Love him or hate him, Joe Rogan brings us another interesting guest Ben Patrick AKA “The Knees Over Toe Guy,” to talk about his unorthodox training style. The name says it all, knees over toes is the cornerstone of his training technique. If you suffer from knee pain, do yourself a favor and follow Patrick. He now has 1 million followers on Instagram and counting...
WHO IS BEN PATRICK?
From 12 years old, Patrick had dealt with knee pain. He was psychotic about being a basketball player, which he attributes to some of his knee pain. By 14 years old, he had multiple tears in his knees; then, at 18, he had a partially replaced knee cap, a meniscus transplant, and quad tendon repair. He finished high school with no college ball recruitment, and by 19, he had more tears in his knee.
Patrick ended up finding Olympic trainer Charles Poliquin and thinks of him as a mentor. Poliquin introduced Patrick to the knees over toes concept, and from there, a lightbulb went on in his head. He started using these training techniques, and by the age of 23, Patrick received a full-ride scholarship to play Division 1 basketball. He left the program after the strength and conditioning coach wasn't on board with his training techniques.
He went on to become a trainer and opened a gym. Patrick began training young basketball players with knee pain in his area of Clearwater, Florida. He ended up working with an NFL player who was coming back from an ACL tear. From there, people from all walks of life started coming to him to help with their knee pain.
At 30 years old, Patrick has a 42-inch vertical jump and can easily throw it down on the court. Patrick offers a ton of free content that he shares with the world. For a more hands-on approach, he provides personalized training to check the form and make sure his clients are doing everything correctly. Patrick fully believes in getting maximum circulation in the knees while strengthening them without risking injury with exercises like squats as a rehab method.
Patrick’s driving force is to help as many people as possible. He’s not profit-driven, which is a breath of fresh air. You can check out his website to support his business, link below. He is a true gem as he doesn’t promote products for commissions or sell anything apart from his coaching and his books.
The majority of the podcast episode revolves around fixing knee pain through Patrick’s training program. It’s important to note that Patrick bases his training on working from the ground up; this means strengthening body parts like the feet, ankles, and the tibialis anterior. He emphasizes working on the smaller muscles that can improve overall strength. Instead of constantly honing in on things like squats and bench presses, he talks about how you should work on muscles like the hip flexors, tibialis, and quadratus lumborum.
They also breach the subject of improving shoulder, elbow, and wrist strength and flexibility. Plus, they talk about other exercises such as reverse sit-ups where you lie on your back, attach straps to your feet, and bring your knees up to your chest.
The podcast is closed out with Rogan thanking Patrick for providing a wealth of knowledge to help thousands of people, including himself, heal and strengthen their knees.
BEN PATRICK’S TIPS ON HOW TO FIX YOUR KNEE PAIN
- Never work through the pain. Patrick found the best results come from clients who perform exercises with ZERO pain. Then do higher reps and use his unorthodox styles until you make gradual progress.
- Use your work ethic to bulletproof your knees.
- Start with walking backward where your knees are slightly over the toes. He got this from traditional Chinese wisdom that said walking backward helps to prevent knee cartilage from breaking down.
- Drag a sled backward is one of the foundational exercises that Patrick preaches. He got this idea from Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell, who studied Finnish forestry workers who often dragged trees while walking backward, leading to stronger backs and knees.
- Walk backward on a treadmill without the machine turned on. (*He jokes, "this is great for the knees but not great for the machine.")
- Knee exercises have three levels; loaded, unloaded, and assisted.
- Start strengthening from the ground up.
- Combine strength and flexibility for optimal results while reducing chances of injuries.
BEN PATRICK’S DIET
In the episode of JRE, they touched on Patrick’s diet and how he doesn’t take vitamins or many other supplements. His belief in eating clean while executing his training techniques makes it clear that his training modalities are responsible for his remarkable achievements. He thinks that throwing tons of vitamins and supplements might bias his results.
For breakfast, he has instant coffee with protein powder. Lunchtime consists of a simple rotisserie chicken from a supermarket and also gives one to his dog! He has two servings of protein for dinner and skips the starches and carbs. Then for dinner, he has some fruit for dessert. At this point, Patrick and Rogan share a similarity as they both primarily eat meat and fruit.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
We love to see how Ben Patrick is slowly shifting the commonly taught idea of not training with knees over toes. The proof is in the pudding; Patrick has coached thousands of people to live knee pain-free.
We recommend you check out Ben Patrick’s books on Amazon: Knee Ability Zero and ATG For Life. He also offers membership to his website, where you will get form checked on your training for a very reasonable price of $49.50/month.
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Kiel DiGiovanni
Author