Weightlifting & Cardio Is A Waste of Time, Build Muscle Faster Without Weights (Part 1 of 2)

People get a Harley…and they can’t wait to f*%k it up!

Almost three years ago, I met Dr John Jaquish, the inventor of Osteostrong and the X3 Bar, at Dave Asprey’s HeadStrong book launch in San Francisco. At the time he was up to exciting experiments and biohacking that other people weren’t talking about. Shortly after, Dr Jaquish came out with a product named the X3 Bar resistance band bar system. It was a simple enough looking system with a platform, some resistance bands, and a bar to attach the resistance bands. I saw people using the system, including Dr Jaquish, and thought, “Big deal, why is it so expensive for some bands and a platform?”

However, two things happened to me that changed my mind about the X3 Bar fitness band bar system. (1) I had my first child, and quickly realized I had absolutely no time to travel to a gym, let alone even 30 minutes to workout. Interestingly enough, X3 Bar resistance band training system claimed you could get a workout in 10 minutes. (2) I read the Cornell Study, which outlined how athletes undertaking variable resistance training became three times stronger than those doing just traditional free weights. I bought the system and since that day I haven’t turned back.

With the X3 Bar variable resistance training system, I am never sore, I have maintained my muscle mass since the days when I was lifting free weights, and best of all, I am injury free. As you can imagine, most people can’t conceive that lifting with the X3 Bar resistance band bar system could get you these results in 10-15 minutes of working out. Naturally, I get a lot of questions about the X3 Bar portable home gym, and the science behind it. I thought it would great to have none other than Dr Jaquish on himself to explain the irrefutable science, and why we have been lied to about lifting weights for so long. Dr Jaquish is known for what some might call lippantly saying “weightlifting and cardio is a waste of time,” but he backs up his beliefs with science.

Since I last saw Dr Jaquish three years ago, he has put on 60 lbs of muscle! Again, people can’t rationalize how he’s been able to accomplish this feat without steroids or some sort of muscle enhancer. Dr Jaquish has, however, been criticized for using testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), and many attribute his gains purely to that. However, on this episode, Dr Jaquish addresses those criticisms and explains why TRT has had nothing to do with his growth. Instead, Dr Jaquish has altered and refined his diet since he first started with X3 Bar exercise band bar system three years ago, which is something we get into heavily this episode. He’s also launched a new product called Fortagen, which is a high quality essential amino acid blend that he credits for helping pack on that muscle mass.

We spoke for three hours and covered so much that I had to break the episode into two parts. In part one, we talk a lot about the science of X3 Bar resistance band training system, his new book, why whey protein is bullshit, how to increase muscle through fasting, and much much more. Enjoy!

Timeline

2:00 - How Dr Jaquish came up for the idea of Osteostrong 4:26 - The origination of the X3 Bar variable resistance training system 15:00 - The evolution of Dr Jaquish’s diet 16:28 - Why whey protein is bullshit 18:58 - Why fasting actually increases muscle 23:40 - Why going to extreme’s with exercise or diet can hamper your results 29:00 - Dr Jaquish’s new book & Forrest Griffin 32:20 - Professional athletes and the X3 workout bar system 39:08 - Difference between X3 Bar resistance band bar system & other “functional exercises” 43:45 - Why tearing your muscles for growth is absolutely false 46:30 - Why fatiguing all ranges of motion is important 50:45 - Why is it so expensive? 55:24 - How Dr Jaquish stays healthy during COVID-19 59:30 - The biomarkers Dr Jaquish tracks 1:05:55 - Fortagen and the importance of essential amino acids 1:09:45 - How to hack fasting 1:16:09 - Is too much protein and meat bad for us? 1:27:00 - Dr Jaquish’s opinion with SARMS

Full Transcript

Joel Evan: Hey, it’s Joel from the Hacked Life. I’m here with Dr. John Jaquish, founder of OsteoStrong and the originator of the X3 Bar.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m the inventor of OsteoStrong. The founder is Kyle Zagrodzky.

Joel Evan: Oh, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he started the company based on my-

Joel Evan: Sorry, Kyle.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, no. He’s … Well, it’s okay. I’m here, I’m here to give him the credit.

Joel Evan: You’re here to clarify all that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. He had the whole vision of the clinic, the special venue because I was actually delivering Osteogenic Loading medical devices to doctors’ offices and they would treat like five people with the device and they’d be like, ‘Hey, it’s a big success.’ And I’m sitting there going, ‘How about 5,000 people? What are you doing?’ and so … And they didn’t care what they paid for it because they charge each customer a couple thousand dollars to solve their bone density problem. And for them, it was worth it, but it’s like, ‘Let’s bring this to the mainstream.’ And that’s why, it was Kyle’s vision for my technology.

Joel Evan: Interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: And so, it’s so interesting that it was … I always assumed it was private ‘cause I always, when I was thinking about the Western medicine approach, it just seems like they don’t want people to get better. So, I didn’t even think that they were using it. Instead, I figured they just tell you things like drink milk or something for more calcium in your bones or …

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, that doesn’t do anything. It’s a building block. You got to give the body a reason to use the building block.

Joel Evan: Talk to us real quick just about OsteoStrong and how it came about. Why were you so passionate about it? Why did it come about?

Dr. John Jaquish: So, my mother was diagnosed with osteoporosis and she was upset, and she felt like it was going to be limiting to her life. And you see your mother upset and it’s just kind of motivating, like ‘I got to fix this problem.’ And so, as I started looking into it, high impact forces is what causes gymnasts to build human bone density and there’s a lot of clinical literature on that. And so, I just thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to emulate impact,’ and that’s what this book is about. Osteogenic Loading is my first book.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so, that’s an adaptation of my PhD dissertation on how do we get these high forces into the body, but safely, because gymnasts also retire on average at age 19 and they do that because of the injuries that they receive from the gymnastics training so-

Joel Evan: So, gymnasts should be using OsteoStrong?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, they do.

Joel Evan: They do? Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of high impact athletics, we have some NFL players. We have anybody who wants to be fracture resistant or a lot of people in sports where they don’t receive a lot of impact like swimmers have low bone density. So, it’s really popular with swimmers. And like we were talking about earlier, it’s the chassis of the body.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: The bones, chassis of the body, so the stronger the chassis is, the more powerful the muscle that can be attached to it. So, the neural inhibitory process isn’t there to shut muscle off, but instead allow more to turn on so you can build more powerful musculature.

Joel Evan: So, you could actually build more muscle, if you have thicker, bigger bones, you could actually build more muscle on that chassis.

Dr. John Jaquish: Of course. Oh, yeah.

Joel Evan: So, it’s a huge advantage.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, look at Tongan and Samoan people who are genetically advantaged and when they pick up weights, they become powerful.

Joel Evan: They’re very powerful.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: And I was asking that, too, even if I’m just Joe Schmoe, businessman, I work at Coinbase here in San Francisco or whatever, or I’m an MMA fighter-

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Joel Evan: I mean I just feel like not many people are doing this or am I wrong? I mean I feel like this would be huge-

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, there’s hundreds of thousands of people using OsteoStrong. The demo is a little older, so you don’t see it as much on social media, but OsteoStrong is in eight countries, has 130 clinics so it’s big.

Joel Evan: Yeah. And they’re coming to San Francisco soon, too. Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Allegedly.

Joel Evan: Allegedly-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Well, there’s some great people who are working on it.

Joel Evan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: I trust them. They opened up LA and, it’s a couple, the woman, she’s from San Francisco so she knows the Bay Area really well. So, they’ll do it right.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: They do everything right. They’re great. They’re a great team, yeah.

Joel Evan: I see. Talk to us about … so I think what most people know you for, too, is the X3 Bar resistance band training system. And I have one, I’ve had one for like two and a half years. It’s a very disruptive and controversial product, and I want to-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yes, it is.

Joel Evan: And I want to say, too, just when I first saw the product myself, I was like, ‘Ah, I don’t know.’ We were talking, I see all these Biohackers and some of them bio hack everything. They buy every new gadget and-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah, they got like a hyperbaric chamber and a BOD POD-

Joel Evan: Exactly.

Dr. John Jaquish: And a sensory deprivation chamber, yeah.

Joel Evan: And I can’t trust them ‘cause I’ll ask like, ‘Hey, how do you like that product?’ Like, ‘Oh, it’s amazing,’ and it’s-

Dr. John Jaquish: Everything’s amazing.

Joel Evan: Everything’s amazing. ‘It works. It makes me feel better and I feel lighter. I feel … ‘ I’m like-

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Joel Evan: ‘Oh, okay.’ So, I remember one guy-

Dr. John Jaquish: Do you ever think to yourself like, ‘But you’re still overweight?’

Joel Evan: I do, yes, yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yes. So many of these guys, it’s just like they’re doing 20 things for their health, but they’re really not that healthy seeming, like ‘Really? Okay.’

Joel Evan: So, I see all these guys on social media, a couple Biohackers I know that are using the X3 Bar fitness band bar system and I’m like, ‘Okay,’ I’m looking at them. I’m like, ‘Ah, I don’t know, I don’t know.’ Couple things happened to me. One, I had a kid and I-

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah, so your time disappeared. Yes.

Joel Evan: Disappeared. So, I used to go to a CrossFit gym and I’m like I-

Dr. John Jaquish: No, you don’t have time for that, yeah.

Joel Evan: I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time. I don’t have that time. And the X3 Bar variable resistance training system, one of the things I really liked was 10 minutes a day. And I’m like, ‘No F-ing way. No way.’ So, it was that the portability I thought was amazing. And then, the other thing was I read the Cornell study about variable resistance.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: I read that study and I said-

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s the best.

Joel Evan: I said, ‘Screw it. I’m going to buy it.’

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: So, could you tell us about-

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s why I called it X3 Bar portable home gym ‘cause it had greater gains so hence the name. Yeah, I put like zero thought into the name. I was just like, ‘Yeah, X3 Bar fitness band bar system.’ Actually, wanted to call it Triple X first, but then if you go-

Joel Evan: crosstalk.

