Hacking Growth Hormone in 10 Min A Day with Dr. John Jaquish

10 Minutes a day, no weights, no cardio with ridiculous results. Research scientist and inventor Dr. John Jaquish joins us to explain the astonishing results I’ve been getting with X3 Bar variable resistance system band workouts. Bigger muscles, increased GH and simply the most effective workout system I’ve ever experienced.

Full Transcript

Sean McCormick: You’re listening to the Optimal Performance podcast. The OPP is brought to you by Natural Stacks. Makers of 100% natural and open-source supplements designed to help you live optimal. For more information on how to build optimal mental and physical performance into your life, go to NaturalStacks.com. Oh, what’s up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Optimal Performance podcast. On today’s episode we have Dr. John Jaquish, the inventor of the X3 Bar fitness band bar system. This is going to blow your mind. I’m not exaggerating. Dr. Jaquish is an inventor, a doctor and a researcher who also has worked with Anthony Robbins on a technology called OsteoStrong. And we talk about human growth hormone, the carnivore diet, but specifically, we talk about the X3 Bar portable home gym.

And the X3 Bar variable resistance system is a piece of exercise equipment that’s really simple, that I’ve been using for the past month or so. And I’m going to show you guys some of my results on my Instagram page; that’s Coach Sean McCormick. And there’s also a special offer for this really amazing piece of exercise equipment. 10 minutes a day and you’ll see results. It sounds like an infomercial; it is not. It is the real deal. And he and I talk about why this band-based work exercise approach is so effective. And there is science to back it up. And I think you’ll be fascinated because the old wisdom about Olympic-style lifting and the things that we think we know about how to gain muscle and stimulate human growth hormone just go out the window for this thing. So excited to bring this episode to you guys today, and like I said, this really amazing piece of exercise equipment that I’m just absolutely addicted to. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. John Jaquish. You’re listening to the Optimal Performance podcast, and I’m your host, Shawn McCormick. It’s the OPP. I’m a performance coach, a wellness entrepreneur, a blogger, a speaker, biohacker and it’s my privilege to bring to you the leading experts in the field of performance. So let’s dig right in. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Optimal Performance podcast. Today’s guest is Dr. John Jaquish, who is a researcher, scientist. He’s worked closely with names that you know like Dave Asprey, to help launch X3 Bar exercise band bar system, and also is business partners with Tony Robbins in his medical device company. Dr. John Jaquish, welcome to the Optimal Performance podcast.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks for having me.

Sean McCormick: Yeah. So I like to give everybody an opportunity to kind of introduce themselves because you know you better than anybody else. So give our listeners a little bit of idea of your story, who you are, and we’ll go from there.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. Well, like you said, my name is John Jaquish. I’m a doctor of biomedical engineering. I started this adventure into physical medicine… I’m going to help people understand what physical medicine is based on my mother’s osteoporosis. So she was diagnosed with osteoporosis, I thought too young, and I just took a different approach to help her address it. I emulated high-impact force with the medical device I developed. And that impact-level force absorbed into the body, very slowly managed by robotics and computerized biofeedback, and within 18 months she went from having a full-blown osteoporosis to having the bones of a 30 year old; and she had me later in life. So she was in her 70s at the time. So that was, it was phenomenal. And I wanted to give her results to a lot of other people. So ended up building a prototype, testing it in a couple of different places, and now it is everywhere. It’s called OsteoStrong. You can go to osteostrong.me to check that out. And that’s the business that Tony Robbins is part of. And also, for that particular product, most people use it as a service. The machines are over $100,000 just because the robotics and the computerization, but they place tremendous forces on the body. And from an athletic perspective, it makes an individual more able to tolerate high-impact force, gives you a stronger chassis, which enables you to basically, hold more muscle. One of the limitations of musculature with especially older people, they don’t have the frame to hold it because the body won’t destroy itself. You have a lot of mechanism to keep that from happening. So that’s how I got started down this physical medicine path. And physical Medicine, as opposed to pharmaceutical medicine, is really a way to look at the human body so that the primary objectives, or the first thing that an individual does for their health, is looking at the triggers within the human body that can be enacted to either preemptively address, or address different disease states, which means avoidance also. And so then I began to look at what other things may be, as society, may be missing in what we can trigger in the human body. And one of the most interesting things with the bone density research is we use the most powerful ranges of motion; impact-ready ranges of motion, to… we isolate those and then we allow people to self-impose for us. And so what I saw when we did… especially when we did a study in a hospital in London, we were looking at individuals who were able to put six, seven, eight times their own body weight through their hip joints. And when I said six, seven, eight times their body weight, that’s crazy.

Sean McCormick: Yeah, that’s crazy.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Gymnasts who are already highly trained, go to 10 multiples of body weight; sometimes even more than that, but average 10. So I thought, “Okay, and we’ve got kind of regular people doing this right out of the gate,” like within one or two sessions, they’re getting these really high levels, “So what does that really say about human capability?” And I’m going to say something really controversial here because once I looked at the American College of Sports Medicine’s database on what kind of forces people use in the gym… Now I’m sure there’s somebody out there who’s an advanced weightlifter and they’re going to want to argue this point, but we’re not talking about them. We’re talking about the average population. The average population puts 1.3 to 1.53 times their body weight through their hip joints when they exercise. Now that is nowhere near what we saw by isolating these impact ranges of motion. So that told me something so profound; that humans are seven times more powerful in the stronger range of motion than they are in the weaker range of motion. Now that’s a massive takeaway. Nobody had really determined that before. So what I thought then was, “Wow! That means when we’re exercising, we’re doing resistance training,” this is kind of a generalization, but I thought, “No wonder most people don’t make a whole lot of progress when they lift.” Or said a different way, when you’re 16 years old and you pick up weights, you get results really quickly, but as soon as you start using weights that are heavy enough, because you’re basically a weak kid, once you become stronger and the joints start feeling the tension, a process called neural inhibition happens, which is really muscles shutting down because of pain in the joints. And so you’re always limited by your weaker range of motion. It’s because it’s the greatest exposure to injury in the weaker range and you’re firing the least amount of muscle. So the stimulus with weight lifting, with picking up a standard weight, really just sucks. And I’m I’m pretty sure I’m the most hated guy in fitness right now because there’s a lot of people with emotional ties to lifting weights. But hey, I go, “Hey guys, look around. There is one tenth of 1% of the people who even look like they work out.” There are some people who manage to get through the weaker ranges of motion, maybe have an optimized tendon layout, sort of like a genetic mutant where they just don’t have as much pain in weaker ranges than others. I know Mike Tyson’s one of those guys. There’s some commentary that was made about how he has more access to his pectorals and weaker ranges of motion than stronger ranges of motion. He had some physiologist just examine him. He’s just kind of an anomaly, which is why it explain how he could get inside of the range of motion, or the punching range of the opponent, and basically give a short jab and deliver almost a full amount of power. So what ended up happening is I made these observations and I think, “No wonder people do more than one set.” You wouldn’t do more than one set of exposure to the sun to get a suntan. You can go outside and then come inside and rest and then go outside again in the hot sun and then come in. You’d give yourself sunburn. You’d overstimulate, right?

