Ben Patrick (How the Knees Over Toes Program is Saving Careers and Maximizing Performance) - Episode 581

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581 of Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing, and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show Ben Patrick. Now, Ben may be more familiar by his online handle, Knees Over Toes Guy. And after finding Ben's work and applying it to my own knee injuries and knee pain, I was amazed how well it worked. So I sought him out and ultimately visited him at his gym in Clearwater, Florida.

So we discuss a host of topics from how we're damaging our youth athletes, his own knee injury journey that led him into the rehab journey that he's on now, the societal and sporting elements that are creating knee and shoulder pain, the tools he brings through his ATG program, and so much more. Before we get to this amazing conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show. Leave feedback and leave a rating.

Every five -star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find. And this is a free library for you, planet Earth. So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women's stories so I can get them to every single person who needs to hear them. So with that being said, I introduce to you Ben Patrick. Enjoy. Well, Ben, I want to start by saying thank you so much for inviting me here to your training space here

in Clearwater. You put me through an in -person ATG session, which was incredible. So I signed up, I think it was like two and a half months ago, following your Zero program. But yeah, I just want to start by saying thank you so much for inviting me here today. That means a lot. And man, you didn't disappoint. I was very impressed. Well, I mean, like I said, you're incredibly fit. Well, it was also following your program

credit where credit's due. If it had been no training at all, I wouldn't be able to do some of those movements, but that's cool. It's testament to the zero program and moving on to that. So we are sitting here in Florida. I would love to start chronologically at the very beginning of your timeline and kind of walk through that way. So tell me where you were born and then tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did and how many siblings.

Yeah. Only child born in San Jose, California. My parents worked in office management, like where you have a little office park, and then you run the places and lease them. So I definitely grew up kind of in the service industry, observing them, crazy hard work ethic, very responsible. They took it on themselves to have every office rented out. You have tenants calling, this isn't working, that needs to be fixed. So they were

so hard working. to service other people, to give them really high exchange for what they were getting. And I grew up working with them from the time I was a little kid. I'd be tagging along, doing physical labor type stuff. So I grew up with a heavy emphasis, a heavy value on work ethic, hard physical labor. Yeah, that was my upbringing. Okay, now what about sports? What were you playing back then? I was obsessed

with basketball. I think when you become obsessed with one sport at a very young age, it could give you an advantage in the skill, but a lot of people have wrecked their bodies that way. So probably every sport has something negative about it physically. In basketball, it's usually for the knees because you're just the nature of the sport. You're jumping so much. You're pounding on your knees so much. There's no example in history that a human body was designed to

be jumping like 500 times a day. Jumping could be used for certain things, but in basketball, we overdo it. So our knees end up super stressed out. So by 12, I already had like terrible chronic knee pain. So talk to me about that journey, because I've had a lot of coaches on here talking about youth athletes. And it seems that to foster resilience and overall performance and health, the multi -sport athlete seems to do very, very well. When did you really get passionate about

basketball? At what age? And then what were you doing wrong as such a young child that already had a negative effect on your knees by the time you were 12? Yeah, good question. So right around eight years old or so is when I started playing on teams that would travel to other cities. And so what that did is it showed me, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm not very good compared to these other players. They're faster than me. They jump

higher than me. So by eight, I already knew if I was going to make it in basketball, I needed some kind of an advantage. So what was clear to me is if I just outworked everybody, that would give me an advantage, a way to keep up with better players than me naturally. So by nine, I was already doing jump programs. So I'm playing basketball as much as I can. And then on top of that, doing jump program after jump program at age nine, 10, 11. So by 12, like my

knees were already. My knees were already shot and in chronic pain, and it would take me a very long time to warm up. The muscles didn't quite develop right because when you're in pain, you stop bending your knees. Things don't form during those ages that they're supposed to form. So that was kind of what did it for me is obsession with basketball, realizing I wasn't as good naturally as other players, so then overdoing it to try

to be as good as them. Well, through just kind of coming to your adult lens for a second, when you look at the way some of our youth athletes are trained, what are you seeing are the good philosophies and then what are some of the bad ones that are injuring our children? Well, it seems like the more it deviates from what's natural for a human body. So a sport like basketball is going to have too much jumping and pounding on the joints. For baseball, it's going to be

like too much throwing. A human body isn't designed to throw that much. So you kind of have different options. You could do the sport less. That's actually worked out for a lot of people. A lot of times people aren't looking at it now and realizing Michael Jordan wasn't even interested in basketball when he was 12. Michael Jordan wouldn't have been Michael Jordan if he would have been as serious as I was at eight with chronic knee pain by the time he was 12. He played baseball.

He was just a kid. By the time he was 14, 15, he didn't even make the local varsity high school team. So he didn't get serious in basketball until these muscles were already forming. So as soon as you start specializing in a sport, you now could be subject to adverse reactions of the sport. So the moment you start specializing, you need to actually start training to prevent

that. So that would be one strategy. Someone could say, okay, I'm going to specialize, but I'm going to need to train these areas to be more protected. Or you could not specialize, play a variety of sports. So it's, I mean, it's kind of common sense. Certain of these sports have certain overuse injuries. So you either train to prevent those overuse injuries or you balance it out and do different activities. Well, you talked about travel balls too. That's something

I've spoken to with a few coaches now. Like we're in Florida at the moment. Obviously, there are professional, I mean, sorry, there are high level, you know, sports teams in all our kind of educational

counties. Yep. It always seemed crazy to me as well to these kids pack up and go to, you know, Georgia and the Carolinas and all over the place to play sports at 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, when there are probably teams that are more than capable of challenging them locally that takes the stress and the financial element away from the parents of sending their kids away for days on end. Yeah. And then because you're gathering on a weekend

somewhere. that you have very little time together, you're cramming in five, six, seven games in a single weekend. So that's also a total deviation from what's natural. It's not natural to go play basketball five, six, seven games. Have you looked at an NBA schedule? No one plays five, six, seven games over a two -day period. It doesn't happen. So usually you have certain players will survive and they'll be healthy, or maybe they didn't play that much. Even LeBron James played football

and basketball. So automatically, LeBron James played way less basketball than I did at the same ages. I'm talking every day, 365 days a year, no other sports, just basketball and training for basketball. That's not natural. And then going to these tournaments, five, six, seven games in a weekend. So Michael Jordan, LeBron James, even Kobe Bryant grew up in Europe. So he skipped all those years that I was playing five, six, seven games in a weekend. Kobe Bryant

wasn't. He was in Italy, is that right? Yeah, he wasn't. And both Kobe and LeBron have spoken out against these youth travel sports. I get the desire to compete, but my kid will just play in my local leagues here. And here's another massive deviation. It used to be more normal for dads to be active with kids. So the more out of shape dads get, the more their kids are having to go travel to find tough competition. When you're a dad, you can kick your kid's ass

at those age. That's the best thing I can give my kid. My kid is going to have such a tough time beating me in basketball. So he's never going to have to go do five, six, seven games in a weekend. We'll go play one game on the weekend together and he'll be able to play against me, men. So he'll go through and a lot of the top NBA players were in situations like that where

they were having to play against men. So you have this beautiful process where you can be a prolific 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 -year -old athlete. And if you play against just in your local area, if you play against men, you can become way superior than if you're just playing against kids your age. So I think that's another massive deviation. The more out -of -shape dads get, the more broken down the kids will get. See, that's fascinating to hear because I've talked about that quite

a bit coming from England. And again, not that where I came from was this amazing, you know. Everything was taken care of and everything was perfect. Far from it. But the philosophy was definitely different. When you come to the U .S., you see these high school and collegiate athletes, depending on obviously what position they play in what sport, at a very, very high level. Strength, fitness, explosion. But then

