Evidence Strong
Weightlifting for kids, is it safe and should kids compete - with Guy Hornsby
is weightlifting safe for kids? So I think that's a very popular question especially from parents. There's good literature on the safety of specifically the sport of weightlifting. A Hamels study from many years ago is probably the most commonly pointed one and where we compare the actual sport of weightlifting compared to other sports and if you're really scared about injuries, there's a whole bunch of sports I would avoid before weightlifting. Yes weightlifting is great. Your kids should do weightlifting. It's about how you know the context and how and do you have someone that knows what they're doing and that's that's qualified to sort of lead it and direct it. So hello guy welcome to evidence strong show. If you could briefly introduce yourself that would be great. Okay yeah thank you Alex for having me. I've enjoyed your your following you on social media over the last about about a year now. I think it's a great way to communicate with parents and coaches. Some of this more research driven information that you know for people that don't want to dive into to the more maybe tedious research articles. So I'm currently at West Virginia University. I'm an assistant professor in coaching and performance science. So I teach I oversee a grant that is funded through our our county's school board that provides a graduate assistant scholarship to a strength coach to be the strength coach to a student to be the strength coach at a local area high school and so we have three local area high schools within the county. We have three GAs and so I coordinate and run that program. I am the head weightlifting coach for behind me here. West Virginia weightlifting. I've been doing that actually one more year than I've been at WVOs at a small school in West Virginia for one year before that Glendale State College. Prior to that I was at East Tennessee State University for a long time. I was there eight years undergrad. Got there as a 19 year old. I was a thrower in the track team at East Tennessee State University. Meg Stone was my first coach. So coach Stone. Two-time Olympians still holds the collegiate NCAA division one record for for discus. First female strength coach at a major division one school also with football as well at Arizona and Texas Tech. So I was you know just blessed to have hers as a coach and and then her husband Mike Stone was my strength coach and also like academic advisor. I got to have him as a professor in a ton of classes throughout my time at ETSU. When I stayed on five years of grad school I was a strength coach at ETSU as a grad student for the five years there. I transitioned to the sport of weightlifting when I started grad school and did that all five years. I think that one of the things I really got to experience that was so helpful to me was when I got to ETSU it was Doc and Meg's first year and then and so I got to kind of be along for the ride of seeing them develop and build the program and then sort of similar kind of being on the front end of things when the PhD program so the PhD in sport physiology. I got goings really it's kind of more true true applied sport science doctorate which is really unique in the US. I was part of that first cohort that got to do that and the timing kind of I mean I'm super lucky with how that all worked out and so yeah that's my background. It's amazing so I contacted you and asked you for this interview because you are also the paper called weightlifting for children and adolescents and narrative review and it's a great paper lots of gold in it so I hope to pick up your brain and let's start with the burning question which is is weightlifting safe for kids. That's a very popular question especially from parents. There's good literature on on the safety of specifically the sport of weightlifting. A Hamels study from many years ago is probably the most commonly pointed one and where we compare the actual sport of weightlifting compared to other sports and if you're really scared about injuries there's a whole bunch of sports I would avoid before weightlifting. Yes weightlifting is great. Your kids should do weightlifting. It's about how you know the context and how and do you have someone that knows what they're doing and that's that's qualified to sort of lead it and direct it. I think one of the things from just our brief talk before we got started a theme of to me anyway when it comes to long-term athlete development which you know this is just one piece of it is that there's LTA-D like education that is aimed at really more so parents and I think that's based on like how do we navigate the situation as it is now and then there's LTA-D that I think is more aimed at practitioners and coaches and I think sometimes it's not so clear which one is which and I think we'll probably come back to that later but I think that for you know resistance exercise for children in adolescence I think that don't view it as just weightlifting like the sport and a barbell there's all sorts of stuff that I mean if you're talking about doing bodyweight exercises gymnastics has has figured out the benefits of that at a starting out in a really really early age very early on and I think a lot of that came from it is a more early specialization sport and you know certain the kind of how they have their stages and levels not certainly not an expert you know for to do certain movements you have to have certain requisite strength levels to to perform them and you know that gets into the idea that forces a vector right so it's got a magnitude and a direction and that also gets at this idea of when we have performance we have movement as coaches oftentimes we're trying to figure out is it more is it more technique issue is it more a not just necessarily strength but you know a force output issue and where do we need to you know kind of yield the best result by by focusing on and sometimes it is more obvious right like this athlete if it's like a movement that's relative to their body weight they should they're strong enough to do this movement but then they don't have the technique required it's obviously much more complicated than that because you know ideally athletes learn the proper technique very very