Sean McCormick: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So the idea is we wanted to… we’re having to do multiple sets. People are having to do multiple sets because the stimulus is just laying. And what if… This is what I sat there and… First, I said, “What if we could change the weight and make it extremely heavier in the stronger range versus the weaker range?” Now, Westside Barbell had been doing that in Ohio, but they put smaller bands and then they put weight on the bar too. And so let’s say when they’re doing a bench press, they got X weight sitting on their chest and 1.2 X at full extension. Well, my thesis from my bone density research, and you can’t look at these studies alone. There’s a lot of people trying to review the research page. They grab one sentence out of one study and they say, “Well, this isn’t what you’re doing.” And of course, they don’t know how to read research because there’s a reason I have more than one reference. You look at these things together, you say, “No, it’s not one versus 1.2, it’s one versus seven. So why don’t we forget about the weight and dramatically increase the variance?” And when we do that, we can go to a much deeper level of fatigue in different ranges of motion, simultaneously in one set, and trigger a massive amount of growth. And then my second thought was, “A lot of people are going to be mad at me for saying this.”

Sean McCormick: But you’re used to that by now.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah-

Sean McCormick: Probably.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s not smart people, so it’s okay. Well hey, it’s a combination between people… There’s a lot of crummy fitness products, especially home fitness products, out there, so it’s easy to just be dismissive and say, “This is just like something I’ve already seen.” It’s not. Somebody goes, “Oh, it uses a rubber band. I can buy a rubber band at Walmart for $5. Why is this $550?” Well, because it’s literally 50 to 100 times more powerful. So do you want relevant weight or irrelevant weight?

Sean McCormick: Right. And for those who are hearing this for the first time, that’ve never experienced the X3 Bar variable resistance system, it is unlike any piece of exercise equipment I’ve ever experienced. And I am a life-long athlete, collegiate scholarship athlete, and it delivers results. Here’s my problem John. As I was preparing, as I’m lifting… I’m on week 2 1/2 of using the X3 Bar variable resistance system. And I’ve had a couple of days off. I’ve been following the correct protocol. And I’m watching my body change its shape.

Dr. John Jaquish: Daily.

Sean McCormick: Daily. One day to the next, and I’m taking pictures of this, so you guys can follow me on Instagram to sort of watch my progression. But the results that you get from this very simple and very elegant exercise system is astounding. And it’s going to be really hard for this not to sound like an infomercial because I love it so much, honestly.

Dr. John Jaquish: I get it all the time.

Sean McCormick: I’m sure you do. And I know that just from the research, is that the people that are submitting reviews, they get flagged on Amazon because they sound like your cousin is doing it for you. So let me just tell a little bit about my experience with this. And I reached out because I kept seeing it on the internet and I kept seeing it on Instagram and Facebook, and I was like, “There must be something to this.” And you, as a physical specimen, you’re just jacked.

Dr. John Jaquish: This is new to me.

Sean McCormick: Really? Your physique?

Dr. John Jaquish: crosstalk look like regular guy. I probably looked a little muscular if I took my shirt off but if I was wearing shirt, nobody would know I worked out two years ago. Now I’m a lean 220 pounds and it’s the subject that were talking about. Whenever I walk into a place or meet somebody new, it’s like, “Jesus. Do you play in the NFL?” crosstalk-

Sean McCormick: What have you been doing?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Like, “Well, are you a UFC fighter? Who are you?”

Sean McCormick: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. They expect they should know me because looking like I look right now is so abnormal. Which I would argue it’s not. I’m low body fat, 220 pounds. Then I get the steroid comment, which is like, okay. A lean 220 pounds is not a steroid statistic, just so you know. When somebody’s 350 pounds and lean, yeah. Ask that question of that guy.

Sean McCormick: Right. So the key to this, and I want to dumb it down for people, it’s literally a 10-minute workout. You do a series, you do four… maybe there’s more, but I’m doing four different lifts to absolute exhaustion, slowly, carefully focusing exclusively on just absolutely destroying the muscle; going to total failure. And as you-

Dr. John Jaquish: In all ranges of motion. First you fatigue the strong range and then you diminish the range.

Sean McCormick: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: So you fatigue the mid-range. So when you’re firing all muscle in the stronger range, you fatigue that range, which is something you cannot do with a weight. Then in the same experience, without letting blood in the muscle, which begins the recovery process… So when you do multiple sets you put the weight down, or you do different ranges and break it up, you’re letting blood in. You’re giving the central nervous system an inconsistent signal.

Sean McCormick: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: But here, by not stopping the experience, you’re taking the muscle to a far deeper level of fatigue, and thereby, getting more growth.

Sean McCormick: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Sean McCormick: Yeah, doing 25 reps of a bicep curl, and at rep eight, I’m like, “Okay. I can’t quite go to that top range.” It’s tense at the very top and like you mentioned, that’s when you’re carrying the most load. Then I can go to half way, reps eight through 16, 17, and then reps 17 through 25, I’m barely moving. And by the time I set the bar down, my biceps are on fire. I can feel it behind my shoulders.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. Your core’s on fire too.

Sean McCormick: And my core’s on fire because I’m using all the stabilizer muscles. I think that is what’s so impressive about this, is for our listeners who want the most from the least; this minimum effective dose, how can I get the most gains? How can I get stronger? How can I build muscle in the shortest period Of time? This is it. And it delivers every time that I do it.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Sean McCormick: That’s the point.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Sean McCormick: Right. It’s-

Dr. John Jaquish: And do you ever feel like you’re at risk of injury?

Sean McCormick: I don’t. I don’t. I never do. And that’s a lot of the feedback that I see too is people who have said, “I’ve had joint injuries. I’ve had a rotator cuff surgeries and this is the only piece of equipment that I can use that doesn’t aggravate that injury, because it’s caters to that.” So walk me through a little bit of the process of… as you’re building this concept of maximum exertion for gains, for the highest level of results.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Sean McCormick: When did you first start to tinker around with the X3 portable gym?

Dr. John Jaquish: So it was about three years ago, I had the idea, after looking at those two datasets and realizing just how much more powerful the strong range is versus the weak range. And the conclusion I came to is we don’t need weight; we don’t even need bands with weights, we need just bands. Because in the weak range, you suck. You can’t handle very much. There’s a reason you don’t touch your knee to the ground with every step you take as you sprint, so you can get a full range of motion. Sprinters use seven degrees of action behind their knee where they have a 180 degrees available. Why? It’s because only seven degrees are efficient. In fact, probably the first two of those seven is just carrying you forward until you can fire again. And so maybe it’s really only five degrees, but seven degrees in use total. So we always choose our stronger range of motion. If you’re going to carry something heavy you don’t say, “Well, let me make sure I lift it from the ground so I get a full range.” You’re going to try and be as efficient as possible; try and isolate the stronger range of motion. So that’s just how we do it. And when you fatigue in the stronger range of motion, that translates throughout the muscle. And then when you can fatigue like what we’re doing, stronger, mid-range and then weak range, you’re really getting a deeper level of stimulus that you just can’t get anywhere else. So I had all this in my head and I thought, “Well, yeah. I don’t think training would be…” Because I thought about just writing a book about bands, right? How bands would be the best. So they made some pull-up assist bands that we’re kind of heavy, but latex is really the only way to go. The molded rubber bands, they kind of stretch out and they’re usually not that thick. And even when they look the same as latex… Man, that’s another thing. Bands all look the same on a small video on your phone but they are not the same. A molded rubber is barely worth touching. You really want to go with latex; even if you’re allergic to latex, which ironically, I actually am. So whenever I use it I just have to take a shower and wash all the latex off my skin.

