 Convention of Tampa, Florida. Up next, returning alumni speaker of the 21th Convention, Bill Day-Simon. He is the author of Momentarum Exercise and Congruent Exercise, which I have called the Greatest Exercise Manual in History, and I actually maintain that, even though it's a really huge, grand oise statement. The books you've written are really influential to my life, and I think there are, as I've said, some of the greatest books, including and especially Congruent Exercise, the best manuals and exercise I've written. So please let me welcome to the stage Bill Day-Simon. Alright, so let me just lower the expectation a little bit. Speakers today, PhD, PhD later, PhD, two days ago, PhD, personal trainer. Certified personal trainer. But I do have a niche which has become what I'm calling joint-friendly fitness. So my talk today and my work in general is all about avoiding injuries from your workout, which for many years I thought was kind of unnecessary to say because, you know, what would be more counterproductive than getting hurt exercising, right? Theoretically, you're exercising to benefit your body, so to me getting hurt exercising completely defeats the purpose. So here's the first tip. Write this down. If you want to know what's going to be successful in the future, ask me and bet the other way, because now the most popular exercise fed around that I won't name for the same reason that James didn't name them, the most popular exercise fed around not only dismisses the risk of exercise, but it glorifies the injuries. So in the last year especially, there have been these reports of these really catastrophic injuries coming about from this activity. And not from bloggers looking to be provocative, but from, you know, actual news organizations, right? So this first link is from outside magazine online. And they have a series of articles over the last year, both pro and con. And they take great delight in the reaction they get from this group whenever they run a con article. This next, the next one from time, last January, they did a, in a print edition, they did a multi-page article also on the pros and cons, very fair. And most recently, outside the lines, the ESPN show did investigative story also with the pros and cons. And that's particularly interesting because ESPN also broadcasts the Reebok CrossFit Championships. So they were really, you know, risking biting the hand that feeds them. Now this, the ESPN one especially, they lead with the story of a guy and they show the video, security camera video, guy is doing their version of hanging leg raises, arms on a bar, except unlike, say, a hit or a super slow version, he's kicking his legs up to the bar and dropping his legs back and then kicking him up and dropping him back. And he's attempting to do 40 repetitions with the instructor right next to him, egging him on. Rep 30, he lets go of the bar with his feet up at the bar, literally bashes his head in on a concrete floor, to the point where he gets less rights and looks like it's over and he somehow manages to recover. And his response was, well, it almost killed me, but since I was in such good shape from it, it also saved my life. I can't wait to get back. Okay. Now, just to be fair, though, all right, in 2011, very first page of congruent exercise, I discussed five examples of catastrophic injuries that came out of conventional weight training and bodybuilding. So the first one, I saw this in the early 70s, Guy chokes to death in his basement after missing a barbell bench press. Bar rolls to his throat, chokes to death. The next one from Flex Magazine, a bodybuilder named John Pierre Fox, because that's what he was, taking barbell squat pictures for a photo shoot, puts 600 something pounds, 675 pounds on, doesn't warm up, goes under the bar, breaks his knees and evulces both quads, putting his ability to walk at serious risk. 2003 club industry, Guy doing a Smith machine squat, no bottom stops. I got it, I got it, I don't got it, but it's not funny because he ended up being quadriplegic. 2007, college football player doing barbell step ups loses it, either putting the bar back or coming off the bench, damages his spine, again risks his ability to walk. And then 2009, college football player bench pressing, strength culture right above him, 275 pounds, goes to put the bar back, misses, lands on his jaw, life-saving surgeries, lawsuits, etc. So it's not just one activity, okay? It's not just crossfit, it's not just bodybuilding or, you know, conventional weight training. So, now what happens when these type of accidents happen is, the apologists or the defenders, they immediately say, well, accidents happen, or they say, well, the person did something wrong, or they had some kind of pre-existing condition. And all of that can be true, but there's a lot of other things that come into play here leading to this, leading to these injuries, okay? So, one is, and I'll let Eric decide what the real proper term for this is, this all-or-nothing type thinking, all right? One of the biggest barriers to training is injury. If I saw on a couch, I wouldn't have injuries, but I'd probably be a candidate for diabetes or heart disease, who