 To the 21th 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 exercises I've written. So please let me welcome to the stage Bill Day-Simon. Thank you. All right, 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 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 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 an 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 last 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, put 600 something pounds, 600 and 75 pounds on, doesn't warm up, goes under the bar, breaks his knees and evulces both quats, 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 a 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 couch 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 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 sat 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, 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 in trying to win, that's one thing, but he's not even, he didn't even get to that 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. And again to be fair, that's not new, okay. The guy, Dr. name 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 quibbles 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. 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 didn't 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 what I'm going to do is for a plastic trophy, who cares? Of course, 10 years after that, big money professional athletes were using steroids, actors were using steroids, singers and performers were using steroids so that knowledge would have come in handy. But again, that's a choice you make, whether you'll do something that will 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 disconnect between exercise and biomechanics, which has been like a 100 year old argument, all of the exercises involved in those really catastrophic injuries, they're 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, 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. The best manuals and exercises are written. So please let me welcome to the stage Bill Desimone. So 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, a boxer, a tennis player. The reason why 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 the best thing for it over time. In office, our 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. Perfect, but if you aim for perfect, then the natural, if you fall short, you still have a lot of margin of error.