In this video Victoria S. Dorsano walks viewers through the full suite of Ben Patrick’s Knees Over Toes (ATG) programs, explains what each program entails, and shares the order she recommends based on her own experience and Ben’s public guidance. She begins with her personal progression—starting with KneeAbility Zero, moving to ATG Essentials, and recently transitioning to DENSE—while noting that ATG Essentials is no longer listed on the platform. Dorsano then systematically describes each offering on the ATG website: KneeAbility Zero (foundational, equipment‑free), Advanced Zero (a more challenging version of Zero), ATG Essentials (a 4‑day mixed‑modal routine that mirrors Ben’s athlete workouts), DENSE (a 4‑day strength‑accumulation phase using weights and high volume), Standards (the strength‑testing phase that pushes toward specific load benchmarks), Women of ATG (a women‑focused program created by Alyssa Patrick), ATG Sprinter (speed‑focused, developed by Coach Brendan), ATG for Longevity (gentle joint‑health program for older adults), and the upcoming ATG PHA‑style training (peripheral‑heart‑action supersets). She outlines the recommended progression: start with KneeAbility Zero or Advanced Zero, then move to DENSE, followed by Standards; after that, athletes can branch into specialty programs such as Sprinter or Longevity. Dorsano also references community resources—Ben’s blogs, Reddit threads, the coaching app—and offers practical tips about program length, equipment needs, and how to adjust the order based on individual goals. The video concludes with encouragement to try the ATG system, especially for those recovering from knee injuries, and provides links for sign‑up and further contact.
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If you are doing the Knees Over Toes program or the ATG program, what order should you be doing the programs in? That's a question I've been getting asked quite a bit, and I want to talk about it. If you've been following along on my channel, you know I post a lot about the Knees Over Toes program slash the ATG program slash Ben Patrick's program. People know it as different things. So I've had a great experience with it, but I want to share a little bit about the variety of programs that he does offer and what my personal journey has been through various programs, what I plan to do in probably if I did it all over again, what my new order would be based on my experience as well as what Ben Patrick recommends. So if you haven't seen any of my other Knees Over Toes videos or the programs that I've done or anything like that, just a brief overview. I started with KneeAbility Zero. I did that for a few weeks and then I moved into something called ATG Essentials, which currently no longer exists on the backend that I can see. It's not visibly loaded as a program that I can select to do, um, but it was something that I got moved into when when I asked the coach on the platform, said, hey, you know, I feel pretty good with Zero. What's the next program I can get moved into? And it was ATG Essentials. So that's a little bit of my journey. I've been in ATG Essentials for, I think, the past, what, that would be like 4 and a half months now-ish, give or take. And, um, I want to first actually break down each of the programs that are currently on the ATG website on the backend. Once you do become, you know, a customer and then download their coaching app and buy the program, I I wanna go through each of those programs and then talk a little bit about the recommended order to go in from what I've gleaned from Ben's blogs, his posts in the Knees Over Toes Reddit, which is a great resource. If you are a Knees Over Toes fan, definitely go to the Reddit. There's a lot of good information in there, but I've seen a lot of Ben's posts in their responses to other people's questions about this, about the order to go in. And I wanna reiterate that and clarify that, you know, given, given what I know. The first one that's been kind of a staple of the ATG program is KneeAbility Zero. That's still available in there. And what KneeAbility Zero really is, a program that you can start with, that you should start with, and that helps you build the foundational strength and mobility moving into some of these ATG movements, the more complex movements. So it really is just building the foundation, and it also is zero equipment. So you really don't need much to start with. Literally nothing. So not even much at all. It's just really easy to get going with that program, and they make it really easy. There's 3 lower body days, 2 upper body and mobility days, and then the rest are rest days. There's another option now that's added into the platform that's called Advanced Zero. So that, from my understanding, is basically Zero but just for more advanced athletes or advanced individuals who kind of want more of a challenge. That wasn't available when I started, 6 months ago or so. So I just hopped into KneeAbility Zero. I probably, if I could do it over again, I probably would've started with Advanced Zero because I progressed through the normal Zero, KneeAbility Zero, pretty quickly and didn't need to do the full 12 weeks because they do recommend doing like a foundation of 12 weeks to really build, you know, again, solid foundation