Today’s episode features Ben Patrick (“Knees Over Toes Guy”), coach and founder of the “Athletic Truth Group,” a gym and online training service based out of Clearwater Beach, Florida.
Ben overcame debilitating knee and shin pain, as well as subsequent surgeries through a personal journey taking knee and foot strength training means to their fullest potential. Ben transformed his basketball career, going from being continually injured and under-achieving to having a successful junior college stint by improving his own knee health and performance. This culminated for Ben with a scholarship offer to Boston University for basketball, but due to NCAA eligibility rules, Ben turned it down and began training athletes.
I’ve been aware of Ben’s training group for some time, but a string of friends and colleagues in the field who have been recommending Ben’s methods as completely transformative in their knee pain has pointed my eyes more closely to his work. If you look through Ben’s social media, you can see how passionate he is about health and human performance.
For today’s episode, Ben keys us into his progression in knee training and how it transformed his basketball career. He also shares some important ideas on long-term vertical jump training and health, and how a hip-centered focus, although useful for short-term gains, can actually set an athlete backward in the long run by ignoring critical links in jumping.
Ben also talks about his four pillars of performance, as well as foot training concepts. It’s always fun to connect dots in this field, and much of Ben’s ideas resonate with things I’ve learned from Jay Schoreder’s system, such as strength through length, terminal end-range strength, in movements, fixing compensation patterns, and more.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, a supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Timestamps and Key Points
6:30 Ben’s athletic journey from knee pain, surgeries, and injury to pain-free performance
12:47 How Ben got started with the “knees over toes” idea with the late Charles Poliquin
18:40 How it is crucial to bulletproof the ankles and knees as part of a vertical jump training system
26:31 The four pillars of Ben’s athletic training system
31:37 How to progress knees-over-toes training for knee health, strength, and performance
46:07 How Ben approaches footwork in his training
Ben Patrick, “Knees Over Toes Guy”, Quotes
“(Throughout performing knees over toes training) In the course of the season, everyone else lost inches on their vertical, I gained 3”
“I do more exercises involving my feet than my knees…. I do the most volume for my feet, second most volume for my knees, third most volume for my hips because if it was the other way around, having an amazing deadlift is awesome, but the less proportionate now you are going down to knee and ankle strength, then when you go to plant and jump you have a higher chance of pain”
“It’s (feet and knees as a priority) a long term approach, but in the scheme of things, I run into athletes all the time who aren’t jumping higher than they were 5 years ago”
“I’m not a fan of only flexibility and without having strength in that range”
“As I get athletes more strength through length, they become less likely to get hurt and they get more strength in the process”
“At the end-ranges themselves, we get freakishly strong”
“I go backwards with the sled, every single day (for knee health and strength)… it takes quicker steps for a beginner to feel a burn in the VMO and the feet, while an advanced person can take bigger steps….. when in doubt, we go slow in one direction, and then we go back quickly”
“The second progression after the sled is the sissy squat”
“The reverse sled work is a foundation for the foot”
“Two of our workouts are calf raises, two are tibialis raises”
“Our forms of step-ups end up putting a tremendous amount of weight through the ball of the foot. Most people would think our step ups are only for the knee, but they help get the foot as strong as the knee”
“The strongest feet I’ve ever seen in the gym was a Canadian champion high jumper”
About Ben Patrick
Ben Patrick is the founder of the “Athletic Truth Group” a gym and online training service based out of Clearwater Beach Florida. Ben overcame debilitating knee and shin pain, as well as subsequent surgeries through a personal journey taking knee and foot strength training means to their fullest potential. Ben transformed his basketball career, going from being continually injured, unrecruited, and under-achieving to having a successful junior college stint through improving his own health and performance.
Ben’s sports performance training career started after this, where he now trains athletes of all levels at the Athletic Truth Group gym and through his online training services. Ben’s system has brought a great many athletes out of pain and is getting notoriety from many world-class trainers and athletes.
Transcripts:
Ben Patrick: So, when you’re actually playing sports, it’s going through your feet. So, my system now is proportionate from the feet up. So, I actually do more exercises involving my feet than my knees, and that’s often a shock for people because they think of me as the knee guy. You know what I mean? So, I do my most volume for my feet, second-most volume for my knees, third most-volume for my hips because if it’s the other way around, having an amazing deadlift is awesome, but the less proportionate you are now going down to the knee strength and ankle strength, then when you actually go to plant and jump, you simply have a higher chance of pain. So, you have a higher chance of jumping high but the increased chance of pain, then your progress doesn’t end up linear.
Joel Smith: That was Ben Patrick, coach and founder of Athletic Truth Group, speaking on his priority list for training in athletic performance and vertical jumping. You’re listening to the Just Fly Performance Podcast.
Joel Smith: Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster. SimpliFaster is an online athletic performance technology shop distributing items such as the Freelap timing system, GymAware, kBox, 1080 Sprint, and the Speed Mat. I’ve gotten many of these items from SimpliFaster and can confidently say that they make today’s best training technology available to everybody. The Freelap timing system has revolutionized both my practices and my athlete assessments allowing me to look at the 10 meter fly capability of dozens of athletes in a matter of seconds. It is wireless, compact, portable, and incredibly versatile. The kBox and 1080 Sprint are fantastic tools for any coach looking to build speed, agility, and implement training scenarios that go beyond the traditional weight room. The 1080 Sprint is being used by great coaches training some of the fastest sprinters in the world, and it truly represents high performance speed training. I can personally attest that SimpliFaster’s customer service is second to none. Christopher at SimpliFaster responds quickly to queries, and anyone who makes a purchase from SimpliFaster is in good hands. If you want to acquire some of the best high tech training equipment available, stop by at SimpliFaster.com. That’s Simpli with an I, Faster.com. They are the future of coaching technology.