early and and proper technique isn't just about I mean a lot of it isn't about it's usually better for performance but then also it tends to be safer and if we're talking about exercises that are performed in more the arena of training versus the actual in competition it better for better technique usually transfers to the actual sport performance better and so there isn't an exact age right and that's a that's a theme of lta do we have ranges for you know the difference between biological and chronological age and those types of things but I think that if you start them off properly with both actual resistance exercise, body weight and different positional exercises as well as actual sports and different sports bring different things to the table that can provide positive adaptations to the athlete certainly still into the single digits is is an appropriate time you'll probably getting upper single digits to where we can look at putting a barbell in a young athlete's hand and the weight of that barbell depends and the exercises and the progressions and all of those things that you would you would have them do what would depend also okay so what you are saying is is it safe is the same question for any sport so it depends who is teaching and how it's run and in terms of what is the appropriate age you would say technique can be early in younger kids and then the weight will depend on each athlete young athlete they can really this and what they need at the moment or for the future the one one of the things that kind of used to be popular thought 30ish years ago was this idea of there's not a whole lot of benefit to developing strength until puberty and that was just based on like looking at strength gains pretty puberty and strength gains post puberty there's been plenty of resources done since that showed that yes the response after puberty to strength training is much greater but athletes young athletes pre puberty still do get stronger and they can progress pretty you know pretty well over time and that's probably most beneficial not just for weight lifters but all athletes more thinking about the technical side right because we know that at earlier ages that's the best time to engrain good technique there are more sponge like to pick up the proper motor patterns and one of the things that we know quite well is that if you try to learn a new technique you know 20 versus 11 or 12 it's more challenging and then if an athlete learns incorrect technique or has some technical issues good you know good luck fixing that after years and years and years and years of them of them doing it and so if you think about for you know younger athletes and some of the positions they might need to get in for specifically like for weightlifting a good start position with a flat back you know being able to not get even with like a bar or when I say bar I don't just mean a 20 or 15 kilogram bar even potentially lighter you know not get let me get pulled around they can they can be they can have tension they can hit like a power position with a with a big chest and a flat back those types of things the strength necessary to do that to where they're not performing those positions with poor technique and they're not they're they're not performing those movements incorrectly and so I think really from a from a like a strength aspect really early on a lot of it is about that and then getting into more puberty and early after puberty I think that developing a sort of this longer slow approach to strength leads to much greater performance potential in the long run and allows for a you know a base so to speak to be provided to the athlete kind of getting back to that thing I said about you have LTA-D for parents and you have LTA-D for coaches one of the things I see come up all the time and I like I agree with many of the like I agree with the general recommendations I see come from from the world of LTA-D but I think that sometimes it's missed that a lot of it seems to be more aimed at parents making decisions now and that is this idea that like for multi-sport versus singles sport or early specialization versus late that type of stuff I do think generally it's good for athletes to be exposed to different sports and and to you know for not just even for physical development but to be introduced to different sports so they experience those different things but let's say a kid really liked weightlifting and they chose and I think that's a very important part of it I've gotten you know being in the weightlifting world I've gotten to know several athletes even if the athlete does make that decision and you know relatively speaking like early high school age let's say makes the commitment to weightlifting that doesn't mean that then the at all the athletes training has to be snatches and clean and jerks right it's it's on the coach to provide a multilateral more general earlier on development for for the athlete and I think that you know one of the things and I know you know I know the US system really and that's it you know I think that a lot of the recommendations that are do do multi-sport I've seen this an athlete that only played baseball growing up usually lacked athleticism and some strength and flexibility and those types of things but some of it is I think at times thinking let's rely on the sport to provide the the athlete development and so you know this sport is more you know basketball there's jumping and landing soccer there's more running baseball there's this this high skill and some high power and and so there and there's certainly something to that like especially for younger athletes experiencing those things in the sport they can adapt to that sport improves in athlete but we shouldn't solely rely on that to be sort of their athlete development system and so I think for weightlifting it's no different and so I've every now and then we'll have like middle school age athlete come into the gym and want to do weightlifting and their program looks very different than the college kids even if even if it's a college kid that just started right because they're at a different place in their physical development and so it's how you go about the the process. Could you make up an athlete let's say at the age of 14 and how you would how you would introduce