The Secret Power of Banded Training (and more) with Dr. John Jaquish

This we have an inventor, Dr. John Jaquish. The best overview about him comes directly from his website:

“Dr. John Jaquish began his experience in life sciences after being told by his Mother that she had been diagnosed with osteoporosis. John, in an effort to help his mother, created a device to place axial loading through bone to safely cause osteogenic loading events. The device was to trigger the effects of high-impact loading, but without the risk of injury.”

We also talk about another invention of his, the X3 variable resistance exercise system, increasing force, strength through different ranges of motion, and more.

Full Transcript

Jerred: Hey guys, Jerred Moon here from End of Three Fitness and welcome to the Better Humanology podcast. Today we have Dr. John Jaquish. Very cool dude to talk to you. I think you guys are really going to enjoy this episode. He’s going to give you a bit of an introduction and background that he has so I won’t steal any of that thunder. But one of the most interesting things I think about him is one of his “titles” would be inventor and he truly is an inventor. He actually invented a machine that like has really reversed osteoporosis. His mother had a really low bone density and so he invented a machine specifically to help with this and the results have been off the charts amazing. Really helped his mom out. But now, I mean it’s helping people around the world. So that’s reason one I wanted to have him on the podcast because I think that information should be out in the world and more people should hear about how he’s impacting lives. And the second thing is he also invented something called the X3 Bar variable resistance system. And we talk a lot about this product on the podcast. And the reason I was so fascinated with it is because if you know me, I really enjoy all the information from Westside Barbell, specifically from Louie Simmons and he does a lot of banded work and I’ve looked at a lot of the research behind using bands in your training and I’ve actually used a lot of bands in my training and I’ve seen a lot of good results. So I wanted to have him on because this system is kind of a banded system, but it goes beyond where a lot of other people are stopping, and that is they just have like a basic, like two-pound band or something like that that doesn’t really add anything to your fitness. I do like to say, when we do one of these episodes that we’re talking about a specific product more heavily. Just so you guys know, full disclosure, I have no affiliation with the company whatsoever, I just thought Dr. Jaquish was a very interesting man and had some cool products and I just wanted you guys to hear about all of this. So just know that going in. Very interesting stuff. Great to hear. If you’re a garage-athlete or someone who wants to kind of change up your training, he has a lot of great information. So let’s dive into it. All right Dr Jaquish, super pumped to have you on the Better Humanology podcast, man. Thanks for joining me.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks for having me. I’m excited.

Jerred: All right, we’re going to get started. We’re going to hit the ground running here, challenging the listeners a little bit. So if you could give us a fitness challenge.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. The fitness challenge has a little bit to do with everyone’s fitness and a little bit to do with their perceived understanding of fitness. So I frequently say to groups of physical therapists and trainers, “How many people believe a two-legged squat is very functional exercise?” Of course, all the hands go up and like that’s sort of a standard. And I say, “You guys must work with kangaroos because people walk on one leg at a time,” and ultimately, we lose our balance, not when we’re firmly planted with two feet, but one. And our biomechanics become automatically corrected or at least to a degree when we get on one foot but we keep training two feet. So fitness challenge, I’d like everybody to use the back of a chair to stabilize themselves, just touch it with their fingertips and get some one legged pistol squats, and they can Google what a pistol squat looks like, down. And when you start firing one leg at a time, you can not only improve strength but you can … And you don’t need to deal with a whole lot of weight, ultimately your own body weight is very productive in that movement. And then ultimately you can start to begin correcting some of the incorrect movement patterns that we all have because our toes don’t sink into the ground as we walk and things like that. So that’s a great movement for somebody who’s already fit and somebody who’s not already fit. If you’re not doing that, that’s both a sort of learning about yourself and your body type of experience.

Jerred: Yeah. And it’s so important too, that unilateral strength. I know when I’m … I do a lot of online coaching. When I first start working with an athlete, they’ll send me some videos of their, let’s say barbell squat. And of course I want to see the side view a little bit, depending on what we’re working on specifically. But I will ask for one directly from the back. And to be honest, you can’t tell that much about a person’s squat looking at the back. But what I’m looking for is the bar angle. I’m like, “Hey, you see how the bar is tilting to the left? You have some serious imbalance here.” And most of the time, people are never ever aware of it. If you’re not lifting and traditional gym where you can, like a global gym where you can look in a mirror all the time. But I think a lot of people have that imbalance. So I think that’s an awesome challenge, kicks you off with. All right, and how about a mental toughness challenge?

Dr. John Jaquish: I tell people, especially when I begin to lecture about some of the discoveries I’ve made, “You need to suspend what you think you know.” And inaudible probably can put parallels out there and in life. Very often we proceed with intentions, we continue with intentions in mind instead of looking at results. And like people might have a lifting program, let’s say they do P90X or something like that, and they’re not quite getting the results that they believe they should be getting and they continue to do what is not being effective because it’s the intentions instead of the results. So being results focused forces you to look in many metaphorical mirrors and really ask yourself, “Am I doing the right thing? Am I getting the results? What are the metrics here?”

Jerred: Looking at the hard data to see if you’re actually improving.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, absolutely.

Jerred: Awesome. And how about-

Dr. John Jaquish: But not nearly enough people do that.

Jerred: … No. I don’t think, most people don’t track enough of anything. That would be my take on it. All right, how about a book recommendation?

Dr. John Jaquish: The Bulletproof Diet.