Sean McCormick: Interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: I know. It’s terrible. I found that out the hard way, yeah.

Sean McCormick: Cruel irony.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s only 1% of the population who’s allergic to latex. I just happen to be part of that 1%. And funny thing was, the way I noticed it was I was getting these swollen eyelids from blocked tear ducts. And I got bit by a spider on the eyelid in Shanghai couple years ago when I was manufacturing first-round of prototype medical devices. By the way, I only make stuff in America now.

Sean McCormick: Oh, nice.

Dr. John Jaquish: No more China.

Sean McCormick: Oh, that’s good.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So just got to look out for the American worker. So what happened, I thought this was a byproduct of that spider bite. And so my eyelids would get swollen all the time, and then so finally, I looked at the bands and I thought, “I wonder if this could just be latex, just irritating my eyelids and shutting off the pores?” And sure enough, if I just started washing my hands… And then if I was doing a workout with my shirt off or something like that, just taking a shower afterward. Problem went away. Yeah. So back to the story. I got these heavy pull-up assist bands. It was the only way you could find a heavy band, was so people can… They offload part of their body weight at the bottom of the pull-up?

Sean McCormick: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so I saw some of these sitting around CrossFit Gyms, and I never did CrossFit, but I saw them around CrossFit Gyms. And just being in medical device industry, physical medicine, I look at everything exercise. So I seen these around. I tried doing a couple different exercises, just stepping on it doing a deadlift. Felt like my ankles were going to snap inward. And the problem is when you make a joint uncomfortable you have a process that starts called neural inhibition. And neural inhibition basically means when you’re uncomfortable your muscles start shutting off. Your body doesn’t like that. It does not want create an injury. So the idea that you can power through because you’re tough, which every Billy Badass and Tommy Tough-guy on the internet thinks that’s what they do, they don’t. They are just injuring themselves and they won’t be lifting in a couple years because they’re just making mistakes on a regular basis. So it was just clear. You couldn’t exercise with just bands. What we really needed was a super powerful full spec Olympic Bar that could handle between 500 and 1,000 pounds because like I said, people are seven times stronger. So the weight that you’re going to handle is far beyond what you think you’re going to handle with this Olympic Bar. And then I need a way to mount the banding, mount the latex to the ground. So I got a polyethylene plating, normally used for the decks of boats and ships, and custom ground some of that plating so that we could attach the bands to the ground. And between the two of those and a series of four bands, that was X3 Bar; X3 Bar resistance band training system was born. And so the first thing I did was Dave Asprey was already a buddy of mine, I jumped on an airplane and flew to his house. And I wanted to show him my new toy. And we screwed around with it a couple days and kicked some ideas around; how we would launch it and how he could help. Fun guy, by the way. Yeah. His mind is moving so quick. And a great marketing mind, a great science mind. I’m glad he’s doing what he’s doing because he’s a gift to the world. Then my next flight was to see Tony Robbins and show it to Tony Robbins. So I got some advice from some of these just Titans of, let’s call it biohacking or physical medicine, which is what I prefer to call it. Then, so I was off. So it took me a little while to get it together because I was kicking around some different designs and I needed to use a certain type of steel because I couldn’t make this thing out of plastic, it needed to be really powerful. And I think that’s also something that doesn’t come through in video. People see me doing a curl with latex banding and they’re like, “Well, anybody can do that. I see people do that at yoga class or whatever.” No, no you don’t. That top of that curl may be 150 pounds, bottom of the curl maybe 50, but all things considered, it’s an incredible amount of force that you need to really trigger growth and the latex needed to be able to deliver and the metal needed to be able to handle it. And that’s how we were going to trigger people to grow. And then ultimately, in the research, the reason I called it X3 Bar resistance band bar system was because it’s a great research study that took some of the things that were being done with adding bands to weights, and it showed that it made people stronger, three times stronger over the same given period of time, to the control group. And they used Cornell athletes for the study. Now of course that was only using banding and weights, and we’re going way higher in weight with more repetitions than that, so whatever results with that, if the variable that they used was variance, and they added a small bit of variance and saw that kind of result, if you have more variance you’ll have more result. And we’re using drastically more variance. So I actually expect people with far greater results using this.

Sean McCormick: It only takes one minute to do a little bit of digging and you just see review after review, after review of people saying, “Oh my god!” You really only need to work out for 10 minutes and you’re not sore and you’re not sore the next day, and it doesn’t strain your body, and holy cow! I can actually see my biceps and I can actually see the vascularity in my calves and in my forearms. And it’s really kind of amazing. And obviously, the reason why, you’re tearing down a lot of preconceived notions about how to work out effectively. I think about this is sort of the opposite of Pilates, right? Pilates is full extension, almost hyperextension, and then doing lots of quick little two, three inch or longer range of motion at full extension. And this is not that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Sean McCormick: And this is also not loading up plates on a straight bar and having no resistance at the bottom of the lift on your chest, and then pushing to the top and then resting at full extension, and then the deceleration down to the bottom where you rest again. And I heard you say once that it’s confusing to the muscle when you’re going through… Let’s just envision a bench press. You’re resting and then you push and you rest at the top, and then you-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, you lock joint at the top and you’re turning the muscle on, you’re turning the muscle off, turning the muscle on, turning the muscle off. Does that show the central nervous system a deficit of everything? No, it doesn’t-

Sean McCormick: It just confuses.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Well, I actually try not to use the word confusion because people think muscle confusion is still a thing. Yeah, it’s been disproven. It’s just complete garbage data. Just like anybody doing P90X still, I’m sorry but workouts work except not yours. Or I mean not as well because just by mixing up the exercises you don’t shock the system into growth. That’s not a thing. But ultimately, everything we’re trying to get out of exercise, and this is the highest level of what adaptation is, you’re showing your central nervous system you’re at a deficit of something. So if you want to show a deficit of bicep volume you need to exhaust, from a myofibril perspective. Which only happens in the strong range by the way, then you need to exhaust from a sarcoplasmic perspective. So you need to get rid of all the ATP glycogen creatine phosphate. So never rest at the bottom, never lock the joint at the top because that lets blood in and starts replacing those fuels. So if you’re slowly replacing while you’re using, you’re not showing central nervous system a clear signal for growth. You’re just not doing it. So by using the protocol that I designed… And every once while, I see on the users’ group… We have some super fans in the users’ group, and that’s on Facebook; X3 Bar fitness band bar system users’ group. Somebody wants to add something special to their program to get even more results. So they’re like, “I’m doing a rest-pause protocol,” which is just sort of like one rep and then you stop and then one rep and you stop. And I don’t want to discourage anybody but it’s usually a long sigh, and I tell somebody from my staff, “Can you just please answer this? Because I just find it upsetting.” You miss the point here; constant tension. You need to leave constant tension on the muscle to get the most complete exhaustion. And then once you go to fatigue like that, you will have tremendous results.

