Ben Patrick - Knees Over Toes Guy: From Battered To Bulletproof

Full transcript: Ben Patrick on London Real

2:27 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Ben Patrick aka the knees over toes guy, the elite American sporting coach who has transformed the lives of thousands of professional and amateur athletes.

2:49 Your revolutionary knees over toes method uses training protocols throughout the full range of motion to strengthen each muscle and support the core joints. After personally suffering from 10 years of knee pain and undergoing multiple surgeries, you use this same protocol to transform your 19-inch vertical jump into 42 inches, enough to easily slam dunk a basketball, all while being pain-free. As founder of the Athletic Truth Group, you’ve dedicated your life to helping others with the aim of saving as many people from surgery as possible while enabling them to realize their true physical potential.

3:24 Ben, welcome to London Real. Hey, I’m super grateful to be here. I’m going to make sure that this is the best podcast I’ve done and that it’s the simplest so that everyone who listens to it knows exactly what to do by the end. Fantastic, I love it. And for everybody, just stay tuned, because when we’re done having a conversation here and talking about the intellectual property, Ben’s actually been generous enough to say he’s going to step out to You’re Now famous Sunny outdoor gym and he’s going to walk through some four basic protocols, so stay tuned for that.

3:57 This is going to be an epic episode, and, you know, Ben, it’s fascinating because the more I’ve been talking to people that you were going to be on the show. The more I realized, Ben, that everybody has knee pain and it restricts them from doing all sorts of things in their life, and so many people have just resigned themselves that I can’t run. I can’t ski. I can’t pick my kid up. I can’t, this, it’s this narrative in our head.

4:20 I have lower back pain where we just almost resign ourselves to no longer be human. And here’s this guy you coming out showing us these crazy easy vertical jumps with these protocols that look simple and telling us that we can get our knees back and our lives back. It’s amazing to see, and I want to go into detail today. And, Ben, you’ve been blowing up this past year. I think there’s a rule in marketing.

4:42 It’s called the rule of seven. I don’t know if you heard of this but it says a prospect needs to hear a message seven times before they take action. And a couple weeks ago I just said get. I told my team, I said get me this knees over toes guy on the show because I kept hearing about you from all these different places, and I said, I got to get you on and talk about this If you had to explain to people right now, what the hell is knees over toes? How do you succinctly explain what you’re all about succinctly?

5:08 Short term it looked like a really good idea for people with knee pain to just avoid putting pressure on the knees. That’s also a death sentence long term. For your niche, succinctly that’s what I do. So we’ve had two different fields evolving, Fitness and Medicine. They’ve both been evolving but two independently so seemed like a good idea to avoid the knees, maybe get surgeries for the knees, anti-inflammatory drugs, all kinds.

5:44 Actually there’s a lot we can do really simply to strengthen our knees. Your tendons, these things can actually grow and develop and strengthen. So if anyone’s ever dealt with a problem and had that aha moment where you realize that short term running from the problem could lead to long-term disaster. My career’s been devoted to that. For the niche that’s perfect.

6:07 And you said before, I think there’s a quote that you said, “We confront the motion that hurts but at the level that it doesn’t hurt.” So you’re all about walking people through, you know, slightly less painful parts of the protocol to kind of bulletproof their knees so you can do things you never thought possible before. That’s exactly right. So I’m only going to cover four things today because I think there’s only four things that really matter, so that makes it simple right off the bat.

6:35 And number one is the idea of walking backwards. So I was always told don’t let your knees over your toes. Don’t let your knees over toes. There’s not actually science to substantiate that. It just seemed like a good idea.

6:46 Oh, there’s pressure on your knee when it goes over your toes, that would mean you can’t walk downstairs, that would mean you can’t walk backwards. For anyone who has a mirror nearby, stand sideways, look at yourself in the mirror, then go like you’re going to take one step backwards. Backward walking is just knees over toes. Not only has that been done for thousands of years in Chinese cultures to prevent elderly from getting arthritis and cartilage damage.

7:13 So many people have even seen Chinese elderly out in fields walking backwards. Even in American studies it showed that walking backwards was alone an effective screening process for falling in elderly, which is one of the leading causes of death in hospitalization. Meaning the better you are with your knees over your toes, the more protected you are. But that’s one of four points, and that breaks down into a lot of levels. So for athletes, I’m strapping them up to sleds and seeing, okay, which athlete start the clock for five minutes, which athlete is going to be able to drag that sled farther in five minutes?

7:50 That’s just a test of knees over toes. Super safe, low impact, best workout of your life. Cardio, you’re even pushing through your toes. Think about flat-footed training. That’s not normal either.

8:00 So by doing these over toes, we’ve also found we unlock the door to not having foot pains, Achilles pain, shin splints, because we’re having to strengthen through the foot. So that’s an example from walking backwards. For elderly, 10 minutes. 10 minutes is a great workout for elderly. Walk backwards for 10 minutes, do it somewhere that’s totally safe.

8:21 For athletes, set a five-minute clock and see how far you can drag a sled backwards. There’s no exact weight because different surfaces vary in friction. And for, I try to live like a non-athlete, like a regular person. So for a regular gym-goer, go in, get on the treadmill, don’t turn it on. Turn around, stick your butt against the handle, and spin the wheel backwards.

8:45 Thousands of people have gotten knee pain relief who had tried all kinds of, you know, PRP injections. Literally from just spinning a turned-off treadmill backwards. That’s why I’m knees over toes guy, because it was like, I was helping myself and so many others. I hated social media, but I knew I had to get the word out, so I went, I don’t give a s***. If I accomplish anything else, if people understand these over toes, my career is a success.

9:10 So I did that three years ago. I made knees over toes guy and it’s so simple yet so effective, and again, people can watch a bunch of the videos on your Instagram, on your YouTube channel. You can see the backward walkers on the treadmill. I haven’t tried that yet, but I’ve gone through a bunch of protocols and we’ll talk about them today. Um, you made some important points there, and you know early on the show we had Edo Portal on the show, and he was all about human movement, and we did a bunch of episodes.

9:35 I actually went to Israel and trained with them. We did a conversation where we walked around London, and I remember him saying, you know, pain is something in the Western world that we tend to avoid or medicate when in fact you know it’s all, it’s not necessarily a reason to stop doing what you’re doing. You know, and so many things I’ve done when I’ve tried different things, whether hanging on the rings or break dancing, which I started doing years ago.

9:59 I mean I did feel some pain and some things heard I actually think I was bulletproofing my knees without knowing it, but I’ll ask you about that later. But you know I pushed through it and I became stronger and better, but unfortunately I think this narrative that we’ve come with medicine, maybe in Western, is that we treat it, we mask the pain, right? So you either do more of it or you avoid it, and it seems like we’re going the wrong way in so many aspects.

10:23 Is some of that correct to assume what I’m saying? Yeah, and first off, I mean, Edo is a legend. You know, guys like Edo Portal pave the way for guys like me. You know, so there wouldn’t be guys like me if it weren’t for guys like Edo Portal. So we come to think of pain.

10:42 Like I was educated to think of pain as something that you try to figure out how to mask that pain, you know what I mean? And you think, okay, what’s wrong, you know? What’s wrong with me? Maybe is genetic or this or that Of course these are factors, but your body’s giving you a signal with that pain. So I look at pain way different now.

11:05 I look at pain as an opportunity. So how crazy would this sound? I wish my body was full of pain. Wait a second, why? Because I’ve got over a 40-inch vertical jump.

11:14 If I still had pain, that would mean I could probably get a 50-inch if I figured out why I have that pain. You see what I mean? So the point is that I see pain as an opportunity. Oh, you’re doing this well and you have shin splints. Oh my gosh, you could achieve, you know, so much more if you actually figured out and handled the shin splints.

11:35 So I think of pain. It’s a communication your body’s sending you. Are you telling your body to shut up, or are you going to take that communication and, and figure it out? Yeah, there’s a lot of parallels to other aspects of your life as well. There Ben, we can talk about that later, but you know, again, hopefully not.

11:51 Let’s just keep it about this, but You know, honestly, like so many things in life, they’re giving you the indicator. With pain you can be with the pain and learn from it, or you can run away from it. But like you said, you can pay me now or pay me later. A lot of people go on this pay me later scenario, which means, you know, maybe you’re not getting the most out of your body. You’re pushing things way down the line.

12:12 And again, most people buy into this narrative that maybe after 30 or 40 or 50 you shouldn’t expect to have non-painful knees. You shouldn’t expect to have a non-painful lower back, and then people just talk themselves out of so many things that could give them so much longevity. And back to just Edo. Yeah, Edo is a legend, and it was amazing to be with him at the time, and he really was a pioneer in everything that he was doing, and it’s just nice to see other people, you know, picking up that torch and going further with it, and you bring your own intellectual property, your own story to this.

12:46 You really blew up over the past year, you know. Ben and I’m curious as to why you think you have. I know there was a bunch of interesting factors, like you had to shut your gym down from COVID. You went online. You’ve also got a crazy vertical jump yourself, and our slam dunk.

13:01 You’ve also got some impressive professional clients that you train, I think in the NBA, and then also you’re online. I mean, can you explain why you became so popular so quickly? Yeah, I mean, I try to base it. I think there’s different ways to gain popularity and different ways to gain money, and I just equate it to value, so either it’s real value or you’re swindling someone into thinking they’re getting value, but either way it is value. And so you know, I think of it, the, what is it?

13:33 Oh, my phone’s off, but what does it say at the top of my notes every day is how do I bring the most value today? Not what time of day do I post, what hashtag do I do, what blah blah blah. I don’t even, my social medias have about combined, about tripled since the last time I put a penny on ad money. It even took me time to realize if I don’t even put a penny on ad money, that’s going to force me to provide even more value. I also stopped using any professional athletes to market.

14:01 I’m training some of the most famous athletes in the world. Some of the most shocking stories people are seeing in sports are guys that I’m training. I don’t even use those guys to market, because again, what’s it going to do? It’s going to force more value. So I was already doing this in person.

14:17 That’s what I was known for in person. I’m a complete psychopath. I’ve taken, I mean, in the last three years, I mean, I took like half a day off when my kid was born. I don’t know how to take a day off. I don’t, I don’t think I’m capable of taking a day off in person.

14:32 It was the same way. Going online was the best thing that happened to me, because I had a baby and otherwise I don’t know how I would have been a functioning dad, to be honest. You know, I still can feel and visualize how much my life was ruined by such simple things, you know what I mean? So I look at my life as I’m one little speck on the planet, and there’s millions of others, of 12-year-old kids about to just go through hell and back in life and ruin relationships and all kinds of things just because of how depressed they are about something like knee pain.

15:04 So I consider my life is one of duty. You know, it’s my duty to get this out there. That’s how I operated in person, so that’s exactly how I’ve been online. I simply out-produce and I try to provide more value and help more people. So what’s funny is that it’s grown mostly by word of mouth from people getting real results and then wanting to share it.

15:27 I get stopped in the street like almost every day now by someone. They pull over in their car and they go, dude, I was depressed three months ago, now I’m happy because my knees don’t hurt, you know. So that’s what I do, you know, but I think that’s why it’s blown up. Joe Rogan mentioned me on his podcast. That’s cool.

15:45 I’m grateful for that. You’re giving me this opportunity, extremely grateful for that, but these don’t exist unless I’m actually prioritizing just helping people with value, you know what I mean? So I don’t stress, probably, what most people would stress if they’re trying to grow. I don’t give a s*** about my following or anything else. I could start over tomorrow with zero followers and it wouldn’t change my mood at all.