Joel Smith: Welcome to episode 148 of the Just Fly Performance Podcast. I’m your host, Joel Smith. Thanks for being here today. On the show, we have young coach, Ben Patrick. He is the found of The Athletic Truth Group, which is a gym based out of Clearwater Beach, Florida. You may also know him off Instagram where he’s known as the knees over toes guy, where he posts a great many videos highlighting some of the exercises that he has used to get himself and a great many athletes out of knee pain and into higher performance levels. I always enjoy talking with on the show, one, young coaches, guys who are under 30 doing awesome things in the field, putting that piece of the jigsaw, filling in that giant coaching jigsaw that’s on the wall, so to speak, and finding those missing pieces, and plugging those in. And so, that’s always something I really enjoy doing. Another thing, too, is just the success story that Ben is, having overcome debilitating pain himself in his early years and working to formulate a system that eventually led him to great success. So, with the whole knees over toes thing, whether you or your athletes are struggling with knee pain, and there’s a good chance that if you train athletes, there’s people who are, this episode is solid gold.
Joel Smith: So, I’ve known of Ben and his videos for a while. I believe I actually was reposting some plyometric things that they were doing several years ago, but I think I fell out, and I wasn’t really paying attention for a period of time until a well-known and respected dunker let me know that he was out of knee pain, prior debilitating … rough word, right? Debilitating knee pain and had gotten out of it using Ben Patrick’s methods. And so, you hear one thing, and sometimes you treat it as a one off, but I was hearing that from more than one source, and I saw Keegan Smith, who is Real Movement Project, for those of you who know him and what he’s doing, which he’s doing incredible things and an incredible coach, also recommend what Ben’s doing. I started to go back to Ben’s videos, and I was like, “Wow. I have to get this guy on the show,” just because, one, what he’s doing is fundamentally far different than what you see in anyone else’s videos. He’s getting awesome results. He’s taking people out of knee pain. He’s improving performance, and so, this episode today with Ben is just all about that.
Joel Smith: We’re going to talk, as I mentioned, get into his athletic journey, what led him to where he is now. We’re going to talk about how he got started with the whole knees over toes idea, the Sissy Squat, and everything that it’s evolved to well beyond that, and his initial roots there with Charles Poliquin. We’re going to talk about his progression and priority list for not just short term but long term athletic gains by fixing weak links and making sure that athletes don’t have to continually take these up and down breaks because of, again, links in the chain. He’s going to talk about the four pillars of his athletic training system, how to progress knees over toes, so the fundamentals, how to get those quads, low quads, and knees highly resilient, stronger, and better for performance, and then, we’re also going to get into the awesome topic of train the foot, and there is a ton of what I like to call two-for-ones in Ben’s training system where you’re training the knee, but you’re also training the foot, and I’ll tell you. It doesn’t really get better than that when you can get that kind of efficiency and power out of your program.
Joel Smith: So, this was just an awesome chat with a young coach who is doing amazing things in the field, serving the field in an awesome way. Not just through the many athletes he’s training, but also by being very transparent and sharing so many great videos on his social media with what he is doing. He’s a guy who walks the talk, and I am thrilled to have Ben Patrick for episode 148 of the Just Fly Performance podcast. Let’s get on to the show.
Joel Smith: So, I wanted to ask you about your athletic journey because I know all people who have kind of created something, right, something big, a lot of it came out of some sort of suffering or trials or troubles, and I know you’ve had some significant troubles of your own that led you down a path to eventual success. So, what were some of the steps that you took to overcome the injuries and those types of things?
Ben Patrick: Yeah. Well, I basically, by the time I was 18, had lived a full athletic career because starting at 9, like you, I became obsessed with athletic development. So, I would wake up at 5:30 in the morning, strap on angle weights, dribble two basketballs two miles through my neighborhood. I wasn’t even a morning person, but I set my alarm clock out of arm’s reach with a light that would flash when I wake up, and I’d have to look at a note I wrote myself that said, “What would John Stockton do?” Because when he was in elementary school, he would wake up on his own and practice defense. So, I even had famous stories people tell me now that they remember watching me when I was 9, 10 years old taking charges on a court by myself over and over and over and over. So, I would start in the morning, get as much done as I could before school. At snack time at school, I found a secret door, and I hid my jump soles in the hall behind that door, and I would go down and do the Jumpsole workout, and then, at lunch, I would actually have a chance to get out my basketball and practice, and then, I had special permission from my school to skip the gym phys ed class and go off and practice basketball.
Ben Patrick: And there was actually one other serious athlete who would do the same thing for figure skating, and she’s my wife now. So, we actually met in elementary school. And then, when that was done, then I would have team practice, games, whatever. So, by the time I was somewhere between 12 and 14, I started getting the nickname The Old Man. It would take me about a half-an-hour to get warmed up. I was famous because most days, I couldn’t touch the net. I was a starting point guard in high school and couldn’t touch the backboard. So, I finished high school unable to touch the rim and had had multiple knee surgeries. So, my life went from all this training to then my body being so broken down, but finishing high school at 18, I still have enough hormones and whatnot and don’t have a family yet and all this stuff. So, I still stayed on I’m trying to be a basketball player, even though I was 18 with absolutely no recruitment at any level, couldn’t even get a walk-on spot. At 21 is when I started experimenting with knees over toes, and after a summer of that, was healthy enough to get myself into a junior college and had to keep doing my own workouts on my own and got good enough by the end of my sophomore year, I was on a full ride Division I scholarship to Boston University.