Sean McCormick: One question that I have, which you can probably help clarify for me is if we’re not extending to the full range of motion are we building a muscle that is going to look aesthetic moor contracted?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s great question. No. Basically, were using… So you don’t ever lock your knees when you sprint.

Sean McCormick: Nope, I sure don’t.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, yep. You’d break them both if you did. And some of the most powerful legs in the world are on sprinters. So yeah, you don’t need to lockout the joint. You can do lockouts. I have had some physical therapists say, “I need a lockout. This is part of my protocols are a problem doing lockouts with X3 Bar resistance band bar system,” because they use it for rehabilitation. And I’m like, “Yeah, no. Absolutely not.” But if your goal is to be as strong as possible it’s best not to lockout and just go to the top of the movement. So you’re going from the power position to the weaker range of motion, and that’s your sweet spot. So you don’t ever discharge the load and let the band go slack at the bottom, and you also don’t lock joint at the top.

Sean McCormick: Yeah. That’s a-

Dr. John Jaquish: But it’s easy to follow, especially if you watch some of the videos. There’s probably somebody listening going, “Man, I don’t really know exactly what he’s talking about.” Everything’s in video on the website; shows you exactly what to do. So it’s really easy to follow. Hey, one thing you said, which I almost never cover in podcasts, there’s no soreness. Do you know why?

Sean McCormick: No.

Dr. John Jaquish: This is another thing that people just get enraged over. Again, it’s Billy Badass and Tommy Tough-guy, who define themselves… Their life is defined by, “I lift dangerous weights.” That’s all they have to say for themselves. The reason you don’t get sore is because most of what you do with standard weights is giving you a significant amount of joint damage, not permanent or anything, but a lot of what people perceive as exercise soreness, it’s in the joints it’s not in the muscle.

Sean McCormick: Really?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And your body doesn’t like that. And even some of the micro-tearing. Now the theory of small tears in the muscle that grow back and become more powerful, fixing the tears, well, okay, nevermind that that kind of denies what scar tissue is, which is not functional. But there are micro-tears and they do heal without scar tissue; however, they have nothing to do with muscle growth. In fact, cyclists have some of the greatest amount of muscle-tearing and marathon runners, and they don’t have big anything.

Sean McCormick: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right? Now inaudible building muscle, right. So they have far more micro-tears than people who lift weights. So micro-tears have nothing to do with growth. There’s two types of muscle growth. There’s sarcoplasmic, meaning protein synthesis; usually showing a deficit of contractile tissue, which again… Gymnast get a big sarcoplasmic effect, usually weightlifters don’t. So the one-rep maximum weight lifter guys do, of courses there’s a high risk associated with that. But there other type of muscular growth is sarcoplasmic; it’s holding more fuel in the cell, and this is what bodybuilders really capitalize on; it’s holding more ATP, glycogen and creatine phosphate in cells. But to get to that, you don’t have to beat up on the joint, not at all.

Sean McCormick: It’s tough to hear man because everything that I’ve ever heard about lifting and about Olympic-style weightlifting, about explosive fast-switch muscle fiber, since I was 13, 14, playing high school football is that if you’re not sore you’re not working hard enough. And if you’re not walking with a waddle the day after leg day it means you didn’t do enough weight or it means your form was poor. And I think that I speak for a lot of our listeners when I say that that’s a hard fallacy to redefine.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And there’s a lot of things in there that you just said that there are real science. There is such a thing as fast and slow twitch muscle, but I’ve also got a piece of clinical research that shows that pretty much all athletic activity grows both types.

Sean McCormick: Yeah, that makes sense; whether you’re a boxer or

Dr. John Jaquish: Am I allowed to use profanity on your program?

Sean McCormick: Let it fly man, yeah. Absolutely.

Dr. John Jaquish: So basically, who fucking cares? If it doesn’t matter then why are we even talking about the principle? Yes, there’s two different types of growth but they both fire when you’re lifting a weight. It’s not like somebody needs to lift something heavy and the body’s going, “You know what? We like running marathons better, so we’re just not going to turn half the muscle on,” yet you killed in nature. No, that’s not how things work. And hen there’s other things. In fact, I’m launching a video series called Falsehoods of Fitness, and I’ve got about 20 different videos I’m going to make. They’re going to be between five and 10 minutes. And I’m actually going to hit a lot of those things like fast and slow twitch muscle. And it’s not the idea that there’s two types; there’s actually three times, but of muscle, it’s not that it doesn’t exist, it’s just that it doesn’t matter. So here’s another one, progressive resistance. I love hearing these guys, they just add a tiny bit of weight and then they produce the same amount of repetitions or one repetition and then it’s like therefore, they got stronger. These are people that don’t know the difference between a strategy and a result because the principle is the result. If you can progress your resistance that means you already got stronger. That doesn’t mean you’re getting stronger next time.

Sean McCormick: Solid point, yeah. That makes sense.

Dr. John Jaquish: But that’s like asking a high school kid, “Hey, what do you want to do when you grow up?” And the kid goes, “I’m just going to cash checks.” And you’re like, “So you going to have a job?” “Nope, nope. Somebody’s just going to pay me. I’m just going to go to the bank every day and I’ll be rich.” And you’re like, “Okay. Yeah, you should do some progressive resistance too.” And they also denies the idea, why are runners strong? They don’t incrementally get heavier every time they sprint, so they can get faster and build more crosstalk. It’s just one of those principles that yeah, if you add a tiny amount of weight, that that is one way to maybe continue to trigger growth, but it’s not a superior way, it’s just a way.

Sean McCormick: Right. If you’re able to put on an additional 2.5 pound plate on the end of your straight bar from your bench press, and you can lift it, well shit, look at that. You’re stronger.

Dr. John Jaquish: Then I like to go, “Except maybe you could’ve done that last time. So maybe you didn’t gain anything. Because you didn’t try that last time, did you?”

Sean McCormick: Chicken or the egg.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, man. It’s just like there’s exhausting the muscle, showing the central nervous system that there’s a deficit. The principle of variance sits over the top of any other principle because if you are moving a weight through multiple ranges of motion, then you have different capability in multiple ranges of motion. And if you’re using the same weight, you are leaving the games behind. You’re just not stimulating, not like you could. So like all these other principles, just different positioning, or how you need to do lateral raises and overhead presses to fully develop the deltoids, that’s bullshit. That’s so not true. So yeah, so all these principles are out there. Some of them are right, some of them are wrong; some of them are dead wrong, but ultimately, like what we’re talking about right now with variable resistance, especially making it as powerful as X3 Bar exercise band bar system’s made it, it’s just like all these other principles just don’t mean anything.