you see a drop -off. And for lack of a better term, we have a bunch of Uncle Ricos that are in their 20s talking about how they coulda, woulda, shoulda in whatever sport. In the UK, you play football, soccer in school. Obviously, there's a very, very select few that go off and play professionally. But people keep playing, whether it's football, rugby, cricket. They play local leagues. They play pub leagues, whatever it is. But you see that continuance of sport. And that's

one thing that's terrifying to me. And I think that's why we get so many parents living vicariously through their children. Because they just stop. And I don't know what we can do to change. And maybe it's through PE, for example, creating healthy kids and resilient kids. But how we can bring more of that European element. Because it's not just the UK. You see it all over Europe. Where you don't just hit a wall from absolute peak performance to zero the moment you graduate

high school or college. Yeah. And it can easily change. Powerful people with integrity change the world. Someone like LeBron James, he has the power to actually change the system, but that's going to take a lot of integrity and a lot of work for him. So I'm one of those people who's just going to keep waking up every day. Like I'm not, I'm not giving into the system. I'm going to make a better one. So that's what I do with my training. I have people of all ages

sledding, sled, sled, sled, sled. Any age can do it. It's low impact. You get cardio, strength. You fix foot pains, knee pains. So that's an example. That's something that I can use the sled. By using the sled forward and backward, I can directly rehabilitate someone's ability to run or play a sport. So then once a week on the weekend or whatever, they can keep that continuance

of sport. So to me, the sled is the best tool to transition from out of shape or injured back into being able to do the continuance of the sport. So that's part of it. But I'm also, as I raise my kid, I'm going to be using my kid's educational process as a chance to create a different system physically. Because there's a number of deviations as we grow up that people aren't quite

aware of that would make a big difference. Well, I harp about on this film all the time now, but one of my guests, Mike Salemi, told me about a film called The Motivation Factor. And it features a high school in – it's La Sierra High School, kind of Central California. Yeah. And they had this super progressive coach in the 50s bring this new PE program. And it was a tiered system. So you wore like a certain color shorts when you started. And I think there was three or four

levels that you could test for. You were in a team. So you basically kind of tried to test as a team. The footage of these seniors from this school – I think I saw it where they – Was there an image of them all with like a six -pack? Yes, that's the one. I saw that. Yes. So I posted it quite a bit because it just blows me away. I had the director, Doug Orchard, who lives in Ormond Beach, not too far from here, on the show.

And again, when you put a good PE program, and back then, even the school meals were still being made by people. They weren't processed and shipped in by Cisco. I think every single kid in that school could do 10 pull -ups. Unbelievable. Yes. Now, there's not many people I know that are adults, even some athletes that can't do 10 pull -ups, you know, in the CrossFit space. They can kick, but they can't do proper strict. So he's documented what happens when you put in a solid

physical education program. And their philosophy is then when that's in place, and, you know, obviously now we fast forward and use some of the technology like, you know, the things that you teach. Now you want to be a basketball player, a football player, a baseball player. You have that resilient frame. It's already strong. It's already fit. And then you go learn the skill. You end up being an even better athlete. Yep. You just nailed it. The balance of the body and

the skill. So many careers break down on the body. They have an abundance of skill. So when we just overstress that skill and don't address the body, then the body is your weakest link. So that's what it was for me. My skill was light years ahead of my body. And this happens to a lot of young athletes. You need that balance of the body and the skill. And then it's actually quite easy to set yourself up to have a healthy

career, to give yourself a fair shot. But I think it's really cool that that school shows that it's totally possible that it can be done. And that means that every one of those graduates statistically is less likely to have health problems as they age. It's just statistics. So the fact that all of them are fit, that should be used

as the model for American. uh high school education absolutely yeah that's the thing you don't need to reinvent the wheel i talk about this even internationally there are either counties or states or countries that do things really well but like you said it takes integrity and takes humility to go you know what can i ask you how you do this because this seems to be better than the way that we're doing it yep yeah that's fascinating i'm gonna have fun studying that because what

i'm doing here is i mean you're sitting here in my gym But this gym, the workout on the board, people can do anywhere in the world. So that concept can work. I can just, I don't have to spread myself thin. I can focus on my craft and deliver a great product in one gym. But in this modern age, I can put it online. So unfortunately for the guy who ran that school that he did so well, without the social media being able to spread it, probably not enough people were aware

of it. In modern day, yes, bad news can spread faster, but so can good news. Anything can spread faster now. So my kid is, my baby's one and a half, and I'm going to make a school for him. Who knows what will happen, but I'm making a school for my kid so that I can try to create a better curriculum, a better education system, and then I'll just make it so anyone can do it.

around the world. So an educator could use it or a parent could use it to educate their kid or they could put together their own school. I like the aspect of actually having a school so you get that social interaction. But that's really cool because I'm going to be studying what they did at that school because they obviously succeeded and I believe success leaves clues.

I believe it's so easy to be successful. You actually just go study directly what was successful and then you can apply that in your own way. So my whole knee system is based on the most successful cases through history with knees, not through some study or this or that where the information gets totally biased and misconstrued, but just people who are actually successful learning from that. So when we're done, you'll definitely have to give me any leads and clues on that because

it sounds amazing. Absolutely. I'll send you the episode because Doug talks about pulling his son from school. It's this crazy education. He basically got him to read the classics, as he calls it, Classics with a capital C. So I think the first one was The Odyssey. And I think Ulysses is another one. But anyway, his very, very young child read it. They tried to put him back in school and school was like, we have nothing for him. He surpassed all our programs. So he

took it back out again. So, yeah, I mean, fascinating story. And he has this kind of PE program. So when I was there interviewing face to face, his

son was there and, you know. jacks wow you know they've got all the all the equipment in the background indian clubs and all the old man and if you start at a young age it's so much easier exactly you set the bar knowing what i know now i never would have had any problems it would i mean it that's what's fascinating about if at that at those young ages everything is exponential whether it's good or bad and so you can put in at those ages it's so much easier to set people

up for success later in life mentally and physically absolutely well you talked about obviously having a knee starting to hurt at 12 so walk me through your pursuit of basketball and then ultimately even though you technically had success with the thing that you were looking for how that ended up taking you down the path of where you are now yeah so because these chronic knee problems were starting at age 12 that allowed me 12 13 14 15 16 so i tried all the traditional methods

So I went to trainers. I went to physiotherapists. I went to doctors. I went to chiropractors. So I tried everything. And overwhelmingly mainstream, when you have a problem with an area in America, is methods of avoiding it. So ice it. So that way you don't feel it. Don't let your knees over your toes. That way you don't quote unquote stress your knee. So from 12 to 18, all I did is go

through methods of avoidance. So I wind up with these absolutely pathetic knees that by the time I was 18, I finished high school on a walker with partially artificial kneecap. Didn't play a single game my senior year of high school. So you'd had surgery before you were even 18 then? Yep. Yeah. So by the time I was 18, I was

already just a bum. Like a physical just... incapable couldn't even play my sport i had the skill level that i should have been enjoying my senior year playing and being able to be in high school games and i already felt like an old man and i had tried all these methods of avoidance but it was also because i was such a had such a savage work ethic so i tested the system so the traditional system doesn't work leaves your knees vulnerable and it scientifically avoids exactly what your

knees need In order to heal and be strong and protected. So then I went just my own route. So now 19, 20, 21, 22. Now you're talking four years of me experimenting only with stuff outside the box. So by 23, I was accepting a full ride division one basketball scholarship. One of the oldest players ever to get a full ride division one basketball scholarship. So I completely remade my knees. from a player who couldn't play to a player who could play. And I played two years

at a junior college. So 22, 23, I was playing at a junior college. I started every game. I played the most minutes on the team. So by 18, I was Mr. Fragile. By 22, 23, I had like the best knees on my team. And from that point, they only kept getting better. But it was at, I got this full ride scholarship at 23. I got to the school and the strength coach at this prestigious Division I college said, you're not allowed to train your knees over your toes. That's how I