Ben Patrick: So, at 23, I’m going D1 after 18 being unable to touch the rim, multiple knee surgeries, no recruitment at any level. So, I already had quite a pull from my community to be a trainer because it was like name one other person that some crazy story like that has happened to. You know what I mean? That’s very rare. I’ve never heard of something like that, and it was from putting all of my energy into my knees, but I was five years out of school, out of high school. So, the NCAA denied my eligibility. So, it’s almost season time, and there’s a scramble. Do I get a lawyer and appeal it? Do I play D2, which I still was allowed to play D2, NAIA? I visited Carlton College in Canada, which has a legendary program, but every place I went, I wasn’t going to be allowed to do my knees over toes stuff. So, I said, “Screw college basketball.” People thought I was nuts. Even Division II full paid education, so I said forget it, and I started being a trainer out of my garage, and yeah, that was four years ago.
Joel Smith: Wow. Four years ago. For some reason, I thought that timeline was a lot longer, but that’s an awesome story.
Ben Patrick: Thank you.
Joel Smith: I thought I was obsessed with … I thought I was the most obsessed kid. I’ve always felt like I was like, “Oh, I was doing wall sits when I was 10, and I wanted to jump higher,” but you got me beat, man, and you woke up early, and I couldn’t even wake up early until I was 30, so …
Ben Patrick: I still don’t like to wake up early.
Joel Smith: To me, that’s unbelievable. I remember, shoot, my dad had to wake me up for school, probably til I was … I think I started getting it together in high school at some point, but I still remember getting woken up. I mean, it was terrible [inaudible 00:11:18]. Not to digress, but no, that’s almost like a Hollywood story, man, just not even getting recruited and then making that big turnaround. And then, I’m assuming that a lot of the issues you had clearly in high school, you couldn’t touch the rim, were very knee pain related. You’d said you had had surgeries, I’m assuming from over-training as a child and those types of things.
Ben Patrick: Yep. Yeah, I was worn down. They did an X-ray, and my knee cap had fractured pieces of bone just sitting there that they said might’ve been there since I was like 13, 14. I was so depressed from it all at the time. I didn’t even bother to get the details. So, I just know that in my knees I have some kind of plastic material and a dead guy’s meniscus, and one doctor told me I had no ACL and all kinds of shit that, to this day, I really don’t even know what’s going on in there. I just train knee ability. I know way less about anatomy than you might guess. I’m way less educated than you might guess, but I’ve probably studied more about the knees in my own way than anyone on Earth.
Joel Smith: Yeah. No. Actually, I just did a post on Instagram yesterday. It was saying imagination is really superior to what we would call knowledge in many cases, in the sense of, “This and this and this is wrong with your knee. You need to learn about this rehab program.” Well, I just figure out my own way that’s going to get this done. So, before we get too much further, too, and I’m sure I’ll mention this in the pre-roll, but could you describe a little bit about, so, knees over toes. So, what is it, first? I mean, it’s pretty self-explanatory, I guess, but in terms of a basic exercise model, and what got you started with that? What made you say, “Hey, this is something I want to start”?
Ben Patrick: Charles Poliquin made me start with that, and to this day, he’s kind of been my one and only mentor, and he was the first guy to say to me personally … I know there’s lots of great coaches out there. Just for me, he was the first guy that I ran into that said, “Not only should you not let your knees over your toes and stop at 90, you should go maximally over toes and full bent.” And this was like, “What?” And so, I started trying it and worked through all kinds of pain, and that’s why my progress wasn’t even faster because I didn’t know what I was doing. So, now, I’ve walked this route, and I’ve helped people do it without ever having to experience pain, but I just went through the pain and this and that. But I could tell this was different than everything else I had tried, and the difference is that when I would actually play basketball now, basketball hurt less. Before, my training didn’t hurt, but the court hurt because I wasn’t prepared for the court, and the stronger I would get my hips, the more I would just kill my knees, and my shin splints were pretty epic, same with my foot pain. It’s like you shouldn’t be that young, hobbling around every morning because your feet and shins hurt that bad.
Ben Patrick: So, it was a whole … from the ground up, I couldn’t handle it. So, doing his stuff, then just screwing around on the court, because at the time, I was still in that No Man’s Land, painting walls every day for my dad and saving up money, hoping I’d be able to go to a college and try to play basketball somewhere, but that’s when I started being like, “Wow. The playing hurts less.” And so, before I knew it, I was able to actually start playing again, which I hadn’t been able to do for three years from doing that, and I just stuck to that religiously and then went and learned from him personally and read everything he’s ever written many times over, and it left me enough clues. He personally told me that his biggest regret was not getting into flexibility sooner, and from being a basketball player, which is a different sport than maybe where it’s like, “All right, we’re going to do a two-month block of this,” and there’s really no off season in basketball. Even in the off season, you play, even if it’s a couple times a week. So, I knew I needed something different where I wasn’t going to have to be working through pain, where I wasn’t going to have to be having my nervous system good one day and drained the next day.