of movements and all that. But I submitted my form to the coach and asked if I can be bumped up into a little bit more challenging of program, which is when they moved me into the next one I wanna talk about. Which is called ATG Essentials. So at the time, ATG Essentials was listed in the courses. It's currently not listed anymore, but I had been doing ATG Essentials up till recently, up until I requested to try a different program. Not because I didn't like it. It's a really great program, but I want to talk a little bit about what it was because a lot of people have been asking me, what are you doing? I don't see the ATG Essentials one. I'm like, oh, weird. It's not in there anymore. It might be later on in the future. I'm not sure. But, um, I want to talk a little bit about that. I've loved that program. That originally was designed to be the, um, basically the workouts that Ben was doing each week with his athletes in the gym, and that was 4 days a week. It was a great mix of all the ATG standard kind of exercises that you do, like your split squats, your ATG squats, your Nordics, your tibialis raises. There was some pull-ups, some dips. So it was a good blend of upper body, obviously sled work, and lower body and all that good stuff kind of mixed in there. So it was a constantly changing week-to-week workout structure. So basically, overall is what I'm saying is this was just a pretty well-rounded combination of Ben's exercises with some additional kind of functional exercises that work on your neck strength, your grip strength, and things like that. Okay, so next I want to talk about DENSE. And DENSE is actually the program that I just recently transferred into as of last week, so I'm actually just experiencing some of this now and can speak to it and how it's pretty different than the ATG Essentials. And basically what DENSE is, is it's a 4 days a week program and it's focusing more on utilizing, you know, equipment and weights to build and accumulate more strength on top of the foundational strength that you've built through Zero or Zero Advanced, or if you were doing ATG Essentials, that too. So Dense is really the place where Ben describes this as like the accumulation phase where you're accumulating strength but not pushing too much of your like limits. You're not trying to get to your max strength yet in a certain move. You're really focusing on volume. There's gonna be a lot of reps and sets. For example, Yesterday I just did, I think, uh, close to 100 Pelican step-ups on each leg. It's a lot. You're doing a lot, but you're building this really, you know, accumulating a lot of strength in this phase, which is why it's called Dense. And Dense really prepares you well for the next program, which is called Standards. Standards is really a program where you are able to now move past the accumulation phase. You've accumulated a lot of strength in Dense, and then Standards is where you're really trying to like push to to the limit of that movement, of getting to certain, like, standards is what he calls them, of different levels of strength. So there'll be standards like, you know, hitting 75% of your body weight in this or hitting 50% of your body weight and doing reverse squats or things like that. So there's kind of different marks you want to make where you're really trying to push the level of strength and push that limit. So I'm assuming rep ranges are going to look different and set ranges are going to look different for that versus dense, which is going to be more focused on building volume and strength. The next program that's in there is called the Women of ATG, and this was something that wasn't added until recently. I didn't see it when I first started, and this was something that Ben Patrick's wife Alyssa created when she was getting some feedback from different women and some different things that they really wanted to see out of the ATG program. So she's going to actually kind of be refining this program as she comes back from her second baby, which she just had. So congrats, Alyssa. All right. So those are kind of like the main programs that are listed, at least right now. The next are kind of like bonus programs or additional programs or like kind of taster programs that are a little bit smaller. So I'm going to run through those because these are all new to me. I haven't seen these in there before until recently, and I think they're worth noting. So I recently saw this one and I'm really intrigued and probably will hop into this at some point, but it's called the ATG Sprinter Program. So this one is clearly designed for developing more speed. It's developed by somebody named Coach Brendan, who is a sprinter or, you know, an athlete in that way. So developing more of the quick twitch muscles. I kind of peeked through the program briefly. It looks like they do include some sprints and some things like that. So I'm assuming that program is going to be more geared towards like explosive movements, athletic movements, and those types of things. So that sounds like a lot of fun. Next, there's something called ATG for Longevity, which I looked through that one briefly. There was a little description on it, but basically it seems like a program that anybody can do, especially if you are in like an elderly population or