got the scholarship. Bending my knees all the way, embracing full range of motion, gradually rebuilding healthier, stronger joints. I was going to be prevented from doing that. So that was a totally eye -opening moment that I knew, I knew, wow, my, My mission here is not about my basketball career. I'm one person. This means that basketball players everywhere are being led towards lives of depression and surgeries

and painkillers. So that became my mission. So maybe it sounds crazy to be knees over toes guy. But if you look back on the journey I went through, it was pretty clear. I actually had no choice but to be knees over toes guy after being prevented from knees over toes through those younger years,

leading to weak knees. Then using knees over toes to restore my knees and achieve my dreams of a Division I basketball scholarship to only then get there and be told I can't train my knees over my toes equals, I mean, I had no choice. I had to be a knees over toes guy. Well, it mirrors the journey that I've been on. I talk a lot about the podcast is more about unlearning than learning. And the foundation of this PE program was from

the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians. I mean, all these different movement practices that we've had for millennia that we disregarded out of a lot of arrogance and capitalism. Our generation, we grew up with nutrition. Like, oh, you've got a bowl of pasta. You've got to carb up before a race. And all your movements were bodybuilding movements. For example, we talked before we started recording foundation training after I hurt my back. A simple movement practice was what ended

up healing it. But the only advice I got from the medical world was steroids, opiates, and surgery. But I'm sure that coach had been through traditional ex -phys training as I have. And I've talked mixed emotions about that. And it was probably coming from good intention. Oh, I'm going to protect your knees. But sadly... we're realizing now that a lot of things our generation has been taught in so many areas was just wrong and sometimes came from a place of

profit, not health and wellness. Yeah. I mean, I think if you look at our culture, we definitely assumed that technology, anything technology equaled better. Only now we're learning, whoops, actually technology can serve us, but what's natural is important too. just repairing all our joints with surgeries is not nearly as good as naturally having a healthy body. So it's very easy to understand how all this stuff came about.

It's easy to understand why we assumed that surgeries and complex drugs would be better for our joints than naturally having strong joints. So with the knees over the toes, with the full range of motion, if you were to take these younger students and have them just using their natural full range of motion. What that does is it provides motion and compression in the joint, which tells the body that you're maximally using the joint,

which delivers nutrients to the joint. So you actually have stronger tendons and ligaments, the things that hold our knees together. So when you start limiting range of motion in the knee, your body then thinks you're not fully using the joint. So the knee actually decays faster. You wind up weaker inside your knee. So in sports teams, they're often dealing with athletes who have painful knees. So they avoid full range of motion because they don't know any tricks

to get in there. So they're still training the muscle. So the muscles can fire, but the joints are weak. So it's almost like you're winding up with a lot of these elite male athletes. It's almost like they have the joints of an older person, but they have the muscles of a younger person. And so when they go out to perform, they wonder why they're having these freak joint injuries. But if you were to actually get down and measure it, they have thin, weak tendons and ligaments.

They're internally weak because they don't train through a full range of motion. Well, talk to me about stress. I've heard you touch on this before because when you look at the word stress,

you have eustress and you have distress. And to me, the muscle imbalances, I mean, you know, the journey of self -discovery I went with my back was, you know, there was... tightness and weakness in the posterior chain my my pelvis was tilted so when i lifted this person you know my my spine was basically like a pizza slice and the ligaments tore um and uh you know but then when you look at that you realize well yeah when you have a column of strength around the

spine it's not sitting on the bones themselves you can create incredible positive stress so i've heard you talk about needing stress on these to create resilience and strength so i'd love to kind of expand on that a little bit yeah and it's it's no different than uh doing a push -up to put stress on the pectoral muscles but for the joint the joint actually has to go through a full range of motion to have stress on the joint so in your case if you think about the

back whatever you were doing in life that amount of stress exceeded your body's capacity to handle stress But the only way to increase the body's capacity to handle stress is by applying an amount of stress that you can handle without pain. So if you took something as simple as like dragging a sled backward, that gives you something that you can win at and you can apply stress to the knees at a level that doesn't hurt. So if it doesn't hurt, but you're able to actually get

into these positions. then you can build up strength. So then you can handle these positions without pain. But if I just dropped someone with knee pain off a two -story house, that's also stress, but it's so much stress that it's going to actually tear things. So we're trying to provide an amount of stress at a level that you can handle without any pain. That's why if you start when you're young, it's much easier to have these areas protected.

But we have people of all ages that are still seeing that you can make physical progress the trick is the whole system is basically how to get into positions that you want to be good at but then reducing the techniques or loads to a level where it's like oh wow that feels good and now so now you're going through motions and you're providing that keyword stress so you're providing that but at a level that doesn't hurt then your body recovers back a little bit stronger

and so you can change over time So with all the traditional routes that you took that weren't helping, I've heard you talk about Charles Poliquin, for example. What were some of the great minds that brought the solutions to you? Yeah. So Charles Poliquin was the first person that I saw just clear as day say the knee that can go farthest and strongest over the toes is the most protected. Up to that point, I was only instructed no knees over toes. I was also instructed don't bend your

knee below 90 degrees. Charles Baldwin also said that, no, no, no, the knee that can bend farther, the knee that can bend more and stronger is more protected. So that was super eye -opening. Had I not been through what I had been through, I probably would have dismissed the data. Because I had already been through all these methods of avoidance, because I had been through the opposite of what he was saying, I instantly knew

when I saw that, I went, that is truth. From there, I just went down the research rabbit hole, read everything he's ever written many times over. He was a little bit older and didn't have videos of himself doing what he was talking about with the knees. I couldn't, so there's no videos of what he was talking about, but he had disciples who had videos. So one of his disciples, Keegan Smith, an Australian strength coach, he had videos of performing these full range of motion and

knees over toes exercises. So I used that as like a framework for my form. And now Keegan's one of my best friends and he actually runs our certification program. So together, yeah. So my business is ATG. It's the super simple business where what I'm doing in the gym, these regressions that I've figured out, people can do it anywhere. And then together we run ATG for coaches. So we have over 600 coaches around the world who are being certified. in ATG. And so it's funny

how that came full circle. So he's to this day, he's still my mentor, still helping me fine tune the educational process for people on this. But that was really it. Because of what I've been through, when I saw that from Charles Pollock, when I knew that was the answer. However, because I was super fragile, I had to figure out more, I had to figure out lower levels of this. So You take something that's ideal. So I could see Keegan Smith doing it. And I was like, I want

my knees to be able to do that. But my knees can't do that without excruciating pain. So, I mean, something as simple as just sitting down in a squat position with your knees bent all the way. Something like that seemed like climbing a mountain to me back when my knees were so bad and with partially artificial kneecap that was never supposed to fully bend again. So what I did is I just figured out lower levels than had

been used. So, um, by figuring out lower levels and then putting in the work at those levels, then I was able to restore what should be natural. What a lot of people don't even think twice about a lot of people in foreign countries, it would actually be very hard to explain to them. People in foreign countries, like I've had people comment and they are completely confused by me teaching a full range of motion because they're just.

