Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time (So Is Cardio, And There’s a Better Way to Have The Body You Want)

Perhaps you’ve been lifting weights for a few years. But do you even look like you work out? Are you spending disproportionate amounts of hours exercising wasting your time? Many fitness “experts” defend weights and cardio like they are infallible, but where are the results? Why does almost nobody look even marginally athletic?

Dr. John Jaquish, who joined me on the episode “The Best 10 Minute A Day Workout – How To Massively Increase Bone Density And Muscle In Just 10 Minutes (& Biohack Extreme Fitness Levels),” just published a brand new book entitled Weightlifting is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio & There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want. In it, he and his co-author, Henry Alkire, tackle the questions above as they explore the science supporting the argument that traditional weight lifting is a “waste of time” and lay out a superior strength training approach that has been shown to put 20 pounds of muscle on drug-free, experienced lifters (i.e., not beginners) in six months.

Fitness may be the most failed human endeavor, and you are about to see how exercise science has missed some obvious principles that, when enacted, will turn you into the superhuman you always wanted to be. Dr. Jaquish has spent years researching and developing improved approaches to health. He is the inventor of the most effective bone density building medical technology—that is now partnered with Tony Robbins and OsteoStrong for rapid clinic deployment. Inventor of the X3 variable resistance exercise system, a technology that is proven to develop muscle much faster than conventional weight lifting (all with the lowest risk of joint injury), Dr. John Jaquish’s methods are used in training the world’s most elite athletes and associations such as the entire Miami Heat organization, various NFL and NBA players, as well as Olympians.

Full Transcript

Ben Greenfield: On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Dr. John Jaquish: If your goal is to show off and throw weight on the floor like a child or a crossfitter, okay, then go for it. The development of the product brought me to a conclusion that strength training is a lot more simple than it really it has been presented to us, but we’re just doing the wrong thing. When you look at how the fitness industry has done, the leanest 1% of males are 11% body fat. That’s not impressive.

Ben Greenfield: All right folks, it’s been a while, it’s been a while since I interviewed today’s guest, but a while ago, I guess maybe two years ago, we talked about how to work out in 10 minutes a day. How to increase bone density, how to gain muscle, not just maintain muscle but gain muscle with 10 minutes of exercise every day. It was a really interesting episode, in which we talked about this concept of variable resistance training and gave some really cool tips.

Ben Greenfield: I will link to that original episode in the podcast show notes, which you’re going to find at … That’s …. Why waste of time? Because this guy just wrote a new book called Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want. Quite compelling title and I thought it was going to be gimmicky when I got this book and then I read it and it’s actually really good. I think I read it in like one night in bed, couldn’t put it down and then texted him the next day and was like, “Dude, let’s do a show.”

Ben Greenfield: Anyways, my guest is Dr. John Jaquish. He’s been made relatively famous, not only for his work in building medical technology called OsteoStrong, which if you’ve ever been to a Tony Robbins conference, you’ve probably seen, it’s an extremely effective bone density building medical technology. But he also invented the X3 Bar resistance band bar system, which is essentially like an Olympic barbell training system that you can travel with anywhere in the world, and we talked about that quite a bit in our last episode. It allows you to literally hundreds of pounds of squats and deadlifts and anything else using this method of training called variable resistance training, which actually does save you a ton of time, and I personally travel with this thing all over the world.

Ben Greenfield: Anyways, I have a ton of questions after reading John’s books, so I’m going to shut up and welcome you to the show, John.

Dr. John Jaquish: Hey, Ben, thanks for having me. I never corrected you last time, so you’ve been saying my last name wrong for-

Ben Greenfield: I never do that.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s pronounced Jaquish.

Ben Greenfield: Really?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s my fault-

Ben Greenfield: I usually call it Jaquish, man. Jaquish sounds better. Go talk to your parents.

Dr. John Jaquish: You know, yes, but it is the way it is. It’s like plants that I tell people about that upsets them because it means they’ve been screwing around and pissing-

Ben Greenfield: Good segue, man. I like how you did that. Well, you actually talk about that in the book. You say that weightlifting has everything backwards, everything backwards. I want to jump in right there, because weightlifting has been around, last time I checked, for quite some time, and now you’re throwing a grenade in there and saying, “No, you guys got it wrong.” Explain to me why you say weightlifting has everything backwards?

Dr. John Jaquish: Because we underload joints, I’m going to quote Peter Attia here, we underload joints, and… I’m sorry, we overload joints and underload muscle. That’s what he says. When we pick a weight we’re going to lift… Let me preface this by saying, if your goal is to grow muscle and develop your body, then Weightlifting is a Waste of Time. If your goal is to pick up weights and throw them on the ground and make a loud noise, I got nothing for you.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, now when you say weightlifting, what’s your definition? If you say weightlifting has everything backwards, and if you say that if your goal is to just pick heavy stuff up and set it back down, waste of time, what are you referring to? Are you referring to O-lifting, powerlifting, bodybuilding?

Dr. John Jaquish: It depends. It all depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to develop your body, weight lifting is not something you should be doing. If your goal is to show off and throw weights on the floor like a child or a crossfitter, okay, then go for it, but that’s not who I’m really talking to, because I realize a lot of guys who lift weights, it’s really about the way that they want to talk about lifting, not really developing their body. That shocked me, I didn’t even realize that was a thing.

Ben Greenfield: You have found that guys tend to be more focused on the amount of weight that they’re lifting than changes in their anatomy?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield: That surprised me actually.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it surprised me too. Because even people trying to have a serious conversation with me, they’re like, “But, what do I tell people?” Who cares?