happens to be a crossfit age group champion, okay? Now, first of all, notice, he doesn't say the biggest barrier to winning is injury. The biggest barrier to competition, of competing is injury, to training. He's not even near the competition, okay? So, if you want to justify getting injured in a competition because you're caught up and trying to win, that's one thing, but he's not even, he didn't even get there with that statement. So, and again, with my amateurish logic, that's a false choice. The choice isn't train so hard you cripple yourself or shrivel up and die. There's a whole middle range of things that maybe you won't be a champion, but you'll certainly benefit from, you don't have to decide shrivel up and die or cripple myself. Again, to be fair, that's not new, okay? The guy, Dr. A. Merkin, wrote one of the first pop sports medicine books in the 1970s, and this idea was picked up by his other Dr. Goldman, who pursued it in the 80s and 90s, which is, if I gave you a pill and it would guarantee you'd be a champion, but it would kill you, would you take it? And methodology aside and whatever the Equibles people had aside, a lot of people said yes. So, that type of thinking, it's not just CrossFit, it's been around for a while. Ultimately, like that's a false choice, ultimately you have to decide that. You know, in the 70s I had the opportunity to get involved with steroids on a personal level. And one of the scare tactics they were using at the time was that steroids will give you cancer, and at the time I had this opportunity my father was in the hospital with cancer. So, it didn't seem to be a smart move on my part. Okay? And since then, I may or may not have had the potential to make some noise in bodybuilding, given genetics and whatever. But, again, proving, getting back to what I said, if you want to know what's going to be successful in the future, I said, well, I'm going to do this for a plastic trophy, who cares? Of course, 10 years after that, big money professional athletes were using steroids, actors were using steroids, you know, singers and performers were using steroids, so that knowledge would have come in handy. But, again, that's a choice you make, right? Whether you'll do something that'll kill you if it makes you a winner. But where the work I'm doing comes in is in this part. So, what I call a disconnect between exercise and biomechanics, which has been like a 100 year old argument. All of the exercise involved in those really catastrophic injuries, they're, you know, revered, the barbell squat, the deadlift, the bench press. But even the most fundamental biomechanics would tell you how risky they are to actually do them. Which is not the same as saying don't do them, but my thing is you should at least know what the issues are. All right, so my story quickly briefly. I started lifting weights in the 70s. Most of the information you could get was from the muscle magazines. I read all of them. Mike Menser was the guy I really hung on. His writing led to Ellington Darden's work, who is here today. And frankly, if I had stayed with what was in print from Mike Menser and Ellington Darden and just stayed there, I probably would have been all right. All right, but being novelty and you're into it, I'm reading everything and adding my own interpretations and other people's interpretations. I also got NSCA certified a couple of times in the intervening years. So I had a lot of influences, a lot of the conventional wisdom. And 1996, that was the best shape I was ever in and ever since. Notice my picture is far away from Menser's. But that was as good as I could do, right? And that was good enough for me. Now, unfortunately, I can't really look that way anymore because I decided to rupture my right biceps and triceps. So the triceps was, it was an accident. I was skating, I fell. But the biceps, I was just doing a slow curl. And I felt a little. And when I looked at my arm, there's like a black and blue golf ball there. So I got my attention, especially considering that I thought I knew all of this stuff about exercise. And this was 1998. So that means I had been, at that point, it was 25 years that I'd been working out and thinking I was reading and reading all this stuff. Then the other thing that that got my attention was, after everything healed, in some exercises, I didn't lose any strength whatsoever. And in other exercises, I couldn't even get into position. I shoulder was unstable. I couldn't hold the position. So I put all the NSCA stuff, all the muscle magazines, all the hip stuff aside. And I went to friends of minds, physical therapists, friends of minds, anatomy and mechanics books. These two being especially useful, Brunström's clinical kinesiology and Vogel's prime mover. And what I found there was very different than what I had found in the muscle media. So for my own self, I rearranged and rethought how I exercise, which then led to moment arm exercise, congruent exercises, videos, etc. So what I did was, the biomechanics textbooks are very, very dense, and they're really not written with lifting heavy things in mind. So what I settled on was this sort of process, right? I would start with