Dr. John Jaquish: I got triplex.com except it was like all … Google’s very confused. It was just like porno everywhere. Okay, I can’t do that.

Joel Evan: You were getting it wrong customers, yeah, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. For sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joel Evan: You’re getting trolled now. The people that were trolling you then, it would’ve been way worse.

Dr. John Jaquish: I don’t even know if it would’ve existed. They would’ve just been confused.

Joel Evan: Yeah. Confused.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right.

Joel Evan: This is not what I expected.

Dr. John Jaquish: So yeah, the X3 portable gym was based on the bone density research because when I did the bone density research, I’m taking deconditioned, elderly people and putting six, seven, eight times their body weight through their hip joint. And I’m seeing the power that these people are capable of creating. These are not athletes. Some of these people have never worked out a day in their life and they’re putting these tremendous forces very quickly. This wasn’t day one, but six months after the study started, just incredible forces.

And I’m thinking we’re missing the boat here. When we lift weights, it’s one weight here and it’s the same weight here. And we have drastically different capability from strong range to weak range. And why don’t we train accordingly? Now, I was like, okay, there’s band training. But the problem with hooking a band on a bar is you’re holding X here and maybe, 1.1X here, 1.2X here. But what we really need is X here and 7X here because that’s the fold difference, there’s the seven-fold difference from weak to strong range, and that’s what I showed in my research so-

Joel Evan: That’s all from OsteoStrong?

Dr. John Jaquish: That was the OsteoStrong research, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Joel Evan: Yeah, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I’m sitting there, I’m looking at this data and I was already busy with OsteoStrong. I liked the medical device industry because despite what a lot of reps and medical will say, doctors are awesome to speak with and to sell products to because if you show them the case for efficacy, they say, ‘Yes, I wants to do this. This makes sense to me.’

The problem with the fitness industry is I mean it’s just a clown circus, just outrageous claims, ridiculous. I don’t want to beat up on any of the people because it is what it is. A lot of people mean well. The physical therapists that go into fitness, everything kind of looks an awful lot like physical therapy and they’re doing rehab movements for strength training, which it’s like, ‘Okay. Yeah.’ However, your kind of leaving some stuff to the side that is even more important. And why would you be doing outward rotation exercises when you don’t have an outward rotation dysfunction? You don’t need to change your tire if you don’t have a flat tire.

Joel Evan: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And so, I looked at the industry and I was like, ‘Ugh, I don’t want to launch a product here.’ So what I did was I took the X3 resistance bands system and I brought it to a bunch of different fitness companies and I said, ‘I’d like to license the intellectual property to you and you guys market this.’ And then, I’ll just work, double down my time with OsteoStrong and stuff like that ‘cause I was already busy. I already had a job. I didn’t need another one. And already inventor of something, already the only guy really speaking about the OsteoStrong technology. And all these guys were like, ‘Oh, you want to make a scientific argument in the fitness space? Forget it. The people in this industry, the fans of fitness are not smart enough. They can’t get it.’ Yeah. And every single company told me the same thing. And I thought, ‘Well, is that really true? Are they not smart enough or are they too lazy to read it?’ ‘Cause there’s a difference there.

Joel Evan: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, when none of them were … they were all afraid of it. They were just like … And they even used the word terrified. In fact-

Joel Evan: You say they, who do you mean?

Dr. John Jaquish: I shouldn’t name names ‘cause they-

Joel Evan: Or I mean what industry are we talking about? Like what-

Dr. John Jaquish: Fitness.

Joel Evan: Fitness.

Dr. John Jaquish: They’re all fitness industry.

Joel Evan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, actually one of them was Dave. He doesn’t mind me mentioning-

Joel Evan: Dave Asprey?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I was like, ‘Dave, we could market this under … We call it Bulletproof Bar.’ And he was like, ‘Honestly, I’m terrified of the audience that this would be going to. You don’t understand- ‘

Joel Evan: Wow. His whole platform is disruption though.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yes. But Biohacking people are very different than bodybuilding.com people.

Joel Evan: That’s true. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And while at first, I was told the bodybuilding.com people were too stupid, I think it’s really more like it’s just taking the time. And why would they take the time? They’re bombarded with ridiculous marketing all the time. So, it’s really easy to be dismissive about something new. But what happened was, so I ended up launching the product myself and I had to be the spokesperson, which sucked ‘cause I wasn’t even in shape. The first couple ads, I was fat and small. I had skinny arms and, yeah, I didn’t have a gut, but I just looked soft and-

Joel Evan: That’s right ‘cause I bought the product, like I said, two and a half years ago, close to when it first launched. And I don’t remember that of you. I don’t remember that-

Dr. John Jaquish: If you look back now-

Joel Evan: Yeah, I know look-

Dr. John Jaquish: If you’re seeing me now and you look back, you’d go, ‘Oh, wow. That’s a huge difference.’ And you can see my before and after pictures on the website anyway. So, the funny part was I had no plan. I wasn’t comfortable being out of shape. I just I was flying 200,000 miles a year-

Joel Evan: crosstalk.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because of OsteoStrong and speaking at all kinds of conferences and yeah, I mean I was eating ketogenic-ish, but if you’re in an airport in Austria, you got pastries, chocolate or beer. That’s all they serve. Oh, maybe some sausages, but all kinds of processed crap in there. So seriously, I don’t know what Austria has against people being healthy, but they really are. They decided a long time ago, no one’s going to be health here.

Joel Evan: I mean we talked about that. There was beer, these things are amazing. These aren’t … We wish we could get healthy that way.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah. Right, right. Yeah, but you can’t.

Joel Evan: You can’t.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So, I decided to launch it myself and I was like, ‘I got to get in really good shape. And I got to practice what I preach.’ And the funny thing is I would see guys who were out of shape buying the product and they’re like, ‘Thank you so much for wrapping this product yourself being an out of shape guy.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, I guess that’s a compliment. I guess I should be happy.’

Joel Evan: I mean to do that, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. It was funny. I mean I laughed about it because I was, I was not like anybody you would expect to represent something that’s like, ‘Hey, you want to get really healthy and strong? This is it,’ and then I was not healthy or strong, but I got there pretty quick. In the first six months, I got a lot bigger. I put on 30 pounds of muscle the first year. And I mean that was ridiculous. I was like I would hardly wear a shirt and have to replace it-

Joel Evan: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because my neck was getting bigger, yeah, everything, everything was just responding so well. And so, all the theoretical stuff … ‘cause you design something, it’s on paper. A lot of things look good on paper and just don’t have a really good practical application, but this did, and I responded so well. And I also took my nutrition seriously, which I would say if anybody makes a mistake with X3 Bar variable resistance training system is they weigh 150 pounds, but they only eat 50 grams of protein a day. And then they eat salads or whatever and think that that’s healthy and the salad’s like nothing, just don’t … You might as well eat a fucking sock.

Joel Evan: It’s air.

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean there’s not a lot of nutritional value in there.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s air, it’s water or whatever. So, I just-

Joel Evan: Real quick, you put 30 pounds of muscle on that first year.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Joel Evan: Now, fast forward, which is two and a half years later, you put on 60 pounds of muscle so-

Dr. John Jaquish: Total 60. So, the next two years, I combined-

Joel Evan: Which is insane. So, for you, when you would put on 30 pounds, what was your diet? Were you doing like keto-ish or was there-

Dr. John Jaquish: It was like the Bulletproof Diet.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Minus a lot of the vegetables because it’s funny, you read the first 75% of the Bulletproof Diet and it’s like meat, fats are not that bad for you.

Joel Evan: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: High cholesterol will actually make you live longer. The bad cholesterol, low density lipoprotein, LDL, which we were told was bad is now indicated for living longer. So totally the opposite. It’s amazing when the patents on the statin drugs expired, it was just like, ‘Oh, yeah, everything we told you, yeah, that was all wrong,’ which is where still the anti-meat, the vegan people, they still rely on research that’s been disproven for 20 years so-

Joel Evan: Which reminds me, and we talk about the dumb bodybuilders, right, but I almost feel like it’s not their fault because I think about the same thing-

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, they’re told the wrong stuff for like their whole life, yeah.

Joel Evan: They’re told the wrong stuff, their whole life, just like saturated fat and just like these other BS studies, man.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, yeah, they’re eating, their protein is like garbage quality whey. By the way, there’s no such thing as high-quality whey protein. Whey is literally trash. In fact, the story of whey protein, it’s … I don’t know how to pronounce his name. It’s Dan Duchaine or Duchaine. I don’t know how to pronounce it.

Joel Evan: Yeah, I know what you’re talking about.

Dr. John Jaquish: He died a while ago probably running one of his own experiments. He was kind of a crazy biochemist, but he would go to milk producers and he would be like, ‘All that whey stuff that you guys are literally throwing in the trash, can I have it?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, take it. It’s garbage. It costs us less for you to take it.’ And then he came out with designer whey protein.

Joel Evan: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. He called it a high end … Probably it was literally trash.

Joel Evan: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: And it has very low usability by the body. You can digest it; you digest a hundred percent of it.

Joel Evan: And that’s bioavailability, is that what we’re talking about when somebody says digestible?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, I don’t like that term because I’m talking about utilization. So, you can digest a lot of things that do horrible shit to your body, but-

Joel Evan: Yeah, you’re still digesting it.

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re still digesting them. It’s the usability. So, 18% of anything that’s whey derived is going to be used, has got the proper ratios of essential amino acids. That’s what really counts, the essential amino acids. So, they’re sucking up whey protein, which also has no fat in it, usually has some sugar in it though.

Joel Evan: Of course.

Dr. John Jaquish: And then, they have like dried chicken breasts and they never get satiated because there’s no fats.