Jerred: By Dave Asprey.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, by Dave Asprey. Dave’s a good friend of mine, I met him after he wrote the book and I did his podcast not that long ago, but I tell people like, the book is written for people who are really more fans of bio hacking than fitness, and there is a difference. It’s Dave promises a lot of shortcuts to good health. And while I don’t … Like I’m trying to get to optimal, not shortcuts. However, very often they are one and the same. And so I tell people, somebody says to me, “Give me some bullet points for my nutrition because I really want to lose some weight.” And I say, “All right, I already know you’re going to fail because if you want the bullet points, that means you’re not really going to understand why those bullet points are the bullet points.” And therefore, when you deviate, which we always do. Let’s say you’re stuck in a German or Austrian airport where there’s only pastries, chocolate and beer, and literally that’s all they have in German and Austrian airports. You deviate and you screw up your insulin sensitivity or something like that and then you’re miserable for extended periods of time. So I tell people, “Just get through that book. Get the audio book and get a Bluetooth speaker and listen to it while you’re in the shower every day. Just get that book, that information into your brain and once you understand it, you’ll never need to read another nutrition book again.”

Jerred: Awesome man. Great recommendation. And I read that book. I really, I’m a huge fan of a lot of Dave’s work. I think like what you were saying, I think the only spot Dave and I would differ slightly would probably be on the fitness side of things. And it could be out of preference. To be honest, I think I just, I prefer putting in a little bit more work, not trying to make everything the smallest amount of time possible. But he has some phenomenal information in all of his books.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, he does frequently say, “My goal is not to be fit, my goal is to be healthy.” So like when he uses X3 Bar resistance band bar system or OsteoStrong, my two products I have out right now, he doesn’t do them so he can be at his absolute peak performance level, he does it so that he can be healthier than otherwise, and otherwise somebody who’s not exercising. So he is really living that type of a lifestyle. But he also does say in the book, “If you want to be at your highest performing level, here’s what you’ll need to do to take it further than I choose to take it.”

Jerred: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Jerred: Awesome, man. Well, let’s get a little background on you for anyone listening who may be unfamiliar, just what you’re doing now, what you’re passionate about and we can dive in from there.

Dr. John Jaquish: Got you. So right now, I’m working with two things; OsteoStrong, based on a medical device I created to put axial compression on bone. And I’ll start the story there. So working with compression on bone and looking at how to trigger bone growth. This all started a little over 10 years ago when my mother was diagnosed with osteoporosis. And I read into what the dysfunction was and I finally came to the conclusion, told my mother, “Mom, this is not really a disease, it’s a deconditioning of bone. Like it’s not a pathogen, you didn’t catch this. Not a virus, not a bacteria. It’s the deconditioning of bone. And anything that becomes deconditioned can become reconditioned. So I’m going to figure out how to recondition it.” And so what I set off to do was create a device. And the best thing for bone is the highest possible impact that you can receive without fracture. Of course, that’s the challenge. Impact is an out of control event so I chose to make an impact emulation device, that’s really important, the benefit of high impact but in a controlled environment. And we use computerized biofeedback to track that, and that became OsteoStrong. And the system is now, the latest version of the system is robotic and automated. So you go in and you log in and the robotic arms move to your exact positions and then allow you to self-compress and trigger bone growth. So my mother went from a T-score of negative 2.5. She was right at the diagnosis level, and 18 months to a T-score of zero. So meaning that normal bone of a 30-year-old-

Jerred: inaudible.

Dr. John Jaquish: And … Right, and she was in her 70s. So she went from having dysfunctional bone to have bones of a young person.

Jerred: That’s amazing.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And then, so this research that came out of it, I was working with a group in London, The Stratford Village Surgery in London, and so I was looking at some of these loading instances that were seeing with deconditioned post-menopausal females and we’re looking at just massive forces going through their bodies very comfortably. And so I compared this data with the data I’ve seen with the American College of Sports and Medicine and what they have determined is the average loading for athletic versus non-athletic people through the hip joint. So the conclusion I came to was that we are seven times more capable when isolating the strong range of motion versus the weak range of motion or full range of motion, ultimately, if we’re doing full range, it has to be a load that we can tolerate in the week rage. So I’m looking at this data thinking, we are seven times more capable in the strong range versus weak range and set a different way when we lift a static weight, we are maximizing our chances for injury because we’re, in using the weaker range of motion, we’re giving the highest stress to where the joint is the most compromised and we’re also firing the least amount of muscle. So we get the least amount of stimulus and maximizing the chance of injury. That’s really opposing to what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to avoid injury and get the most benefit. So I thought, “Okay, what about varying the resistance?” Now, there’s a guy named Louis Simmons who runs a place called Westside Barbell Club in-

Jerred: One of my favorites.

Dr. John Jaquish: … In Ohio, right.

Jerred: Yup.