Sean McCormick: Who gets the most worked up by your system and the results?

Dr. John Jaquish: Usually and interestingly, people who don’t seem like they workout. Internet commenters, who when you look at crosstalk like fat or they’re high school males, really angry high school males. It just funny. You look and they’re like, “Oh yeah, that’ll never work.” And you look at them and you’re like, “Hmm, okay. Does your mom know you’re up right now?” Also, for some strange reason, the people who seem to misspell every third word, they’re really upset by this too.

Sean McCormick: I see that. Okay, but so-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, right. And it’s so entertaining at this point.

Sean McCormick: Okay, but besides the basement dwelling trolls, what sort of qualified or experienced people balk at it the most?

Dr. John Jaquish: Some of the guys who have built some programming, that have made their living by teaching people how to lift weights. And if they got a business tied up in lifting weights, they’re like, “Hey…” Weights work for some people but not the majority. Look around. We, as a society, we put fitness on a pedestal, as we should. We should all be healthier, we should be more attractive. We should all feel better when we walk down the street. I think everybody deserves that if they’re willing to put in some work. But you see people going to gyms year after year and nothing changes; the vast majority of people. And here’s a statistic for you. 6.6% of adult males over 18 in the United States have used anabolic steroids.

Sean McCormick: Whoa.

Dr. John Jaquish: I know, right? Do 6.6% of males look like bodybuilders or professional athletes?

Sean McCormick: No way.

Dr. John Jaquish: Think, you put a hundred people in the room, you get 6 1/2 people that look like bodybuilders? No.

Sean McCormick: No.

Dr. John Jaquish: Maybe if you have 10,000 people in a room, you got one that’s just like, “Whoa, that guy’s in shape.” You can’t even tell. You can’t even tell most of these people work out. Why are we so in love with these principles that are being hammered down on us by some of the gurus out there, when they’re clearly not effective for the majority of people? Like 99% of the population is just totally frustrated with exercising. And here’s another thing. We sold 6 1/2 thousand units, right? It’s a new company so just getting started. 6 1/2 thousand X3 variable resistance exercise systems are out there in circulation. So we have 1,300 super fans in the users’ group. And so most people will say like a home fitness product, “Oh, nobody’s going to use that. It’s going to sit under your bed and collect dust.” No it won’t because it actually produces results, which is why we have seen so many incredible stories come out of this. It works so people don’t skip it. And so when people say, “General population doesn’t work out because they’re lazy.” No, I don’t believe that. I don’t buy that at all. They’re not lazy. They’re frustrated with not seeing results. Once you give them results, they’re committed. They like it.

Sean McCormick: Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think that’s what makes this piece of equipment so different is that for those of us who are busy, who… We’re all busy. We all live busy lives. We’ve all got stuff that we should be doing. And the 2 1/2 hour round-trip in the car, to the gym, to half-ass it on the treadmill for a little bit, to half-ass it in squat rack for a little bit, or even to just work really hard, if I can condense that 2 1/2 hours with a sore elbow the next day and a hip was kind of funky, and switch that out for 10 minutes a day, five days a week, in my living room while I watch TV, man, I’ll take that any day of the week. And if it works and I can look in the mirror after my third workout and go, “Holy smokes! Look at those biceps. They’re popping.”

Dr. John Jaquish: It works better than anything else that you’d be doing. And I know some people who are addicted to going to the gym. They love it for social reasons. That’s where all their buddies meet up. So they just take their X3 Bar resistance band training system to the gym.

Sean McCormick: Really?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Sean McCormick: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: In fact, I have had so many people say, “I needed to buy your product. There’s two guys at my gym that are just getting in better shape every day I see them and they’re only using your product. And I ask them, ‘Why do you still come in here?’ And they’re, ‘I don’t know, habit.’” Or, “I keep my X3 Bar portable home gym in my locker.” That was a little funny to me but hey, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s actually more than 30 gyms that have X3 Bar resistance band bar systems so you can go to your gym and just use it there.

Sean McCormick: That’s another feature of it too that I really like is you can bring it on your carry-on, you can travel with it really easily.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. TSA does not love it. It’s a big metal bar. So I always check mine. 50% of the time, just when I was prototyping it, I’d try and get it through security and half the time they’d let it go and then the other half the time they’d go, “Yeah, you could hit somebody with this.” And I think that’s funny because they let people with canes and skateboards go through all the time. Those can be used as weapons, but whatever. So until the TSA officially approves it as a rehabilitation device, which it is, we can get it through every time then, but until then, just check a bag.

Sean McCormick: Yeah. So I’m 2 1/2 weeks in and loving it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome.

Sean McCormick: And I’m curious where the exercises go because as of now, and I just finished my workout for the day that took me about 8 1/2 minutes because I was focused and cooking. I did deadlift, curl, bent over row and calf raises, and that effectively… it’s two leg exercises and two back and bicep exercises and I’m curious to kind of skip forward a little bit in the book to see where do we go from there. Because obviously, the bands become thicker and more resistant, but where does the variability in exercise come in and how did you develop that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Just picking the exercises was very much trial-and-error. That’s another thing I’ve been kind of criticized on. The program right now is very aesthetically focused. I believe more people are interested in looking good as opposed to being the ultimate CrossFit athlete or something like that. A CrossFit person would never do bicep curls because that’s not going to help them with their competitive lifts. So a lot of those guys are just… I remember I got a one-star review from some guy that goes, “Oh, bicep curls are so 90s.” And I’m like, “Okay. Skip.” Like, really? That’s your problem? But whatever. So it is focused for the person who really wants to be high-performance, also look high performance. Calf raises is another thing. Ben Greenfield gave me a hard time about the calf raises, “Why would you do calf raises? You’re getting that in a deadlift.” And I said, “Yeah, not to the same degree.” I think it was week three or four, I made this comment, “The key to having great calves is being born with great calves.” I proved myself wrong because my calves never looked like I trained them a day in my life and I’ve been training them for 20 years with weights, but now it looks like somebody glued or ribeye steak to the back of each of my legs, with the way my calves stick out and have like an inch of depth, just from that isolation calf raise that we’re doing. So in the program that exist right now it does focus on some aesthetic movements. Now if somebody’s doing CrossFit and they want to use this for CrossFit assist, ultimately… When we talked earlier I said, “Somebody who is doing CrossFit and they want to use X3 portable gym, they can use X3 Bar fitness band bar system to assist in their CrossFit but they did they wouldn’t do something like the calf raise, they would emulate some of their lifts.” They would do a deadlift, they might do an overhead press, and then also lock into the overhead position and do squats with holding the bar over the head. Ben Greenfield has been enjoying doing that. So ultimately, slightly different movements, but the way the program is right now, very aesthetic focused. You’re going to stick to some of those same movements. The squat is going to move to a single-leg squat, which gives you more stabilization firing, which upregulates growth hormone. And also, it allows you to use your resources, all focused on one leg at a time, which is really… Unless you’re a kangaroo, you run on one leg at a time, right? So I say this to trainers all the time and they kind of stare at me for a minute and then smile like, “Yeah, that guy’s got a point.”