Joel Evan: Yep.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so, they’re hungry and they’re bloated and they’re angry and, yeah, it’s an awful way to live and they’re eating like six meals a day like that, gross. And not producing the right results.

Joel Evan: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And now, I’m eating one meal every 48 hours and I’m leaner and I’m stronger, yeah.

Joel Evan: Every 48 hours, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So really, really-

Joel Evan: Wow. I thought you were doing like just a once a day meal, but you skip crosstalk

Dr. John Jaquish: Right now, I am ‘cause I’m trying to … I hit a size goal and then, I got a little soft in there, like platters of rib-eyes, 4,000 calories a day, that’s over my basal metabolic rate plus activity. So now, I’m just trying to get a little bit leaner and stay around 240.

Joel Evan: Wow. Talk real quick about fasting and why you can … I mean you’re super muscular. So, talk about why, and I know you just mentioned fasting, talk about why fasting can actually build muscle ‘cause I don’t think … The idea again is got to eat every six, two hours. I got to keep pounding in protein.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right, right. So, I think my team and I actually discovered something, and I knew this was out there because I called a guy, we worked together, and he’s like the smartest guy I know. His name is Henry. He’s a co-author on the book that we have coming out. And I said, ‘Look, there’s never been a study that says fasting is anabolic. It’s anti-catabolic. You don’t lose muscle because growth hormone goes up when you fast.’ I said, ‘But my experience, I’m growing faster the more I fast.’ So, the more often I go through a long time-restricted eating window, the more size I’m putting on and the leaner I’m getting. It’s just …

And I’ll see people like here in San Francisco, especially during coronavirus period, I haven’t been hanging out here much. I’ve been staying up by my office. So, some of my friends I see like every two weeks and they look at me and they’re like, ‘You look like you’re in way better shape than last time. And the last time, you were already a mutant. So, what’s going on?’ And I’m like, ‘The only thing I really changed was my fasting protocol.’

So, what I did was I called Henry and I said, ‘Do a literature review on every fasting study that’s ever been done.’ And this guy is really patient and really focused so he’s like the right guy to do this ‘cause most people would just not want to read a stack of papers that are not particularly exciting and all the same, by the way. Right. So-

Joel Evan: But he’s like ‘Let’s go through it.’

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: ‘Let’s get into it.’

Dr. John Jaquish: And so, what ended up happening, I said, ‘Look for something where … They’re all tracking body mass, lean mass and fat mass, all of these studies. Find one where the fasting group had lean mass go up and they actually address it where they say like, we don’t know why lean mass is going up.’ And he’s like, ‘That’s really specific, man. I don’t think we’re going to find that.’ And I said, ‘The chances are slim, but I’m seeing it’ and since they track body mass in all these studies and sure enough, it’s there.

Joel Evan: Really?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. There was one study that did every other day eating and it’s like just for some reason, and these people didn’t even work out. They did no exercise whatsoever and they were gaining muscle mass. So what the theory, and I talk about this in much more depth in the book and give the details on like how exactly they triggered it in the study and how I’ve been triggering it, but so what we’re looking at is a super anabolic acceleration at the end of a fasting period, which kind of makes sense. It’s like, okay, so the central nervous system is saying, ‘Okay, we couldn’t get a meal. We couldn’t catch that water buffalo or whatever. So, we need to be stronger. So, we need to have a greater anabolic utility.’

And also keep in mind, there’s growth factors that we don’t even know about. And they’re discovering them all the time and doing … There’s a journal of IGF1 and other growth factors and that journal exists for reporting of other growth factors. So, when we’re looking at what happened to these people, yeah, they kept the weight off. They lost more body fat than the calorie-restricted group. The calorie restricted group, of course, lost muscle ‘cause that’s what happens no matter how upset people get on the internet. So, they lost more fat, but they gained more muscle and neither the control group nor the test group were exercising at all.

Joel Evan: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So-

Joel Evan: Is there anybody else … That’s only one study though, huh?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s the only study he was mentioning, yeah.

Joel Evan: Is there anybody else that you know that’s doing a similar program to you as far as nutrition and stuff that’s not getting the same results?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Of course.

Joel Evan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I got a whole network of people that they’re on the user’s group, but they don’t talk about what, ‘Hey, I want you to try this.’ And I mean it’s not too tough to figure out who’s doing it. ‘Cause the super responders, the people who I know are using the product right, especially the ones who are inventing their own really dumb exercises that are just counterproductive, which-

Joel Evan: Such as what? ‘Cause that is a question I’ve gotten a lot is can you ask him if there’s more exercises we can do or other ones …

Dr. John Jaquish: You know any motorcycle people, like people who get Harleys-

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. People get a Harley, and they can’t wait to fuck it up. They can’t wait to …

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS

Dr. John Jaquish: They can’t wait to fuck it up. They can’t wait to rearrange the thing. Right? Like, ‘Oh, I got to make it custom’. And making it a custom is just ruining it. Right?

Joel Evan: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s just like, ‘Just leave it the way it is.’ The people who designed these things, they know what looks good and you don’t, so stop it. You wouldn’t buy a suit, and cut the sleeve off, and just stitch a red sleeve on, because it looks cool. You’d never do that. Why do people want to screw up certain things? In exercise programming, for some reason, people just have a hard on for wrecking something that was really well thought out. So, it’s like, ‘I’m going to do this, but I’m also going to do a CrossFit program. And I’m also going to do this. And I’m to going to get five times the results.’ No, you don’t understand physiology, you don’t understand biochemistry, you don’t understand nutrition, and you going to get nothing. I actually ran into a person who said to me, ‘I’m doing ketogenic nutrition, but also the Mediterranean diet.’ And I thought about it. And this person was overweight, of course. Because you know where this is going.

Joel Evan: Yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: Basically, they liked the fat that they can eat from the ketogenic nutrition so they can eat as much cheese as they want. And they love that the Mediterranean diet says, ‘Oh, you can eat as much bread as you want.’ So, what does this person eat? Pizza all day long. And they’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m not getting a lot of results out of my combined diet.’ Right, because you don’t understand what you’re doing.

Joel Evan: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: You just shot yourself in the foot. It’s like the stupidest idea, that somebody would have ever heard if they understand the underlying science, which… And I think, and so when I launched this product, to circle back to when I launched the product myself. Within the first few days, we pivoted from people with an interest in fitness, to people with an interest in optimizing their time.

Joel Evan: Yeah. I mean, that was where I fell in.

Dr. John Jaquish: Busy professionals and executives. That is who we target that at. We don’t target it at bodybuilders. I mean, first of all, a bodybuilder with $500 is unheard of. So yeah, and you know who I heard that from is a bunch of bodybuilders. In fact, the enhanced athlete guys, who I do some videos with, they’re like, ‘People threatened to kill us because we’re selling a supplement, a supplement bottle for $35.’ And they’re like, ‘Where am I supposed to get $35?’ And I’m like, ‘Really? How do you feed yourself? What happens if you break a shoelace? You just go without shoes? How do you…’ And so, yeah, it’s a very different market. And there’s a reason why Planet Fitness is $9 month.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I mean, there’s clearly a market there, where, no matter how filthy the gym is, no matter how bad the employees are, no matter how stupid the policy is, because the policy is real stupid at Planet Fitness-

Joel Evan: I’ve never been.

Dr. John Jaquish: If you grunt, you get kicked out.

Joel Evan: The $9 always made me wary.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yeah. Oh, right.

Joel Evan: Yeah, that’s why I just… Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. You wouldn’t eat a $1 steak?

Joel Evan: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Clearly, it’s probably not grass fed. Probably not anything I want to put in my body. It might even be made out of cardboard. I’m not sure, it might even be a photograph of a steak. So, we just switched away from that market completely. And I had already been talking to some people at bodybuilding.com about buying some advertising there. And I was like, ‘Never mind.’ And then we got an article in Business Insider, and in Entrepreneur magazine, and sales were great. And by the way, there’s a lot more executives who want to be in shape, or in better shape than they are, because some of them were pretty fit, but they don’t read the Generation Iron or bodybuilding.com type stuff, because they’re looking for a more scientific approach. Also, the word science is so overused in the fitness industry. Everybody says the thing is scientific.

So, there’ll be like a website that sells whey protein and it’ll have a couple paragraphs of ridiculous claims, and then it’ll have 10 references. And you read the references, and it’s just about how protein is important. They don’t put the reference next to the comment that is controversial. They just put a list of references at the bottom. Anytime you see that, you’re probably being lied to. Just references at the bottom, as opposed to references attached to specific claims. So, I do it like a scientist does it. Like, ‘Here’s a very bold claim, but here’s the reference that explains that bold claim, and it’s right there, right after that sentence,’ because that’s the way to do scientific referencing. So, I’m always focused on presenting it right, because I do make bold claims, so I have to. I have to do it right. Next question.

Joel Evan: So, talk to us about the book.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay.

Joel Evan: Tell us the title and then, I mean there’s just-

Dr. John Jaquish: You really want me to say the title.

Joel Evan: I do. I do want you to say the title, and just tell us what’s all in there. What are you packing in there?

Dr. John Jaquish: So, it is very thorough. It is a 300-page book, with 250 academic references. There’s the foreword, was written by Forrest Griffin. So former Light Heavyweight Champion of the World, we have the-

Joel Evan: How do you run into Forrest, by the way? What’s your connection with him?