something like a barbell curl, if you've seen the curl video. And then I would try to figure out what the issues were biomechanically, and then either tweak it or use an alternative exercise or just discard the idea completely. Side note, if I had kind of learned over the last 20 years instead of when I did, this would have been much more difficult because of this emphasis on whole body movements, where there's too many moving parts, you really can't, I don't really think you can get as precise a handle. So for instance, if you're looking at curls, it's elbow flexion, pretty cut and dry. When they get into these whole body movements, much more difficult. And again, how I interpreted biomechanics was how the bones and muscles of the spine handle load, how the shapes and connections of the joints affect movement, they're not all 90 degrees, and they're not all hinges, and then how they apply and resist force, specifically with lifting weights for exercise in mind. And as I heard Skyler say, the 30,000 square foot view became, and if you just take this torque where I put it over here, if you have biomechanics at one end and exercise at the other end, and you break it down into the joints, the spine and the curves of the spine is what's important. The shoulder moving overhead is important. The knee and the elbow is flexing and extending and with the elbow, I'm sorry, the wrist and the elbow, how they rotate. On the muscles, you break them down to deep and superficial muscles. The deep muscles are responsible for posture, the superficial muscles are responsible for torque. And you either maintain posture through stabilization, you develop the torque through resistance training. And when you put it all together, you end up with exercise. So now as we're heading into the gym, you know, I frequently have people say, oh, I did a kettlebell class, I did this exercise, that's a great exercise, right? And if you pick a part, what's a great exercise? We'll mix it a great exercise. Usually it's somewhere over here. You got a good pump, you got a good burn, I got sore the next day, I sweat, my breathing my heart rate. Much of which boils down to feel. It feels like a good exercise, it must be a good exercise. And I agree with that. I like I want that also. But I want to incorporate this stuff at the same time. Safe joint motion, challenge most appropriately and not having a sticking point. So let's go right, let's go right into the actual practical stuff here. Who thinks the left side is better form? Quick show of hands versus the right, put your left hand up for the left, right hand up for your right. Okay, I can count. I used to think this was better form as to the ground squats. I certainly had enough, there's certainly enough written support for it. But I've come to think this is better. Okay, this is the bottom position. If I were to barbell squat, mainly because of where the lumbar curve is. So obviously with the shirts, it's hard to say. But this curve is still somewhat intact. The lumbar curve is towards the belly. And this curve is obviously with your ass to the ground, rounded the wrong way. Now it gets tedious. Sorry. Now, here's why. Lumbar spine, the lumbar curve thoracic cervical. When the James correct me if I'm wrong. But when the since the vertebrae are irregularly shaped, they're not Legos, not squared off Legos. Since they're irregularly shaped, when they're stacked on top of each other, there's a curve in the spine. Thank you. When there's a curve in the spine, the pressure on the discs is even. They're not bulging, they're not twisted. It's flat. Thank you. Now, what happens when you exaggerate a curve in the spine, when you reverse the curve in the spine? If you bend forward, if you if you do that, if you exaggerate the curve, reverse the curve, the disc deforms a bit, which in itself is fine. But do it over a lifetime, do it through manual labor, do it through repetitive emotion, do it through exercise, and eventually you come up to either a disc carnation, ruptured discs, compressing the nerves. A whole lot of things can go wrong with the spine. Thank you. So getting back to this one, let's assume let's assume I'm not lying. And the lumbar curve is folded the wrong way, right? You can get away with this. And if you're not squatting with a barbell, as James and I were doing earlier, it does help stretch your lower back, it does feel like some relief. But again, don't forget an exercise, we're putting a bar on it, and we're doing multiple repetitions, and we're pushing hard on it, and we're hopefully doing this for years. So to my eye, combining that with the rest of life's wear and tear is only going to accelerate the wear and tear on your disc in this form. In this form, you're at least managing what you can manage. You still might have a problem, but you're not really overtly running into it. Some other relevant anatomy of the spine. So one argument you get is, well, if you put the spine in that position, the muscles around the spine will eventually get strong enough, right? The only problem is the layers of muscles around the spine are much smaller than the glutes and the quads. And if you notice, they're also very short, they