Ben Greenfield: Well, I should say, it surprises me for a recreational exerciser, who I would tend to place into the bucket of doing many things for aesthetics, sometimes for functional athleticism, but often for aesthetics. That’s the lion’s share, I think of bros walking around the gym, for example, and many women as well. But then in the sector of athletics, professional athletics, whatever, crossfitting, Spartan, triathlon, you name it, I know in those situations, it wouldn’t surprise me that people are more focused on performance metrics than anatomical or aesthetic metrics. I think it probably depends on the audience that we’re talking about here.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. For people who want to develop, change their bodies, especially in the most extreme way, what you need to do is load the body in accordance with its capacity. When I was doing the research with the bone density medical devices that I invented, it was very clear to me that we could put people in the position they would normally absorb high impact forces, and they could massively load the body. I’m talking deconditioned elderly women who had never exercised in any way in their life, after six months, were putting five times their body weight through their hip joint, maybe even seven times their body weight through their hip joint. Well, that’s weight that a weightlifter can’t even use with full range movement.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m looking at just the impact inaudible range of motion and I thought, wow, humans are capable of so much more in this position that you would normally absorb high impact. It’s a combination of leverage with the different positioning of different bones. There’s that factor. But that also comes into play when the target muscle is at its shorter position, not shortest, but a shorter position.

Dr. John Jaquish: When we isolate these positions, humans are capable of seven times more than they are in a gym type environment, because in a gym type environment you’re picking-

Ben Greenfield: When you say a gym type environment, you mean lifting weights typically in what would be called an isotonic base format. You pick the weight up, you put it down, you’re talking about instead, something that we discussed a little bit in the last podcast, but I’m going to make the assumption that some people may not have listened to that, you’re talking about instead, keeping a high amount of tension on the muscle throughout a full range of motion as being a superior way to train, and that is your definition of variable resistance training?

Dr. John Jaquish: Correct. The high tension is variable in that the tension needs to be magnitudes higher in these impact positions, and then it needs to drop off. When I do a chest press, when I’m just short of lockout, I’m holding 540 pounds. As I let the weight come towards my body, when I’m in the halfway position, it might be 300 pounds, and then it’s 100 pounds at the bottom.

Dr. John Jaquish: I might do 25 repetitions and get to that 540 pounds 20 times, but then after I’ve done that I can no longer continue, I’ve gone to fatigue, but I can still get to the halfway point. I do half reps-

Ben Greenfield: Because you still have strength through half range of motion, you don’t have strength through full range of motion. So, you can essentially keep on cheating through half reps at that point.

Dr. John Jaquish: I don’t call it cheating.

Ben Greenfield: But a lot of people understand that language, you know what-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, you’d call them half reps or something. But as I’m getting to that 300 pounds, and then the last few repetitions may only be that 100 pounds in that weakest range of motion, but now I’ve fully fatigued the muscle and fatigued that is in, you know, because you use it. But it is a far more profound level of fatigue, and the more intense the fatigue, the greater the adaptation. So, people grow very quickly.

Ben Greenfield: Right. Okay, so I want to summarize for people who may need to get the quick and dirty summary here of variable resistance training. Again, go listen to my other podcast with John, if you want a deep, deep dive into the science of variable resistance training. But essentially, when you walk into a gym, you’ll find that some weight lifters are doing things like hooking cables, and bands and chains, and all sorts of things like that to barbells and dumbbells to allow the actual weight to change as they move through a range of motion based on the idea that the body is naturally stronger at certain points of a lift. Meaning that as john just explained, if you’re halfway through the, let’s say, a bench press, you’re actually going to be producing more force than you might be able to, let’s say the very bottom of the bench press, and you might be able to produce even more force than that at the very top of the bench press.

Ben Greenfield: Using variable resistance like chains, or bands, or something like that would allow you to challenge yourself during the entire lift, and then furthermore, when you pair that with as you poop out during a set, and you begin to not be able to move through full range of motion, you can simply continue to do reps, moving through partial range of motion, again, still using some type of variable resistance apparatus.

Ben Greenfield: What you’re saying, John, is that if your goal is to actually maximize your time working out with a minimal effective dose of exercise, and your goal is primarily force production/muscle maintenance/muscle building, that it’s a pretty dang good way to train in an extremely time effective manner.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I think it’s the only way. I would never waste my time lifting weights now that I know what variance can do. Unless I decided I was training for an actual weightlifting event, because then you have to get good at the sport of lifting a static weight through an entire range of motion. That’s a completely different subject.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, got it. With something like variable resistance training, what I’d like to do, I have a lot of other questions about things you talk about in the book like cardio and blood flow restriction training and some really interesting things you have on growth hormone and testosterone. First question I have for you regarding variable resistance training, since we’re on this topic already is what does an actual workout look like?

Ben Greenfield: Let’s say I’ve got your X3 Bar variable resistance training system, let’s say I’m going to use your X3 Bar exercise band bar system, and I’ve got my bands there hooked up to this bar that you develop, it’s like an Olympic Training barbell, but it fits in a suitcase, and I’ve got all my equipment, what’s the actual workout look like to be able to adhere to the variable resistance protocol that we just talked about?

Dr. John Jaquish: We do a push pull split, which is pretty standard. One day, one workout, the next day, the next workout. It takes 36 hours for a muscle to completely recover and complete muscle protein synthesis, and we know this through muscle biopsy studies as the very high level of evidence. We have complete recovery and adaptation between workouts. But each workout is really just four sets. It can take you 10 minutes.

Dr. John Jaquish: The reason we do multiple sets is because the stimulus is lousy. When I say to somebody, they say, well, one set is ridiculous, and I go to say, “Okay, how many sets do you need to do in the sun to get a suntan?”

Ben Greenfield: With traditional weightlifting, you’re saying that multiple sets become necessary because you’re training inefficiently. But what you’re saying is that, if you’re doing single set to failure of variable resistance training, in the way we just described, you can get away with just one set.

Dr. John Jaquish: Anything more would be over stimulus, and there’s one correct way to do it, and it is one set, that’s it.

Ben Greenfield: How many reps?

