Knees Over Toes: A week by week review of Athletic Truth Group rehab training

My history of knee pain or discomfort has been going on for a long time. The first time I can remember really experiencing something that I knew was out of the ordinary was early in high school. I was not a very athletic kid, in the sense that I wasn’t one of these kids that was on a bunch of school teams or community teams, or whatever. But, I did engage in sports. I played sports in gym and would play games before and after school when available. 

I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but to the best of my recollection when I was in 8th or 9th grade there was a period when several of us were playing basketball before school started because our homeroom was in the gym for some reason, and we were playing quite a bit of basketball during gym class, and I was playing a little after school. I was not good, but most people weren’t. But at some point, my knees started hurting. Like, it hurt to run, hurt to jump, I believe mostly centered in my left knee.

I remember it feeling pretty severe, like I felt like my left knee was just going to give out, a feeling I’ve since felt numerous times. But at the time, this pain was brand new to me and confusing. It was bad enough that I asked my mother to take me to a doctor, something I never did and still don’t like to do. I remember getting some X Rays and being examined and the doctor basically saying there was nothing wrong with me and recommended I use a knee brace. This was my first introduction to not only knee pain, but also knee braces.

This thing was monstrous. This was not a simple sleeve or even a thicker brace. This thing went from my mid thigh all the way down to my calf, had to giant straps and metal hinges. It looked like something someone would wear if broke their leg. I needed to wear this? I was a kid playing sports maybe a few hours a week, I wasn’t doing anything extreme, not in my opinion. Why did my knee hurt this way and why on earth did I need this ridiculous knee brace?

But, I started wearing it. It was weird to be asked why I needed this monstrosity, but it went find. It did help. I was able to keep playing, but once it was off I didn’t really feel better. My knee still hurt. And then my right knee started hurting. No doctors visit this time, but we did purchase another brace, this time one that was more like a stiff sleeve. No straps, no metal parts. So then I was wearing two at school, which caused a few more questions. Like, what is wrong with you? Nothing wrong with needed braces, if you need them, but why did I, as a seemingly healthy teenager need them? I don’t know. But I wore them for a while and eventually, I felt better and just stopped. Not sure if that’s because whatever the issue was went away, or because my overall activity level dropped some, or something in between. But I stopped wearing them and I felt fine. For a while….

Its been long enough that I can’t remember how I felt on a day to day or even a month to month basis. But I definitely started to feel like my knees were not as healthy or as good as most peoples. I felt slow, slightly immobile, couldn’t jump. 

The next severe incident that I can remember was the summer before my junior or senior year, I think. I think it was before senior year. I met some friends and a teacher for a run. At the time, I felt fine. But, it was the summer. I was probably playing some, working some, but I was not playing any kind of organized sport or anything like that. Definitely was not running distances at all. So, it wasn’t smart in general to just get off the couch and go for a run. But I was 17, I wasn’t worried. What’s there to worry about a little run at 17?

So I met this small group and we went for a run. Nothing too fast. I’m slow and I had no trouble keeping up. No one was keeping track of the miles, but being familiar with the route, I know it was about 3 miles. It was strenuous, but didn’t really think much about it after it was over. Until the next day. I felt like a total wreck, which I know now was probably due mostly to running a pretty good distance and not having really been running at all. My feet hurt, my ankles hurt, my knees hurt. I felt awful, it hurt to walk. And then it didn’t go away. Weeks later this same group asked me to go for another run and I had to decline. My knees still hurt. Hurt right under my kneecap. It hurt to walk upstairs, and I wasn’t even doing anything. Finally, after what had to be two months later I started to feel somewhat normal. This was my first major lesson in being careful. From then on I knew if I ever wanted to run a long distance, I needed to spend sometime, weeks in fact, to get my ankles, knees, and joints of all sorts to get accustomed to it. 

For years after this, there would be periods where I would start a routine of running, getting up to being comfortable with several miles comfortably, but if I ever had a break I knew I needed to spend some time, walking, jogging, running short distances to give myself time to get comfortable. Even then, I experienced numerous instances where my knees hurt and I would be forced to try various forms of knee sleeves, braces, wraps, straps, shoe insoles. I tried so many things to try and feel more comfortable running. I always wondered why this was necessary for me. I knew I wasn’t doing anything extreme. The most I would ever get up to was slowly, over periods of weeks and months, building up to running 10 miles at a time. Not that 10 miles is insignificant, but I always felt like considering how careful I was being, the knee pain I was experiencing sometimes was a little ridiculous. 

