should you LISTEN TO "KNEES OVER TOES GUY?"

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Before we get into his actual advice, I do have to preface the article by saying that he's trying to get you to buy his training system, which is perfectly fine! But I'm not going to do so. But so a lot of his information is essentially hidden behind a paywall, so basically I'm working with what's available here for free on his YouTube channel. Personally, I think that the snapshot that he provides us is enough to make a sound judgment of what you would be getting if you purchased his services, but others might not necessarily agree with that so I feel that I'm obligated to mention this fact.

You're working on unilateral strength and hip stability, you've got the knee on the front leg moving through much greater range of motion than you'd be able to achieve with most other exercises, and then on the trailing leg you're basically working on hip flexor mobility with every rep. The kneeling hip flexor stretch is a great way to limber up the hip flexors and this is essentially that same thing but being done under load and also building strength at the same time so kind of killing two birds with one stone.

As an inverse example, this is why steroid users suffer such a disproportionate number of tendon ruptures as compared to non-steroid users. The tendons and ligaments take much longer to develop than the muscles do and a steroid user's muscular strength will literally outpace their tendon development to such a large degree that outright ruptures, which are actually pretty rare, simply become commonplace. So these tissues are slower to develop in general, but there are things we can do to enhance that process. Moving deliberately through a full range of motion under load and pumping plenty of blood into these avascular tissues is one of them. Targeted eccentric only work is another.

So that's another positive aspect here, as it would stand to reason that if these concepts can be used to resolve pre-existing joint issues they can also be extrapolated to work for you from a longevity perspective as well simply by making progressively building up those capacities to a certain degree a focal point of your training, thereby consistently building stronger tendons and ligaments over time.

Another aspect he emphasizes that you don't really see anywhere else is direct tibialis training. And this aspect has kind of piqued my interest a bit because he makes some pretty good points regarding the function of the tibialis and it's role in deceleration. Now, I will say that he has certainly made some pretty bold claims regarding the effectiveness of his tibialis exercises, but regardless of that he has currently got me considering incorporating some of his training tips here just for the sake of seeing what happens - seeing if someone at my level can eke out some more speed and power improvements with something novel and untapped like this.

I'm not going to say anything conclusively right now in terms of the effect that training this muscle directly could potentially have on performance because I honestly have no idea and I don't really want to speculate. I think that would largely be dependent upon the individual because just because you haven't trained the muscle directly like he advocates doesn't mean that you haven't been training it for many years as an athlete because you have been...every time you run and jump! BUT this sort of progressive loading in a more controlled environment could have a different sort of training effect and that training effect could be particularly useful for elite athletes who have already built their base and tapped out resources elsewhere and are just looking to take performance to its absolute peak.

So I do think it's cool that he's introduced unique equipment like this "Tib Bar" that you see him using in some of his videos, as it not only standardizes the exercise but makes the execution much smoother and easier as well which makes progression more reliable. Now, from what I've seen I do think he may be hyping this exercise up just a little bit too much in certain instances, but that's not to say that it doesn't have value. I obviously think that it does, I just think it has a highly specific usage, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, in this case I think that it is actually that specificity and uniqueness that really lends this exercise its value in the first place.