Dr. John Jaquish: Trained together with X3 Bar resistance band training system, just talking about injury prevention. And for a guy like him, who, I think he’s had five orthopedic surgeries. So, he’s got a lot of joint pain, and people who want to avoid joint pain, X3 Bar resistance band bar system is awesome for them, because it offloads the joint when the joint is at the greatest position of risk. And it hyper loads the joint when the joint is in the position of efficiency. So, he has no pain when using the Elite band in a chest press. So, he can train just like I do, but I have no injury whatsoever my shoulders, and he has incredible injury. And so, all of a sudden, he’s like, ‘I can actually just train again, I can actually get stronger.’ So, we-

Joel Evan: Yeah. I noticed that too for myself. Since I’ve had it, no injuries. And that’s one of the reasons why, as I get older and stuff with my kids, it’s like I’m tired of being-

Dr. John Jaquish: You want to be the super dad.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: You want to be the dad who goes to the soccer practice, who can pick up your kid, and throw them in the air, and all the other dads are like, ‘I can’t do that.’ Yeah. That’s going to feel awesome when that happens. So that’s how Forrest got involved. But also, blurb endorsements from somebody we work with at NASA, from the head strength coach of the Miami HEAT. So, Miami HEAT uses X3 Bar resistance band bar system. They’ve gone away from weights.

Joel Evan: I feel like if you’re an MMA fighter, or any athlete, maybe not any athlete, but it just makes so much sense because, correct me if I’m wrong-

Dr. John Jaquish: Any strength athlete.

Joel Evan: Yeah. I mean, I used to box a lot, I used to do a lot of martial arts. I was always trying to find a balance when I was lifting weights. From weights, cardio, and then I got to go train, I got to go hit the bag, I got to do Jiu Jitsu or whatever. And it’s a lot. It’s just taxing on your body. And I was always confused. Like, ‘What should I be doing?’ Now, if I had to go do it again, I’m like, ‘Man, you know what? I’d get my strength from X3 Bar exercise band bar system, not be sore. And then I go do my sports specific training.’

Dr. John Jaquish: Of course.

Joel Evan: And I’d be great. I mean, do you see? I mean, right? Am I making sense? Or…

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re making complete sense, and what I love about pro athletes… By the way, we got another five NFL players to switch completely during coronavirus time. And they just were like, ‘Hey. Can you help me out? Can you give me some personal advice?’ They wanted to speak with me about how this would optimize them for the NFL. Because they don’t want to just buy it, and run experiments themselves, because if they get hurt, it could mean a $40 million contract.

Joel Evan: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So, they really want to be careful. So, I gave them all, some personal help. And what I love about pro athletes is they don’t care how much they bench. They care what they do on the field, because that is what they are paid for. So, they don’t have these absolutely idiotic ideas about how they have to bench X so they can talk about it on the internet with the other chubby people who bench a lot, or whatever. I just see these dick measuring contests going on. And it’s just so ridiculous. You guys are hurting yourselves; you’re using sloppy form just so you can say you do X. And your peer group is just as screwed up as you are. Forget about all that. Be stronger. Don’t exercise so you can talk about it. Because then it becomes a different activity that becomes very dangerous.

If we want to talk about longevity, if we want to talk about how we’re going to continue to get stronger for the next five years, the next three is the only thing we’re going to talk about. We’re not going to be talking about lifting the same weight here, where we are completely inefficient, and damaging our joints chronically, than we would here, because the weight here is irrelevant in this position with a static weight. So, it just doesn’t make any sense. And the pro athletes, they don’t care about that stuff at all.

Joel Evan: They want results.

Dr. John Jaquish: Exactly. They want the result. They don’t care what the path is to get there. And the NBA, they’re really funny guys, because they’re all embarrassed of their squat numbers, and their bench press numbers. Because when your arm is eight inches longer than my arm, your bench press is not going to be impressive.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s just very inefficient.

Joel Evan: Were the Miami HEAT, were their minds blown when you showed them the X3 Bar resistance band bar system? Where they open, or like, ‘No way. Come on man?’

Dr. John Jaquish: Better than that. It was refreshed. It was like, ‘Oh, we’ve been looking for this.’

Joel Evan: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. Also, I think that pro athletes, now keep in mind, bodybuilders rarely have actual coaches, because there’s not a lot of money in the industry. So, a lot of these guys, somebody told me the top 10 bodybuilders in the world, they don’t even make a million dollars a year, even with endorsements and everything.

Joel Evan: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. In fact, some of the physique models make more money than the pro body builders.

Joel Evan: Oh really?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s more interesting. Women watch it. Women don’t watch pro body building. Women watch the physique competitions, because those guys look like underwear models. They are.

Joel Evan: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So, these guys… Where was I going with this?

Joel Evan: Sorry. So, we were talking about the book. This all started from the book. Yeah, yeah. So…

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I mean, the athletes and the strength coaches. They also trust the strength coaches, because strength coaches are highly knowledgeable. So, when a strength coach says, ‘This is what you ought to do.’ And the guys in the Strength Coaching Association, they will say, ‘We’ve been telling our players, ‘Hey, we’re doing some stuff at the gym, at the stadium, but check out X3 Bar fitness band bar system, because I don’t think you can get hurt with this thing.’‘ And that’s really the comment I’ve heard from strength coaches is you can run some experiments with this because this is really hard to get hurt with it.

Joel Evan: That’s true. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And so, that’s a better endorsement than saying it’s better than weightlifting, because if it’s better than weightlifting, and more dangerous than weightlifting, then who cares? Because these guys can’t put themselves at risk. They’re worth too much money.

Joel Evan: Yeah. I think the only one time I hurt myself with X3 Bar portable home gym was doing the dead lift, and the-

Dr. John Jaquish: You let go of it?

Joel Evan: Yeah. The bar, it was my last rep, I knew I was squeezing one last one out. And the bar just slipped out of my hands, and landed on my foot, but that could happen regular with weightlifting.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yeah.

Joel Evan: People do way worse.

Dr. John Jaquish: People drop weights on themselves all the time. The difference is when this thing comes catapulting towards you, it doesn’t really have any weight on it. It has momentum. So, some people do the stupid grip when they do this bench press.

Joel Evan: Oh, yeah. What they call the monkey grip or something. I don’t know.

Dr. John Jaquish: Suicide grip.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. I call it a stupid grip because only a stupid person would do it. The bar slides off the hand and nails them in the chest. Well, when you’re using the Elite band with the bar, it’s, for a 6-foot-tall person, it’s 540 pounds at the top. But when it hits your chest, it’s not 540 pounds, because the elastomer has contracted. And it’s really just the momentum of it falling at a higher speed. So, the bar weighs nine pounds, and it whacks you, it doesn’t feel good. But it’s not like dropping a 500-pound bar on yourself.

Joel Evan: Right, right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. Not at all. You just go, ‘Ow.’ And-

Joel Evan: It sucks, and it was like, ‘Ow.’

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And then you do the rest of your workout. You’re fine.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: Exactly. So, coming back real quick. So, title the book, you got to tell us the title.

Dr. John Jaquish: Title is Weightlifting Is A Waste of Time and So Is Cardio.

Joel Evan: Can’t wait. This going to piss people off. It’s going to be completely disruptive in a good way though.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Controversy gets tension. But I believe that. I believe weightlifting is a waste of time. Now that I have that there’s no amount of weights… And I get invited to some world class gyms, whatever training center, the UFC Performance Institute. And they’ve got state of the art everything. And it’s like, ‘What do you want to try?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I got my X3 Bar variable resistance training system, so nothing. You have nothing that I want to try here.’ Because I can point out what’s either not relevant, or not important. It doesn’t mean that every piece of equipment is dumb. It just means that it’s not going to give me what my very elegant, very simple system will give me. Just, it won’t.

Joel Evan: What about, someone asked me this question. Ask them about different, I don’t know. I’m thinking bilateral movements or something for your running gait, or quote, unquote. I know you hate this, functional training, and I’m thinking-

Dr. John Jaquish: Most overused word in fitness.

Joel Evan: … rotational. Rotational exercises, the maze, the club, this… The X3 workout bar system doesn’t capture all that. What would you say crosstalk?

Dr. John Jaquish: It depends on what you’re doing. In writing online, I have to be pretty brief. So sometimes I might come off like everything other than what I invented is just stupid and forget about it. That’s not actually how I feel. That’s how I want people to be focused who are on that group, because typically, those are just average guys who… They’re not participating in any sport. You want to be lean and strong, and those are your priorities. You’re not trying to be a ballerina. If you want to be a ballerina, then you’ve got to do some other stuff. You got to be strong also, X3 Bar resistance band training system would be great for a ballerina. And I think these guys, it’s like the customization with the motorcycle example. It’s like they just can’t wait to mess with it. And then they’ll throw something in there, like maze work, and unless you’re swinging a golf club…

Joel Evan: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Even then, I mean, when you swing a golf club, you swing a golf club. So, you’re working on your rotation right there. So, do you really need extra rotation? Do you need to add heavy rotation, and screw up your golf swing? Because you can do that too. So, unless you’re seeing a coach for specific type of movement, and also X3 Bar resistance band bar system is for developing muscular size power output, the efficiency of switching cells on, from a neurological perspective. You’re using a lot more muscle cells when you’re doing your X3 Bar than any other type of training. So, you’re training the body to switch on more. That doesn’t mean its skill training. So if you’ve got to balance yourself on a balance beam, or if you’re a pitcher, and you want to be able to transfer your weight faster from back foot to front foot, there’s drills for that. And there’re other things you can do for that. And that’s great but see a coach for that. That’s not X3 Bar fitness band bar system. And also, the people who are asking these questions, 99,9% of the time, are not pitchers, or ballerinas, or have anything to do with any of that stuff. Just stop looking at videos on the internet that are like, ‘You really need rotation.’

Joel Evan: Yes, yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: Why? Yeah. And that’s my question. Why do you think you need that?