16:07 It would probably just fire me up, and I would think, well, [expletive] I’m gonna have to get that much better and help that much more, you know what I mean? So that’s my philosophy. It keeps it stress-free. It keeps me motivated every day, because even if I reach a goal, well, that might give me a reason to be complacent. So I’m not gold driven.

16:27 I’m, you know, duty driven and purpose driven, and I’m chasing that next life-changing win for someone. Yeah, you said you’re a psychopath, Ben, and I think I agree. And it’s almost like you’re scratching your own itch, you know. You’re doing this for you. You use these protocols on yourself to bulletproof yourself and get you back to be able to do them, what you love, which is play basketball.

16:49 I heard you say one time that you’d be okay going to prison for 20 years as long as they had a basketball court. So, and you could see it when I see you listen, when I listen to you talk to people about your IP, you get into this weird tunnel where you’re almost somewhere on the autistic spectrum, man. You go there, and it feels like you could talk about this stuff for 72 hours straight, you know, without any help. And that comes out in your videos, you know.

17:15 You’re really into this. You’re obsessed with it. You’ve thought about it and I can tell you’re trying to better communicate it. You’re constantly struggling with innovative ways of communicating your IP um, is that, am I seeing this right? Yeah, exactly.

17:27 How do I get what’s in my head into someone else’s head you know what I mean, right? And that is where, I do, I personally believe the closer we get to the truth the simpler it gets. I believe we should be able to explain things quickly and simply, so I feel like each time I’m a little better and a little more capable. So like today when we’re done, I think I’ll be able to show four things that probably compared to any previous time I’ve put it across, more people will be like, oh well, that makes sense.

17:54 I got this now. Now I can go forth in life with that knowledge. Okay, all right. Let’s talk a little bit about this knees over toes protocol. Um, like you said, I remember, I think, being trained in the gym with my personal trainers over the last 20 years and I’m sure they told me to squat probably without my knees over toes, because everyone knows that’s bad.

18:11 And you know how many other myths were propagated in a place before there was YouTube and social media and people like Edo and people like you and people like Charles Poliquin, who you trained with, who was a guest here on London Real back in 2018 who actually Edo used to quote his name before I had even heard of Charles back in the day. And, uh, Charles unwittingly became part of my movie iron mines. At the time I was training for an Ironman Triathlon and I was doing it on a plant-based diet, and Charles had nothing good to say about that, and basically said I’ve trained like how many Olympians did he train?

18:44 Like hundreds or something, and I counted 286 Olympic medalists, I think by far the most in history. Yeah, I remember reading that on his intro, and I said that just doesn’t even sound right. It was so big, and Charles actually kind of played the bad guy in the movie. The anti-vegan guy, and it was a great part. We dedicated the movie to him and his passing, and I was so sorry to see him go, and I know you trained with him, so maybe you can talk a little bit about what it was like to train with Charles, what it was, and where you got some of these ideas before.

19:13 I know you’ve shown pictures of some of these old pictures of strong men where they’re holding these kind of like kettlebell-looking things behind their back and doing these knees over toes training. And maybe you can talk, because I know Charles had said to you, or early on, how not only should you, but you had to move your knees over your toes when you squatted. So, I don’t know, maybe fill us in a little bit of the background. Charles, training with him, and then how some of these ideas started bubbling up in your head.

19:39 Yeah. I mean, it started with Charles. Now, like you said, I was, I’ve always been crazy passionate one way or another, and I wanted to be a basketball player, and I didn’t have the hype for it, didn’t have the genetics for it. Then from 12 to 18, chronic knee pain, surgical alterations. So when I finished high school, when in America you’re supposed to get like a college scholarship I, I didn’t have any basketball recruitment, and I mean, in theory I should have just, like, gone into a different field somehow.

20:11 In my mind I still thought I was going to make the NBA, right? So I was this delusional guy, but I wasn’t delusional about how good I knew I needed to be. I knew where I was at. There’s a difference, you know what I mean? There’s a difference between having a big goal but actually knowing what it’ll take to get there.

20:28 So I started to realize that if I didn’t figure out how to bulletproof my knees, that was just gonna never happen, and I got to rock bottom, to a point where it wasn’t even like it was like, if I could just figure out how to bulletproof my knees to play basketball without pain, then I could just be a happy person, you know? Like, that was my hobby, even if it means just once a week on the weekend, you know? Like I’m looking forward to life going you know, I’m turning 30 this month.

20:53 My kid is nine months old. I’m just happy knowing that as he grows up, I’m gonna be able to play basketball with him, you know what I mean? So it got to that kind of level. So then I put aside all the other stuff, and my whole life mission was how do I bulletproof the knees? And really the first thing, because I was so bad off and I had already tried every common thing that someone would be told.

21:17 Charles said the athlete whose knee can go farthest and strongest over the toes is the most protected. So a light bulb went off I immediately knew that was true. Now how do I get there, right? So if someone just tried to do that, they might, you know, maybe they would get hurt in the process. You see what I mean?

21:39 So I saw that. I heard that. Now, as you know, Charles was older, there wasn’t exactly, like, it’s not like he had videos of the stuff I’m talking about. It was mostly written, right? Written and there was a guy named Keegan Smith, a student of Charles.

21:54 So Keegan had some videos, and I’m watching this intentional knees over toes training. And so really my best blessing was that one of my knees has partially artificial kneecap replaced meniscus, quad, 10 repair. So that means if you look at the knee, it has surgical alteration above the knee in the kneecap and below the knee. That’s kind of a tough trifecta when each below the knee, in the knee, above the knee. But then the other side, I was too depressed to even get surgeries on the other side.

22:25 I didn’t care if I had a limp the rest of my life, so the other side had worse tears, a bunch of different tears so because of this terrible difference, and not just trying to get through life but trying to play basketball, getting the clues from Charles, observing Keegan, and then trying to apply it to my own horrible body. Then once I started getting results for myself, what happens, more people want help. 60-year-olds, seven-year-olds, 80-year-olds, 90, or you know, like so then I had to just regress more and more and more until I realized that every human motion’s on a scale.

22:59 It’s not I can’t do or I can do. You can do anything on some level, so that was a totally eye-opening moment that everything is on a scale, and so that’s what I do now. And yeah, it got me. I end up getting college scholarships. I was the Florida scholar athlete of the year.

23:18 I’ve been 10 years of competing like crazy in basketball without ever having to miss a game, let alone a practice, because of my knees. So I’ve lived it now, helped tons of other people, but it was that clue from Charles that was so on the other end. It wasn’t like, well, your knees can go over your toes. No, it was like the athlete whose knee can go farthest and strongest over the toes is the most protected. So it gave me that.

23:43 That’s what created this explosion for me, and honestly I’ve never looked back. And I was able to study in person with Charles before he passed away. So I was very fortunate because of Charles and Keegan Smith. you know, you could see if it weren’t for Charles, I you know, I’d be working commercial real estate with my parents. Isn’t that amazing how one, you know, one poignantly put sentence from a man or a woman with extreme conviction can literally change the course of history.

24:16 Like isn’t that incredible, right? It’s changing pro athletes’ lives. It’s changing elderly’s lives because of that one statement. Changed my life. What was it like to be around Charles?

24:28 He’s pretty intense, huh? He’s the most intense person I’ve ever been around, and I could see why, because you see how I channel this into passion. But for him, now imagine being, I’m lucky I get to be in the social media age. I get to have people getting that instant feedback that it’s working. Blah blah blah.

24:47 In his age, things couldn’t spread that fast. Can you imagine how much internal frustration that must have been for him? You know, I can’t even fathom how much frustration that had to have been for him, you know. So I got off lucky by comparison. He really had to sacrifice for everyone by sticking to his convictions, you know what I mean?

25:13 And as you mentioned, there is case precedence if we go back and back when fitness was kind of new, people didn’t know any better, so they just used the body’s ranges. There was no concept of don’t do it. There was no don’t do anything, you know what I mean? And this actually worked really well, and I don’t want to even, you know, get too political. I wasn’t there but it does appear like they were getting tons of results for military coming back from the war with broken-down bodies fixing them naturally, and that didn’t go over well with the medical community.

25:53 So there is kind of precedence for this. They didn’t have social media. They couldn’t spread things fast, nor did they know any better. Like, if you look at what I’m doing, I have hundreds of physical therapists reach out to me thanking me for using the drills. So from learning from the history from learning from Charles, I also do think that I’ve had a realization that they probably didn’t have, which is that no matter what someone’s fitness or diet opinions, that’s all secondary to treating other people with respect.

26:22 How you treat other people, the ability to get along, that’s the ultimate toughest thing. That’s the ultimate ability, the most command-worthy thing. My ability to get along with someone else is more important than any opinion regarding fitness. That’s a fascinating observation, and yeah, Charles was back there in the day training Olympians, training professional athletes. I think he was one of the first, even personal trainers there was out there, and he was one of the first guys, I think, actually to charge appropriately for his services.

26:55 As I’m just remembering back to his episode where he was like, I’m charging you thousands and you’re gonna pay it, and people started doing that. And, uh, but he was intense. I heard his gyms had every piece of equipment under the sun. It sounds like you better pay attention. It sounds like, you know, he may, you’re sure you paid attention to him, but like you said, he must have had to stay with his convictions for years while being naysayed, and bright stuff, and then have to wait maybe five years ten years for his stuff to be proven true.

27:24 Is that what you remember about Charles? Yeah, I mean he was a perfectionist and a genius, and his job usually was to make Olympic champions, and that requires perfection. For me, I just want to play my sport without my knees hurting. That doesn’t require perfection at all. So I’m like a, yeah, I’m Charles Poliquin in my yard figuring out how anyone in the world can afford to do this.

27:50 You see the difference? So when I was 12 and my knees started killing me, I couldn’t have afforded Charles Poliquin. When you see what I mean, but I could have afforded knees over toes guy. So I think, if we all, I think if we all in business think about what did we need at our worst, how can we be of service or duty to what’s truest to us. It kind of makes it simple, and in his case he was an Olympic coach.

28:12 In my case, I’m trying to help dads, moms, I’m trying to help regular people, I’m trying to help people in pain, I’m trying to help kids. I’m sure the money can’t stop people from doing it. So funny enough, though, from all that I actually would still take the simple approach. Like, if you look at some of the athletic abilities I’m getting now, I’m actually exceeding, no offense, some of the stuff that Charles was doing. So I actually think that more world records could be broken with an even simpler approach, but that’s my philosophy.

28:45 We’re all entitled to our philosophies, and I almost think you get to a certain point where you understand a subject so well that you realize that it’s actually the simplest basic things that you can go even farther than if you were to get more complex, but you gotta, it takes someone like Charles living the whole way through and someone like me going the whole way through and being able to just work it up and down to break out. Okay, what actually matters, and I’ll show you that stuff at the end. Yeah, it’s funny to say, I think Edo said something similar to me when he first trained me at one of his first two-day clinics, where he said, look, you know, a lot of people have a tendency to kind of just blast out all of their knowledge of the anatomy and all these pieces, but the real hard job is to try to simplify it into one simple thing to explain it to them so they grasp it, they communicate it, obviously, and then they embrace it, otherwise there’s no point.

