Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 492 - Knees Over Toes Guy Ben Patrick

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

Ben Patrick is the “Knees Over Toes Guy”, CEO and founder of the Athletic Truth Group. Ben had struggled with knee and shin pain for years during his basketball career. After several surgeries, Ben dedicated himself to researching and discovering the best methods to recover from his injuries, as well as bulletproof his knees and ankles to allow him to perform at an even higher level before his injuries and surgeries. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter: https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢FREE LMNT Recharge Sample Pack: http://bit.ly/3bxyMND ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

What's up, Pat Project fam? This episode is brought to you by Element Electrolytes. Speaking of Element Electrolytes, I actually wanted to ask you, Insuma, you being all jacked and tan and all strong and pretty, do you take your Element Electrolytes pre or post workout? I actually take it pre, during, and post. Sometimes I'll do more than one pack. So if I finish the pack of Element that I had during like my workout or my jujitsu session i'll pop out another one sometimes post and that

hydration really helps my recovery because sometimes after you get done with a really hard workout when you are sweating a lot you feel sore you feel kind of tired and you feel drained there is absolutely no problem with taking more than one pack of element yeah i'm really interested in trying it like uh intro workout right i've, I've always been one of those guys that's like, oh, you got to have your, your pre-workout and then your post-workout and in the middle, it's like usually water or something. Right. But now with Element Electrolytes from what Rob Wolf told us about how it like maintains strength and all this other just amazing benefits. I'm just, I'm really stoked about it. And if you guys want to be like us, we actually like getting the value bundle because

you essentially get a box for free. But if you're not ready to fully commit, Element is still offering you guys a free Element recharge pack. So that's an eight sample pack. All you have to do is cover the shipping. You can do so by heading over to drinklmnt.com slash power project. Again, it's absolutely free. You just have to cover shipping. Make sure you guys go there and check it out right now. group. Athletic Truth Group, or ATG, is a gym and online coaching company based out of Clearwater Beach, Florida. ATG is the first of its kind, being the first online gym in the world to coach athletes' form and technique seven days a week. Ben had previously struggled with knee and shin pain for years during his basketball career. After several surgeries, Ben dedicated himself to researching and discovering the best

methods to recover from his injuries, as well as bulletproof his knees and ankles to allow him to perform at an even higher level before his injuries and surgeries. Ben was personally mentored and influenced by the late great Charles Poliquin and credits Charles as his original influence for the knees over toes method. Through his unique training methods, Ben went from having an artificial kneecap, surgically repaired quad tendon, replaced meniscus, a torn MCL and ACL, extreme patellar tendon pain, and knee bursitis, to being able to rehab his injuries and work back to a 40-inch vertical jump,

improved performance on the basketball court, and 100% pain-free knees. But you guys probably don't want to hear about that, because that's a different story. Please enjoy this conversation with Ben Patrick. It feels like a warm hug. It feels like a warm hug amongst four men. Yes. Four men. Four hot men.

Let me tell you what happens. Five men, I guess we got in here, yeah? I immediately want to call my mom, and I say this every time, I want to call my mom and tell her I love her. Wow. That's actually true. That's all I want to do. Like, I want to call her and tell her I love her, and I want to give everybody hugs.

I have. Not today, but I will do that later. It's too early in the morning. Oh, okay. I'll do it later today. You got to wait a little bit, huh? Yeah. We're rolling. What? Yep. Yep. When?

Soon. We're going now? In the past future. Alright, let's light it up with some Mind Bullet. Oh my gosh. Here we go. Now it's a party. I took the capsules. I can't do... You may want to start with half, potentially. Yeah, half.

Half seas. I think he should do full. Oh, my God. He'll be fine. He's all fired up. I feel like he'll be fine. Okay. And down the hatch, all three with a shot of my bullet potion.

If he turns into a wolf, I'm going to be the first one to run out of the room. He's like, wait, really? He's like, huh? No, I'm pretty sure he could catch you, bro. He'll just jump to the other side of the room. He's like, wait, really? He's like, huh? No, I'm pretty sure he could catch you, bro. He'll just jump to the other side of the room and get you. Oh, yeah, he'll catch me in a heartbeat, for sure. This is dope. I'm looking forward to studying up on this.

Seeing what will happen. Yeah, after you already took it, right? I realized I was sipping it before you guys, and I'm like, wait, but should I? Just like the new guy prank. It's like we faked him out, and we didn't actually drink any of it. Exactly. No, we drank it. All right.

Well, let's get to the bottom of this. I know a lot of people out there. We recently had the back doctor of all back doctors on our show, and we're trying to help people out. We're helping people with their nutrition. We're helping people with their training or helping people with their training. But a lot of people run into injuries. They run into lower back. It's really common.

I think shoulders are pretty common. But we see a lot of people with banged up knees. And you've been studying this and working on this for quite some time, right? Yeah. Since I was 12, really, it's when, like, I knew I was different than other kids when I was 12. Remember, like, a fire alarm at school and being like you know i can't run like i have to be like by 12 i had to be like warmed up i mean you mentioned me before the podcast you had problems from 13 to 16 by 18 i had you know three different surgical alterations in my knee takes your joy away for me it was basketball yeah

so nothing i love more than basketball nothing I hated more than that because it just represented so much pain. So you're 12 years old. And when they have a fire drill, you're like thumbing through Kelly Sturette's book and like, hold on. I need to do these mobility drills. And let me do a couple jumping jacks and I can join the rest of you. Pretty much. I remember at 14 having like early morning high school practices. I'd have to get there half an hour before everyone else.

My nickname was Old Man. The coach called me Old Man because by 14, it took me half an hour just to be able to get warmed up. Now, you want to run? You want to race? We could just race. You can go at it right away. Exactly.

Man, it just stops. It gives you your joy back of what you like to do. That's it. Let's talk a little bit about pain because I think that pain is something that is really underestimated. And I think Phil DeRue has pointed this out before. We've had him on the show, and he works with a lot of fighters. And he just talked about how much pain blocks so many different things that we do and we don't even realize it. And also just how, uh, demoralizing it can be at a young age like that when the rest of your buddies are playing basketball or chucking a football around, um, you know, at lunchtime randomly, they're chucking around a football and you, you know, you feel like you can't participate.

Um, it's fucking depressing, you you know being hurt is depressing and as we mature and as we you know grow older and as we start to you know get into power lifting or bodybuilding or jiu-jitsu and you tear something or you get hurt severely um you're kind of reduced to nothing like you feel on top of the world you have this kind of big ego you feel really good about what you're able to do all your capabilities. And then in an instant, it feels like it's all taken away from you. And now you have to deal with this and try to manage this pain all the time. What was the pain like for you?

Yeah, I mean, you know, as a kid, it's like this chronic pain. You're told, oh, it's growing pains or, you know, rub this on it or, you know what I mean? Go to every doctor and this and that. And like, it's just still there. Then you start to have, boom, something happens. You're like, something happened. You know what I mean? Now you're like hobbling around.

Months are going by like, shit, I need to see a doctor. You know what I mean? So I think it messed up probably my hormones. I think I was so depressed because of that. I think it probably messed up a lot of stuff through those ages. So, yeah, the pain, it's like, dude, we're human. I love so many of your quotes because it's like, life is not just this freaking fairy tale. You ever seen a birth? Like, holy shit, is life beautiful, but holy shit, is it not a freaking fairy? Like, it's more magical than we think it is,

but it's also, like, more, like, severe and fucking hard. Well, either one of those people could die in that instant, and it wouldn't surprise you. I mean, it would be shocking and horrifying, but you would be like, well, yeah, it seems very, like, a traumatic experience. Yeah. So I think it's something that has to be confronted.

My approach on it now is, like, so, like, I don't touch any kind of foam rollers or any kind of body treatment or any kind of creams to rub on or any kind. Like I want to know my pain. Like I want to know any possible pain I have. That's like your, that's like your signal from your body saying like, hey, here's an area to handle. to handle. And then it really started changing for me when I started realizing not only was that pain showing me where I had an issue, but actually where I had more potential. Wherever you have that pain, start thinking about it differently. It's like, don't, don't run from that pain. Quit trying to shut that. Your body's talking to you. It's a two-way communication, but we're usually in just in a one way with our body. Body says something, shut the fuck up. You know what I mean? Squash that. No, the, the, your up. You know what I mean? Squash that. No, the, the, your body's trying to tell you where you have an issue and that could actually,

you could get better from that because now, now you handle that and you find out weak points in there. Now you're total. So for me, it was like the jumping thing. So in basketball, dude, I mean, you see, I'm not, I'm not six, six, you know, um, to make it as a basketball player. Yeah. You're short and you can't, like, I couldn't jump my, I think my muscles didn't develop right from the knee pain. So I had a 19 inch vertical and I was like the best, I couldn't get over that 20 inch mark. Okay.

Really bad for a basketball player. Um, so I had long given up's part of being white as well. It's not being able to jump. Well, he might change that. Absolutely no comment. They made a whole movie on it. It was based on a true story of all of our lives.

No comment. That was the intern. So, dude, I had long given up on the idea of dunking you know i the best i got to was like scraping the little thing that that holds the net you know and it's like oh touch the rim you know what i mean like touching the little scoopy below the rim was like the best i got to in high school so man I had long given up on that. Then as I started figuring out my knees, I started being able to play basketball again. I couldn't play 17. You told me you couldn't play like 13, 14, 15 in that area. 13 through 16. Yeah. I was just pushing through the pain until eventually because of different surgeries and whatnot. Like then if I would go play once, it was like too much swelling,

too much, you know? So I wasn't playing 18, 19, 20. So then 21 started getting back able to play. That's when I really started conquering my, my knees.

And then some buddies were like, you know, after a bit, maybe like six months of this kind of training, some buddies were like, dude, I think you could dunk. And I was like,

you know, immediately laughed like, yeah, right. You know what I mean? Sure enough, like I could fucking dump. Like I somebody's like, dude, I think you could dunk. And I was like, you know, immediately laughed like, yeah, right. You know what I mean? Sure enough, like I could fucking dump. Like I didn't like, it just happened. Was that putting on maybe almost, uh, like 15, 20 inches on your vertical? Like, is that nearly doubling your vertical or

at this point? Yeah. So, you know, you can just barely dunk and you don't now it's like, you know, like real easy enough that when I play, like if I get open, boom, it's coming down like two hands. So, you know, there's a progression of like, you know, with no one there and, you know, hand just over there. But, but yeah, so, I mean, really from training and then just jumping, you know what I mean? Wasn't from all the plyometrics I was doing that actually like destroyed my knees and, you know, um, so that'll, that changed it for me as well. And I think it me an opportunity i looked i was like this is an opportunity to make handling pain cool you know so that's everything i do is um it's dude i'm not like knees over toes everything i do is just a calculated effort to try to help people handle i want to stay on this topic of pain just

for a little bit longer so you know just for everybody out there listening, you know, um, sometimes, you know, uh, sometimes we get an accumulation of something that everyone can see, like when people gain body fat. Um, and clearly that ends up being a weakness for some people, people that have excess amounts of body fat, you can kind of think, okay, well, they struggle with, they have a hard time with their food. You know, with pain, you can't really see someone's pain. It's also really hard to like judge someone's pain. Again, with different people being different sizes, you could see someone that's 200 pounds, 300 pounds and so on.

And it's very, it's very clear to everybody. But when you have pain, it's very difficult to kind of see like what kind of pain someone's in. But I love what you said about kind of leaning into it and recognizing like this is a really cool opportunity because this is a weak chain in my system. And you're only strong as your weakest link. And so if I can play basketball and I can do all kinds of things, how good am I if I can't be quick or if I can't cut or if I can't jump very well?

It seems like jumping is a major requirement of basketball. You'd have to start to maybe think about a different sport, but even all sports require a good first step and they require you to be quick and nimble and stuff. So you're kind of left with not a whole lot if you have that pain sitting in there. So attacking, it seems to be the number one thing to really focus on. For you, you mentioned plyometrics, and we see a lot of coaches when they coach volleyball, they coach these sports that require some jumping skills. They have the athletes jump more. And you're kind of like, maybe we should get these people in the weight room.

Maybe there's a better way. Uh, what was the way for you? What, what helped you the most? Was it going in and, and like lifting weights or what was the, what was the big difference for you? Oh yeah. So that was the big shift for me was probably through, you know, all the way through 18, 19, you know, like I was already bombed out, finished high school, no recruitment, you

know? Um, and I was trying all these treatments, you know, like I was already bombed out, finished high school, no recruitment, you know? Um, and I was trying all these treatments, you know what I mean? The amount of money I probably spent on supplements for my knees is like embarrassing. Like, thank goodness. Like, like my mom works for me now I pay her very well. Okay. But so now I feel like I'm like getting back in exchange with my parents, but the amount of crap I put them through with my knees is absurd. But it was all on treatment. Not once along that chain did anyone ever say, you know, bro, your knees have very little ability. But if we look at every study in history, ability is only a good thing. The more pain-free ability we have in an area, the less chance of

pain and injury. Like life could still be, if I jump off a skyscraper, my knees are, you know, exploding, you know? So it's still, it's still just like a math equation, but it's trying to put that math equation in our favor. So I saw a guy that, that I know Mark has worked with, Charles Poliquin. Rest in peace. I think he's one of the biggest geniuses ever. Oh yeah. He was amazing yeah so i read everything this guy wrote you know and there wasn't a ton of visual examples i'm so excited right now i love stuff on charles poliquin yeah

so literally like every word that guy's written i've read it at least like three four times so it wasn't a ton of visual examples so the first guy talked about nasal breathing he was the first guy that i saw talk about nasal breathing like 20 years ago oh really yeah he wrote an article called like shut your mouth and train or something like that yeah um like if there's anything i could do in my career would kind of be to take some of his genius and just make it like super fucking accessible and just like common knowledge you know what i mean but so we go from charles but, you know, I couldn't see a lot of visuals. Like, you know, there's not like visuals of him like training his knees and stuff, you know?

So then I saw a guy named Keegan Smith that I saw recommended from Poliquin, Australian guy. You know Keegan? Yeah. Okay. So to this day, Keegan's my strength mentor. We're like super tight. We're driving up here. I see her on the phone like two and a half hours. Yeah. I remember Charles Pullipin was one of the

first guys that I ever heard to talk about having your knees over your toes and how important it is. He's like, he's like, maybe you want to avoid it if you're, you know, squatting 500 pounds. But he's like, if you're an athlete, you end up in this position all the time. Exactly. So we're gonna have a lot of fun breaking this down because I think some people can see me as like an extremist, but it's actually not that way at all, you know? Anyways, so I start seeing videos of Keegan and, um, and like I said, to this day, he's my strength mentor. He literally certifies people now in knee ability, which is what I teach because I'm a, I'm in the trenches trainer doing what I do. I don't know anything about certifying other coaches. You know, he's been leading other

coaches for a long time and learn that from Charles. And, um, so I've spent time now in person with Keegan and I spent time in person with Charles and, you know, I was, uh, you know, so prepared for the time I had with Charles that I was able to get every question that I had for that guy answered. And so much of the gems that he had, he did have to save for the higher priced in person. This means you can probably work on us and help us. I learned from some really successful guys. He had a magical way of helping people heal from injuries through active release therapy and all kinds of different things.

Yeah. Now I don't, I didn't, I recognize my role in it and that's not my role. My role is getting it like as simple as possible. You know, his level of genius was like a whole nother, whole nother deal. Right. But, but I got to spend time with him in person, get questions I had answered. I mean, like he trained an Olympic gold medalist long jumper, but you know, it's not like he's written, I mean, that could have been a book in itself, you know, but he, he had to write what the market was going to buy. You know what I mean? And, and he had to reserve certain data for the high, you know, it's about a thousand bucks a day to spend time with this guy you know and he you know if i looked down when i was like doing an exercise like he

he hit me a couple times you know it might not have felt like much to him but like my jaw was a little bit sore um he he was intense yeah right um so i really got to get everything i you know all the questions i had for him and now since that point i i ran my own gym for six years during corona i made the decision um so many people were needing this that in person it was just kind of impossible and it was still just playing with my heart because I was starting to train NBA guys in person. And, you know, you can charge bigger numbers and stuff. But it's like, fuck, I was having problems when I was 12. Like, I go to sleep at night well because my business is just what I wish existed.

That's it. I don't go outside of that. I don't take other opportunities. If Mark offered me a million dollars right now, I wouldn't take it, you know. I just do what I wish was there. So it's like shit you can just get started with and start doing. And it is the concept of bulletproofing. It's not, you know, I slept on the wrong side. So I was a little bit, you know, I think I got this one treatment. It was, I felt great. And then the next, oh, but the next day it hurt. No, it's like, you're, you're the product of your work. Like we look at those knees.

What's your level of pain free ability. That's what we can control 100%. We can control how good we get our pain-free ability, and that puts the odds in our favor. So that's what my career is. That's what I'm going to be diving into tremendous details, putting Mark through. They've got me scheduled for literally nine videos. It's going to be a good day. I'm scripted and ready for every single one. One of the cameramen actually is going to have like the most torturous workout of his life. He doesn't know, you know, we don't know which one it is. I know which one it is.

But so it's going to be a good day. But no one's going to work through pain. We're just going to improve pain free ability. Yeah. So this is something. Yeah. If you're a powerlifter and you start trying to drive your knees over your toes, trying to no one has ever matched power lifting numbers with their knees over toes. Look at the power lifting world. Every sport has

what you have to do for that sport. And it puts us at risk, you know. So as Mark was saying, if you're a volleyball player, basketball player, you have to do those jumps for your sport. My God, you probably don't need extra jumping on top of that. You should be focusing on the protection on top of that. And that's what's rocket launched my vertical. And I've worked with a ton of the top jumpers in the world. Now, you know, you see these guys going viral doing the 360 between go look at their YouTube channels. You will see leading up to those many of them, you know, I'm not trying to take credit for, I'm just saying, go look for yourself. You'll see many of them doing these exercises that I've been doing. So it's, it's about making it cool, but it's about getting honest with yourself.

The exercises are kind of resistance training. Yeah. This is strength training. This is bodybuilding. This is powerlifting. Really, it's like powerlifting applied to bulletproofing. Honestly, like every, everything I try to get down, you know, there's certain things you do at first to get into it. But like, by the time you get, I only have three simple programs. By the time you get to third one, everything it's, it's numbers. Like I'm, I'm measuring like, okay, well don't be surprised that you can't decelerate into that jump shot without pain. If you can't do X amount of load. You know what I mean?

I remember Charles in his basement which is just like you've never seen more equipment in your life. It went down this guy's basement and it was like it almost made you kind of like do a double take and think there's something wrong with this man. He had so much fucking

equipment piled on top of each other and all these different uh um dumbbells with different handle thickness he's like that one's three-quarter that one's this one he's like no one can pick that one up over there and like i was trying to pick it up a bunch of times and i kept getting brian shaw was with me he couldn't pick it up like i was like what do you even have this you know what is this even for? Yeah. Then he showed me how to do like a particular lunge in a particular way. And he's like, you know, keep your chest upright. And he was smashing me.

He's had a stick. He's like poking me with his stick. And I'm trying to do this movement. I just started sweating. I didn't even do a rep yet. I just start like, you know, I'm pouring with sweat. And he's, you know, he's because I was like, I got a little something in my right knee. And so he's working with me on it and he's just having me try to do like a lunge, but in a way that, you know, a Charles Poliquin style lunge, trying to keep

the chest real upright, trying to really lean into the leg a lot and drive the knee forward. And I think I had like 25 pound dumbbells, my whole body started because he wants you to do it very slowly. He has a tempo and he has you to do it very slowly he has a tempo oh yeah and he has you pause and stuff like that and he had me like kind of pulse up and down a couple times and then he's like okay that's one rep and so we're gonna do like five reps and i was just i was dying my legs were so full of blood and like felt like lactic acid i was like holy crap like it just crushed me and he's like i have a girl who's a skier who does that with 80-pound dumbbells. He's like, she needs to use straps.

He always makes you feel good by letting you know which female athlete is crushing your numbers. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But that's what was eye-opening for me is I realized this whole time it wasn't about which version of BioFreeze I was using. You know what I mean? They all didn't work for me. Think about it on a pain scale. Okay, going for a walk. How much ability do you need for that? Okay. How much ability do you need for basketball? I was simply

far, you know, from that number needed for basketball. And a lot of guys are, are closer. They have decent ability. And so they get some pains and the biofreeze works wherever I just had a much bigger gap. So then starting to look at Charles's stuff and he was, he was especially big on these numbers for the upper body And that's where my career has kind of been devoted to just making that for the needs, you know and it was it was this like math system that just made me realize how pathetic I was, you know, but That give that gave me so much hope yeah, you know that is the first time someone just illuminated for me You're just not you're not that strong, you know, in the right areas.

