Strengthening Joints, Not Just Muscles | Ben Patrick x Dave Asprey

Let's start with that. Knees over toes, like that. That's actually a thing in weightlifting. You never do that and yet you call yourself that. What's up with that?

Let's do this. And I don't know if you know, but I was actually selling your products out of my gym, like, 10 years ago. I've actually sold that, Ben. I've sold tens of thousands of dollars. And we all loved it and had great results dating back, like 10 years ago.

Ben, you're amazing, man. Thank you for supporting me back then. We've been community all this time and you never told me. I love that.

Yep.

Okay.

Yep. That was before. That was before social media. And I had no intention. Even then. Ten years ago, I never expected to have the abilities that I do now. Really. I just wanted to be off painkillers for my knees. I wanted to just be able to enjoy playing some pickup basketball on the weekend and not having to, like, worry, am I gonna have a knee surgery if I go play pickup basketball with my friends? So the fundamental of that for me was walking backward. And I would either have a friend or my now wife sit in the car with it in neutral and I'd put my butt against the bumper and I'd, like push it backward or I'd find a sled at the gym and drag it backward. But walking backward for me is what got me off painkillers for my knees. And if you look at it from a side angle, like if you stood up right now and took a step backward, your knee is over your toes. It was found in the 1970s. Yep. Go ahead and stand up. Take your time. And I'm standing up sideways to the camera. I'm pretty.

See, my camera can get this. All right.

Yep. Now take a step backward. Take a step backward with your right leg. Yeah, there you go.

My knee is over my toes some of the time. Yep. Okay.

Yeah, like, you wouldn't. You wouldn't be able to walk backward. Like, backward walking forward is kind of like knees behind toes. Walking backward is knees over toes. Okay. And it was. Yeah, it was. It was found at a university in the 1970s that when your knee is over your toe, there's more pressure on the knee. This wasn't some, like, long term study that found that was bad. They just found there is pressure on your knee when it's over your toe. So for me, it was finding what I could do to improve at that pressure that then got me off painkillers, got me back able to play basketball. So I became really, I'VE always been a bit obsessive. So I've probably now spent more time coaching and digging into these ingredients of knees over toes training. And trust me, I never imagined I would be able to do the things I'm doing now. I can jump off stuff and do all kinds of basketball dunks and explode from crazy positions with my knees, and that's not what I was going for. It's definitely helped to show and inspire people that the body is not as fragile as most people think. But if you avoid pressure on the body, you might not get there. The whole idea is, how can you find a scalable route to be able to handle pressure?

It seems like the basics of everything in the biohacking world is how do I get a signal into the body? That's the right signal at the right intensity at the right time for the right time to cause change without overwhelming it. Right. And why. How did you figure out that walking backwards was that signal?

Well, it's definitely not something new. Some people listening to this may have even recalled seeing older folks holding hands, walking backward in the park. Because it's a very safe way to start, is you have a partner hold your hand, they're walking forward, making sure that you're walking on a safe path. And this was passed down generation to generation in China.

I thought that was prevent arthritis this whole time. Oh, man.

So that would be like a low level of it that's been passed down for centuries to prevent arthritis in the knee. There was a. Someone I think you would consider in the biohacking space in terms he at least had this viewpoint. Charles Poliquin. He trained Olympic athletes.

Yeah, Charles is an OG biohacker. I dedicated one of my books to him when he passed. So. Charles.

No way.

Hundreds of Olympic athletes. So he was a backwards walker.

That's right. That's right. So back when I was. Back when I was far from an Olympic athlete, a failed high school athlete with bum knee, nasty surgery stuff, hooked on painkillers. I saw this sort of clue from him that the farther and stronger the knee can go over the toe, actually, the less chance the knee has of then getting hurt in the sport. And so he was having people drag sleds. He learned that from Louis Simmons, who was actually a powerlifting coach. And he got that from Finnish powerlifters whose day jobs were dragging trees backward like they would have to drag trees. And then they credited getting these incredible legs from dragging trees. Wow.