29:37 And I bet that Charles is probably looking down with a smile watching what you’re doing right now, which is very different than what he was doing, obviously, with a different landscape with different kind of media, but also seeing the way you’re simplifying it And again, and I should mention that too. Yeah, super sorry to cut you off, but I just, to make my last statement clear. If Charles is training a 100, let’s say a 200-meter hurdler, that means their entire job is to go over a hurdle with a certain leg on a certain curve, that’s different than being a basketball player.

30:10 Well, where I have to go left, right, up, down, back. You see what I mean? So I do think there’s a difference there. I’m not saying that I could have done his job better, but I do think, from learning from him, and he and him training these really specific Olympic things, I think I was able to figure out for the common person. You see what I mean?

30:29 For the person who just wants to be bulletproof everywhere, not for like one specific task. Anyways, I want to get clear on that, right? I try to say I’m doing it better than understood, and one of those people is your mom, right? She’s 65, and, uh, she’s now, uh, internet famous thanks to her son, and, uh, you put all her up, and she’s doing all the body weight knees over toes stuff. Can you explain to everybody like what’s happening there, how she’s embraced them, and why it’s important that a 65-year-old woman is doing this as well?

31:01 Oh yeah, my mom’s my most important influencer. I mean, I don’t even have any influencers, but my mom is the influencer because, okay, I did all these experiments on myself, yada yada. If I can’t get my mom to be able to do every exercise without pain enjoyably, well, then I’m not doing my job. That’s my job. So my mom is my most important client, and every, she was the proving grounds to find how can you scale every single exercise?

31:32 So she was just sending me her videos, again, and she’s working on all these crazy exercises you see me doing, but at her level, at what she can do without pain, enjoyably so to me she’s like a crucial part of the process because I wanted to be able to help my parents. She had really debilitating hip issues. My personality is like, I’m not gonna rest, you know, until we fix that. So we are able to fix that through the power of regressing the exact same motions but to her level.

32:07 Do you think everybody would benefit from these protocols? Everyone, barring structural defects, which would be, you know, maybe one percent or less, you know what I mean? And even then there’s no telling that it couldn’t provide some degree of improvement, right? If I’m working with a 16-year-old with knee pain and he’s six feet tall, yeah, that guy’s gonna be able to dunk. If I’m working with an 80-year-old who just wants to be able to go up and down steps, the 80-year-old’s not going to dunk, but who’s to say that win isn’t even more life-changing, right?

32:39 So it’s the degree of improvement is still relative to the person. So like, I haven’t seen someone that I would just go like, you know, yeah, you can’t do anything about it. You know, it’s just a style of fitness where you’re addressing your weak points at the level you can handle, and you’re reversing the flow, so what in life is coming in at us unnaturally human body wasn’t designed to be in pain. So now, if I go jump thousands of times, which the human body wasn’t designed to do that much in basketball or whatever, we, almost every sport has some kind of overuse action, and it’s a you can get miraculous pain transformation just by reversing that action.

33:19 What do you mean by that? Explain that. Reversing that action. Simplest way to fix runner’s knee is by going backwards. I mean that it’s that simple.

33:30 Simplest way to reduce shoulder pain in someone throwing is to set up a strength system, not of more bench press, but of the exact opposite, like literally to measurably strengthen the exact opposite of your throw, so that when you put that force in there, there’s more protection there. But that’s the runner’s one, is a great example. If you watch yourself run in slow motion anyone could devise a strength system by watching that in slow motion on rewind.

33:58 Those are the exercises I do to fix runner’s knee. It’s literally running in slow motion. Foot plantar fasciitis, shin splints, runner’s knee watch yourself in slow motion backwards. You just came up with your strength exercises. Wow, that’s fascinating.

34:14 I’m sure everybody watching us right now is now thinking, and I challenge anybody who is right now, as to that one thing that hurts, the one thing that stopped you doing the thing you love, whether it was a foot, an ankle, a knee, a hip, a lower back. I mean, I would argue that everybody has come to that point, whether you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 70 years old, where they’ve stopped doing something because they thought there wasn’t a choice. I mean, am I right in assuming, like, this applies to probably most people?

34:45 Definitely. I would say the majority of people had some kind of physical pain that caused them to stop doing or lessen how much or how intensely they could do some action, whether it’s a pro player having to retire because they can’t move like they want to be able to move, or whether it’s someone just having to give up their sport or stop squatting down to play with their kids. And in every case you could at least improve it by getting stronger in the reverse of what hurts.

35:15 So I just feel like that has to be fundamental knowledge: not to run from pain, to use that to signal where you could make an improvement, and then to get stronger, you know, in the reverse of what’s hurting. Okay, talk to me about sitting. How bad is sitting for all of us, and is this a product, to a certain extent, of all of our sitting, of even us looking at mobile phones, of, you know, this new lifestyle we’ve adopted over the past 30, 40 years? I mean, I think the nature of it, I think we can’t assume anything less than it’s having a negative effect.

35:50 You know, it’s not, again, it’s not natural, right? So we’re getting too crouched this way. Our hips are getting really tight. Now, that being said, I just live like a regular person, and I sit with whatever posture I want, and I sit tons of hours a day working online. I have, you know, for years, typing up programs and articles and this and that, but I’ll show you at the end, like I can still do like a front splits cold, meaning like I have elite hip flexor length and stuff like that.

36:21 So I think you can, I think you can still live like a regular person as long as you balance that out and you train. So even my upper body system is almost like just meant to reverse the gravity of too much sitting and too much time on our phones. So yeah, I don’t think we can ignore anything that’s deviating from what’s natural. We’re gonna have to reverse that out. Okay, good, and we’re gonna show some of these protocols.

36:47 I started doing some of your I split squat, or I don’t know what you call it with the, you know, that you bend the front knee and you extend the back one, and you try to get your hamstring to touch your calf with your knee over your toe. That’s like your basic maneuver, right? That’s my favorite exercise. It takes some detailed coaching, because there’s a lot going on at once, but that would almost be like the ultimate exercise to balance out everything that’s messing up our hips and knees and ankles.

37:17 It’s like the exact opposite of, you know, every imbalance we’re getting in our legs, and I’ll definitely show that one. Okay, good, that’s fascinating. I want to hear about that. I started, funny enough, break dancing about five years ago. I actually trained with Edo.

37:31 I gone to Israel with him. I was doing lizard walks and all this crazy stuff with Edo. He was teaching me all things about my body. I’d never really been an athlete, but I had done some things, martial arts and stuff like that, and then I was doing a lizard walk on the ground one day in the gym, and by the way, Edo told me if you haven’t been kicked out of your gym, you’re doing something wrong. So you know he’s, he’s all about doing weird stuff.

37:53 Anyways, so I was doing a lizard walk down, like, by the treadmill bank, and I was down there and I had a flashback to some kids that used to break dance when I was in, grew up in San Diego, and I started taking on this art and learning it, but I remember, Ben, this first year my knees really hurt. My fingers hurt a lot because you’re supporting a lot of weight on your fingers, and I, uh, but also my ankles were off the ground, you know, so I was on, you’re on your toes a lot in a squat position and all these things, but I feel like I went through a bunch of your protocols without knowing it, because over a year or two, it got to where everything was much easier and much flowing, and now I could do some crazy stuff that when I posted, people don’t even think it’s real, but it’s because I’ve been doing it every day and pushing through the pain threshold for, I guess, now years, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m, I’m accidentally going through some of your protocols.

38:45 I’m sure that you did, and these human bodies are fragile relative to plenty of other things in the world, but they do adapt, so if we don’t kill ourself off in the process, we can adapt and become more resilient. So, like, what you did, maybe for one person they do that and they wind up more bulletproof. Maybe for another person they tear something. You see that. So that’s why, like I said, the first thing we opened up with.

39:12 Out of, I said, there’s just like four important things, and one of them is just, like, walking backwards. Like break dancing would be like one of those other four points, you know what I mean? Of like a full knee bend. So As a more fragile person, some of those things were like too much for me, you know, and they could be too much for others. But there’s no telling that if someone had the mental fortitude to push through it, they might be able to do so.

39:39 Obviously, if you had a break dancing coach and me, we could have figured out the right formula, that it wouldn’t have had to hurt in the process, and you probably would have actually gotten bulletproof even faster because you have the stimulus you’re putting in, but you also have the breakdown. And so, a tendon is something that connects a muscle to your bone, and the tendon doesn’t get as much blood as the muscle, so it takes longer to recover. So even if you, so if you tried to break dance every day, maybe the muscles would actually be getting stronger, but your tendons would be playing catch-up so that’s my only point.

40:13 Like, for example, I only train my knee tendons and Achilles tendons three days a week, you know, and everyone will see my stuff. Can I do that every day? You could, but why? Why not? Why not every other day?

40:26 Why not give it, you see what I mean? So it’s all just degrees of how much are you stimulating it to adapt, and if you don’t go knees over toes you’re not, you’re leaving it vulnerable for potential disaster later. So if you are going to do knees over toes training, how much are you stimulating it, saying I would like more of this strength and this development of the tendons and the muscles versus how much time do you have to recover? So yeah, I think you did it, and you’re probably a person with exceptional mental toughness, and so you made it.

40:58 You made it through, and then you were, I’m sure if we did an MRI, I’m sure that your muscles and tendons were actually thicker and stronger than beforehand. Yeah, I just wouldn’t let it go, so I just kept going back. And also it’s fun, and it’s also, it’s, you’re learning a skill at the same time. So probably like basketball is for you, for me I was like, this is fun, and I want to get this one move, and I enjoy it, and I don’t want to quit. So I think I did push through some of that, and probably unlocked all of this physical ability I didn’t even know I had.

41:32 And that’s the thing, guys, we’re not talking about, Ben, is that subconsciously people make decisions to avoid or quit certain pleasurable body movements because of this pain, right? And so we don’t even know that we consciously stopped running, swimming, playing with our kids. We might have just, you know, preferred to watch Netflix more and more, and that’s a real issue, right? Absolutely. I mean, what’s our purpose here in this planet?

41:59 Is it to get through life completely unscathed, you know what I mean? Like, is it so I would take, like for me, no offense, you probably have a lot of really smart business people watching, no offense, but I would take the ability to dunk over any car in the world, and any multitude of the cars there’s literally no dollar value of anything that I would trade. And no, we’re not going to get all weird and say oh, but if you had a billion dollars you could save the world from hunger.

42:29 No, not like that. We’re talking about just if I owned the cars and I couldn’t do anything, or the house. There, there’s nothing material that I could own that I would trade for the ability to dunk, you know? And honestly, the ability to play with my kid. There’s nothing I would trade for that, you know what I mean?

42:48 So, so to me that’s the thing it’s like, how do we, how do we live life and do what we love without pain holding us back? And funny enough, when you’re break dancing, that’s probably a much more balanced activity than basketball. Like, basketball, we never bend our knees all the way, so we get these horrible imbalances of how springy we are here versus how terrible we are in a full knee bend, and you could actually, like, wipe out, you could wipe out, you know, knee, like knee problems for basketball players in terms of the scale they are, just by getting basketball players good in a full knee bend.

43:22 So I think when you’re break dancing, you probably got a lot of different angles, you know what I mean? And so you probably got the muscles and tendons strong in a balanced way. Anything that starts to get imbalanced that’s where I see problems come in on the body, and pains start to form because we have weak points, and our body doesn’t want to break, so it has the pain there. Like, please don’t go there, please don’t go. It’s just trying to protect us.

43:46 Yeah, so many good points you made there. And again, I mean, when I’m having a great day breakdance, you know, I haven’t done it in a few days. Like, I feel incredible. I mean, I just, you know, it’s one of the happiest places I am. And to imagine that I wouldn’t be able to do that, I mean, some people would literally kill to get use of their body in such a way, and I think we forgot how much you know, we are our bodies.