And then there were times when I wasn’t really running at all. Months or years long stretches where I was just lifting weights or maybe spending some time on ellipticals or bikes, not really putting any kind of pounding on my knees at all, and I would still feel like there was something not right. Felt like I couldn’t bend my knees easily, just casually kneeling to look at something or to work on something.  Occasionally I would see a doctor when it got severe and X-Rays or an MRI would always be negative. Sometimes they’d barely acknowledge that my knee was even swollen, which it often felt like it was. 

Anyway, I struggled with this on and off. Knee pain, feeling like my knee was wing, occasionaly feeling like it would just give out, and always feeling like my knees are not nearly as mobile as others. Even when I would be feeling good there were times where, when it came to athletic things like jumping, playing basketball, doing a box jumps, where I would think to myself, “I’m healthy, these people are healthy, why are my knees clearly so much weaker than theirs?”

But, fast forward to my most recent issue and what has got me somewhat desperate for relief and hoping, praying, that the ATG program and the ideas recommended by Ben Patrick “the knees over toes guy” will work for me.  In February 2020 I was doing normal stuff for me. Squatting, deadlifting, running a little (a mile every now and then). I was feeling healthy. Maybe I pushed it a little hard in the gym one day, I don’t know. But I woke up feeling like my knees hurt. Hurt to run, hurt to walk on stairs, hurt to sit down. Mostly my left knee. At first, I didn’t think much of it. I’ve felt this many many many times before. But then a week or two later not only was it not gone, but it was in both knees and had gotten worse. 

I toned it down some. It still kept lingering. I started wearing knee braces again, which felt better when I was working out but didn’t really fix anything. Went to the doctor, got X Rays which were negative, which I expected, and got some anti-imflammatories and a recommendation to go to PT. I could have gone, but I just didn’t have any faith that would work. Then the Pandemic shut everything down and I really didn’t feel comfortable going to a PT office if I could even find one that was open. 

I’m not completely insensible, so I started toning down what I was doing. Didn’t work. The COVID pandemic shut gyms down, so I toned down my exercise even more. I was still working, but I wasn’t running, wasn’t lifting heavy, nothing really close or so I thought. This knee pain kept lingering and lingering and lingering.

Finally, over the summer after having significantly toned down to almost nothing what I was asking of my knee other than just living my life, I started to feel better.  So I tested them a little bit. That was three months ago, and ever since my little tests, they’ve been bothering me every day. It hurts to walk around, hurts to sit down, hurts to go on the stairs. People I work with keep asking me what a doctor thinks. Now, truth be told I haven’t gone since the late winter. I could go, but I don’t have any confidence they’ll be able to say anything. My knees generally feel exactly like they’ve felt before when I’ve had this issue. It’s just lingering far longer than ever before. Nothing has ever showed up on an X Ray or an MRI and I don’t feel like it would now. I never felt anything that felt like a tear and my range of motion is not limited physically, except by pain or discomfort. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like if I tore something there would be other signs than just pain. Like I wouldn’t be able to run or squat with weight or something, all of which I can do, its just painful. Like I said, maybe I’m crazy, but I have felt like this off an on for decades. Just never quite to this extent.  Plus, I don’t want surgery, so I’m not sure what I’d do even if a doctor found something.

Enter ATG and Ben Patrick “Knees Over Toes Guy.” Throughout this whole time, every now and then I will Google  things about how my knee is feeling, trying to find any kind of answer. Which is, again, something I’ve done many many times in the past and sometimes I have found answers. Like, foam rolling, or a new kind of knee sleeve, etc. And sometimes that did work and I was able to find some relief. But so far, for this, nothing had really worked. I was starting to feel broken, like this is just how I’m going to have to live from now on. And maybe it is

Then Friday of last week, December 11, I was browsing Tik Tok and a post by Ben Patrick “@kneesovertoesguy” found its way to my feed. Why? I don’t know. I had never heard of him before, never searched for him before. Must be because his page is “fitness” related and I’ve liked some fitness things before on there, who knows how their algorithm works. But in this short video at the very top it say “How I Saved My Knees” and shows Ben doing some things with his knees, that appear to be EXTREME, like things that I would never even consider doing or have ever considering doing. Seemingly effortlessly putting his knees into positions that I know I’ve never ever been able to do, while at the same time talking about how he struggled with pain for years and had multiple surgeries. 