them to the sport and how you would structure the training at the beginning and how you would move these this athlete or 11 or yeah so if we're talking younger ages and honestly I do sum this even with if they're beginners they're beginners but if we're talking younger ages the first couple technical things I look for really deal with more pull and squatting and maybe some overhead pressing and but I really look at the pull as a combination of so the the first pull in the transition from the floor to right to the above the knee when they start the transition into the power position and I look at that as a process of getting into a good power position and using a good power position and so it really is centered around that and so I want them to learn what a good power position feels like and I want them to learn how to be vicious and aggressive with with using it and so you know different probably the the the the top down approach is been officially with what I just said of like okay let's you know let's learn more some overhead squats and power position and work our way down a combination is is probably the best way to do it you know we can I think we can work on the power position and then also do some some work off of the floor as well if we're talking about something just like uh uh the second pull from from the power position I think we can if it looks good we can do multiple reps early on anything more technical I keep the reps low and provide rest and then I'm a I'm a big believer in strength development and and and eventually power to develop early on a whole lot especially if they're real young a whole lot of it is actually from the power position snatches from the power position cleans from the power position we do a lot we do quite a bit of pulling from the floor from the knee when we don't catch and so you know it's that's less technically complicated and then we can also overload that you know beyond what what they could catch but so early on it's sort of a combination of really trying to drive these specific technical aspects I'm a big believer in doing those partial movements to focus on specific areas that have so there's both a technique but then also a strength benefit to them kind of going back to that stuff about you know to some degree especially beginners you improve strength doing things right I think you can also improve technique and then I'm a big believer in you know if you're kind of just picturing like a typical macro cycle or even you know macro cycle let's say that's an annual plan so you have an entire year utilizing and taking a big time advantage of general prep and so you know weightlifting is a sport that's kind of the nature of the competition schedule you know basically have a meet and then you have months and months and months you know you might compete two three times a year and that's it more advanced athletes more advanced weightlifters you know let's say it's I'm just making a hypothetical but let's say it's kind of half and half general prep and specific in fact for more advanced it's probably a little bit more than half specific the general is sort of to get back what was lost through like the taper and the active and the active rest in that for more beginner it's much more general prep in fact early on it's general and then you know what I would say is specific is more like general slash specific right so you're going to like strength exercises higher reps a lot of you know squats and presses and pulls and those types of things before getting into you can do some you can do a snatch certainly and you can do a jerk and those types of things but it progresses more over time to the more specific as they climb the ladder so to speak over years and years the specific increases and the general decreases some but I think it's important remember you know we're a very adaptation heavy sport and if you want to be a good weight lifter you need to be really really really strong and that doesn't happen that doesn't happen overnight and so you know you got to be patient strength development and the people would call it more you know just general prep that stuff that training and then the heavy snatches and clean and jerks those two things don't go together spend a lot of time developing strength and getting them strong and then when it comes to competing they believe in not having a miss you know be conservative with their weights both in training and especially in beats to where early on for me the goal is six for six and I don't you know I'd rather than go six for six and not beat maybe what they've done in training before then if we're talking like within the first couple years versus pure i'm by a kilo or two and they go two for six or three for six because you want to build confidence on the platform you want them to sort of get used to expecting I'm going to make my competition lifts you know there's some experience to be had through the whole tapering and peaking process which is new to new to athletes early on and sometimes they aren't sure of it early on and maybe even don't like it because it's less they feel like they're not doing enough but yeah that's that's sort of my general approach and one of the great things about starting with them early is I mean there's no excuse for not being patient you have tons of tons of time they're going to I think sometimes because they're when they're when they're those younger ages they can prove so rapidly people get too excited and want to just push the weight and push the competition lifts but you got to do things in due time and you kind of got to pump the brakes now and then you know there's some good good stuff on if the the longer and slower you develop them the higher their overall peak performance potential goes and so now you look at some some studies on athletes that kind of compare volume intensity and particularly intensity when they were in their teenage years how they were pushed how much were they pushed and you know there's those themes of they peaked early and kind of stagnated they experienced things like burnout and kind of fell out of love for the sport so there's the whole side side as well even when you get more into that stage of we want to to win meets and we want to PR and all that you can't lose sight of this is one meet