Dr. John Jaquish: We go higher reps, because you’re using higher weight. It’s mostly for safety purposes. We go between 15 and 40 repetitions.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, got it. Then are you resting at all in between any of the exercises in the push sequence versus the pull sequence, or just going exercise to exercise to exercise?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, you feel like you’ve been hit by a truck after every set. It’s a hard set you’ll ever have.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I actually borrow a little bit from the StrongFirst, the Pavel Tsatsouline crowd, and in between sets, do like a boxer would, some bouncing, some moving around, keep the blood flow going. Then once I feel ready, I’ll go and tackle the next set to failure. I’m typically doing this in my hotel room, or in a park or where I happen to be exercising with minimal equipment. So, I’ll just bounce around, typically, it takes me around 60 to 90 seconds, and then I’ll go on to the next set. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes for the full routine.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. That’s what the actual routine looks like. Now, I want to backpedal a little bit here and actually get into a little bit more of the science behind this. One thing I want to ask you about is hyperplasia, which you discuss in the book, meaning that muscle cells and muscle fibers can split to form additional new fibers and that that’s basically what hyperplasia is. You talk in the book about ways to actually maximize, not hypertrophy, an increase in the size of the muscle, the muscle fiber, but hyperplasia, again, an increase in the number of cells and fibers. Now, when it comes to hyperplasia, why did you write about it in the book? What does that have to do with variable resistance training?

Dr. John Jaquish: It happens to very high level strength athletes, and you can get more of the effect by going through specific protocol. I wanted to give the person who reads the book who maybe doesn’t know what X3 Bar resistance band training system is, something that’s very valuable that they’re not going to find in hardly any other books. There’s 32 pages out of 268 that are specifically about X3 workout bar system. I didn’t want to make the book necessarily a commercial for my product, though I do talk a lot about it, because the development of the product brought me to a conclusion that strength training is a lot more simple than it really it has been presented to us, but we’re just doing the wrong thing, like picking up static weight is just garbage next to using a high level of variance with variable resistance.

Dr. John Jaquish: I just wanted to give people something that they could apply the next day, but also yeah, it’s super useful because the hyperplasia protocol, it works, especially with what we do with amplifying cellular hydration.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I get that, but what I’m asking is, can you explain to people how you actually maximize hyperplasia? What’s your strategy for maximizing this increase in the number of muscle cells and muscle fibers that’s going to obviously, when stacked with muscle fiber hypertrophy going to allow for significant adaptations when it comes to just your overall muscular development?

Dr. John Jaquish: You want to create as much internal pressure in the cell and a relaxation of the cell at rest. So, when you’re going through muscle protein synthesis, the cell… Really, the biggest constraint to hyperplasia and cellular growth has to do with the external pressure of the fascia that surrounds the entire muscle. If you can get that to relax by super hydrating the cell, and also, by stretching the muscle while it is super hydrated, you create a little bit of extra space, and that extra space allows and encourages the cells to split.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. This would be like if I had a balloon, and let’s say that balloon is the actual muscle fiber or muscle cell itself, or let’s say it’s full of muscle fibers or muscle cells. What you’re saying is that the balloon, the lining, or the skin of the balloon would be the fascia, and if we can pull that balloon in all directions and stretch, stretch, stretch it so we got more room for the muscle cells or the muscle fibers to multiply, to increase in number, which is what hyperplasia is, and then simultaneously put a whole bunch more fluid in that balloon so it presses even more against that fascia that we’ve stretched, that based on what research has shown about hyperplasia, that combination of hyperhydration and stretching would result in improved hyperplasia response?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Ben Greenfield: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: It was a friend of yours who really made this discovery was a professor, Jose Antonio.

Ben Greenfield: Oh, no kidding?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, he documented the… This was his dissertation project.

Ben Greenfield: For the stretch part, are you just saying, do yoga, or stretch in between your sets? What does the stretch part involve?

Dr. John Jaquish: I wouldn’t say yoga, you’d want to really get a hard stretch for 30 seconds, and I would do all the stretching after. But you stretch the muscles that you just worked.

Ben Greenfield: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. I think there’s one study that you cite in the book, where they took some pretty rapid measurements of flexibility adaptation after stretching and found that if you can hit the muscle within about six minutes after you finish the workout, for your post workout stretching, and then you hold for around 30 seconds, which allows more blood flow into the muscle, that’s the way to do it. For example, if you were doing the X3 Bar variable resistance training system and you did one single set to exhaustion of the chest press, well, at some point in that six minute window, following your full workout, some kind of stretch for the chest, whatever, a hang from a pull up bar or a chest stretch against the wall, or anything like that, you get in that position, hold it for 30 seconds, give the fascia a nice deep stretch, and that, if you combine it with the hyper hydration, which we’ll talk about in a second, would allow for maximizing hyperplasia?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Ben Greenfield: All right. So, how do you hyper hydrate?

Dr. John Jaquish: I do a vasodilator, and then a small amount of carbohydrates after the workout. So, vasodilator before the workout, which can be on medium effect that you’d get from glycerol, or Epimedium, which are both natural… Well, what’s natural?

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, well, they’re vasodilatory agents. They’ll be like arginine, citrulline, nitric oxide, beetroot, anything that’s going to open up a blood vessel you’re saying will assist with hyperhydration.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right. That’s right. Then, of course, the more powerful ones would be like Viagra.

Ben Greenfield: I actually know a lot of athletes and lifters who really dig Viagra, and I’ve used it prior to workouts, and I’ve discussed this, I think when we did our podcast on blood flow restriction training, another podcast with Jay Campbell, there’s a lot of benefits to sildenafil, the active component of Viagra in terms of the nitric oxide response that make it pretty potent for working out, and it’s also the reasons banned by water, because it’s pretty potent as a pre-workout.