in that position regularly so it's so weird for them to see like that some people are actually limiting human range of motion yeah yeah no it's interesting because i mean yeah you look at asia and you look at some of the the less developed countries and these elderly men and women are you know working the land and hunting and incredible you know and some of the the asian cultures they'll sit in that full squat for hours and yet i'm not going to point at other people me if i try

to sit and squat for 10 minutes i'd be in pain And as you pointed out before, I'm not the least in shape person on the planet either. But the sitting and all that stuff. In America, you're a gem. So that just shows. But look at the years that we've lived unnaturally. Exactly. So we're trying to restore that. But you're really looking at a lifetime, at years, maybe decades for most

of us of letting our knees decay. Now with Keegan for a second, having had Charles' teaching, sadly we lost him a couple years ago now, I think it was, but carrying that on, what was he seeing, trying to coach through that lens with what was being taught with most of the strength and conditioning

community? I think Keegan felt the frustration of knowing how much better the system could be, but... seeing how entrenched the system is in its ways so i think that's why we really connected is that he was able to guide me but he could see like that i was gonna like go big and actually try to change the system so together we just kind of would hype ourselves up like look like the future's unwritten like we could actually do this like we can actually change things for

sports and it's only just barely starting to happen but it is actually happening and players are getting more freedom in their training so um that's that's still what keegan and i are waking up for in the morning is actually trying to change the system and charles was such a genius but the system wasn't changing and i think that made him very frustrated so i saw with charles that um he had all the tools he had all the genius and i think I realized that my responsibility

was going to be taking that genius and then applying my mind not to being right, not to being a genius, but to what would actually get it to work, how to actually get that data applied. And so figuring out these scalable sort of routes and then studying social media, how do I actually reach millions of people? Okay, so millions of people have data that has now been proven incorrect. but it's in the college textbooks. So how do I counteract that? Well, I'm going to have to master social

media. So this is what I did starting about three years ago. I was like, okay, the same focus I have on being the best coach I can be, I'm going to have to put that same study into social media and how to reach people. So now we're pretty stoked with things because we're seeing that we really can produce change. We really can win.

The truth doesn't have to be the obscure. uh attacked thing we actually can bring truth to light so it's it's really exciting yeah well and it's bringing that technology the good side of technology because i think social media is an incredible tool i agree but has been abused and obviously is really kind of broken down a lot of social elements but you found a way of getting people's attention and getting them to learn without wearing a bikini for example i

tried that i got like two views i mean i'm trying that next week But if it is that, because there is an art to it, and we discussed before, it's challenging for me because I don't want my face out there. I want the focus to be on the people

that come on with the solutions. But even in the few things that I do, I see that juggling act between capturing the initial attention with that opening moment and then... maintaining that attention to the point where you can deliver good content because i've put lots of stuff out there that's been brilliant content and as i've heard you talk about too it's barely even watched and then i've done things as we talked about before we start recording like done a spinning

hydrant a spinning kick on a fire hydrant and goes viral you know so it's it's heartbreaking really um so you know what what was some of the ways that you were able to to kind of solve that puzzle and combine that shiny object with with the content actually being you know absorbed by the viewer yeah uh sounds super simplistic but for me it was dunking because with dunking i could do something that people tend to those type of videos it's not like it's the most viral

thing on the internet but the throwing down a dunk seems to capture the attention like it's a it's this action thing and it's also people kind of inherently know like Yeah, if you're if you're not tall and you have terrible knees, that's like impossible to do. So really just using that to show to capture the attention. And then I often in these videos, I'm going from dunking to showing exercise regressions that people can do at any age. So to me, that's really

that's where I found. is the best marketing is like my purpose in the video is to get across and show someone something that they can actually do but i'm going to try to use something to capture the attention in order to get them to watch to the point of seeing how they could actually progress now in the fire service when we talk about knee injuries it it's sad because it's mirrors so if we talk about ptsd they always talk about oh it's what we saw on the job absolutely an

element, but a very small piece of the pie when you look at sleep deprivation, childhood trauma, all these other areas. Same with cancer. We talk about what we're exposed to. We don't talk about what we eat, our exercise level, sleep again. And when it comes to knees, the one thing I hear over and over again is, oh, well, we step off the rig, step off the fire engine or truck. And it is steep, and sometimes we've got our gear on. It's not the least cumbersome thing that

we do. But at the same time, Right from the beginning, I've always been like that can't like the human body is so much stronger and more resilient that people give it credit to. So we talked about, you know, some of the errors as far as strength and conditioning philosophies in general in life. What are some of the things that are contributing to the Western developed world having knee pain specifically or knee injuries? Yeah. Well, it

starts when we're young. When we're in school, we start sitting in chairs for like eight hours a day. So we get very used to that. imagine when we're eight, nine, 10, 11, if we were allowed, like I wasn't, you weren't allowed to get out of your chair and rest in a deep squat or you see the positions that kids naturally want to sit in. When you watch younger kids, they're in all these flexible knee and hip positions.

So, so much of the, okay, eight -year -old kids don't have an epidemic of knee pain and they're going off the swing set and dropping from like six feet high and they're They don't have an epidemic of knee pain. As we get older, we're trying to restore the very mobility that those kids have. So we can see it's not just like an absolute of strength that protects us because here these kids aren't very strong, but they're very protected. So their joints are very strong.

So then as we get older, I mean, if you think about the exercises we were doing today, first we were trying to get circulation going. And then really we were trying to restore youthful positions. We're trying to restore the mobility that we had when we were kids. And that tends to make the joints feel better. So I think right off the bat, when we're in school, if we're allowed to sit on the floor, so floor time, the supple leopard mobility man, Kelly Starrett. Yes. You've

heard of him? Yep. All right. He's a legend in the mobility world. And he directly told me that that's one of the things that would really improve.

people's joint health as they age is if when we were in school if we were allowed to be out of the chair and have and sit on the floor just doing that alone would have kept our knees and hips much more mobile and pain -free so i think that's like the simplest place to start in terms of uh kind of what you were saying deviations and if you watch little kids if you've ever watched a little kid go down the stairs oh my gosh their knee bends so much to go like their knee is so

far over their toes to go down the stairs. So then as we get older and then something like going down the stairs or a big step down the stairs, really, we should probably be able to handle that. No problem. Even in a natural lifestyle, if we were out in the jungle or whatever, we'd be walking down hills or stepping over rocks. So these would actually be pretty normal motions.

um but we get we get so far removed the joint gets so weak all of a sudden that becomes painful and then it's kind of a dwindling spiral because i went through it where you go you're searching for which drug or which surgery will fix this pain when that can band -aid things or maybe give you a reset but then it's like you're starting right back over well we just had the gentleman walk by not super super old cane you know pronated feet just you know shuffling across and that's

what breaks my heart whether it's obesity whether i mean he's still within view now and he walked past about 10 minutes ago um you know terrible whether it's a veteran that got hurt whether it's someone who had you know chronic pain this is what our country consists of you know a majority of 70 is obese or overweight and So I think that there is a push from the wellness perspective now, people like yourself, that is coming from an altruistic part. Like, it breaks my heart.

It's not about fat shaming. I'm heartbroken to see someone who's morbidly obese because I know what they could have been. I know what their body could have done, as you said. I know they could have played with their children. They could have done all these things. And because of the way they were taught and their environment, and

everyone points to personal responsibility. I get it, but that's a... byproduct of your environment and your upbringing you know we've done such a disservice to our people that you know now i mean you talk about surgery and opiates it's another thing i mean we have a opiate epidemic and many many of those when you go to the root cause it starts with some sort of injury or surgery yep yeah i'm right there with you and for me at first it was like it would break my heart

to see a 12 or 13 year old kid told that their knee pain was growing pains because that's been shown now that doesn't actually exist like there are some certain pains that can occur during those years but not in relation to something like knee pain like if your knee hurts your knee actually hurts it's not there's no just natural um yeah your knee is supposed to hurt because you're growing and so for some of those kids who didn't have as vigorous of lifestyles and

the hormones kick in and the muscles develop but then for other ones they go from being told it's growing pains So then it's a full -blown condition. Imagine being 13, 14, and you're told that you have like, oh, you have Osgood -Schlatter's disease. So when I was 12, 13, 14, I had diseases in my knees, as told by doctors. I have diseases.