44:10 I mean, Edo used to say, the body is the mind, the body is the mind, and we become, you know, these creatures that kind of live above our neck to a certain extent, you know, and we forget that it’s all actually one thing. There’s a lot of wisdom down there. There’s a lot of connection going on and I think you’re making the right choice. There is no fleet of cars that’s worth your slam dunk, you know, and I’ve seen it. It clearly gives you a lot of joy, and I like watching you dunk as well, so there’s a real thing there, and it’s important that people maybe recognize that.

44:38 And the other thing I want to say is that I agree with your product calls, and my b-boy instructors, I think we probably could have gotten there faster. But one thing I see after watching your stuff, Ben, and I decided this a couple weeks ago, I said, you know what, I’m gonna stop telling myself that my right knee will always give me problems, so I won’t be able to, you know, backspin on that side. I’m gonna always have QL tightness, so that means I can’t, you know, do a head swipe on this side, and I’m just, I’m actually refusing to accept that, and I feel like I’m going to bulletproof my entire body at 50, 51 years old to where I can do anything anytime that I want to, and I can do these moves.

45:16 So like, that’s my plan for the next six to 12 months. I’m going to be going through your whole system and hopefully using your protocols, and if you get to London, I want to train with you, but that’s my goal is to just refuse to resign the fact that my body is no longer useful anymore, and I hope everybody else can kind of get that idea, because I think anybody could do that. I love it, and it’s like, what do you have to lose, you know what I mean? So I couldn’t love that anymore, and I’ll definitely, you know, I’ll definitely try to figure out how to come there and and personally train you.

45:52 Like I said, I’m turning 30 this month. It’s not like I have everything figured out, and me and my wife are loving this, really just hands-on with our kid, you know what I mean? Coming from a workaholic background, being able to be here every day walking my kid on my chest. You know, it’s just a phase of life for me right now, you know, but I would love to come out there, and you know, and look at the solutions and film it. And again, for me it’s all about teaching people safely, you know what I mean?

46:22 It’s all about teaching people how to put in that investment in your body without the risk. That’s, you know, that’s my role in this. Yeah. All right, talk to me about training professional athletes. I mean, you moved out to California.

46:34 I’m guessing it’s because you’ve got professionals out there. What is it like to have that first meeting? What is it like when you have to kind of handle some of their skepticisms and objections? How soon do they see results? I’m just wondering if you could just pull back the curtain tell us what is that?

46:53 Oh, like, because I guess it’s pretty incredible. I guess every client’s different, but what happens yeah, I mean, so I ran a gym seven years, small town in Florida. I trained some lower level professionals Corona hits, and I knew I had wanted to pursue doing it online because I was starting to realize that if I’m just in one location, and you know, how would I have reached the kid out there like me, you know? So I knew that online was the thing for me, of making it so that if something that by working together everyone could afford to do the exact route that I did.

47:29 So coming to LA, I thought, oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be able to collaborate and, you know, train pro athletes and this and that, and gain more notoriety faster, which is funny enough, during the time of being here over the last year, I came to the conclusion that I should take a slower approach and keep valuing everyone equally in terms of their results. So I don’t, the famous athletes that I’ve trained, you don’t see them on my social media. I don’t even ask for a picture to post, nothing but why do I try to keep training someone famous once a week, because it’s a ton of [expletive] pressure, so I only meet up with these people one on one session.

48:14 I have to change this person’s life. Now, sometimes my job is already too easy for me, because I’m meeting up with them, and they’ve already been doing it online, and they’ve already had life-changing results, and it’s really just like an awesome meetup of getting to lay out the future for them, but it also look how that challenges my ability to make a simple route, that in one session I have to lay out an entire program for this person with measurables that will equal a better quality of life for them, or doing what they’re trying to do for them, getting rid of that pain, being able to dunk without it. So yeah, it’s a hell of a lot of pressure to train someone who could easily spread bad word about me if I don’t get a result.

48:53 You know what I mean? So I love putting that pressure on myself of the result. That’s always how I’ve thrived, not by running from the pressure but by putting myself into the most pressureful environment I can. That’s what makes me get better, so that’s what I do. So on average once a week, just based on people who reach out, I try to base it on severity, you know?

49:16 Like if some guy’s career depends on it, no offense to someone else, but it’s different than me wanting to be able to play on the weekend versus this guy, his income depends on that knee. You see what I mean? So or maybe it’s if it’s like a father and son, and yesterday I trained a famous NBA player, ex-NBA player, like he had a nice long career, but went through 13 surgeries in that career. So this was not like a fun process as this career went, and honestly he probably could have had a much, you know, more successful career if it weren’t for 13 different Achilles and knee surgeries, and now his kid’s 14, and he doesn’t want his kid to go through that.

50:00 You know, the kid’s 14 and can already dunk, and it’s the abilities, not he doesn’t want the kid to go through 13 surgeries. So how am I supposed to say I’m not going to meet up with you? I can’t. It’s tough, you know what I mean? So I’m just out here one day at a time trying to do my job, and I don’t even charge for those.

50:18 I don’t, if people know something about me, it’s that I don’t charge for anything other than my online. It keeps me streamlined so even if I’m influencing the sales of other products, I refuse a kickback whatsoever. If I can’t get any penny other than from my route that I would have needed, it just keeps me really honest to that route. If I was making money on these meetups, maybe I’d be doing them every day, and I wouldn’t be delivering the best coaching I could be so that’s what I found.

50:43 I can get away with once a week to meet up with someone that’s going to put just ultimate pressure on me, almost like my reputation on the line. Once a week, you know? Yeah, Ben, you’re like the most non-LA guy living in LA. Like I love LA, but I don’t know. It’s, I’d rather live like up in a mountain or on a beach somewhere.

51:11 I don’t know. I, I love people, but I know what you mean without saying I hate LA. I don’t know, you know, I mean, in LA you’re supposed to snap pictures with celebs, you’re supposed to post on your social, you’re supposed to charge them ridiculous rates, you’re supposed to get them to refer you to their friends. I mean, that’s the path of least resistance, business model for that whole city, but regardless of whether you have some really amazing IP that works, and yet you, Ben, decide I’m not going to do any of that.

51:39 I’m just gonna be this other guy with my own principles and ideas, and the weird thing is, you’re going to be more successful that way, and you go, you’ll probably get there quicker. I agree with you, it makes my product better. Short term, if I take the selfie and say, hey, great workout today, that would get more sales. Long term, that would take the pressure off of me to make my product even better and to get the results in my own body. It’s much easier to live a product if you’re living the product.

52:13 So my, that’s my theory for a coach: to be a product of the product. So that guy I mentioned, Keegan Smith, who was the first guy I saw doing these over toes, he now has over 200 coaches around the world that I have a private chat with them every day. We call it my business. We call it ATG for coaches, and funny enough, I don’t even make a penny off that. I only make it on my route.

52:34 So he runs that from a business perspective, but I’m, I’m messaging these guys like 50 times a day trying to create a new way of thinking about what it means to be a coach, that you put ultimate pressure on yourself. So these, you know, these crazy things you see me doing, I’m putting the pressure on the trainer to do that. You know, so you know, I think, I think that’s the better route long term. I think short term it’s harder in every possible way. I think long term you can make more of a legacy business based on the quality of that business than the short-term marketing.

53:08 Definitely. And who is your typical professional client? Are they 90 MBA, are they the 20-year-old, the 25, the 30-year-old, or the one that’s retired and just wants to be able to, you know, play ball without question? People who have, you know, that their career is being put in jeopardy by their knees is the most common, and funny enough it’s like a pretty even mixture of football, baseball, basketball. Funny enough, maybe more football and basketball than baseball, but even some of the top baseball players.

53:46 So you know, almost all athletes are going through some issues of one kind or another, you know, but funny enough, yeah, it’s not more basketball than the others. You know, I would have thought it would be just basketball, but it’s pretty balanced, and baseball. You don’t, a lot of, oh, MMA guys too. interesting. You have to be bulletproof, so like my style of training is going to be more relative to an MMA fighter than powerlifting or Olympic lifting or strongman or bodybuilding, even though I use tools from all those, but every tool I’m only looking at, how does this bulletproof me?

54:25 Because if I’m bulletproof, I can go run, throw, that like you can, then do what you want to do. So I don’t think, I don’t think of my system as a sport. It’s very important for me that my system doesn’t try to become a sport or compete with other systems, because then I could go into the same arbitraries of competing for the sport. So it’s, so my sessions are 30 minutes long. I only train 30 minutes a day.

54:48 That’s it. Sometimes these sessions are 20 minutes because I’m in such good shape, so I’m just living that, and then people can do what they want with it. So for pro athletes, that’s why it tends to be pretty conducive for anything, because I’m only setting up for them three 20-to-30-minute sessions a week. That’s nothing, you know, in terms of time investment. What’s the typical reaction of a pro athlete you’ve been working with for four weeks?

55:12 What do they say to you? Knees feeling better, younger, you know, younger as a common term, because we come to expect aging is real, so it’s very easy to see how we could assume that all our pains have to do with aging because aging is real, right? So I think that’s a big one. Like even for myself, it’s because it’s whatever I’m experiencing is gonna be the same for someone else, and that’s even when I keep noticing is like how am I, feel like even after all this time, like I’m feeling even younger, like that workout just got even easier you know.

55:46 So it’s the same thing. That’s probably the most common one: less pain, able to go, you know, harder, feeling younger. And when you introduce the protocols, are they a little unsure? Like, I was doing some of your stuff with my right knee, and I was just like, I hope he’s right, because you’re, you know, you’re putting it over the toe for the first time in a while, and you, you get the initial signals that say, well, we told you not to do this a few years ago.

56:13 But then, honestly, within a few sets I was going much further. But do you get that reaction from people? I think so, to some degree, but I also take really painstaking efforts to lay it out in the right sequence, you know what I mean? So there’s no rush on it. And if it’s done in the right sequence, you kind of are able to get the result of one thing, and then, like, that makes sense, and then you go to the next thing.

56:37 So if I were to, because again I, I think it could work to jump someone into the, you know, into the toughest stuff, but I don’t see a reason to do that. So by really taking it from like zero and then like doing it from the ground up, each step kind of makes more sense, and there’s more trust. I would say, I would say back in the day, when I didn’t have it as polished, yeah, my job was half delivering and half mentally getting the person to try to do it.

57:09 You see what I mean? That used to be a massive part of the job prior to going on to social media and just putting out all these regression, regression, regression, regression tips. You know what I mean? And then my philosophy, like the way I train, I start from my toes and ankles, so every session I go from the ground up. So I don’t just start in with the knee.

57:32 And so yeah, like you’re saying, back in the day you kind of had to sell them on the IP to get them to believe in it to even try it. These days, to a certain extent, your reputation precedes itself, so, and your better communicator, so now it’s about them just actually doing the protocols a bit more. Yeah, so much, so much smoother. And again, because of the internet age and how easy you can start some of this stuff, so many people, again, they’ve already tried it, you know?

57:59 I mean, like they’ve already felt results, so whether they’re signing up online or I’m seeing them, it’s like they, they already have gotten some results from it. So it’s almost they almost put, like you did, they almost put themselves through that process before I even got there, and I just consider that. Like, that’s how investment works. And I don’t know anything about investment. I just know the concept.