Ben Greenfield: But the vasodilatory part makes sense, because if you’re going to hydrate a cell, you obviously need more blood flow to it. But there are a couple other compounds that are interesting, one I used to use before it became banned, or on the banned substance lists, and that’s glycerol, just like straight glycerol powder-

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s off the banned substance list now.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, it’s off now. All right. Yeah, I haven’t been following the banned substance list so much since I quit-

Dr. John Jaquish: It was just maybe just a supplement. People were like, come on, guys.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, but it draws a bunch of water into the muscle. Also, that’s a one two combo, because it also has a vasodilatory effect was interesting because glycerols, they’re cheap. You just get glycerol on Amazon, and you’re saying you would use something like glycerol for the hyperhydration with a vasodilator. Then the other one would be something that I think many people are familiar with as a cellular hydration amplifier, and that would be just basic creatine monohydrate.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, so let’s summarize thus far. You’re going to work out for 10 minutes with variable resistance training, single set to failure, push one day, pull the next day, something like a four workout a week, or you could even do a full body protocol. I like the full body protocol almost every day. That’s the way I sometimes do it when I travel, it’s also because I just like to move every day. Then beforehand, some type of vasodilatory and hyper hydrating substance to maximize hyperplasia. Then afterwards, stretch each of the muscles that you work for about 30 seconds, and that’s the hack for minimal effective dose getting hyperplasia and hypertrophy using variable resistance training.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, we also… The only time I wouldn’t ever recommend carbohydrates would be in that 30 minute window after you’ve stretched, because carbohydrates also replace glycogen very quickly when you’re glycogen depleted. So, right after a workout before the gluconeogenesis starts, for someone who’s ketogenic. You can absorb… I believe now the research would say… The research I cited says anywhere from 0.5 to 0.7 grams per pound of body weight. I’ve been going a little lower than that, because I feel like I have an insulin event if I go to that recommendation.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I’ll go below half. I’ll pick maybe 40 grams of carbohydrates.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, got it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Small amount, but my muscles look like they’re going to explode.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, that’s the old secret from my days in bodybuilding, once you did your morning pose off and judging between the morning show and the evening show, I do pancakes, bread, just as many carbs as I can get my hands on and I just be swole by the evening. Sometimes I put on 12, 15 pounds in a day just between morning and evening.

Dr. John Jaquish: Would your stomach be bloated also?

Ben Greenfield: A little bit, yep. A lot of times you’ll see bloat in some bodybuilders when they’re posing for the evening show just because-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, they look like they swallowed a sea turtle.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, you get fermentation and it can definitely happen. I’m not saying it’s a healthy practice. But, that’s how you do it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Nobody ever said bodybuilding was about health.

Ben Greenfield: I want to ask you a few other questions. While we’re on the topic of hyperplasia and muscle fibers, one of the things that you believe or at least you talk about in the book is that you shouldn’t worry too much about your unique muscle fiber type. A lot of people are doing, new muscle biopsies but a lot of times genetic testing to see am I more type one versus type two, should I be doing strength training versus endurance training? You say it doesn’t really matter that much at all. Why do you say that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it pretty much says people who do strength training, regardless of what type of muscle they have. Slow twitch versus fast twitch, it really has to do with the speed at which a cell turns on and we’re talking about microseconds. Now, it just so happens that people with a lot more slow twitch become better marathon runners, people with a lot of fast twitch become better sprinters. However, when it comes to building of muscle, especially size, it doesn’t matter.

Ben Greenfield: Well, I think that if you are doing strength training in the way that we’ve described, and you actually are going to fail, you’re recruiting every muscle fiber, you’re recruiting both slow twitch and fast twitch, you’re not just working type one or type two muscle fibers in isolation, you’re working all of them, and I think one study you talk about in the book is how total muscle fiber mass increases, but the ratio of fiber types remains constant, proving that all the fiber types are affected-

Dr. John Jaquish: You did a better job explaining than I did. You read the study.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, no, I do my homework. Basically, you don’t have to say, “Well, I’m more type two, therefore, I should focus on maybe a heavier set, lower reps, or I’m type one, so I need to do high rep, low weight.” Just do the full single set to failure in the manner that we’ve described, exhausting yourself, and then moving through the range of motion that you’re actually able to handle even after a previous range of motion is exhausted, and you’re basically going to utilize every muscle fiber.

Ben Greenfield: It’s almost very similar to something like if you were to… Let’s say, you’re injured, or you’re rehabbing and you have to use electric muscle stimulation, anybody knows that, that can make you super sore, because that electrical muscle stimulation is just grabbing every single fiber. Often fibers you haven’t been using or muscle groups you haven’t been using, and what we’re talking about is trying to get the same effect using something like variable resistance training.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. Got it. Okay. That was a question I had about the muscle fiber composition ratio. Then I also wanted to, and this might be a little bit more of an involved question, but you talk in the book about the questions that an ideal exercise program should answer. You specifically have a few criteria. I want to ask you questions about the… You really have three criteria. One is that you want to get the maximum amount of hypoxia, meaning low oxygen in the actual muscle that’s being worked, and myostatin downregulation. Why is that, and how can we get those?

Dr. John Jaquish: We have noticed through different research studies and different protocols, mostly with blood flow restriction, that we get a downregulation of myostatin when we create a hypoxic effect in a muscle. This was mostly obvious when they do blood flow restriction studies, where somebody is obviously restricting their extremities, you can’t really restrict your core, but they would notice pectoral growth when somebody would do blood flow restriction in the legs. It’s obviously not something that’s affecting the local muscle that is constricted, this is system wide, and this is how the myostatin effect was discovered with blood flow restriction.

Dr. John Jaquish: But blood flow restriction has some limitations because your body… Well, let me just stick with myostatin. We knew that keeping the blood from returning to the heart, however we do that is going to downregulate myostatin. For those who aren’t familiar with what that does, that changes your-

Ben Greenfield: Google myostatin knockout bull, or myostatin knockout mouse or myostatin knockout dog, and you’ll see what he means; giant muscle-bound animals.