Sean McCormick: Yeah, you’re right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. We don’t hop on two legs. So we fire one leg at a time, so if you start squatting like that, biomechanics are improved because you have to balance your hips and your shoulders. You have to. You don’t have a choice. It forces you to reinforce a better level of biomechanics, which improves your two-legged squat if you do competitions with two-leg squats. That better supporting joint firing is going to help. Also, in the advanced programming, beyond the 12 weeks, there’s some static holds in the stronger range to really make sure that you’re getting… so not locked out, but just short of lockout; holding in those positions so you can really make sure you are taking the muscle to absolute fatigue.

Sean McCormick: Got it. Okay. I can see that. Can you talk a little bit more about stabilization and how that… You said a hot-button phrase, growth hormone. Let’s talk about growth hormone a little bit.

Dr. John Jaquish: The two things that are talked about the most, when it comes to performance, and maybe this is the reason I get some of these steroid comments, which are, like I said, just kind of nuts, and also, like I said, made by people who don’t look like they’ve ever worked out. Hey, also most of trolling is just jealousy. They’re angry somebody’s in better shape than them so they just insult crosstalk-

Sean McCormick: It’s flattery.

Dr. John Jaquish: Guys who have been Mr. Olympian are getting insulted all day long. So okay. But there are two things that are happening, which are highly anabolic, beyond just loading the muscle with X3 Bar exercise band bar system. There is a tremendous upregulation of growth hormone and testosterone, with the use of X3 resistance bands system, and I’ll explain why. So I wrote a meta-analysis in 2016 on growth hormone. So a meta-analysis, for the people who are listening that don’t know what that is, it’s when all of the research on one particular subject is brought into one study and condensed and measured via statistics, to control for like, one study had a large sample size, one study had a small sample size, and so you weight them a little differently for significance. And then you come up with a sort of score or level of effectiveness of… and most importantly, a p-value, which shows you whether you have statistical significance. Basically, what I discovered was in 23 different datasets in previously published studies, we found in this study, 23 different datasets, positive changes in growth hormone based on stabilization firing, anywhere from 400 to 2600%, per single session. And the changes between what was different between the 400% and the 2600% had to do with loading. So if you had an incredible amount of load, there was more stabilizers that were fired. So if you were doing a little bit of balancing on both legs, just held maybe a 120 degree angle of inclusion behind your knee, your core’s activated and you’re doing some beyond tonic contractions to keep yourself from falling over. That’s got a tiny growth hormone affect. If you do it on a balance board it has a more so growth hormone affect. If you’ve got a weight on your back, like in a squat, and you do free weight squats, you have an even greater effect; let’s say even on a flat piece of ground. So just a flat piece of ground, you can increase your growth hormone by 600% by doing just a standard squat with a bar. Guess how much growth hormone gets released in a leg press?

Sean McCormick: Man, I have no idea. How much?

Dr. John Jaquish: Zero, none. There’s no stabilization firing. So doesn’t it seem like a great idea to upregulate the growth hormone and the receptors at the same time? Because that’s what you’re doing.

Sean McCormick: Why is that? is it because you’re firing all the little stabilizer muscles around the bigger ones?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It just because you have to be stable. And then when you add load… Now let me ask another question. So we know what happens when you have a bar on your back and it’s got some weight on it, an exhausting level of weight. Now what happens when you use X3 Bar portable home gym? When you’re hyper-loading the stronger range of motion? Now you’re using even more stabilizers at more repetitions. So longer time under tension, with a higher weight, what’s the stabilization firing there? Well, it’s even greater. That may be approaching some of the 2000% areas that we’ve seen, which is why I have veins showing in my abs and I do no cardio. I haven’t done cardio in years and I’m 42 years old. So that massive upregulation of growth hormone is something that happens with X3 Bar resistance band bar system, and you can’t really do anything beyond that yet, though I’m working on something that’s going to come in the future. Well, it’s going to be an accessory to X3 variable resistance exercise system to get even more growth hormone out of that. But the way I am now, my nutrition’s great and everything, but a lot of people have great nutrition at 42 years old and they’re still fat, or they still look… nothing. crosstalk-

Sean McCormick: Let’s talk about nutrition a little bit.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, let me just switch to testosterone first-

Sean McCormick: Yes, please.

Dr. John Jaquish: … and explain. Yeah, so by the way, that growth hormone meta-analysis actually got me a position as one of the editors of the Journal of Steroids and Hormonal Science. So I’m an editor of three different medical journals; that one being a really important one. Now that’s hormones and anabolics for the treatment of disease. People hear the name they think, “Oh, a medical journal about cheating in sports.” Yeah, there’s not a medical journals written about that. So yeah, this is therapies that this journal is about. But ultimately, wouldn’t we rather go with a physical medicine solution first? Anybody says to me, “Oh yeah, I’ve been thinking about taking growth hormone.” You can make more growth hormone. Your body has the ability to do it; way more. And you can be lean. Just apply the principle. Some of these growth hormone supplements, whatever’s out there, just try X3 Bar resistance band training system first and you want ever think about taking the GH supplements again. Now testosterone is upregulated mostly based on how much force you’re putting through the body. And because with X3 Bar exercise band bar system, we’re hyper-loading in the stronger range and using that with more repetitions, the same thing happens. You get more testosterone out of your exercise too. So it is just such an anabolic workout by design, is where I was thinking right out of the gate because that was part of my background, that endocrinology research with anabolic hormones. That’s why we have older guys… I was looking at some of the before and after pictures that have been submitted. Guys in their 50s who’ve never had a six-pack in their life, within 12 weeks, have a six-pack. Didn’t do any cardio. Some of them didn’t even change their nutrition, and it just happened with the use of X3 portable gym.

Sean McCormick: It’s almost unbelievable. And you’re probably sick of hearing that, but the results like that, that you’re talking about are so uncommon with any other sort of fitness protocol, that it’s almost… there’s this cognitive dissonance around those types of results.

Dr. John Jaquish: The good news is there’s two versions of product. There’s the original and then we have the pro version which is a little bit more expensive. It’s all steel, knurled steel. Looks like an Olympic bar, functions like an Olympic bar. It’s a pretty small price to pay if it delivers. Now somebody says, “I can’t believe $550, that’s crazy.” And I go, “What would you pay for 20 pounds of muscle?” And they’re like, “Like $10,000.” Yeah, right. So you might want to give it a shot. We do have a return policy. So it’s worth the experiment. And also I noticed, because I can see the click patterns on the website, somebody goes to the science page, they immediately go to the buy page a minute later. When they read… Most people don’t really want to learn anything, they might glance at something and just be judgmental or be so blinded by what they think they know, that they, “Ah, this is not true,” whatever. But it’s amazing. You read the science page and you’ll say, “Wow. If this guy is right, then so much of what we’ve been doing is wrong. But it’s worth a shot because this is pretty crystal clear how this works, and never heard anything like this before.” So they go for it and they never go back.