I had syndromes. So now you're 13, 14, 15, 16, and you have diseases and syndromes in your knees that come to find out all those diseases and syndromes handled with just basic human motion and compression. You're right that a disservice is being done. It is a broad scale thing. The odds of an individual having the intuition to know that the system is wrong, to not do it, and then come up with answers themselves, you're talking about like one in a million. That's nearly

impossible to do. So for people going through it, yeah, the system is set up in a way that

it's almost like a factory. these problems not going away so i mean that's why people like you and i are doing what we're doing yeah absolutely well it reminds me as well the the foundation training founder eric he talks about carpal tunnel syndrome and how you know people slice and dice these poor people's hands when ultimately the root is coming from you know the the spine itself and once they fix the shoulders and the neck that pain goes away you know so that's there's

so much power in this preventative movement practice but you know again back to the the personal responsibility it takes work like my back rehab journey that i was on for five months was painful it was hard it was you know mentally and physically very very challenging but long term it paid dividends but again with that environment conversely i could have gone had some pills had surgery felt good for a bit maybe but i've got two friends of firefighters and One has had multiple surgeries

now. The other one's on his second so far. And they just continue to spiral downwards. And again, it's heartbreaking. If they had done what I did, is it an absolute guarantee? No, but there's a high chance that it would have fixed it. Yeah, nothing's a guarantee. But you have such a high chance if you find a route that has worked for other people with your issues rather than doing just the short -term Band -Aid treatments. Hard

now or hard later? The option that's easy now but hard later, it usually ends up being pretty disastrous later. And with a lot of these physical issues, when we stop the activity portion of it, the weight just piles up on the body. And we know that having excess weight makes it much tougher on the joints in the back. Like if you,

I don't know, it keeps improving. But if you Google like what can I do about knee pain, the last time I checked, google doesn't give you anything you can actually do about knee pain only band -aids other than it says you can lose weight and that that will help your knees well without a route how the heck are you supposed to lose weight because for someone who's never had joint problems it's often like i got motivated i started running x amount of miles a day and

i lost 100 pounds but what about the person who was fine then had knee surgeries now the weight has piled on They can't go run. Now you're stuck. What do you do? And spoiler alert, sled. Sled is what you do because even if you have excess body weight, that actually makes it easier to move the sled because your weight is moving against it. So it gives you something that's low impact on the joints that gets your strength training

and cardio in so you can lose the body fat. and get stronger at the exact same time while making your joints even more healed. So it is, that's why I go on and on about the sled because it's the human cheat code for these physical problems. Well, it was interesting as well because when I started doing this, I had knee surgeries and, you know, both my meniscus were torn. Yep, there

we go. One worse than the other. And, you know, it was one of the things where it was locking up and as progressive and movement focused as I was, at that time, all the things I was doing didn't seem to help. And it was, you know, a thing that was flapping around in my knee. So I'm like, okay, for now, I'm going to get it snipped. I hope one day stem cells maybe get to the point where I'll be able to get regeneration.

But then, I don't even know what really was the reason, but it started getting worse again recently. I do jiu -jitsu. I do stunts. I do cross -fits. There's a whole bunch of things I do that, of course, batter my knees a little bit. But finding your system, it truly has helped. And I was just telling you before we were recording, we do this draw in jiu -jitsu that used to make my knees click, and they don't anymore. And the split squat that we did today, when I first did that,

that was very painful. That's a lot stronger now. So I've seen it. I've seen it work. And I think that's just it. But when someone comes up with something like you have, like Eric has, that's truly solving some of these issues, it's so powerful because then once you address that one -week link, as you said, now you have confidence. So for me, I'm getting stronger. Now I'm able to lift more. Now I'm able to go back to jiu

-jitsu, back to CrossFit. So kind of like when I talk about CBD, I love CBD, but it's just a chalk that you fill a wedge, a gap. that allows you then to sleep better. Then you start training more. So CBD isn't a magic pill. It's a little buffer to get you on, even with knee pain. If it's allowing you to do a little bit more ATG, then beautiful. But it's these practices then that open the door, as you said, to that journey where you truly start making gains everywhere

else. Yeah, and that's how I look at this slide. It allows us to get some momentum going. And I still look at the human body, that it is still relatively a frail thing, but... I'm just so grateful that there's stuff we can do about it. So that's kind of where my mindset stays is like, I'm not trying to give people a magic pill. I'm trying to teach them what they can actually do about it to improve conditions to some degree. So I try to keep it pretty realistic. And to

me, that's the gift. I'm appreciative for it every day. I keep a list of what I'm appreciative for. And like one of the things I'm appreciative for is just the... knowledge that i know how to go use a sled and instantly start getting that circulation that i can go get a workout in five minutes that's going to make my body last longer well in the fire service i think one of the challenges that we have is when like again talk about environment The fire department

are fighting uphill. They work 56 -hour weeks usually, don't sleep every third day. Sometimes they get told they can't go home, they have to stay another one. So their environment is absolutely set up for failure. So the ones that are very fit and healthy is despite the environment usually, not because of it. And so you get a lot of responders five, ten years into their career that just aren't the stellar men and women that stood on that drill ground day one. There's an element of guilt

and shame attached to it. And what I found with the sled and some of the strongman training that I do is it's also a great tool to remove all that fear of looking stupid. So, you know, we could come in here and you go, all right, James, we're going to do Turkish get -ups and we're going to do some snatches. You know, my skill level dictates whether I can even do those. But if you just say, hey, put this around your waist and walk backwards, it's equally as effective.

It actually mirrors fire ground tasks for my community. Backwards is dragging someone out of a fire. Forwards is advancing a charged hose line. So you can literally, but you remove any kind of fear of looking stupid, which I found is a big barrier for a lot of people. So the sled is an incredible tool for removing the kind of skill element and allowing people just to do the work itself. That's super interesting. Yeah. Fear of how you look doing it. Fear of

joint pain doing it. Fear of how much time it's going to take to do it. Yeah, I think like in a firehouse and if you didn't necessarily have turf in a sled, there's still the the torque fitness makes this tank sled that uses internal resistance. And if you belt up, you can still do the push. You can still do the push and the pull forward and backward. And that you can just

wheel and the whole staff can be using it. And I mean, you even go you even see like how much ground can you cover forward and backward in five minutes. And I mean, it's like the workout of a lifetime. So I feel like that torque fitness tank sled. is very realistic for a firehouse because you don't have to mess with the layout. It's a very small device that you can keep in a corner or something, and then you can use it anywhere. You can use it on the street. You can

use it anywhere. So I do feel like that is going

to be the one that's more realistic. And it's not like it's the cheapest thing ever, but for a full -on, you know, maybe for a 12 -year -old kid, that's a lot to save up for but for like a firehouse it's actually like a pretty affordable piece of equipment yeah yeah no i mean you know the one i'm talking about yeah with the wheels it's over there in the corner yeah like i keep one there so that i can demo it to people in here if they want to see it yeah no i think that's

fantastic because normally firehouses will have you know like we call an apron front and back so you'll have concrete so a regular slab works well but then you take you know fdmy They might not be able to drag a sled up and down the sidewalks there. Yeah, it kind of depends on the surface with a regular sled. Yeah, exactly. That's why you felt how smooth it is in here on the turf. So a metal sled on turf is my favorite. But my second favorite is one of those tank sleds on

really any surface. Yeah. Now talk to me about shoulders. So your Zero program, which I've been doing for, I think, 10 weeks now, 8, 10 weeks. There's the rings on. you know, alternating days and you're getting the ring rows and the ring pushups all the way, like full, full range of motion again. So, um, you know, portal, that's one of the movement guys I had on, I haven't

had on, I did his program. Um, he talks about the, um, the deep squat holding that for 30 minutes cumulatively over a day and then hanging for five minutes. Wow. So talk to me about the shoulder health element of what you do. Um, I keep it pretty similar to the, how we address the knees. and the idea is to restore a full range of motion push -up, which someone could do like on their

knees. You can also, like if you have dumbbells, you can lay back on a bench, and instead of just having an overhand grip, like if you were in a fight and you were going to throw a punch, you wouldn't just be standing there with an overhand grip. You would actually reach your arms back with more of a neutral grip. So that's how we press dumbbells. So we put the bench to an incline, and we hold the dumbbells with a neutral grip. That way the dumbbell doesn't run into the shoulder.