Dr. John Jaquish: Giant muscular animals, right.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, because myostatin is a myokines, protein produced and released by myocites. It inhibits myogenesis, which is basically exactly what we’re talking about; hyperplasia, hypertrophy, muscle cell growth, muscle cell differentiation, pretty much all of that is encoded by that gene. You want to inhibit myostatin, and you’re saying that one of the better ways to do that is by inducing some kind of a hypoxic state within the cell as you’re training.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. How would one achieve that if they weren’t going to use something like tourniquets and do blood flow restriction?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, the problem with tourniquets is your body knows there’s a tourniquet there, and that’s why you can only train very light because you have all kinds of neural inhibitory processes going on. If you got something clamped on your arm that’s keeping blood flow from happening, that’s why you got to cut the weight by 75%. But if you just use constant tension with variable resistance, which is part of the standard roots of every exercise that X3 Bar portable home gym encompasses this, you get that hypoxic effect, but you also are using a lot more muscle cells, because you’re allowed to train much heavier than you even would… Forget about training with blood flow restriction, you’re heavier than you would in a normal gym environment.

Ben Greenfield: But it requires constant tension. If you go to full lockout, or you rest in between reps, that’s not going to do inaudible That’s one thing that I’ve seen in the literature is that it does require constant tension under load. If you’re one of those people who’s doing inter rep rest, or you’re locking out at the end of a chest press, holding it there, taking a few breaths and then go to the range of motion, you’re not going to induce hypoxia. So, you have to move through full range of motion in a manner that does not involve resting at lockout or resting at the beginning of the range of motion to induce that hypoxia, if you’re not using something like blood flow restriction bands or kaatsu bands, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. The idea behind the blood flow restriction, of course, is that if you were injured, or you could only use lightweights, or maybe you’re traveling, you don’t have variable resistance training on you or something like that, you can get the same effect with blood flow restriction training. Now, I actually want to correct you about something you put in the book, though, John, that I disagree with you on.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay.

Ben Greenfield: I disagree with you on this point, you say that because blood flow restriction is training light, because you just can’t train heavy when the muscles are restricted from blood flow, therefore if you’re training light, you’re not going to stimulate testosterone receptor activity or trigger testosterone or upregulate growth hormone.

Ben Greenfield: Now, that’s true if you’re training light in the absence of blood flow restriction. But there are a variety of studies that show a hormonal response that is significant to low intensity, low weight blood flow restriction exercise. I still think that you get a significant growth hormone and testosterone response if you are training with lightweights if the muscle is tourniquet, or if using blood flow restriction. I think that you were kind of right when you wrote that in the book, but at the same time, I think that, that goes out the window if you actually are restricting blood flow from all the literature that I’ve seen.

Dr. John Jaquish: Interesting. So, to the same degree, as just-

Ben Greenfield: No. You’re never going to get as high as you would with a high intensity, high load protocol. But what they have done is compared blood flow restriction training under light load to regular training under heavy load, and the testosterone response is a little bit higher with the heavy load without the blood flow restriction training, even though you get a pretty significant testosterone response, even with low load training with blood flow restriction bands.

Ben Greenfield: But here’s what’s interesting, the growth hormone response is the same between low load training with vascular restriction and traditional high load resistance exercise. Long story short, is you actually can get a hormonal response with blood flow restriction training.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. You’re really not going to get any, it’s just a lower.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. Well, it could be a second edition-

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Well, we got into the weeds a little bit. What I mentioned was that you said there were questions that an ideal exercise program should answer. One is we got induced hypoxia and myostatin downregulation, that makes sense. Number two was you said that you need to get stability firing, if you want to get a really high growth hormone effect. What does that mean, stability firing?

Dr. John Jaquish: My co-author and I in 2016, did a meta analysis of different destabilization type protocols, and then destabilization type protocols with weight added, and how much of a growth hormone effect there was, because it was very observable, a standard squat, free weight squat, there’s a growth hormone effect. But a leg press, or leg sled type exercise where you might be using a lot more weight, there is no growth hormone event at all.

Ben Greenfield: Because you are not having to stabilize the muscles as intensely when you have that kind of… Well, they’re both closed kinetic chain exercises, but the leg press obviously involves far less stability mechanisms and something like a squat.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. If I’m using the variable resistance training, if I’m doing the X3 Bar resistance band bar system, and if I’m at the top of, let’s say, a shoulder press, and my muscles are shaking, because the resistance has been, the best way I can describe it is the muscles are shaking, they’re very unstable. What you’re saying is that if you can induce unstability during a workout, then you’ve seen literature suggesting that that’s going to amplify the growth hormone effect.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. In the meta analysis, we got 23 different data sets.

Ben Greenfield: I wasn’t aware of that. That’s really good to know.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, it’s magical. Once you realize… This is why people who train with barbells, or it’s like, “Do you use any machines?” I’m like, “I don’t really get any results out of machines.” That’s why.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Okay, that’s number two, and then number three, you said that you have to make the weights that you work with heavier to trigger the maximum possible amount of testosterone upregulation, and the greatest activity in testosterone receptors. To me, that third point seems to be the most straightforward, all you’re saying is that you’re not going to get a testosterone response that’s significant by lifting light weights, with probably the only exception being-

Dr. John Jaquish: Not getting away from heavy. You want to grow, it’s got to be heavy.

Ben Greenfield: It’s got to be heavy. With the only exception being, blood flow restriction training, if you just can’t lift heavy loads, you’re still going to get a greater testosterone response than nothing at all.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Basically, one, there’s a lot of stuff for stacking. If we want hypoxia, we want myostatin downregulation, we want instability, we want the maximum load that we can lift. Ideally, if we can, we want some type of vasodilatory substance or hyper hydrating substance beforehand. We want to push the muscle through failure, through each of the different ranges of motion, preferably in an unstable environment. If we are doing this correctly, not wanting to waste a lot of time, we’re achieving that all in one single set. That’s the summary of everything we’ve discussed so far, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re an amazing interviewer, dude. God, you do your homework.

Ben Greenfield: Well, I love to geek out on this stuff.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, you do.

Ben Greenfield: This is all very cool. What about cardio? Because, I’ve interviewed way back in the day, the guy who invented super slow training, and he said that you get so much peripheral resistance in the arteries and vasculature, moving away through a slow range of motion that you see a decrease blood pressure response and increased stroke volume in the heart, and all these things that you’d normally get through cardio. I think that was Doug McGuff that I interviewed about this, you can get through resistance training.

