If you’ve spent any time in the health and fitness world over the last few years, you’ve seen the rise of Ben Patrick—better known as the “Knees Over Toes Guy.” His videos, programs, and testimonials spread like wildfire across social media. People who had been told for decades that they should never let their knees travel forward during a squat or lunge were suddenly praising a system that put that movement front and center. And not only did it not destroy their knees—it often helped them get out of pain, get stronger, and reclaim movement they thought was gone forever.

But the real story here isn’t that Ben Patrick discovered some magical, previously undiscovered biomechanical hack.

The real story is that his success is a predictable response to a healthcare system that has become overwhelmingly fear-producing—one that often hands out overly rigid rules and outdated biomechanical warnings instead of offering people graded exposure, context, education, and confidence.

Ben’s work is legit. But its impact has far less to do with “knees over toes” as a rule, and far more to do with restoring physical freedom in a culture that has been taught to fear its own body.

The Myth That Knees Can Never Go Over Toes

Let’s start with the obvious: Ben Patrick does not say that every squat, lunge, jump, and lift should be done with the knees far over the toes. He has never marketed that as a universal rule. What he proposes is much simpler—and much more reasonable:

Taking knees-over-toes off the table is what hurts people. Putting it back on the table is what helps them.

In other words, the human knee is designed to tolerate (and even thrive with) forward travel under load. If your goal is to fully rehabilitate a knee, strengthen the quads, improve deceleration, or build confidence in positions that life regularly demands, you eventually need to expose the knee to that range of motion.

This isn’t radical. It’s biomechanics 101. It’s also basic physiology, motor learning, and tissue adaptation.

Avoiding a range of motion forever does not protect the body—it deconditions it.

If you want to call yourself “recovered,” you must eventually restore the full arc of movement your joints are built for. Not necessarily on Day 1. Not necessarily with heavy load. But eventually.

That’s graded exposure.

That’s progressive overload.

That’s rehab.

Graded Exposure Disguised as a Revelation

The interesting thing about the ATG system is this: when you strip away the branding, the story, and the viral simplicity, what Ben Patrick is doing is the most fundamental rehab principle in existence—systematically building tolerance.

Reverse sled pushes
Knee flexion progressions
Slant-board squats
ATG split squats
Tibialis raises
Full-range calf work

None of these things contradicts what we know about tissue capacity, motor control, or incremental loading. In fact, physiotherapists, strength coaches, and athletic trainers have used graded exposure for decades.

What Ben did differently is this:

He packaged it clearly.
He demonstrated it consistently.
He removed fear from the process.
He told people they could get stronger, instead of warning them about all the things they shouldn’t do.
He promoted possibilities instead of limitations.

That messaging resonates because people are tired of being told their bodies are fragile.

The “knees over toes” idea is less important than the freedom to move without fear.

The Medical System Created the Perfect Environment for His Rise

Let’s be honest: if our healthcare and rehab systems were consistently empowering, progressive, and focused on building resilience, Ben Patrick’s message would not feel revolutionary.

Instead, we created an environment where patients frequently hear statements like:

“Don’t bend forward—you’ll hurt your back.”
“Don’t flex your spine.”
“Don’t twist.”
“Don’t lift more than 10 pounds.”
“Never run again.”
“Don’t let your knees go over your toes.”
“Avoid overhead lifting.”

These rules often stem from isolated biomechanical studies—sometimes on cadavers or in tightly controlled lab settings—that may identify forces on tissues but do not address the organism as a whole. They do not account for adaptation, graded load, psychological readiness, coordination, or the reality that humans must move into these positions in daily life.

When you tell someone to avoid bending, lifting, twisting, or squatting deeply, you aren’t protecting them—you’re de-training them.

Fear-based rules promote disability more than recovery.

A person who believes they must avoid half their normal movements will eventually become weak, guarded, anxious, and dependent. Their world shrinks. Their confidence shrinks. Their capacity shrinks.