58:18 Like, I don’t know, I’m so streamlined on this. My wife is a business beast. She runs my business, not me. I focus on the investment of the training concept. So I understand that, how hard I worked to figure out regressions that no one had ever used that now is paying off, so I’m showing up, and people have already, they already have been through that process.

58:41 They’re already they’re already ready. Like, okay, let’s do this. Like, they’re already ready, you know what I mean? But you didn’t used to be like that. And now you’ve gone from just knees over toes protocol and the whole jumping and stuff all the way into lower back, upper body, and I went through a bunch of your, you know, YouTube playlists and stuff.

58:58 But now you have the QL exercises, which is great, because my kill has been driving me crazy for years. And then these upper body stuff to kind of reverse some of the effects of sitting. Was this just a natural progression to just work your weight yourself away through the whole body? Yeah. At one point I thought it would be much easier business-wise to just do knees, just do knees, but there’s thousands of questions about shoulders and back, and so.

59:24 And then I’m seeing the same limiting beliefs and people in chronic pain, and yep, well, my knees are doing so good. I just want to thank you so much. I’m going to cancel for a little bit because I’m heading in for shoulder surgery, so it’s like the duty just kind of extended. And if you watch those videos, it’s very conservative in terms of starting with no weight or you know what I mean? Like, like the concept of rebuilding a push-up, but with through a full range of motion, you know, like it’s everything still regresses.

59:55 I don’t really pressure people into it. It doesn’t interfere with the Monday, Wednesday, Friday lower body sessions, and then Tuesday, Thursday is like optional core and upper body. Following the exact same principles, being balanced from one side to the other, having strength through range of motion. All studies that have been done on this concept of not just stretching something or just strengthening something, but actually training your strength through a full range of motion.

1:00:29 It shows like four times reduction of pain and injury compared to one or the other alone. It just makes sense. It’s more patient and honest strength development. It could still be used to supplement. I train a lot of powerlifters.

1:00:43 You would think that powerlifters, because their sport requires the thigh only to get to 90 degrees, so there’s no advantage of going knees over toes, but a lot of them are in chronic pain. You would think powerlifters would hate knees over toes guy. Only I’m helping some of the best powerlifters in the world. I just helped a guy do a thousand-pound half squat two weeks ago. So what is he doing that he went from in pain squatting 875 to no pain squatting a thousand?

1:01:08 The tibialis muscle and that ass-to-grass split squat, the two opposites of the powerlifting squat, so now it doesn’t hurt and it just allows him to do his, his sport more. So the, it’s just applying the same concepts very patiently, not in extremes, to the spine, you know, those QL, those quadratus lumborum muscles, the upper back muscles, the shoulders. You know, same, same concepts, because I don’t know, I don’t like just selling people, hey, sorry you’re in pain, I’m not going to touch it.

1:01:45 It’s hard for me to do that. Yeah, I’m glad you continued that. You know, it’s still, it’s, it’s the same kind of mission and mindset. You’re just moving into other parts of the body, so I’m glad you did that. You mentioned that, that big power lift.

1:01:57 Any other like quantifiable success stories that you can talk about, just to give people an idea of some of the things that this enables? Lots of extreme distance runners, these guys who do like 100-mile runs, because what is that? It’s just a test of where will you break down, you know what I mean? Right? And every step you’re on your your feet and balls of your feet, and pressures on the knees.

1:02:23 So what’s funny is, almost like, how many of these extreme human, like, trying to jump as high as I can or run 100 miles or squat a thousand pounds? People like us, pushing toward extreme goals, we can’t afford to avoid the issue, you know what I mean? So it, it really forces us, and our goal is so extreme that I guess it’s easier to connect those dots than someone who doesn’t have any extreme fitness goal, you know what I mean? So I used to think that that my purpose was only training extreme athletes, but it’s taken more time to realize that there’s even more of us out there who aren’t, you know, on a sports team or pursuing something freaky, and we just want to enjoy, you know, a better quality of life.

1:03:05 You know, yeah, we’ve had David Goggins on the show. I’m sure, uh, you could, uh, you could do some great work with him. He’s always trying to break something on his body, whether it’s, you pull up records or 100-mile races through the desert, or if I, like, I’m sure a lot of your protocols would change a lot of that stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think he’s one, that he has such a strong influence. One of those guys I just have infinite respect for, and so even just by learning, like, you know, really any of these tools I’m going to show today, all four of these would relate.

1:03:43 He was having, I guess, some knee issues recently, you know? People, people will be like, hey, you should help out, blah. I never reach out and say, you know, hey, I can help you with, you know. Because what I do is unorthodox. It works better if someone is just able to kind of look at it on their own, you know?

1:03:58 And so I, I haven’t found that like forcing it really works, but any, any four of these things, he would be able to help a lot of runners. Yeah, that’s powerful. A couple things before we get out, and then check out, you know, your outdoor gym and a few of these protocols, and everyone’s waiting for that. And this is, it’s, I can’t wait to see it as well, even though I’ve watched all your videos. What’s your biggest challenge right now?

1:04:23 Uh, mine is at a complete blank. I think I was asked if this a few months ago, and I had the same blank. Okay, I don’t know. I don’t at the moment. I don’t have any challenges.

1:04:42 I guess I don’t think of, well, it’s a good time to explain. My number one life philosophy is no excuses ever for anything. So it’s a philosophy. There’s plenty of reasons to have an excuse, but what if you didn’t have an excuse ever for anything? You just try to become powerful over that issue and powerful over that.

1:04:59 So the more I applied this, the more I ended up running out of problems, you know what I mean? So I don’t have any pro, I guess. I guess the problem would be like, like Michael Jordan, as good as he was, he still had to fire himself up for every game, you know what I mean? Like, that to me is the most impressive thing about Michael Jordan, is that he got so good but still had to fire himself up for every game, and bring that passion every game. Even he already brought it.

1:05:30 I mean, like Michael, what’s your biggest problem on the court? I like, he was able. I feel like that’s such an underrated thing, that even if you’re doing well with something, the ability to still fire yourself up just as much, you know what I mean? So that’s where I, I kind of have to keep these reminders of why I’m doing it, because it would be easier if I was someone who had, like, a, like, a jet plane on my vision board, so you got to just keep making a certain amount of money.

1:05:57 And that’s, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. Different people have different goals. Mine was so focused on just being able to dunk a basketball without my knees hurting, that maybe I’m too, I’m like easy to satisfy on material stuff, so you know, just staying focused on helping people. I guess I would say that’s the challenge. But again, I think if your mindset is right, you don’t think in terms of challenges.

1:06:21 You are, I am fired up for every day. It’s probably laughable how fired up I am to do this stuff, you know, seven days a week. But, uh, but I, I owe it to that mindset. So it’s like, it’s like anything you face that you could complain about or make an excuse about, try going 24 hours without complaining about anything, you know what I mean? And so I that’s kind of where I still, I would say that’s my number one challenge, is really to just maybe I made this many complaints a few years ago, and now I make this many complaints.

1:06:54 I just want to keep working down any of those complaints. The less I complain about my wife, the better I actually get as a husband, and I’m lying to myself if I say anything. Every single complaint is a little lie. We’re just lying to the universe. The universe hates when we lie, so every time we make a complaint, we’re sending out a little lie, because we actually are powerful enough to do something about that.

1:07:19 You know what I mean? So I guess that’s where it is. I have to just keep making less complaints. I guess that would be, that would be my answer to that. That’s my number one challenge is to keep getting it down to literally where excuses or complaints just aren’t even part of my vocabulary.

1:07:38 Yeah, it’s an excellent concept and an excellent goal. Do you ever feel like you need to get all your IP out there quicker, or, you know, faster, or you just, like, look, I just do this every day, and I’m, and it’s okay, my pace is okay. Yeah, I used to feel like that, you know what I mean? I used it used to frustrate me, like knowing something and then trying to get the data across. I’ve been lucky as hell.

1:08:04 Like the knees over toes thing, it actually worked. Like, it’s out there now, you know what I mean? I’m getting stopped on the street like every day. Like it worked beyond what I even hoped, so I could wake up happy every day the rest of my life, because I set that goal of busting this myth, and the [expletive] worked. There’s enough other people out there.

1:08:25 There’s enough great other people out there, other coaches already using this now, so that it’s like that data is not going to be lost. You know what I mean? It’s kind of scary in your mind when it’s like, what if this gets lost? You know, so that was the only time, like it was, there were scary times when I was a nobody on social media and had 2,000 followers or whatever, and it’s like, what if this gets, what if this data doesn’t get out there and gets lost?

1:08:53 So I, yeah, I’ve been lucky enough to, like, you know, have passed that point. So now it’s not distress, and it’s showing up every day and still trying to get better. That’s, I call it the MJ mentality. How do you still? You already reached your goal.

1:09:11 Get even better? That’s pretty tough to do. Yeah, you mentioned MJ a couple times. When you watch The Last Dance, like, what do you see? I mean, I’m obsessed with that.

1:09:23 When I was four, I was so obsessed with Michael Jordan I said, I’m gonna save up and buy a Michael Jordan rookie card, which cost a thousand dollars back in 1998. It cost a thousand dollars. So two and a half years later, by Christmas time I had saved up a thousand dollars. No toys, no every I wrote, you know, to every relative, send cash, send cash, send cash. I worked every little job you know that I could saved a thousand dollars, and on Christmas my parents bought me a safe.

1:09:54 So inside the safe, so I spent my thousand dollars at like six and a half years old and had a Michael Jordan rookie card. So my obsession, my obsession with Jordan was insane, you know, and I feel like on the court, I feel like he embodied that no excuses ever for anything mentality. He just wasn’t gonna make an excuse about it, and so, so yeah, MJ still inspires me. The Last Dance was the last thing I watched on TV I have, in 2021. I haven’t watched a TV show or a movie or any kind of entertainment.

1:10:32 Of course I keep learning, but I’ve had zero entertainment of any kind in 2021. That’s MJ mentality. I already reached my goal. I already surpassed my goal. MJ mentality is, so what, get even better.

1:10:48 So these are the kinds of things that I’m taking, steps of being like, okay, I’ve already surpassed my goal, now I’m going to work even harder than I did before. That, you know, that’s good that you ask these last questions, because even I hadn’t really, you know, thought about all this, but that’s, I’ve been trying to live that. That MJ attitude of not only not getting complacent but actually then leveling up, you know, even more. And yet a lot of people have a hard time understanding you know that MJ had to get that kind of personal rivalry, that bitterness, that extra edge to get on the court is that because most people don’t know what it’s like to be a champion?

1:11:24 Or did you hear that as well? Because a lot of people noticed that, and they’re like, well, yeah, he’s still bitter, he’s still angry, he still holds a grudge. That’s not, he’s not at peace and harmony with the world. What did you see when you saw him do that? He used that as fuel, you know?

1:11:39 Like, it’s not easy to most of us. It’s so easy because we’re still striving for a goal, you know? I think it’s almost like the most dooming thing for a person, to actually reach your end goals, because it’s like, now what do you do? I think it would be so easy to spiral into depression. Believe it or not, like I know that’s the weirdest thing to say, because we all think once we get here we’ll be happy, once we get here we’ll be happy, once, but having the once we get here is pretty cool, you know?

1:12:10 Like, that keeps us that gives us motivation. I feel bad for the Michael Jordan who had already won five championships, because who [expletive] gives a s*** if you want another one? You see what I mean? Like, no one gives a s*** if you win a sixth one you already won five. You see what I mean?