Dr. John Jaquish: And Louie, now he’s doing something very different than what I’m trying to do, but he’s got a similar approach. So he uses bands, rubber latex bands to add some resistance. So let’s say you’re holding X on your chest when the bars and the weak range of motion when you’re doing a bench press, you might be holding 1.2X at the top, whereas Louie is trying to get people to be better at the sport or the bench press or the sport of the squat. So I understand what he’s doing. So you train with variable resistance and then you go back to just the static weight, and he wants that kinetic chain firing and all those things. So the people are really good at the sport of those lifts. In fact, he only trains lifters, he doesn’t train bodybuilders or casual lifters. And a guy is training out of his gym and broken more than 100 world strength records. So he has proven hands-down that his method is incredibly powerful. Now, when I looked at what he’s doing and what some of the research out there on variable resistance and then my own research showing what people’s capability where, I realized, okay, I need to massively double down on the variants. So let’s forget about the weight. Like for me what I’m personally doing my own fitness and what I’m trying to recommend to people is, who cares what you can bench press or squat? Like I don’t think everybody getting good at the bench press or everybody getting good at the squat is going to make for a healthier, happier world. We want to be as strong as possible And I’ve listened to a lot of your material and I believe you and I have the same philosophy there. Being as strong as possible is a lot more important than winning a bench press contest.

Jerred: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: So how do we become as strong as possible? So instead of the 1X on the chest and the 1.2X at extension, let’s have X when you got the bar laying on your chest and maybe 5X when you’re in the strongest range of motion, because that is what the research has determined we can handle, we can handle far more force in the stronger range of motion. And that gives us the opportunity to fatigue first the strong range, then the medium and weaker rage, which is a much more complete stimulus. We have more muscle firing in the stronger range. So if we can fatigue the strong range and then the medium range and then the weaker range all in one set, that is a powerful stimulus. And Cornell University tested that theory and they showed that you can grow muscle three times faster, which is why I ended up calling the product X3 Bar portable home gym.

Jerred: And I think that part of the reason I wanted to have you on was this product and then just the theory and the research you put behind it. Because sometimes, this is not you at all by the way, but sometimes somebody, they find a study somewhere and they wrap their entire product around this study and then they’re like, “And that’s how the shake weight was developed,” or whatever. And they didn’t actually put a lot of thought behind it. But when I started hearing about your product and then … So just so you know, Louie Simmons is like probably my biggest mentor in strength and conditioning as far as basically everything I’ve ever learned or he … I respect him the most. So what you’re talking about with accommodating resistance, when you started talking about different ranges of motions, I was like, okay, well I respect the hell out of Louie and he’s basically saying the same thing, just he has a new device for it. And so I was really, really impressed. Now I haven’t got to try one of these things out yet, but tell me, I’m just really curious about how the device actually works given the different ranges of motion. Maybe you can pick a movement for me and just tell me how the band is actually operating to provide that different resistance at different points in the range of motion.

Dr. John Jaquish: So what we’re looking at is maximizing the force going through a kinetic chain. So maybe multi-joint, maybe single joint, maximizing the force where there is the most mechanical leverage. So mechanical leverage also typically coincides with a little bit of, it depends on the movement, but typically coincides with the shortening of muscle and the shorter muscle is the more sarcomere engagement. So thereby there’s more potential there. Now I say potential instead of activity because frequently when these things are tested with electromyography, the muscle starts to turn off in that stronger range of motion because it doesn’t have to work as hard. So people have been distracted by the fact that there’s less muscle activity. Well, there’s less muscle activity because it’s more efficient. But if you turn the weight up, then there’s more muscle activity. But that’s just not how it had been tested in most studies, vast majority of studies use static weight. So let’s say for a curl for example, I’m going to do a curl where I might do 15 or 20 repetitions, high repetitions is really good with this because you fatigue all ranges of motion and you want to do, let’s say the first 11, I go to the strong range and then by the time I get to the 12th, I can’t get to the strong range anymore because I’ve fatigued that range. So then I diminish the range. So I start off where I’m just beginning a curl and I may be holding 50 pounds, but then at the top, as I curl, I may be holding 120 pounds.

Jerred: What would a workout protocol look like of that? Say you were doing a bicep curl, is that a one set, two sets, three sets? What are you crosstalk?

Dr. John Jaquish: One set to absolute fatigue until you can’t move anymore.

