Walking Backward, Progressing Forward

It might be hard to tell from the picture above as it looks a little creepy… but it’s a shot of ME walking backward, dragging a sled with 90 pounds of weight on it.

Have you ever gone for a walk in your neighborhood, but instead of walking forward, you walk backward? The looks you get? Crazy! I can only imagine what people are thinking… there goes that kook!

In 35 years of training for sport and fitness, I never once considered walking backward… and I definitely never thought I might be dragging a weighted sled on my driveway, at night, BACKWARDS!

But that is exactly what I’ve been doing.

Why?

About 3 years ago I injured my right knee. A meniscus tear. It required surgery. As a bonus, I also had a “Baker’s Cyst” behind the knee courtesy of the fluid draining from the knee. Not painful, just really irritating.

I tried a lot of things to improve it over the past three years. Nothing has worked.

In December, per the recommendation from my friend, Z, I started following the programming of a guy who goes by the Instagram handle @kneesovertoesguy. His recommendations for training legs (and especially the knee) are the complete opposite of everything I’ve learned about squatting and lunging. As a “fitness professional”, you never move the knees out past the toes in squats or lunges. Ever. Cardinal rule. Why? It can cause pain.

But in life, your knees move out past your toes ALL THE TIME – when you’re walking downstairs or when jumping.

And the kneesovertoesguy has had huge amounts of success with thousands of people who have trained using his methods.

Therein lies the rub. And for me, that presents too much of a compelling and unexplored potential opportunity to just pass up.

So now, I drag a sled. Backward. At least 3x per week. Often at night.

I’ll go into more details in a future post… but thus far, the results have been solid. I am WAY more stable and confident in my right knee than I have been in years, with less irritation. And the really exciting part? I’ve only just begun!

More to come…