Joel Evan: Yeah, yeah. And there’s something to be said about these big compound lifts, which like dead lifts, squat. X3 Bar resistance band bar system captures that. And so-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: …it’s going to be the foundation of every-

Dr. John Jaquish: The stabilization muscles are totally activated, and working, and growing. So, it’s not like you’re missing out on a part of the body from a training and growth perspective. But it doesn’t cover all skill development. And also, somebody who’s a great fighter is not necessarily going to be a great pitcher, even though the same muscles are being used. You can’t throw a hundred mile an hour fast ball by doing boxing training. So, what are you going to do? Everything? You’re going to do one day of boxing, and one day of learning how to throw a baseball? And well, don’t you want to be ambidextrous? Well, throw some left handers. I mean, you can go down the path of functional training where you can do so many things, you can hardly sleep, or use the restroom, because you want to be well rounded functionally. No. Just forget about that, unless you really need to do one of those things.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. But also, equestrian athletes are very well balanced on a horse. They’re not trying to be baseball pitchers, even though both activities are functional. It’s specific. So, if you want to do something specific, great. Do your X3 Bar resistance band bar system and go do that.

Joel Evan: Yeah. And that’s always been my thought.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. You got it right.

Joel Evan: Yeah. So, talk to me about I’ve heard you talk about micro tears in the muscle. And I want to know about really, we talked a lot about the X3 Bar variable resistance training system, but I don’t think we said really why it works. And the belief, at least always, since I was 18, and started picking up weights, and lifting is that you got to tear the muscle. So, you got to do three sets of eight, tear the muscle, so that these micro tears occur. And then the muscle rebuilds. X3 Bar resistance band training system is not doing any of that, correct?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: So, if X3 Bar exercise band bar system is not doing that, how am I getting big?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s because that’s not how you get big. Yeah, the micro tears have nothing to do with growth. In fact, the more micro tears you have, the less growth you have, because the protein synthesis has to attenuate the damage before it creates any growth. And this has been well studied. And muscle biopsy studies, it is the closest thing. There is no such thing as definitive science. So, when people say the science is settled, those are morons. There’s no such thing as settled science. But closest thing we’re going to get to it is tissue biopsy studies, multiple studies that came to the same conclusion. So, it’s when you stop damaging the muscle that you have the maximum amount of growth. Right?

Joel Evan: But that’s-

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, but marathon runners have more micro tears than bodybuilders do in their quadriceps. But marathon runners, they got legs that look like twigs.

Joel Evan: Yeah. crosstalk.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So, they’re not growing from that. If we want to look at micro tears, let’s go the other direction. Let’s look at people who grow nothing, who are actually shrinking muscle, and getting tons of micro tears. So, a marathon runner, all they get is the repaired tissue. They don’t grow anything.

Joel Evan: Yeah. But X3 portable gym, you’re getting suburb results. So how is X3 Bar resistance band training system building a muscle?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a higher level of fatigue. Fatigue and damage are two different things. And the more you fatigue, the more the neural inhibitory process starts shutting muscles off and saying, ‘No, we’re not doing this anymore.’ It’s the shutoff. It’s the involuntary shutoff. When people ask what really fatigue is, it’s when you’re pushing a muscle, and it’s shutting down, despite your greatest efforts. You cannot do anything to keep it going. It’s shutting down, and then we do diminishing range. So, when I’m doing a chest press. I’m going, just about this cadence, two to three seconds up, two to three seconds down. And then I can’t get to the top anymore. Then I shorten the range, and I’m doing half reps. Because I’m only, instead of 540 pounds here, I’m doing 300-pound peak force reps here. And then I can’t get there anymore. And then the last couple may only be like an inch, but I’ve fatigued all ranges of motion.

Joel Evan: Why is that important, fatiguing all ranges of motion? What is it?

Dr. John Jaquish: Because well, in certain movements, different parts of the muscle are firing. Like squats, the glutes are firing more, and the quads are firing more, depending on your position. You don’t need to worry about it, just as long as you fatigue all ranges of motion. We can go way in the biomechanics weeds, but ultimately, as long as you’re fatiguing all ranges of motion at the appropriate weight. One of the hardest parts of developing X3 Bar portable home gym was coming up with variance that was appropriate, because all bands we came across was just too weak.

Joel Evan: You’ve mentioned that, and saying there’s a difference between the latex, and I’m sure a lot of people, ‘Well, I’ll just go out and buy a rubber one.’ And you’re like, ‘Nah.’

Dr. John Jaquish: No, no. It’s petroleum rubber. And the funny thing about the petroleum ones is they get longer every time you use them.

Joel Evan: Yeah. They stretch out.

Dr. John Jaquish: They stretch out, right. So, you think you’re getting stronger. No, you’re just screwing up your band.

Joel Evan: crosstalk the band. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, the layered latex is really important. We did a couple things to make them harder and stronger than others that were out there. Nobody had ever tried to do that before, because if you use an X3 Bar resistance band training system band by itself to do a pushup, you could break your wrist. I mean, there’s some really irresponsible people who every once in a while, try and do that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Really irresponsible people, who every once in a while, try and do that. And I really try and encourage them don’t do that, because if you look at the human hand, there’s more bone structure on this side than there is on this side, if you discount the thumb, which you don’t want to load the thumb.

So, you’re doing this and it’s not … The mirror images of both sides are very different, structurally. And so, if you have an uneven load, it’s going to twist your wrist. So, I see people … When people do push-ups with bands, you’re either going so light, you’re not stimulating any growth at all, and this is true with any band on the exercise, or you’re going heavy enough to damage joints. And you’re just damaging them in a different way than weights do.

So, humans’ interface … The smallest bones in our body, other than the ones in our inner ear, are in the wrist and in the ankles. And those are the two things that band only training will screw up, unless you have a second ground to stand on, like with inaudible.

Joel Evan: That’s the inaudible.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, and then a bar, which our hands interface with bars really well, especially one bar. The strongest people in the world use barbells, not dumbbells.

Joel Evan: Yeah, because I’ve seen people saying, ‘Why don’t you have a dumbbell version?’ And yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and I would’ve much rather developed that. That would have been way cheaper, way cheaper to build, way cheaper to market, way cheaper to sell. It’d be more saleable. However, not the way the body works.

If you’re going to push something really heavy or pick up something really heavy, you’re not going to use one hand. You’re going to use both hands.

Joel Evan: When one hand is firing, isn’t the other one … Isn’t there a cross extensor reflex that like engages, anyways?

Dr. John Jaquish: A balancing reflex, of course.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Try doing a dumbbell bench press with just one arm, and having nothing in the other arm, you’ll fall right off the bench. Your body, it’s got to be balanced.

Now, legs are the opposite. Unless you’re a kangaroo, you walk on one leg at a time and you run on one leg at a time. So loading one leg at a time makes more sense than loading both legs at a time, but when it comes to anything with the upper body, you got to be hanging on with both hands to the same structure.

I see these cheapo band handles and it’s just like, it’s a garbage workout and your wrists are still getting twisted. I try, probably half the time, just throw those things in that trash. Don’t use that. Use the bar, use it right.

Joel Evan: Let me ask you this, because we were talking about this. When one time I was living with X3 Bar resistance band bar system and I posted on Instagram in my stories or something, and a buddy sees what I posted. He does his research goes to X3 Bar fitness band bar system, whatever bar.com, then texts me back and says, ‘You were lifting with that? Why is that shit so expensive?’

I didn’t even want to go there with them. What do you tell people, though? You’re like, ‘Okay, backwards hat wearing person.’ I didn’t want to go there with them, but I am curious.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Well, this cut costs a couple hundred dollars to manufacture. It’s a problem with the internet, actually. It’s not just fitness people are the sideways hat guys or whatever. You’ll see all the time, something horrible about Apple being like an evil company, because it only costs $5 to make an iPhone, and they charge 800. Actually, it costs $500 to make the iPhone 11 and they charge $800, and they market it and they ship it to you or the ship it to the store, and they got distribution. They got a whole army of people they got to pay. So, they may be making 15% on an iPhone.

Joel Evan: Mr. Wonderful, from shark tank, wouldn’t be buying it that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, he exaggerates margins for attention, because he wants to be seen like he’s the Emperor from Star Wars when it comes to margins. He’s an entertainer. It’s like when Donald Trump ran the apprentice. He was supposed to fire people, that was his job. So, he wasn’t supposed to be a nice person. Just so happens that he’s good at not being a nice person all the time, it’s just so natural.

Being nice and being effective are not mutually exclusive at all. You guys should probably write that down.

Joel Evan: I’m glad I just got that life advice.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m your life coach.

Joel Evan: Thank you.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, that costs a couple hundred dollars to make. So, the idea that somebody posts, ‘Oh, this costs $5 to make.’ It’s like these people don’t know anything.

First of all, by seeing a small picture of it, they don’t know that, unlike an actual Olympic bar, an Olympic bar is hollow. This is a solid steel core, and that’s what links both hooks in the rotation. So, this is actually a solid unit. Exterior is anodized aluminum and the best knurling you’ll ever get ahold of. And you can see, my calluses, they’re awesome.

If I get shot, I hope I get shot right there, because nothing’s going to happen to me.

Then, it’s a solid steel core, so everything on the exterior is aluminum and it’s shiny, it’s beautiful. And like I wanted to create … It is the most powerful thing you’re going to use to develop your body. I wanted it to feel like a light saber, like something that’s just dynamite, ‘Wow, I feel so good hanging on this thing.’

Like an iPhone, you pick up an iPhone … When you first get your new iPhone, you’re like, ‘Oh, this is so …’ It feels so tight, it feels so solid, it feels like the thing is just cast in one material.

Joel Evan: The cool thing, too. I heard you were talking about that all your manufacturing is done in the US. That’s kind of cool.

Dr. John Jaquish: Not the bands. It doesn’t rain here enough off to have a tree-based latex, because all the latex is grown in trees. So, the rubber tree needs … These basically live in a swamp and we just don’t, even Florida doesn’t have the rainfall for latex trees for creating latex.

So those are made offshore, every … Not only is that made in the United States, but every part is made in the United States, as well. So that’s tremendous.

Also, coincidentally, during the coronavirus, most of the manufacturers, all of them, except for one just kept going. They were like, ‘No, this is essential. People need to be fit.’ In fact, that actually defeats the Corona virus. So, they told all the local officials were in essential business and they were like, ‘Okay, you are. Fitness is really important.’