aging population and you want, you know, people like your mom or your grandparents to start doing some of these exercises but kind of gently move into it to develop more longevity for their joints, that looks like a really great program to start with. And then lastly, there's a new one that just got added, and if you follow Ben Patrick like I do, you've probably heard him talk about this, and that is the ATG PHA style training. I know it's a mouthful. So PHA stands for peripheral heart action, and peripheral heart action is actually really interesting. It's a form of type of training. And this is something that Ben learned from another, another individual in this space in, in weightlifting and athletic performance. And super interesting. So it's about kind of maximizing your cardiovascular activity in between sets by training two muscle groups that are completely different. So for example, he used, he used the example of doing like a chest press, an ATG style chest press, in combination and supersetting that with doing like tibialis raises because you're not, you're still giving one muscle group time to recover, but you're still actively training the other. And that's gonna also challenge your cardiovascular activity because you're not really fully resting. So if you're interested in that, it sounds like he's currently developing that training program. It is kind of listed in there as like, hey, check it out, we're talking about this on our podcast, but it's not like formally listed as a program program yet to like dive into. But it seems really interesting. So I'm gonna keep you guys up to date on that as I learn more. All right, so let's talk about program order. So first you're going to want to start off with KneeAbility Zero or Advanced Zero. You could honestly probably stay in KneeAbility Zero for as long as you want because there's— it's just a great thing to incorporate. A lot of those exercises are really great for just continued longevity of the joints. But if you want to truly like make a difference as an athlete and to continue to develop your athletic ability, I'd say it's, it's going to be needed to progress. But Kneability Zero stuff is still great. Like if you're traveling and don't have equipment, you can always go back to some of those basic fundamental exercises and still get a killer workout that way. So I would start there with one of the Zero programs. Um, then it seems like from what I've been reading from Ben's, um, Reddit posts and things to questions on program order. The next recommendation from there is to move into Dense. Dense, like I said, is going to really help you to develop the full strength. You're going to add in some weights, you're going to continue to, um, add, accumulate strength throughout those ranges of motions that you've been practicing, and it's going to prepare you for being able to push the limits as you move to the next program, which is recommended, which is Standards. So we're going Zero, Dense, Standards, and then from there, I mean, the sky's the limit. You can really go wherever you want at that point. For me as an athlete, I want to do the ATG for sprinters at some point to really develop more speed and explosiveness. So that's probably going to be my personal track. Like I said, I had been doing the ATG Essentials for, you know, 4 and a half months and just moved into Dense. So had I been able to do it all over again, I probably would have gone straight from Zero to Dense standards, but it is what it is. And I still gained a lot, a lot, a lot of strength and a lot of just— I mean, I just— a lot of fun throughout the program too with the variability of it. So I'm really excited to dive into Dense though and really see like the gains I'm going to make there. So there you have it, guys. That's what I've kind of learned throughout this entire process in terms of the order to do programs in. Obviously, you know, Ben probably will continue to put out more content, more programs and things like that, and the order may change up. But as of right now, it seems like that's the order he's recommending. That's the order I would probably do it in if I could do it all over again. But I, I think that's going to give you the best chances of success to really build your foundation, your strength, and then push that strength to the limits. Seems like it makes sense. All right, you guys, I hope that answered your questions and helped to give you a track to kind of move into that's going to, you know, lead you into a successful path. I'm sure it will. The ATG family has been amazing, amazing, amazing. I've had such a great experience. And if you haven't watched my 4-month review, definitely watch that. Talk a lot about like my whole experience in it, and it's just been nothing but wonderful things. So if you are like me and have had ACL surgery or knee surgery or knee issues in general, definitely, definitely give them out like a shot. I'm going to put all the information to sign up down below. And as always, follow me over on Instagram if you want to direct message me there. If you have any questions or if you just want to say hey, more than happy to say hey back. And as always, if you can like this video and subscribe to my channel, I would greatly appreciate it, you guys. All right, thanks so much. Bye!