So with a normal grip, the dumbbell will stop short and it'll hit the chest. But if you rotate your grip more parallel than the dumbbell, you can get your full range of motion. So we try to restore a full range of motion in the shoulder while then strengthening everything back behind that shoulder, which is weak for almost all humans. So in zero, we're really just trying to restore full range of motion, push up with... excellent control on a rowing motion for back behind the

shoulders. But once it gets into the actual like program with weights and equipment, we do, uh, like tomorrow we have four different like shoulder elbow exercises. Yesterday, Tuesday, we trained upper body. We'd even trained the neck, the grip. So we're just trying to work out, uh, when it comes to the shoulders, we're trying to work out all those weak links and we're trying to

restore full range of motion. That's kind of my entire program is basically, um, trying to correct modern human deficiencies if i just had to summarize my entire program in a sentence correcting the most common modern human deficiencies so it's interesting i had um dr rocket on who is the uh orthopedic surgeon for crossfit so he's the one that's actually on staff on the games um super nice guy super down to earth And he was talking about the different kind of injuries.

And he said in CrossFit, they don't see as many knee injuries. It's more shoulder, especially, I think, from all the kipping and the explosive Olympic barbell work. But he said more like the kind of basketball, hockey, when you have those extreme changes in direction and deceleration, acceleration. So the shoulder health obviously is a big thing for a lot of the CrossFitters

out there. Being okay, I think it's the foundation training, understanding ring rows and the strict posterior work that's helped me a little bit. But when you have steering wheels, computer keyboards, cell phones, you just see that kind of forward shoulder carriage that so many people have now. That's modern life. So I feel like we have to do something to unwind that. And in CrossFit, it would make sense because CrossFit does use more of a full range of motion with the knees.

but with the shoulders doesn't use as much of a full like it's still more um in those mid ranges of motion whereas the knees you get more of a full range of motion and i think for i think that's probably the case for like really elite crossfitters but i feel like the the day -to -day crossfitters if they're not coming into it with pretty solid knees then it can quickly bounce out like that you said that's the orthopedic doctor like for crossfit so he's probably working

with a lot of elite yes crossfitters if he were to interview a bunch of people who had quit crossfit in the first month or two it's often because their knees can't handle those positions so my passion is not only is my passion not rivaling crossfit my passion is actually just getting atg into crossfit gyms so a number of these of the 600 plus atg coaches uh the highest background of them is crossfit because what they're seeing is let's say they have their crossfit schedule

at their gym they're seeing they can deliver some atg classes not mess with their crossfit classes but deliver some atg classes now they can train more of the people in the community because any age can do it and they can take people who maybe are like boy i'd like i'd like to do crossfit four days a week but my body can't handle it now they can do two days crossfit two days atg so i feel that's where the I feel the greatest potential for ATG is actually just being used

to assist CrossFit gyms. CrossFit already made it. CrossFit is everywhere. Everywhere I look up from Costa Rica to Korea has CrossFit gyms. So CrossFit made it and it's there and the gym has a fairly open setup. And in our system, like where's the machines? Like we don't use, we use very basic equipment, not like big gym machinery. So. to me, it seems like a really smooth transition.

A lot of these CrossFit coaches are just getting amazing results and their gym is becoming a lot more profitable because you already have all the gym costs. Now you deliver your CrossFit classes. Now if you can throw on a few more classes and reach different people in your community or retain members who might otherwise have to cancel because of injuries, I think it's there. I think ATG is probably there to support CrossFit

perhaps more than anything else. Well, it's been interesting because I got into CrossFit in 06. And so I've seen, you know, like 15, 16 years worth of, you know, ups and downs. And definitely when the game started to become more popular, I saw the injuries go up because people weren't leaving their egos at the door. You know, it was I want to be the next Rich Froning or whoever. People learning butterfly pull -ups before they can even do strict. And so, you know, as a coach,

I could see that. Luckily, it's... I think it's one completely other way now where understanding of physiology and accessory work and mobility has really been prioritized now, which is beautiful. So tools like ATG, I think are, you know, there's no better time to have them than now when that community is finally understanding, you know, let's create that balance in the body and let's take the weight off the barbell and let's get you moving full range of motion without pain.

And then we can start building you back up again.

Yep. yeah i think it's wonderful i'm really excited for that future with crossfit so talk to me about um the older population i know that your mom is kind of like the the poster child for atg for the senior community i mean just how i was trying to get myself where i could play basketball with my parents i was trying to get a system that they actually wanted to show up and do the workouts so a lot of trainers have noted that their own parents are the toughest clients to

get them to train and it's pretty simple regressions and also the sled the sled is my parents favorite tool both of them and now i've been able to use it uh when i was last in la my neighbor is 82 and he loved the sled so like to me that's the coolest thing that the sled is my number one tool that makes me able to go out and dunk a basketball on the weekend and feel like a million bucks but it's also for my 82 year old neighbor with no exercise experience he's able to do the

forward and the backward with the sled and get an incredible workout so My parents, it really just accelerated that learning process to realize like, wow, the sled is the key for the older generation. And from there, it increases the circulation so that you can even whatever else you're trying to accomplish in the program, you can have more success with it. Well, we did the sled today. We did the push and the pull. And I heard you talk about the relationship between.

being able to walk backwards as a senior and falling. Now, in my community, we respond to the broken pelvises and hips. And from the ex -phys side, the medical side, you learn that a lot of people that have that injury often don't ever recover. It's kind of like the one nail in the coffin kind of thing. So talk to me about that relationship as a kind of diagnostic tool.

And again, I don't know if it's anecdotally, some of the people that were very... um fragile that you've seen build back up through this training yeah so it's a direct correlation and a direct training process of dragging the sled backward so that you can go downstairs so when you go downstairs every single step is knee over toe knee over toe knee over toe so if you were to imagine going downstairs and if you film that and then if you put that on rewind You're doing

the exact same motion when you drag a sled backwards. So when you're dragging a sled backward, you're preparing yourself to go downhill. You're preparing yourself to go downstairs. So the stronger you get at that, the easier those activities become. But with the sled, it's not like an exercise where you have weights on your back and where you have that potentially injurious factor. Meaning if I put a thousand pounds on a sled and I asked my mom to drag it backwards, most likely it just

wouldn't move. Like most likely she'd be fine. She'd just be standing there and it's leaning. She's just hooked up to a thousand pounds. She'd just be leaning. So, okay. If she leaned backward against a thousand pounds, she'd just be standing there. But if I put a thousand pounds on a bar and put it on her shoulders, it would crush her body. So there's this fundamental difference between using a sled as the resistance versus using free weights on top of your body as the

resistance. So we do use free weight exercises. But those are specific things and we don't overdo them. Whereas the sled we found we can do daily. We can really use the sled more often to get through those shit zones and get restored and get into shape and get fit and get stronger. So when we go forward with the sled, it's wonderful for the toes and for the glutes. And a lot of us lose from all the sitting. We lose that quote unquote like. you know, connection or activation

to the glutes. So when you go forward, the sled is unbelievable for opening up the feet, getting rid of foot pain, Achilles pain, and getting the glutes to wake up. And then when you go backward, it's unbelievable for your knee health. And it's something that an older person can do. And yes, if they've found studies correlating your ability to walk backward with not falling down the stairs, well then walking backward and getting stronger