1:12:25 Like, I feel bad for that, and so he was just this is just what he had to do to get himself fired up, you know what I mean? I’d probably do the same thing when I was, even when I was starting to fix my knees and I was able to get a second chance at basketball. Remember, I had no recruitment out of high school, so I I got like a second chance, and you get these, like, recruiters, who their job is to, like, help put you in front of colleges, and day one the guy that I’m hiring says you cannot get a scholarship.

1:12:58 It’s not physically possible. You’re too slow. What I can do is I can try to find connections of schools where you can still pay full price to go to school, but they’ll let you, you know, sit on the end of the bench. So I prove that [expletive] so wrong and get a full scholarship, and the day I got a full scholarship he calls me and he begs me not to accept it, begs me not to accept the full scholarship, because he says, in his words, I know that coach, you’re never gonna play a minute for him, so you’re just wasting, you’re wasting college if you go play for this guy that you’re never gonna get a minute.

1:13:36 I started every game. I led the team in minutes. So is that gonna fire me up next week when I go to a court to throw down some dunks to teach kids the value of landing equally well on either side. Hell yeah, it’s probably gonna fire me up. You know, you got a little MJ in you as well, Ben.

1:13:57 That’s good to see, man. It’s about getting the job done. So if that helps me get the job done, that’s MJ. Get the job done, you know, and he was happy when he was on the court in those moments. I only feel bad for him now.

1:14:09 He looked so happy when he was just, like, in it, being it, you know what I mean? The tough thing I think for him was matching how high he felt on the court with regular life, with not being an athlete anymore. That’s that’s brutal to throw at someone. Yeah, no, Barry, I’m asking myself when I’m gonna have to watch that whole series again because there is nothing else as good as that. It’s the best thing.

1:14:35 How do you stay motivated? Yeah, well, you know how do you do it? You’ve been in it longer than me. Somehow you’re still showing up. Well, I have a high bar for myself, and so that can be good and bad.

1:14:51 That can lead you to constantly criticize yourself, which I’ve done in the past, and lead you down a whole road of substance abuse to get away from yourself, but finally figure that out. I mean, I just love what we do here. I love having great conversations with people like you and spreading great IP, and also I really enjoy this, you know, I mean, I get to, you know, hang out with guys like Edo and learn about stuff way ahead of the curve, and I get to actually spend time.

1:15:18 So it’s just having this conversation with you. It’s you know, probably a hundred times more effective than watch one of your videos, because I’ll never forget this. I’ll embody your protocols and I’ll never forget them. The same with Edo, the same with Dan Pena, the same with all these Robert Kiyosaki that have been on my show. So for me it’s, I’m just super grateful to have the privilege to do something like this.

1:15:39 The fact that other people can learn on the back of it just makes it even better, and like you said, the world knows what the world tells you when you’re doing something wrong and when you’re doing something right, and so when you’re doing something right and you’re putting out all this great energy and information, the world just gives you all these signs like keep going, keep going, and so I’m just following that path, to be honest, Ben. I love, and you mentioned that you’re grateful for it, and I’m constantly looking up at other mentors still, because that’s always what’s worked for me, right? Is not trying to pretend like I have it figured out, but in terms of life, and I’ve seen that a few times lately, that the guys who are still showing up, who have been in it way longer than me, who are still showing up with the passion they seem to have that in common, that they have that gratitude factor, you know what I mean, for where they’re at.

1:16:29 So I’m gonna apply that for sure. Yeah, one of my mentors before always said gratitude is attitude, and it sounds really simple. Gratitude, and you know, you do the gratitude journal, and it’s easy to dismiss something like that, but you know I wake up every day and I don’t have to go to London Real. I get to do London Real, you know it’s, I mean, I, I find a way to come in here on Sunday and Saturday, just because for me this place also allows me to explore all of my fears and pains, because I go right into it on the show so I’ll have the Gaston that I know is going to push me that I places I don’t want to go, and it gives me a platform to kind of experience, you know, life to the max.

1:17:10 So yeah, just super grateful that I can do this. So yeah, every day is a win that I can do that. And yeah, that’s what keeps me going. So, good question. All right, well, one more question before we hit your outside piece.

1:17:24 How do you deal with the haters, Ben? Because one thing you realize is, if you start to get well known for something, and this happened to me as well, you get people out there that spend sometimes their entire lives making videos about you. And so I didn’t actually go looking for them, but I was looking for you. I saw a couple of the exposed videos, and I’m sure there’s a few of me out there. How do you deal?

1:17:47 Do you ignore the fact that people then come after you and your IP? So I’m just a math guy. My whole system is built on measuring each quality, so I look at it and I go, every second I spend on a hater is a second away from helping people. So I just don’t engage sir it, you know? And I’ve tried it, where I take the time to level with the guy, and you know what I mean?

1:18:20 Like I’ve really tried that, and I don’t think that was the right approach. Like, if someone’s already reaching out, hating you, they’re already kind of setting up like that’s their game, you know what I mean? So, like, if you engage you’re just playing their game, and I just can’t go to sleep at night knowing that I spent even one comment or retaliation on a hater. Also, by really scaling these regressions, man, the hate is so small compared to if I’m just making a post of something crazy, you know what I mean?

1:18:59 So it’s been very different, and I feel like by you know trying to get out there, I feel like I got a lot of haters, and now by using that to just make myself get even better at getting the communication across. Even people have told me, hey, by the way, that video that says exposed, that was actually just a catchy thumbnail. The guy’s actually doing your program and loving it. No joke. Like, so, so I, but I can’t spend a second watching that you know what I mean?

1:19:31 It’s, it’s just math. I can’t. I’ve become like, my whole business is that I got really good at not lying to myself. Like, I just actually look at what’s true or not without lying to myself, and so I can’t lie to myself and spend a second on a hater. Now, here’s one cool little thing I figured out recently, which is that if there’s some other industry leader who disagrees with you, people will try to create something between you.

1:20:00 So a third party is going to come in and try to pit you against each other. So here’s what I do: I reach out to any of these guys that people are trying to create [expletive] with, and I tell them what I admire about them. So I tell them, dude, I see, you know, such and such, and you managed to answer even the most hateful comment without saying something critical back you’re a f***ing legend. How you do that is amazing. You are mentally tough.

1:20:28 I want to be more like you. I’m saying to my top competitors. I legitimately find, honestly, what I admire about them, and I reach out and let them know. So if someone, if I see that someone’s trying to create beef between me and another person, I’m gonna hit it at the head, and I’m gonna go right to them and let them know what I admire about them, and this has led to some of the people that have different views than me now actually using some of the very tools I’m going to show you today, because maybe they disagreed with one thing but they agreed with another, but if they, if we created a beef, we wouldn’t agree on anything you see what I mean?

1:21:03 So I think that the way you overcome the haters is by not spending a second on them. You can’t. You’re wasting time that you could have spent on someone who actually wants your help and then if someone’s trying to create beef between you and someone else, go find what you actually admire about them, and and hit it, you know, before something gets created. Yeah, I think you figured it out. Then I would say that’s pretty much my philosophy here for us.

1:21:32 It’s just, I come today, every, to work every day, and I create, I’m trying to create, create, create things that transform people’s lives. Period. And if I ever spend a second not doing that. Yeah, I mean, shame on me, right? Shame on me.

1:21:46 So you know, unfortunately or fortunately, it’s kind of become an industry in itself thanks to social media, where people can kind of create careers and incomes on that side, and so like you said, a lot of times you look at the title on the thumb, and it actually doesn’t really have much to do with the actual content itself, and so can it be a horrifying thumbnail? Yeah, yeah, and that again, they’re very good at that, and the human mind, of course, is attracted to that to a certain extent. So it’s all part of business.

1:22:15 You know, I have one of my affirmations I say every day that I got from Grant Cardone when he was in here, and he said, criticism is a sign of success. I want more, and so it’s a great thing to say, because honestly, nobody would spend their time with the exposed video on Ben if you weren’t doing something important. And nobody started doing that to me unfortunately until about 18 months ago, and then we just got so big where it became, I guess, valuable to do that, which meant we were making more of an impact.

1:22:44 So in a weird way, I’m actually grateful, and I’m also incredulous that some people spend their whole lives effectively promoting me. They might not think they are, but they are, and again it just forces me to keep creating, to keep getting better, and so try to find a yin and yang with it. So I want to know. I agree with that 100%, and if you want to know my light at the end of the tunnel, because I still feel this much, and I know you do too. I feel this much bad for the hater, because I wish I could go rectify it with them, you know what I mean?

1:23:18 So I feel this much bad, but again, it just wouldn’t be fair to the people who want your help, so the way I look at it is I look at, okay, if I’m having a guy on the street come up and thank me for his knee pain, and that now he stopped being, you know, bitter and depressed, he may go out that day, and he may give his barista, when he gets his coffee, he may give them an extra tip, and maybe that barista is one of my haters, you know? And now that barista gets a little bit happier, so it’s kind of like we, we have to acknowledge that, you know, the world is a big place, and you might not be able to just go be everything to everyone, but if ultimately you’re helping people, you’re helping the hater. You’re definitely helping the hater, if ultimately you’re helping people.

1:24:04 Yeah, definitely, and you’ll probably, if you keep showing up every day, every day, and creating, and sticking to your guns in the long run, you’ll actually probably help them, because they’ll realize that maybe there’s something there, but engaging with them, it’s almost always the wrong thing to do. It doesn’t usually go anywhere, because first of all, waste your time, and it usually they’re already in a mindset, so the best thing to do is really stick to your North Star, keep doing what you’re doing, and if you do it long enough, you’ll, you’ll create great change, great value, and you’ll create a great following and again, it’s a sign of success. I don’t know anybody out there who’s doing important stuff that doesn’t have people that criticize them.

1:24:43 I just don’t, and the people that don’t have critics aren’t doing anything very interesting. So that’s just the way it is. Yeah, and honestly, I think some of the top pro athletes, I think, have set a good example on this. I mean, you see with some of these top pro athletes, they get like the most ridiculous haters, you know? It’s like, here’s the guy, was like, you know, one of the most successful in a sport, winning championships or whatever, and then also you see with some of the top pro athletes, even if they’re on separate teams, they’re often still close friends off the court.

1:25:13 So I, I commend those guys who set that example because in business we don’t necessarily have that opportunity to be friends off the court, you know what I mean, and it can be easy for people to like pit us against each other, whereas with the athletes, you know, it becomes a little more, you know. I just want to commend those guys who are setting those examples, you know what I mean, that again, if someone only learns one thing on this, it would be that. I would just encourage people to look at the fact that no matter how passionate they are about their job or their business or their beliefs, that respecting each other would still be the senior quality.

1:25:54 Yeah, it always amazes me that I’m surprised to know that behind great IPM protocol is also like a great system of values. So good to see that with you, Ben, and tell us, what are we gonna do outside? What are you going to show us for people that never have heard of knees over toes guy. What’s about to happen? All right, so we’re going to look at the just the backwards concept.

1:26:19 So I’ve kind of narrowed it into like what I think is most important. So like, if I could only teach four things the rest of my life, I’d be very okay if these four, and I’ll and I’m gonna show them, were all that I could teach. I’d be very okay with that. So first is just the backwards concept applied to the knees and the muscles and the tendons relating to protecting our knees from pain and injury, and then number two is the tibialis, which we’ll look at because it’s so gentle that this is the thing that even the people who don’t believe in knees over toes, even they agree on that it’s so gentle, and it’s a muscle right under your knee, and then the third thing is going to be this idea of being pain-free and able to fully bend your knees, which is another, often in the knees over toes realm, is don’t go all the way down, or you know what I mean.