You see what I mean? So, yeah, my career from that point has been dedicated to that stuff. And it's really gone through three distinct phases. The first phase, I just want to be able to play basketball without pain. Honestly, I contemplated giving up so many times. When I started experimenting with Charles and stuff. I would experiment in the morning, like 4 a.m. Then I would paint walls all day. I would put the CD player down. I would just be like alone with my thoughts, like trying to like just that's a weird like go spend 10 hours painting walls with no with nothing to distract

your mind. You might make a breakthrough that the world needs honestly yeah so i i think that's part of the secret of creativity is like you know life is all it's like coming in at it you know anyways then i would go at night be experimenting again and it took some time because i couldn't even do like mark what you were talking about you know that's why i'm the knees over toes guy because i couldn't even do like Mark, what you were talking about, you know, that's why I'm the knees over toes guy, because I couldn't do knees over toes at all. So not only am I not trying to force people into I was like the one of the worst cases I've seen at that, you see what I mean? So that's what made me good at that. And I just wanted to be able to play without pain. So I

kept doing it testing doing testing. So and let me give you the backstory of if someone only listened to 10 seconds of this podcast i think anyone would have come to the exact conclusions i had if you were so insane that you literally like still thought you were going to make the nba like to this day i actually think i'm going to play in the nba to this day i'm still that insane and throughout this process so finishing high school if you get no college recruitment from any level like you're not going to the nba you know what i mean but i was saving up to be able to go to one of these like uh these like postgraduate you know academies to like get my second shot to play okay first year of high school i still couldn't still couldn't even play basketball

without my age second it was my third year out of high school. Saved up like 15 grand or whatever. Went to one of these second chance academies. Because by that point from just trying to find these regressions, I could actually play a little. And I didn't know what was going to happen. Was I going to go blow my knee out again? Well, sure enough, in season i actually kept getting more athletic and my knees felt better and better day one you know and i'm paying my 15 grand right and they have this like recruiting expert who's gonna like help me get recruited so he comes in like with a chart and like sits me down like on a scale of one to ten and it's all like ones twos threes out of ten and he basically is telling me like the strategy you're like the lowest numbers are the best numbers, right?

This whole like layout of how much I suck in like every, like all these detailed categories. But he tells me like, look, like, so we have to get this out of the way right now. Like it's, like, it's not possible for you to get a scholarship, right? But what we can do is we can start like trying to use my academics to like get into a school and I can pay and be that preferred guy on the end of the bench, washing everyone's underwear and stuff. So he tells me that on day one, I call up my dad, tell him about it. And my dad's like, so what do you feel? I'm like, just lit a fire under me, man. I got a full ride scholarship that year.

Damn. Guess who calls me up? The recruiting expert. Thank you, Jessica Smith, for delivering us coffee. Thank you. So I already got the full ride scholarship. He calls me up and I'm thinking he's going to tell me he was wrong. He's begging me not to take that. He's like, I know the school you're going to. He's like, you're never going to

play a minute. This man is that school, right? God. Two year, two year starter led my team to back-to-back conference titles, which they hadn't won in years, ended up becoming their strength coach. And they had one of the most legendary runs in junior college history, just dominance. Okay. These players were building VMOs and do building VMOs and doing things that other teams weren't doing. They went like eight straight conference titles or something. So my point is just that throughout every step and to this day, I think I'm going to the NBA. If you have no shot at going to the NBA and you legitimately believe you're going to the NBA, you're either going to just like, and with having already had three surgical alterations by the time I was

18, you're either going to fail horribly or you're going to figure some shit out. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I just could have given up so many times. I know I said that was gonna be like a 10 second story, but it was great though. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, that's just, that's just the underlying theme of it so the first part of that was trying to just be able to play without my knees killing you know what i mean like to because let's say you play one day and then like you can't even get out and play the next day like you can't be a part of a team you know what i mean so that was phase one was just being able to play then the second phase was trying to get athletic enough to be able to play at a high level.

And now the third phase, man, right before Corona hit, I was feeling good. I was training NBA players. I have beat NBA players trying their hardest one-on-one. That doesn't mean you get to just go say, hey, can I have a tryout for the NBA? It doesn't work like that. Okay. mean you get to just go say hey can i have a tryout for the nba it doesn't work like that yeah okay and even part of my plan even once i was beating nba players one-on-one i figured it'd be like in my like almost 10 years from now i figure would be having a shot at it because some team will think shit we have three out of every 15 players are can't even suit up for that

game that's the current stat 20 like can't even suit up for the game. That's the current stat. 20% can't even suit up for the game. So if this guy can even improve that a little bit and save us one of those, my roster spot would be worth... Anyways, so that's my crazy plan. That's my current plan. Coach slash player. Right. Look, you have 15 guys.

They're not all getting the game. Yeah. You can tell me just like that recruiter told me that I'm never going to play. Leave that to me. But I'll save you one or two injuries. So my spot will actually be worth more than one 15th. How would you get a tryout?

Like, uh, cause like you hear that sometimes. I remember, uh, the movie was made with, uh, Mark Wahlberg when he tried out for like the Eagles and he just was like, he just happened to run into somebody and he had a shot and then he ended up being fucking awesome and it worked out well like how do you get a shot like there's the D league right or G league yeah and it's never it's never happened something like this never happened in basketball it's happened in football and some other sports where it is more fit like

physical and and they have a they need a ton of guys on the roster and stuff but yeah my strategy is like if i train a like high enough players and again if i'm in like my late i'm turning 30 this year so i was thinking in my late 30s there was once this like italian guy who was so smart about the game that they knew that he wouldn't be like his peak physically or whatever but he would come in and like and and they signed him to the nba like from europe at like he was like a 38

year old rookie because they knew he would like Improve the iq of the team and blah blah. You see what I mean? So it's like I I feel like it'll take a while And again, I know it's insane. It's not like my life is a failure if I don't do that But the point is i'm still training for that. So now I need not only To not have knee pain not only to be really athletic but now i have to have insane longevity so that's really where my system is now is i've got it down my mom can do

every single step of my system yeah there's no exercise that she can't do it's all levels but it's all just levels of strength you see what i mean so that's so that's kind of the evolution for me is getting pain-free, getting athletic, and now having to be like, shit, now I have to hold on to this long enough that I'll be so wise that some team will give me a shot when I'm like damn near 40. You know what I mean? I would make the team healthier and they would do better. Every team I've worked with has done so much better. You know what I mean? But I realized it's like a long play. I have to keep running my career. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But that's where I am right now. I'm still working on my NBA plan that I started when I was five. Have you thought about any overseas professional teams or anything like that? Kind of going that route? At this stage, to be quite honest. you have nba is this like big level i actually played some in europe i had plenty of contract offers i could be playing in europe right now it's honestly i much prefer being here with my family running my business yeah i don't really want to be a play like i'm working seven days a

week took a day off on my wedding day a few years ago i took most of the day off when my kid was born last year that's it like haven't taken a day off other than those two days i'm not trying to go be spending years being a player and i realized that because i would go over like for certain tournaments in europe and stuff and it was like i had to choose trainer or player and i don't give a shit about myself. I want to help other people. I just think that if that shit happened in the NBA, I would just do it for a season just to spread more fricking positivity and helpful shit. That's all. You see what I mean? I would much rather, and I'm sure you can relate to this. It's such a higher level feeling of helping others than just yourself. Like I couldn't,

I couldn't switch now when I was young. Yeah. live for myself you know and you think it's you think that's the best thing you could do is your own career and then as you get older you realize that's actually a really limited view of life and there's much greater it doesn't mean you can't be successful yourself you know look at the charitable work that guys like lebron do the guy i feel like lebron's happy as shit he helps so many people you know what mean? So I actually think our happiness has a little more to do with how much we're helping other people. And I've seen some pretty depressed guys who are very successful themselves because they haven't aligned themselves. So it doesn't mean you can't be successful yourself, but also be aligning yourself. And so at this point, I'm like, I'm living my my frickin dream.

I mean, before before we leave the idea of pain and that, that stuff, I want to know, cause you mentioned the three surgical alterations. What were those alterations? Because like, for me, like I had my meniscus,

uh, I had my meniscus removed. Um, and I've had like some injections in my left knee, but by seeing your content for a while, really like gave me a lot of hope for what I could do with my knees. Cause I was like, I couldn't do a, a fricking 10 pound leg extension in my right knee without feeling massive amounts of pain. And I started doing simple things like the Peterson step up. And

a lot of this stuff you were showing for free on your Instagram over a few weeks, I'm like, damn, I can actually put pressure into my right knee and I'm not fucking crying like a baby. That's right. So what, what happens to your knee? Because I feel like there's so many power lifters that have had knee issues or that had surgeries, jujitsu athletes too. And they're like, well, I'm going to live with this for the rest of my life. Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't, I, in hindsight, I wish I had more shit happen.

You know what I mean? Like just because everything I've been through is now, whatever I've been through, I've gotten really good at helping others with, you know, people reach out for certain things. I'm like, I haven't been through it now, whatever I've been through, I've gotten really good at helping others with. You know? People reach out for certain things. I'm like, I haven't been through that. I didn't break my elbow. Like, I'm really sorry, dude.

Here's what I have for wrist and elbow. But, like, I didn't, that didn't happen to me. You know? So, what I did have is I have, Mark, see how the left one kind of, like, sticks out there? Absolutely, yeah. So, this is like some kind of. Nice legs, bro. Thanks, bro. Got some good definition in those legs.

You really do. Thanks, bro. So that's some kind of artificial substance. I was so depressed I didn't even want to know. Do you want to know what's going on? No, I don't want to know. But anyway, so I have a partially artificial kneecap. That creates a lot of scar tissue.

You can see. I mean, it's literally a fit. It's like some kind of plastic or something in there. So that creates a ton of scar tissue. So it's really tough to get back to, like, the cycling motion your leg takes when you run. Yeah, Kelly Sturette talks a lot about this. Your body will, like, calcify and just create like bones and areas. People have this, uh,

where you see it the most is in the, um, in the ankle and heel. You see this a ton on people and people don't even know. Wow. But he, he works with people like in a seminar setting and he's like, he's like,

you see this like heel and he's like, just grab somebody else. He's like, this is the way a heel and this is the way an ankle normally looks. He's like, this bone was created by your body as a defense mechanism against. So your body's like, this is the way a heel and this is the way an ankle normally looks. He's like, this bone was created by your body as a defense mechanism against. So your body's like, you know, hey, let's put down something protective. And then it can be something that's in your way that can cause pain all the time.

Exactly. So that's a nice one because you can see there's a mass there. So like there's certain things like that knee wasn't supposed to be able to fully bend again. If you look at my profile, it bends like a motherfucker you know what i mean so it's got like world-class bend so that was that was a good side of it it has a meniscus transplant i'm assuming whoever they gave me could fucking jump out of the gym you have a meniscus transplant yeah oh apparently they don't even do like people like they don't even do that anymore anyways i have a meniscus transplant.

Maybe it's from a gorilla or something. Yeah. Yeah. And then I have a quad tendon. So my quad tendon was apparently like fully torn. Now, what's really strange, too, is I once got an MRI and I was diagnosed 100% torn ACL. Didn't have surgery on that. So it's a long time ago. Yeah. Okay.

So it just brings up something really interesting, which is that did that heal? Was the doctor that wrong? You see what I mean? Like I got the MRI, the doctor calls me up 100% torn ACL. I'm devastated getting the news. It just shows that we don't have it all figured out in terms of the medical. They're doing the absolute best they can for sure. You know what I mean? But to assume we have it all figured out, that's freaking weird. And it was much later that a doctor looked in on it, like in surgery, looked in and the ACL was intact, you know? So that was the left knee, a lot going on there. The right, no surgeries done, which was actually really important to me for figuring out my system because believe it or not, some things that actually worked for the left didn't work for the right because the right had some tears in it that i at that point it's like i don't care what happens like i'm

never having a surgery again you see what i mean like i at that point and that became my new game so my right actually was much tougher than my left because my right i i went on like on a certain play and it was like shoot you know what i mean and it took me years it actually took me some years to figure out the right because i have the left that's so stiff and then the right that's literally torn it's that loose so because of that difference i feel like i would there's no chance i would have had the system as good as it is if i hadn't had that total difference from one knee to the other you know i mean because if you're just doing double-legged stuff, you get like a totally different response between sides. You know what I mean? So it's allowed me to really relate to people along the way and figure out a system

that handles, okay, how do we get the stiffness that we want? You know, how do we get that sturdiness, but also have the looseness? You know what I mean? So that's kind of what my system does is there aren't any shortcuts it is not just one thing it is about addressing the ability of your knee from every possible angle and this simply gradually puts the math a little bit in our favor here i'm good i'm just gonna i'm gonna just demo for these guys right okay you can see like i've been standing here andrew can the camera see it? No. No, but if you can just do play-by-play.

If you can. Just record him. They can just react to it or whatever. Actually, you know what? Let me, I got, there you go. Yeah, let's just record him. That way, at least we have it on camera here. My leg's probably cold.

So he's trying to show us. Like, pretty cold, right pretty cold right Feel my hands Like I'm fucking cold So my point is just That doesn't hurt Yeah he just went into like a full sissy squat Where his knees hit the ground Boom there

Right This is something people want to be able to do Shoulders to the floor Notice how I'm coming up What's this movement called Is there a name for that right there This is something people want to be able to do. Shoulders to the floor. Now I have strength there. Notice how I'm coming up. What's this movement called? Is there a name for that right there? I call it a human knee extension.

There you go. Human knee extension. So he's on his knees and he just sat way back and laid flat on the floor with his knees on the ground. And you didn't hear any break, like creaking or crackling? No. And you didn't hear any great like creaking or crackling? No. No, I can, you know, my knees aren't completely soundless, but they used to be like. But like when I was doing my first Poliquin experiments, holy shit, it was like I had to work out when no one else was in the gym. You're showing us that to demonstrate that you don't need a warm up to put your knees in this.

It's a math equation. What would otherwise be a compromising position. Right, it's a math. If I jump from a high, I could hurt myself. I'm not sure exactly how, but I could. You know what I mean? It's a math equation. What would otherwise be a compromising position. Right. It's a math. If I jump from a high, I could hurt myself. I'm not sure exactly how, but I could, you know what I mean?

It's a math equation. I'm just a human body, but I've been training away to build the ability around the knees. So it reduces my chances of pain and injury. You see what I mean? What have you noticed through training? Like, uh,

let's say it's, uh, you know, let's say you bet on a strength program for a bit and you're trying to push your squat, you're pushing, uh, the strength of your legs, which you're probably kind of always doing. Uh, do you notice that to be more difficult, like the next day or two days later when the muscle soreness kicks in, are you still fine to bounce into stuff like that? I don't actually skip any days so i do crazy knee shit

every fucking day of my life not a single day do i not do crazy knee shit either jumping off ladders or doing stuff like that i have to live my product i want to know if there's pain i want to find that pain i try to keep put now i jump off ladders and try to land in that shit so if your legs are really sore you're still good to go on doing some of these sometimes the soreness my my knees feel even sturdier because it's almost like it almost like puts some more blood in the air you know like um that's crazy i was doing that yesterday morning last night wait till you see my youtube channel tomorrow my editor's working on it right now i was doing crazy knee shit last night in the hotel.

I just don't stop. I have to push my body. The farther I push my body, the more I clear the path for someone else to walk. This isn't a gimmick to me. When I first made the Knees Over Toes guy Instagram, because up until a few years ago, I was just doing my thing in person, hated social media, all that stuff. But it was my dad. My dad's really my business advisor. I would not be here right now if my dad had not helped me every step of the way to know

what to do to take, okay, I have the ability to help people. I could have lived and died with no one ever outside of my town knowing who I was. You know what I mean? So that's how I came up with the knees over toes guy. Cause he said, you need a name that lets people know what your product is now it can work you're mark fucking bell okay that wasn't work i i i was just you know i wasn't on that level yeah so i had to come with a name right it's like some okay lows lows doesn't say what it is but it's fucking lowes you know what i mean i go in i live in little you know little small mountain town outside of la and it's like the do-it-yourself center like it says what it is so i literally okay you know it's it's super i had to get on to that level of like okay if i you know what what would measure success for me would just be helping improve that people aren't scared to train their knees over toes and that they know how to.

So, yeah, I was like, all right, I'm the knees over toes guy. Yeah. You know, along with that, let me ask you this. So you had the surgical alterations on the left knee. You had problems on the right knee, but chose not to go about getting surgery. But a lot of people, when something happens, they go and they get an MRI or whatever the docs like, let's get it, let's get into it. Let's try to get surgery. I know it really depends on what it is. But for a majority of things, do you think people can just pay attention to what you do get like and do regressions to where they don't feel pain to try

to progress back? Yeah, I do my best to put out the latest research and most people aren't aware of the latest research that for many of the commonly done surgeries that when they've done placebo tests so they cut you up they cut you up but they only do the surgery on half of them yeah and then the recovery rate's the same now it's not for all of them i'm but but i put i a lot of people attack me for being unscientific go ahead and look at how many sources i cite in my fucking youtube descriptions go ahead and actually read my shit and i'm actually is you know what's funny is i get attacked by the scientific guys for being unscientific only they're not being scientific it's very hypocritical. So the point is just that

most people aren't aware of the latest research. So I have, okay, all my stuff is in free articles. All my stuff is in free videos. I don't hold back any data at all. And it's actually worked out well for me because people get more enlightened on it and then they might want to follow a specific program and get their form coached. So my whole whole i never thought i would do social media and i never thought i would do an online business and my online business only became i'll be showing this my online business simply became coaching people's form yeah because i would find that even if people saw the exercises their form would be their form would suck and it's like you're just not going to get the result if your form isn't good so i started doing off. I would write it up on like a

Google document, the program, shoot my YouTube video, link it in. And then I would use WhatsApp so they could be anywhere and they would send me their form videos. Eventually I couldn't coach those videos myself. There were so many, you know, but this started getting the results for people. So I love putting the data out there to enlighten. And a lot of people do get results off the starting tips. But where we see the really good long-term transformations is without question, people getting the form down. Some stay members longer than others. So that's literally like, this is all I do in life. And then every single guy who works for me now was a member who either had an e-surgery or whatever. And they did it and they got their form coach. So they understand like, so we've done surveys, nine out of 10

men will butcher the form. What's hilarious is that it's almost opposite for women. They nail the form, but they don't have, again, it's just a numbers thing, not all. They don't have the confidence in their form. So they actually won't make progress because they're not sure of themselves. So we find that either way, the men need confidence in their form. Right. So they actually won't make progress because they're not sure of themselves. So we find that either way, the men need to get their form right and the women need the assurance that their form is right.

Why do you think it's nine out of 10 men? That's huge. What do you think it is? Stubbornness? You guys could tell me better than I could. You guys have a lot more experience with male ego and testosterone than I do. Dudes are fucking stubborn.

We're stubborn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm the exact same way. Even if you look at my system now. All right. What's like the dinkiest exercise in my system? The Tibialis race, right?

I brought my equipment with me. So Mark's going to be taking those Tibs to failure. Yeah. I'm taking that shit to failure. I still have the same max out mentality that was leading me to like blow out my back with like a 225 deadlift you know what i mean like so i have the exact same male ego overdo it the thing is now i'm like now i can overdo it on exercises that the harder you try to overdo it the more bulletproof you get so that is the one area i've had discipline with myself

is i just do my damn system so people are are like, oh, you should test your squat. But that's not my system. But I put my body test in basketball. So different people are going to have their different tests. It would be like asking a powerlifter to then go play basketball. That would not be smart for their career. You see what I mean? But the great thing is that your stuff will benefit powerlifters.

Your stuff, I do jujitsu Will benefit a lot of Jujitsu athletes that have to Our knees are putting up a lot of weird positions in that martial art And if you're able to bulletproof it You'll probably see a lot less injuries Within the sport It'll benefit a lot of people outside of the specific sport of basketball Which is so fucking awesome

100% some of the best friends I've gained on this journey Are powerlifters Don't see life through a straw. You know, give me a chance. I'll give you a chance. That's like, you know, that's how I look at it in life. I think we all have more in common than we think. I want to point out that, you know, your demonstration of you, you know, jumping off the ladder.