right hopefully in a long line of many many many other meets to come and that you're not just there for the meet you're there to help them develop over a long period of time so this is a hard part i think for for coaches because they aren't the pressure maybe from parents partly also ones probably to perform the best they can what do you have any advice for coaches how to navigate this pressure one of the things weightlifting affords i think a little more than some other sports like team sports i see is at least in my experience it's much easier to talk to parents right i don't have a team of uh twenty thirteen and fourteen-year-olds and parents are all coming and dropping off at the same time and picking up after and if you're going to talk to them they're sort of all there at the same time you got to pick and choose who you talk to and so my advice with at least for weightlifting with parents is talk to them communicate what you're trying to do and and and why this is a very us thing i don't know if you deal with this in australia but in the us most parents are not familiar with the sport of weightlifting at all so like they go to their first competition they don't know what uh you know kilograms how it's contested those types of things and so um you kind of want to educate them on on all of it and i also think that it's honestly probably a little bit easier too with when parents are less familiar they have less sort of expectation of you know my my son or daughter has to clean and jerk this amount of weight by this age or otherwise this is all a failure like i know some of that sort of stubborn bullish stuff that you might see in team sports i don't think exists as much the athlete side is it is it is different and that i think is more similar to you know in a driven athlete to other those other sports like they want to be as successful as they can be as soon as they can and as soon as they can be it and so i think that one of the nice things weightlifting is it allows for a lot of communication in training you know you have more you have rest periods you can talk you can go over things you really can have conversations and not be conversations that take away from the training and so you can you know you can provide examples of sort of how how and why you do things and how you're going to plan them out and you know i've honestly maybe a time or two i've heard a comment of an athlete after me saying you know i wish you to let me go heavy or something like that but that's not super common probably what is more common is maybe you know an athlete starts to want to go right into the specific prep right so kind of skip some of that general because they see there's a more quicker payoff to the specific and so you know those are those are important conversations i think i think if you can develop it probably the most helpful thing we have to to maybe provide examples for is building a good team right to where i'm very fortunate that i have grad students and lifters that you know i've been with us for a number of years five six years for some of them it's one thing for me to tell them tell the athlete like this is why we do this and this is why we do that but then you have the athletes you know we go through this process so we can taper and peak eventually and improve hopefully so yeah it's it's all communication i think the sport lends itself well to doing that communication i mean to kind of to kind of in odd comparison i think it's kind of like cross country and and distance running in that way of so i with work with track there's so much time spent with the coach talking like before practice after practice we get a lot of talking time and so yeah you're going to explain to them why you're doing what you're doing and i think that you know if if they stick with it and they experience the progress then you know then hopefully it gets to the point of just what we you know coach knows what he or she is doing we're you know i trust the plan and and so having said all that like if an athlete every now and then gets gets upset about not getting to go as heavy as they wanted that's okay you know that's that's that's very understandable and that's them wanting to wanting to push themselves and wanting to lift have your weight which is part of the sport and so you know as long as it's not detrimental to their process and to their training it's it's probably a good thing that ever now and then they they want to do that and then have those thoughts so i have i have two questions and they go nicely together i think one would be why kids should do weightlifting and the other would be if kids do weightlifting what are the risks yeah so i think beyond just weightlifting increased strength is so beneficial for all sorts of sports most sports in some way benefit from athletes being strong or even even endurance sports you know if you look at some of the things that go along with training for for weightlifting not just increased strength when i say that you know not i should say not just increased maximal strength right but the ability to repeat forces to be the the ability to improve power outputs and things like postural control and the sort of stabilizing low back midsection musculature and so you know i think it's it's a really nice sport if we were going to go back to that kind of example of if you're going to if we're going to do a couple of different sports with the aim of improving you know different types of athletic ability it's a it's a great one in that it essentially it provides your your S of your straining conditioning and it provides some conditioning as well and i think that's it that's an important factor kind of going back to the the stuff i said about general preparation you know doing things like sets of 10 working on basic strength three sets of five where you have to repeat forces over and over and over again i think some unique things that that go along with it are the development of the stretch shortening cycle so that particularly that that transition into second pull and the the loading of the hamstring and the stretch reflex that that comes from that very beneficial for movements like jumping and sprinting flexibility if you look at how weightlifters catch snatches and cleans they you know there's a whole bunch of sports