Sean McCormick: Yeah. When I jumped into the X3 Bar resistance band bar system users’ group and started to sort of get a sense of what people were saying and how they were talking, one guy made a point that said, “There’s a reason why you don’t find these used on the internet, you’re not going to find these”-

Dr. John Jaquish: So true.

Sean McCormick: “… because people keep them and they use them.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Sean McCormick: And if that’s not a testament to the quality and the effectiveness of a piece of equipment, then I don’t know what is.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. Yeah, even some of the broken ones… You never 100% of the manufacturing correct, so we get 1% of them that the hook’s not quite in there right, or whatever. We get them, we refurbish them. We can’t even keep those here for demo purposes because somebody always comes in the office like, “Hey, can I get one right now?” Like, “Oh, we only have one refurbished one.” “Okay.” So we just don’t have them. inaudible-

Sean McCormick: I know that you’ve been tinkering around with nutrition for a while and seeing as how we’re a pretty hardcore biohacking audience, people are going to know what keto and carnivore diets are. I’ve also read… I’m going to preface this by saying, your suggestions for everyone are not necessarily the same things that you do for yourself because you’re further down the path-

Dr. John Jaquish: Thank you for noticing that, yeah. I’m also running experiments. I’m running experiments so if they work out, I can share that experience. And I believe I’m part of one of the largest nutritional experiments ever done, which is being spearheaded, he used the word yesterday, by Dr. Shawn Baker, which is the carnivore nutrition.

Sean McCormick: Well, there you go.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, but before we jump into nutrition, I do want to say that there’s a lot of different approaches and I am very disappointed when I see people with almost a religious attachment to a nutrition program because everybody should want to be as healthy as possible, right? I tried a vegan diet for short period of time just so I could say I tried it. Like I thought, I hated every minute of it. And there was nothing, no food I looked forward to, especially because you can’t cover your broccoli in butter if you’re trying veganism, right? I don’t know what you cover it in; salt? Okay. Yeah, that got real old and lost a ton of muscle. It didn’t work. But I will say, it is possible for somebody who’s a vegan to grow muscle. It is possible that they can even be ketogenic. The amount of processed vegetation that they have to go through is incredible, to get there. Like you better own an avocado farm and have a whole lot of alfalfa and green tea protein isolate to be able to have any sort of… just basal levels of some of the macronutrients you need. And I even think that macro discussion is often misused but it can be done. So when I say ketogenic and intermittent fasting, it doesn’t mean somebody’s excluded from that. Everybody can do that, they just need to prepare.

Sean McCormick: Good point.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, so what I advocate is a longer fasting window; the longest you can tolerate it because you’re really giving your digestive system a break, and it can regenerate its cells when it has nothing to digest, which is something we don’t do. People who eat three meals a day, they’re not getting that rest time for the intestines. And a lot of them are dealing with chronic inflammation of the intestines. So that’s a really positive aspect. That also upregulates growth hormone; not to the same level of stability training, but it’s a different axis of growth hormone upregulation, so you can enjoy both simultaneously. So I can go, even at times I’ve experimented with 48-hour fasts, so I don’t eat anything for 48 hours. My workout at the 47th hour, I didn’t lose any strength. My body’s running on ketones, which it’s getting from metabolizing the fat from the donut I ate when I was seven years old. Right?

Sean McCormick: Sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s how that works.

Sean McCormick: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So-

Sean McCormick: Well, I want to highlight a key point there because I do the same thing. I fast until… One of the questions I ask all of my guests, that we didn’t get too because we just drove right in, was what is in your body today? What have you put in your body at the time of this recording? and we can skip that, but I think one of the key points is, if you’re going to fast, you should eat after your X3 Bar exercise, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Great question. The anabolic window.

Sean McCormick: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: No such thing.

Sean McCormick: Oh!

Dr. John Jaquish: I know. That’s one of my Falsehoods of Fitness videos that are coming up. Just doesn’t exist, yeah. The idea that you can actually turn fat into muscle is a reality when you’re fasting; you can do that. Or you can, at the very least, preserve muscle. Now I can go through a fast and then eat a meal, and I’m growing muscle and losing body fat at the same time, and I’ve been doing that for a while now. So ironically, a lot of gurus out there say you can’t, you got to be in one phase or the other. No you don’t. Yeah, when you’re doing ketogenic nutrition and you’re doing intermittent fasting, you’re getting a proper amount of nutrients with your meals, which I don’t actually think is quite basal metabolic rate, as I do feel like my appetite goes down the longer the fast I have. So like I used to eat three pounds of red meat a day, and sometimes after a long fast, man, after I choke down to it’s like, “I just can’t eat anymore,” but I can see growth immediately, in two or three days. Everything’s bigger, everything is measuring bigger. I take an in-body scan. I’d prefer to do a DEXA scan but I happen to have an in-body right down the street from where I live in San Francisco. So yeah, a lot of that stuff is just… there’s no evidence of it.

Sean McCormick: Okay. So the short answer, or the sort of key takeaway for nutrition is fasting is good and experiment, because not everybody’s… We’ll see. We’ll see, right? But not everybody’s cut out for the carnivore diet, which it sounds like you’re… Are you still doing it now?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Since last November. So it’s almost a year I’ve been doing carnivore nutrition. And definitely leaner, easier; just going to almost no carbohydrates has… Every once in a while, somebody puts some sort of marinade on the steak. There’s also glycogen in the meat. So nobody’s zero carbohydrates. I hear that a lot from carnivores and I’m like, “Okay. That’s not quite how that works, but I’ll let this one go.” So you have less than 20 grams in a day and you stay in really hard ketosis, and there’s… I’ve also read some of the arguments that you need to cycle it. I don’t believe that. There’s this one study that’s pretty small that says you need to cycle out of ketosis. And so I just don’t and I feel fantastic all the time. The gains are phenomenal. My brain function is just dynamite; my power of recall. It was good before, but now somebody brings up something that I’ll go, “Yeah, I remember in 1993 I read that study.” Everyone sort of turns their head and looks at me, “Really?” Well, and apparently, one of the guys that works with me at Jaquish Biomedical, he says, “It’s more impressive to watch you on your feet when you get a question because you’ll fire out a study. Somebody’ll ask a question, completely unscripted, you’ll fire out a study and they’re like, ‘How the hell did he remember that?’” Part of it is this is what I’m excited about, but the other thing is I think on this really high ketone nutrition, the brain is just blistering with capability that you really don’t have if you have a carbohydrate diet.