Ben Greenfield: You say, cardio for weight loss. For what I’m talking about, cardiovascular health, we’re talking about weight loss, you say cardio for weight loss is a lie, and I’m curious why you say that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Most of what I chose to talk about is what the mainstream is looking for, which is aesthetic. Most people do cardio. When you ask them, why do you do cardio? They’re like, “Well, I want to be lean.” I don’t think it’s a very good way to approach being lean because you get a much longer cortisol effect-

Ben Greenfield: I should mention a decreased growth hormone and testosterone response.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, that’s right-

Ben Greenfield: If we’re talking about chronic cardio, we’re not talking about-

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right, we’re not talking about an hour of cardio.

Ben Greenfield: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: More than 20 minutes. 20 minutes seems to be the threshold. When somebody’s doing a lot of cardio, they’re up regulating cortisol in a chronic manner, and cortisol’s objective is really diminishing muscle mass, and protecting body fat, holding as much body fat as possible. That’s really the opposite of what somebody wants when they’re doing cardio. Now, I know a lot of cardio people do cardio, they don’t care how much muscle mass they have. I’m thinking of a lot of women, which is unfortunate, because I think women who hold a little bit of muscle actually look incredibly feminine. But that’s the question that a lot of women have, “Like, I don’t want to look like a man so I only do cardio.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Then they end up just being skinny fat. They have diminished muscle mass, poor posture, they’re slumped forward.

Ben Greenfield: I don’t know man, Gwyneth Paltrow does it, it must work.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, let’s talk about the rocks she tells people to hold in their vaginas that cause infections. You want to talk about that?

Ben Greenfield: No, vaginal infections aren’t on my list of things to discuss today. But I think that-

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s a good story though. People should look into that.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, just Google that. Long story short, is that what you’re saying is that you’re getting a downregulation of the growth hormone and testosterone that you would normally want to be able to enhance lipolysis and also be in a more anabolic phase.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. You want high growth hormone, and you want low cortisol.

Ben Greenfield: At the same time, you’re breaking down lean muscle tissue, which is going to obviously affect overall metabolic rate and even non-exercise based activity thermogenesis the rest of the time that you’re not training. I think that’s all pretty straightforward, but I do want to mention that, I do cardio, I do, and the reason for that is that I think it does have a place when it comes to metabolic efficiency, and some amount of fat burning efficiency, and I’ll explain what I mean here in a second. I also think that there is something that is… Even Dr. Andrew Huberman talks about this in some of his neuroscience research, there’s this meditative low blood pressure, decreased stress response to this concept of constantly moving forward.

Ben Greenfield: Now, the caveat here is that for me, cardio means that I’ll get up in the morning, fasted, and walk up and down the farm road with the dog for a half hour. Or I will try to hit 15,000 steps a day, just by engaging in low level physical activity throughout the day. I’d no longer do my one hour beat down on the treadmill at a moderate intensity, or a long two hour hammer fest on the bike where I’m just chronic cardio over and over again.

Ben Greenfield: I define cardio in two different ways. One, I define as a more ancestrally appropriate, I’m hunting, I’m gathering, I’m gardening, I’m moving slowly throughout the day, and I think that’s perfectly appropriate for metabolic efficiency, for fat loss and even for some of the overall health benefits from distressing and simulating meditation to a certain extent, constantly moving forward. But then when you cross the threshold to I’m just going to hop on the elliptical trainer for 45 minutes and jam, or I got my one hour treadmill session, or I’m just going to go ride the bike down the trail for an hour out and an hour back, don’t fool yourself into thinking that, that is going to accelerate weight loss, fat loss specifically, but do know that it’s going to inhibit any amount of lean muscle gain and probably decelerates or even impair any type of aesthetic performance. That’s my approach to cardio.

Dr. John Jaquish: You got it.

Ben Greenfield: All right. Do you do that, by the way? Do you do much walking or just low level physical activity throughout the day?

Dr. John Jaquish: Not really.

Ben Greenfield: Because you’re kind of jacked. I don’t find many super-jacked guys who move a whole lot. It’s like Dan John’s Mass Made Simple. I interviewed him about that book, he’s like, lift weights, eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and watch football the rest of the time.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I would not eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Ben Greenfield: Maybe an almond butter and blueberry… I don’t know, crepe on a lovely sourdough bread or something like that. Maybe we should redefine-

Dr. John Jaquish: It sounds better, but I probably just eat a steak.

Ben Greenfield: Just give me the ribeye. Okay. I’ve got a few other questions for you, John, because I know that people might wonder about this. Variable resistance training, I’m going to go to Amazon, I’m going to grab myself some of the top ranked elastic training bands on there, or some elastic tubing from Rogue Fitness or whatever, or maybe my local sporting goods store, take that back and start doing this single set to failure training, just like holding the bands and holding the tubing.

Ben Greenfield: I’m curious what you think about that? Because I seem to recall in our other interview, that there’s a difference in the elasticity of certain forms of bands.

Dr. John Jaquish: Unfortunately, my initial plan when I realized what humans were capable of, the seven fold difference with how strong we are, and the impact ready range of motion, truly fatiguing a muscle, we needed banding that was far more powerful than anything that was available. But then the problem is when you get a pull up assist band. There were some bands out there that had a lot of power in them. They could offload your body weight by a few hundred pounds with pull up assist. You know what I’m talking about, when you hook it around a chin up bar.

Dr. John Jaquish: If you throw one of those heavy bands, and of course, X3 Bar resistance band training system bands are five, 10 times even heavier than those, and try to do push up with it or a squat or something, you could break your ankle or your wrist. Those are really powerful. They’re putting lateral force through joints that should not have lateral force put through them.