where it's beneficial to have not just sort of the maybe the often thought of flexibility of like hamstring flexibility or hip flexibility but ankle flexibility right being able to to sit all the way down there in the bottom of a squat you think about a movement snatch overhead squat the flexibility the coordination of of the movement total you know total body can be really beneficial for a whole lot of sports in terms of the risk and you know a lot of this goes to is the person that's providing the coaching and the training plan are they trained educated credentialed all of those good things you know you can have an athlete perform something technically incorrect and that could lead to you know all you know all sorts of different issues whether it's shoulder risks poor catching of a of a snatch or clean you know let's say they don't know how to properly pull the bar and so that leads to it's the bars out in front and so they have to jump forward to get it the bar does it turn over to them so they catch it they they catch a clean down or they catch it on the snatch a little bit in front and that can lead to some some upper body issues so there's sort of there's sort of I'd say two general categories there's the technique and sort of like I don't know if accidents the best word but you know an acute something where the bar's out of place and an injury occurs and then there's the more overuse training driven category yeah so improper manipulation of volume and intensity going too heavy all the time I would say that's probably a more common issue than the volume issue provided for just talking about in the weight room having said that especially for athletes that are still doing other sports as well an important thing you have to do is the coach right is you have to integrate how you're providing the weightlifting training with whatever else they're they're doing the overuse stuff really it starts with putting together a long-term plan right having a proper progression having heavy and light and medium days and what's your you know depending on what type of phase you're you're in what's your progression and how do you how do you do that what's like your sort of your loading paradigm sometimes is referred to like sort of step ladder like with heavy and light days along the way but you're kind of your increase in the intensity over a number of weeks and then and then de-loading after that oftentimes for like more power-based blocks we will do like a sort of a strength week and then really decrease the volume and ramp up on the intensity over over a couple weeks all of all of those things are are part of just proper training prescription one more controversial question should kids compete i think it depends and i know that that's not the perfect answer or or district four dancer but i think that there's a whole lot of things to think about one is do they really want to compete and technique wise are they consistent so not just do they you know do a snatching clanger and it looked like it needs to look but are they consistent are you comfortable that it's consistent i think that there are some unique aspects to a weightlifting competition that need to be considered and this is you know some things i will tell parents is that i thought i knew all all there was to know about individual sport and people watching you coming from track and feel right like it's an individual sport you know when i'm throwing no one else is doing the same throwing event while i'm doing it but then you go to a weightlifting competition and everyone's watching you and and so it is like it can be intimidating and terrifying for for a young young athlete you know let's say their their their technique has gotten to a point where it's it's pretty stable i think there's some things that are worth doing in preparation to sort of even start to kind of gauge you know whether whether they're ready or not in most cases could you give some examples so do some things that kind of simulate meat like environment type things and you know and some of that is to introduce them to what the meat looks like with how how the clock works and changes are made and when you you know are you following yourself or you following someone else you might have them okay we're going to do you're going to do all your warm up attempts over here and then we're going to go to this other platform to where you're going to perform your meat left and we're going to have a couple people sit there and watch you know those those types of things and see how they how they respond and react to that and so if all of those things kind of point to they're ready to compete i think they can they can go to a meet and compete and you know i don't think there's a perfect age i do think it just depends i think consistency with technique is a big big part of it and then it's just generally how are they responding to to some of those like the example of the scenario where they're they're put through sort of like meat-like experience i would say really early on you know if they're 12 13 14 even the the frequency at which they compete i think should be first pretty low and then probably a little bit higher than once they get into their like late teens and 20s in that because no would be how many meats in a year i mean one or two or early on and then once they get as long as it's feasible like logistics and driving and all that stuff like i think after you know two years of that i think you can actually ramp up the amount of meats and really look at it from a an experience standpoint like we're not going to taper and peak every time um you're going to go and you're going to make lifts we can you know think of this as a a training saturday because every time it's a learning experience and they build up they build up you know confidence they get used to you know they develop their own sort of approach and strategies whether it's you know warm up routine music how they like to pace themselves you know you'll you'll as the coach you have all the warm-ups and the rest and plan out all those things but you start to learn one another and they start to learn what they prefer and then i think you can kind of make it past that to where you kind of go back to we're going to you know you're going to get to a point where we're going to