Something about this post, spoke to me. It wasn’t that long, but it clicked with me. I started googling him, looking him up on youtube, trying to find out if he was legit or what.  What I found were some genuine people on YouTube who seemed to be trying his program for similar issues as me, long term knee pain that wasn’t responding to usual methods, and were having some success. Not miracle success, afterall they hadn’t been doing it that long, but success enough that they felt much much better to than before. One video the guy spoke of having several days where he didn’t even THINK about his knees and I thought, “Man, if I could get to even that point I’d be so much happier.”

OK, so it definitely didn’t seem like bullshit, so I kept looking. Inevitable I found ATG’s and Ben’s YouTube channel where they show some of their thinking and some of the exercises they recommend and why and show more of his story and more of their customers’ success. These spoke to me even more. I almost felt like they were speaking directly to me. And these weren’t some kind of super slick marketing campaign. The stories from real people seemed genuinely self filmed and their real story told their way. Now granted, that could itself be produced, but it didn’t seem that way. One guy spoke of being athletic for years and then having to get knee surgery and the doctor basically telling him, “Oh, you’re never gonna feel good playing basketball again.” And he was still a relatively young man, and he spoke about starting with the beginner program “Knee Ability Zero” and how it completely changed his knee, after a long time and a lot of work, and that he feels basically completely normal and that he’s thriving now. That really spoke to me. 

Alright, so it seemed legit. I watched more of this videos, checked out the site and found out its $50 a month for online coaching with the program. Whew! $50 a month. Not for a gym membership. Not for physical therapy.  Just for access to his programs and online coaching.

This was kind of a big decision. A lot of the exercises he talks about doing, he talks about publicly and demonstrates on his YouTube channel, his Instagram, ATG’s channels, all of that. Not all of it, but especially the beginner stuff, which is what I’ll be doing, can be found for free. But, from everything I saw, ATG is promising answers to all questions online, video review of your form everyday, advice and critiquing on a daily basis.  In addition to that, they have a promotion for $30 for the first month. But still, $500 basically for one year for online physical therapy basically.

But, I figured a couple things. Number one, because of COVID, I’ve had to suspend a gym membership and also a jiu jitsu membership. So my overall fees for physical training are still going to be much lower now and in the next few months than they were at this time last year, even including paying ATG $50 a month. In addition to that, I kept watching videos and saw a few people who say they basically completed recovered their mobility, if not surpassed anything they did before. And these people apparently have had much worse knee issues than me, including multiple surgeries. I figured, if it doesn’t work, yea I’ll have wasted some dough. But if it does, and I feel even moderately better, it will have been completely worth it. 

So, I signed up, paid the first bill and started using their app. Did the first days of exercises. Now, I’m not going to reveal what they tell you to do for now. But, basically the beginnger program for people with knee pain, has 10 things to do Monday Wednesday and Friday. BUT, several of them you’re only supposed to progress to when you can only do the others pain free. So starting, I’m only doing three little exercises and some stretches. But these three little exercises are surprisingly strenuous and they’re designed, I think, to build up the muscles directly around your knee. We shall see I suppose.

So the first day I did it, the application was easy to use where you can log your work outs and post videos they request so they can check your form. Both were very good. I asked a few clarifying questions and got a response very quickly, either that night or the next morning.  Saturday and Sunday are rest days, but they do have some stretches they suggest on off days which I did on Satruday. Monday was more of the same three exercises with some stretches. I received some feedback from the trainers on Monday and Wednesday and was told to go ahead and try an additional exercise (I think you can describe this as a reverse step up).

So far, so good. I can’t really say I feel any better or different, but its only been a week. Other reviews from normal folks like me talk about feeling better after a few months or longer and Ben Patrick himself talks about a multi-year journey he’s been on, but I’m  not sure at what point he would say he started feeling healthy but I have gotten the impression from listening to a couple podcasts with him that it took him years to figure out what he wanted to do and then another year or so before he started feeling healthy. Not sure about that though.