Sean McCormick: Yeah. I’ll attest to that. I think that one of the smartest things that I’ve done in my life is go through that process of drastically limiting sugar and fasting and eating within a window. I typically eat between the hours of 2:00 and 8:00. Most days, I workout, fasted plenty, and it’s made me just better everywhere. It’s made me a little bit smarter, it’s made me more mentally agile, it’s allowed me to be more productive. I also take a bunch of supplements and smart drugs and mushroom supplements that we carry at Natural Stacks, which frankly, I need all the help I can get because I’m a little all over the place. But yeah, I think getting to the heart of what is going to make me the best? How can I be the absolute best version of myself in all aspects? And so now that we know that you’re still eating, and I like that you called it carnivore nutrition. What’d you call it? Not carnivore diet, but carnivore…

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, carnivore nutrition.

Sean McCormick: Carnivore nutrition. Now that we know that you’re doing that and still eating that way, for the people that don’t know what that is or they’re just getting into this, is there a dietary suggestion or broad-ranging protocol for people who are using the X3 Bar resistance band bar system for the first time?

Dr. John Jaquish: So in the 12-week program, there’s a series of nutritional videos too. And what it does is it takes somebody who’s probably drinking soda and eating McDonald’s fries, and week one is you want to remove sugar, candy bars from your diet. Because most people, if they hold themselves accountable day-by-day… Like, “All I got to do is avoid candy bars. I can do that. I’ve gone a week before without eating candy bars.” So once you make it through one week, you go, “I can do that every week. I’m not dying for a candy bar every day.” So week-by-week, you start eliminating some things from the diet until you get to something to a low level of ketogenic nutrition, with some intermittent fasting, with a pretty manageable eating window. So skipping breakfast, everybody skip breakfast when they’re running late. Now people who have very poor insulin sensitivity get angry when they don’t have a meal right away, or people who are hypoglycemic… Interesting. I was hypoglycemic as a kid because my mom would feed me the same thing all moms feed their kids, cereal and all kinds of crap; highly-processed garbage. And as soon as I went to ketogenic nutrition 12 years ago, my inaudible stopped shaking. It just never happened again. And that was just crystal clear to me. Like, “Wow. I can skip a meal and not feel ill or be angry at all? That’s awesome.” So I knew I was on the right track, even back then. And then it’s just gotten better and better, and I really am enjoying the carnivore nutrition program. So basically, my nutrition is steak, red meat’s the most digestible but I’ll also do eggs or chicken or turkey or something like that. Fattier meats, the better. And then water. inaudible and I basically have one meal a day. So my eating window’s 30 minutes.

Sean McCormick: Wow. One thing that I haven’t seen noted or specified in the carnivore nutrition protocol is emphasis on grass-fed. Is that a thing?

Dr. John Jaquish: Great point. Grass-fed does get talked about, especially by the biohacking community. And I have started to not care for grass-fed beef because it doesn’t have the proper amount of fat. Now ultimately, if you look at what a predator eats… So if a leopard is going to chase down a gazelle, is it going to try to catch the fastest, youngest, most powerful one or is it going to pick the older one that’s not eating high enough on the trees and maybe a little fatter and maybe a little lazier? It’s going to have the weak one, right?

Sean McCormick: Yeah, I haven’t thought of that. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So I don’t agree with cruelty towards animals, so I don’t like the way a lot of factory-processed meats go, but what you’ll see is grass-fed and then corn-finished. And so the idea there is corn is like candy to a cow. It’s not cruel to feed that to them. They’re not in torture, but it’s much higher glycemic index type food. And of course they don’t have a lot of foresight, they kind of have lizard brains, so they’ll eat anything that’s put in front of them that’s edible. And so they prefer the corn. If you put a trough of corn in a field of grass, they’ll eta the corn. So I just want to point that out because I don’t want people to get confused thinking it’s cruel to serve them corn. Some of the other things that happen to cow could be managed much better for the comfort of the animal, but ultimately, having a fattier piece of meat is much more beneficial than to have a leaner piece of meat. Yeah, ribeyes are always the choice and if I can’t get a ribeye, if I go to a place that’s only got strip steak, I might get three strip steaks at a restaurant, and then I’ll go home and maybe do 10 scrambled eggs so I get in a fat.

Sean McCormick: How do you like your meat cooked?

Dr. John Jaquish: Pretty rare. Yeah. Not raw on the inside, warm. But ultimately, bacteria can manifest on the surface of a cut piece of meat, not on the inside. So you sear the outside and inside is pretty good; almost raw.

Sean McCormick: You’re making me hungry man. What time of day do you eat?

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m making myself hungry. I was just thinking about that. I have 6:30 dinner reservations tonight. The whole company’s going out to dinner at this great place that’s got some pretty big ribeyes, so I’m going to have a pair of those.

Sean McCormick: We could keep going for hours and hours but I want to be sensitive to time. I want to just share one more time how impressed I am with the results that I’m getting and that’s all that matters.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it is.

Sean McCormick: That’s really the only thing that fucking matters to me in working out; am I getting bigger and stronger? And I have goals, I have physique goals. And it’s working, and it’s fun, and it’s easy, and it’s fast, and it checks all the boxes for classic biohacking stuff. And so I’m going to keep on it. I ask all my guests kind of the same question at the end of every episode, which is, based on everything you know, not specifically in product design or research, but just sort of generally, if you could, complete this sentence. Everyone should know that…

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re asking a researcher what everybody should know? Oh, man. I give a 10-hour lecture on that. I could talk all day. Everyone should know that what they’ve been taught about exercise, most of it’s just wrong and they need to be much more open-minded because it’s just a lot of holes, a lot of things missing. And we’re plugging those holes I think. Growth hormone, for example. What regulates growth hormone? Only the understanding, this principle of human physiology of stabilization and… firing was discovered in 2016; in that research study, that meta-analysis with the 23 different datasets. So these sort of standards of fitness that were basically being carried from the 1970s, most of them are just incorrect and force most people to spin their wheels. So billions of dollars of supplements sold, billions of dollars are spent in the gym industry. The home fitness industry is four, five times greater than even the gym industry, yet you walk down the street and almost nobody looks fit. So before getting upset that some of the principles that Arnold Schwarzenegger was using back in the 1970s are being challenged by me or Dave Asprey or Tony Robbins, and there’s plenty of other people that are challenging these things, before getting upset about it, take note that almost no one makes progress with the principles that are being passed around today. And there’s just better ways to do it.

Sean McCormick: That’s excellent information. I think that’s information that everybody needs to hear and needs to hear it over and over and over so that we can sort of reprogram what we think we know. Before we go, what’s the best place for people to get ahold of you or learn more?

Dr. John Jaquish: So of course on Instagram I’m @ Dr. Jaquish, D-R-J-A-Q-U-I-S-H. Answer any questions there. On Facebook there’s a Dr. John Jaquish page, there’s also an X3 Bar page. Staff is there to answer all kinds of questions. And also, to get the product it’s x3bar.com.

Sean McCormick: Thanks for joining us on the Optimal Performance podcast.

Dr. John Jaquish: Absolutely Sean. Thanks so much for having me.