Bracing For All Impacts
Turning weaknesses into strengths, one weird exercise at a time.
As I peeked over the cliff, surrounded by fearless friends that were all itching to plunge into the water below, I found myself in an all too familiar situation. The echoing of my heartbeat through my ears, the subtle tremble in my hands, and the uncomfortable rumble in my stomach all resembled the reaction our ancestors may have experienced a couple of million years earlier in the face of a wildebeest on the African Grasslands. Though we shared the same physiological response, those primitive hunter-gatherers and I differed greatly in our subsequent psychological responses. In their case, the adrenaline rushing through their veins acted as the fuse to a catapult, gradually inching them towards the actions that would preserve their lives; whereas, in my case, the heightened senses and sudden need to visit the little boy’s room acted as magnets, repelling me from the edge and drawing me back to safety and comfort. Of course, my logic told me that I didn’t have much of a choice, as I knew the hard-nosed wrestlers and soon-to-be Marines that surrounded me would never let me hear the end of the story if I chickened out. So, I fell back upon the good-ole 3-second count down, took my 40-foot leap into those quarry waters, and squealed like a little girl the whole way down.
Whether you share my fear of heights or not, you likely recognize the shaky feelings I experienced prior to my big jump, as they embody the nearly universal barrage of sympathetic responses we encounter before a daunting task. Interestingly, I often find that in moments like these, when your body is silently screaming in refusal, when chills slowly traverse your spine, and when droplets of some mysterious liquid — which definitely isn’t pee because you’re a grown adult and are way too tough to pee your pants — trickles down your leg, that we can reap great rewards from doing exactly what we are scared of. In other words, sometimes the things we want to do the least are what we ought to do the most; furthermore, since it is typically our fears and weaknesses that fall into this category of actions to avoid, leaning into those actions offers the greatest opportunity for returns. Ben Patrick, more commonly known as The Knees Over Toes Guy, understands this concept well, as his ATG training programs are founded on the idea that we should strengthen the positions in which we are the weakest and most vulnerable in order to prevent injuries and maximize athletic potential.
Introduce Knees Over Toes Guy
Patrick, a life-long basketball player who spent his early years tortured by recurring joint injuries, limited athleticism, and multiple surgeries, has gone viral in recent years, as his unorthodox training philosophies for, “bulletproofing,” the human body have exploded across social media. After initially losing his childhood dream to play collegiate and professional basketball due to issues with his knees, Patrick set off on a mission to rewire his body’s faults to withstand all of the running, pivoting, and jumping he could ever ask for on the court. Since the days of sitting on the sidelines with knee pain and being mocked for his sluggish movements on the court, Patrick has recaptured full ranges of motion in his joints, acquired NFL Combine level speed, and developed elite jumping ability, all with the same artificial knee cap he received as a kid. Although Patrick’s ATG paradigm is founded in 10 core principles, each of these is inherently based on the tenet that we should train and strengthen our joints in the positions where they are most vulnerable: end ranges of motion. The method of flexing the knee over and beyond the toe during squats and lunges is the most renowned example of this tenet in action, and it is the movement that earned Patrick his famous nickname: The Knees Over Toes Guy.
Although his greatest hurdle was knee pain, Patrick discovered that he could only fully achieve his athletic potential through strengthening the entire chain, from his ankle all the way to his neck. This forced him to expand his repertoire of exercises and regimes to bulletproof the entirety of his body; consequently, his training programs and ideologies are not only valuable to aspiring hoopers, but to virtually anybody experiencing joint, ligament, tendon, muscle, strength, flexibility, or mobility issues.
If you put aside the biomechanics and physiology, Patrick’s system proposes a universal outlook on turning weaknesses into strengths: if you are uncomfortable, weak, or vulnerable in a given scenario, it is only through embracing and engaging with that scenario that you will overcome your discomfort, weakness, and vulnerability. What should you do if you are uncomfortable and squirmish in the cold? Take a cold shower or ice bath and learn how to control your breath and take back your comfort. What should you do if you are a weak swimmer? Spend more time in the pool practicing to become a strong swimmer. What should you do if you are afraid of public speaking? Spend more time speaking in public to get more confident in front of people. So, why should training and rehab be any different? What should you do if you are tight, weak, and vulnerable to injury when your knees are over your toes, your leg is extended behind you, or you are picking something up off of the ground? Spend time training your flexibility, mobility, strength, stability, and balance in those positions.
In addition to his approaches to the actual exercises, Patrick also emphasizes the flaws in modern thinking when it comes to the duration of rehab and injury prevention training. In particular, he highlights how you don’t expect to achieve a 315lb bench press, 5:00 minute mile, nor a graduate degree in a couple of months, so you shouldn’t expect to improve years of soft-tissue damage with a few weeks of rehab exercises and stretching. In combination with the previously mentioned core tenet behind the ATG system, this focus on long-term improvement wraps up the idea that pushing into situations in which you are in danger can make you stronger, in the long run. After all, ideas like these are so foundational and simple that even our hunter-gatherer ancestors understood them.
Now that you understand some of the main thinking behind the famous Knees Over Toes Guy, here is some content from, by, and of Ben Patrick himself to get you moving on your path to bulletproofing your life.