that will allow clients to sample a variety of different classes to see which ones they like best.

Rather than drop in and take your chances, Sinks advises folks to pre-register. Complete details about 802 Pilates, including classes, their start times, rates, package deals and online registration, can be found at 802pilates.com.

Sinks’ future plans include marrying 802 Pilates offerings with other services, including acupuncture, presentations from nutritionists, and meditation.

The best service her new business provides?

“It makes people feel good,” Sinks said.

Reporter John Flowers is at [email protected].

Fitness

One in three Australians has pain. Building muscle can help — and you don't need to leave home to do it

Published

12 hours ago

May 9, 2024

Press Room

One in three Australians has pain. Building muscle can help — and you don't need to leave home to do it

Muscles are getting plenty of positive press lately and for good reason.

Increasingly, we are understanding that lifting weights or doing resistance exercises are not just about getting ripped (though if that’s your driver, all power to you).

By building muscle, we can safeguard against falls into older age, make our bones stronger and less brittle, better control our blood-sugar levels and reduce the risk of a suite of serious diseases.

“It’s really about improving functioning, improving capacity,” physiotherapist Sammy Prowse, who works with the AFL’s Hawthorn Football Club, tells ABC RN’s Life Matters.

“It might be that you’re looking to be able to play with your grandchildren, or you might be a labourer and you’re noticing that you need to have strength in certain positions, or you might be an athlete; it’s about optimising your muscles and the way in which your body performs.”

Building muscles also helps in managing pain, she says.

“We know that 30 per cent of Australians have pain or 16 per cent have lower back pain. So it’s really high … one in three has pain.”

But Prowse says it doesn’t need to be this way: “There is so much that we can do.”

A set of squats is one effective resistance exercise that can be done anywhere.(ABC RN: Anna Levy)

How to build strength

There’s a simple equation to building strength, Prowse says.

“What you really need to be ensuring is that [you’re bearing] load — load is the thing that brings strength.”

There are lots of exercises to help.

For example, squatting can be done at home without any equipment.

“You can do that by bending your knees and ankles, and you really want to think about it as though you’re sitting back into a chair. So you really stick your bum back so that your knees don’t shear forward,” Prowse says.

“That’s a great one. It’s functional. It relates to walking, going up and down stairs, sitting to stand — these are activities we do all the time, and it includes our major muscles of the legs … all of the muscles that we need, essentially, to move around.”

For abdominal exercises, a safe place to start — if you don’t have any upper limb, arm and shoulder injuries — is doing a plank from your knees, Prowse says.

There are many different ways to do this, including holding yourself up on the floor or by putting your hands on your bed, and taking your knees or feet back on the floor, so that your body creates a long line, and holding the position for a few seconds.

Planking, which can be modified to suit your strength and environment, is a good exercise for building abdominal muscles.(ABC RN: Anna Levy)

You might start with three sets of five repetitions, with a break between sets, and you can gradually increase the reps to 10 or 15, when it feels safe to do that, or increase the seconds you hold for.

“Those are things that you can do around the house that really do make a difference. It’s great if you can access amazing facilities … but you can actually just do this in your own home. And it really does work.”

Elements of Pilates and yoga also have “underlying principles of strength”. Another option is to see a physiotherapist who can tailor a program for you.

If you can commit to the routine, you’ll reap the rewards, Prowse says.

What if my workout is making me sore?

When building strength there is a concept of “safe” pain, which doesn’t include pain from injuries.

Pain after exercise can mean you’ve done a great workout, or it can mean there’s a problem.(ABC RN: Anna Levy)

Safe pain is pain that, on a scale where 0 is none, ratings up to four out of 10 would be considered normal. This is when your muscles are working and you’re unlikely to be doing any damage, Prowse says.

“That’s a good place to be.”

However, above four out of 10, things get “a bit sketchy”, she says.

Pain at that level should be considered in relation to any injury you might have, your physical condition and your body. When the line between safe and unsafe pain feels blurry, a physiotherapist can help.

Aim to feel ‘good in your body’

Ella Mason, a fitness coach and founder of a strength-based gym in Melbourne’s north, says any exercise that “pushes you out of your normal window of tolerance or comfortability or resilience” is a great way of building strength.