Ben Patrick: I needed something I could do in season. Otherwise, I’d knew my knees would be back wrecked by the end of the season. So, it was pretty cool to get his take and then actually have to go play college basketball while trying to catch up athletically in the course of a season. So, as the season went, every guy on my team lost inches on their vertical. I gained three. So, that was out of 16 players. 15 lost inches from pre-season to post-season testing. I gained three. So, if I hadn’t been in these situations of necessity, there’s no way this stuff would’ve come about.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Yeah. To me, so many great things have come through that. Kind of the first question, so many amazing things have come through this immense need for something, and then, obviously, you have just a huge desire to improve and get better. One of the things that really just stands out to me, too, kind of as you mentioned, as you were saying, “I have all these things clinically wrong with my knee, pieces floating around,” and yet, you became pain free. Eventually, there’s no … And so, I always feel like-
Ben Patrick: Never have pain, ever. I pay so hard on the court. People hate playing against me, offensively, defensively because I can just slam on my knees so hard. Never have pain. It blows my mind. Every time I finish playing, I’m driving home, and I’m just like, “It still gets me. How is this real?” It’s crazy.
Joel Smith: Yeah. One of the things that I think was really cool about what you said, too … Well, with that as well, before I jump into my next thought, it’s mind-blowing to me how good the body is at healing itself given the right context and belief, I think, being one, too because I’m sure because it was Charles Poliquin as well, not only is there the benefits of the actual knees over toes progressively, but that’s also like Charles Poliquin is behind this, too. And when-
Ben Patrick: I wouldn’t have suffered through those initial weeks if it weren’t for him.
Joel Smith: Yeah. If it was just anybody saying, “Hey, do this painful thing-
Ben Patrick: I would’ve tried one workout, and that would’ve been that, and there would be no knees over toes guy.
Joel Smith: Yeah. To me, it is awesome, too, how obviously he passed not too long ago, but this is something that it’s almost cool because I feel like this is something that’s living on, creating something new, and helping a ton of people as well even after he’s gone. So, I think that’s probably pretty cool, I guess, on your end to be able to be part of that.
Ben Patrick: Yeah. It gives me chills. It’s really gratifying because he saved my life. So, now I get to do that for other people and see those same words, and I mean, that’s what I live for everyday.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I think inside, I think that’s what all of us who train athletes kind of live for, whether we know it or not.
Ben Patrick: We live for those moments.
Joel Smith: Yeah, 100%, man. I couldn’t agree more. I’m super excited for you how often and how much a part of what you do is that, and so, that’s really good stuff. What I was going to say before I lose my train of thought was you were saying that because … and I think this lends into a lot of ways athletes are currently trained is if you aren’t pushing your knees over your toes, purposely sitting back on everything, you said you had a ton of hip problems and foot problems because it’s like you’re constantly lifting in a way the body isn’t really meant to move. It’s a way to move a weight, but if you take a join out, other joints are going to pay the price. So, could you go into that a little bit? How are you training with your knees, when your knees were messed up, and that was exacerbating some things? Or what’s you take on kind of the typical kind of just hips back, shin vertical, and some possible negatives to that?
Ben Patrick: Yeah. So, it has to do with gravity. So, when you’re actually playing sports, it’s going through your feet. So, my system now is proportionate from the feet up. So, I actually do more exercises involving my feet than my knees, and that’s often a shock for people because they think of me as the knee guy. You know what I mean? So, I do my most volume for my feet, second-most volume for my knees, third most-volume for my hips because if it’s the other way around, having an amazing deadlift is awesome, but the less proportionate you are now going down to the knee strength and ankle strength, then when you actually go to plant and jump, you simply have a higher chance of pain. So, you have a higher chance of jumping high but the increased chance of pain, then your progress doesn’t end up linear.
Ben Patrick: So, a study can show what can make you jump higher, but it might not track the long-term effects, and as you know from being an athlete, sure, if I only had six weeks to make someone jump as high as possible and had no responsibility for the rest of their career or for what would make them jump higher 12 weeks from now. How about 52 weeks from now? How about three years from now? So, I think all of us as strength coaches can agree that the posterior chain at the hips are the most, right, the most important in terms of the power.
Joel Smith: Yeah, compared to the-
Ben Patrick: Like the hips are putting the power out.
Joel Smith: Yeah. That’s ultimately where, yeah, ultimately athletes are going to have horsepower there, for sure.
Ben Patrick: Right. Right. So, we can agree the hips, you can’t have no muscle in your body, huge calves, you’re not going to be … you know what I mean?
Joel Smith: Popeye, Popeye won’t, Popeye isn’t going to be a good athlete. He’s not going to make it in the NFL.
Ben Patrick: Right. Right. So, basically, as those glutes, lower back hamstrings, as those get stronger, we can use every ounce of that improved strength. So, then, when you go out and practice your jumps or whatever it may be, the recovery is so much smoother because your feet, your knees, whatever aren’t hurting. So, you recover faster, and by being able to plant harder and not have to avoid it, then you can stimulate the tendons to get more elastic. So, basically, I find that working through pain is almost like the number one deterrent of progress. So, it’s not that we don’t train the upper body. It’s not that we don’t train the hips. It’s just that we make sure that we’re proportionally getting even more world class sooner in our feet and then knees. Does that make sense?
Joel Smith: That makes all the sense in the world.
Ben Patrick: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:22:26] for fun. You go out and jump, and there’s no pain, and you can plant as hard as you want, and it doesn’t hurt anything through your feet and lower legs and knees because while you did get your hips stronger, you didn’t get them stronger too fast, too soon compared to the rest. So, it’s a “slower journey,” but what’s funny is someone will go six months, gain eight inches on their vertical or something. That doesn’t seem slow, but there’s a difference between even six weeks and six months. You know what I mean? So, it’s definitely a long-term approach, but in the scheme of things, I run into athletes all the time who aren’t jumping any higher than they were five years ago.