1:27:10 So we’re just going to look at that and how anyone, you know, can do these things, and then the last thing is we’re going to look at how easy it is to actually get pretty bulletproof behind your knee, which is like, in terms of right behind your knee, you’re going to be amazed at how this could be implemented. All four of these things could be implemented across all sectors of society. Certain of these in little kids’ gym classes, and certain and olderly in elderly, so Do you mind if we go take a look?

1:27:38 Yeah, I can’t wait. Let’s do this. I’m excited. All right, so hopefully the connection stays good out here. Lucky says hello.

1:27:49 What’s up? Lucky is my coach. You’ve got the man cave dream going on there, Ben. Everybody wants your setup there. So this I set this here, so it should show.

1:28:03 Yeah, everything up here, and the first thing I was going to look at, which it’s okay if you don’t see my face, but the first thing I was going to look at is just this idea of going backwards. So you see, if I want to step backwards, see how my knee is over my toes. Can you see that? Yes. Okay, so if I just walk backwards, that would be the lowest level of knees over toes, and obviously, if I was now, if I strap something to my waist and I dragged it, or if I put my butt against a treadmill and I had to spin this wheel.

1:28:36 It’s a knees over toes test. So That was just the first thing I wanted to show. It’s just this concept of backwards, and if we look at that we’ll take it a little bit farther here. I just kind of set up everything. in one spot.

1:28:52 So let’s simulate that I’m going downstairs, right here. Yeah, am I still in the frame there? Yes, you are. All right, so to go downstairs the knee has to go over the toe. Now this is a really cool time to explain how every exercise scales, meaning even for someone who can’t go down the steps without pain, you could use assistance, and you could pump out reps of this at your level until you could do it without holding on to anything, and then in my case I end up adding weights to those, and then I can jump super high.

1:29:31 So it’s a scale from like elderly should have steps set up and should have things to balance and should be working on the knee over the toe. So that’s, so you see why that’s principle one. Like, even with that, if all I could teach was that getting people to go backwards and to actually work on reverse step-ups as an exercise that scales from less than your own body weight, and you start to feel these muscles burning, and you do load your patellar tendon so that it can develop and get stronger.

1:30:07 A lot of people don’t realize because we don’t look at them, we just see the muscles. We don’t realize that the tendons have the same growth properties that muscles have, but if we don’t put the pressure there, we’re the tendons are going to be very weak. So I think this is kind of the modern athlete act, I would call it like external development but not internal, so they may look good, but they’re going to be having knee pain and surgeries just dropping like crazy.

1:30:31 So I think in terms of building, build from the internal and build from the ground up just by taking a step backwards. You’re now pushing through your footwork. When you walk forwards, you’re now more receiving the blow. Like, forwards is more receiving it expressing that power. Backwards is actually right from that big toe.

1:30:50 It’s strengthening the exact opposite, and you’ll, you said you hadn’t tried it. I want you to let me know when you try the five minutes straight on the treadmill that’s not turned on and get that wheel spinning backwards. It’s the most marvelous leg workout, and without realizing it, you’re also strengthening through your feet. Now, I do most of my workouts like without shoes on. I think in year one of training, I think someone should wear like a more minimal shoe, and then you could look after that, and I just do that in training.

1:31:21 I’m still like a normal guy or whatever, but the point is that I like to let those ankles and feet free. It’s a smaller point, but it allows you also to look at what’s occurring. So I think that concept is huge. Go backwards, do reverse step-ups at your pain-free level. It boom, it’s just money in the bank, towards less knee pain, towards doing.

1:31:44 Now it’s like, oh, I couldn’t. I, like, couldn’t, you know, go down steps or whatever, but like you actually can train that the same way you can train a bicep or anything else. So that’s concept one. Concept two is the idea of strengthening the muscle right below your knees. So most of us in our entire lives will never lift away with our feet like this, right?

1:32:08 So how extent does that make if you have a certain genetic frame and now you do all this resistance training, and you develop shoulders and biceps and pecs, and you don’t develop this muscle right under your knees, and that muscle starts right under the outside of the patella, and it wraps around to that inner shin, which, if you’ve ever felt, a lot of people have felt this pain in here when they run and stuff, that’s where that muscle attaches in. Now this is just part of it, but if you looked at running and if you just put these two concepts together, those reverse step-ups going backwards and now concept two of strengthening the muscle underneath there. You could effectively wipe out shin splints as well.

1:32:52 Like shin splints is a math equation. Knee pain is a math equation, how much load is going in versus how strong are we from these areas, and I have endless tutorials on how to start that without equipment. You can actually start it by just putting your back against a wall. Someone could go on YouTube right now and just search knees over toes guy tibialis raises. I leave that video public so anyone can see and anyone can start, and I promise you’ll be on fire here by the end of 25 reps.

1:33:20 It’s right under our knees, so it’s like this is the one that, like, even if you don’t believe in knees over toes, we still believe in muscles and physics, so there’s not an advantage to being weak here. There’s no studies on strengthenness, so I can’t speculate for someone what they might achieve. All kinds of good stuff happen for our feet, ankles, Achilles, shins, knees, when we think, okay, I want to be the strongest guy in the gym, right? here. Sorry, number two.

1:33:50 So again, if all I could teach was backwards reverse step-ups. You know, that’s in one category of just, if all I could teach people was going backwards and strength. Need to be honest, I’d be totally fine with my career, and then the slant board makes it easy to see a deep squat. So we kind of see an inverse ratio in society between how weak people are and how little we deep knee bend, and how many knee surgeries and how much knee pain we have. So, Ben, you’re man.

1:34:20 You’re standing on a slanted board right? I can’t actually see it, but I mean, I’m wondering. It’s just so people look super okay, right? Yeah, okay, now okay. So this makes up for lack of ankle mobility.

1:34:32 So most of us have lost the ability to go like this because we don’t have the ankle mobility. Okay, that’s totally deep split squat that you were looking at. I’m going to turn this downward right here. Yeah, here we go. So this is like a test.

1:34:50 So my back knee is not going to touch the floor, and my front hamstring is covering my calf with my heel down, but most people can’t do this, so we simultaneously are progressing that ability by elevating the front foot, by using assistance, by letting the heel lift, so we work this one side at a time. We work that full knee bend one side at a time while using a slant board to put them together, and this gives with even with even light weight on a slant board compared to a regular squat or a deadlift, you get unbelievable development of those lower muscles by the knees and those patellar tendons. I mean, most people to do to do this someone with knee pain, like if you look at basketball players, if you had everyone in the NBA just try to do that, they don’t, they’d be in excruciating pain.

1:35:47 So it’s the same concept of setting up chairs and doing it at the amount of load you can through that full range of motion, so that the slant board forces the knees further over the toes. Is that what I’m seeing there guys and watch my ass compared to my heels. The slant board allows that full range of motion, so this is a separate concept than the backwards concept, so this isn’t, yes, your knees are vertos, but the important point of this concept is the depth, a fully deep squat.

1:36:22 Okay, so, like, I don’t do traditional squats. I jump super high because of stuff like this, so this I can challenge those muscles in a way that’s tended and dominant, that’s developing those lower quadricep muscles, that’s growing my tendons compared to avoiding them. Right, so and most professional athletes couldn’t do that, couldn’t go without being in pain. Most guys in knee pain, if they’re making millions of dollars and they’re being affected by their knees, it’s like this, they don’t even have the strength to trust this right here, so like most people with knee pain would not be able to go this deep without any pain.

1:37:07 Wow, and for a guy like you to slam dunk, you’re not doing these heavy leg squats, these heavy dead lifts. You’re doing work on a board like that. That’s correct, and sometimes we have to unlearn something that’s false, so just because a lot of trainers are doing that. A young Michael Jordan at his highest jumping ever he didn’t do that stuff. He hadn’t even started weight training yet.

1:37:33 I’m trying to duplicate how nature builds the greatest athletes so if you actually look at it, that stuff is not producing what nature is. So we, in terms of training, think about this. No one in the history of those lifts has ever jumped as high as Michael Jordan did naturally. That model doesn’t work, and it leads to more knee problems because you’re training muscles but you’re not training tendons, and your tendon tendons are stronger than muscles pound for pound.

1:38:07 These freak NBA, like the highest jumpers in the world, that’s not because they do the most squats in Dallas. They have the strongest tendons. If one substance is stronger pound for pound than another substance, that substance is gonna make you jump higher. So your Achilles and patellar tendons, which don’t get trained when we don’t even in the Achilles. If you want to create massive Achilles problems, don’t let the knees over your toes, don’t load the Achilles, so loading knees over toes actually strengthens the patellar and the Achilles tendons, so and it can be really tough for people because when we think about jump training or something we think about a bunch of exercises that the top jumpers didn’t do right.

1:38:54 All right, covered three. Those are three. So backwards walking tibia strengthening, adaptive backwards, so backwards walking, so reverse walking, reverse step-ups at your level. That was one concept, just the concept of getting stronger in reverse. That’s why I put that first.

1:39:13 The concept of getting stronger in reverse can wipe out, you know, for the world in terms of statistics, can wipe out knee problems. And then the second one, partly because of how effective it is, partly because of how simple it is to strengthen here and because of how many other secondary effects it has, helping your feet and ankles. Like people want the ankle mobility I have, but they’ve never even trained the front of their ankle, so it’s built up with all kinds of scars that your body’s stiff there because you’ve never even asked to be good there.

1:39:42 So tibialis strengthening is number two, full knee bending is number three. So I use this and then I develop my strength from this point. I only squat on a slant board so that I can go all the way down, and I separately use that one side at a time because let’s take a look at something really quick. And the cool thing is you got to see me because I was just sitting there in the chair. So notice the back knee.

1:40:07 This would be a traditional lunge. How much is this left, that left hip flexor stretch? Not that much. How much is the stretching here? A ton, and it’s under load.

1:40:16 So you got to see me there. So I can do the splits. I haven’t even stretched when I was sitting down in the chair for over an hour. So I simultaneously use that fully deep split squat which again scales from negative weight all the way to I do it loaded. You know, it’s totally up to you.

1:40:39 So for, like, my mom, everything I’ve showed for my mom we’re really just looking at, like, at using what feels good. There’s no weight target for her, but for me it’s like how do I jump even higher without getting knee pain. You can get more bulletproof and jump higher at the exact same time, based on how you build it. So those three concepts better you are, reverse, less chance you have of pain when you go forwards, stronger backwards, less chance of pain forwards, and it’s scales that anyone can work on.

1:41:07 It’s number two, tibialis. The better you are from the ground up, the less shit’s gonna go wrong. Anyone, this thing could be. You load this with one pound. I mean, these should be in old folks’ homes, literally.

1:41:20 Like, you could load them with one pound and then number three, fully full knee bend. It’s gonna matter more for the longevity of your knees and tendons and athleticism than how much you can do in a half rep. And then fourth, which I’ll show right here, and this is the one I think that would affect children the most, because if you start this by the time you get old, it takes a lot more teaching to help people with this. So what if, like, other people do push-ups?

1:41:54 What if you could lift your body with the back of your knee so you can’t tell me that that is going to be a disadvantage for bulletproofing your ligaments. In fact, your ACL attaches. Your ACL attaches from the back of the hamstring to the front of the shin bone, exactly in this manner. So the stronger you are here, the more protected those ACLs are, and we train this in various ways and my mom sets it up like this. So my mom has a Nordic bench in her house, and at 67 she goes, I guess so, she regresses it to her level, but how much sense does it make to do push-ups chin-ups?

