Kaged Athlete Ben Petersen

Q & A

What is your social media?

My Instagram is @dr.benpetersen

What year did you join Team Kaged?

2021

Where is your hometown?

Lincoln, Nebraska

What is a random fact about yourself?

I have eaten “rocky mountain oysters,” feel free to Google that

What is your favorite workout?

Chest and back.

Growing up I played baseball and in the baseball community, especially for pitchers, it’s pretty taboo to workout upper body.

Naturally, once I stopped playing I had to make up for lost time.

Plus I love doing pull ups and bench presses. I'm pretty good at them too and it’s always fun pushing myself to new heights.

Since you’re both a physical therapist and a fitness coach, you’ve worked with healthy populations and those recovering from injuries. What are your best tips for staying injury free?

1. Graded exposure. This is basically the idea of gradually exposing yourself to the exercise or the lift before going all out.

Let’s take squats for example, since a lot of people get injured doing squats. If you want to learn how to squat without getting injured, you’d want to start with a quarter squat.

The progress to a half squat, then a box squat then into a deep squat achieving full range of motion. Do all of this before adding weight. As the saying in strength and conditioning goes, you don’t want to add load on top of dysfunction.

2. Stop picking your scabs. When a lot of people start to experience pain or a slight tweak, they will keep “checking” their injury to see if it still hurts. This is like picking a scab.

Most injuries can be healed by simply slowing down and giving yourself time to recover. But if you keep picking at your injuries this is how something small can become something big.

3. Understanding your own goals. 99% of people don’t need to do extreme workouts for the goals they want to achieve.

Let’s say you’re a dad who wants to get rid of his gut before the family trip to Florida, do you really think you need to max out on deadlift to achieve this goal? Probably not.

Focus on the aspects of training that will actually help you get closer to your goal instead of doing things that could potentially hurt you.

What's something you believe that other trainers disagree with?

I don’t believe “correct form” exists. There are simply different ways of doing an exercise and varying degrees to which the exercise contributes to strength, hypertrophy and potential risk of injury.

Outside of the gym, what are some of your hobbies?

Traveling, running, and playing chess.