Joel Smith: You’re listening to the Just Fly Performance podcast brought to you by SimpliFaster. Yeah. No, I totally agree, and in my mind, I’ve always looked at areas where it’s like, “Okay. Is this a shortcut, or is this long-term? What is the foundation of long-term?” And you’ve just said, well, a couple of things. It’s from the ground up, and it’s fascial and tendon driven and making the connective tissues of the feet and the knees. If those are good, you’re solid, and I mean, I went through pretty much all of my late 20s and early 30s strengthening my … I got to this point where it’s like, “Okay. Maybe I’m not going to keep doing track meets and high jump and triple jump and stuff and just start lifting more,” and it’s like the athlete I was doing just power lifting, having very, very strong hips, and I guess quads even, but feet not that great and just that general training way, and I’m an elastic athlete as well. [inaudible 00:24:09] the Christian Thibaudeau’s Neurotype 1B. So, I am not the prototype. I don’t train well under those programs anyways, but just the type of [inaudible 00:24:17] that I was was just unbelievable to me compared to when I was in high school or college or mid-20s.
Joel Smith: And I know exactly what it feels like to … even to do a program where lifting a maximum amount of weight is the outcome, and there’s not a thought to, like you said, the feet and then the knees. It’s like it’s always hips first, but it’s like what path, what hill are you going to climb, but you get to the top of the hill, and you completely missed a few really important stages, and the athlete you become is not, I think, what nature necessarily intended in many cases. I think, obviously, in completely healthy athletes who have awesome movement patterning, you can get away with that stuff, but for a lot of us mere mortals and even some who aren’t and then even staying healthy down the line if you are elite. I just think it’s hugely important. So, I’m glad you mentioned that. I really like how you said your most volume, feet, your next most, knees, and then down the chain. I’ve never heard that, but it makes a ton of sense.
Ben Patrick: Thank you. Yeah. I try to make sure that every single thing I use is something that I don’t have to convince someone of. You know what I mean? That it’s so simple that they can understand it for themselves. So, I hate the idea of having to convince someone to try my stuff. You know what I mean? And everything I operate on is a principle that the simpler it is, the closer I’m getting to the truth. So, that’s everything I do is did this just get simpler or did it just get more complex, and that’s what I’ve always based each thing on. It’s just a theory that if I get it simpler, it’ll be closer to the truth, and it keeps turning out that way.
Joel Smith: Yeah. That’s some Dan Johns stuff right there, but I’ve found that as well. Yeah, the more you can … because when we make things overly complex, it just tends to … a lot of times it’s like then it’s easy to hide behind, I guess, just knowledge or book knowledge or not … The simple things are going to work, and if we have to explain it too much, I think there’s an Albert Einstein quote on that, too, then maybe we don’t really know it well enough or haven’t experienced it enough.
Ben Patrick: Yeah. So, my whole system is based on four pillars that all should make sense, and the first one is improving your strength relative to how much your own body weighs. So, if you don’t have more strength to animate your skeleton and muscles and organs and everything in your body, it’s unrealistic to think that you’re going to be able to move your body faster, jump higher, and I think just about every strength coach on the planet has figured that out and seen that for themselves. That’s why we’re all in the weight room in the first place, but then, it does have to be built according to gravity, and that’s where I look at a lot of programs, and I go, “This does make sense to improve hip power output, but the athlete’s more likely to end up with knee pain and shin splints.” So, that athlete is more likely to be on the training table a year from now while I keep jumping higher, and my athletes keep jumping higher. So, if I’m improving that pound for pound strength from the ground up, what’s the next thing I have to look at? And that’s what I found is what we call strength through length, and what that means is it means that the stronger we can be through more range of motion, it accounts for more potential variable in sport so that we never get outside of our comfort zone.
Ben Patrick: And that’s why I’m not a fan of only flexibility but without having the strength and that range, or and it really is this simple, imagine if your arm swing and leg drive could only move one inch. How fast would you go? You’d be slow as shit, even if you pound for pound were the strongest person on Earth. So, in sports, it’s just an observation that as I get athletes more strength through length, then they become less likely to get hurt, and they actually become more athletic in the process because we’re still improving that pound for pound strength. We’re still doing it according to gravity. I’m just making sure I’m getting it with as much … that anything they could stretch through, that they’re strong through that range as well, and the one missing thing that I think is a common misconception with my strength through length stuff, that doesn’t mean we’re using dinky weights only at those deepest stretched positions. It also means that at the actual end-ranges themselves that we get freakishly strong. So, my knees are not only strong at the fullest bend, they’re also superhuman strong at the fullest extension because just think. Every time you land from a jump, every time you try to take off onto a jump, the stronger you are at that extension, then the less pressure is going into your joints in the first place.
Ben Patrick: So, we basically for every joint of the body, we’re looking not only at the strength through that deepest stretch position but also the most extended position, and then, we do all those three principles. The final thing that I was missing because those worked so well, but there would still be these little outliers of people that I couldn’t get into the movements in the first place. So, what I’ve done now is every single exercise I use in my system is scalable. So, my test is my mom can currently train every exercise I can. So, the same things have my mom, at 65, able to run a marathon, and she finished it and told me, “That was easy,” and she had no pain in her body, and she’s 65 years old. So, me and my mom do the same program, but within that program, every single exercise we do is optional, and the volume totally changes depending on the person. So, it’s not a one size fits all, but it is a one size fits all as a human body because we all have ankles, knees, hips. We all have these components, but then, how we want to craft it for our sport is up to us to decide what’s that ideal body.