These are these are demonstrations to show where your knees are at now. You know, And I think sometimes people might think like, oh, that's what I need to do. And it's like, well, no, you know, let's, this has been a long progression. Like, have you been at this, uh, for a decade or how long you've been, you know, messing around with this stuff? Yeah. Looking back on it, I'd say, believe it or not, there's probably only been two to three years of like actually like correctly what I use in my system now. But now think about that. Two to three years of really precision work has balanced out a lot of years of imprecise work.

But two to three years is still a long time. Right. And most people are still in that mindset of like thinking of it as a treatment, not thinking of it as their body of work. And you've been aware of a problem for 18 years or so. There's something wrong with my knees. Exactly. I think it's important to point some of this stuff out. Well, even that video, I don't want to cut you off, but even that video where I just

jumped off the ladder, the first line out of my mouth in that video was, this is not how I got here. Right. I get people to start if, all right, I get old people start walking backwards, you know, like, so I, I am, cause I have had people say that to me, but I just don't see the messages get people to start if all right i get old people start walking backwards you know like so i i am because i have had people say that to me but i just don't see the messages coming in of oh i hurt myself doing this we just don't see it because i'm every day blasting those lowest it's really like my my thing you know my thing is that it's like is the regression and trying to make

that cool and get people actually like buy into confronting their level. Not the level you can do on the painkiller, you know. Yeah. Not the level you can do that. Then you have to ice after. What exact pain free ability. But it's tough for guys to confront where they're at and then gradually go up. What I wanted to say a little further on that is like

uh louis simmons pointed this out too there's a there's a certain level of like gpp or general physical preparedness you should be able to let what you demonstrated anyone should be able to do that you know anyone should be should have the capacity to do that to some level you know it might be slight you know it might be lower than where you jumped from, but everyone should be able to possess that ability. Louis Simmons kind of pointed out that, say like an NFL running back. He's like, I should be able to go into an NFL running back's bed and go in there and slam a bunch of pots and pans and make crazy noises

and say, get up, get up. You got to run. You got to run three miles. And boom, they can go right and just start running three miles. That doesn't mean that they are running all the time. They just have a capacity for it. They should be able to. They should be able to.

Survival potential. I mean, and that's why, honestly, like if we were in the wild right now, I would have some advantages in some ways. But you guys would also outlive me in other ways. I need to get stronger. So I've been on this knees over toes journey. It doesn't mean I don't also want to put on more mass and get stronger. You know, I I've been playing basketball. I've been doing that. It doesn't mean that I think that, that my build is the perfect build or something that you see what I mean? Like I have so much more I want to develop in myself. I've just been trying to tackle this problem first you

know um but yeah like if i looked at myself to take my survival potential even further you see what i mean but most people don't think about it that way and they have to get so warmed up and like but how would you do out in the wild boom i i make video i i try to get more politically correct as i go somehow mark has gotten away with like being, don't do that. Mark can be himself and I will learn how to do that. But I also have to learn how to do that without tripping up along the way. You know what I mean?

Cause I'm just trying to help people's knees, you know? So I don't want to turn certain people off, you know? But I've done a lot of videos where, yeah, like I go out first thing in the morning, jump off the ladder.

And it's like, if a tiger came after you in the jungle, like, would you grab a foam roller? You know what I mean? Like, seriously. So there is something really interesting to that. And I haven't figured out yet the best way to test that. You know, it's not like I want people like, because there's some injury risk there probably by testing your cold ability, you know, But it is kind of an indicator of like,

get outside of the weight room, get outside. What's your survival? Are you strong? Are you fit? You should be agile, strong, fit. What I showed with my knees, think about this for a second. I get, you know, obviously I have ton of support, right?

But there's some haters and, you know, it's like, that's extreme. But think what I just did. I only expressed my own motion. I literally just controlled my own body i lowered my knees down as far as they'll go and then i bent them back as far as you those i didn't do actually anything extreme that was actually normal you know yeah that that should be normal look at a a deadlift right it it's it's not natural i think for a male to not be able to pick up a bunch

of weight you know what i mean what's your survival potential if you can't go out cold and pick up a bunch of weight you see what i mean so so that's where i think there's actually like a lot of common denominators that i was i mean first off this is is easily the biggest honor in my career so far as being here. But I also, because of, I look at it, I think actually very similar to a powerlifter or a bodybuilder. I think I have a lot more in common than they might realize, you know? I just haven't been devoting myself to those qualities. I've been doing it in my own way, but it's a really similar way of thinking. It's a simple concept.

You know, you should be fairly hard to kill you know and you yeah when you look at somebody and be like yeah that would be a real bitch to try to kill that guy you know it should be very it should be difficult and you gotta be fast you should be able to fast if you're not fast cold you could get caught if you're weak it's oh that that's a good example of this is like my my deadlift setup When I'm normally trying to go for like a PR Mark will be like Yep That's my body weight I did that cold because I was like I was just looking and I'm like I feel like I could

Like deadlift my own body weight Great mobility fantastic You know what you're talking about Yeah I kind of cramped up just looking at it Three sets of ten Do you know joel green is joel green he's been on our show a couple times yeah he's a genius when it comes

to nutrition and stuff i i probably do you know seeing so many names on social media i forgive me yeah he came into the show um and he was talking about how like every single day i think he does what five cold sprints like just he'll just be walking and he'll just go into a sprint because for in his belief over time of doing that like you'll be able to have the capacity to you know do that until you're old he's 53 he's on to something he's 53 and what does he weigh 220 yeah right great shape 6162 i've done some really similar testing. You know those air runner machines?

I like those because you don't need a ton of space, and you can just get going as fast as you can. Plus, that thing of just start running, well, what if the gravel's slippery? There are unforeseen these external factors. So something like an air runner, and you can see your speed on it. external factor. So it's, so something like an air runner and you can see your speed on it. So I've done with myself and a lot of others, like what's like, how fast can you run? Like if you don't warm up for it and what we would do is we would do this and we would try to feel kind of like what hurts, you know, what hurts during what hurts that, like that would illuminate weak points. That's actually how I warm up. So like what I do is I don't really warm up at all. I just usually start an exercise.

Same. And I do an evaluation. You know, I might say like, say I'm doing like a lat pull down or something. I'm like, does anything hurt? You know, if something hurts, I might do, I might spend a little bit more time. You know, let me get my core temperature up and get used to the exercise. Let me get used to the load that I'm using for today. And then sometimes it turns out where I'm like well uh something feels a little off i i'm gonna have

to switch up my routine slightly different but i'm not avoiding i'm not avoiding stuff i'm just kind of paying attention to like oh there's something's a little off with that if it happens again the next time then you bet that i'm gonna start to work on uh some movement to help improve that area. Because I'm like, well, this is two times in a row now. Maybe there's something there. No, this is huge. I've never even thought about it quite that way until you put it that way.

That's actually something I'm going to get right to work on for sure. It's like we should have systems. And obviously for me with knee exercise, but for different people with different exercises that they specialize in coaching of like, so that's what I do. I just start the exercise. But it doesn't mean I jump in at the top weight. I'm actually still very meticulous about feeling it out. So it's, you can jump right in, but you have to know your regressions of that, of, of how to enter it in pain-free and then warm up from there.

There's not a lot of great reasons to jump in on a top weight. You know, in my opinion, there's really no reason not to just, you know, uh, have your workout set up in a way that makes sense. So you have at least some time allotted to getting used to the way Charles Pullik was really big on, uh, you know, you can even know the movement and you use seven, eight warmups. His warmups were even programmed. It would dial in your nervous system. If you got the weights right, you could actually lift more that day. Exactly i think that stuff is key but i think it's almost key to to kind of set up a guide like okay if this is the exercise here's how you get into it and here's actually some other things you could work on if it's not feeling good right away you see what i

mean that's i think that's where it's at so be super smart like take your time like why why mess with that you know what i mean but it's a good indicator you know and that's where you can see i haven't wrapped my head around it fully you know and and i would have got if there was like a new guy in the gym he wanted to join us on like the sprint challenge i mean i definitely made some mistakes you know on the along the way i was a little more like when i owned my gym, a little more hardcore. But like, you know, guys would get hurt. Yeah. Like, oh, new guy wants to try this?

Like, you're not that resilient? Like, I wouldn't tell him, you know, let him try it. And, you know, pulled some hamstrings. You know what I mean? Whereas the guys who had been training this style for a while, like, we knew we weren't going to get hurt. It was just a matter of how fast we could run. And a matter of maybe finding, well, shoot, my left side is actually a little bit weaker than, you know what I mean? I feel a little pain that it's like, we're trying to,

rather than run from pain, try to find it. But that was just what I was having trainers do. You know, I wouldn't, yeah, as an athlete, like, no, get really smart about how you warm up, but it shouldn't take you 27 different mobility drills to be able to do that human movement a squat a dead whatever these are just human movements there's my philosophy is there's no such thing as a bad movement that's my personal opinion yeah andrew if you can play that uh video of me falling with that weight um the reason why the reason why i'm showing this is to uh i mean kind of show this this shit that I kind of went through when I fell with this 1,085 squat here.

Oh, my God. And were you okay? I was, no. Back to your point earlier when you said, the funny thing is I put chalk on my dick like in training like that week and just like left it there because i thought it'd be funny and then and then this happens and then everyone gets to see like why has he got chocolate over his dick i've actually never noticed that but i didn't either first of all it's very distracting to have a girl wearing a sundress while you're trying to do the lift so

you gotta blame her it's her fault that this happened 100 you can't concentrate god dang but the reason i'm bringing this up is because what you mentioned earlier about um those subjects having you know one had surgery the other ones didn't and their recovery ability was similar and you mentioned how your one uh your one knee was uh uh different from the other one and you didn't want to have surgery on that leg so So I knew that if I went to a conventional doctor, they would be like, you're fucked up, you know, and you need surgery. Because I was pretty messed up after this. My ankle was crazy swollen. My knee was very swollen.

It took me about three months to kind of get back to normal. It took me three months just to put a shoe on because my foot was so swollen. Um, I did some compression. I did, you know, but whatever I thought would, uh,

work best at the time, I was able to get back in the gym and do some stuff here and there. But I was, I was pretty screwed up for a while. So I went to a doctor friend of mine who does like acupuncture. He does kind of unconventional stuff. And what he said was, I'm like, I'm like, I don't know, like, you know, did I tear something

you think? Or he's like, maybe, maybe. I mean, he's like, how do you feel? I'm like, well, I'm, you know, limping around and it's like, it hurts quite a bit. He's like, well, it happened, you know, five days ago. Yeah. it hurts quite a bit. He's like,

well, you know what happened, you know, five days ago. Yeah. And, uh, he's like,

you could go to the doctor and they can do an MRI, but like, or they can x-ray or whatever they can come up with to try to look at your knee. He goes, but what previous history do you have with, with them? Have they ever seen your knee before? He's like,

I'm going to guess that from squatting a thousand 80, what you did in the previous competition, that your knees are probably pretty, they probably some trauma, you know, going on in the quad and the knee. And, and, uh, he's like, so what do you really have to compare it to? He's like, I would just say, you know, don't worry about it. And that was really empowering to me at the time because I was like, fuck man, I think he's got a point. I mean, they are going to tell me that I'm fucked up. They are going to, they are going to tell me that I need surgery. And I'm like, I'm like, there's no reason for me to like rush into, and I'm not really that accepting of, I've never had any surgeries.

I'm not really that accepting of a surgery unless I, you know, if I needed it, I guess, you know, to, to live, maybe I would think it over. But, uh, I was like, nah, I'm not accepting of a surgery. So I'm just going to wait and see what happens. And I got better and I can still squat now. Yeah. I mean, you clearly made the right call. And to be clear, I said certain things. I was glad this or that happened, but like, I'm only glad the surgery side happened. So I know what that's like, but like the mass is in there like my journey would have been easier if that mass was you know so you made the right call in that instance and i've seen studies that look as high as one in three that if they just go check an athlete with no issues going on just to see that they could

operate on something like that if If they went in like first, basically if, like if I went in and lied and said like, you know, I can't play basketball or whatever, my knee hurts. Like they, they might find something in me. I don't know.

You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I just don't know. Testing, testing for things that might not be there. Right. Interesting.

Right. I like, I like the fact that you were five days out and first they were like, well, you're five days out. I think that's an important part of the process because it's not like they're going to rush you into surgery anyway so i definitely have seen some things where someone is five days out they do get the mri and then a few months later like it's time to have surgery but they're like i don't even have any symptoms so this is something i did a lot for my friends

when i had my gym it was kind of known that if you lived in clearwater florida and you tore something in your knee oh yeah just go just go to the knee guy and work it out you know like bad you know like as a surgery no like just come to me and try like florida okay legally not a good idea to even be talking about this okay but it was something where it was almost like it wasn't, it was like, well, you can do this. Like as my friend, like I can't like charge you for the, you know what I mean? And I had a ton of guys cancel surgeries, even many times where the doctor would relook at the knee and say, you don't need the surgery. So doctor scheduled the surgery,

relooked at, and then said, you don't need the surgery. So again, I don't think it's for every issue. You know, it's a tough thing to like, man, that would have been hard to be the people who did the study where you cut open half and cut open the other half and don't do, I mean, like, this is again, like, this is some tough shit. So trust me, doctors actually have my utmost respect. Those guys are tough as hell to confront that stuff. You know what I mean? So I think that's a big misconception too, is that I hate doctors. No, they're actually some of the toughest people I've ever met.

And I was lucky enough to have, there was one doctor in my life, a guy named Dan O'Donnell, and he's a beast, super strong. And I think that's what, since he was a doctor, but since he also lived it, you know, and like trained himself and was like strong and stuff, he helped many times where an athlete would come to me thinking they needed surgery and he would really help them determine if they did or if they didn't, you know? So I do think even within doctors, I think there can be more of a concerted effort to be

like, to just make sure you're knowing both sides and what the latest research is and what can be rehabilitated versus what can't, you know? So yeah, trainers, we can get better. Doctors can, we can all get better, you know? And I think that's an area we do have to keep pushing on is just to make sure that we're not potentially messing up the rest of someone's life unnecessarily. Because once you've had, for example, like an ACL, now I try to do my best to have the stats very accurate. This comes from an Australian researcher that it looks about five times more likely that you're going to have now a knee replacement later in life if you've had an ACL. So really what happens, you have the ACL. People don't realize that when you go through a rehab from something like that, you lose a lot.

And you lose a lot of tendon. And your patellar tendon becomes pathetic. And that's a major shock absorption right there. So like for you when you were in your teens and you stopped playing sports, tendons probably didn't develop quite right. You see what I mean? So you go through the ACL. Now you're thinking your ACL feels okay, but I just got some tendinitis now. So common to go from the ACL to the tendinitis. And you think, oh, there's like some tendinitis, but my knee feels good. Now, before you know it, your cartilage is just getting wrecked without realizing it. Now you end up later in life.

You're out of cartilage. Now you're having a knee replacement. So, you know, comes from an Australian researcher. Hopefully it's accurate. But he said he's really. Sexual assault. He said he's. I described it as semen's butt, but it's just sticking out.

I mean, I really do. But that's the number he keeps coming up with is that five times more likely to have a knee replacement, you know, for the first thing. So, yeah, I mean, we can improve it a lot, you know. Yeah. I've heard you talk about simple things, you know, as far as like getting knee replacements here, but simple things like walking backwards and the Asian squat. I don't know if we could tackle each of those separately. What's up with walking backwards? That's interesting.

Yeah, it's really interesting so um if you think about that quality going backwards basically like the better you are backwards the more protected you are forwards so and that's where people running like they're putting this forward impact even a squat really like it starts in your hips but then once that load comes into the knee right so yeah i mean measurably they should be testing this to death right now the stronger people are backwards the less chance they have of injury when they go forwards now again this is an area where respect for the guys but we could do better exercise science is spending 669 more money studying acceleration than deceleration so we are manufacturing we're manufacturing knee surgeries not intentionally not out of evil we're meant but we are manufacturing

them yeah okay because we're seeing how much can we accelerate and not just proportionally seeing how much we can do like who's obsessed with like deceleration and going backwards i am james smith the uh the thinker oh you know who that is but yeah my friend james he loves sprinting and he's always talking about that and shit yeah yeah you're right no one's really oh was he from the old like t-nation day anyways yeah yeah yeah yeah he's from elitefts.com and he started uh studied a lot of charlie francis's work and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I was such an idiot. I did like the rate my physique on Teenation when I was like a stupid teenager

with like my tiny dick pushing against me. Like basically everyone just came on and- In some sweatpants. I didn't even know what the word chode was and I'm like, why is everyone- That's amazing. Remember before we started this, you said we could edit some stuff out?

You got like a chub going on here. last 60 seconds yeah i think it's the i blame it on the mind bullet anything that's happened in this conversation yeah and the mind bullet logo has a brain like on a rocket and i'm super happy and i think that's what's going on right now yeah um walking backwards with a sled is actually really useful for, you know, building up some strength in the knees. I know that I think Louie Simmons, again, he sent when Ed Cohn, if you can pull up that clip of Ed Cohn falling, Ed Cohn just blew the fuck out of it. He just blew it out like crazy doing a big squat. And then Louie Simmons sent him a sled and he's like, you know, take this sled, throw weight on there and walk backwards like for a mile. Right, right. And it helped him a sled. And he's like, you know, here, you know, take this sled, throw, throw weight on there and walk backwards like for a mile, you know? Right. Right. And it helped him a lot. Yeah. So let's nail this down really clearly right now. Nothing magic about walking

backwards to protect you from a squat. You'd have to load up some load to protect you for a squat, but there's something magic about walking backwards to be an old person and not wind up in a wheelchair. Right. That's so let's be really, you know, because I'll see some like young athletes like, well, hopefully my vertical goes up. Like, no, like walking backwards. No, but, but yeah, if you kept walking backwards, you'd probably still be walking when you're 80 instead of in a walker. So even, so we really only have one good study on backwards walking and it was to predict

the chances of elderly falling. one good study on backwards walking and it was to predict the chances of elderly falling and it was concluded that backward walking alone is an effective predictor of falling and falling is actually one of the biggest causes of death oh my god oh well maybe one more time oh it just sucks about you know as a lif, you're just watching this and you're like, oh, man. He looks so strong, too. He handled it so well. He handles the weight. Oh, my God. I mean, sometimes it's clear.

Like, I don't recall what happened to him there, but sometimes it's pretty clear that you need a surgery. You know, like the way that he fell, I'm imagining he just snapped something completely off, you know? Exactly. And the way I look at it is like surgeries are still going to keep going on, you know? So if I work as hard as I can on, on natural means, I'm not messing up the system. You know, I look at it as like, you know, I'm not going to hurt the doctor's pocket or this or that. Those are big industries. And if I even do my small part, then I'm saving some people money, you know. There, you know, there has to be people working on this from both sides. But if so, let's look at that quality, right?

So if walking backward, you could even take shorter steps backward, like even that regresses. And then so that's the only good study that I've seen so far on walking backwards. Now, on running backwards in 13 to 15 year old kids, there's two groups. One group, they did forward sprints. One group, they did backwards sprints. At the end of it, for every one inch of vertical jump, the forwards group gain, the backwards group gain four inches vertical jump. So if you look at a vertical jump, go ahead and look at every 40 inch vertical jump in NFL combine history, the knees went over the toes. Now stand there and I want you don't

actually walk, but take your first step backwards. Okay. Your knees over your toe. So back quite a bit. So backward walking would be the lowest level of knees over toes training, right? Maybe backwards walking uphill would add a nice resistance maybe. Definitely. So I have videos of showing basically everything you could possibly do to add resistance to walking back. You know, I've, I have like a dozen different options. So if we look at the most common, I have people around the world right now walking into their gyms, getting on the treadmill, not turning it on and spinning that shit backwards. I was doing it at the hotel last night for a video to show is I did go two minutes straight. I don't say longer than two minutes in a straight bout because on strength research, I don't know if you're really getting stronger at that point beyond two minutes, but I

think you could actually get strong. Like you get a little more leg drive a two minute. And, and I don't even do that stuff anymore unless it's occasionally for a video. Cause I don't have to, but it is. So this concept of reversing out knee pain. So, you know, my ATG fam guys are ROKP, ROK, you know, like I have to make these R.O.K.P., R.O.K.P. You know, like, I have to make these things cool. You know, I once had a whole high school football team who literally believed that bigger tibialis made them more attractive. Chicks dig big tibs. I told them there was a study done.