Especially because who were they’re interfacing with? Law enforcement. Does law enforcement think fitness is important? Yeah, they really do. So, it was great. And we only have one part that that’s been behind, which is why we’ve been backordered for a little bit, but it’s okay. That’s about to end.

Joel Evan: Cool.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: What are you doing, by the way, for coronavirus, as far as just anything you’re doing specifically to just keep your immune system in peak performance?

Dr. John Jaquish: I just don’t watch the news. because it’s really not a real thing. It’s not really a threat hardly at all. In the very beginning … Well, I did a Newsmax piece back when everybody thought it was fecal transference, like hepatitis, and I was like, why are we worried about something … It turns out it’s not that, but it was very early days when the disease first came out.

For coronavirus, I don’t want to be dismissive, but we see that it affects overweight, diabetic, COPD, emphysema and elderly people who have those comorbidities. So really, it’s affecting people who are pretty sick already. So, when they say … There’s some memes that are going around that are pretty funny, like man gets attacked by shark dies of coronavirus. It shows a shark coming out of the water. And the reason they’re saying that is because somebody with 40 years of emphysema dies …

We were counting people as coronavirus deaths before there was a test. So, they would just be like, coronavirus. It’s like, well maybe the fact that he’s been smoking for 80 years, since he was in elementary school, the guy’s been smoking. He’s had emphysema for half his life, maybe that’s the problem. But no, no, no. It’s Coronavirus.

I ask people, ‘Do you know anybody who’s died?’ And they’re like, ‘Well, no, I know some people who had it.’ Anybody here know anybody who’s died? There’s a room full of people, you guys can’t see. There’s a whole party here.

Joel Evan: Shh.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, quiet guys.

There’s so many people who know someone who’s had it. I have some friends in New York, they both had it. It was a couple; they gave it to each other. The guy, he didn’t even know he had it and, and the female, she felt lousy and then they got tested and sure enough, he had the antibodies and she had it. And they went home, and chilled out in front of the TV, and didn’t eat any junk food and oh, hemoglobin A1C score gets better and it’s gone.

So, I’m 0% worried. I’m a hundred percent irritated. I showed up on Newsmax before this thing … We even knew anything about it. And I said, ‘Nobody should worry about this.’ And the reason I said that is because I’m playing the odds, because how many pandemics have, we had where the news, which by the way, is in the business of selling advertising space. So, they’re all making more money the more people are tuned in.

So, everything is a crisis. Everything’s a bigger deal than it really is. How many times have we told the sea levels are going to rise and all port towns are going to be underwater?

Joel Evan: Global warming.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. I think NBC said Manhattan would be completely submerged in water by 2015. Jimmy Carter said the world would be out of oil, and I think in 1986. Why does the news media pick up on that, because it’s sensational, it’s keeping you glued to the TV. So just stop watching the news. Don’t believe the hype.

I really haven’t done anything for it, but hemoglobin A1C scores four, which is super healthy, like I have an incredible healthy metabolism.

Joel Evan: What other test do you run, because I’m sure people will say, ‘Oh, he’s he says all this, and it says that,’ but can you back it up with like lab results, or what kind of blood or biomarkers do you do a lot of that you’re keeping track of?

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m about a year and a half out from the last lab work I did, because that’s when I went … I had been a couple of months carnivores then, and my LDLs went up, but they didn’t go up by that much. My triglycerides were low, but right at the bottom of normal range. That’s better.

There’s not a lot to check on. Most vitamin levels, I don’t particularly care to track, because I don’t think they make that much of a difference.

Joel Evan: So, you’re not taking like a multivitamin?

Dr. John Jaquish: People who take multivitamins die younger.

Joel Evan: Really?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I think that’s coincidental. I don’t think there’s a cause and effect relationship, but there is a study, it was done on women, specifically, so there’s not a male counterpart, but it’s the only study we have. So, we got to go with it. People who take multivitamins die like two years earlier on average. It’s probably because they take a multivitamin and they think, ‘Oh, I’m healthy.’

Joel Evan: And they eat shit food.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. They use it as an excuse to eat garbage. So, yeah, I don’t think it does anything.

Also, if you were to eat a diet of whole foods, just whole foods, so no supplements, no powders, no nothing. How many calories a day would you need to take in … Foods from all over the world, it doesn’t matter. How many calories a day would you need to take in to get to the recommended daily allotments ascribed by the American medical association? How many calories?

Joel Evan: 40,000, something like that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Great guests, 27,000. So, you need to eat 28 … You need to eat more than an elephant in calories to get your vitamins from food.

So clearly nobody ever ate that way. So, the recommendations are just nonsense, so I don’t pay attention to them. I don’t test them. I know that I feel a better if my vitamin D levels are high, but I spend more time in the sun, even in the wintertime.

When I first started X3 Bar resistance band bar system, I didn’t get a lot of exposure to the sun in the wintertime, because I thought … I hadn’t met Wim Hof yet, and I didn’t realize that cold does not really hurt you. It’s actually a great metabolic accelerator. And so, I got a great picture on Instagram, Julia actually took the photograph, where I’m standing in the snow barefoot, just out for a walk-in like foot deep snow. Was it cold? Yeah, it was cold, but I was getting sun. It was sunny. I was only wearing shorts, no shoes, no shirt, no nothing. So, I get a lot more sun, and now my vitamin D levels are normal, but you know, I’m more like an indigenous person now, because I’m just outside, like wearing not much.

Joel Evan: Which is actually another reason why I love X3 Bar variable resistance training system. I’m always using it outside, and I think … I remember Ben Greenville, I think even there was a study, he had quoted where they said people were actually stronger lifting weights outside. I have no idea. What is it? Is it negative ions or what? I have no idea, but just interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: Vitamin D would be a big contributor, but like I said, there’s growth factors we didn’t even know about yet.

Joel Evan: Wim Hof, is that a guy that you follow a lot of, or do you do any of his breathing like on a regular basis or no?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, but I like cold. I’m into that. I’ll jump into cold water.

A lot of the people with like protocols that you really have to … I don’t have time for that. I’m so busy. I’m working on writing this book. When people read this book and they realize it’s 300 pages with 250 references …

It was a huge undertaking, but I wanted to document the efficacy of X3 Bar exercise band bar system and all the things that go along with it to the point where it’s just irrefutable, and the only people who will argue with it will be the people who didn’t read the book or can’t read.

Joel Evan: That will be a lot of people.

Dr. John Jaquish: Bodybuilding.com. The reason there’s the most fitness content. It’s really funny, like fitness is just like an industry where most of the content exists on YouTube and I’m like, ‘Well, yeah, of course, because these people can’t read,’ or they’re not very good at it. And then sometimes you see the comments, especially like my troll comments, like misspelled the wrong word, like an apostrophe S at the end of every word.

Joel Evan: I haven’t seen that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, you should go read some fitness comments. Yeah, because you’re following body hackers. You’re not really following the fitness people. It’s just amazing.

That’s the industry that, that is, but it’s cool, because that’s not who I’m interested in really engaging with. It’s the busy professional, busy executive.

Joel Evan: Question for you, we’re drinking your Fortagen?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Joel Evan: This stuff is amazing, by the way. This is the first time I’ve had it.

Dr. John Jaquish: You like the taste?

Joel Evan: Yeah, it’s actually really good.

Dr. John Jaquish: I get so many complaints about the taste.

Joel Evan: What’s wrong with it? I enjoy it.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I made that one for you, and that’s probably a 30-ounce glass. So, you probably drank it a little more diluted than some people. Ah, I think I filled it up to about right there.

Joel Evan: I like my stuff strong, but I think it was good.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it tastes a little bit like lemonade and rocket fuel.

Joel Evan: Because I’ve had other brands too, just so you know, other essential amino acid brands. So, I’ve tasted other ones, and this is good.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, this one works.

Joel Evan: Okay, yeah. So, let’s talk about …

Dr. John Jaquish: You guys should probably write that down.

Joel Evan: Write that down.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yep.

Joel Evan: Talk to me about, because I’ve heard you talk about the difference … Again, there’s multiple brands out there that have essential amino acids.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, there’s been essential amino acid products for the last 50 years. The problem is they need to be made in the right way, so the body uses them. We are meant to consume … This isn’t the most appetizing thing, but you’re asking the scientists, so I’m going to give you the truth.

We’re meant to eat rotting stuff. Really, if you and I were in a tribe thousands of years ago, and we had to take down a mammoth, we’d probably eat it for two days. And by the end of that second day, it’s sitting there in the sun, it’s rotting. And the rotting material, our microbiome is able to digest and gets a different level of amino acids out of the rotting material.

So, Fortagen is made out of bacterial fermentation, and again, I know it’s not the most appetizing thing, but what happens is the bacteria goes through the rotting material and then completely dies off and then it’s filtered.

So, all the other non-essential amino acids are filtered out of it. So, you’re just getting the benefit of the fermentation without the actual rotting material.

Joel Evan: I was going to say, it tastes like lime, it doesn’t taste like fermentation.

Dr. John Jaquish: It doesn’t taste like sulfur or anything like that. So, it tastes fine, maybe a strong lemonade taste, but that’s about it. People also tell me it tastes like apples. Did you get apple?

Joel Evan: No.

Dr. John Jaquish: I don’t know, but that’s why we don’t put a flavor on it. It’s just Fortagen. What flavor is this Fortagen flavor?

Joel Evan: It’s just Fortagen.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, we get some people complaining about the flavor, but also, it’s such a powerful anabolic protein, so much better. And also, it’s cheaper. Like anything on the internet, people whine about the price, but if you look at the fact that for each dose of that, that you take, it’s 50 grams of protein you don’t need to eat. Well, any other source of protein of 50 grams …

Keep in mind, 50 grams of whey only really counts, because you got to discount it to 18% of its full value. So that’s nine grams of quality protein you’re getting out of a 50-gram shake. Well, that’s pretty worthless. Why bother taking whey protein? If every 50 grams you take, only nine actually have value.