It is in that context that someone offering a path back to ability—who says, “Your body can handle this, and we’re going to build you up”—feels like a savior.

Ben Patrick succeeded not because he invented knees over toes, but because he offered people permission to move again.

Full Range of Motion Isn’t Extreme—it’s Human

The idea that a joint should be restored to its full available range is not controversial in any other domain:

If you sprain your ankle, you eventually work back to full dorsiflexion.
If you injure your shoulder, you gradually restore overhead motion.
If you injure your wrist, you don’t stop extending it forever—you train it back.
If you hurt your knee, the same logic applies: restore flexion, extension, and load tolerance.

Avoiding “dangerous” ranges forever is the opposite of rehabilitation.

Yet many patients come into the clinic believing:

Their back will break if they bend.
Their shoulder will tear if they press.
Their knees will explode if they go past their toes.

These ideas are not rooted in human function—they’re rooted in fear, misunderstanding, and misapplied biomechanics.

The truth is that load is always relative, and this is the part that usually gets left out of the discussion.

People say, “You shouldn’t let your knees go over your toes under load,” as if “load” is an all-or-nothing phenomenon. But load exists on a sliding scale. Your body perceives 5 pounds, 20 pounds, 60 pounds, and 200 pounds very differently. And what feels “heavy” or “dangerous” today may feel trivial and safe three months from now.

There is always a load light enough to allow you to access your full range of motion safely.
And there is always a path to gradually increase your tolerance so that heavier loads can eventually occupy that same range.

This is the foundation of progressive overload, behaviorally and physiologically:

Start with a range that feels safe.
Train it with a load that feels manageable.
Adapt.
Increase the challenge.
Repeat.

At your absolute heaviest—a max lift, a sprint, a forceful change of direction—you might not express the fullest end-range angles. That’s normal. Max-effort output naturally narrows the usable range of motion because the system prioritizes stability and force production.

But that doesn’t mean the full range is dangerous.
It means it lives at a different part of the spectrum.

Strength and range exist on a continuum, and your capacity in one end of that continuum supports your resilience in the other.

A body that trains end ranges at light loads becomes a body that tolerates mid-ranges at moderate loads…
which becomes a body that handles intense loads in sport or life without fear.

Our bodies evolved through complexity, not rigidity.
They adapt through exposure, not avoidance.
And when we honor that adaptation process, full range becomes not only accessible, but protective.

Why the Public Chose Ben Patrick

Ben Patrick has millions of followers not just because people want bulletproof knees, but because:

He gave them hope.
He gave them a simple entry point.
He wasn’t condescending or fear-based.
He showed real people getting real outcomes.
He provided a path that made intuitive sense.

Most importantly, he met people where they are—physically and psychologically.

The ATG system scaled because it delivered what healthcare often fails to deliver:

Clarity.
Progression.
Confidence.
Permission.

It’s the same reason CrossFit exploded. The same reason yoga exploded. The same reason strength training has exploded.

Systems that give people agency will always outperform systems that give people restrictions.

What Professionals Can Learn From His Success

Clinicians, coaches, and rehab professionals should not dismiss Ben Patrick—or try to reduce him to a gimmick.

Instead, we can learn from the phenomenon:

People want to move without fear.
They want a plan that progresses logically.
They want to reclaim ranges of motion that were taken from them.
They want someone to tell them they’re capable, not broken.
And they want to feel results, not just hear theories.

Ben didn’t win because he flipped biomechanics on its head.
He won because he offered the public what healthcare should have been offering all along:

A way back to themselves.

The Real Takeaway: Put the Human Back Into Human Movement

Knees over toes is not the point.

The point is this:

Movement heals, exposure builds resilience, and restricting the human body into artificial rules creates more disability than recovery.

When we reintroduce the ranges people were taught to fear—gradually, intentionally, and with support—they don’t just get stronger. They get their lives back—and often become even stronger than they were before.