don't cover as much of a distance as the glutes and the quads cover. So their role is to hold the curve in the spine. So you can easily overpower those muscles with a normal squatting load, for instance. And then as you get more superficial, the muscles get a bit longer. Okay, but ultimately, if you're at that rock bottom position in the squat, the first thing your muscles try to do is get the curve back in your spine. And given the relative size of them, that's where you run the chance of them straining, going into a spasm, leading to whatever other complications come out of it. So very common guidelines for the spine, right? Don't load inflection. In other words, when you pick something, when you pick something up, don't slouch into it. Turn don't twist, right? You never see a baseball player lock his legs in place and try to hit this way. It's a turn. The hips turn, the body follows a boxer tennis player. The reason why you turn, you don't twist is the disc is between the vertebrae. If you twist the vertebrae, it's like ringing out a dish towel. And again, it allows it, but it's not it's not the best thing for it over time. And again, especially say in sports, you're trying to apply force, speed, repetitions. So turn don't twist is another one of these cliches. And then from manual labor, lift with your legs, not your back, which really means hold your back fairly stiff. While your bigger muscles of your legs lift the object. Now, these aren't just this isn't just my idea of how the spine works. Every institution that puts out safe lifting guidelines, whether it's universities, Department of Defense, agricultural groups, industrial groups, they all say more or less the same thing. They all they all advise about the discs. They all talk about lifting with a stiff back, letting your legs do the lifting. They all have the same breakdown of the anatomy. But somehow when we walk into a gym, we touch a kettlebell, a machine, a barbell, doesn't matter. This is touching this stuff is going to make me invulnerable. Alright, so so getting back to the general idea of avoiding injury from your workout. It's really not a question about being the exercise police, you know, don't do this exercise, don't use that brand name. It's it's a question of given your choice of the exercise you have, how likely are you to keep the same posture in the back for right now? And again, rather than just blanket, not do the exercise, know what the issues are, and then you can decide. Alright, so unless you're a powerlifting where you have to do those three exercises, you've got a pretty wide range of things that all in effect do much of the same thing. So back in the gym. And now we're going to get into the the raw preference section here. I personally don't barbell squat anymore. Whatever magic it has, it's just not worth the aggravation to my back. If I was, I would definitely consider a Smith machine. And I would and keep it in mind that I want to protect the curve and lower back, probably not too much lower than this position here. And then the other thing I would do is you have to use the bottom stops. Because if you descend too low, you're going to have that big moment arm and your thigh goes vertical, and you get crushed like the poor guy mentioned in the first the first slide. So really the bottom stops are probably about here, right? Not down here. They're probably about here. So your squat as low as you can go and still keep the lumbar curve intact. Richard Wynette sent me an email saying, you know, conventional muscle thinking is that the Smith machine is bad for your knees. Well, if your feet are out here, and you're trying to squat with a vertical back, and you go so low that your femur is horizontal, yeah, that would be bad for your knees. Right? Or if your feet are here, but instead of, instead of sticking your butt back as your squat, you dropped your spine straight down. Yeah, that would be pretty rough on your knees. But if basically, if you're mimicking a free barbell squat with the good form, the Smith machine will actually keep the bar from crushing you absent to Smith machine, hip belt squat, right? Now, the curve in the back isn't as obvious. Because the hip belt is is that's exactly what the hip belt is. Alright? One of the things I like about the hip belt squat, you're still loading the hips and the thighs. The spine can keep its posture and support the weight of your head, which is what is supposed to do. Alright? One of the things I don't like about the hip belt squat is, you got to be very careful about getting out. Because if you go to failure, and you sit right on that 45 pound plate, you're not going to worry about hip belts, lower backs. So you have to plan for how you're going to get out of the hip belt squat. Okay? Either stop short of failure and unhook or get your knees on hands on your knees, or use a machine that allows it. But aside from that teensy detail, this actually does a pretty good job of matching up the spine works from congruent exercise, various split squats. So in the left one, you know, it's not, it's a, you might hear, see described as a lunge, but actually you, you lunge to get into position, and then you