Ben Patrick: But my biggest contribution, I think, is just the fact that I’ve made these things so scalable so that the guy who can’t get in, who “can’t get into movements,” actually can in my system, and then, you fast forward a few months, and now, he’s doing what would’ve hurt him a few months prior. So, that is my entire system. So, I’m pretty proud of that that I can explain my entire system in maybe 5, 10 minutes, which if I’m not improving your strength relative to how much your body weighs, then I’m not doing my job. And if I’m not doing that according to gravity, then I’m not doing my job, and if I’m not doing that through the deepest ranges and most extended ranges I can, then I’m not doing my job. And if I’m not putting you on the right level that you can do without pain, then I’m not doing my job. So, at the current state right now, that is my job, and I’m not finding that I have to deviate from that job.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I love that. I was going to say with you mentioning strengthening both sides, like in full extension, near full extension, and then, full flexion of the knee, for example, that reminds me of Jay Schroeder stuff. [inaudible 00:31:52] and the altitude drops, and working both ranges completely, and I just keep thinking about, it is turning over in my head, I think what a lot of strength and conditioning typically has become really, and I just keep going back to this, is it’s so simple, working the feet, starting with the feet and then the knees and then hips, and obviously, hips are important, definitely like we said, but I think it’s just so easy to get away from ankles and knees because those almost just get delegated to just a rehab protocol, sports medicine protocol. It’s a-
Ben Patrick: Right. And that’s the problem is that three sets of 12 on your ankle once a week without the same neural drive. I put more neural drive into my ankles and knees than I put into my hips. You know what I mean? The point is that it’s how you take it. You know what I mean? If your only upper body work was an accessory three sets of 10 pushups, you know what I mean? You wouldn’t get that strong, and I feel like that’s what the ankles and knees get relegated to. Whereas, we actually train them first in the workout when you’re freshest.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Oh, heck yeah. It’s like we always do squats first. I mean, typically squats or cleans first, it’s like that’s the big push, but it’s like, “Oh, wait.” And then, all the other stuff is an afterthought. Oh, do some of the extensions at the end. Do some calf raises at the end. Okay. So, awesome stuff. Before we get too much farther because I know we don’t have too terribly long left, but something really simple. So, knees over toes squats, could you give us just … obviously, I know you’ve helped a ton of people with this, but could you give us just a little basic progression for people out there that’s like, “Oh, yeah. My knees hurt”? I’m sure people have watched your Instagram videos. They can easily see this type of thing in action.
Ben Patrick: No, but this is a great, great topic because like I said at the start of our interview, I’m four years out of school. This is happening right now, and I’m doing my best to put it all together. You know what I mean? But for anyone listening to this right now, I’m about to give a really clear breakdown as of my thoughts right now, which my thoughts right now are going to be more clear to follow than they were a few weeks ago even. So, the first and safest layer is figuring out how to get resisted going backwards. So, you’re just putting on rewind the trauma that you put into your body, and at my gym, I’ve set up my whole gym so that I have three sleds that you don’t even have to turn the sled around. It has this cool loop. So, you literally just walk to the other side, and you keep going backwards the other way. I do it every single day. I go backwards with the sled every single day, and I do it in various ways, but generally speaking, I find that it actually takes quicker steps for a beginner to feel a really good burn in the VMOs and the feet.
Ben Patrick: Whereas, for a most advanced guy, he can actually kind of sit back and go slower in each step and really activate, but the beginner will do anything possible to avoid the feet and the knees and will basically just use their own weight to sort of lean the sled back. So, that’s why a faster step means you’re getting less of your own weight against it and more of your own speed. Whereas, for an advanced guy, I can get less momentum into it and force the muscles. So, when in doubt, what we do here is we go slow in one direction, really trying to get a mind muscle connection with the feet and the knees, and then, when we go back, we step quickly, and that ensures that whether you try to cheat it or not, you get the burn of a lifetime. Now, without a sled, the first thing I found that worked just as well is getting on a treadmill, not turning it on, holding on to the little heart rate handles, holding onto the handles, and getting that bitch spinning as fast as you can backwards. Unfortunately, 1 out of 10 treadmills is either too fancy that you can’t move it if it’s not turned out or gym management will tell you not to do it, or occasionally, a treadmill’s so shitty that there’s no internal resistance at all.
Ben Patrick: But I find the average treadmill, even in a hotel gym or whatever, I go in, hold those handrails, give me two minutes, and I’ll have so much blood and strengthening going through my feet and knees, it’s insane. The third way I’ve found that you can do is by using your car. Put it in neutral, make sure a friend is steering, put your but against the bumper, and same thing. Get that bitch going. Now, again, you could do it on the treadmill or at the car. You can do it where you go fast for a minute and then slow for a minute, fast for a minute, slow for a minute. So, all three of those ways, I’ve found to work really well. With the car, what works best is almost if you find the slightest uphill that it almost doesn’t quite look uphill because the problem is if it’s pure flat is that it builds up speed, and you don’t want that. You want the continual resistance. But if it’s super uphill, I’ve got to be really clear about that. I’m talking very slight uphill, and then, it just stays. You want to find that spot somewhere in your neighborhood or wherever where it’s like that tension just stays exactly the same, and I have a straight right in my neighborhood that’s just like that, and it works perfectly.
