Strength OR Flexibility?

7 min readOct 24, 2020

Until 2015, I didn’t want to get “too flexible” and “hamper my explosiveness.”

Then, one fine Summer day in a small gym in Las Vegas, I watched Olympic medalist Dmitry Klokov Snatch 374 pounds — more specifically: he asked one of us (his students) to hold his iPhone, then he picked the 374 pounds up off the ground, recited a Russian poem to his wife, and exploded that bar over his head faster than I could blink! I didn’t have Instagram at the time, but I just looked back and sure enough: he posted it! Click here if you’d like to see it. I was sitting directly in front of him when he did this…

But why did this make me realize my inflexibility was just an excuse?

Because he dropped down into a front splits shortly after!

Here’s a picture of him with Annie Thorisdottir, one of the most explosive women on the planet.

Klokov can also do a head-to-floor pancake and many other impressive feats of flexibility. Is he a contortionist? Absolutely not. But he was WAY more flexible than my pathetic self was in 2015, and I didn’t possess HALF his strength.

So right now, we can establish that:

1. Flexibility does NOT = weakness.

JUST AS…

2. STRENGTH does not = stiffness.

Once I saw this with my own eyes, I realized I was just being a coward.

“I don’t want to lose explosiveness” was just the best excuse I could come up with.

And very, very unfortunately, some of the world’s most famous current trainers push this same philosophy on people: “you don’t want to get too flexible.”

I wouldn’t have a problem with this, except for the FACT that this advice is being pushed on people who are so stiff, they are heading right towards the United States Assembly Line of Knee Replacements (click here for some truth more frightening than anything you’ll see this Halloween).

Yet these trainers giving this advice have PATHETIC explosiveness compared to so many people more flexible than they are, MYSELF INCLUDED!

They just kept going down the same track I was on in 2015 before I realized I was lying to myself. They haven’t stopped lying to themselves, and now they’re lying to millions of people, simply to justify their own lack of flexibility.

You expect our top politicians to be dripping with unethical behavior, and our top trainers to be models of integrity and truth?! You’re living in a bubble if you take someone’s word, just because they’re at the top.

And like many of these “don’t get too flexible” trainers, I, too, had strength-trained myself to a low-30s vertical jump.

The low-30s vertical jump gives us genetically-poor athletes the illusion that we have done something great, when in reality: a low-30s vertical is quite average in the sports world.

But you will find these low-30s vertical trainers reaching the top of the industry because they master marketing, videography, etc… while the Klokovs of the world are too busy getting shit DONE to think about all that stuff.

I have no doubt these “don’t get too flexible” trainers with 30 inch verticals can make you average, too.

BUT I DIDN’T WANT NO FRIGGIN AVERAGE. I was in the presence of an Olympic medalist and it totally put into perspective how pathetic most trainers really are in terms of true athletic greatness.

So I began exploring the strength-flexibility relationship and never looked back.

I brought back some gems from the past and made them popular again.

I standardized exercises which had been close to their potential.

And I flat-out innovated exercises which didn’t exist but were needed.

You can see the fruits of this labor in the 20 Numbers, which are supplemented by the 6 Flexibility Standards. The best part about it is that, per Pillar IV of the VIII Pillars, every single tool is SCALABLE so that virtually anyone can progress!

Now…

I have a 42 inch vertical and I can do the front splits, just like Klokov, as well as head to floor pancake and many other feats of flexibility.

Only a few humans have ever been able to do a windmill dunk AND a splits. Not bad for the kid nicknamed “Old Man” in high school because I was the stiffest and least athletic on a team of pretty stiff and unathletic Berkeley Preparatory School kids! I never thought about that until this moment. Imagine being on a team of unathletic prep school kids — and being THE guy who is so much less athletic and so much stiffer, that your nickname — given to you by the Head Coach, is “Old Man?” I’m laughing at myself as I write this.

Let me make this clear…

I cannot trust you as an authority on flexibility if YOU ARE NOT FLEXIBLE.

I cannot trust you to teach me how to run my business if YOU ARE BROKE.

You are not an expert something because you CRITICIZE it or because you have a lot of followers on Instagram or YouTube.

Your expertise on a subject is based on how well you actually KNOW the subject, and it is very hard to know something which you cannot do.

And so we have celebrity trainers much more famous than I am, speaking out as AUTHORITIES on things which they factually do NOT know for sure.

And that’s the purpose of this article: to re-educate you on the TRUTH.

The truth is that if you had a true “zero” of strength, you would not be able to lift up your own bones and thus would not be able to get out of bed, even if you were the most flexible person on earth.

And if you had a true “zero” of flexibility, your body would not be able to move at all and again, you would not even be able to get out of bed, even if you were the strongest person on earth!

Our bodies ALL have some degree of strength and flexibility.

Does driving up either side of that equation in imbalanced fashion to the other seem natural to you? And that is where the problems occur.

Many exercises in the ATG system train your strength through length. Without these exercises, I NEVER would have taken my pathetic natural 19 inch vertical all the way to over 40 inches, while fixing ALL my pains and never having a lapse.

By building your strength in perfect harmony to your flexibility, you don’t just get more athletic — you directly get more RESILIENT too! If the VIII Pillars didn’t make sense the first time you read them, maybe they’ll make more sense now.

Your body is bulletproof to the degree it is strong THROUGH RANGE OF MOTION.

The strongest tree that cannot bend, can still break.

And the limpest tree that can bend but has no strength, can get torn apart.

It is the tree that can both bend and be strong — that is most frustrating to try to break, just like my body and just like every body with each passing ATG session.

In the grand scheme of things, we will still be fragile humans, but our statistics on surgeries and painkillers can come down to one-TENTH of what they are today, in my honest estimation, simply through correct training ACCORDING TO THE WAY OUR BODIES ARE DESIGNED.

It’s just common sense.

Sorry if you came looking for studies and complexities, because exercise science has NOT yet explored what ATG has with thousands of users and the most knee success stories in history, among many other areas of success, and the strength-flexibility relationship IS. NOT. COMPLEX.

They work together. So build them together. Your most vulnerable point is the weakness or tightness you leave behind or didn’t know was there, and modern exercise science leaves your bulletproof vest FULL OF COTTON. Nuff said.

And it’ll take exercise science 20–30 years just to catch up with what the ATG system is already using right now to create life-changing wins every day. So ATG Fam, I’ll see you on Monday. And for those who want to wait, I’ll see you in 20–30 years. The truth is still the truth. It’s true now and it’ll be true in 20–30 years when exercise science catches up.

Have a great weekend!

Yours in Truth,
Ben

PS. If anyone discouraging you from flexibility has any further questions on this subject, yes: I do answer all DMs on Instagram, BUT I think these questions would be better directed to the following, who have achieved more success than I have:

Usain Bolt: Doctor of Speed