Jerred: And then you’re good 72 hours or whatever to recovery and hit it again?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Recommend … So there’s two workouts. One of them is a chest press, tricep push downs, overhead press and squats. So four exercises. And then the next workout is dead lift, bent over row, bicep curl and calf raises. So two workouts, each of them for exercise, one set a piece, it takes less than 10 minutes. And that’s all I do. I don’t touch any weights, I don’t do any cardio, absolutely nothing other than those things. And not to pat myself on the back, but everywhere I go, people ask me like what football team I play for. It’s like, it’s very obvious I am a high-level strength athlete and I tell him like, I don’t touch weights, I haven’t touched a weight in years since developing the prototype, which was a little over a year and a half ago. And I have some … One year before and after in one mid range picture after I developed the prototype. So once I started reading about what Louie was doing, because I was very much into bone density research, and that’s sort of where my head was. And there was a couple other medical and therapy devices I was involved with. And then I started doing this research about the bands and looking of the data that I collected in that London study, and I thought, “Wow, okay, well we should just all train with bands. Like, you don’t need the weight at all.” So I knew that, but within a week, so I was thinking, “I’ll do a workout, I’ll draw up a workout where you just need rubber bands.” And first of all, molded rubber bands are garbage. I didn’t realize that. There’s a big difference between some of the layered latex technologies and just molded rubber. Didn’t know that. But what I started doing was as soon as I got heavy, so start off with sort of physical therapy bands and then I go to do a curl with some of these lightweight things and I can do like 300 repetitions so that’s obviously not a workout. There’s a lot of $40 products at Walmart that use rubber bands and they’re not … They’re great if you’re sort of on the edge of hospice care. But they’re not very useful if you really want a fitness benefit, or like a physical therapy environment, there’s a reason therapists use those. But the idea that it’s going to get you some sort of exercise stimulus and a benefit, no. Very gimmicky. So I thought, okay, I’ll find heavier bands. And I started working out with just bands, like doing pushups with a band wrapped around my back. And my ankles and my wrists were just in severe pain within a number of days because the band wants to be a circle and it’s not giving you resistance from the directions that you want it. You go to step on a band and do a dead lift, your ankles have lateral force, which is extraordinarily uncomfortable, therefore are giving you injury or neural inhibition, which shuts the muscles off. So I realized like I couldn’t get a workout from this, this wasn’t right. So I thought, “Okay, what have I developed? An Olympic bar with special hooks, but a full 360 swivel rotation, just like in an Olympic bar?” And then a plate to mount these things to the ground so I wasn’t getting lateral force through my ankle, then I could do anything I could with a barbell with this. And the limitations on that would be very high and I could put tremendous forces through the musculoskeletal system. In fact, I have videos where I’m using this technology, using the product X3 Bar variable resistance system, I’m delivering more than 500 pounds of force in a dead lift at the peak. So I’m getting the benefit of a 500-pound dead lift at peak but then as I diminish the range, the weight drops down. So when I get to the riskier range of motion in the dead lift, the weight drops off to maybe 100 pounds, which is light for me. And of course, you can swap out the bands that are hooked to the bar and the ground plate so that it’s the appropriate weight for the individual, I’m very strong so I choose the very high resistance band, but you could put something or one of the other bands in there, it shifts with three bands. And so you can slot the other bands in there and do whatever’s appropriate, but you’re getting the benefit of lifting much heavier. In fact, when I was … I recently did my first, because the product just launched a couple months ago, did my first conference where people were coming up to my booth and asking questions. And you really want to get your talking points down as easy as possible. And I said, “It’s like tricking the body in the lifting heavier than you would ever lift.”

Jerred: Nice.

Dr. John Jaquish: And people get it, it’s just instantly, “Okay, I see.” Because as soon as the band stretches and they see that the thickness of the band, just the depth is like the thickness of my pinky finger, they’re going, “Whoa, like that looks like a band that would pull a car. Awesome.” Just …

Jerred: So I have a question, now does the … Or have you found, I guess in your experience, does it translate to obviously muscle growth, but does it translate to an increase in raw strength? I’m thinking if someone who maybe had to use a barbell maybe they’re competitive in nature and they wanted to add this to their routine, can it help someone with their raw strength?

Dr. John Jaquish: Absolutely. So great question. Now I do caution people, if you want to be good at your lift, you need to do that lift because there’s a firing pattern, right?

Jerred: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: So like the X3 Bar resistance band bar system is not a replacement for everything. It is for me, the way I choose to use it, because I just want to be as strong as possible, I don’t care what I lift. However, if you want to translate that, you can definitely translate that but you got to do both. So what I would have somebody do is do their lift first and then do the finishing set with the X3 Bar fitness band bar system. So they … Maximum stimulus, but they’re still firing in the proper pattern. So they might do one or however many sets they do with the regular bench press or regular squat rack and then they go and say, “Okay, I’m absolutely going to finish this muscle off. Get the maximum amount of stimulus.” Now somebody who’s doing that probably won’t grow as fast as say I did because they’re getting kind of a not optimal stimulus with a regular lift, but then they are … So they’re pre-exhausting the weaker range of motion, so that can limit what they’re able to do with the X3 workout bar system. But ultimately, yes, they are going to get stronger faster.

Jerred: All right, that makes sense. And now I think this is super cool, super fascinating too. So just give me a quick breakdown in your workout routine. I mean, is it … Because it sounds like you said one set for … So like how much time are you putting into training each day or week?

Dr. John Jaquish: Like 60 minutes a week.

Jerred: Just like total?

Dr. John Jaquish: 10 minutes a day, yeah. When I do a set, I hesitate to say this for the more timid people who may be listening, but I’m like gasping for air at the end of a set. Like it is … Like you take that kinetic chain to the absolute exhaustion point. So you’re first exhausting in the strong range, then in the mid range and then in the weak range. So you’re at the point, like when I do the chest press, I’m holding 400 pounds at the top and 80 pounds at the bottom. So I’m at the point where I can’t even push 80 pounds just like one millimeter at the bottom where it’s laying right on my chest. So you can imagine how exhausted that. And so I got to like sit down in between a set and catch my breath. So the whole thing takes, it takes under 10 minutes, but let’s just say 10. And so at the end … And I do it six days a week, so Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I do workout A, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, I do work at B. And there’s a 12-week program, like a P90X kind of thing, which takes somebody through and that’s on the site for the people who bought the product. So like it imagines you know nothing about fitness. And a lot of people who follow you, they’re the garage fitness kind of guys and they want to work out at home because they’ve got other priorities. They got a lot of work to do, they’ve got family, they’ve got whatever, and some of them haven’t lifted in years. Some of them had maybe like a perfect pushup or some kind of gimmicky product that they tried once or twice inaudible. Like you said, a shake weight. And they go, “Okay, this is not going to get me a champion physique here.” So it takes somebody through imagining that they don’t have any experience with weightlifting and then takes them through the 12-week program, and at the end of the 12 weeks they’re training like an athlete would.