So, see, I'm wearing, like, shorter shorts, right? I told them there's a study done. They have women just evaluate men. Then they had the same men wear shorter shorts. And the guys who trained tibs and vmos were more attractive They I think many of them believed it, you know, so these fuckers were trying to get the strongest tibs in the nation Like I can raise my foot up better than anybody else in the world. So the whole team knew chicks dig big tips, you know So the point is yeah

Of course walking it's not walking backwards sledding back. None of this is glamorous But yeah start to think of that as a category. Okay, you can walk backwards, drag a pound, drag two pounds. You see what I mean? Start thinking of every quality as like a zero to infinity mindset. It's not I can or I can't. It's where on the scale am I, you know? And I have found that two minutes works well,

meaning there is in strongman training just more like all-out efforts. But I think that's an exercise that works really well for two minutes. Ease into it. You know what I mean? If anything ramp up towards the end, as the blood flow is going, then, then push it really hard. Anyone that's got like real knee pain that really bugs them a lot, you know, try going down the stairs backwards, you know, hopefully there's a railing there so you don't fall, but you'll actually notice you'll have zero pain because you're able to, you're able to avoid, you know, what you're talking about. And so I don't recommend avoidance as a way to solve a problem, but if you need to

get up and down the stairs for now, that might be something you want to mess with. Yeah. So sled obviously is sled is the king, in my opinion, like if you have, if you can get turf, like my gym was basically divided between like turf and everyone sledded, you know what I mean? And we kind of had this rule of like a hundred miles so it's kind of like it's a good way of looking at it like okay keep going to you know try this herb and that herb but at least do a fucking 100 miles backwards before you complain to me that your knee hurts you know so um so i i did my 100 miles you know and i never have to and now you can see i can do shit cold that i couldn't do at my best you see what i mean so it's over time you turn something that was really hard into something that's easy.

We'll do a 10-minute backwards walk later. I was going to say, everyone that does their 10-minute walks. Be careful where you're walking, you know, of your steps. And that's why a sled is great because you have the turf, right? And that's why the treadmill not turned on. The sled will balance you a little bit better, yeah. Yeah, and then the treadmill not turned on is a great one because it's safe there. And people are even making some of these kind of treadmills almost built for it.

So depending on how much someone wants to spend, I like the Matrix S-Drive. It's a good one. So it's built for that, and you can adjust the resistance. Nice. Okay. Now, with the sled, because a million people ask, how much weight does it? Sadly, there are different sleds of different frictions. And, you know, so I love measurable stuff.

In this case, you can't really get an exact because it's going to be different from gym to gym, but figure out your measurements at your gym. So we're going to go today and we're going to do some of these two minute bouts and we're going to figure out, you know, a little goal for here. What's the right way. I already loaded the sleds with like half my weight and half your weight. It seems to be like a good amount for it. But again, from doing it, you can figure out then for your space. Okay. What weight do I use? And you can feel how easy it is and how fast you can move. And you can, and if you wanted to do it as a test, it wouldn't be how far you can get in the

two minutes. It would actually be how far you can get in the, in the second minute of those two minutes, because I don't want you just jumping into it. Like get the pump. And then when you're so, you know, when you're so pumped that you can't hurt yourself and it feels fricking amazing, you know what I mean? That you would then test that part. That's the safest way to do it. So I'm not asking everyone to test themselves, but you could. And at my gym, we had, you know, records on the board and knew, you know, who was the strongest backwards. You know, I had an NFL defensive backs who were, you know, obsessed with this and they practically wanted to like, okay, that's my program. I just go back, you know, does a lot for you. And even the backward walking. So I mentioned backward walking predictor for

falling, backward running predictor for kids. And I think that's why for in the middle, the sled is so good because just asking adults who have pain to start sprinting backwards, it is too much injury. It's too plyometric. It's too much going on. But then thinking that you'll get rid of your pain with walking backwards, it's not enough for those lists. But I actually still think even the backward walking alone is good. And there's some interesting stuff showing that it might even help us mentally not to end up, you know, certain of these dementia and stuff as we get older. It does something because you're now, you're now having to get into the moment. You can't walk backwards out of present time

because you know what I mean? It's, it's, it's different. That's a great point. You're not going to text probably. There's proprio. You need to focus a little bit. There's proprio. So there's something. So, so I think it's great. My wife walks backwards.

So like for my wife, just going through life, you know, she's found the backwards walking actually has been very effective for her. So there are going to be a lot of people in your life that the backward walking alone will do really good. My mom's 66. And if you see her in these videos i mean she can jog and this and that you know and and she she walks backwards almost every day you know in my system we do like three leg days you know i just think people you know do it every day well like it

works so why you know get the get the day in between you know to rest your legs at this point i do something every day because I want to. I have to make sure this shit works. And that was the point I was trying to say earlier when I was starting my Instagram. I had a really respected trainer, and he was actually trying to advise me to get other people to demo it than me in case I got hurt. I'm like, in case I got hurt, I shouldn't be selling this shit. You know? Yeah.

So that was kind of the point of the earlier thing of of how i realized that you know my instagram was not just i didn't like social media because i thought i'd have to be you know fake or this but i've actually used it to put more pressure on myself because people are expecting the video i do a video a day you know so i mean what am i gonna do do one day and like change clothes seven times and then rest this next day you know what i mean so yeah so it's actually social media has become i think about it much differently now and it's totally up to you how you want to use it but you i mean look i wouldn't be here right now meeting two like-minded people that i'm not just gonna run into if it weren't for social media um so yeah so

think about this concept of going backwards it's really we can all find some way to do that if we have knee pain and it forms a really nice, forms a really nice warmup, you know, because you get the blood flowing in a way that helps your knees. Yeah. So that's, that's actually the only warmup in my, it's an optional warmup for all my leg days. And depending on your equipment or this, you know, it's just getting better backwards. How about the Asian squat? equipment or just, you know, it's just getting better backwards. How about the Asian squat? I mean, I think it's something I don't actually introduce like, you know, heels down, like, like a heel down, full range of motion squat takes a lot of mobility and stuff. I don't introduce that until my third program. And even then you're allowed to use as much heel elevation as you want. And even then you don't even have to load it. It's actually, once the squat comes into my system, it's actually a personal thing. We do 12 sets of

three on a 90 second interval. So it takes 18 minutes. You do 12. So you're really taking your time, you know, so you're really like, you could just stay body, you know, my mom will just stay body weight. Um, she could even hold like a little plate in front, which almost makes a little easier. Yeah. So, um, that that's just kind of putting some things together. And it does seem to be., you know what I mean, to Northern Europe. It's a very natural position for people to rest in many, many years ago. You just don't see people doing it anymore. Right. And then what I do for athletes is I actually set up bands on it and I set up a little differently. Some people are like, you didn't set up the bands right. Well, here's how I set set up bands on it and I set up a little differently. Um, some people go like, you didn't set up the bands, right? Like, well, here's how I set them up. I think anywhere in that bottom half, it's all about the same difficulty, meaning the bottom is not really

harder than the midpoint because the bottom you're kind of resting on your cushion. You know what I mean? So I set the band so that the whole top, the whole top half of the squat is getting heavier. That's how we oftentimes will teach pause squats because some people have big legs and big calves, and they're just kind of sitting on their own body. And having them pause a little earlier sometimes can be more effective. Oh, wow. Very cool. So I actually haven't found that.

So I do think that a full squat builds the vertical jump better, but not just, but I think the bands have to be on there. Otherwise you're not actually expressing how much strength you have, you know, through the whole top half of the motion. So that's literally how the squat is coached in my system. We only use it in the third program. It's a totally personal thing. You can elevate your heels as much as you want, right?

So everyone can squat deeper depending on how much they elevate their heels. A bunch has led to that. You could just do it, so someone could even, because I know coaches who their career is built on like not going full squat, but even they agree that without weight that you should be able to full squat.

Do you see what I'm saying? So like there's coaches who believe that like loading shouldn't go below 90 degrees or whatever even them i have common ground because even by talking them they believe that you should still be able so in my it's it's a personal thing man you could still totally have your opinions on squatting then if you are an athlete that that is how i like it if you're gonna load it is to still get the full range of motion but man that shit like yeah get so my first goal for athletes is actually just to be able the only like my squat standard is only your own body weight on your back all the way down

and from that point adding as as much bands bands bands and anything beyond that becomes a personal thing the bands are are fantastic you know utilizing bands or chains the weight is lighter at the bottom and this might be problematic for some people that might be where there's like kind of the most amount of pain. And so if you can kind of think like if you have the option to train where the bottom of the lifts could be just a little bit lighter, whether you have the bands on there and they're working against you or whether you have the bands on there and they're working for you in a scenario of like a reverse band. Yeah. same difference.

Yeah, they both do the same thing. Obviously, it's different, but they both do the same thing. What have you noticed in terms of we talked about deceleration quickly. When the bands are on there, what does this do in terms of deceleration? Yeah, and I have to say for people who have surgery, they find it to feel much better because I think it's getting your tendons like, hey, so like you're you know, so rather than just using a set load and going all the way down because we are much stronger at the top. So I feel like it I feel like it preps the tendons. Mm hmm. And there's also you're ready to kind of thrust into it.

Right. There's also a new research is showing like really that that even at the very tippy top you know like that that extension is actually really good for our tendons so yeah so with the band you know if you weren't handling as much weight as you could at the top and that is where deceleration starts is when those knees start to bend you know what i mean so it's just you're just going to get more protection for actual jumping and decelerating. You know what I mean? So, so for an Olympic lifter, no, I probably wouldn't mess with it because that's your sport, you know? So, um, for a power lifter, you also have your squat, but you know, maybe something

like what Mark was talking about with the, with this Astrograss style split squat, that's my king because the the the difference in my knee so that so the atg split squat is used that's another one kind of like the hundred miles of backwards like do 10 000 atg split squats then you know then see where your knees are at yeah and we find people are fucking transformed you know and if they want it that i i've had power lifters who use that to boost their squat i've had olympic lifters who use that to boost their squat i've worked with quite a few bobsledders and those guys to get the the top score in the squat like everything in the bobsled combine if you hit this you get like a 10 if it like it has a number that if you hit you get all the points like you don't get keep getting infinite

points so 200 kilos 440 for three and they want to see it like full squat to get the full points you know so i've trained a number of guys to that and we used that ass to grass split squat that's a tremendous amount of weight because these guys aren't 250 pounds you know they're probably 180 or well in bobsled they're actually more like 220 so the ideal bobsledder weighs like 220, as fast as lightning. Still double body weight for trip or ass to grass. So that's an example of like, yeah, in my system, my standard is only 100% of body. Like, if everybody in the NBA could do their own body weight on their back, all the way down, pain free, there'd be way less injuries, you know? So there's,

to me, that's just kind of like, that's your like baseline athlete standard and then adding bands. And then depending on the personal goal, you know, adding weight, but even the power lifter could elevate the heels. Uh, Steffi Cohen. I mean, my God, it, this is why I'm knees over toes guy. Cause I'm not, I'm trying to bring light to everybody who's, who's has these gems to offer. You know what I mean? And because I'm these overtoes guy, people will listen to me about, you know, it makes it clear. Okay. That's what that guy does.

Right. Steffi, go ahead and look at some of her top, you know, quad develop movement. She elevates the heels, knees overtoes squats. She's one of the best ever. I mean, that needs to be more known. She's a doctor, isn't she? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Like, holy shit. Like, and yet people still think nosy. A doctor who is living proof of having some of the strongest legs ever uses that as one of her accessory moves. You see what I mean? So,

so that's probably what I would do in the, so again, it's right within my system. I would do the 12 sets of three and use whatever heel elevation is comfortable and, and just, you know, use what, you know, what weight feels good as an accessory. I would never ask a powerlifter or Olympic or something to use my system as their, as the main course, you know, and I try to get all my workouts down to like 30 minutes. Why is, I don't even want to train longer than that so that I have a ton of nervous system for basketball. And I think it's a bit underrated if you can get some really like actual productive shit done in like 30 minutes and not more than that. Hormones start to jack up. Now you're not, you know, nervous system is like really primed for whatever you're actually trying to do in life, you know?

Well, that's the thing though. Like a power lifter doesn't have to do, you know, those squats with bands if it's going to interfere with their program, but they could easily add in the ATG split squat. They can easily add in the Peterson step-up. All these different movements can easily be put into a powerlifting program to be able to bulletproof a powerlifter's knees. There doesn't have to be any type of hindrance in terms of their athletic goal for the sport. Right. And that's why I try to find these examples other than myself. So people can see, you know what I mean? Like, like look at

her man, dude, her, her squat form is magical heels elevated. And she like, she's got like killer killer knees over toes strength. She did the fricking, she did the fricking sissy squat with weight. I put her, uh, i put her doing that and i put mark doing backward sleds in one of my last videos oh wow um and and yeah stephy she's holding looks to be about like a 30 pound kettlebell and she's doing something that most guys couldn't do with no weight yeah i mean success leaves clues you know um so yeah it's power lifters i do think in general aren't as aware of some of the knees over toe stuff they could be doing power lifters in general may have made the greatest contribution to post your chain training of any you know genre of fitness if you look at so much of this stuff

i'll often come up with something brilliant and then then I'm like, holy shit, Louie Simmons has been doing this for the hamstrings. So, and, and so I do think with the posterior chain, a power lifter is going to see a lot more of the gain in the posterior chain, but maybe there's, maybe there's 10% there with the knee over toe. You know what I mean? Maybe there's, so it wouldn't be, it's not like I think the knee over toe would actually have like a massive impact, but well, now you're not getting hurt. We kind not like I think the knee over toe would actually have like a massive impact. But well, now you're not getting hurt. We kind of I've worked with a lot of these jumpers and we've all kind of come up with the same theory. The best jumpers are just the guys who aren't getting hurt and they just keep and they're able to jump with their full intent.

So being able to express your full intent is a key part of adapting on anything. You know, and so you can probably relate to that in your lifts is those times when you felt like you were really able to express your full intent, you cause more adaptation. Absolutely. That's my jump strategy is to not have knee pain when I jump. And year to year, I just seem to keep jumping higher. Are you comfortable answering like very specific questions from listeners right now? I mean, only a few. Maybe give one, you know, again, people are usually going to ask medical, but it'll still be a good, I mean, it's still worthy to get an answer. Yeah. And that's kind of what I was

thinking. But throw one and even how I answer it may help them. Got it. So this one is from AK. I'm going to butcher what this person has, but said that they are asking for recommendations for to butcher what this person has but said that they uh are asking for recommendations for condro condro malaysia patella that's the one yeah me and my mom laugh about these patella for moral pain syndrome like we me and my mom laugh about it because she's she runs my customers so she gets you know like yeah like who the fuck is osgood schl? Who, like, I need, yeah, yeah, yeah, for reals. Um, so that's, uh, what is that exactly? So,

it, in, in a short term, it means your knee hurts. Okay, Google will tell you to rest, ice, compress,

elevate, and just, you know, wait for knee replacement down the road. No, um, no, but it,

you know, the, the cartilage hurts in your, like, like that one, like the Chondromalacia patella sounds pretty fucking fancy, right? Like, I mean, it literally just means like your knee hurts in there. Like we've all had Chondromalacia. Anyways, I don't, basically a lot of these big names really mess us up because they give us a label.

So like as a kid, I had all these knee labels. Like I thought I had a syndrome. No, I just didn't have knee ability. You know, no, I just didn't have knee ability. So for this guy, I mean, I've had so many people who were told they had this chondromalacia patella, you know, irreversible cartilage damage, and they're just a simple dude doing a very small part in this, not an expert on any knee medical conditions, but every study ever shows the same thing. More pain free ability, less chance of that pain and injury. So for this guy, it would be, let's tackle which exercises at what levels you can start and see what happens. And it's going to be the same thing

for every single medical question about the knee. You see what I mean? Do you train through any type of pain or is it just small amount of like discomfort? No, no. See, that's the thing that I think is actually really key in my system is we're not even trying to push through the discomfort if that makes sense like we're really trying to get in or it just feels good to work out you know like in your in your um we want to get to that point we're actually able to push your muscles so failure i'm watching your instagram and i go to try something i i should have no pain. Exactly. And if I do have pain, then choose another exercise. Exactly. And if someone's, you know, oh, I tried that.

Well, keep studying because you just tried something that I only use as the fifth exercise in a workout when you're already primed and warmed up from all these other factors. So I definitely am obsessive about the order of the programs and what movements you're doing at what stage. But even then within each thing, these things regress down. You know, so a lot of people aren't even trying the level. They're not even giving a chance to try the levels that I had to start at, you know. So that's, yeah, that's with my videos. I try to always show what's that lowest level.

Now, get into it. Get in, you know, like it should indicate and it should feel better. You know what I mean? And then work, work your way through a progression that feels the most comfortable to you at the moment. If all you could handle is backwards walking, then maybe do that for a while. Then maybe look into some of the resistance that you talked about, adding a sled in there or something like that and then if the other exercises still suck just continue to wait until uh they start to feel pain-free i guess right exactly so obviously if you are in active pain you know like then to say it may be hard to judge if an exercise

is pain-free or not and that's why just build it on the lower level stuff you know build it like like the backward sledding would be one that would be very likely that someone could get into. And I have found this little secret weapon of the tibialis because it's right there. This is from doing those knee shoots without like padding. I got bulletproof knees, not bulletproof skin. So I have scabs on my knees. That's why I often have a pad in the video because my knees would just be,

my knees are often bleeding and I don't get the shot and I just do it again and they keep bleeding. Anyways, your tibialis is right there. So it's almost kind of like Charles had a lot of success training all the forearms

in all these different ways for the elbow. Right. Obviously, to have a bulletproof elbow you do have to train your elbow but the point is he really handled a lot of chronic elbow issues by training through the forearm so it's like you're not even using your you see what i mean so so that's that's that's my other big one that i put a number two is ten thousand tibialis raises like just don't complain to me about your knee until you've done ten000 tibialis raises. Like, just don't complain to me about your knee until you've done 10,000 tibialis raises. And every set going to fail. Yeah. And you're going to do that today and I'll show you what the bar, but what's dope is you can take those

puppies to failure without even bending your knee against a wall, you know, waiting for your wife at a store. Longer she shops, more you gain. I mean, not your bank account, but your tibs, you know? longer she shops more you gain i mean not your bank account but your tibs you know um and and i mean the blood has to get there so sure go ahead and be an expert and tell me how it doesn't work but blood's going down there and it helps you know and so so even for that healing process you you don't actually even have to bend your knees so that's really where my system starts and for myself and a lot of people we had to start at things, even like the tibialis raise where your knees not even bent, like you're not even stressing the knee yet. And you're actually stressing what's below the knee. So that's a great one. That tibialis raise is a phenomenal one.

And people might find that like a leg curl doesn't hurt at all. Yeah. Right. And now you can train the hamstring. And I'm sure just if we can go upstream and downstream, train the calves. Exactly. We're not messing with the, with the way that maybe this particular person's knee is bothering them. Exactly. So it is going to come down that math equation of, of what creates knee pain. It is going to come from every angle. There's no, this has become like my big fricking like motto, like in, like that I look at it every day is that, is that weakness is never a strength. Like, yeah, we don't want to be weak anywhere down there. And 99.999% of guys are going to

have weak tibialis because they've never trained it. So even look at the way you walk. A lot of people might not realize that just the way we walk, they may be having extra wear and tear on their cartilage. You know what I mean? Because they get strong everywhere else except there to be Alice. So there's, there's quite a bit to gain without even putting pressure on yourself yet. So as I try to get people in frame, like, like go easy on yourself, start training the tibialis. You know what I mean? Don't be,

don't beat yourself up. If you can't do such in session exercise, just start, you know what I mean? Get it, get it going. You've been, okay.

You've been training 20 years, like start training your tibialis now, you know, a year from now, you can be a different person. It's really, uh, what weird things have you discovered that you were totally on expecting of,

uh, uh, has somebody, you know, you've taken people through these progressions and now their shoulder doesn't hurt anymore or they notice something different with their hip or their glute? Because, you know, these things are all interconnected. And sometimes when you release pain in one spot, you end up with some great benefits in another or even just training your tibialis, which is just super unconventional. Maybe it helps other parts of our body. Hips in the back for sure. So I think the hips in the back really can be quite pain-free for people. And a lot of people are struggling with hips in the back. And it's kind of because, so you look at your ankle, I'll often do demos showing kind of a depth jump in slow motion like like theoretically if my

freaking foot was strong enough I would land like this like you like you wouldn't even need your knees and it's the same then it's the same then you ever see one of these like olympic lifters the like one of these chinese guys that it's just like magical and their torso like never they never even had load on that like the quads were so strong the back never even got loaded you see so so I do think there's some pretty cool stuff that happens with the hips in the back that i wasn't expecting you know like i thought i would be the knee guy and it really now i feel like i am just as obsessed with knee ankle and hip and low back because of how those are related and it can go each joint can f up the other one so even a weak lower back you now going to actually stress your knees more than you see.