at that motion. It's almost safer because the sled like slows you down and allows you to really train the strength of that quality. So I think if they ever tested that, it would be like straight up miraculous. Now, speaking of foot health for a second, you're wearing Xero shoes. I had the founder, Stephen Session on here. I'm a huge barefoot fan. I mean, I get ridiculed on my gym all the time. I probably got some of the ugliest feet on the planet, but it just makes perfect

sense to me. Again, if you reverse engineer so many issues. We didn't have shoes. And even if we, you know, as we did in culture, it was a very thin kind of layer just to stop, you know, rocks and things from penetrating the skin. So kind of what's your philosophy on barefoot and or minimalist shoes when it comes to your training? My viewpoint on the barefoot shoe is trying to restore what's natural. But let's look at what's

natural. It wouldn't be natural to wear a shoe, a Nike Air that has this giant heel and then this narrow toe box. jamming up our foot, putting pressure on our knees. That wouldn't be natural. I also don't think it'd be natural to be walking on concrete all day. So natural life, I think is actually quite aggressive for the barefoot shoes. So I wear barefoot shoes all the time. I even play basketball in barefoot shoes, but I wouldn't advise someone to just jump into that

transition. Now you're here in the gym and we're on turf. So this is a softer material. much more like what you would experience if you're out in the wild, softer mud, grass, sand, that's more natural for the foot. So yeah, if you were just barefoot on like sand or grass or mud, that would be the most natural. So I like people to wear barefoot inspired shoes when they do their sled work. So barefoot inspired shoe with sled work is now really allowing your foot to move

and strengthen. outside of that ideally if your shoe doesn't have a narrow toe box because it's if you think about like if you look at your hand and if you put all your fingers together and then if you spread your fingers apart like which one's gonna have better balance obviously if you spread your fingers apart you're gonna have better balance and control and so with the foot as the foot gets unnaturally jammed together you're now able to like handle less of the forces

of life through your feet your feet are full of muscles that should be strong and mobile So the less capable the feet, that force has to go somewhere. So it starts coming up through the shins. You're probably more likely to have shin splints, more likely to have patellar tendonitis. So kind of like with the rest, what am I trying to do? I'm just trying to restore what's natural. So unfortunately, we're in that kind of limbo

where the world outside of us is concrete. So concrete everywhere is not natural, but Nike air cushions aren't natural. I've got to the point where I can wear barefoot shoes all day, but maybe for someone else, maybe wear whatever the most like comfortable shoe is you can find that has a wide toe box. And then when you go do your exercise sessions, that's the time you really have a lot of potency for strength through your feet. And so perhaps for your exercise sessions,

wear like a barefoot inspired shoe. Beautiful. Yeah, I love it. I mean, that's a very valid point and concrete. My little boy's on the track team and I went and bought him some running shoes and I love the minimalist ones. but he's running multiple miles a day on concrete. So I think there has to be natural. No. So you have to have a little bit more cushion just to absorb. Right. That's very tricky because yeah, you're wanting him to be natural, but the concrete is not natural

for those miles. If he was running, in fact, um, like if you wanted to restore quote unquote running form, uh like if you took your son and you had him uh go to a field and take his shoes off and just run he'd probably have just majestic form yeah like that most people can restore their ability to run with the sled and most people can restore fair running form just by running barefoot in grass absolutely well i'm sure people are fascinated to learn about atg kind of what

what the week would look like if they subscribed and then where they can find it yeah thank you very much for that um so we currently train i update the workouts every saturday for the week ahead so i'm constantly involved in the process this week i set up the workouts for monday through friday we went we're doing our legs monday thursday upper body tuesday or sorry legs legs actually i set up for monday friday this week upper body tuesday and thursday and wednesday mobility so

today we're working on mobility stuff Tomorrow, we'll actually work on more upper body mobility stuff. So I'm just trying to spread out a five -day schedule to cover everything from the toes to the wrist to the neck to the spine to the hips. And that's atgonlinecoaching .com. And someone can do a two -day -a -week gentle version of that. I have a book called ATG for Life. That was intended for longevity as a very confrontable

starting program twice a week. And then you've also seen... I have a book called Knee Ability Zero. So I only have two books. One of them is no equipment at all, just body weight to rebuild from the ground up. The other one is more like a taste of my full program with two really gentle full body sessions. So I'm trying to just trying

to provide solutions for anyone. i love using the app and being able to see the workouts i love working out five days a week i love you know trying to get stronger but in a way that makes me that is going to make my body last a long time but not everyone wants to do that someone might want to just do some body weight stuff someone might want to just do it two day a week so all covered now with that it's not just an app giving workouts you have the ability to upload

videos of yourself and get critiques so expand on that Well, when I made it, I didn't want to go online because I didn't like the idea of someone trying to do this stuff on their own. So the whole thing that I that I fine tuned was being able to have a business model where someone can send in video of themselves on any of the exercises, any session, along with any questions and be answered rapidly. So that's what I've always

done since day one. And as we've grown, I'm just obsessive about the quality of the coaching,

the response time. So for me. good programs were like having a map like but i didn't get near the results until i actually went and met charles poliquin and he actually looked at my form and i actually got to like see how form review works and really understand the the value of coaching form of being able to have a question answered so i feel like i feel like where someone can get on their own when they're new to a subject or even if they've been in a subject a while

but having a having a coaching process, being able to get questions answered. That's, I feel like it's exponentially valuable, but there's no long -term contract. So someone could do it. Someone could literally just do a month and that'd be totally fine with us. Like we don't, it's, it's whatever, however long of the journey you want to be with ATG. That's our goal is to make it something that, that someone could afford because how much would it cost someone to get

in -person training for this? Not everyone would be able to afford that. So I made my whole business model like, What would I have been able to afford back when I was a kid with totally terrible knees? So the business is kind of what I would have needed. Now you have the Xero program as well, which is, as you said, all body weight. I just went on a cruise. I'm actually about to go on another one next week. Oh, wow. And so obviously nowhere to drag a sled. Yeah. But they have treadmills.

Oh, yeah. So talk to me about that. You're either in a hotel or you're somewhere where you can't access a sled. I mean, I love getting on the

treadmill, not turning it on. turning around and then spinning the wheel backward because they often have some internal resistance but i have to immediately say not all gym owners appreciate that so uh i've never had a problem with it um but some gym owners have said it can break the treadmill but i'm kind of stuck in that limbo of like treadmills are like three four five thousand dollars sleds are don't come near that so i feel like there needs to be somewhat

of a cultural shift to the treadmill is The treadmill is doing too much of the job for the human. So we wind up with all kinds of weaknesses because we're not having to use muscles that we should have to use to move the treadmill. And so with the sled, it really puts it back on the human. You get so much more out of a sled than a treadmill. So when in doubt, I use that treadmill because I'm okay with breaking the machine. I'll choose

the human over the machine. But I do have to tell people, like, I'm not advising someone.

