In this vlog, Victoria S. Dorsano recounts her decade‑long injury history (ACL reconstruction, kneecap fracture, calf tears) and the progress she made using the ATG/Knees Over Toes (KOT) program. After about 1.5 years she decided to quit the ATG regimen because the workouts felt slow, repetitive, and left little time for the heavy, explosive training she craved. She switched to a blend of CrossFit‑style and athlete‑focused sessions (including programs by Kelly Matthews and Ladder co‑founder Victoria Dorsano), which quickly increased her muscular strength and power but also triggered joint aches, knee discomfort, shoulder and low‑back pain due to the higher loads and reduced joint‑centric work. She reflects on the trade‑offs, concluding that ATG‑style joint mobility work remains essential and that she now seeks a sustainable hybrid that balances strength, agility, and joint health. The video also includes a sponsored segment for X Endurance’s Extreme Endurance supplement, highlighting its claimed stamina‑boosting and recovery benefits.
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After nearly a year and a half of doing ATG/kneesovertoesstyle workouts, I've decided to stop doing them. For those of you guys that are new to this channel, back in 2020 I had ACL surgery, I had a kneecap fracture, I had two calf injuries, and just a bunch of other weird odds and ends injuries that just kept kind of nagging me that year and for years to come. And after going through physical therapy for the ACL surgery and for the calf tears, I was not particularly satisfied with the results still. So that's when I found the Knees Over Toes Guy and his program, the ATG program, which if you're interested in learning more about my entire journey going through that program, I'll make sure to include the playlist down below as well as up top in the links. In short, I made some amazing, amazing progress with the ATG program and loved where it was taking my body. But as of recently, I decided to stop doing the program and I wanted to share a little bit about why I decided to do that and how my body's feeling now that I've stopped. But before we dive into today's full video, I want to share with you guys a little bit about this awesome new product from today's sponsor, X Endurance, that I've been really, really digging lately. As an athlete, I'm always looking to try to get the most out of my workouts and really maximize my training sessions, and that's why I've been absolutely loving this new product, Extreme Endurance, from X Endurance. I've been using Extreme Endurance over the past week to really see how it impacts my training and my performance, and I've been just floored at how much more stamina I've been having, how much I can push through workouts even better. It's pretty incredible. So how does the supplement work? Well, Xtreme Endurance has been clinically shown to boost stamina by increasing your aerobic threshold while speeding up your recovery time. Plus, you can rest easy knowing that Xtreme Endurance is third-party certified by Informed Sport, meaning that every single batch is tested for contamination or banned substances. And if that's not enough, professional CrossFit athletes like Danielle Brandon and Josh Bridges have openly raved about how Xtreme Endurance has helped them push harder and recover better than ever during their workouts. And if you're interested in learning more, I put the link down in the description with a special discount code for my audience only. So go ahead and check it out. And thank you again to XEndurance for sponsoring today's video. Okay, so let's back up the storyline a little bit. So a few months ago, I was doing the ATG Female Standards Program. That's kind of the last update I gave you guys about where I was in the ATG program journey. And as May came along and it started getting warmer outside, beach volleyball season started getting into swing, and I started to get back out into the sand a little bit. And as I did, my legs were very heavy feeling, and that's not abnormal for going back in the sand this time of year. It's pretty common if you haven't played all year round and you're coming back into season after taking many months of not being in the sand. You have to get your sand legs back. I get it. But this was like a different heaviness that I was feeling. It was just like that I had extra muscle, which was great. Like, I felt strong, but I just felt heavy. Like, I didn't feel like I was working a lot of agility lately. So I messaged the coaches in the app. I told them, hey, here's what I'm experiencing. Do you recommend a different program that I can kind of use to really get myself back into shape for more agility work and get my legs feeling lighter and just, you know, more powerful and explosive? And they suggested doing the volleyball in-season program combined with the ATG run and jump program. So that's what I ended up doing. I did 5 days of the in-season volleyball program combined with the one day of the run and jump. And I did that for about 6 weeks, and I still feel like it wasn't really enough for me. I felt like it really wasn't enough agility work for what I was looking for. And besides that, it just didn't feel like enough activity for me. It was a very slow-moving progression of a program, which I think is great for if you truly are in season and training, you know, multiple days a week as a D1 athlete or as a high-level athlete in, in volleyball or on your sport, but you know, I was just playing like once or twice on the weekends, maybe once in the middle of the week, nothing crazy. So the pace of the program felt a little bit slow and like I wasn't getting quite enough athletic kind of, uh, I don't know, vigor to my workouts. I really missed doing like some explosive and powerful heavy lifting movements that I just feel like I wasn't getting from