Like, like stress is straight. Like the force is somewhere, you know, there's, do you want to be great at all three of those? I understand a hundred percent. When I used to squat,

a lot of times my quads, just from like, you know, power lifting and squatting wide and just addressing some of the things I was addressing, my quads weren't as strong as they needed to be. So then where did the weight shift to? It shifted to my lower back.

And then people will say, oh, I got, you know, a bad lower back or my lower back's always really tight. And it's like, well, maybe if we strengthened this other area, maybe you could have a little bit, maybe you can be more upright. Maybe the bar can sit in a different spot. Maybe even though you already squat a lot of weight, maybe you can squat 50 more pounds. If we can bring that bar down a half inch or an inch, you know, just really searching for what's optimal. 100% weak knee. We see way more back tweaks, you know, way more, way more back issues

start to occur simply because we're, we over rely on it. You know what I mean? So that was, that was the part I didn't expect to get into. And even once I was having, you know, once I was really on this knee track, like without even thinking about it, like, like I had a rough back and I would like go see the car. I would have to like, um, like at night I would sit like, I would lay like 15 minutes on this thing. And like, if I didn't lay on it like 15 minutes, then like, like I had to do it every day or my back would hurt. It never occurred to me like, like,

Hey, I shouldn't have back pain too. You know, now my back is like, it never like nothing ever, not zeros. You know what I mean? Nothing gets to my, now it's again,

it's still relative, right? It's still a math equation. If I did enough deadlifts in a day, you know what I mean? So it's still, it's still a math equation, but the point is I didn't expect that, oh shit, I would end up with a back that never hurts as well. You see what I mean? Yeah.

But I think it's just from shifting those and then getting, you know, a more optimal balance. Plus, if you look at how the quads go down to the knee, like even if you look at the stuff I did on the floor, like when I laid back, opening up those hip flexors and stuff, I think that kind of allows the back to have a little more freedom. So there's certain areas that, again, is the, you know, the weakness is never a strength. And so even your hips are then connecting down into muscles going to your knees. So that's from trying to hit the knees from every single angle. I also figured out shin splints,

you know, back, like I had nasty shin splints. I thought, you know, fuck God, you know, my knees are great.

If only I didn't have shin splints now, or what, you know what I mean? And now, now my shins are like crazy bulletproof, you know? So, so yeah,

it's those, you know, ankle, knee, hip, any one of those joints can F up the other joint Any one of the joints could could help the other joint, you know your flexibility standards like how when you started thinking about movements in terms of flexibility and

Helping out your your the knees and the strength of your knees Where did that come about because you paid like for example, I think Andrew pulled up a video where you were doing the splits, right? But you're also able to do that demo too. Yeah. You're also able to generate this massive amount of power too, right? People don't associate the two. They think to be able to do that, you kind of have to be tight, right? But you're not at all. So how does that play in? And it's, it's actually because it's actually, cause I don't stretch. I don't like to stretch. I just like to move in my first program there is some because at a very low level even stretching is some load so for the first 12 weeks we do some stretching the next 12 weeks there's only one static stretch by my second program by the third program there's zero static stretching i don't static stretch but

yes you've seen dude i've been like standing here cold. I'll do this. He's doing another demo here. He's in a lunge position. So let's look at what creates my splits. So Mark mentioned this this Astrograss split squat. So without the back knee

touching the floor, I'm able to get full bend on this front leg. Notice my back leg. That takes some serious hip flexor. Yeah. And then for my posterior chain, if you want to build the best hamstrings, you have to go through a stretch there. So from the back hip flexor... He's in a very upright posture. His shoulders are right over top of his hips. Just in a full split.

Not the world's best, but it's a pretty quality split for cold. Yep. So it's a pretty quality split for cold, but I used to static stretch for years, and I was nowhere near that. I don't static stretch now. I just try to get stronger. So people don't even realize in my first program where I have some gentle static stretching, it's only because that's actually like a really low level of strength, but it's some loading there that we don't want to dig into yet with weights. But maybe in the beginning, maybe you were stretching, even though you weren't like

actively static stretching, you were going through range of motion that were testing your mobility. And over time you're now able to do that kind of stuff. Exactly. So the, the system just traces what I've done with myself and others. Challenging movement over and over again. And we find that once you get some stretching in, okay, let's turn that into strength. Anything we can turn into strength training, we want to turn into strength training. So yeah, by this point it took, it took a lot of time, but in order to find the right tools and the right exercise. But yeah, by this point, like, yeah, I don't ever static stretch.

I have zero static stretches in my arsenal. Now, it's also not to say that somebody else, they may need some static stretching. I respect stretching. Right. I respect the hell out of stretching. But I've gotten to the point where I can just do strength training. I don't want to stretch. You see, I don't want to spend the time doing it, but it does work.

But I think it works, but then, I mean, shit, if you could then load and get strong. Your mobility was probably really not a major issue really ever, was it? I had horrible mobility. But was that just pain related? I think it, I think because I had this philosophy growing up that if I just worked hard enough, I would make it, you know? And so I would put on ankle weights starting when I was nine, 10, 11, go dribble, you know, 5am, three miles through my hip flexors were so tight through all those teen years. There's no doubt that added to my knee pain, the hip flexor tightness. I see. So it was, um, and

then I feel like for some of us, no matter how much we static stretch an area, it tightens back up if we're weak in that range. So that's kind of started with getting on like, Hmm, wow. Like I hold this area of flexibility more by strength training. So that's kind of how it gets. Like I absolutely wouldn't stop someone from, like I have nothing against stretching. You see what I'm saying? But shit, if I can do the splits cold without having to ever sit there and do a static stretch,

I mean, you know, it's like having your, like it's like finding out I can eat like steak all day and be, you know, like when you have that realization, you think like eating meat's going to make you like fatter or something. More unhealthy. Yeah. But, you know. Mark's the king of that.

I actually, to prepare for this, I had three steaks last night. Oh, that's great. But the hotel. Stack them on top of each other. The hotel I was at had a steakhouse down below. Ooh. Where were you staying? Grass fed steaks.

Holy shit. What is this? Kimpton. Kimpton. Okay. It's downtown Sacramentoramento i just want to you know i just went on oh the sawyer yeah yeah yeah okay so i just went on google to see what's the best hotel i all right my lifestyle i get in the car one day a week to take my wife on a date

i film videos out of my yard i we go on a family walk in the morning i have a pitbull who needs so much walking or he's just a handful but i love him to death he has to get a family walk in the morning. I have a pit bull who needs so much walking or he's just a handful, but I love him to death. He has to get like two miles in the morning, two miles in the evening. And then afternoon I handle like, I handled the text work and stuff. I put the baby on my chest and so I, dude, I don't, I don't leave my neighborhood except for once a week for a date with my wife. So I'm like, I'm going to Sacramento.

Like I'm just, I'm not trying to stay at the budget in. Yeah. I want to go feel, uh, Sacramento. I've never been here. So yeah. So I got like a balcony suite downtown, killer views, gorgeous sunset, go downstairs. They're like a restaurant there. Grass fed like steaks, ordered myself three steaks.

Like a echo and rig or something like that. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. So it was fricking, fricking, I was i was like i gotta get ready for you know for mark bell i need to freaking man up yeah and have some steaks tonight you know on what you said in terms of like you don't need to stretch anymore here's the uh oh not bad not bad nice shredded yeah you can eat three steaks and yeah have body fat. Yeah. But what you're saying in terms of like not needing a static stretch anymore, I totally agree with that because it's like,

after I started getting more into mobility, cause I, I was very tight. And after I started doing that, after a certain point, it's like, there's a certain level that just stays there. Exactly.

And personally, like I can go into the gym and I was like, I've told Mark this like years ago and still now I can go into the gym and just start training cold now because I have this base level of good movement. Yep. Right. And it can, it can still be improved, but I don't find that I'm having to like, you know, put like, use a hard ball and roll my glutes on it and do all this stuff. I used to have to spend forever. I like it. Like I had to, like, if I didn't, like I couldn't get into my, and it would hurt. And I had this whole routine

it would take me like 30 45 minutes exhausted by the time it got to time to train yeah you know yeah so big difference yep so what does it mean and i mean sorry this is going to be like a very like elementary question because yeah no problem um my knees pop like crazy to the topic good to the point where like um like we we all we walk all day long like we we you know get work done then we go for a 10 minute walk i love it um there's times where i'm walking i'm like i'm not gonna pop my knees not gonna pop my knees but it feels like i have like an air pocket in between like my joints or whatever i don't even know the terminology and then like i'll pop them and I feel fine and I'm good to go. Pain is not really there, but obviously it's, I feel like this isn't correct. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And you're right. And here's the thing with knee noise. Okay. Knee noise does not mean you have bad knees. However, it can be an indicator. So I would simply put it this way. Whatever your knee noise is now, you could have the best knees in the world and you could still have a lot of knee

noise and you could have the most bulletproof knees in the world. Okay. But if that noise is getting worse, you know what I mean? So for you, it's probably somewhere along the line, gotten a little worse mine was worse in my teens i remember had this knee that could make like you could hear it from like like you know when you know how you say you pop it and then it feels better after you pop but you can feel like it needs to put like yeah um that's not a good indicator you know like like i would at least be doing training to try to remove that issue. Right. Okay.

And if we don't train our knees through a full range of motion, if we look at the research on what creates length, okay, even stretching and length are two different things, right? So think about the way down on a Nordic, think about a good Romanian deadlift. Okay. So those things are actually proven to create length. We don't have studies on that for the front of deadlift. Okay. So those things are actually proven to create length. We don't have studies on that for the front of the knees. Okay. We don't have studies on that for the tibialis. I want, I want you to get super flexible all through your tibialis and through your quad,

but through strength, not through just static stretching those. But here's what the research shows on the hamstring. Took these $20,000 machines. They measured, like, I don't even know what this would look like, but they measured the length of the hamstring took these twenty thousand dollar machines they measured like i don't even know what this would look like but they measured the length of the hamstring he's like you guys probably understand this better than i do this whole like concept of like so it wasn't a flexibility test they they analyzed the muscular length and yeah athletes it didn't matter if they were elite or novice or whatever athletes with more hamstring length were four times less likely

to injure their hamstring that's a hell of an indicator yeah hell of an indicator that other muscles might enjoy that as well like so so yeah for you i definitely will show you today before i go like just a great way you can start working on the length on either side and i would be working the hamstring length too you know what i mean so so your calf tibia hamstring and quad length but right now the research we have is only really on hamstring length so that's a good point that someone should start studying this episode of mark bow's power project podcast is brought to you by piedmontese beef and i really want to talk about piedmontese beef because in my opinion it is the most underrated most untalked about just

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over you know exactly what you would you know maybe have her do but maybe she can give you uh some insight as to her knee problems yeah definitely but hopefully hopefully it helped with the concept of the yeah absolutely i mean literally as i asked you a question like i i kind of like stretched my leg back and it popped and it just did again yes and it's just like i don't know if it's like a mental thing at this point where no i mean it's what i mean is as far as like oh i need to pop it for my knee to feel better like it's sort of like your kn is as far as like oh i need to pop it for my knee to feel better like it's sort of like your knuckles right i've been there i used to have that yeah i'd have to pop so um i think it has to do with the length got it yeah but it doesn't for anyone out there

with the knee noise you do have to know like it doesn't mean you have bad knees you you you literally could have the most bulletproof knees in the world and still have knee noise you know i mean it's it's important for people to know that because some people freak out you know if they have that it doesn't mean you have bad knees but if you notice the noise is getting more and more that might be an indicator for you you know what i mean yeah nice yeah hi what up jess just get a little closer to the mic well yeah both of them do cause me pain. Okay. But my right obviously causes me more pain because I've had multiple surgeries. Oh, wow. When I was like a sophomore in high school, I completely dislocated my kneecap off.

My patella was just off. It did not go back in. So I ended up having surgery where they cut the side tendon and retied my kneecap back on. I shaved the complete underside of it off. It was like a potato chip was floating around in my knee. All the cartilage is completely gone. The last couple years ago, I ended up having surgery where they basically went in and took all the arthritis that I had created. I created bone spurs.

So when I went to go wrap my, I didn't even know about them, but when I went to go wrap my knees for powerlifting meet, my knee swole up so bad. It looked like someone had taken a personal size watermelon and sliced it in half and threw it on my leg. That's what my knee looked like. I could barely walk and Mark was like, all right, you got to figure something out because you can't keep you can't even walk um and it just i had basically compressed

my knee so far that the bone spurs were going into the soft tissue of my knee that's how bad my bone spurs were my arthritis was really really nasty and honestly my knees and my joints, like my shoulders, like sublux a lot. So that's just something that I still kind of experience now. I'll be laying in bed and my left knee will sublux. Like I can feel it, my kneecap, like go in and out. And that's just, I have pain all over. So I've been struggling. I've finally got to a spot where I can squat pain-free so I feel good about that but um anything weird um one leg just not very strong at all and it

does cause me some pain so even attempting to try and strengthen that is really hard for me because it'll put me in a position where I'm in pain. And so that just makes me not want to do it because I don't know how else to even, I don't know, progress that movement. So if we were to say like, Hey, just, you know, do some lunges right now, you know, 20 reps on each leg, you'd be like, uh, give me a minute. Right. Yeah. Um, it would, it would take a lot of movement to get me to be able to do those lunges. And then even then, depending on the day, I could or could not be able to do it. I'm really glad this one came up because it's a really specific thing we haven't talked about at all yet. And it's so simple.

And I'll definitely show her today. Now, like any of these qualities, you're going to have to build it, okay? Right. Like everything we've talked about, all your different areas are going to matter, okay? But there's one in particular. She had the original patella injury and then now the cartilage going away, right? Mm-hmm. And I think this whole thing, how it goes from a patella issue and and then it's

your patellar tendon right there like that's your biggest shock absorber right a tendon is tendons are stronger than muscles okay they're actually less flexible so the muscle is more flexible the muscle is weaker than a tendon so that is that is a major actually point of strength in your body is those patellar tendons. And we already have amazing studies proving how using a slant board can actually help you rebuild your patellar tendons. pain-free ability on that slant board and in your situation it can be so hard even to get the right muscles to engage so hard slant board is a game changer i started noticing this one day like so until recently i lived in in florida and it's fishing and docks and all this and like every time i'd be like going down like docks and it like like a slant like a good wooden like slant that your foot grips i'm like my knee doesn't hurt in a slant like a good wooden like slant that your foot grips like my knee doesn't hurt in that position you know what i mean like it was weird that my knee

like it actually made the right muscle work now the lowest would be literally just so like i brought a slant board with me i brought tib bar slant board and one other thing but the lowest would be literally just even having the ball of your foot on your floor and just the heel on the slant and using assistance and just like getting the right muscle to and without realizing it you're actually strengthening scientifically strengthening your patellar yeah so you're now like rebuilding like a brand newbie just starting to learn a new lift you know like you're benching 75 pounds you know like you're like you know like you're rebuilding a weak area for yourself and i think this one's particularly might be king for for power lifting in fact is just once you've had those knee injuries it you are so strong in other

areas it's hard to get those knee muscles to really you see i mean so it's almost like your strength is against yourself because you're so strong in other areas, it's hard to get those knee muscles to really, you see what I mean? So it's almost like your strength is against yourself because you're so strong in other areas that these other areas just want to take everything over. Yeah. So yeah, so with a slant board, yeah, we want to get you standing on it. We then want to get the slant board up on an Olympic plate. We want to then get the slant board up on six. Now imagine right now the idea of being on a slant board on six inches and going knee over. That would probably like cause so much pain.

Right. I mean, the thought of just like exactly that. Exactly. But that's that's actually what you want to get to that being pain free. And at that time, you'll notice some more of that that DMO kind of come in. But but more importantly, is is that it's, it's, we're actually following the science that does exist for showing what actually can build those patellar tendons. And that's why I think it's such a huge point. I'm so glad this came up because we didn't talk about the slant board and it's so simple and they should just be in every gym. And, and you, the lowest would be only the heel up on, so the ball of your front on the floor with something to to balance and not just something little like a like a foam roller like like maybe turn a bench like right

side up you know what i mean like something really sturdy to balance and just get that thing what you can't you know what i mean get it pumping let it recover do that for like the next year, never more than three days. Cause there's just no reason to risk it like that. Um, and, and your patellar tendon could make huge improvements. What's the deal with like the Q angle? Like, is this some nonsense or like, is it mainly just people working on weakness? Cause I hear people all the time with, when it comes to females in particular, they talk about the Q angle, the, the knee being inside the hip and how, you know, this is leading to problems and stuff.

Do you think that that is a real thing? It's just the way that people are built or do you think it's bullshit and people just need to be stronger? I don't, I don't know what that is. The Q angle. Oh, you've never heard of that before.

Oh, never heard of it. Well, anyway, I've probably come across it and been like, but that's, yeah, so it's, it's right here stand up straight when you see her her hip is here yeah and her knee is here oh i see and so uh this is uh what a lot of people blame on like on knee

injuries for women i think they're like cheerleading or they're in just any sport, volleyball or whatever it might be. There we go. I think that's more an effect that occurs from being weak in the wrong area. And I'll tell you, I've worked with some people who had that pretty bad because in the football world, actually, some of these Samoans actually get that pretty bad. These guys who are very heavy, right? Some of these Samoans actually get that pretty bad these guys were very heavy right so they're very heavy And I don't think that VMO can handle the force that's coming in on it And so we saw many cases where like I have texts from people like you cured my fucking knock knees You know what I mean like how it how it goes in so Yeah, I think this means like we really have to get stronger and straighten out that leg, you know.

So I have another question then, because I lack. I am unable to bend my knee like I can. I can sit on my knee like, you know, some people can like sit back on their heels and stuff. I do not have the physical capability of doing that. I completely understand. Mark touched on this earlier on, which is that the body will put things there. Your body's built, you know,

like defense mechanism to try to protect itself. So your body's trying to protect you from blowing it out right now. But that's not advantageous for life to not have that range of motion. You know what I mean? Correct. Your body's putting the pain, the swelling, it's putting these things there to actually try to protect you so we have to put

real strength in its place and that's we just see that those lack of range of motion issues the solution is not actually to be trying to bend it and stuff the solution is actually just to put the strength in the right areas and then i think your body will gradually allow you know the false strength that's there to wither away that's what we've observed that's well so i was working with phil derue and he he basically said the same thing like my mind will not allow me to bend my knee any further like you cannot force it because it's giving all these pain receptors to me telling me that you can't move your knee in that in that direction and so until i can get rid of some of that pain there's no way i'm going to improve it because my body just will not allow me to do it right exactly forcing the bend i don't

think is what would fix it believe it or not almost the exact opposite of that of getting on the slant board and forcing the right muscles to engage is actually how i would approach it awesome that gets me excited thank you yeah last note is that no no last note for her is that um it may oh for her don't go there she's running away realized that like it's going to be like an exponential graph because the, at first it's going to be so hard to get the muscle to feel. You see what I mean? Like just put the money in the bank, come back the next day and it's going to compound.

And then weeks, months, you see what I'm saying? So you can't be hard on yourself at the beginning of that process. You know what I mean? Yeah. And you just try to get some feeling in the right, some pain-free feeling the right, and then a little bit more and then a little bit more. Once you're getting to now, now imagine taking those muscles to utter failure with no joint pain. That's the end goal that we're trying to get to. But that's

all I wanted to say is that don't try to push through the pain to get there because that could cause more damage than we even have time to recover by the time because strength takes time to recover. So what if the strength has recovered, but the pain that you put in hasn't recovered yet? Now you actually can't get stronger. Do you see what I mean? So if it takes you longer to recover from the pain, then the strength is, you see what

I'm saying? Like you can't drive up your bench press benching once every three months like i mean that's a a really like big bad example but you see my point is that if you push through pain it could cause too much damage to recover no working through pain no working through pain acknowledge yourself for every one percent more that you feel one percent more is a lot to feel a little bit, because what if you actually did that for a year? You see what I mean? Where could your life, life could be long for us, you know? Every day is a blessing, but shit, this could be long. So like, where could you be in a year from now, you know? Yeah. I usually share with people,

in terms of like just strength training in general, like I don't think anything should be above like a level three out of 10 and maybe even even lower like you really know but that's proven you really shouldn't have hardly any pain when you're training now you might be uncomfortable and something might feel you know for me like i've been dealing with like a left hip thing for quite some time a right knee thing for quite some time a left elbow thing for quite like i have these little things and they're just there and they're it's always left hip, right knee. It's always. Yeah, right.