Jerred: That’s incredible. Now I want to talk to you about some other important points that I know that are part of your work, and specifically when it relates to athletes is the importance of … I mean, this is probably way overlooked, the importance of bone density in athletic training and how an athlete could develop that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. So the challenge with bone density, if there was a good way to build bone with just like some kind of training protocol, I wouldn’t have bothered to create these machines for OsteoStrong, because they’re around $100,000 going in these clinics to treat bone loss or to be proactive and actually get people to have greater bone density than normal. Which is where I am, I’m two standard deviations above normal. So I have like superhuman bones.

Jerred: Is that because you use your own device frequently or is it you just natural?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, no. It’s because I use my own device.

Jerred: Yeah, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I definitely had normal bone before I started.

Jerred: Got you.

Dr. John Jaquish: So the compressive forces through bone, ultimately think about it this way, bone is the chassis that muscle sits on and muscle is the engine. So if you put a Formula 1 engine in an economy car, in a Prius, you’ll pop the clutch and probably blow the wheels right off the car, right?

Jerred: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: So ultimately, our central nervous system isn’t … It’s intelligent, it protects us from ourselves. So one of the limitations on muscular growth is bone density via neural inhibition. So if you go to load the body and bone or tendons or ligaments can’t handle that and you’re loading in a controlled manner, discomfort will actually shut you down, neural inhibition. So like I can’t squeeze my own fist hard enough to break my own finger, right? And somebody with deconditioned bones can’t squeeze a fist hard enough to break their finger. But I can squeeze harder than they can because my neural inhibition limit is set differently because I have higher bone mass. So ultimately building bone and you see sometimes people who are deconditioned, who are older, they just can’t seem to progress with some of their lifting and it’s because they’re trying to build a strong engine on a weak chassis and that doesn’t work. So ultimately it’s high impact or impact emulation like I designed, which is available through these OsteoStrong clinics that will deliver the proper forces to trigger the growth. And this is very interesting. Probably one of the most interesting medical facts that I think has ever been published. So previously you would hear resistance, just resistance exercise is good for bone. That’s a really in every international body of academic information delivering to patients or to physicians has said resistance exercise. That is such an irresponsible recommendation because it’s a recommendation without a dosage. That’s like saying aspirin is good for headaches. Well, five milligrams or 5,000? If you take five milligrams, it’s probably not going to do anything. If you take 5,000, you’ll probably die. If you take 500 though, you may be good. So ultimately, it’s the dosage that’s required. So some researchers in Bristol United Kingdom did some work with some accelerometers and blood tests looking for bone turnover markers. And this was just a few years ago, it was after my first study. And they wanted to determine what the minimum dose response for growing bone in the hip. So the hip is the most important place because those are the fractures that end up either limiting someone’s quality of life, broken hip, it doesn’t heal right or actually contributes to their mortality, it kills them, complications as a result of these hip fractures. So what they determined was the minimum dose response for growing bone density in the hip joint is 4.2 multiples of body weight.

Jerred: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So you say this to professional weightlifters and they say, “I don’t think I even do that. I don’t think I get 4.2 multiples of body weight through my hip.” And there’s other research that shows a single instance of high forces over 4.2 multiples of body weight is what triggers growth. Multiple instances of lower impact or loading don’t do anything. So it’s the single instance of over 4.2 multiples body weight. So the special design of these bone density devices was really important to isolate, use the robotics to isolate the impact range of motion. And someone only needs to do this like one time per week at one of these OsteoStrong locations.

Jerred: And is this something that you think only people who have been through a DEXA scan and are seeing that they need it, or do you think that this has beneficial for anyone and everyone?

Dr. John Jaquish: Everybody with bones.

Jerred: Yeah, the human race. That’s awesome.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I mean, ultimately it’s a system you can optimize that will take a limitation off of what your capability is.

Jerred: Yeah, and most people.

Dr. John Jaquish: Like I love talking to guys like you because I can actually get excited about some of this stuff and share my excitement, because when I present at like a medical conference, being excited is not something you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to just present the data, right? And so I love having these conversations where I can talk about some of these things that we can do, where individuals can actually, and with both X3 Bar resistance band bar system and with OsteoStrong, you can see your body changing. OsteoStrong provides a data output on a week by week basis where you can see your functional bone performance changing. And what’s so amazing is watching deconditioned people, now athletic people, they’ve seen metrics of their health change so it’s not as dramatic for them, but they’re very excited to see these metrics. But when a deconditioned person who’s generally frustrated by the subject of their health and their fitness because they feel like it’s out of control, right? It’s like you ask somebody a political question and they’re just like frustrated, like, “Oh God, I don’t like what’s going on, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Jerred: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right? It’s very frustrating. So all of a sudden, they look at their functional bone performance and they think, “Wow, I’m actually controlling something that’s going on in my body. It’s not a downward spiral. This is going up. I wonder what else I could do.” And that tiny two millimeter shift in their thinking changes so much because it’s a catalyst. You actually get to see them saying, “I’m going to take my nutrition seriously,” or, “What was that Bulletproof book you said I should read? Because I’m going to go read it now.” So it gets people in this cycle. And in fact, the principal investigator at the London study that I did at Stratford Village Surgery, brilliant guy, his name is Basil Hunt, he’s a clinical psychologist. And so what he was looking at and looked at, what was the mental process of these subjects who were going through this? And so he had them do sort of a standard psychological survey, what their outlook was with their health. And the answers were all very frustrated with our health. And whereas at the end of the six months of the study, they were very optimistic when it came to the subject of their health in its entirety, which is tremendous.

