During the pandemic, I got fat. To be 100% truthful, I was always a little too fat, but I was also pretty strong (competitive powerlifter), so the extra girth was “justified.” However, as the Covid numbers kept climbing and climbing, I knew that doing a powerlifting meet, where sometimes hundreds of people are all in close proximity all day long, was not a great idea. So, if I wasn’t going to compete anytime soon, maybe I didn’t need to be so heavy. Dropping a couple pounds may finally make my knees feel better. They had been hurting on and off for years. I chalked it up as the cost of doing business when lifting heavy weights. So, if I wasn’t going to compete, then I shouldn’t need to lift such heavy weights. Logically, this was the best time to lose some weight, so my knees should get better. Right?
Fast-forward eight months, and I’m down forty pounds. I look better, my clothes fit better, and most importantly, I feel better. Except my knees. I had followed the plan to a T, and yet my knees oscillated from achy to a disconcerting brittle feeling. I thought if I increased collagen and fish oil supplementation that might cure it. It did not. I gave it another couple months, and even after dropping a few more pounds, the knees were not improving. I was really starting to worry that maybe I caused permanent damage from years of heavy lifting, and this was a genuine sign of arthritis. I’m only thirty-eight; I have a three-year-old son. I cannot afford to have junky knees this early in life. How am I supposed to play with my son? How am I supposed to play with my grandchildren?
Professionally, I also noticed that there were instances when I did not want to perform an example jump, especially if it was on one leg, for my students during class. Playing in a scrimmage game during basketball practice was something I would reluctantly join in only if I had to. However, I knew that my knees would be shot for days. Does any of this sound like you? The good news: you can fix your knees! However, you will have to put in the work. But if you are sick of not being able to do all the things you want to do because your knee mobility is holding you back, then it is time to take a look at Knees Over Toes Guy.
The beauty of Knees Over Toes Guy, or Ben Patrick, is that he gives away tons of information for free, and his personal training packages seem very reasonable. If you have any previous athletic or weight training experience (which I assume most of you have since you are PE teachers), then the information he provides through his Instagram account might be all you need. Even though my knees feel 100x better, whether I need it or not, I will subscribe as a thank you for all he has done for me.
His approach is simultaneously novel and a no-brainer. To have a healthy knee, it needs to bend. He doesn’t just advocate bending it a little, but full range of motion movements that would have made me cringe just thinking about them a year ago. Split Squats where my knee goes well over my toe? There is no way my knees could handle that, the pain would be excruciating. I came from a powerlifting background where you were taught to sit back, use the hips as much as possible, and barely let the knees bend past 90 degrees. We would routinely wrap our knees during heavy squats too, so even though I was building a strong squat, I may not have been building the supporting tendon and ligament structures I needed along the way. I tore my ACL close to twenty years ago playing basketball. I had never had a knee injury before. Was it a coincidence that I tore it after years of heavy squatting with a powerlifting suit and knee wraps all the time? Olympic lifters commonly do ATG (ass to grass) squats that go through extreme ranges of motion compared to powerlifters, and proportionally, they don’t have knee issues. I wonder how much better my knees, and squat, would have been if I had incorporated this training much earlier?
Another novel approach is he trains muscle groups in the legs with exercises opposite to their most popular variations, which builds strength and stability. For example, I spent years and years squatting. I had never done a reverse squat before, which is basically a knee lift with resistance. One could also lie down and secure a resistance band and pull it towards you with your feet. The foundation of his program is walking backwards with a sled. We train our calves all day, but have you ever trained the anterior tibialis, which is the muscle that runs across your shin? If you ever had a shin splint, you have felt your inflamed anterior tibialis. By training muscle groups in movement patterns opposite of the traditional repetitive way they are done in sport or life, he has helped thousands of people with correcting muscle imbalances and finally relieving knee pain.
I would like to say that the way he approaches strength and conditioning is the way I approach physical education. After having terrible knees as a young man, Ben Patrick decided to do something about it by trying radically different exercises to fix them. He did things that went completely against the grain of established protocols when it came to knee health and training the legs, and in the process, found what might be the best way to train for knee health. In my own life, I had an opportunity to create a physical education curriculum for my Montessori school from scratch, so I chose to have the games we play completely integrate with what’s happening in the classroom. Because of this, the students are getting all the fine and gross motor movement practice of traditional PE, but they are also getting so much more exposure to classroom content, which directly impacts their memory, concept retention, and critical thinking (link to video explanation here).
If your knees have been holding you back from doing active things you used to love to do, check out Knees Over Toes Guy, and start slow. You have to give it plenty of time. It was months before I even thought it might be helping. However, in half a year’s time, which goes by in a flash, they feel amazing compared to how they used to, and that is with no additional supplements, surgeries, treatments, etc. It has truly changed the way I think about knee health, mobility, and my future being an active dad. I can’t recommend his product or system enough. It has truly changed my life.