But it's just it's just very it's just very tiny. You know, so there's things that I know it's not great to just like live with these things and just to keep pushing forward. But I don't feel like I like I'm not they're not really, really painful. They're very, very three on a pain scale is actually proven clinically to work. Meaning it is proven that if you push through a two or three, it works. Now, I try to push for no pain. You see what I mean?

Like I think. Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's a worthy goal to push for no pain because have you ever tried like, you know, when you have a program, you have to like hold a, like, a three count or something, and then you watch back your film, and it was, like, 1.2 seconds? Yeah. So I feel like if you ever train with Charles Follik, he does it the other way. Right, right. One, two. You're literally sweating with, like.

Anyways, but the point is that I feel like it's good to know the data. It's good to know that a two or three actually works but not to let that turn into a four or five well and i like what you're saying here too because this is similar to uh just how we lift in general like you know let's say there's a 15 year old kid and the kid wants to have a big back you know and you tell them about some of the basic movements and you you you know, you see Nsema do a bent over row and he does it with very strict form. Well, for that 15 year old kid, I would say do it like Nsema is doing, you know, utilize that really strict form.

But at the same time, if it's, if it's really, really limiting and the kid can't use any weight, I would say, you know, put on a belt, maybe get a little bit of momentum in there just for a set or two, nothing crazy. Just add a little bit of weight, use a little bit of body English, and then reduce the weight and finish out your sets, uh, you know, with, with the strict form as you can possibly handle. So these are like these little two or three is proven. I just think that people need to know and still be striving, be striving for perfection. All right. But it is. Well, it raises a question, right? When you have a two or three, now you can say, well, this is something I should be addressing

because it really, I shouldn't have any pain there at all. Yeah. Now, what if you get even stronger and no pain? That would, you see what I mean? Like, that would be a great. Because I know when I've been my strongest, I could go, I could drop a weight so fast that it would scare everybody they're like what the i'd take out like a 500 pound bench press and i would drop it right away and just like let

the thing go because i knew i was plenty strong like i was like i'm gonna smash this fucking thing when it gets to my chest i'm gonna wind up i'm gonna coil up and just blast it and then the same thing was uh with squats and if you watch at Westside Barbell, they do something called accelerated eccentrics, which is when they're training with bands and training with chains. I mean, these are big guys. These are 300 plus pound guys that you're not really thinking about speed with these guys. But they drop down in those squats so fast. And that's a great indication that I would imagine that that guy doesn't have any pain inhibition because if he did, he would be like, let me hold on. You know, that's an

incredible amount of force because you're adding, when I first did the, the, the knee over toe demo, I was showing how, like, if you go slow though, remember I tried to shoot him fast. Yeah. Exactly what Mark is saying now, which is that you don't have that that pain it's actually more force like dropping it rapidly like that but overall i think it's a good i think it's a good topic that that little bit of wiggle room to if you can get a little more wiggle room to get a little stronger it does seem like scientifically that actually works you know but the key is not letting that wiggle room turn into you know more and more and more and more. Or yeah, you kind of lie to yourself and it's now a four. And now your buddy's going all you and then, you know,

and now it fucks because you have all your percentages laid out based on a false max. Dude, I only took five pounds off, I swear. I just get a little bit. Yeah. I love everything you're saying because it's just cementing everything that I have in my mind right now. I actually had a conversation with Stuart McGill regarding my back. Oh, wow. And yeah, he basically said the same thing. Like you need to spend more time out of pain.

And like, uh, as we're doing like this consultation, like I stood up like kind of like just like a lazy piece of shit. Like, and he's like, Whoa, he's like,

no, no, no. He's like, you don't do that anymore. He's like, every time you cause pain, you have to take $50 out of your bank account.

He's like, every time you move without pain, sorry, I don't know if I said that wrong, but every time you hurt pain you have to take fifty dollars out of your bank account he's like every time you move without pain sorry i don't know if i said that wrong but every time you hurt yourself uh you got to pay fifty dollars every time you move without pain you get an extra hundred dollars so it's sort of like uh and this isn't the way he put it but this is how i interpreted it it takes like a hundred uh movements without pain to get one step better. The way I looked at it in the past was like no pain, no gain. So it's like, okay, I do three movements without pain.

I hurt myself on the fourth. That's okay. I'm going to keep continuing and go four, five, six. He's like, no, when you hurt yourself, you go back down to zero and you have to keep building up like the good credits of not being in pain. He's like, cause otherwise you're not for my situation, you're not really going to develop strength and you're not going to repair yourself you're just going to keep going back to square one yeah so i really like again i really appreciate everything you're saying oh yeah 100 it reminds me of um what you said and what

mark was saying reminds me of tom platts and how he could just like dip into those steep knee bends you know like and like look at the legs those steep knee bends, you know, like, and like, look at the legs he was able to build, you know what I mean? So. He's still able to squat being old. Yeah. But there's something, there's something to be said there. Cause I've seen people who mentally can never get over just pushing, pushing through some stuff, you know?

And it's like, yeah, like to. Yeah. Look at that speed or watching some Westside Barbell guys. And they got like about four plates and they have, you know two or three hundred pounds of bands on there and they're just flying through the weights yep actually there might this looks like there's maybe a hundo on there too quick question like specifically for like maybe jujitsu athletes because like those types of athletes and even um just grapplers mma athletes uh they're put into a lot of positions that is wonky on the knee they're put into a lot of positions that is wonky on the knee. They're put into a lot of submissions that

pull on the tendons. If a guy's put in a heel hook, he can rip a guy's ACL apart. You were talking about tendon strain. I've heard you even mention in a video tendon hypertrophy. Tendons and ligaments hypertrophy. like tendon hypertrophy um so tendons and ligaments hypertrophy yeah you know what what like i guess like they have anabolic qualities like what would be some great movements that could help with that that maybe they can add into what they're currently doing i mean it would be great if they could just go into the program and just do that specific program that you have but if they

could add something in well i mean if we start with a good example of the slant board for example you know like all right well how much does someone squat but if if could add something in. Well, I mean, if we start with a good example of the slant board, for example, you know, like, all right, well, how much does someone squat? But if, if their knee is going to hurt to go, you know, on a slant board, then clearly like the tendon's not matching the muscles there. So I, I think there is something kind of going on in the broader scheme of sports where I think that the muscles are so badly outdoing the tendons and ligaments. Um, that's me. Yeah. So, so you don't see, you know, you see the muscles, you know, you see the 40 yard dash. You don't see if maybe that guy has chronic pain. It's my understanding that they respond pretty good to higher reps. Is that correct? Or am I off on that? Well,

I think you have a blood flow thing. And as long as you're like avoid, like if we look at like the sled, right. And how it can give you an opportunity to like get a pain-free pump, but then look at the angle we were in, our knee was over our toe. So really it can take a step back and, and pumping an area to actually just get into the position that does develop the tendon. You see what I mean? Yeah. So, um, that seems to be really good stuff is, is really anything that you're getting, uh, stronger with that heel elevated knee over toe seems to load that tendon. But again, if, if you're pushing through pain, but now if you start to get a pump and, and, and you're feeling those muscles working, that would be a good indication that

probably the tendon is getting stronger too. Um, and then even in terms of the ligaments, it does seem to be that there's something to be said for the full bend. You know, it's, um, quite literally meaning like, like literally like the, the quality of the full bend itself, like not just that. Like full knee flexion. Yeah. Okay. Exactly. Um, so like, not just from a, not just from training the muscles perspective, but literally the fact of it, you know, just sandwiching itself on it, you know, like it's like, oh, that'll hurt your knee or whatever. Like the way these bodies are, they just kind of like adapt to the shit that we, we do with them. You know, I understand what you're saying. Kelly's threat refers to as

overpressure. You know, when you're in the bottom of a squat, he was talking about 10-minute squats where you just pop a squat and just stay there for a bit. ourselves in these positions and come out of these positions pain-free, there's, well, causing adaptation. There's a lot more potential there to get stronger than there probably is from just flat out squatting all the time. Yep. You know, we might be able to progress our squat, you know, might be able to go from a 700-pound squat to an 800-pound squat and all these things. But if we stopped for a minute and addressed some

of these, uh, nuances that we, that might, we might think is annoying or monotonous. If we address these things, maybe, maybe 800 isn't our limit now. Maybe our ceiling is now, you know, 881 until we get, you know, further progress. And I think, I think there's a couple of really good examples. And I think one really good example is Steffi Cohen doing the full knee bend. I mean, it's causing a lot of adaptation there. She may not even know what a regular lifter feels like in their knees. She may be feeling so much better. She has no idea how shitty, you know, the rest of us felt, you know, trying to build

our squats. And then on the other side is the jumping. So I've had to make videos because, you know, even well-known sports trainers and stuff put out, you know, so much data about the quarter squat is ideal for vertical jump. Okay. Well, these are usually testing short-term studies. So I know for a fact, because I have video, you know, this video footage of Stefan Holm. So Stefan Holm, in terms of competition, he was a high jumper who won a gold medal as a 5'11 dude in the high jump. Okay.

So he has the greatest head to height differential. So the world's highest jumper of all time, squatted ass to grass, full knee bent, cheeks to sneaks, bum, bum. You know what I mean? Like, but here's what's really dope about it he's in his 40s now and he's still bouncy as fuck so why would he do that if that doesn't look like what a high jump to me it makes absolutely no sense let's say that a quarter squat is going to be necessarily great for a uh for a for jumping ability since i believe that so much jumping ability comes from your butt and you can't really tap into the glute very well,

unless you're getting down there in the squat. It's true. So I think, I think for short term, I think sure. A quarter squat may work better in a study in the short term, but my God, where, where are all these short-term coaches getting people doing full, you know, full range of motion for not, you see what I mean? Like it takes me damn near 36 weeks to develop that in someone. My God, what is some college, you know, grad student having people do for a full squat? But, but again, none of that matters. I don't matter. The, the studies that have been done don't matter. Stefanholm does matter. This isn't just, you know, I'm not basing a whole system on one case, but that is, it still fucking matters. Look at the Olympic lifters and look at the

shot putters. These guys can all do cleans and snatches very proficiently. And, uh, I've seen, you know, 350 pound shot putters jump up on a reverse hyper machine before. That's all the proof I need, you know, to see what some of these things can do you know yeah so if the world's greatest recorded jumper ever was and in high jump so many guys refused to do the deep bend that he was doing you know but his resilience now is insane he's in still in his 40s jumping was a goal also he was the Cal Ripken of high jump he wasn't just he would go to the local and regional meets that he wasn't even required to go to just to put out for fans you know like he was a he was just a regular dude you know who was so he competed more and jumped higher and was doing full now he trained all that

you know he trained all the different positions in his hamstrings and and and shorter box step ups and stuff but the point is that clearly a full pen squat doesn't make you not jump high. Yeah. And then there's another guy in the the guy who appears to be the highest jumper in like the dunking world. It's not like high jump where they have a measurable, but it's this French dude, Kadur Ziani, who's like flying through the air. And you want to talk about full knee bend. Holy crap. You know, this guy's balls are on his heels. Kadur Ziani is actually my mentor. And if I like we, we message every day. So Kador is my jump mentor because I, I told you my plan that now I have to have insane longevity added to the equation and he's 47, 5'11 still

dunking. Okay. So Kador plus Stefan Holm plus Steffi Cohen, fuck every study ever it's been. Plus Stefan Holm, plus Steffi Cohen. Fuck every study ever it's been done. That's enough for me. Right. You see what I mean? The studies have inaccuracy. Stefan Holm's high jump didn't have inaccuracy.

Khadur Ziani doing fucking triple 360. Steffi Cohen, that was measurable on the bar. Every study that's ever been done is subject to a ton of inaccuracy compared to those. I'll take those three cases any day. Now add mine to it. Add, you know, whoever else. You see what I mean yeah and that there's video footage that you have had on your channel like cador doing these full knee bend walks that's what i'm saying sidewalk like he puts me to shame honestly like it's crazy like cador has more range of motion and more like probably more

knee ability than i do like that's my point it's like he's you know takes he takes it to whatever extremes possible and he's out there in france at playgrounds and stuff with no weights having to figure out how do i put load and how do i i mean anyways have you seen uh everyone be able to end up with pain-free ability or uh are they just able to maybe manage their pain better or end up with just less pain? I would compare it exactly as if some newbie said to you, do some people just not gain muscle? Do some people just not get – like I've tried everything. I just don't gain muscle.

There's different levels. Every guy who comes to you and says, I've tried everything. I just don't. That's how I feel. See, because people ask me that question like i you know am i just a special case like how do i know it's going to work for me well it's going to be relative but like it's not my opinion like it's just biology like how it works you know so you can make progress no matter who you are and you can have less pain i've never seen anyone who just like couldn't make progress. Right. But there's definitely head cases who in anything they choose

in life will figure out how to not make progress. You know what I mean? Like, like it's pretty easy to not make, like anyone can not, but anyone who's tried, you know what I mean? That's why I built this on training, just endless people in person. We never saw such a thing as someone who couldn't make progress it didn't exist we never saw that i would have old ladies on the sled and they couldn't even drag the sled and so i would be pushing the sled with some additional assistance and then and then build them to the point that they could do it on their own you know but like like jesus man if i've trained 70 80 year, like, and if they made gains, yeah, no one has any excuses. One thing that I've seen from you that was, like, super exciting was this guy named George Heckenschmidt.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, the hack squat. Wish we had videos, but we have pictures of him at 75 jumping over something, like, as high as this table. Yeah. Okay? And talk about crazy full knee bend and stuff. It's too bad we don't have like videos of that fucking inventor of the hack squat what's really sad is that that machine

resembles nothing of what right he right what the hacks it's kind of like the sissy squat machine thing right like that's not at all what anyways i mean it's just what about some of the machines in the gym uh these like not great tools because they did. You know, I sometimes hear people say they cause shearing forces. I think I've heard about leg extension, hack squat. Like what are some of your opinions? They do make it feel like your knees are going to explode sometimes. I mean, number one, I don't feel like there's any I don't feel like there's any such thing as a bad motion.

But I feel like certain machines, I mean, at least master your own weight and free weights first, you know? Um, and then there are, I think there are some pretty dope things you can do with some machines, but I don't use any in my system. Plus again, I'm like, I'm, I'm just trying to make this stuff accessible. You know what I mean? If anything, if there is a machine that works, I'm trying to figure out how do you makeshift that machine, you know what I mean? If anything, if there is a machine that works, I'm trying to figure out how do you makeshift that machine. You know what I mean? Like, so, like, things of that nature.

That's kind of like. This is Shane Hammond doing a 1,000-pound squat. So, the 1,000-pound squat was so fast that, like, the footage, like, I can't find a video of it. Like, you just see him. He has it loaded up. And then he squats down. The camera can't follow him. And then he comes up and that's all you see. So this is, this is for 10, um, kilos, but yeah, this is insane.

Yeah. This is a 900. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this guy, I want to say he had like 30 inch calves, something just absolutely insane like that from what i i recall um he was an olympic lifter i believe holy shit wow yeah play that one again that's i mean there's a guy who's kind of like he obviously has no pain all right i mean you're not going to move like that

if if you had any pain at all well let's imagine if if he had to pick up a cow his knee wouldn't break you know right like it's just survive you know which when you're on the carnivore diet you know you need to pick up a cow every other day or so there's another one yeah oh my goodness and there's examples of this non-stop You know, you go and look at the, again, don't look no further than some of the Olympic lifters. They're just, they're so strong. And they're not even big guy. I mean, this is a huge guy. Look how big his legs are. What? He comes up a lot slower than he goes down. But that's that reversal strength.

And, you know, that can be, I mean, that's that reversal strength and you know that that can be i mean that's a lot of what you're demonstrating when you're jumping down you know you're jumping down from the ladder yeah um out in sports yeah right those that eccentric fast for like you can't like you can only run and jump as high as you can put the speed into and then and then handle that so have you ever heard of uh Schroeder? Oh. Years ago, him and Adam Archuleta and all those. I feature Adam in a ton of my videos because Jay set up a six-year plan.

He used to jump off his roof, right? He used to do a lot. He used to do a lot of eccentric training. Jay Schroeder had the craziest, I mean, I used to read a little bit of it, but I kind of lost interest because I was like, this is too fucking crazy. I don't even know what he's talking about. Yeah, I feel to read a little bit of it, but I kind of lost interest because I was like, this is too fucking crazy.

I don't even know what he's talking about. Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. I've taken only one piece from his system, to be honest. And it was the fact that this fucker could do weighted Nordics, you know, and that he started and they would like laugh at him because he had no hamstrings. They said he had a nice face for a girl in the gym. And yeah, he was was you can see it on espn interview i feature this interview in my videos and so the part of the plan was to make hamstrings and so he would do like weighted eccentrics like so he got it took him but my

favorite part of it is that right there on camera and sports and it says it took him two and a half years just to do a flat Nordic. I think that's such a powerful statement because here's a movement that's proven to help protect your ACL and all this. But it took him two and a half years just to do one, you know. So that I actually based a lot of my shit on that concept of like, where are you now? Like, where could you be on the right plan? And, you know, he's, he ended up being a first round draft pick in the NFL and the guy never should have even gotten a scholarship to college. You know, he was laughed at for the idea of even getting a

scholarship to college, you know, skinny, you know, slow kid ended up being a first round draft pick known for his strength and his speed. Yeah. Trying to do an absolute freak like a combine freak. Yeah now with something like that You know, it's like Why weren't there more of him? You know like there's and anyone could it come in anyone could attack my system from a number of ways as well but I do believe that there probably was just a Higher risk, you know within that system it was just a higher risk, you know, within that system. So I feel like if Jay took his genius and maybe made like a, like more of a scaled down program, I think there's a lot of genius to what

was going on there. But like you said, it was so extreme that I think most of us would have gotten kind of hurt in the process. Yeah, I saw it jumping off the roof, and I'm like, this is where I'm jumping off to. Well, and the difference is, I do it to demo, the difference is this kind of stuff was like part of their program. They would also pick him up and drop him so that he would catch himself in a push-up position. And you can see video of him with 225, and he would do drop. So he would hold the bar, and he would let go of the bar,

and he would catch it just above his chest. Oh, right, right, right. Yeah. And for his size, he had the strongest bench ever at the time for a player of his size. Wow. So they would hold him up by the feet on one side

and the hands on the other side and they would drop him. So you get my point. It's like, you know, if that could be turned into a scaled thing, it just shows that a human body can adapt. What doesn't kill it. So i'm just trying to create something where we're not going anywhere near those risks in the process you know but we're following that concept that that yeah like it's

it's a body it can get stronger it can adapt period that's one of the coolest things i think about your program because um you have all these really really like some of the regressions that you see in it it's just like it's so simple that someone would not be like, why the fuck am I going to do that? But it's, if you can't do this, just start at this really simple thing and you can slowly build up. That's how it was with my right knee. Like I couldn't get into that position without pain.

Like I couldn't fricking do this without pain initially. And then slowly I was able to build up to being able to do it from a little bit of height it just it makes it and that's i recognize my role is to make that boring shit look cool you know it's honestly like i do these videos to try to make this look cool you know but um but my biggest thing is like everything in my system like my mom has to be able to do it like if she can't she's actually like my my proving ground like if she can't do it then i know it's not a scalable enough thing because what about the person who's so powerful that in their own way, they're fragile because of that weak point. So it's like it has to start in that anyone can do it. Yeah.

So, yeah, and it doesn't look cool. It doesn't look fancy. You know what I mean? But it works. But when you see a dunk, then it's like, all right, fuck it. I'll do it to be honest. You know what I mean? Like, yeah.

But it works. But when you see a dunk, then it's like, all right, fuck it. I'll do it to be honest. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Where was the first places that you started to make progress? Because you mentioned you have been on this journey for a really long time. Started when you're about 12. You recognize like my knees are shit.

And you had surgeries and did a bunch of stuff. And then the backwards sledding. Is that where you started? I used my car in neutral. Yeah. So like I would, I started realizing I was going to the gym and I started realizing I was getting best gains by me and my buddy would go down to the parking lot you started my car in neutral yeah so like i would i started realizing i was going to the gym and i started realizing i was getting best gains by me and my buddy would go down to the parking lot put my car in neutral and push it backwards and i was getting more gains outside of

the gym putting my car pushing it backwards was like your butt so yeah like so your butt's against it and and you get i don't fucking kill your legs get the most phenomenal workout yeah but yeah just the concept of going backwards and, and, you know, I was trying to play basketball. So I do think that it took, you know, it took that loading. And that was directly from Charles Poliquin and Keegan Smith. And again, a ton, tons of greats have done this, you know, but it's like, why is that not like, why is every basketball, basically like every basketball player just needs to be aware of that. It doesn't mean that now basketball magically becomes pain-free but shit if you make some of this stuff part of a lifestyle my god it doesn't have to wreck your knees you don't have to be

taking painkillers you don't have to be icing your knees i you really can create a massive shift over time um that was the first thing i noticed car in neutral pushing it backwards yeah and what were some of the progressions from that point well in charles's thing charles is huge on the squat right like charles never respected me because i wasn't that strong i'm gonna be honest okay um but it's because i couldn't really get into his programs with the full squat, right? Like I would, you see, I have pretty good mobility and in person, like he'd be telling me to go deeper. You know what I'm talking about. Absolutely.