we're really just going to compete when we taper and peak and so let's say it's two to three times a year we're going to taper and peak that many times and we're going to try to really do well at these competitions thinking about all of those things it's it's it's very individual and i think that for the first couple years it's it's be patient and and i would avoid competing too much not just from all the sort of meat and experience and psychology stuff but also just to you know part of it is limiting the time how often they would go heavy for for their statues and clean and jerks what is your approach with is weightlifting is a weight control sport like you have weight classes even with youth athletes so how do you navigate weight classes with your youth athletes so i would say by and large it's i tell them to not worry about it and just lift and train and eventually we'll get to the point because it is a weight class sport to where we'll address it later on i think especially for young beginner weightlifters that's the best for sure the best way to go i do think i mean it gets into the the almighty it depends but at some point you might you know unite might need to think about okay they're probably going to be this weight class you know let's say they're a kilo or two over there can be beneficial learning experience to going through the process of making weight and sort of them checking themselves and all that at what point that should be i think a lot of it depends on you know emotional maturity and where they're at in there if they're training in their weightlifting career one very practical consideration is you might think you know will they if they compete in this weight class versus this weight class and that we're talking about like they're you know let's say they're a kilo or two or three over if they drop just a little bit or we talking about they'll much more likely qualify for for a big meat or something like that which very early on is don't pay attention to it i mean first of all you probably don't want them focusing on that to begin with but then also their bodies are going to change and what they are now is not going to be what they are later on not just and it's not just as simple as yes ideally they they put a muscle um so that would be gaining some weight but then also i've seen athletes lean up some and actually drop some weight and so we get a lot of college age athletes and so for that it's much easier to know about where they're going to be um the changes are are much slower but USAW has some nice stuff um some like got nice guidelines for for coaches and parents for for navigating some of the weight class stuff and they've done some things that i think are good for the way and experience weight and the singlet and and those types of things the food diaries and and things like that um should be avoided early on and i think that's more important type of thing than just a weight class recommendation and it can cause some issues to the point where i've seen it and you know refer them to uh sport so i'm lucky that i'm in a college and actually has sports psychologists that can meet with athletes and and have have have those conversations athletes being more hyper aware of like their their readiness and their sleep and all of these things like sometimes you need to just probably focus on training and and and not getting so wrapped in dive i now think i'm going to have a bad day of training because of the thing in my my my wrist says so i know that you had a book came out recently so please tell us more about it yeah thank you so um it is called strength conditioning in sports from science to practice there's there's five of us that that co-authored the book it was led by uh Mike Stone and Tim Supermel and then my myself John Waggle and Aaron Kananam think is a is an authorship group it was a nice combination of you mentioned Doc's work in a second but Tim Tim and myself are academics that also coach and then John is he's just actually took a new job with Notre Dame as the director of performance science but he came from doing uh a sports science job but at uh Kansas City Royals major league baseball um Aaron Kananam is director of sport science for the Cincinnati Reds he's worked previously for UFC in a sport science role and before that the San Francisco Giants and so i think it was a kind of it was a really nice group of us that different heirs complimented one another well this book the first several chapters whether it's spinal hergetics or neuroendocrine or mechanics uh those those chapters are pretty heavy science one of one of chapters is on athlete monitoring and the different technologies and processes and and kind of what we know now it's it's we've made a lot of strides and so I think that it's an upper level undergraduate text like senior level to to to to grad and I think that in terms of the particularly the periodization that's covered periodization information in the athlete monitoring I think that we were able to put it together with a pretty high level that was aimed more at that sort of grad level student um and and hoping in practitioners as well so um yeah it was an honor to take to get to do that I wanted to ask you if you would have like one sentence advice for coaches on the topic of kids in weightlifting what would it be the most important thing you want coaches to know probably something along lines of just be very very patient and plan out your process beyond just you know the first week or two be long-term with how you you think through things last question oh no I have two more questions so one is what is your favorite color what's the old uh money money python blue no green I'm nodding it because of the next publication in weightlifting we'll have an infographic with this color so that's the promise for me I thank you so much for today and one last thing is where people can find you so yeah i'm on twitter uh coach Geithin g-u-i-t-o-n is is my twitter handle i'm on research gate and research gate is a real nice way to share research conveniently and quickly um it's just Geithornsby is my name on there and my email is william.hornsby@mailwvu.edu okay thank you so much for today and I hope to see you and to talk to you again soon thank you yeah no thank you for having me [BLANK_AUDIO]