Jerred: Yeah. Changing a person’s mindset, whether it was marginal, the improvements from a physiological standpoint, if you’re changing them in a psychological standpoint, then they’re going to see phenomenal results if they keep the momentum going forward.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So I didn’t meet any of these people until after the study was over because obviously I have a bias and I just wrote the protocol. And then after the study was over, I went to the Stratford Village Surgery and introduced myself to some of these people and some of the discoveries that we had made. And like these people, this is average population people. These are deconditioned, post-menopausal females, just like a lot of moms out there. And they’re just regular people who are generally frustrated with their health. And then there were some males in the diabetes side of this, or the same study which showed incredible results as well. But the outlook of these people, they had the excitement that I have when I talk about these things, which when you see somebody who’s deconditioned and they’re well on their way to becoming conditioned, that’s going to change the world.

Jerred: Yeah. And this is another reason I wanted to have you on, was this specific … I mean, you have two amazing devices, because the only way … So going back to the people who were in the study, the only real way that you could have … You kind of already in this show kind of busted the resistance training myth for building bone density. And so the only real way beyond that to have this individual do something is either going to be medication or you’re going to have to recommend like high impact exercise for a deconditioned elderly or older female, which is not the best … Not a protocol I would put someone on even if I knew it was going to improve their bone health just because I don’t think that high-impact exercise is good for most people. I guess my question would be how did you get to this point? Like how did you find out that you solved the problem? How did you do that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, the motivation of one’s mother’s health is, that’s a pretty big one. Yeah, I saw my mom just heartbroken about her diagnosis with osteoporosis. And my mother’s sweetest person and really just kind of pissed me off. Like just thought, “Wow, like I’ve got to fix this, this sucks. I want my mom to be able to do stuff with me.” I was a very active guy. And so you find drive and motivation in some strange places sometimes. And it was just, I just wanted to help my mother. And then after that, especially when coming up with X3, remember my second recommendation when you talk about mental toughness, forget what you think you know, because a lot of things we’re taught really are just things that have been done, not necessarily the right thing to do. So and a lot of formal education is here’s what’s been done and you should remember this. And so we’ve been taught weights make you stronger and therefore the answer to all questions are weights. And there’s a lot of other close minded thinking patterns that we see. I meet yoga people who think yoga is the answer to everything. You have cancer, you need to do yoga. You died of cancer? You didn’t do enough yoga. And while I think yoga is fantastic and weights do have a place ultimately when we look physiologically at what our capabilities are, it doesn’t make sense. Like we should not be … The majority of what we’re doing to our bodies should not be static weight based, that just doesn’t make sense. In fact, when you look at like picking up a heavy object, you look at people who do this for a living, let’s say movers, they try and pick things up in their stronger range of motion because they want to be efficient. Well that’s not an accident. Like they’re doing it because they want to avoid injury. And when somebody runs, like a sprinter, a sprinter uses seven degrees of action in the knee joint where 180 degrees are available. Yeah, and why is that? Well, because the individual is making it efficient. Now what weight lifting has done is isolating, or not isolating, I should say, maximizing the range of motion and really focusing on one muscle or one kinetic chain at a time. So when you maximize this stimulus, when you actually fatigue the strong range, the mid range and the weak range, you can get the benefits of both. You can have that full range of motion, you can fatigue in separated ranges of motion simultaneously in one set. And that’s just something that hasn’t been out there thus far but is unbelievably powerful and simple. And like I didn’t know whether we were going to do this show like via video, but I keep my X3 Bar variable resistance system in a drawer, like my entire gym fits in a 21-inch long, 12-inch wide and eight-inch deep drawer.

Jerred: That’s awesome.

Dr. John Jaquish: Dude, it is. It like-

Jerred: Travels with you

Dr. John Jaquish: … When you talk about like garage gyms, well, I live in an apartment in San Francisco, I don’t have a garage, but my entire gym, which has put more than 30 pounds of muscle on me and probably hovering right around 8% body fat, maybe 7% body fat, I have veins showing in my abs, all I do fits in a regular drawer.

Jerred: And I think this is so incredible for a lot of reasons because it’s going to take a long time for the old way of doing things and just the dogma of weight training, and to be honest, I 100%-

Dr. John Jaquish: Great word, that’s exactly what it is.

Jerred: … Like I love training with a barbell, it’s a hobby of mine, but when it comes to like, I’m aware of blood flow restriction training and the studies behind that and how that works. I’m also aware of Louie Simmons and accommodating resistance and kind of what you’ve done with the bands. And so I still just like barbell training, it’s kind of a hobby. But if you look at other sports like I pick on power lifters all the time just because I don’t think, I just don’t see the point in power lifting. Just I understand people they want to lift heavy stuff and be cool and I get it, but you’re training for these three lifts and at the end of your career you are just a broken human being. It doesn’t make any sense. And then bodybuilding, which I think your device has amazing uses for, like how long is it going to take until Mr. Universe or whatever didn’t touch a barbell, you know what I mean? Like I think-