So, but he was also used to training national level athletes, world-class athletes. I was no such thing, you know? So I don't think he was used to someone with like as weak of knees as me so it really was these polar ends of like the super gentle shit you know what i mean of the backwards sledding backwards car backwards hill backwards dead you know what i mean whatever you can find you can actually use like a duffel bag uh sandbags are like four bucks for 50 pounds i find that half your body weight in sand in a bag use a strap go out to a field world-class knee workout dragging

it yep okay eight bucks like who doesn't have a duffel bag and like a strap or a rope you see what i'm saying yeah eight bucks so so it was all that shit while trying to figure out how the hell to get into a squat without it hurting all the way down. You see what I mean? And so that's my my king became that split squat. Now I play basketball. I actually decent. I actually have decent muscle mass for a basketball player.

But so the the squat I only use like part of the year as like a finishing touch to add more power and development. So that split squat has become like my rock that I use at all times. Every week of my life, I train my strength in that ass to grass split squat. So that's, that was my big thing was coming from where I was trying to get into those squats without them hurting. But even the split squats, I couldn't really get into, um, which that's how I became so obsessed with the step-ups and even a lot of the step-ups I couldn't get into. So I became obsessed with the tibia. You see what I'm saying? So it literally went on a regression from squat regress to split squat regress to step up regress to the tibialis and the backwards with the gar. I mean, there you go

right there. That's my career in a nutshell. And then also, meanwhile, trying to figure out hamstring progress because I'd crazy, you know, i would like drop like a bag of potatoes on a nordic and stuff and now people are like man i could never do that it's like bro like i had the weakest nordics now i have world-class fucking knee flexion strength too you know so so that that whole stuff but there it is like if you just made all right that would be a 60 second podcast there's my there's all my secrets squat progresses to split squat which regresses to reverse step up. There's a, I'm doing a video today showing the different reverse step ups. There's a logical order, but it's really that simple.

Anyone could, anyone could create a wonderful knee system by regressing squat to ask to regress split squat to reverse step up to, to the Allison and backwards sledding, whatever you find. We had a cal deets uh who's a world-renowned strength coach uh come to our gym and he showed us a bunch of different cool techniques and this was one of them where he had us uh he had me doing um like kind of a single leg squat and uh he's just telling me to you know kind of do whatever you know whatever i'm able to handle at the moment but he also also is, he was teaching people to be on their toe, to have their heel off the

ground and to, you know, press their toe into the ground hard and kind of flex the calf because a lot of the athletes he deals with, he's like, this is a position you end up in all the time, you know, when you're. It's the most athletic position in in basketball football you know running i thought for sure when he's showing me this exercise see now he's showing you a way to kind of avoid the pain and go way back into it but i thought for sure i'm like that's gonna kill my knee it didn't hurt my knee i didn't feel it in my knees at all made your vmo engage right that's gold for the tenants he's 100 right and my system does exactly that not that movement

i guess for me i'm obsessive about measurables like obsessive like i need to know the exact degree so to to approximate exactly what's going on there i have to use two different movements right i have to use that astrograph split squat yeah and i have to use the peterson step up so the the peterson step up is where you're you're on the ball of your foot right and so this is this is the king of step ups the problem is without slant board training most people can't even hold this position yeah and without so i mean but i'm we're gonna i'm gonna do that in the gym so right so like this, this is a, that is so tough. That regress. So that was, so that ball of foot knee over toe strength at the same time.

He's a hunter. It's the most athletic. That's literally watch Michael Jordan. The game is played. Like it's played on the ball of our foot with our knee over toe. That's a very tough position. So that reverse step up on the ball of foot created by Carl Peterson, who was a Canadian downhill ski coach,

who took him from like riddled with knee surgeries to just cleaning up. I did it like strong. And then, but Paul O'Quinn found that people couldn't do that. So Paul O'Quinn is the one who threw the slant board on there. So a slant board reverse step up allowed people to then get into that. And what I found coming from a basketball point, because think about both those positions,

the Peterson step up and then the Poliquin step up. There's no ankle mobility going on. And so I found that basketball players ankle mobility was so bad. They don't have enough soleus strength that it was it's asking for Achilles problems. So he's demonstrating right now his feet are totally flat and his knees are way over his toes. Yeah. Which is really hard to, you know, for me to get in a position like that. Yeah.

So you see that if you're stiff there, then you have the excess pressure going. So it's kind of like so. So I build. So, yeah, I named this shit after my own last name. You got Peterson, Polak and Patrick. My last name is Patrick. So it just it just made sense. So. All right. So. But imagine here name is Patrick. So it just made sense.

So, all right. But imagine here for a second. So good, good. Imagine that. Now imagine the stronger you are in that position. That's your foundation. Then we put the slant board. Then we remove the slant board.

And we simply find better gains from that. That's all. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. Then you could imagine how something like basketball becomes like actually super easy. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. Then you could imagine how something like basketball becomes actually super easy. I'm curious, where did, especially I guess when it comes to strength training here, I remember when I was in college, you'd be squatting and the strength coach would be like, don't let your knees go over your toes. Don't let that happen.

Where did that kind of come into play? Because I remember that all the way, not just college, but high school. go over your toes don't let that happen like where did that kind of come into play because i remember that all the way like not just college but high school like don't let your knees go over your toes you know there seems to be a number of sources there was both you know there's some well-known basic studies that when your knee is over your toe it puts more pressure on your knee yeah yeah but if you word that a certain, you can scare millions of people out of it. And then there does seem like I'm not a historian on it because at this point I just like, look, I use studies because I'm just trying to help everybody. And a lot of people won't even look at my system unless I cite my sources and stuff like that. Yeah. But I actually don't give a shit about any study that's ever been done on anything. and stuff like that. Yeah.

But I actually don't give a shit about any study that's ever been done on anything. So, um, I agree a hundred percent. So, so, so I'm not a historian on this, but some of my friends have put together really cool things showing how there was this guy who was just on this rampage of not letting people put their knees over toes. And he did these studies and gotten sports illustrated, but it was just super biased crap. And he had this certain machine that then tested it like there was a guy on the opposite rampage of the one i'm on right now and that that scared and it was just him promoting i mean like you can get you can be

wrong and you could if i challenge mark he could probably make a company that wasn't that like he could probably just make that shit work and and you see what i mean like it doesn't so so the right kind of person can get some shit done even if it's not really you know so so there was a guy who uh well just overloading you know overloading a squat with your knees over your toes. Yeah. You know, start getting into like, you know, heavier weights. Yeah. Maybe with your goal, maybe it's intentional and maybe because of what you're doing and the result that you're looking for, you're doing it in a much different fashion. Maybe you are intentionally flexing your calves and maybe your heel is off the ground, not even necessarily elevated by anything, but maybe it's a practice that you get into to really strengthen the knees and to make the knees better, but as you're going to squat, you know, a PR, maybe it's not in your

best interest, you know, because we would see powerlifters everywhere, they would be squatting and driving the knees forward. And I think that's valid too, is I think that it would be just as incorrect to force someone, you see what I mean? Like Like I only, I just want to be protected in life and do what I enjoy without pain. That happens to have forced me to do some, you know, knees over toes training. There's nothing magical about knees over toes for you to be crazy strong with your knees behind your toes too. You see what I mean? There's nothing. So that, that's really, uh, that's really the thing there's is anything forcing someone into the position they're not strongest in in a time you know like i think it's just

gotten exaggerated you know like you should definitely be uh looking to drive your knee over your toe when you're doing like a lunge yeah i mean again not not forcing anything but i think we kind of the goal i just think we should be fucking strong in every possible way right you know and and that whatever our weakest link is could bite us in the ass. Yeah. It doesn't mean it will, but it could. Yeah. And we're seeing that this mass avoidance of knees over toe.

I wouldn't even be here and I wouldn't even want to be here if the stats looked good on knees, but they look so scary bad. It's really upsetting when you see how many kids in their teens are having knee surgeries and shit and who have been forced and are in the weight room not allowed. And now they're so that's the only reason I'm doing this. If the stats weren't there, that this shit was horrible. You know, knee replacements was at like seven hundred ninety thousand last year. And now that in the in the latest American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, they're predicting it to now 4x over the next decade hey i'm predicting my profit to go up as well i don't know you i'm yeah i want my business to survive so there is no like american academy of alternative you know what i mean like there's

no like respect it's not part of this it's you the medical is respected and then the alternative is like somehow like this rogue disrespect, you know what I mean? So that's why I'm doing this. The stats are the stats are horrid. The stats are really bad for our knees in direct relation, as we see in populations with restricting knees over toes. And then you look in certain cultures where they don't have that restriction and they're doing a lot better with their knees. It sounds like you're a fan of many different types of motions and, and, and body weight exercises and, and then progressing onward into, you know,

utilizing some weight. What are your thoughts on something like a wall set? Have you, do you use that in your practice at all? Or is that a torturous exercise? Yeah, I don't because I don't find that it prioritizes that lower quad. And I guess,

I guess I find that people are already stronger in that position than they would be. Like, I guess, I guess if someone was going to say, I want to do a wall sit, I would say, okay, turn around and face the wall. Get those knees as far as you can. Now hold that position for two minutes. If you are going to do the wall, like at least for every set of wall sit, do a set of reverse wall sit. That could be a game changer for sports teams.

That sounds horrifying. But it's just be good at both of them. Do you see what I'm saying? Because knees aren't getting hurt in this position. Knees are getting hurt in this position. And if you look at ACL and people talk about all this valgus stuff, look at a landing. Like when you do a landing, where the fuck is your knee going to go?

And if it can't go over your toe, it goes in. And so we see a direct relation when people do like step-down tests, if they can't go over your toe it goes in and so we see a direct relation when people do like step down test if they can't go knee over toe so again we don't have testing on like the exercises there's no poliquin step-up study or peterson step-ups there should have been these things produce gold medals they saved athletes but we know it's right there in science the weaker you are with your knee over toe more likely to tear your ace remember years ago in the NFL, they eliminated cowboy collar tackles. That's where you drag the guy down by the back of his jersey, kind of jump on his back and pull him down. And the reason they outlawed it was because the running, whoever had the ball in that particular instance, was in a really compromised position.

And again, so like, you know, kind of back that scenario of Louie Simmons saying you should be able to wake somebody up in the middle of night. They should be able to go run if they're an NFL running back. Maybe, maybe you don't practice like this particular mobility all the time, or maybe you don't get yourself in all these different positions. But if you don't possess the ability to get in those positions, you're going to end up with a career ending injury just from somebody tackling you in some weird way. Otherwise you could have avoided it.

If you had the mobility, there's actually, if you can bring up a video of Chad Ikes, uh, uh, falling from a squat, Chad had tremendous strength and tremendous, uh,

uh, tremendous, um, flexibility. He falls with this huge squat and it looked like he died but he was totally fine afterwards. He actually finished the competition. Michael Jordan had that happen sometimes

where you would see almost a near identical thing to Jordan of a guy See if you can get the audio on this. He screams. It's fucking wild. This is actually at APF Senior Nationals. That Bigger Stronger Faster was also filmed. Big, big boy right there. Oh my gosh.

Oh, yeah. And he was okay. He was totally... He just stood up right there and he you know he was a little stunned for a few minutes and he was and then it was like his career upper well everyone's like are you okay he's like uh he's like yeah i think i'm fine yeah we're all like like what's you know we thought like at least he tore something in his abs or something because he all right rolled back so hard but since we're seeing the power lifting clips paul you'll have to go to my youtube because i had to

dig through hours of footage to find this of michael jordan so it'll be on a video of mine the truth the truth about farthest knees over toes that's a video i just did last week so pull that up on mine and then scan in there it's not a long video so you should be able to quickly see a clip of michael jordan falling and it's like what was the title sorry the truth about farthest knees over toes should be the title i i'd send like i i turned my phone off so that it wouldn't what are your thoughts about the sissy squat the uh there we go there we go that's a sissy squat so this the truth about farthest knees of her toes and fullest knee bent so the point of this is just that like i'm only expressing

human oh yeah yeah good good all right it's gonna go in slow-mo you can let it play it'll show it a few times um oh my god look at that out right so how many times on one leg so my point here is how many times did he train? Look right there. Look there. Boom. Yeah. Exactly. So, but his body has the ability.

Jordan had really beautiful VMOs naturally. Okay. I have respect for all trainers, but it is a simple fact that Michael Jordan was already back to back slam dunk NBA champion prior to meeting Tim Grover. Okay? True. Tim Grover now has the number one selling jump book of all time with Michael Jordan on the cover. Even though you can look at the tape and Michael Jordan never jumped even a centimeter higher.

Okay? So, I'm thinking about making a book with Bill Gates of how I got him written up. Delete that. Delete that. No, but it is. It is. I would feel like shit. I'm thinking about making a book with Bill Gates of how I got him written. No, but it is it is. I would feel like shit, honestly. Right. Right. To put out a book with Michael Jordan on the cover after after he made that decision, he was going to go find Jordan. And, you know, and I think he probably helped Jordan. I just don't think it was ethical to put out a jump book when he's the one who targeted and found Jordan after he was already the best dunker in the world to then put him on the cover of a book that never made him jump higher. That's right. And it's very misleading for a child like me.

It's like 12, 13 idolizes Michael Jordan. When I was four, I didn't buy a toy or anything. I didn't accept a toy event till I was like seven. OK, I worked every chance I could do in whatever little jobs my parents could could find mess, you know, wrote letters to all my relatives, send cash. Okay. Saved up a thousand dollars. I saved up a thousand dollars for a Michael Jordan rookie card. I made this decision when I was four, you know, when my other friends were like, who knows, you know, like trying to figure out like what Lego set to get. And I'm like, I'm going to get a Michael Jordan rookie card, rookie card you know so i so seven years old comes around to christmas my parents bought me a safe

and i bought with my own money michael jordan rookie card that's pretty obsessive about michael jordan so you could imagine how obsessed i was with that jump manual and honestly it was one of the things that kind of destroyed my knees because it was so much plyometric volume which jordan never did. Right. Okay. The honest book would have been breaking down his jump technique, which was gorgeous. And he had this beautiful jump technique. Nowhere in the book did talk about jump technique. My whole life, I had no idea I was jumping differently than Michael Jordan. My muscles would have developed differently. I would have developed more jumping ability. Had I just gone out and practiced jumping

the way he jumped instead of doing a ton of drills that he never did right grover did effectively build his upper body i'm very confident that you could have right right okay many people could have helped michael jordan develop his upper body right it is the number one selling jump book of all time it did have me doing exercises. Yeah, give me the greatest athlete of all time, and I'll get him fucking jacked. Yeah. Yeah.

I got no worries about that. I mean, write a, write, you know, number one speed book, go find Usain Bolt. Right. And it would be the number one speed book, even if you never knew him prior to his, you see what I'm saying? Yeah.

So, that's my only point, is that that was a contributing factor for my knees. It wasn't honest and it didn't get me trying to jump the way Michael Jordan actually did. How bad ass were those jump shoes back in the day? Did you ever own a pair of those or did that skip your, uh, your age bracket? I always wanted those. Dude, I used everything. Those also helped destroy my knees. Um, to, To be honest, I think there's actually probably some pretty cool aspects to that. But what's really weird is that Michael Jordan and these guys didn't do any of that crap. They didn't do plyometrics. They didn't do the jumpsuits.

They jumped. Do you know how much force that is? But all right, I'm going to give you a perfect example and you'll understand my world in jumping, right? Because basketball revolves around jumping. I'm going to give you a perfect example and you'll understand my world in jumping, right? Because basketball revolves around jumping. Imagine if every like top selling powerlifting program and none of them. Unbelievable. Imagine if all the top selling powerlifting programs and they didn't actually have you bench squat or deadlift. Right.

That's all the top selling jump pro. You don't fucking learn how these guys are actually jumping. A running approach into a jump is a very specific technique. You see what I mean? So I have friends. guys are actually jumping. A running approach into a jump is a very specific technique. You see what I mean? So I have friends, I have a guy in Canada named Tyler Ray. If people want to look him up, Project Pure Athlete. Again, I'm not like paid to say that. I just try to, I just try to put people in the right direction. So he's an example of guy who's, he's simply coaching jump technique, you know? And so I learned a lot from him. When somebody does like a long jump, they do a high jump.

You see Jordan jumping. They almost always point the toe inward a little bit. Do you know anything about the relationship of what that is? I mean, you're not going to, you're certainly not going to point your foot outward. Like, you're going to lose a lot of force. So like when Michael Jordan would do a two foot jump, he's jumping like this. Yeah. I mean, he was very kind of pigeon-toed in a way.

But actually, all the top jumpers do that. Pull up, okay, pull up, look up Connor Barth, C-O-N-N-O-R-B-A-R-T-H. This is a guy that I've trained a ton. He's one of my close friends. Watch the YouTube version of this podcast, please, because I know we're doing a lot you have visual i don't know if you have instagram on there or yeah okay okay okay holy did you see the curve so yeah so um oh jeez all these guys yep i've had i've had most of these guys at my so see that curve right there that's because you can't take a force and then just stop it all in an instant you have to You have to keep going with that force.

You see what I'm saying? So your legs are going like this. What are you just going to abruptly stop right there? None of the top guys with none of these top guys stop with their feet side by side. I was probably crushing too much pressure into my knee trying to stop all that force at once. Does that make sense yeah yep right i kind of consider it like you're like blocking like you're right you're blocking it's too hard of a block yeah yeah and then it creates too much imbalance because then you're not really using jesus that guy's head was over the front yeah hell yeah i gotta rewind that one yeah that was absolutely this is an example of a guy, when he started with me, he was told he needed knee

surgery. Oh, shit. Look at this. Yep. But I'm not out here selling a book with him on it. Because guess what? No. This is 90...

Get the fuck out of here. I would say his jumping... Dude, where's the trampoline? The guys are jumping off trampolines, right? Look at the... That's crazy. That's crazy to produce that much force into the go against the green 95 percent from jumping just as a power lifter has to build his bench squat

deadlift no one ever got me to master the art of no one ever got me to master the art of jumping so the guys who jump well with the right form they're actually building their muscles differently they're not winding up with the same pains now do you want to know why he needed any surgery and it happens to almost every one of these top guys but it takes a while it's because they only do a certain plant yeah oh one side over and over the other plant yeah um so i can dunk all four plants so i can't just dunk i can dunk running in right left left right running off one leg off my left leg, running off one leg off my right leg. So when I'm coaching someone, it's not, oh, you can dunk.

Now let's try this. It's, oh, you can dunk. Now let's get the next plant. So if you want to develop elite young athletes for jumping, number one, don't have them do plyometrics. Just have them do their, their sport thing. Master that shit. Have, have the kid watch Michaelael jordan slow motion until his

foot pattern looks the same and then to make sure there's no injury down the road have them master that from the other side with the other hand kobe bryan was the best in nba history has the most career dunks off all four plants so kobe was the most balanced dunker in nba history and and people like i'm gonna kill this dude the guy played like 20 years at a crazy he's one of the greatest lawn it doesn't mean no one's ever gonna get hurt or have an injury nor was he probably even training as good as he could have you seen it but the point is that Kobe he finished his last game with like 60 points he was no he was no shit athlete by the end he was still athletic by the end and for a basketball player Kobe had no major knee injuries that's insane can you imagine playing

100 games a year for 20 years with no major knee injuries. That's insane. Can you imagine playing a hundred games a year for 20 years with no major knee injuries, but he was the most balanced. So, so someone like this, so much force is going in that. Yes, that is much better than trying to block, you know, that block step. And so his technique is still way safer and way better, but I had him practicing also the opposite plant and like on reverse step ups, his right leg way stronger than his left leg. All I really did was just help him with some basic shit. You see what I mean? So that's I helped him with some basic shit.

He didn't have knee surgery. He's actually an excellent trainer and coach himself. Now I'd recommend anyone to him. You know what I mean? He's his own man. And 99% of his result is from jumping. What have you seen in terms of I mean, you know, obviously it has a, it looks amazing when you apply it to basketball, you know, and obviously there's a place for it in volleyball. And a lot of sports don't really seem like they require much of a jumping skill.