Ben Patrick: I have college basketball teams doing this. They love it so much. They do it every Friday. It’s their Fucked Up Friday. That’s what we call it at ATG where we make it kind of like our hardest workout of the week. And then, the fourth way, it’s a little trickier, but gyms that have cable machines, you can actually belt up. You put the pulley all the way down to the bottom, and you can actually step backwards, similar to a sled, but that one has to be done slowly because if you step quickly, it has a sort of jerking effect on the pulley, and so, the resistance kind of bounces up and down. So, that one only works slow, but I’m telling you. It feels like it does slow on my sled. So, with those four, I really do get about … I’m averaging about a dozen people a day message me saying, “Oh, my god. Thank you so much. This is a miracle. I’m in tears,” whatever it may be, and that’s my fuel. And so, that’s what keeps me motivated. So, that’s the most basic way to start strengthening your feet and your knees. Then, the second safest way is the Sissy Squat, but it’s a Sissy Squat progression, meaning you always use a pad, and imagine I put a pad 18, 20 inches off the ground.
Ben Patrick: Literally, if you can walk, you’re actually putting more pressure on your knees than doing an 18 to 20 inch pad, and you’re on two feet. So, most people would assume a step-up type exercise would be the next progression after going backwards with a sled or whatever, but it’s actually a Sissy Squat because you’re on two legs. So, you turn your toes out, clench your glutes, and it’s all knee from there, and I try to progress on that until they’re going down. I think it’s about maybe a six or eight inch pad at the bottom, meaning once your shin is vertical to the … or once your shin’s parallel to the floor, that’s as heavy as it’s going to get. Going further than that is still a great workout, but now you’re talking about extreme foot stretch, and it gets a little more into the balance and hip flexor. And what I do in my system is I try to isolate and make each quality really pure and not have anything that could get in the way of just that result. So, my system’s almost … It’s almost like a bodybuilder’s isolation exercises but applied to athleticism. So, in the case of the Sissy Squat, I try to progress people where they’re totally pain-free, feeling a great muscle burn at whatever pad allows their shin to stop when it’s parallel to the floor.
Ben Patrick: And starting last week, I realized, “Why not load that?” So, my own workout this morning, I was doing 10 kilos each side of the bar for sets of 10, front-racked Sissy Squat. Felt great. So, we’ll see where it takes me. So, those are the only two that I suggest doing on your own because the other ones, it starts to get more detailed, and what I do with my guys online, to this day, I’ve never sold a program. I sell what exactly my program I do in here along with the fact that me and my guys actually watch your own form on the more complicated exercises every single workout. So, we use WhatsApp. People take a video of their last set. Not the first one when they’re looking good. I want to see the last set of each exercise every workout. So, that’s kind of how we do things right now, and I’m going to keep trying to polish up these beginning things that I find that are safe while we keep mastering the actual coaching of the things that do get a little more complex and progressive.
Joel Smith: You’re listening to the Just Fly Performance podcast brought to you by SimpliFaster. Yeah. I like that you’re doing that. So, the 65 pounds or 85 pounds Sissy Squat with who knows what in your knee, but it’s amazing, right? You’ve come that far, right? I feel like a lot of professionals would’ve said you never could or should or would do those types of things, but to me, it’s amazing how resilient and adaptable the human body is. I was going to say, too, it’s really cool. For some reason, I had thought, “Okay. Well, it’s just knees over toes squatting.” I didn’t really think about the reverse sled, which is kind of like a knees … That’s a knees over toes, too, if you look at it. I hadn’t really thought of it in that respect.
Ben Patrick: Yeah. It starts working towards that, and it’s basically all those. Those first ones I mentioned are safe because they’re concentric in nature, meaning I could put 1000 pounds on the sled. You won’t move it, but you won’t get hurt. It just won’t budge. You know what I mean? So, it’s different once you choose a certain weight on a certain step up or split squat that we do. You have to make sure you’re really progressing properly with those things because once you choose the weight, you could use a weight that hurts your knee. So, that’s why that stuff is more progressive. Whereas, the treadmill, the faster you can get it to go, the more it’ll burn, or you can go slow. My mom does the sleds. We even have a lighter sled. Kids do backwards sled. Old people do backwards sled. So, if you can walk, you could walk backwards. If you could walk backwards, you could probably drag a pencil, and then, if you could drag a pencil, you could probably drag two pencils. It’s really that simple, but you’re simply strengthening all the decelerators. Everything that takes the beating, you’re strengthening all that, and so, I do that every single day. It’s mandatory in my programs twice a week, and then, it’s also mandatory in my programs twice a week forwards because when you go forwards, similar thing.
Ben Patrick: Unlike a squat that once you choose a weight, you’re going down with it, pushing a really heavy sled is my number one favorite foot strengthening exercise, and again, if it was too heavy, it just wouldn’t move, but you wouldn’t hurt your back or your knees or something. So, that’s kind of a foundation, but depending on the athlete and the sport, many of my guys go backwards every day. I have an NFL defensive back who’s so unbelievable. I walked in two weeks ago, and I was like, “Did you take a break? What are you still doing?” He’s like, “Oh, I go for an hour.” He goes backwards an hour, and he’s eight years in the league, and he’s faster on the timing and feels better than he has in his entire career. I never told him to go an hour. That was his own thing, and be aware, and this is why I do love coaching people is because if you do all that stuff, you are going to need to do extra … You’re going to need to stretch out your rectus femoris and your piriformis and things of that nature. There’s a balance to things that if you’re working one area, you should be working another. You know what I mean? There’s things that can tighten. So, our workouts, all of our workouts include strengthening from the ground up, core exercise from your quadratus lumborum to your abs to your hip flexors, upper body.