do a squat. So in that one, the forward foot has stepped forward. And then you're squatting, trying to keep your weight on this leg. And again, your spine doesn't have to support more than what it's supposed to, much more than what it's supposed to. This is sort of like a reverse lunge. So if you have the balance, you're here, and this leg comes back. And again, the front leg is doing the work. Again, now, again, you're bending over a little bit, right? But it's, it's manageable that you can keep the curve in your spine. Not that it's perfect, but it's manageable. So a number of years ago, somebody close some ruckus online, with the squat and the leg press. Now, when I, when I said or gave him presentations, squat or leg press, I meant this leg press, not this leg press. Okay. The nitro leg press, you can adjust the seat back. So you can mimic the body position of a squat. It's got curves in the seat back that you can fit into the curves of your back to support it. Okay, so that's the kind of leg press I was referring to. That's kind of interesting. That's kind of interesting. Yeah, okay. All right, so now more, more conventionally, right? So now this is from an NSCA textbook from about 2000. So this is like a very old school leg press. Now, what, what, what, what differences do you see in the two? Well, this angle is much closer to a right angle than this one. Okay, so I'm able to open up a little bit in the hips. Because what happens here is, first of all, her knees came so far back, you can't really see it, but it's unavoidable that her lower back flattens against the pad. So instead of having her back curve this way, as the knees approach her ribs, it has to flatten. And if you're doing the leg press to minimize the stress on your lower back, you just defeated the purpose. Especially in like the 70s, where the muscle magazine advice was, you know, let your, let your, let your knees go into your armpits for that full range of motion and push out. Well, the only way you can get your knees into your armpits is if your pelvis flips and your lower back flips. Another, another thing about this joint angle is when she gets to a right angle, when she presses this away from her and her femurs and her torso is at a right angle, the exercise is over, right? Because she can lock out. But the joint angle for where the glutes are strongest is a little bit further out than that, which you can't possibly reach here. So while this is very uncomfortable, especially at the bottom position, it doesn't necessarily, it's not exactly the right kind of challenge. It's only uncomfortable because of what the compression at the hips and your lower back. All right. Remember I said about it's not being exercise police? Now, don't do this exercise. I forget that. This, this, the example I mentioned, college football player doing barbell step ups. And he either stepped off at the end of the set, twisted his ankle, dropped the bar damages spine, or he had the bar here, he turned around to bring the back to the rack. And the thing he lost control of it and then injured a spine. One of those, one of those is what happened. He injured a spine came back to play and walk again. Okay. But since I wrote congruent exercise, another college football player stepped off backwards injured a spine and is paralyzed. Okay. I don't know what benefit this exercise has compared to other leg exercises. And it makes it looks it looks like a pretty simple picture. But other than getting off and starting exercise, other than ending and starting exercise, it's fine. So here's the problem with this. This implies that he steps up on the bench and stands up perfectly erecting his back on top of the bench, right? But if you try to stand up a bench that high, and I'm perfectly standing up here, and I get my foot up here, I can't get I can't stay vertical and get on on on the platform. I and everybody else has to bend over to do it. Only now, like when you bend over in a squat, you have two feet as a base. Only now you have one foot as a base. So unless you're unless you're using a step, like a regular conventional architectural step, you can't get on top of the bench without bending over with the barbell on your back on one foot. So you have so you have this load that's extraordinarily wide. And now you're bent over on one foot. It's amazing. More people don't get hurt doing this. And now think so now. Okay, so you do that you live. And now you're on top of the of the bench with the bar here. And you're locked out because your thighs are gassed, your breathing heavy, your back is tired. Now what do you do? There's no rack over here. The rack is back there. The rack's not in front of you either. So what do you do now? Well, ditch, but but but what do you have to do? You're gassed, you're gassed, your quads are burning because you just did 20 reps or whatever. And now somehow you have to balance on one foot, reach back behind you for the floor. Again, the fact that more people don't get crippled on this is what is what's freakish not the fact that some guys do get hurt. So if for some reason, you think stepping up has some value beyond the work for the glutes and quads and etc. You know, that's