But I would imagine like all the things that go into jumping can massively improve any sport. That's at my gym right there. Whether it be powerlifting, Olympic lifting, boxing, jujitsu, like it seems like because of the explosiveness. What have you seen from some people that they, let's say you just have somebody that, you know, has a vertical like you did when you first started and you bring them up and they play a sport like rugby or they play football where jumping is not like a main requirement all the time. What have you kind of seen from some people? I mean, again, I think that the plyometrics can

be overdone. You know, if you think about plyometric force, it doesn't only mean jumping, just the running, the cutting that, you know, like, like if, so for, for someone in rugby, they tend to then often try to overdo the plyometrics because my, my current mentor, Keegan Smith is Australian. I've worked with actually some of the top rugby players in the world and yeah, they're obsessive about doing their power training as well. I think it's something that can be done slightly better. Um, it's something I'm actively experimenting with right now. I, I'm, I have, I, I've told you how I kind of like this, like three level system to just kind of gradually build these qualities. And I'm working on like a fourth level of like genetic

potential. Like what could you really see that you're capable of where you would, how would you add in sprints? And you know what I mean? So it'd be kind of like an optional fourth level. So I think that sprinting is one of the foundational ones that it doesn't matter what sport you play. It's a lot of force. I think this ability to run as fast as you can with no pain or limitation. You know what I mean? I think sprinting would be like the most elemental one, in my opinion. And jumping might be a little nicer than, I mean, just thinking in my head, I think it'd be maybe harder to fuck yourself up with jumping versus sprinting.

Yeah, I mean, they both can go wrong for sure. I think, and again, I don't want to say, most of the things I've said on here I'm very sure of, so I don't want to say something and someone takes it. But I do think something as simple as, so so like with these rugby guys there's a big obsession with like box jumping okay now the difference powerlifting rugby they have to do so much deceleration so i'm not really as concerned with it's a great like that's a great explosive effort but it's not approximating then the the landing and stuff like that so i do some drills like i'll give you a simple example of a drill just stand there jump as high as you can but then try to do your depth jump on one leg so it's self-limiting because you're only landing from as high as you can jump

yeah and then you're doing a rebound jump on one leg so i don't have anything where i'm like people should do depth jumps you know what i mean right and fact, I did more of these two up, one down jumps. And I think that's why I can do the depth jumps when I do demos. I don't do depth jumps for training. I do it to demo. If I've done something in training more, it's this two up, one down jump. What is that? So it's...

You jump down from one thing and jump on to another? No, no. So I'll show you a low level one, right? Mm-hmm? One second. So, I think this is superior for rugby and stuff to do climbing. You jump, land, right? So,

you should... See, that was a lot of force. Alright, think about a death jump. So, let's say I jump a few feet in the air, but now I'm having to rebound on one leg. That's a ton of force. But it's keeping me balanced between sides. It's putting a ton of force, but it's kind of

self-limiting. Like, how do you know what you should depth jump from? Right, right. And guess what a box jump does not do at all? Yeah. I've never been a fan of box jumps. I've always thought, like, why not just jump straight up in the air and just see what you can demonstrate there.

Watch the knee, okay? So he's jumping off of both legs, and he's landing on one leg and then doing a second jump on that same leg. So this would be biometric to prevent ACL. Box jump would be biometric to create ACL. Well, because that's the power side of it. Right. But then not being able to handle your own power.

Of course we want the power, but we've got to be able to handle it. Right. So it doesn't mean, not like the shit athletes are the only ones carrying their ACL. Or Derrick Rose, his name is ACL. Absolutely. One of the most exposed basketball players ever. But this is not the predictor of ACL. That is.

So there, self-limiting, a kid could do it. My mom could go like that. You see what I'm saying? So it has that zero to infinity quality, meaning like every kid on the team could jump a little bit. Right. Yeah, even if your knee hurts, would just your computer your brain your mind would say hey you know let's only jump this high to see how it goes first exactly you're not gonna you know do your weight room development and build your power you know what i mean but but this is

like such a simple drill of like could you handle your own time again right i'm cold it actually it actually it actually hurts right here you know when you're like cold oh yeah swing your arms yeah my point is that i'm doing that there's no pain i i'll jump up and do dunks and land on one leg it's uh auto regulating it's like writing itself because exactly you wouldn't load up a bench press um you know you wouldn't load up a bench press with 700 pounds you know you're gonna yep there's gonna be a certain amount of weight and you can only land your own jump and you can always you could there's always potential like hurt yourself i guess but like i like i like

that because i think if we're to tell people like hey you know joel green came on our show and he talked about sprinting and she'd go out and just sprint. Well, I just think that a sprint is just, it's probably been a long time since anyone's jumped. It's probably been a long time since anyone's done a sprint, but without any limiter on it, without any limiting factor, and you say, hey, just sprint for 10 seconds. 10 seconds is a really long time to sprint. The likelihood someone's going to blow out a hamstring

or have some sort of accident on the curb or something like that is fairly high. It's extremely high. So you have to give 60% or something. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. If you said, Hey, you know, uh, you know, go, yeah, go at like 60% or something would be a great start in this case. You don't have to really even say that it's kind of automatic. And I like when stuff is built in automatic, you can start at a young age for the record. I've taken an NBA player and fixed chronic knee pain with that and got them doing dunks that they couldn't do before in years of all their fancy training. You know why? I don't have time. I don't.

All right. When practice finishes, just do 10 fucking one of those on your week. Like fucking jump up and land on your week like 10 times after practice. That's it. Within weeks, jumping higher, knee pain gone. That's great for all sports. I think that as a plyometric drill would be far superior for people like rugby. But even if they want it, I only don't like box jumps because of the risk of falling, to be honest.

I actually love it. It's super fucking fun. I actually love it. It's super fucking fun. I actually love it. It's just the risk of falling and because of the fact that I'd rather be the most resilient guy and then go play my sport. There's a lot of pushing and a lot of contact in rugby. Would you maybe apply that to some grappling sports as well, like jujitsu and maybe wrestling and things like that? That's what's so cool is anybody can do that. Right, right.

And then if you look at the research on that shit, that's eccentric training to build our tendons too. Right. Okay. An extreme example would be like this girl, right? That wouldn't be someone, something to start with. I forget her name. Jessica.

Okay. That wouldn't be good for Jessica to start with. But shit, if she would have been doing that when she was younger, I bet she wouldn't have had that knee injury. That should be an elemental, fundamental sport thing. You're going to go play in a game. You better at least be able to land from your own jump you know and and a lot of people don't realize that top athletes are often landing through one leg so even if we look at derrick

rose's acl sure there are freak injuries but his wasn't okay in his career prior to that point he had only planted through that left leg and he would often land on one leg through the left leg So he did a routine move that he should have landed through the right leg Couldn't like mentally flipped out and then brought the other one in boom It should have been an easy like you see I did it on either leg, right like either but Dude, if you jump as high as you can And you land on one leg and then test the other leg There's a very high likelihood for

people that one side will have issue compared to the other. Yeah. And our injury risk is not only in relation to being weak, but also in relation to being imbalanced, meaning it's our own strength can fuck our own weakness. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Your strengths and weaknesses, they run parallel and they sometimes collide into each other and they pull and push from each other. You know, you're trying to be the strongest in the world and you may be at the very beginning had the intentions of starting this whole thing out as being a practice that will help make you healthier. But as you keep going down that, you know, as you keep going down that journey or whether it be bodybuilding, you know, there's a lot of PEDs and so forth that are involved in bodybuilding. And so maybe your goal to be healthier and to be more fit, or even CrossFit, it just completely disappears. Now your wrist hurts, your ankles hurt, your elbows are messed up because you're going for it.

And all our sports have these issues. They're different in each sport, but we're all wrecked. Yeah. That's the funniest thing because with Jiu jujitsu, I get a lot of messages from people that strength train and want to do jujitsu or strength training and doing jujitsu.

And they have problems because they're so strong that they can get away doing things with horrible technique because of their strength. Right? So with some of those people,

it's like, I'll say, hey, do a workout beforehand so that you go to jujitsu a little bit weaker. Right? And because of that,

you're forced to use good technique. You're forced to like, you know, get better in that way. Yeah. I love that too, because I think people are so freaked out about what their maximum is and stuff.

And it goes in every sport, right? Oh man, I'm worried about being sore for the game or whatever. Like, like, you know how you'll probably have like the game of your life. Do like some fucking Nordics before they get, know what i mean because then you'll go out and

you won't be so worried about everything being so damn serious because when you see the top guys man they are even when jordan was in his toughest mode man he was just having fun he's just gaming he wasn't worried about shit you know what i mean so i found that for guys training in season for example is huge and I don't care. Yeah. Have sore quads. You'll probably have a game of your life. Probably like,

Hmm, I feel those puppies. Yeah. Like, and you won't be. So it's almost like, it's almost like, wow,

look what I did. Even, you know, with the work, like it, you know, rather than being so stressed about it. And so we've covered,

we've covered a lot of good shit. I love, but you can see, I love that jumping one, but you can see i love that jumping one but it's not like something that i've been able to put as many people through as the as the training and i don't think it's something that just everyone should do but i think shit for athletes and stardom when they're young scientifically you can just build way more resiliency and if you look at the research on depth jumping like that force right like, I grew up thinking that all these like thousands of repetitions would work.

I would have been better off doing 10 good, good ones of those and causing some actual adaptation rather than just like Mark was saying earlier, just more jumping and more, you know what I mean? Like if I would have just gotten stronger, done shit like that, I would have been dunking back in high school. You mentioned earlier your parents, and it sounds like your parents were there for you quite a bit growing up. What kind of influence did they have on you?

Because it sounds like at 12 and 13 and 14, that's a really rough time period to not be able to chase after your dreams. You want to be a basketball player. That's what you love to do. And your parents had to, uh, how they still believed in me. It's beyond me. They never told me I wasn't going to make it as a basketball player. And you know, that they're talking about, and they're probably thinking like, man, he thinks he's going to be a basketball player, but they probably never shared anything like that with you. They never, ever didn't believe in my insane goal. And now that's led me to be a lot more successful than I even thought I could be doing what I do now, you know, but, um, yeah, dude, I never got even a sense from them that they didn't think I could

do that. And you would think the logical thing to do would be, oh, you got to get sensible. You got to, you know what I mean? You got to go to college go to college you got to yeah yeah i yeah it i'm so much more successful than if i would have been like gone the college exercise science route it's absolutely absurd like like i'm doing things that just wouldn't have been possible and i don't just mean like physically in terms of my business and everything else like i've yeah uh and yeah my my mom's the hardest working person i know uh she takes no days off ever she doesn't she works morning tonight every single day her and my dad will go on little dates you know i think that's an important thing is to to go spend time with that but she just doesn't to get her to take a vacation or something is like

pulling teeth yeah Yeah. And she still keeps working. She brings her. So she runs the customer service for my business. She's absolute beast. She's not the kind of person that probably like like needs motivation. Like she's just doing she's just doing shit all day long. Right. Yeah. She's purpose driven. Right. She believes that you can just be purpose driven and i you know i see different things and i see you know i would consider myself part of grind culture you know grind and i see a lot of people bashing grind and talking about grind and it's like dude like i think guys like you and i we respect however whatever works for somebody else, but fuck, I just wouldn't have

gotten to the goals that I wanted to get. I mean, this is what works for me and it's what makes me happy, you know? So everyone's different. My mom's now in her late sixties, you know, still grind coach. She's not burnt out. In fact, she's the opposite of burnt out. You know what I mean? Like, so there are different kinds of people. I think you have to assess for yourself what works for you. Yeah. To me, my wife, like, she's kinds of people. I think you have to assess for yourself what works for you. Yeah. To me, my wife, like, she's like an alien. Like she doesn't need a motivation either. And I don't, I don't particularly like always need motivation, but I do like to get some inspiration sometimes.

I need more than my mom. I'm, I like watching YouTube videos and they get me fired up or just kind of dabbling in some new stuff. But my wife, she'll watch the trashiest, worst television you can think of. Stuff that just rots your brain. She reads the worst, the worst books. I mean, none of them are like, you know, they have nothing to do with business or anything. But whenever we sit down and have a meeting in here or whatever it is, she always knows what to do. And she's like, usually always right. And I'm like, this is so annoying. Like, what's the deal with this fucking person? My wife's better at

business than me too. So my wife is the COO of my business. And then my wife what's the deal with this fucking my wife's better at business than me too so my wife is the coo of my business and then my mom runs all the customer service and my dad is the guy who has the call with me to tell me about the impending doom that i'm gonna face if i don't fix x like he sees the future and then so yeah we have we have a really fine-tuned business because of them like i would be an utter desire I'd have great knees and utter business ruin if it weren't for them. Are you maybe not that organized? No, I'm pretty organized. I am so focused on the process, you know what I mean? You're in it.

Yeah, but from whatever, I really love working with other people and recognizing when someone's good at something, you know what I mean, and using different team players for stuff. Great. Yeah. But yeah, my parents are, yeah, it still shocks me that they, you know, I'd be doing some run-of-the-mill job, you know, making a tenth of what I make if they had tried to make me, you know, more conservative. It's pretty wild. Do you think you're going to be able to believe in your do you have more than one kid just my first kid yeah

congratulations thanks do you think you're going to be able to have that same level of confidence oh yeah with yeah on wavering confidence no matter how pathetic your kid looks at doing something sometimes if i can be the knee guy that kid can do whatever the fuck, you know what I mean? Like, I like that. Like what, what would have been like the number one thing that would be like impossible

would be that I would, you know, I mean, it's anyone listening this, this far into it probably doesn't care. I hate talking about business stuff, but yeah, I have no one's listening.

I have 20 full time staff. We're a well-oiled machine. You know what I mean mean i make more money than i ever dreamed i could make as a trainer you know um so and i'm doing that as the knee guy like that was the downfall of my fucking life you know what i mean like everyone knew me as like the failed knee guy who like didn't make it in his knees and then all of a sudden like what the fuck this guy's playing college basketball. What happened? You know what I mean? And then, and then that led to people wanting to, I never even thought I would be a trainer, you know? Your weakness can be your strength sometimes. Exactly. So that's my point is that, yeah, my kid, I'm also trying to raise him like

naturally as hell. He's five months old and I spend three hours a day with it. We do 90 minutes outside. So we go for like a, like a three mile walk every day. He's on my chest. Best part of my day. I'm, I'm driving straight. I already told the guy who met me this morning, like picture you trying to have him walk backwards and shit. Oh yeah. I already told the guy who, who let me in this morning that I'm shooting straight through that way. I can just go back home to my kid, but I like to, I believe in like a more primitive way, you know, of raising your kid. So he spends no screen time. You know, we do 90 minutes outside.

Soon he'll be able to like do shit and we do 90 minutes inside. He's on his, you know, he's on his belly on the mat. He's like exercising, you know, he's just like, so that's kind of, that's my strategy. I think, I think it's going to be so hard in today's world to raise a kid that my strategy is to take the responsibility and spend three hours a day man time with him every day. You know, it's going to be a long journey. Have you ever heard of Ben Greenfield before? I've heard of him. Yeah.

Ben does a lot of stuff with his children where he's, I mean, he's in the, they're just do what he does and they eat the same food and everything. He's got them, you know, he's got them eating, and he's got them hanging out in the sauna with them. He's got them doing cold plunges. They literally, you know, and he just tells them, like, this is good for me. This is what I like to do for my body, and this is important. And he has them doing this kind of stuff kind of all day long, and they do manual labor stuff. I love that.

They dig ditches. They chop wood. They do, like, it chop wood. They do like, it's, we feel better when we work in produce, man. It's awesome. I mean, uh, you know, uh, just my hat goes off to him because that is a, a huge commitment, but what an amazing way to raise your children. That's what I'm trying to do is raise it. Like I'm imagining it, like I'm out, you know, uh, with my hunter gatherer tribe and I got to teach him how to hunt and I got to show him how to live. And you know what I mean? And he'll tag along with, you know what I mean? Like,

um, it's not going to hurt him to know all that shit. Exactly. It's only going to benefit him. Exactly. And so I, you know, I believe all kinds of crazy goals can come true and it's the journey, you know, like you don't even know what's, I feel like if you're not following your heart though, like you never know what the hell. So is your, is your kid going to cry, you know, you don't even know what's i feel like if you're not following your heart though like you never know what the hell so is your kid gonna cry you know when you go and chop wood of course yeah he's gonna cry i don't want to do it dad you know and yeah but you know they learn and they see the other maybe they're different maybe you have another kid and they see the other kid doing or a friend yeah and you just you learn and you learn like i fucking hate to chop wood like i you learn stuff and there's gonna be other stuff that you really like. Yeah.

100%. Yeah. So I'm, I'm anticipating it being very tough to raise, you know what I mean? To, to raise a kid who's like actually prepared for the world and not a wuss, you know, not delusional.

And so, yeah, that's my, that's my strategy is to take responsibility for it. You guys have any more questions? Just can't wait to get some video stuff. Yeah, I'm excited, too. I was going to ask you, Mark, mid-podcast, you put something in your coffee.

What was that? Oh, I used some of this podcast. It happens to be sponsored by these guys, too. It's an interesting question there, Andrew. By Element, and I used my chocolate Element. I dumped it right straight in my coffee. Okay, I'm hearing about this stuff everywhere. Yeah, it's fantastic.

It's got to be good. It's great. So I'm looking forward to trying it. Yeah, we'll give you something to dump into your water. I also got to say from this, so like... Oh, yeah. Let's get the... How do you feel, man?

I probably slept two hours last night. Oh, shit. I was... They booked me for nine videos. You guys realize this, right? Yes. You also realize that I don't talk about shit. I fucking do it. Okay, so I basically have like nine workouts with my body so i was going through pages

and pages last night getting it down to like my key points for the videos and slept like two hours but this thing fucking works the mind bullet launched you into outer space yeah it actually works i had a few lapses that you need to remove that I you know non-politically correct whatever the hell the chode thing you gotta take why it's so good the great thing is it was live so it's out there I just know someone's gonna have like a viral video of only that and miss out on everything helpful that I said in this so you know, no, it's all good. It'll be publicity. Yeah. No, but, yeah, this was really cool.

I got to look into this. Yeah. I go real simple with the diet stuff right now, but I've been like low-key studying the crap out of Mark and just kind of copying him on the diet stuff. And I've never felt stronger and leaner at the same time. Yeah. Which for basketball, you know what I mean? So.

Yeah. It's good. But now the problem is I keep seeing his videos and I'm like, man, I want to actually start putting on some muscle. Sensei Charles Poliquin used to always say like if you're a guy and you're above 10% body fat, no carbs. Very strict rules, you know? He was pretty brutal.

Oh yeah. Yeah, he would. Yeah, man, that would be another one for another day. I hit up Kelly Stratton. I let him know that you're on the show today, and he said that's awesome. He's like, just make sure that he knows that my knees are more handsome than his and more tan, but he's got a great message. So he wanted you to know that his knees are better looking than yours, which I, you know, I don't know. He's a good looking guy.

Yeah. I'm not going to lie. Yeah, we can compare him. I got to hustle for my, you know, I had to hustle to get my wife. He's, look, his knees are definitely better looking than mine. But honestly, honestly, that means a ton because in this space, I mean, that's a guy that I've only looked up to and never had any, you know, personal communication to. So to hear that from him is pretty absolutely amazing. Yeah.

He likes to wear short, short suits. So I don't know. We could probably compare, get some pictures or something. Yeah. Some AB comparison. All right, Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. I will. A huge shout out and thank you to Element for sponsoring today's episode.

Mark was drinking a mid podcast. We're probably going to be sipping on it all day long filming nine videos. That's insane. For more information on them, check the links down in the podcast show notes as well as YouTube description. You can head over to drinklmnt.com slash powerproject.

The free recharge pack is still available or you can hit up the value bundle, which is what we get because you pay for three boxes and you get a fourth one free please make sure you find the podcast at markbellspowerproject on instagram at mbpowerproject on twitter my instagram

twitter and clubhouse is at imandrewz and sema where you at instagram clubhouse at sema inyang no yeah yeah he's a toes guy ben just search it in whatever you want at Nsema Inyang. No. Yeah. Yeah. Knees Over Toes guy? Ben? Knees Over Toes guy.

Just search it in whatever you want. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Knees Over Toes. Fantastic. Thank you so much for the information today. We appreciate you spending your time with us,

and I'm looking forward to getting involved in some of these exercises and seeing if I can exercise my right knee to some better health. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later.