Ben Greenfield: Because as you are moving the resistance band through range of motion, it’s pulling you both laterally and vertically?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right. I realize people were just going to get hurt if they tried to do this. They weren’t going to get any results at all, they’re just going to get a different type of injured than they would with regular weights. So, I realized we needed an Olympic bar, and Olympic Bar is a brilliant invention and it works very well. Our bodies interface very well with an Olympic Bar. Why I say Olympic because of the rotational nature of that.

Ben Greenfield: Right, so you’re not holding the elastic band in your hands, the elastic band is instead attached to a bar. So, you’re eliminating a lot of that lateral pull, while still maximizing the vertical and the long bone loading.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. What about the makeup of the band itself in terms of potential to snap or break at higher resistances or the actual, I don’t know exactly how elastic bands are made, it’s not something I’ve studied up on, but fill me in on how you keep the band from snapping or being able to withstand really high loads?

Dr. John Jaquish: A lot of different ways. With the high density band we needed to trigger muscle growth, they needed to be non-petroleum based. Most of them are petroleum based, they’re made of oil, and those have a tendency of stretching out. There’s a reason they’re cheap, they don’t last very long. People think they’re getting stronger, but what’s really happening is the band is getting longer. That doesn’t do anybody any favors. Those do break from time to time.

Dr. John Jaquish: What I needed to do was develop something that was layered. A layer could fail, but the whole unit would not fail.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, got it. That is probably why if I leave my X3 Bar fitness band bar system bands out in the weather, which I have before, sometimes I’ll notice that the outside layer starts to peel away a little bit, that’s why?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, got it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. One layer, it’s like a rope that’s a little frayed. Does it still work? Yeah, sure. It’s not inaudible How I see, people with nicks in their bands and they go, this is okay. Yeah, it’s fine. If you get a tear all the way through, which somebody can do because they hook it on something by accident, and then they just tear it, well, yeah, you need to replace that.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Okay. The layering of the bands is one part, having the band attached to a bar so you’re getting basically superior mechanical leverage on the bar. Then the final piece that comes with this X3 Bar variable resistance training system setup is the ground played. That’s interesting, because, a lot of times I’ll train barefoot. So, I’m standing on top of the actual elastic band itself, and it seems to… I think we even talked about this in our last podcast. Pulls up on your ankles, it’ll snap out from underneath your foot. You figured out how to create this lightweight plate that the band just goes underneath.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, the band slides freely underneath your feet and doesn’t lift your ankles.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, so your ankles aren’t rotating inwards. Especially if you do it… Because you can do… I’ve seen you do, I think like 600, 700 pounds peak force on a deadlift, and I believe that was using… What’s the heaviest X3 Bar variable resistance training system band called?

Dr. John Jaquish: The Elite.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, the Elite, the big orange one, which it hangs in my garage, I’ve used it a couple of times, but I’m not even to that level yet to be able to… I’m not quite as strong as you.

Dr. John Jaquish: inaudible deadlifts all the time.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. But that would literally break the bones in your ankle if you were standing on top of the actual band itself.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. The reason I didn’t write a book first and develop the product first and then wrote the book later, was that I needed to come up with something that was actually useful for strength training first, because the bands by themselves, they’re just not that great. I see people writing nasty things on social media about band training is stupid, because it doesn’t work, or I don’t like it. Then people send me the link, and they’re like, “Go straighten this guy out.” I’m like, “Well, why?” Band training by itself doesn’t really work.

Dr. John Jaquish: Now, they may be misquoting the science, they may not understand exactly what’s going on, or why bands by themselves aren’t so effective. But when I hear somebody say I hate bands, I’m like, “Okay, well, me too.”

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, exactly the type of bands we would traditionally think about. Now, what about… I don’t know if you get this much, I’ve heard a lot of people say that if you’re working out and you’re getting the type of results that I see in a guy like John working on 10 minutes a day, you got to be on the gear. There must be some kind of hormones, testosterone, something like that going on. What’s your take on that? Because I’ve seen that floating around out there as well.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, every high school kid with a visible bicep vein is accused of being on steroids by usually people who have never worked out, or at least don’t look like they’ve ever worked out. That’s unfortunate. I work with 12 different NFL players directly, and 40 different NBA players. Got another 15 professional athletes around the world. These guys are all in incredible shape and they’re all drug tested. Well, the bodybuilders aren’t, but except for the bodybuilders are drug tested and it’s amazing. They have absolutely amazing physiques. They look similar to me, and they’re not on anything. You don’t need to be on anything.

Ben Greenfield: Well, granted also, I haven’t messed around that intensively personally with what we just talked about on this show that the hyperhydration with the vasodilatory substances, followed by the stretching for the hyperplasia, I would love to guinea pig this on myself using that full protocol, probably creatine, glycerol, Viagra and other nitric oxide precursor, do the variable resistance training, do the stretching afterwards. I could do a little one month experiment just to see any transformation in my own body because actually it would be interesting to pay attention to how much you would get if there is that amount of myostatin downregulation.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield: Well, it’s super interesting stuff. Obviously, we could talk about this stuff all day long, but the X3 Bar exercise band bar system, and you guys are still manufacturing it, people still get it, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah.

Ben Greenfield: All right. Cool.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. We’re sending out thousands of units a month.

Ben Greenfield: I don’t remember what are… We have a special discount code for you guys, I think you save, what is it, John, like 50 bucks, something like that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, okay. If you guys go to bengreenfieldfitness .com/wasteoftime, bengreenfieldfitness .com/wasteoftime, I’ll link to my other interview with John and then I’ll also make sure… I think the code is Ben, if you go to the X3 Bar variable resistance training system website, but I’ll double check, and I’ll hook you guys up with whatever discount that John and I can work out for you. But I’ll just put all that over at bengreenfieldfitness .com/wasteoftime.