Okay, you're. You're convincing me that there's a history here that I Did not know about. I've seen yourself online about walking backwards, and I admit I haven't done very much of it. I'm about to get a system that I'm testing out that would allow me to put some extra. Some extra tension while I walk backwards.

How sweet.

How many miles a day of walking backwards do you have to do?

I don't do miles a day. I've done. Yeah. It was like, I look back and I've tracked all my logs. We're talking about 13 years that I've been doing it, and only. We're talking roughly a quarter mile three times a week for that time and seeking to add resistance. I'll send you one of our backward treadmills only after years and years of the number one question being, how do I add resistance without a sled, without good weather? We make a cheap treadmill that doesn't turn on resistance, and it's only for backward.

How much does it cost?

600 if you're paying full price with no discounts, nothing.

Okay, so I'll send you one of those for a lot of people, or you can go outside for free and do it. And that's something that's really important. There's more people than we've had in the last 20 or 30 years who are now paycheck to paycheck.

And it.

It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that our government just created 40% more of our currency last year, which means they stole 40% of your bank account and then gave it away. Not to you. So I'm a little annoyed about that. I don't know about you, but you live in Florida.

My legal team just asked me to end the podcast. It's been great.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But, like, that stuff's going. So I just want to say $600 is still a lot of money, but it's.

Oh, for sure.

It's achievable. And there is a way to do. This was a weighted vest or, you know, carrying something, or does it need to be pulling something when you walk backwards?

That. That's a great question. I think the foundation of exercise for longevity is resistance from the ground. Now, that could mean like, what I started doing originally, dragging a sled. So if you dragged a sled, where is the resistance on your body? It's the friction on the ground. It's not bearing down on you. I recently showed this, and a lot of people are like, oh, I get it. I hooked my mom, who's 69, up to a thousand pounds. Sled she tried with all her might. Did she get hurt? No, not. Not at all. It's fundamentally safe when the resistance comes from the ground. Now, the cheapest form of that would be like a hill. The difference with the hill is you still have to come back down. So actually a lot of people get great results walking backward up a hill. Just make sure you come down really safely and slowly.

And rattlesnakes.

Yeah, so. So yeah, my. My treadmill for $600 is not free, but the average one costs over $3,000. The gym also affordable. Go ahead.

It's affordable. What I'm saying is there's. People are going to have $600. So there's still a lot to learn in this episode. And $600 is for a piece of fitness equipment. Not exorbitant by a long shot. It's a. It's in the affordable class. Right, I'm with you.

Right. And at gyms, the treadmills that are already there, even though I would argue it's better to have ones that don't have the electricity that you do the work for, cheaper nonetheless, the ones, the million treadmills that are already out there, most of them, if you don't turn it on and you turn around and put your butt against the handle and spin it backward, there's some internal resistance. So this has already been tens of thousands of people had great results actually, by backward dead milling, meaning not turning the treadmill on, you use your strength to spin the belt and going backward, I like about 5 minutes if you have resistance, 10 minutes if you don't. Look, if you've got good weather, you could find you could drag a tire. Some people have results in driveways dragging tires for that friction.

Wow.

Okay, so there's a lot of ways to do this.

So it's a friction thing, not a weight thing?

Yeah, it's. The resistance is coming from the ground upward rather than weighing down on you, which is. Weightlifting has its own awesome benefits. I just think the foundation of human exercise, or let's say resistance training, would be where the resistance comes from the ground. Because it's so fundamentally safe, you can ramp up. Like when you go backward with resistance five minutes, you're getting cardio, your feet are getting stronger. I help people fix plantar fasciitis by stepping backward. That's a toe first activity. Walking forward is heel first. So there's a lot you can get from resisting from the ground.

You're listening to the human upgrade with Dave Asprey.