74: REWIND / Bill DeSimone Part 4

Welcome to the InForm Fitness Podcast series REWIND, a listen back to the classic interviews we’ve had with the high intensity gurus & master trainers… names like Martin Gibala, Doug Brignole, Simon Shawcross, Jay Vincent, Ryan Hall & Doug McGuff.

Adam kicks off the series with biomechanics expert, author, weight lifter, and personal trainer Bill DeSimone. Bill penned the book Congruent Exercise: How To Make Weight Training Easier On Your Joints. Bill is well known for his approach to weight lifting which focuses on correct biomechanics to build strength without undue collateral damage to connective tissue and the rest of the body.

In part 4 Adam & Bill discuss past & present trends in training, along with a quick chat about posture, mobility & feel in exercise.

Bill DeSimone Website

Optimalexercisenj.com

Bill DeSimone - Congruent Exercise

https://www.facebook.com/CongruentExercise

As always, your feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

Adam Zickerman – Power of 10: The Once-A-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution:

http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTen

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74: REWIND / Bill DeSimone Part 4 Transcript

Arlene  0:01  
The Inform fitness podcast with Adam Zickerman is a presentation of inform fitness studios specializing in safe, efficient, personal high intensity strength training, in each episode Adam discusses the latest findings in the areas of exercise nutrition and recovery, the three pillars of his New York Times best selling book, The Power of 10. He aims to debunk the popular misconceptions and urban myths that are so prevalent in the fields of health and fitness. And with the opinions of leading experts and scientists, you'll hear scientific based up to the minute information on a variety of subjects. We cover the exercise protocols and techniques of Adoms 20 minute once a week workout, as well as sleep recovery, nutrition, the role of genetics in the response to exercise, and much more.

Adam  0:56  
Hello, everybody, greetings, Adam here. Welcome to the Inform fitness podcast rewind. It's our listen back to classic interviews with high intensity gurus, master trainers, scientists and authors. This is part four of our interview with author, personal trainer and biomechanics expert, Bill De Simone. Conversations with Bill are always enjoyable, always enlightening, because of his experience, being in the business for over 40 years, he really knows his stuff. There's absolutely no one better than discuss the past and present trends and training. But first, a quick chat about posture, mobility and feel in exercise.

Bill DeSimone  1:35  
Some people work at a desk, their postures fine. Maybe they just intuitively stretch during the day. Like maybe maybe the postural issue. No, I don't think we're postural issues. If you get them on the person's young, you might be able to correct them. You guys got a person, you know, 60 70, it may have settled into the actual joints, the joints actually may have changed shape.

Adam  1:54  
Yeah, we got people with kyphosis. So all the time, we were like, We're not gonna, we're not gonna. I mean, you know, you have these women that I find that a lot with tall women, right? They grow up. So taller than everyone else. And there is and they're shy. So they end up being kyphotic. Because they're shy to stand up to it. You can, I've never been able to, I mean, you can prevent further degeneration,

Bill DeSimone  2:16  
20 or 25. If you catch that, maybe you can train, they can train out of it. But if you get it when it's already locked in, that's all you can do is not do more damage. The way we train people takes a half hour twice a week, maybe that leaves plenty of time for this person to do mobility work or flexibility work. If they have a specific activity that they think they need the work in. If you're training for strength once or twice a week, that leaves a lot of time that you can do some of these mobility things if the person needs. Yeah, I think feel is very overrated. In our line of work. The guy can get you to feel something, but it's not a you can do a concentration curl, a tricep kickback, or, you know, Donkey Kicks with a cuff. And you'll feel something because you're not because you're making the muscle about to cramp, but that's not necessarily a positive. As far as activating the glutes, glutes go, if they don't feel on leg press, I would go to the abductor machine. If you put somebody on the abductor machine, and they feel the sides of the glutes burn, in that case, the feel matches what you're trying to do. If you have somebody doing these glute bridging exercises where their shoulders are on a chair and the hips are on the ground, and knees are bent, and they're kind of just driving their hips up. You feel that, but it's it's it's irrelevant, you know, you're feeling it, because you're trying to get the glutes to contract at the end of where they are away from their strongest point. You're not taxing the glutes, you're getting a feeling. But it's not really challenging the strength of the glutes. One thing that was better in the early 80s is because we had all these Nautilus fitness centers around with the the one right way to work out. Even though that didn't catch I noticed the trainers who came through that system, you had a common vocabulary that you could work off of. So at Sports Training Institute, which was around the time, we would get trainers from those types of Nautilus fitness centers. And it was like that was sort of like the default workout one set to failure, full range of motion on this machine. But if the client didn't like go into failure, or if the machine didn't agree with them, it would take us you know, we had the option of doing what we do now. Trainers today, people coming out of school today or even with multiple certifications. There's a definite to me. There's like a lack of it's like the anything goes School of Exercise, right? If I call it an exercise, it's an exercise. There's no common vocabulary. So a young trainer will come into the studio and see that I have a kettlebell he's Oh great. I'm gonna do that. No, you're not Oh, no, no, no, no, no, but kettlebells whole door open. That was for experimentation. That was for experimentation only and I was the guinea pig. Now, we do not do that with clients. There's too much of an anything goes mentality, like, you know, just because some physical labor you did makes you breathless and makes you sweat makes your muscles burn, and pumps you up, doesn't necessarily make it a good idea. And that I think is very common among newer trainers, the exercise industry has created this. They've created this structure that I don't think I kind of think is a house of cards. Like it appears to have a lot of substance to it. But if you can't apply it to most people who walk in your door, what good is. And that's kind of why I got away from NSCA type stuff and heavy industry stuff.

Adam  5:52  
And let me say but you ...