1:42:36 What if you could do these as easy as other people do push-ups and chin-ups, and then it sure as heck makes it easy to run faster. So the fastest guys, without any shadow of a doubt, there’s a high correlation how good they are at this exercise, and notice no machinery basic equipment. The same guy who came out with this tibialis bar is working on making one of these more scalable and available for people. And you could have these, like, kids could be doing these with their own body weight and setting their knees up for success, not to have these blowout injuries, because we’re seeing kids now, 14, 15, 16, torn ACL.

1:43:20 Wow. So I think those four together, does that mean we’re Iron Man who can’t get hurt? Hell no, we’re fragile humans. We are fragile humans. We’re all vulnerable.

1:43:33 We’re all gonna get old, but I think the stats would just I think if these were part of society, and how difficult was that? This is how difficult is this right here? Yeah, right? How difficult are these things that I just showed? So the four most important things in the world to me that I’d be happy with the rest of my life, all super simple that can be available to any of us that could be put in broadly in society.

1:44:00 So that’s kind of, that’s why I keep waking up fired up each day, because until I walk into a gym and they have six slant boards and six of these and six of these, all of which cost less than a single you know, elliptical machine or whatever, a single pec deck machine or something. I gotta keep going. Hmm. And you make those Nordics look easy. They’re quite challenging of people trying for the first time, right?

1:44:26 You’ll need some support. Everything I showed, I do an extreme moderation actually. So the Nordic we only work on Mondays, and the first 12 weeks we just fight on the way down at whatever’s comfortable for us. So we have to just gradually, you put in that one percent and you adapt a little more. You always work at your pain-free level.

1:44:46 So like those reverse step-ups, you know what I mean? This kind of stuff, we do this, we do this stuff in moderation. It’s not about going to extremes. It’s about stimulating not annihilating. You could try to annihilate and you might make it through the other side, but why not just stimulate it get a little bit better, and so now, yeah, now I can, like, you know, I wouldn’t even know how to like hurt my knees.

1:45:10 They would have to take, like, a physical impact or I’d have to jump off something, you know, extremely high or something like that. So the point is, yeah, now I’m anti-fragile, you know, compared to a normal human body, but I think you can actually get there quicker by taking it with moderation and just aiming for that gradual progress each week at a level you can recover from and if the whole of America or the whole world started introducing these protocols in. I mean, how many surgeries would that save?

1:45:40 How many, you know, billions of dollars in health care would that save? I mean, it’s it would make a major dent in the way we live our lives. Exactly, and it would make a major dent, and it would make people. It would raise the mood of society, because so many of us are held back by problems that we just don’t even know what to do about. So, like, I never was taught you can do something about your knees, you know what I mean?

1:46:09 It was always either avoiding them or medical interventions, right? So here I was a hard-working kid, an honest kid, trying to, you know, be there and be a good kid for my family, and now I’m wasting tens of thousands of dollars of my parents’ hard-earned money trying to fix my knees. I mean, that can mess you up psychologically for the rest of your life just because of how bad you feel about that, even if you’re not, you know, vocalizing it, and so that’s what my career is devoted to.

1:46:37 It’s just the awareness that you can actually do something about bulletproofing your body. Yeah. Wow, all right, mind blown. That’s fascinating stuff. It’s all super congruent, and it all makes sense, Ben.

1:46:53 How do people take the next step? What’s the easiest thing to do? How do we follow you, and if I actually want to try your programs, because you’ve got the zero program, which starts off with body weight, then the dense, which puts a little load, and then you call it standards, which I guess is getting you more up to this kind of anti-fragile level, is that right? Exactly. So it’s just put together in levels so you can give your body time, so I would suggest that someone tries the 10 minutes of backward walking three times a week as a warm-up, and then, which is in a public video, right on my YouTube, tries the wall tibialis raise.

1:47:32 So it couldn’t be simpler to do, but just to be out knees over to whatever will search it knees over toes guy tibialis raises on YouTube. Those are the first two steps those would be the first two steps if you have a gym to go to and you feel the backward walking is easy, because remember, the idea of the backward walking is that you could walk forwards the rest of your life without breaking down. If you balance out the backward walking, you’d be strong enough to walk backward forwards now, if you add some resistance by spinning the treadmill backwards for five minutes with it turned off, so that’s all it that’s all.

1:48:04 So from zero, the idea is that you literally need nothing, like no equipment, nothing to start. So those are the first two steps of zero. Then in dense, the idea is the concept of getting the strength deeper in our body, and so that’s where we start to add implements. We add the slant board. We add you see what I mean?

1:48:25 So like this is where we add just basic stuff, and then the concept of standards is now, like, okay, you saw me doing that ankle exercise. What’s good? No one else has put thousands of people through this. I have. I can tell you what equals professional level ability to handle impact.

1:48:42 Right, okay, how much percent of your body weight should you do on that if you want it done? And no, they’re not absolutes. They’re based on thousands of people doing. So that’s what standards are. Standards are things that most people cannot do that.

1:48:54 Most people can do something that most people can’t do, that most people can do, so it’s not it doesn’t mean you have to have any special genetics to do all the standards. Okay, and how do we find this stuff? You’ve got your Athletic Truth Group. You’ve also got personal stuff, like, where are the programs? Are they online on websites, atgonlinecoaching.com, because I know I never wanted my business to be about me, so it’s called Athletic Truth Group, which is kind of synonymous, ATG, ass-to-grass, which, that’s kind of the mindset there.

1:49:26 So atgonlinecoaching.com is the only business that I have, period. And then I use Instagram and TikTok and YouTube, and I try to put out value. I try to educate every day. You’ll see the posts are not here’s the secret, here’s the secret, here’s the C that that’s my philosophy is to educate as much as possible, and then someone might want to do the program and actually send in their videos and get their form coached since it’s unorthodox stuff. I’ve tried it.

1:49:56 Like, I literally tested this out. Nine out of ten males will butcher the form if they’re not coached, and that’s why I’m suggesting try the first two steps because you can’t really [expletive] up spinning a treadmill backwards, and you can’t really mess up doing the wall tibialis raise, but once it starts getting into these fully deep split squats and stuff like that, I mean, that would be trying to learn like any system of fitness. Any good Olympic weightlifting coach is going to tell you how horrified they are when they see people just trying to do it who haven’t had a good coach.

1:50:24 So that’s, so my whole business is based on making that affordable. It’s 49.50 a month because a business advisor said it’d be impossible to do for 99 a month, so I was like, all right, I’ll do it for half that, and it’s 24.75 for the first month, and there’s no long-term contract, so for the kid out there who only has 25 bucks in his pocket, he could still do it and get coached for a month, and there’s good people out there with a variety of incomes. So the person who stays on yearly, yeah, that’s how we put food on the table, but the kid can still go mow a lawn, make 25 bucks, and still learn everything and get coached because there’s nothing’s held back, like it’s all the programs are there, and then we use an app, so you can do whichever one you want at whatever time and send in your form.

1:51:12 So there’s exactly how my business works, and like I said, I would suggest starting with the safest tips and just take your time. You know, one step at a time, and your wife shoots videos with you as well. When she’s not too busy running the business, I love having her come out because I think it helps people to see, like, okay, here’s a new mother and she’s doing this level. It’s one thing for me to show. I can show how it scales.

1:51:36 It’s another thing to see my wife or my mother doing it, so I think that helps. And when does your new son go on the protocols? Yes, as soon as he can stand. But here’s the cool thing is that from what I knew know now it’ll be so easy for him. Maybe when he’s like 8 or 10 or something, he’ll see me doing the Nordic once a week only, and he’ll want to do it, and he’ll put so much money in the bank for his future self.

1:52:02 You know, and so it’ll be so easy. I mean, my whole system is 20-30 minute sessions, so I’m not only am I not going to be the hard-driving dad? Look how many other people I’ve gotten to do this stuff. It’s not by trying to make them do it. I think people get better conviction when they’re allowed to come to their own conclusion, so I’m just going to let my son go through life, and he’s going to see Daddy out there doing the workouts.

1:52:24 That’s it. It’s like, it’s totally up to him. It’s on me to make that look like something he wants to do, and when Daddy’s in his 40s throwing down dunks, he’s going to want to do the workouts. Yeah, and that’s, I think, one of the reasons that you’ve also become so popular is because we’ve seen you dunk. Like we’ve seen this stuff, you know, result in real vertical.

1:52:44 Well, you drop into the split squat right afterwards. I mean, you know, it’s great to see the real-time results. It’d be one thing if you were just out there on the slant board, but to marry the two, it’s powerful. It has to write, it has to actually be powerful enough to give us a reason to do it. You know, yeah, all right, you got me, Ben.

1:53:02 I’m in. I’m gonna start putting these protocols together, and I’m going to bulletproof my knees up to where I can break dance for at least another 50 years. So, I’m gonna join your coaching, and I appreciate that. I follow you on YouTube. I’ll see the gear immediately.

1:53:16 So give me a shipping address, and I’ll just send you the tools immediately. Awesome. Yeah, that tibia TV I think was cool. Um, good. I follow you on Instagram, on YouTube.

1:53:25 I encourage everyone to is really great value-added stuff. It’s great to just see you doing it, and again, I’m thinking about getting my mom on this. She’s 75, 76, and she still loves traveling the world, and like you said, like, is she really bulletproof for that fall? That’s gonna break her hip. That’s gonna put her in the hospital.

1:53:43 I mean, right? or even an effective screening process for falling. Alone, it doesn’t make us bulletproof, but even the studies show. So I’d get her doing the backward walk three times a week, 10 minutes. Yeah, all right, Betty, this is coming towards you.

1:53:56 And actually, I was walking backwards with my boys on Sunday in prep for this. We were walking up a hill backwards. They thought it was the funniest thing ever, and everybody was looking at us, but I was getting into it. I was like, okay, I could see what’s going on here, and I know, you know, the Chinese were talking about it thousands of years ago, and look, this stuff all really resonates. So I appreciate everything you’re doing.

1:54:15 I really appreciate the philosophy you’re doing it. I think it’s it just, it’s a beautiful thing. Your philosophy in itself, and it’s the reason you’ve been so successful. There’s always something behind the IP. It’s not just the IP.

1:54:29 It’s always a philosophy, as a mission, and I can see it with you, Ben, and I really appreciate what you’re doing, and I appreciate the fact that you, you know, you kind of honor people like Ito and Charles that kind of came before you, and those guys were incredible for being out there early days throwing ideas out there when they were really, you know, not accepted or understood by the mainstream, and you’re doing a version of that now too. So look, I love this stuff, and just keep pushing forward, and next time you’re in London, let’s sit down and do this in person. I love it.

1:55:02 Definitely gonna make that happen. Thank you so much for having me on. My pleasure. There he is folks. The man himself, the one we’ve seen outside.

1:55:10 Now it’s true that Jim isn’t just a green screen. I’ve actually seen it. Ben Patrick aka knees over toes guy, again, great name, great IP. I love to see someone take something like this, a real micro niche, and expand it. So wishing you all the best and keep doing what you’re doing.

1:55:25 It’s great stuff, and I’ll be starting the protocols. I’ll be posting on it, and thanks so much, Ben. I appreciate you. Thank you. Excellent stuff.

1:55:33 Thank you all for watching. Go follow this man. We’ll see you next time on London Real. Take care.