this combination of programs. And sure, could have I added in some of those movements that I was really craving into my existing ATG programs, of course, but I felt like I wasn't really having the time available for that because the program itself was already taking, you know, a full workout period of close to 45 minutes to an hour. And I just didn't feel like I had the time to build in extra lifting on top of doing that program. And I want to be clear, there probably are other ATG programs that have more of the components of what I was looking for, maybe like the ATG Shred program or the ATG Pro program. They're always adding more programs in there, but to be honest, I was also getting a little bit bored with some of the movements. By no means have I mastered all of them, but I felt like, you know, these movements, you— they were kind of just getting cycled through over and over again in different programs in different ways. And there's some new ones thrown in there, but I was just getting a little bored, and that tends to happen for me. So I just decided, you know, maybe I'll try something else for a little bit. And I really wanted to see how my body was going to respond to doing something else because this program, you know, with ATG has been so great for keeping myself injury-free, keeping my knee feeling really great, all the things. And I was a little bit nervous to hop into something else and kind of wanted to see how my body was going to do. So I started to do a little bit more of a blend of like CrossFit-style workouts and more workouts that were geared towards athletes, some ones that were created by Kelly Matthews. Victoria S. Dorsano, who is one of the founders of Ladder, and just workouts that were challenging me as an athlete in a different way that I haven't been challenged before, to really lift heavy and do some explosive movements and some complex movements that I really missed, and even incorporating different kinds of lifting paces like cluster sets and things like that. So I've been doing those types of workouts now for the past 2 months, and here's what I've noticed. First thing I noticed is my knee started hurting right out of the gate, which was kind of like a big womp womp moment for me. But in retrospect, I have to acknowledge that I increased the amount of weight that I was lifting exponentially within one week and the volume, and that tends to create some overload in my knee that I've had ACL surgery and it makes it a little cranky when I do that. Um, I didn't manage my load really well and I don't think my knee was really happy with me about that. I also started to get some random aches and pains in different joints of my body that I hadn't in a long time, like my shoulder shoulder, um, than my primary swinging shoulder in volleyball. I started to get some pain in there. I started to get some low back issues going on again. I started to get again my knee issues kicking back up. So just some like overall joint stuff was coming back up for me that I hadn't experienced in a long time. But it kind of makes sense because the programs I was doing was, you know, really focused on a lot of muscular strength and not too much joint work, which the ATD programs are a lot you know, a lot of it is focused on joint mobility and strength through a full range of motion and all that stuff. So it checks out that I'd be experiencing those things. Overall, since stopping the ATG style training and transitioning to more of a CrossFit and heavy lifting and more athletic movement style training, I would say I feel stronger muscularly. Like, I definitely increased my agility in the sand, my power, um, I feel just a lot stronger in my muscles but not in my joints, if that makes sense. I feel like I'm not as strong through full ranges of motion like I was when I was really actively doing the ATD program. So here we are at a stage where I've learned that the ATD style workouts are something that I'm probably always going to need to incorporate in one form or another. I'm still honestly just looking for what that happy medium looks like, what that blend for me is going to look like moving forward, where maybe I'm not training quite as hard and quite as, you know, with so many heavy weights as I have been lately, and maybe I'm blending the two types of workouts. And I got to figure out what that happy medium looks like. But I just wanted to give you guys an update and what my body has felt like since going off the program. Again, a testament to ATG and to the Knees Over Toes guy and what he's created. Um, I will likely be incorporating a lot of those things again. I did today because my back was a little irritated, so I was like, oh, I'm gonna— gotta do some of these ATG movements that I know really made me feel good. Um, so that's where I'm at. I'm looking for that happy medium. And I think that's the fun thing about fitness and exploring our bodies and seeing what works best for each of us in the demands that we each have, right? We each have different demands that we are placing on our bodies, whether that's different types of sports or, you know, if you're not an athlete, different types of activities that you're doing throughout the day. It's important to find what works best for you and what achieves— helps you achieve those goals for you in a way that keeps you healthy in the long run too. So you guys, I hope you enjoy this update. And if you've done the ATG program and other programs and maybe a combination of them, I'd love to hear like how you're combining that. What that looks for you to integrate some of the HDG program into your other types of training. I want to learn from you guys too. So if you like this video, give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to my channel. I greatly, greatly, greatly appreciate it, you guys. And as always, I will see you guys next time. Bye.