why running stadium steps was a classic exercise, right? They weren't too steep. That's why steps in the house or in an office are certain height. You can pretty much do it with all hip and quad action and not make it more complicated. Also from the 2000 NSCA textbook. Same exercise, different parts of the book. Okay. And neither part of the book identified one of these as the wrong way to do it or a risky way to do it. They just described the deadlift. If I was going to guess, I would say that this guy, and again, it's hard to see with the shirt, I would say that this guy's lumbar curve is somewhat intact. I would say that this guy's lumbar curve. Not so much. Now again, so obviously you have guys with different now granted, they are they are lifting empty barbells. So but again, you're reversing the lumbar curve and you're trying to lift weights against it. This guy can probably get away with it. Probably not. So a couple of alternatives. Trap bar deadlift. Why the trap bar deadlift might work is if you especially if you use the higher handles, you don't have to go as low to get to reach the handles. Right. So like in this guy's case where it looks like he's keeping the curve in his back. Again, he's doing what you can do. A much taller guy, his lower back probably would curve the wrong way. So that wouldn't be a great option. This one. Again, an SCA textbook 2000. I mean, it's just so obviously his lower back is bending the wrong way. Now what you could do if again, you you for whatever reason like the deadlift, the straight like deadlift, stiff like deadlift, you could lower you need another set of eyes, a mirror or video, you could lower as far as you can go. And then when you feel you lose it, then this is your marker. So your deadlift would be here instead of here. But I mean, that's like classic, you would never you would never get away with lifting that way like with occupational health nurses around. But because you walked into a gym, it's different kettlebells. Okay. Now in in in Pavel's enter the kettlebell book, amidst all the bullshit and all the cutesy stuff. There's actually some good instruction in there. And he actually pretty much says, do two exercises to arm swing and another exercise I don't like. But but he basically says master two, right? Well, no one goes to a kettlebell class and just does two exercises. You're not going to say no one does a kettlebell DVD focusing on two exercises. It's always a bunch of things that a dumbbell would be better served. There's nothing unique to the kettlebell. But with it with the tool and the reason why I was looking into this is I'm trying to figure out the fascination with the kettlebells, like what's so unique about them, what makes them better than a rock or a cinder block or a dumbbell. So now this this two arms swing is kind of interesting because if you do them the way he instructs it, it's probably a manageable amount of of wear on your lower back. And the way he instructs it is your weight is on your heels through the whole time. And it's not really intended as a speed deadlift. So you're not supposed to be swinging this way. It's really meant to be more of a more of a jump. So in the instruction he says sit back as if you're doing a box squat. So you're reaching back for the box. And then you forcibly come up as if you were jumping, but you keep your weight on your heels. And then the kettlebell swings away from you just in response to your hip drive. The point of it isn't supposed to be to be like a Derek or a crane. So again, if I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily like I don't have my clients do kettlebells. I'm experimenting with it myself on myself, but I'm not having clients do it. So if you're going to use a kettlebell, how to use it safely is what I'm trying to help answer. And of all the exotic stuff to do and that's probably about the most manageable. Moving moving the kettlebell overhead makes no sense to me. Turkish get ups makes no sense. Half moon pose and yoga with a kettlebell in your hand makes no sense. Flipping the kettlebell from this side of your forearm to have it smash into the back of your forearm and tear up all your calluses. I don't get that one either. The two arm swing though is manageable. So if anyone wants to say yes I use kettlebells that's the one to master. The one arm swing, you know, getting back to the disc health argument bent and rotated is considered James one of the worst positions to put the discs in right. So if you if you flex the spine and rotate at the same time, not only pinching it on one side, you're ringing it at the same time. So that's considered like one of the worst place worst postures for your disc health. Well, obviously, if you had the kettlebell with one hand, you really run the risk of the kettlebell pulling you into a bent and rotated position. So that one maybe this one I'd be very leery of I would I would really I really think there might be something getting back to that list of what makes a good good exercise. The left side where where it's feel. Okay, I'll give that one. I'll give it to that one. But that seems to be the most manageable way of handling your back. The one