Ben Patrick: We actually do full body four days a week with quite a bit of stretching, and I have to make sure that my workouts work really well. So, I only do the stretching in my workouts, and I can do splits cold, and we even have a stretching expert who writes additional flexibility programs for Wednesdays and weekends. That’s just kind of our base. It’s like Monday, Tuesday, we train our whole body from the ground up proportionately. Thursday, Friday, we do it all over again. So, Wednesday, we’re like, “Man, take a fucking day off.” But we do offer guys come in, and we’ll do a full hour stretch routine and same thing on the weekend, but I have to make sure my shit works. So, I get sent free joint supplements. I get offered free laser treatments. I turn it all down. It’s been years since I took a supplement or did any kind of attempt of treatment, no icing, no foam rolling, no massage, no laser, nothing. I have to purely make sure that my exercises and stretches are actually what’s causing the changes, and I put my body on the line.
Ben Patrick: So, I estimate that the most a player’s going to play is about 100 games year. So, that’s exactly what I do on my own body, and I can tell you that the last 100, I never had so much as a niggle, I mean, not a tweak, not a anything, no pain the next day. So, I put my body on the line. I use only my stuff, and I started rambling there, even though I said I wouldn’t at the start, but I love this stuff [crosstalk 00:45:57].
Joel Smith: No, I could tell. No, and it’s really good. I know we just have a couple of minutes left. No, I’d love to keep going on that. I do want to ask you really quick just because we only have a few minutes left. So, you mentioned train the feet first, right? So, what are some of your go-tos for training the feet? Obviously, we talked a lot about the knees, but what’s your take on foot training in a maybe three minute time span?
Ben Patrick: Okay. So, it starts with this various type of sled work. When you start doing this stuff and getting really strong on it every day, that’s kind of the foundation, but then, we also do actual forms of calf raises and tibialis raises. I’ve trained so many athletes in their entire career who have never done tibialis work. So, two of our workouts are calf raises. Two are tibialis raises. So, my party trick is the fact that I can stand against the wall and have a stronger tibialis than anyone else in the gym, which if you look at my page, I post that maybe every couple weeks, super simple exercise. So, we do that stuff, and then, our forms of step-ups actually end up putting tremendous amounts of weight through the ball of your foot. So, most people would think that our reverse step-ups are just for the VMO and isolating the knee, but we actually get the foot as strong as the knee. So, to this day, the only athlete I’ve ever had come in whose foot was as strong as should’ve been for his knee is the Canadian high school high jump world record holder, and he came down here without playing a game of football yet. Just off how athletic he is, he already has an offer to Alabama as a wide receiver, even though he’s a basketball player.
Ben Patrick: So, his feet are that strong. So, again, this is just observation stuff. The only athlete I’ve ever tested who came in with a foot as strong as his knee and he’s a world-class freak for one-foot jumping, and even off two feet, I have a hoop in ATG I can raise to 11 feet, and first try, he did a two hand tomahawk dunk on it. Absolutely insane. So, I would say that would be the gist of it, and we do things to get super flexible feet. So, super flexible, super strong feet on both sides, the achilles, calf, and the lower tibialis front ankle and upper tibialis. And then, when the heaviest things you lift are sleds, then it’s like it’s very hard to get hips strong enough to cause damage below.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Right on. Hey, it’s been a good conversation today, Ben. Where can people find you? Obviously, on Instagram, you’re pretty popular, but where can people find you, more about you and what you’re doing?
Ben Patrick: All right. Instagram is definitely a great place because you’ll notice from the moment you look on my page that I make a lot of efforts to … You don’t just see graphs and stuff like that. You see me really showing, and if you read the captions, I give tons of details how to safely get started on a lot of this stuff. So, I try my best to give as much data as I can safely without having people then doing it wrong and potentially injuriously. So, I also offer a $49.50 a month coaching service where you do exactly the workouts we do in here. I send them two days in advance. I filmed 974 videos in less than a year because I’m so obsessive about constantly linking the best form clip I can to each exercise and each workout, and answer your question, seven days a week, I coach your form on your exercise seven days a week. That’s on ATGonlinecoaching.com. I also just have a website, AthleticTruthGroup.com, which shows not only our online coaching but also my gym here. If it wasn’t clear from this, I own a gym here in our town. So, yeah, that’s the gist of it. @TheKneesOverToesGuy on Instagram, ATGonlinecoaching.com for people who want me to coach them, and AthleticTruthGroup.com for people who may want to actually come out here and train.
Joel Smith: Oh, that’s awesome, man. Well, hey, it was really good talking to you, Ben. Congrats on all the success that you’ve had in bringing that out of a lot of obvious early pain and injury as an athlete, and so, it’s really cool to hear what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. So, thanks for being on the show. I appreciate, man.
Joel Smith: All right. Thanks for tuning in today. I appreciate you guys being here and listening, and we will be back next week with another great episode. I’m sure this week in your own training, you’re going to be busting out those reverse sleds and Sissy Squats. Ben is doing some awesome things. Again, I think it’s awesome how he is putting that piece in the jigsaw of the field and helping us to all serve our athletes, train our athletes better, be out of pain, jump higher, and get long-term results. We will be on next week with another great guest, and as always, visit our sponsor, SimpliFaster.com, suppliers of high-end training technology, great blog, leading sports tech in various categories. You have EMS. You’ve got Freelap timing system, kBox, force plates, contact grids, and everything you really need if it comes to tracking your athletes’ performance. Also, if you enjoy the show, feel free to leave us a rating, review. We’d really appreciate it, iTunes, Stitcher, whatever you’re listening to. That really helps us out and spreads the word of the great coaching information that our many guests are offering. We will see you guys next week. Have a good one.
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