How The ATG Program Can Fix Your Knee Pain
Updated: Oct 28
The ATG Program
The ATG program was created by Ben Patrick. If you are wondering who Ben Patrick is, here is a little background:
His knee pain started at 12 years of age.
By 14 he had multiple tears in his knees.
By 18 he had a partially replaced knee cap, a meniscus transplant, and a quadricep tendon repair.
By 19 he had more tears in his knees and his knee pain was excruciating.
Doctors said he would never be able to have normal working knees and he should not play basketball, this is where he started the ATG program.
Above is a photo of Ben Patrick performing the ATG split squat.
Fast forward to Ben being 23 and he was a D1 athlete in college, perfectly able to dunk, with no knee pain. However, he ended up leaving college to become a strength and conditioning coach when his coach wouldn’t let him use his training techniques. Now, at 33 years of age, he can still dunk and has no pain in his knees. He has helped 1000s of people overcome knee injuries and achieve their fitness dreams with the ATG program.
Give this podcast a listen on 'Just Fly Sports': Ben Patrick, “Knees Over Toes Guy”, on Building Bulletproof Knees, Feet and Transforming Your Performance.
How can the ATG program fix your knee pain?
It is a widespread belief that the position you are most susceptible to injury in is one where your knees are over your toes.
Research came out a long time ago supporting this fact. And it's true—this is the position where you are most likely to get an injury, but the ATG program takes advantage of this.
Because guess what? You cannot avoid this position!
So, what is the best thing you can do to prevent and treat knee pain? Your best cure for knee pain is to start loading this position.
Check out this blog from 'The Pre-Hab Guys': Knees Over Toes: Is It Safe?
When you start training in the position where your body is most susceptible to injury, your knees become bulletproof!
Exercises like the ATG split-squat slowly put you deeper into the 'knees over toes' position and you increase your strength through the full length of the movement and get a lot of mobility gains as well.
This will all help to cure your knee pain!
The ATG program also strengthens all the ligaments around the knee and loosens off tight muscles which may be pulling on the knee causing you pain. The exercises in the ATG program also help to develop strength in the ligaments around the knee and to loosen off tight muscles that may be pulling on the knee.
This is why Ben Patrick is called the 'KneesOverToesGuy'!
If you would like to check out some of the exercises that you can expect to be doing in the ATG program then click this link: Full-Body ATG Exercises.
My personal experience with the ATG program
I started the ATG program to try to fix a bad Achilles which had stopped me running consistently for years. After a month of the ATG program, the following things happened:
My ankle mobility on the side with my bad Achilles had improved drastically
My Achilles pain had gone away completely
I had no back pain
I was stronger in my squat
I could sprint nearly 2 seconds faster for the 200m
The ATG program saved me from so many injuries, but it also improved my performance a lot. Through exercises like the Nordic curl, my hamstrings got a lot more explosive and I was destroying PBs and sprinting faster in no time.
You may also like: Lesser Known Exercises For Achilles Tendonitis.
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ATG programme is quality! Bloke knows his stuff