Dr. John Jaquish: I think I have close to an answer to that question because I have been talking to a lot of professional bodybuilders. I did Ben Pakulski’s podcast and Ben and I got together at a Tony Robbin’s conference. Tony’s a partner in OsteoStrong. And we sat down and I showed it to him, took him through the whole protocol and he definitely said, “Yeah, like a lot of bodybuilders think weights are the answer to everything and it’s against their religion to say like, I’m not going to do this,” but that’s okay because as I’ve discovered the first couple 100 people who bought X3 Bar fitness band bar system, I called them and I asked them like what was it about X3 Bar variable resistance system that attracted you? And they just said, “I can do in 10 minutes. It’s easy. Like I can fit it in a drawer,” like the kind of things we’ve been talking about ultimately. So me being a scientist, I always want to talk about the fact that you can grow muscles three times faster and there’s very little chance of injury, which scientifically is awesome. But as Ben Pakulski pointed out, and Phil Hernon is another amazing bodybuilder and an amazing human being who has … He and I have been working together on some of these protocols and he’s really trying to get bodybuilders to forget about weights, look at stability and increase growth hormone was stability firing. And ultimately like not how are you going to win the next contest, but how are you going to be fit until the day you die as an old man? Like that’s the kind of thing. And so there does seem to be almost religious devotion to lifting weights. And I think part of it is it’s a lifestyle. It’s kind of dangerous, which makes them feel really cool. But for the guys who are like 35 or 40 or 45 years old, there’s no more ego lifting. It’s I just want to be strong, I want to be as strong as possible. And for those guys who value their time, don’t want to live at the gym and also want to be as strong as possible, but are mentally past the ego lifting, they are highly attracted to the product and what it can do for them.

Jerred: Yeah. I think if I wanted to … Everyone needs to look at what their goals are and what they’re trying to achieve. And if you want to … I think if you want to put on some muscle and get … Well actually one question I have for you is, because I don’t know, you said like you’re gasping for breath so I’m guessing it’s pretty extreme, but central nervous system activation through the use of the X3 Bar resistance band bar system, I mean, is it … Because you know lighter band work doesn’t really do anything to stimulate any hormonal production. What about with working with your product?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s tremendous. Part of the reason when you look at my before and afters, like I put on 30 pounds of scale weight, didn’t measure my body fat. Honestly, like when I started, I didn’t even know I’d launched a product. It was just something I built and was going to use myself. And then as soon as I started seeing … I saw differences in the mirror week by week. And in fact, as I was filming the 12-week program, if you look at the 12-week program, I got comments on Facebook as I post each week, people were like, “You’re actually getting in better shape by the week.”

Jerred: That’s awesome.

Dr. John Jaquish: Like somebody’s just like, “You’re like bigger and leaner than you were last week.”

Jerred: Putting your money where your mouth is, I like that about anything.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, absolutely. So the hormonal benefits, so Henry inaudible and myself, he’s a really smart young researcher, we work together. And so last summer we published a meta analysis. So for the listeners who don’t know what a meta analysis is, you take all the studies in one area of medicine and you use statistics to average them out to come up with like a more ultimate answer. So we found 23 different datasets that had to do with stabilizing activity and like standing on a BOSU ball for example, and or vibration technology, whatever. Looking at challenging one’s stability and taking pre to post growth hormone tests, blood tests for growth hormone. And so individuals who did very slight knee bends while doing stabilization type exercise, remember what I said about one-legged squats?

Jerred: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: They saw an over 200% increase in growth hormone acutely after they did this. People who had very high resistances interspersed with their stabilization firing had over 2600% inaudible in growth hormone. So-

Jerred: So basically stabilization exercises coupled with some resistance training?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Jerred: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Or X3 Bar resistance band training system.

Jerred: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s what that is. So like when I’m stabilizing my chest press bar and I’m at 400 pounds at peak and I’m hitting it for repetitions, I might do 15 repetitions. So there’s all kinds of stabilization that’s going on in my core, in my neck, in my shoulders, my back, my spinal rectors to keep me stable as I’m putting these very high load. So the stabilization firing is one thing, stabilization plus load just amplifies the stabilization firing. Therefore, growth hormone skyrockets. You get very lean very quickly.

Jerred: That’s incredible, man. And that’s, but back to my point is like the power lifter doesn’t really make sense to me because at the end of your career, you’re just broken. And now bodybuilding, I understand wanting to grow muscle and it’s a very, typically a pretty safe other than the banned substances and whatnot that a lot of them use, but like bodybuilding’s starting not make sense to me with like stuff like this. Like if I wanted to go gain 20 pounds of muscle right now, that was my main goal, I wouldn’t do … Because I used to do bodybuilding back in the day, like that was my main thing. I wouldn’t go back to those 90-minute to two-hour routines fully exhausting the muscle, because that doesn’t even make sense to me anymore. It’s knowing what new stuff is out there and new research and everything else, it’s like if this is your goal right now, then there’s a lot better ways to go about it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yup.

Jerred: Awesome. All right, so we’re going to hop into the quick fire questions of the show. You’re ready for that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Absolutely.

Jerred: All right. What’s the hardest workout you’ve ever done?

Dr. John Jaquish: Probably the last … I’ll tell you the hardest workout. I worked out, I did an X3 Bar portable home gym workout with Cedric McMillan. And probably one of the strongest guys in the world. He won the Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic, he’s a bodybuilder and he’s probably going to win the next Mr. Olympia. He did the last Olympia but I think he was on the tail end of another show and he didn’t quite have his preparation right. But he is absolutely incredible and so I wanted him to see what I was doing with the product and what it could do for him. And this guy, he’s like a 300-pound lean guy. So like I wanted him to be impressed, but I’m like a 230 pound lean guy. So I wanted him … He knows I’m not a bodybuilder and I’m not quite doing what bodybuilders are doing, I’m also a lot older and I’m 41 years old. So I worked out with him, and he made a couple of tweaks to the protocol I had been recommending pointing out that people, you got to make sure that you have a protocol that doesn’t allow people to be lazy and imagine they went to fatigue when they didn’t. So we did some experimentation with some of the protocol, and it was the kind of thing where I … It just took me beyond where I would have ever thought I would be exhausted.