Joel Evan: …

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s the most cost-effective approach to getting usable protein in the body. I think it’s really … There’s a reason I came out with it. I did the math and I’m like, this is gold.

Joel Evan: Did this help with you for the extra 30 pounds of muscle you put on? Do you think this was a huge factor?

Dr. John Jaquish: It was a huge factor in comfort and convenience of my life, because eating three pounds of meat versus two and a half pounds of meat, but that last half pound is not delicious. I don’t care who cooks it. I don’t care. It could be the best steakhouse in San Francisco. Man, it’s just a lot nicer when you don’t have to consume that extra half pound or you can do two doses of it.

As I’ve been getting leaner, doing more fasting, I’ve been doing two doses a day. So, now there’s a hundred grams I don’t need to worry about.

Joel Evan: Yeah, that’s huge.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: Can you hack fasting? I was curious, could you hack fasting by doing this? Does it keep you a little bit more …? Is it easier to fast, and by doing it, does it also …?

Dr. John Jaquish: It doesn’t screw up the fast. It doesn’t screw up the fast. You need 50 calories to stop autophagy, which is really the barometer of whether the fast is still going. 50 calories. So, if you’re fasting and a moth flies in your mouth, it’s not like, ‘Oh my fast is ruined, damn it. Everything’s screwed up now, I’m going to lose the Mr. Olympia contest.’ No, that’s not going to happen.

Joel Evan: Fortigan is only four, I was just checking.

Dr. John Jaquish: Its four calories. So very, very, very low calorie and it’s just absorbable material. In fact, the broken amino acids, the incomplete proteins are essential. BCAAs don’t do anything, by the way. You might as well eat sand. There’s a lot of science on it, like it’s been disproven for years. I don’t know why people still sell it. It’s just a joke.

You wouldn’t … I’m trying to think of a scam. Nobody would go out and buy snake oil, because it’s literally, it’s a joke. It was a scam product in the 1800s, but they’re still buying BCAAs is for some reason. It’s just totally incomplete, like your body can’t metabolize it. So, it just goes through your system in the form of nitrogen.

Joel Evan: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, you just piss it all out. Take BCAAs and your urine is going to look like beer. It will be all foamy, because there’s the nitrogen that you just took as BCAAs. It just went right through you and didn’t do anything. You need these central ones.

So, when you have the essential ones, especially when you’re in a fast, what’s happening with autophagy is you’re cannibalizing proteins in the body that you’re not using old cells, scar tissue.

So, my fraternity letters are branded into my arm, and that used to stick up by half a millimeter, and it’s been eating itself from the inside, because …

Dr. John Jaquish: And it’s been eating itself from the inside, because of the autophagy, and the Fortagen so the autophagic process is making all … It’s converting all that scar tissue into the non-essential amino acids, the ones that your body can make on its own, and then it links up with that stuff, it becomes anabolic.

Joel Evan: Whoa.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And so, I can repair tissue, I can repair my skin, you know, whatever.

Joel Evan: That’s huge>.

Dr. John Jaquish: Huge.

Joel Evan: So dude I’m totally going to try this, and I want to try it with just like what you’re doing, like the fasting because I mean, that’s just like crosstalk.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah you don’t need … I just take a 100-gram equivalent, so two doses of Fortagen when I’m fast, and clearly, I need like, I really need like 300. I like going about 50 over. So, I try and get 300 grams of protein a day.

Joel Evan: So, you’ll do breakfast, lunch, dinner as far as when you’re fasting?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, no, just one in the morning, one in the evening.

Joel Evan: That’s it?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah this was my morning one today because I just took it easy this morning because I needed to be here a little later in the day. Yeah, that’s it. So, I mean, it’s a pretty easy protocol. It’s the only supplement I take other than IN-perium, which is kind of like a bulletproof coffee replacementt, or coffee replacement.

Joel Evan: Yeah. Pre-workout, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Or-

Joel Evan: Is that what you do before or just focus?

Dr. John Jaquish: Just, yeah. It’s a coffee replacement or a pre-workout. it’s funny, most of our market doesn’t know what pre-workout is.

Joel Evan: Really?

Dr. John Jaquish: Busy executives, they don’t know what that is. That’s a bodybuilding thing, that’s a fitness thing.

Joel Evan: Completely. I remember growing up with N.O. Xplode, that was a big thing. You got to take your N.O. before you lift.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well and these products are really just caffeine and sugar, and they’re garbage, the most pre-workout. So, I go and make an actual, high quality pre-workout, that doesn’t have all kinds of chemical garbage in it, and then I’m presenting it to a crowd that has no idea what a pre-workout is, it’s kind of funny. But they know what a coffee replacement is.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: And that taste delicious, so yeah. And it has electrolytes in it, so that helps again with the fast thing, so it keeps you a little bit better hydrated. Has Beta-Alanine in it, which is a great energy enhancer.

Joel Evan: That helps with recovery too, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yep, yep. And then it has MCT oil in powder form in it. So, it’s kind of crushes your appetite, but it’s only 25 calories so it stays under that 50, so it doesn’t screw up your fast. Now if you did like five servings of it, yeah you screw up your fast. But I’m hoping people are using it as directed. I did not understand use as directed was such a hard thing for people to stick to. You know? People know not to drive their car on the sidewalk, why don’t they just-

Joel Evan: You know what? I think there’s something-

Dr. John Jaquish: … Follow the directions?

Joel Evan: … About, you see the … You just don’t believe it. You’re like, I don’t believe this.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I guess.

Joel Evan: Let me try it. Let me see what happens.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, it’s one thing after another where I’m sure I’m going to get an email where, somebody did an enema with IN-perium and they-

Joel Evan: You just gave up. I can’t wait when this era crosstalk a lot of ideas.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I just-

Joel Evan: We got good ideas by the way.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah, right. They just can’t wait to misuse it.

Joel Evan: Yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And it’s like everything in nutrition and fitness, I don’t know what it is.

Joel Evan: All right question for you, because I know you’re a big vegan right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Between meals, 100%.

Joel Evan: So, I wanted to ask you, because you’re not a vegan, you’re a big carnivore guy.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right?

Joel Evan: So, I was reading David St. Clair’s book, he’s the big NAD longevity, his book is called Lifespan.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah really muscular guy.

Joel Evan: And if you don’t know-

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m kidding, he’s like a twig.

Joel Evan: … Dr. John Jaquish is being very sarcastic.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: So, he wrote this in the book, and this was part again, his book’s called Lifespan, it’s all about living longer, blah, blah, blah. So, he wrote this, ‘Meat is murder on our bodies. Study after studies demonstrate that heavily animal-based diets are associated with high cardiovascular mortality and cancer risk. Processed red meats are especially bad. Red meat contains carnitine, which gut bacteria convert to trimethylene and oxide, or TMAO, a chemical that is suspected of causing heart disease.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, that’s never been proven, that last part.

Joel Evan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I mean, people have guessed it has. I mean if every time you take a bite of your cheeseburger, somebody gets hit in the crosswalk, that doesn’t mean cheeseburgers cause traffic accidents, that’s just a correlation. So, most of the research that he’s basing those statements on, has been disproven for 20 years. High levels of LDL, and I talked about this earlier, are associated with longer life. So, the higher your cholesterol is, meaning the more saturated fats you have, the longer you’re going to live. So, all that stuff we were told when we were kids, total BS.

And, the two greatest drivers of long life that are not argued with at all, and this is where I really came down to because I said, if I keep stripping layers away, because when I wanted to recommend a nutrition program for X3 Bar resistance band training system, I really didn’t have a bias. I really didn’t … I had tried veganism, I felt like garbage but, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t right. And also, I’m a sample size of one. So, I wanted to look at the clinical literature, what happens in these test groups. And so, I really want to find the ultimate nutrition, the answer was out there. I just needed to go back far enough to the most basic physiology research, to determine what was really the right path.

And I’m very confident that I got it, and the reason is, I found research in nutrition that was irrefutable. And that irrefutable research led to two things, it indicated two things. That the longest life is associated with the highest level of strength, and the lowest level of body fat. So, if we want those two things, what nutrition is associated with those two things? Almost no carbohydrates, you want a low level of body fat, I mean carbohydrates basically do one thing, get you fat, that’s it. Yeah. There are some justifications for endurance athletes, bodybuilders before a show, maybe hydration, if you want to adjust your hydration just a little bit.

But that also doesn’t mean eating carbohydrates, Western diet is 70% carbohydrate.

Joel Evan: 100%, yeah. Cereals, grains, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joel Evan: Look at how that worked out.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right, everyone’s fatter and sicker than ever.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And so, like and vegan nutrition, is 100% carbohydrate. But I shouldn’t say that because I mean, vegans-

Joel Evan: Pea protein.

Dr. John Jaquish: Vegans like to lie and say there’s as much protein in broccoli. If I were to eat broccoli and replace my protein, I think I would need something like 25 pounds of broccoli a day. And never mind the value. The value is just like garbage. So, I wouldn’t be able to digest it, but just grams of protein, I’d need to eat 25 pounds as opposed to three pounds of steak. So, it’s not an equivalent at all, nobody can eat 25 pounds of broccoli, that’s ridiculous. So, but aside from that, if you’re going to be as strong as possible, animal protein is the way to go. We all know this.

In fact, the athletes who are like vegan, it’s usually there whenever they have in athletic career, and right when their careers are winding down they switched to vegan, use all their old pictures of when they were eating 100% meat to market some vegan protein and say, ‘This is what you get out of veganism.’ No, that’s not how what happened to you, you’re just defrauding people. So, also a lot of this vegan research is paid for by Kellogg’s, and Post and-

Joel Evan: 100%.

Dr. John Jaquish: … And Biscoff.