arm variations, not too much. And if you're really, you know, a lightweight, and you want to train the muscles of your lower back specifically, like a spine extension over a ball over 45 degree hyper extension bench. The important part though is to break the knees when you're stretched out. Because if you don't break at the knee, if this knee is straight, what happens is your hamstrings connect your shin to your pelvis. If the hamstring goes straight, and your torso comes down, your pelvis is locked into position. And so all the movement has to come out of your lower back. So what happens is when you break the lock at the hamstring, the pelvis can follow the lower back and keep the curve. Okay, so in this, in these two pictures, the one bar curve is there in both shots. And this is more of a prehab or rehab type exercise, not trained to failure, not doing 50 reps, just sort of like waking the muscles up or making sure you have some control over those muscles. Zip nothing, I got nothing. I don't know. So Alright, so three things you can do right away Monday when you go to work out. If you if you need to make this easier on your joints. And by the way, it's all, you know, it's also the classic way of handling this is, well, nothing hurts. So why should I change? Because that's what I did. Nothing hurts. I didn't change until I was 40 and everything hurt. So if nothing hurts, file the stuff away. And when things start to hurt, you have an idea where the answer might be. If things hurt, you can do these three three things right away to make it easy on your joints. Don't let the weight or the machine push you into a stretch. Okay, you're probably putting the joint in the vulnerable position if you do that. Always try to maintain the lumbar curve. And I didn't go into too much upper body stuff, but try to keep your hands in your peripheral vision. So if you're looking straight ahead on a machine, let's say it's a peck fly. If you can see your hands in your peripheral vision, you're okay. Once you start coming back here, you're probably overstretching the joint. And that gives you a little bit of a margin of error, but it's a rule of thumb. So whether you're doing a chin up, and you're either here versus here, or some kind of a press, if you can see your hands in the peripheral vision, you have a little bit of a margin of error. And again, you don't have to be perfect. But if you aim for perfect, then the natural, if you fall short, you still have a lot of margin of error. If you aim to be sloppy, you don't have any margin of error. And none of this guarantees that you won't get hurt. Like I don't know, and you may not know what you've done physically prior to walking in the gym that already wore out a joint. When I was a kid, I remember subluxing the shoulder in a pool, swimming and all of a sudden my shoulder popped out of joint and someone jammed it back into place. And years later, I ruptured the bicep and tricep on the side, so it made no sense. But my point being is that's not the type of thing you regularly think of. You don't really remember, gee, I fell this way. Maybe this joint is a little weak. And three little cliches, you can drop on message boards, be short and punchy. It can be effective without being excessive, challenge of fitness, not your safety. And at this point, I want to work out smarter, then work out harder. So it's one thing to just try to brute strength your way, brute force your way into being in shape. I'd rather know what I'm doing, do it safely and then worry about how to make it harder. Any questions? In the back. I think the big reason why people are proponents of going down low in the squat is they argue that you need to work your hips and certain muscles that don't get, that you don't hit with half squat. So what do you... I've read that also. I don't see that there's any foundation. I don't think there's any real support for that argument. I've read that also. I forget. I don't know if it's CrossFit or Dan John. And the thinking is by squatting so deep, if you're training the deep muscles, right? There are safer ways to train the deep muscles, though. It still doesn't get around the fact that you've reversed the lumbar curve. Well, the adductor machine, the abductor machine, a split squat, where you are balancing on one foot or just using a bosu and doing your squats without a bar on a bosu. So there's some instability there. I mean, I think that's a case where you feel the exercise because all the muscles are stretched out, so you feel it. So it must be making them stronger. But in reality, you're just stretching the muscles and joint out by going so deep, which is not the same, by the way. Just from mobility, like to just stretch or like a yoga type thing, by all means, squat deep, right? Because you do want to keep some passive range of motion. But my issue is with loading it in that position, with everything else that follows. In front. We only have time for two more questions, but if anybody has any other questions that we don't get to, just give them to me and I will ask him during the interview and you'll still get your questions answered. Okay. Thank you. A lot of really good information and