Jerred: Normally when you’re teaming up with anyone at that extreme level, it’s they’re going to take you to a whole different ball ballgame. That’s awesome. All right, in your opinion, what’s the best activity for building mental toughness?

Dr. John Jaquish: Going outside of one’s comfort zone and reading sort of the conflicting information. I think whether it be fitness information or health information, I think … Or how about even politics? Let’s make this like crystal clear obvious, people like reading the things that reinforce their existing opinions.

Jerred: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: And boy is that true in politics, right? And we do that, people do that in all areas. So like for example, there are people who, bodybuilders who believe eating every two hours is like the right thing to do and the only way to gain muscle. And then there’s other information that shows growth hormone levels going up, muscle being built in individuals that are doing intermittent fasting and eating one meal a day. And that’s like they only want to read that information. So ultimately, it’s challenging the convention and trying to gather information that may lead you to a different conclusion or may prove to you that what you’re doing currently is the right thing to do. But ultimately, if you just keep looking to validate your existing opinion, you will learn nothing.

Jerred: I really love that answer. All right, I think I already know the answer to this one, but if you could only have one piece of equipment to train with for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, the X3 resistance bands system. Yes, you did know the answer.

Jerred: Awesome. All right, man, last question of the show, what is your best advice, the best advice you have for becoming a better human? And this is 100% open-ended.

Dr. John Jaquish: For becoming a better human. I suppose that optimizing nutrition and exercise. We talked a little bit about learning, but that’s kind of on the mental toughness side. But when I talk to people about fitness and they’re very frustrated by the subject or their nutrition, they’re very frustrated by the subject, and I tell them what I do, my nutrition is fish or chicken or fatty meats and green vegetables. That’s all I eat. And when I want to really get lean, I just cut back on the amount of meals I have a day and put them all into a small window. So like inaudible diet but I was doing that before anybody was talking about it or thinking it was cool because I think right now people are thinking that’s some sort of fad and it’s just backed up by like years and years of science. And so, and I tell them, I tell people what I do and then I got a 10-minute workout and then they kind of shrug the shoulders and say, “Yeah, well I’m going to keep going to CrossFit.” And I said, “Did you hear me? Did you not understand what I said? Because unless you want to be a CrossFit competitor, you want to be as strong as possible and as lean as possible, then you’re not, you’re probably not doing the right thing. You’re probably just begging for an injury and over cooking your meat or whatever,” like a lot of these sort of paleo diet followers just burn the hell out of everything, shouldn’t be doing that. But you see what I’m saying?

Jerred: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Like that … Yeah. It’s just really find out how to optimize and I’ve dedicated my life to looking at physical medicine, what we can do with our physiology without any chemicals, without any supplements, what triggers in the body are we not pulling and how can we pull them to maximize our lives?

Jerred: And I think that’s great advice because people often don’t realize how infantile just the field of fitness and nutrition really are. I mean you, you don’t have to go back that far. I mean people you know who probably still are alive who just never heard anything about fitness or nutrition when they were a kid growing up. Because it just wasn’t something that was discussed, it wasn’t really something that was necessary. Now I’m not saying that stuff hasn’t been around, people who’ve already have known about it for a long time, it’s just, it wasn’t a necessity. Now today with all we have going on, if you don’t get in the game and start trying to optimize and pulling some of those levers that you’re talking about, you’re going to be in a world of hurt. So I think that’s really, really awesome advice.

Dr. John Jaquish: Just a couple years ago, I worked with a guy, not a very intelligent person as you will put together from hearing the story. But this guy, his lunch almost every day was Twizzlers. And I just watch him scarf these Twizzlers down and he’d kind of like explain to me that I was wasting my time like going out and like getting something, which is in accordance with my nutrition. He goes, “There’s no fat in these. There’s zero fat.”

Jerred: Yeah, they put that on the label, real big.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And then I’m just looking at him like, “Are you …” He’s a grown man. This guy was like 55 years old. And I’m just looking at him thinking like, “Wow, like critical thinking, not something you do. Unbelievable.”

Jerred: That’s awesome.

Dr. John Jaquish: But people are, a lot of them are lemmings, they just do what they’re told. It says zero fat on the box. So I guess I’m crosstalk.

Jerred: And I heard that was bad and so no, this is the perfect meal.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Jerred: All right man. Well it’s been a blast talking to you and I’ve loved learning more about all you have going on, but I’m sure a lot of people are going to want to check some of your stuff out. So where can they … What’s the best place for them to learn more about what you’re doing?

Dr. John Jaquish: x3bar.com

Jerred: And I’ll link to that in the show notes if anyone’s driving and wants to check this out later, then you can check out the show notes. I’ll have the code in there with a link to the product. But Dr Jaquish, it’s been a pleasure having you on, man. Thank you so much.

Dr. John Jaquish: Jerred, absolutely. If there’s some discoveries in the future and some other things, I’m able to do this again.

Jerred: Yeah, I’ll have you back on, man. It’d be a blast.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome. Yep.