Joel Evan: What about Game Changers though, that just came out. I didn’t watch it but-

Dr. John Jaquish: 100% fraudulent.

Joel Evan: … Isn’t Arnold backing that. And I kind of thought like, kind of what you just said, fraudulent. I like Arnold but I was like, come on, man, you were not eating a vegan diet when you were bodybuilding, come on.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, of course not.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: No. He admits that in the movie, he was taking eggs like every meal. Yeah, he is pushing vegan nutrition now. I won’t say anything negative about Arnold, I’m friends with his son, who’s a great guy. And, a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, Arnold sold out.’ Like James Cameron owns a large percentage of the pea protein manufacturing in the world. And, he and James Cameron are really good friends, I mean Arnold kind of owes his career, that was the Terminator. That’s what started Arnold. people didn’t discover Arnold in Conan the Barbarian, that was while a great film, very obscure. But, the Terminator, everybody saw that. And Terminator 2 even more.

So, I don’t know why Arnold did what he did but, I’m not … He’s not a scientist, he never claimed to be. So, also not the first kind of strange thing he said. Like, if you read the Modern Encyclopedia Bodybuilding, which is a book that he allegedly wrote.

Joel Evan: That’s a classic.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Joel Evan: In the bodybuilder world that’s a classic. Yeah for sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah there’s a lot of bodybuilders that think that book is great. It talks about enlarging your rib cage with a certain exercise. Like you’re going to make your rib cage bigger so you can hold more muscle on your upper body?

Joel Evan: I’m guessing what, you suck it in or something like that?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, you did it with a dumbbell. It was just like, dude, that’s not a thing. There’s 0% truth there and there never was. And yeah. So, he’s made misjudgments before, but if he’s surrounded by people that tell him, ‘This is a real thing.’ He’s not a scientist so he goes, ‘Okay, cool. I’ll tell people in my book.’ So, I feel like that may have happened, but everything that was claimed in Game Changers Has been disproven. I don’t know that everybody needs to be 100% carnivore-

Joel Evan: Yeah what about women? I was just thinking about that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Depends what their goals are. Do you want to put on a ton of muscle? Like-

Joel Evan: No but I mean, okay here’s my goal, just like Dave Asprey, I just want to live. Longevity. Just health longevity, I just want to-

Dr. John Jaquish: You need a lot less protein if your goal is not to put on mass.

Joel Evan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It may even be half of what I recommend. I recommend one gram per pound of body weight, or more-

Joel Evan: But that’s to be building muscle.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. You may only need half that if you just want to maintain your muscle mass.

Joel Evan: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Which is … And Dave has never tried to even claim that he was athletic or, he … Yeah, he’s a fit healthy guy.

Joel Evan: For sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s it.

Joel Evan: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. That’s all he ever wanted to be.

Joel Evan: And then, so same thing for women. You just say, yeah, maybe you just cut your protein down maybe.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, or … Now, protein is a superior food source because you can’t store it as body fat. You store fat as fat, you definitely store carbohydrates as fat, you don’t store protein. You overeat protein you go into thermogenesis, your body temperature goes up. That’s it.

Joel Evan: Okay. Okay. Because I thought even high amounts of protein will convert into like what gluconeogenesis, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Gluconeogenesis.

Joel Evan: Neogenesis, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. That is a huge fitness myth.

Joel Evan: Really?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I’m going to do an episode of falsehoods in the fitness and like, yeah. So, gluconeogenesis is demand driven. So, when your brain needs some glucose, it calls on the pancreas to make insulin, and begin that gluconeogenesis process, so some of the protein gets converted to glucose. But as soon as that happens, that glucose and insulin bind, and they have an address, it’s a package coming from an Amazon warehouse that’s going to a place.

Joel Evan: To the brain.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yes, wherever it was called for, or to musculature, or whatever. I mean ultimately, if you eat zero carbohydrate, do you still have muscle glycogen? Oh yeah via gluconeogenesis.

Joel Evan: Okay, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So, you get to a minimal level and body’s like, ‘Okay, we need some glucose here.’ So, it’ll make the glucose that it needs, but it’s not going to get stored as body fat, ever.

Joel Evan: I see.

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

Joel Evan: It’s got a purpose.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right crosstalk right. So, a lot of the people that get where this comes from, is people who get all their, science from memes, from a sentence fragment. That’s not the complete story. In fact, there’s books written about this. So, when you like read a meme about gluconeogenesis, anybody who makes memes by gluconeogenesis, should probably have their dicks cut off, because it’s a very complicated thing, and they’re trying to boil it down to like a third of a sentence. No, don’t do that. There’s a reason why I don’t make memes.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s not that simple. Yeah. So, yeah.

Joel Evan: Question, the next thing I want to talk about is TRT. But before I go there, quick question. SARMs have you ever done SARMs or, and if so, any efficacy do you think? Or-

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I have high hopes for SARMs. I believe that the people that are looking for anabolic effect, and don’t the down, I mean no one wants to downsides, right? Especially the medical community want the downsides of anabolic steroids. For those of you that don’t know what SARMs are, selective androgen receptor modulators. You’d want to look into following a guy, he’s a good friend of mine, coach Trevor, he just goes by coach Trevor.

Joel Evan: He has a blog or something.

Dr. John Jaquish: He has a YouTube channel.

Joel Evan: Perfect.

Dr. John Jaquish: And one of the, he’s a biochemist, and he really is focused on producing, well he’s not producing, but producing content to get people more knowledgeable on these androgen receptor modulators. So why this is important is, instead of introducing a hormone into the body which can go where you want it to go, or maybe where you don’t want it to go, it can manifest a lot of different ways. The reason that a selective androgen receptor modulator is important, is it goes where you want it to go, in a muscle, that’s it. So, there are SARMs out there … Now, there’s not a ton of research on this, so not nearly the kind that injectable testosterone has. Injectable testosterone has so much research on it because it’s been around a long time, SARMs have not.

So, the breadth and depth, the research is not there. But what we know based on their design, is that they’re going to be safer. and the problem is they’re not really produced, they’re not really released yet. So, some people are making sort of pirate versions, and are you getting what you really think you’re getting? I don’t know. I mean, some of the industry experts probably have a better opinion on that than me because I’m not following it. But I know that the literature that’s been published so far in medical journals is, they look like they’re very helpful and they don’t have the downsides that anabolic, standard anabolic drugs do.

Joel Evan: Yeah. Nice.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I’m not to the point where I’m recommending them, but I do think that, that is the future of people who want to go above and beyond what the body can provide and look to supplement in some way. I think we’re going to have the same problem like with standard anabolic drugs, is people are going to use too much. Because they think more is better. And another thing, it’s like fitness, like I said, it’s like a motorcycle. People just can’t wait to screw with it. And it’s like, there’s a reason that the Tylenol bottle says to take two and not 20. Right?

Your headache goes away with two, ‘Why don’t I take 20? I’ll probably feel even better.’ You’ll probably die, it’s toxic past a certain level. So, they understand it with Tylenol. They understand it with other medications. But when it comes to performance enhancement, people have a real problem with minimum dose response.

Joel Evan: Yeah, 100%.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, what is the minimum amount of an intervention? Whether it’s an exercise, or a chemical, or even a food? There is like the minimum, like I’m not going to eat 10 pounds of steak in a day. It would be worthless. There’s only so much my body can use. When the SARMs do come out, there’s going to be a dosage that’s associated with the effect that humans want, and no doubt, there will be sideways hat guys out there, that’ll take 10 times the amount that is recommended, because they want to be 10 times bigger, and that’s just not the way it works.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Joel Evan: You know it reminds me of Tony Robbins. I think, I remember hearing a story about him learning Taekwondo. And he learned some move from his instructor, his black belt instructor, and he’s like, ‘Okay, great, teach me the next thing.’ And his instructor is like, ‘No, you keep doing that like 10,000 times.’ Or whatever it was. And there’s something about one mastery, and then just the simplicity in something. Even like the X3 workout bar system it’s like, this is it. Just understand like the beauty in just that simplicity, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. And I do explain it that way, it’s like, if you follow the X3 resistance bands system program, fitness is just a problem that’s now solved for you. you don’t really need to keep researching and reading, and just leg humping every shiny object that you see on the internet, that has some sort of bizarre claim associated with it, that’s going to get you even better. It’s like, no, just do that. You’re going to get exactly what you want if you just do that. There’s a guy, I ignore him now, but he was like the most perfect example. I think it was like every third week he would make a big announcement in my DMs that he was going to start doing keto.

And I’m like, didn’t you tell me that five other times? But it’s because every time this guy opens the internet, he finds a shiny object to go chase. So, it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to do keto now, I’m going to do this.’ So, he’s haphazardly switching from one thing to the other, to the other, to the other, to the other, and he gets nothing out of it. inaudible it looked like it works out. It’s just sad. I mean, I wouldn’t ridicule him and I won’t say his name but, it’s just amazing how just, there’s a set of knowledge and that knowledge is irrefutable, and, you can also see it, if you don’t understand the sciences, I understand. I mean, the science is, it’s a full page of reading, it’s too much for some people. But look at the results from the users.

Joel Evan: Yeah, I love that.

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s people putting on 20 pounds of muscle with that simple product, 20 pounds of muscle. That’s why when people complain about the price, like first of all, you don’t understand what things cost to make, which is common internet thing. But then the other thing is, that delivers incredible forces where your body needs them. So, it’s going to trigger more growth. So, I ask them, what’s 20 pounds of muscle worth? Most people will say, ‘God, I’d pay like $10,000 for 20 pounds of muscle.’ Right, that’s what that’s going to give you. So, think about the results, it’s designed to give you results, and it has to be very powerful.

The thing has to handle over seven or 800 pounds of force, to be able to trigger the growth. People don’t know that they’re that strong, or that in certain positions of a movement, that they are capable of that, but they are. And once they access that, the growth happens so fast.

Joel Evan: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.