watching, listening to it. I think I'm pretty intuitive. I should have thought of that. So thank you for that. I do a lot of hot yoga and it's very, I think it's really good exercise for me. It carries over into the activities I do. And so I don't spend a lot of time in the gym and I'm wondering, is there a pitfall to the exercise I am doing, the yoga I'm doing, the exertion I'm doing? I don't know. There is a book out called Science of Yoga by a guy named William Brod, who does a very thorough pro and con of yoga. Even though he likes doing it, he goes into like the downsides. So in general, I think yoga has a place. I do, I try to do it daily. But that's not putting a barbell on my back. So I would look into like Brod's book. I'm pretty sure his name is William Brod, Science of Yoga, because that seemed to be a very fair look at, it was a look like this only at yoga. I train alone and so I try to stick to machines but listening to your, your talk, it doesn't seem like a lot of them are going to be well suited to joint health. There, there are a lot of the lower quality machines. What would be your advice to me in the gym? Don't let the weight push you into a stretch. You know, the one kind, yes, there are a lot of low quality machines out there, right? And everyone has their opinions to which is low quality. But your joints and body is the same for machine to machine. So the idea is to figure out what the joint positions are that are safe for you and use that regardless of the name on the machine. So for instance, if I was doing a chest press, I would, I would no longer come all the way back here. Alright, I would stop it here. And again, hands are in peripheral vision. So I stop here whether it's a nitro chest press, whether it's a push-up on the floor, whether it's a old universal bench press. Don't let the weight push into a stretch. You know, hands in peripheral vision. But the thing is to understand what your joints are supposed to do and know, get the sense of where that is. Right? And use that on the machine regardless of what the machine tells you to do. Machines, by definition, aren't the enemy. You know, there's this myth about barbells are better for stabilization, functional activities and machines aren't. But you could be doing a barbell curl and be all over the place or be doing a seated machine curl with perfect posture. It's what your body is doing on it, not with the exercise I asked you to do. Really good speech. What's your take on machines versus free weights? You kind of covered it like now, but could you go more detailed into that? Without really born in the hell out of everybody. Because the problem is there's so many different machine designs out there that just to say a brand name doesn't do it justice because there's, you know, within the same brand name, different years, you have different wildly different designs. I don't think machines interfere with your athleticism, power, any of that stuff. I think it's perfectly legitimate to train safely on machines because you can, you know, a machine that you can set the bottom stop on, you got to try to get hurt. You really have to try. So you manage your posture on the machine, you do the exercise, and then you go practice your sport or your martial art or dance or whatever it is. On the other hand, if all you have access to is free weights, same thing. You know, manage your posture, do the exercise under control, don't put your joints into strange positions, vulnerable positions. Ultimately, it boils down to preference, right? So if someone comes to me and says I have access to this kind of machine, I'll say, alright, here's how you should use it. Here's specifically how to use it. If someone comes to me and says, you know, I only have dumbbells and a chaining bar at home, I'll help them figure that out also. Again, it's what you do with your body. I don't think by definition machines are bad, but some are terrible. Some are just badly designed, they're rickety, the angles are terrible, and they're like unfixably terrible. Okay? Okay. So thanks for the speech first, and my question is if you had to pick five basic exercises, which one would they be? Nitro leg press, well, in my studio Nitro leg press, Nitro vertical chest, assisted chin, three, five, huh? Maybe the crunch over the ball, and because I'm vain, incline curls with the dumbbells. Right? Completely non-functional, but you know, if it was all, if I was working out in a home gym, I would think of wall sit for the quads, push up maybe with elastics once you got, once body weight was, once you mastered body weight, you know, I'd rather people use an elastic over their back for resistance rather than go between chairs and use the distance. So what I say, wall sit, push up with the elastic band, chin up if you can do it, one dumbbell row, one, two, three, curls again, and also for vanity maybe a side raise. However, it's entirely possible that light press, chest press in some kind of pull gives you 90% of what you're going to get out of weight training. It's entirely possible, might be boring, but if that's not a, if that's not a concern, then yeah, those three might do it. Alright, thanks. Thank you Bill.