Ben Greenfield: I think probably after this discussion, I’m going to go hit my X3 Bar resistance band bar system this afternoon, just because whenever I chat about stuff like this, I’m not about you, John, but just makes you want to go do it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ben Greenfield: I’ll probably be out there in the driveway later on today with my X3 Bar variable resistance training system. I can’t promise I’ll have the Elite Band out. Sorry, man.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s okay. You need to be really ready for that. I tell people all the time… A lot of people order it, and they’re beginners, and I say, okay, well, keep it as something to work towards, but you don’t really want to discourage somebody, but at the same time, it’s like, you don’t need that, man. Most of the NFL players, most of the NFL players can’t use it.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. One thing, by the way, did you hear my interview with Milos Sarcev, the bodybuilder?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, but I know who that is.

Ben Greenfield: We talk a lot about intra workout nutrition, and he had some pretty cool protocols for when you have really enhanced blood flow to a muscle, which actually is the case using the protocol that we just talked about. He had certain compounds, many of which we’ve already discussed, like creatine and post workout like a dextrose, or really high glycemic index carb that rapidly replenishes the muscle glycogen levels. But he also talks a lot about amino acids and high blood levels of amino acids during the actual workout itself. He’ll consume during, 10 to 20 grams of essential aminos, but do them in between his sets.

Ben Greenfield: Another one you could throw in there would be, do your first set and then as you’re recovering, after your first X3 Bar resistance band training system set, suck down a few sips of aminos and then do your next set, then suck down a few sips of aminos. The overall idea being you actually maintain extremely high blood levels of amino acids, which I know you touch on in the book a little bit yourself, and that would also probably be something that would combine well. But I’ll link to that podcast in the show notes, the one with Milos Sarcev. It was super interesting, and probably, if you’re still listening at this point in the podcast with John, what Milos and I talk about would be right up your alley. I’ll put a link to that one as well. Anything else you want to touch on, John, while I have you on?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, I love the questions you ask. It’s great, because when you decide how you’re going to interview somebody, you don’t listen to another interview that they’ve had, and then just ask the same questions. So many podcasters do that. You came up with all original stuff, and I appreciate it.

Ben Greenfield: Well, you know the reason why, I can tell you this, because I get books shipped to me all the time, they all come with an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper that says, here’s what to ask the author. The first thing I do is I throw that out or I use it as a bookmark for the book, because I do not want to ask what the publisher thinks I should ask. I read the entire book cover to cover. Literally I’ve got books on my bedside, books by my electrical muscle stimulation unit downstairs, books on my desk. Pretty much if there’s downtime at the house, I’ve got a book under my nose, and I read the actual book, and then I asked the questions that I want to ask, not that the publisher wants to-

Dr. John Jaquish: Of course, inaudible sent those by the way.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: You didn’t get a piece of paper to say, “Ask me this.” Because I knew you would. I don’t actually do that for anybody. But the problem is, they’ll go watch another podcast I did and then ask the same questions.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: This is great.

Ben Greenfield: I get it. Well, cool. So-

Dr. John Jaquish: Suppose-

Ben Greenfield: Go ahead.

Dr. John Jaquish: One thing… I did think of something I want to say. When I wrote this, a lot of people got offended by the title and of course didn’t read the book. I think judging a book by its cover defines a fool, but I also have to say, before rushing to the defense of the fitness industry, you have to ask yourself who’s really fit? Now, I have some statistics in the book that talk about how the leanest 1%, and I like tracking lean because that includes muscularity in that calculation, the more muscular you are, the leaner you are by proportion.

Dr. John Jaquish: When you look at really how the fitness industry has done over the last, let’s say 50, 75 years, the leanest 1% of males are 11% of body fat, that’s not impressive, and that’s the top 1%. Also, one in six males over the age of 18 in the United States have used anabolic steroids. That means almost everybody who’s used anabolic steroids has also failed to become what anybody would refer to as fit. What the fitness industry has done is basically nothing. I don’t see… You and I are outliers, compared to the average person at the average fitness facility.

Dr. John Jaquish: We walked into a… I’m not talking about Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach, I’m talking about Planet Fitness in the middle of America. You go in there, and then you go to the pizza place next door, and does the people look any different? inaudible

Ben Greenfield: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. That’s the whole problem with the fitness industry as a whole as we have relegated ourselves to feeling as though we need to walk into a gym, or a health club to get fit. That’s why so many people ridiculously said that they got in the worst shape of their lives during the COVID pandemic, when in fact, all it takes is literally walking, having a kettlebell or an X3 portable gym or some kind of a setup in your garage, which is they’re cheap to do.

Ben Greenfield: Trust me, Google will allow you to do any number of body weight exercises to failure with nothing. But the problem is people want to walk into a gym with the TVs, the magazines, the Jamba Juice, the shiny stuff, being able to sit down and be hunched over your cell phone while you’re sitting on the pec deck. That’s gym culture, it doesn’t get results. It doesn’t produce athleticism. I think just about everybody listening to this show is probably sick of me getting on a soapbox about this. But yeah, you have to take your health and your fitness into your own hands and defy the status quo of what the typical American or gym junkie considers to be fitness and actually figure out a way to creatively and proactively design an environment that allows you to be active anytime, anyplace, just like our ancestors did for thousands of years before gyms even existed. That’s the way that you should live your life.

Ben Greenfield: I’m not saying not go to the gym, gym is actually my happy place. I like to go to the gym and walk around, try new exercises. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that that’s how fit people actually get super fit. They basically integrate fitness into their entire lifestyle.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Ben Greenfield: I’m on the same page as you, man. Well, let’s wrap this thing up, because I actually got to go. … is where the show notes are at. If you guys have questions, comments, feedback, if you want to grab your own X3 resistance bands system, you can use code BEN, and I’ll put a link in the show notes as well. Until next time, I’m Ben Greenfield along with John Jaquish. Did I get it?

Dr. John Jaquish: Jaquish.

Ben Greenfield: Jaquish. I was close, man.

Dr. John Jaquish: Jaquish, like Jake and wish.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. Oh, that helps me out, that mnemonic was very helpful. John Jaquish, the Jaquish, the doctor, Jaquish signing out from bengreenfield.fitness

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks, man.

Ben Greenfield: Have an amazing week, everybody. Thanks, John.