yeah like you should be aware and you should be respectful of you know what the rules are of that gym some some gym owners do it themselves so it's it's really going to depend on the gym owner whether they'll let you use the treadmill turned off and then spinning the wheel backward yeah i know i got some funny looks but yeah it worked yeah all right well i want to switch some closing questions so i can be mindful of your time you talked about your two books are there

any books that you love to recommend to people it could be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated I mean, I really enjoyed all of Charles Poliquin's books. I'm sorry I don't have like a bunch more better recommendations. That's a good recommendation. Yeah. So, I mean, it kind of varies what the prices are and where they're selling. There's even one that he wrote on strongman training. And so I don't use all that stuff. I just use the sled because it's

so gentle. So the sled is the gentlest, but he

actually has direct quotes in there. about the sled he says that if he was on a deserted island and he could only do one thing he'd have a sled and if you've looked into his work i think he had the most detailed and expensive gym setup i've ever seen but even to him with the most complex and expensive gym setup i've ever seen right there in his book on strongman training which he includes all the details of the sled he says if he could only have one tool it would

be the sled so I feel like that that's probably my number one recommendation. I think for like eight bucks or something, you can get like a scribbed account and read that book. It's right on there. So I think it's called I think it's called Applied Strongman Training, I want to say. But if you search Charles Poliquin Strongman Training, to me, that would be my number one recommended book. OK, yeah. And the price is

a funny thing. When I talk to people and they ask about, you know, what what should we get for a fire station gym? I get that one. It's a thinner book. It's a much more affordable, thinner book. So it's not even like an expensive book. So I think for a fire station, Charles Poliquin's strongman book. Okay. Yeah. But even the equipment itself, you know. Oh, yeah. Like you said, a treadmill, an elliptical with thousands of dollars. Right, right. Start with one of those

tank sleds from Torque Fitness. Yeah. And sandbags. I love sandbags too. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's the best thing you could do for a firehouse. Beautiful. All right. Well, the next question, what about a movie and or documentary that you love? It's the wrong timing. I've been over 400 days. I haven't watched a movie or a TV show or Netflix. It's just it's not in my. You're going to have to watch The Motivation Factor. Yeah, make an exception. So that's my number

one recommendation. That would be the next thing I'm watching. So brilliant. All right. Is there a person that you'd recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professions of the world? I mean, that's a really good question. I mean, the first person I'd have to recommend is my training partner. Um, his name's Derek Williams.

He goes by Mr. Infinity on Instagram and he's 43 and he's my training partner because he comes in here and he kicks my ass on the sled every day. And he's at 43. He's got himself back dunking on the basketball court. So he, when you see him play basketball, like he's not 43, like this is a body in its twenties. So again, I think for, I think for. law enforcement and fire department,

longevity is so valuable. Health and longevity is so valuable that I just feel like anyone who can provide insight in that way, I feel like that's like the most valuable advice I could give. So yeah, he's the person who comes to mind. Now, with all the research that you did, This audience is a very sleep -deprived audience, and I attribute sleep deprivation to a lot of the mental ill health, a lot of the weight gain, the cancer, the heart disease, you name it, everything.

The importance of sleep for recovery and growth when it comes to the musculoskeletal, have you delved into that world at all? Sleep is like one of my secret weapons. So I still did well

in life on low sleep. but i've done much better with sleep and that was one of the primary reasons i cut out entertainment completely so like i it was to start 2021 i decided i just wouldn't do any entertainment for the whole year no sports games movies netflix tv shows nothing and it's because now i fall asleep super early so i'm this crazy guy who goes to sleep at 9 30 and i never could have imagined i would do that because earlier in my 20s you're talking at least midnight

seemed Midnight seemed early. So by cutting that stuff out and going to sleep at like 930, you're talking I'm getting eight plus hours of sleep a night. That's like my secret weapon. For me, I did it more for the mental reasons of being able to be on point every day mentally. I mean, look, we're interviewing now. I trained this morning. So much is going on and I have to be mentally sharp. But I think that for the body. I think that for the immune system, those are

the two places I feel at the strongest. When I'm getting a lot of sleep, mentally, I do much better. And I feel like my immune system is just rock solid. I feel like if I start getting sleep deprived, I feel like my immune system is like, I feel like I can get sick very easily. So what do you think? Oh, I agree completely. And that's the thing. I mean, my, you know, this community, the profession I was in, We are so sleep deprived.

And then when this this virus came, you know, it worried me because they they are more susceptible. And we had a lot of very healthy, fit firefighters and police officers that luckily did well despite that environment. But we lost we lost a lot this year, too. I don't think it was, you know, that they were frail people, but that. year after year after year of losing sleep, you know, if you could delve in the sleep medicine world, it's the sleep debt is real. Like, you know,

when you lose it, you lose it. And then when you look at the impact of a poor immune system, you see the cancers, the heart disease, the autoimmune disease, the mental health problems. That's, you know, we don't, we don't die from one thing. We die from everything. And that's the point. Wow. So it's real. Yeah. Yeah. Charles Polken called sleep, like the most underrated health

factor. and so i just call it like my secret weapon like i think you can i think you can survive and i think you can survive well on low sleep but man if you're surviving well on low sleep and you are also getting sleep i feel like i feel like we could all survive so much better but there is so much good binge worthy content to watch at night so many good tv shows and this and that that again it's kind of tough for us to shut off and then we have then we have that

stimulating those stimulating lights and screens that we're looking at yeah Yeah, so it's very tough to fall. Like you can't just snap your fingers and fall asleep if you're someone who's used to going to sleep at midnight and watching TV. That's why I had to just like pull off the Band -Aid and try to go a whole year because I had this feeling at night that like I had to watch a TV show or two to wind down. I had that

feeling. But by cutting that stuff out, boy, what happens when you put one and a half hours

or so. of sleep additional for a year straight like my immune system feels like a young mike tyson yeah i did the same thing with alcohol so i've i've always said this i've never binged drinks i really didn't but i relied on it heavily to decompress in the evening yeah um especially more so towards the end of my career and did the 30 day stops and we just be right back at it again when i was done so actually about six and a half weeks ago i made the decision to just

stop stop wow no i'm gonna stop for x amount of time i'm gonna stop and that in itself you know i'm going to bed earlier because you think that it winds you down it doesn't you can buy an alcohol with television you're still wide awake at 11 30 at night now i've taken that out i'm actually getting tired earlier and earlier and earlier so so that's another thing but it's interesting with that same mindset with television

That applies with alcohol. What if I challenge that and don't turn on the TV, but just read instead? You know, how much sooner would I get drowsy then? Man, is that productive too. Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. All right. Well, then speaking of that. So when you are not doing all the incredible things that you're doing, what do you do to decompress? Really enjoy my family and my dog. So like I can't wait every morning.

I can't wait for my I take my dog like. down here by the water, we go on like a big loop every morning. Maybe it's a mile, mile and a half, two mile, maybe about a mile and a half. But like, I look forward to that walk every morning. And then the evening, like really look forward to time with my family. So I also feel like that's very fortunate. If I was just a single guy, um, I feel like that created when I was living on my own, I feel like it created the habits of

watching TV at night and stuff. Cause you don't, you don't have someone, you don't have a counterpart there. Yeah. So I feel like Having my wife made it a million times easier because we kind of grew to where it was like super enjoyable. All right, the phones are off. Now we get to actually like hang out, chat, bond. So that's the only things I've been able to find to replace that

family and my dog. What about you? Same. yeah it's funny because i bought my dog actually i've got a puppy now so three times a day but yeah the morning one is about the same distance actually about a mile and a half the evening one is shorter one because my one dog is 10 10 just over 10 so she's a little slower yeah but the middle one i'll i'll just destroy the puppy to get her tired dogs are great companions they are and then again i leave my phone at home it's my kind

of walking meditation time oh wow that's really smart yeah yeah i don't think i'd be able to do the no entertainment stuff at night if i didn't have family and or a dog yeah exactly all right well then um for people that want to subscribe to atg where do they find that and where's the best place to follow you on social media yeah

appreciate it atgonlinecoaching .com is where someone can dive in and do my program uh i highly recommend reading a book first to see if you like it that way there's no pressure um so by my books are on amazon knee ability zero and atg for life and i'm on instagram youtube uh tiktok and facebook as knees over toes guy and are you still offering the half off the first month yeah i think we're just going to do that all year okay so that's 2022 makes it 20 and

22 cents no long -term contract for someone who wants to dive in and ask questions and have their form coached perfect yeah it's a pretty pretty risk -free trial yeah i appreciate that brilliant all right well ben i just want to say thank you i mean i came down here you know i got to train with you we went and had steak for lunch now we did this so i truly appreciate your time today i really appreciate you you have to drive back so it means a lot to me thanks for coming