Along the way you’re likely to build confidence, too, they say.

“As we go along with strength training, we start to understand our bodies a bit better. The more autonomous we are in our bodies and how we move them, without someone telling us how to and how not to, we get to understand our individual bodies.”

Mason is a big fan of strength training over a lifetime, rather than in small spurts.

That goes for bodies of any gender, ability, size and age.

“I advocate a lot for all bodies to be able to do movement,” Mason says.

“We have all sorts of people come through the gym [including] older people who are in their 70s and 80s, who are new to strength training [but who can] suddenly lift things that they never have before [or are] regaining really good balance and reflex, which in relation to falls mitigation as we age, is really important.”

For everyone who is strength training, the same ethos should apply.

“It’s really just about feeling good in your body.”

Advice in this article is general only. See a health professional for advice on your individual circumstances.

RN in your inbox

Get more stories that go beyond the news cycle with our weekly newsletter.

Fitness

TOI Health News Morning Briefing | AstraZeneca withdraws COVID vaccine, West Nile fever outbreak, pregnancy guide for summer season, fitness tips and more – Times of India

Published

19 hours ago

May 9, 2024

Press Room

AstraZeneca withdraws COVID vaccine worldwide
AstraZeneca, the British pharmaceutical firm, is presently pulling its COVID vaccine from global circulation. This action follows months after the company acknowledged, for the first time in court records, the potential for a rare and hazardous side effect associated with the vaccine. The withdrawal request was submitted on March 5 and became effective this Tuesday, as reported.
“Have disclosed all side effects in packaging”: Serum Institute of India
In response to the side effects of the vaccine, the Serum Institute of India has said that they have disclosed all the rare to very rare side effects in its packaging since 2021.”We fully understand the ongoing concerns and it’s crucial to emphasize our commitment to transparency and safety. From the outset, we have disclosed all rare to very rare side effects, including Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome, in the packaging insert in 2021,” the SII spokesperson said.
West Nile fever spreads in Kerala
In three districts of Kerala—Malappuram, Kozhikode, and Thrissur—more than 10 cases of West Nile fever, transmitted by the Culex species of mosquitoes, have been reported. Responding to the increase in infections, the State Health Department has issued an alert and directed authorities to intensify pre-monsoon cleaning efforts.
7 diseases linked to asthma
Although asthma is a common respiratory condition marked by airway inflammation and narrowing, it often coexists with other illnesses, worsening symptoms and complicating treatment.
Summer pregnancy survival guide
Attention expecting mothers! With rising temperatures, it’s essential to focus on your health for a comfortable experience during the sunny season. Keep hydrated by consuming water-rich foods such as watermelon and cucumber. Take shelter indoors during the hottest hours to prevent fatigue. When outdoors, protect yourself from the sun’s rays with loose clothing and sunscreen.
Best diet to give children for their eyes
Consuming a balanced diet is crucial for the growth of a child. The developing eye requires specific micronutrients like vitamin A, essential fatty acids, and zinc. Deficiency in these nutrients can lead to various eye conditions such as keratomalacia and night blindness due to lack of vitamin A, repeated bleeds in the conjunctiva due to vitamin C deficiency, and impaired brain development due to essential fatty acid deficiency.
Easy tips to increase walking speed
Speeding up your walking can enhance calorie burning, enhance cardiovascular health, and make your walks more effective. Whether you’re walking for fitness, transportation, or daily errands, here are some simple pointers to help you increase your walking speed.
5 warning signs of ovarian cyst to know
Ovarian cysts, characterized by fluid-filled or solid sacs forming within or on the ovary’s surface, are frequent occurrences in women of reproductive age. Often, these cysts go unnoticed and resolve independently without any symptoms or complications. Nonetheless, specific warning signals should not be disregarded, as they may signify a more significant problem necessitating medical intervention.
While walking do these 3 exercises to lose arm fat
Regardless of whether you’re walking outdoors, on a treadmill, or simply around the house, we’ve compiled a list of arm exercises that you can integrate into your walks. Remember to proceed at your own pace and prioritize walking over arm movements. Focus on maintaining balance and controlling your upper body. To engage your core and enhance stability while walking, draw your navel towards your spine.