Episode 092 - Dr. John Jaquish: Weighlifting and Cardio Are a Waste of Time!

In Episode 092, we sit down with Dr. John Jaquish to find out why weightlifting and cardio are a waste of time. While it may sound like a click-bait title, Dr. Jaquish brings up some very compelling arguments around why your expectations around weightlifting and cardio may be misplaced. He talks about his own personal experiences around training, shedding fat, building muscle and strengthening bones. Dr. Jaquish also discusses the device he invented to build bone density, muscle strength and overall lean body mass, and identifies the reasons he believes it provides superior results to conventional weightlifting and cardio, particularly when it comes to muscle development and fat burning.

Dr. John Jaquish began his experience in life sciences after being told by his Mother that she had been diagnosed with osteoporosis. Dr. John Jaquish, in an effort to help his mother, created a device to place axial loading through bone to safely cause osteogenic responses to those loading events. The device was designed to trigger the effects of high-impact loading, but without the risk of injury. Dr. John Jaquish is currently advancing osteogenic loading research and speaking worldwide about its implications, as well as developing other biotechnology devices and products that will aid in advancing the health and wellbeing of people all around the world. He frequently presents on the topics of osteogenic loading and whole body vibration and has disseminated his research at the World Congress on Osteoporosis, the Medical Wellness Association, multiple ageing/age management conferences, and the Google campus. Writings include multiple peer-reviewed publications in medical journals, and the book Osteogenic Loading. Dr. John Jaquish has recently been invited to participate on the editorial board of Diabetes Open, a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Full Transcript

Don Saladino: So we are here with Dr. Dr. John Jaquish. And John, thank you so much for coming on. Derek and I, we’re really excited to have you aboard today.

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

Don Saladino: Can you tell our followers, can you give a little breakdown on what it is you do because I think it’s very interesting, and we are yet to have anyone on our episode to discuss these topics?

Dr. John Jaquish: Boy, what I do. What most people think I do is I sell a piece of fitness equipment. What I really do is I invent stuff and I spend most of my days reading the research. I also have a good time. You get on my Instagram, Instagram is really funny because you look at some people and it’s like is this guy always on a beach? I mean I take a lot of pictures on beaches, but the answer is no, I’m not always on the beach. I spent a lot more time reading research, trying to come up with a better understanding, a better way to document things. A better way to explain to the fitness industry. There’s research that’s been made available to the fitness industry for years, and it’s been ignored because I think two reasons.

Dr. John Jaquish: One is the general reader is not intelligent enough to understand what the hell it’s about, and reading research is not easy either. You really got to decide you want to understand something. The other thing is the “facts” that have been given to us in the fitness industry, all have to do with selling something. Now I am no different. I am making people aware of different facts, and I am selling the product but what they’re saying is inaccurate and I would say fraudulent. When treadmills first came out, every couple years a treadmill said for the same exact workout you’re burning a few 100 more calories, now you run for 20 minutes on a treadmill it’s like you burned 1,200 calories yet not even close.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I mean maybe one eighth of that. So that’s how you sell more treadmills. It’s like somebody gets on the next newer treadmill and like, “I got to watch better workout. From this, look at these numbers.” Yeah, it’s just bullshit.

Don Saladino: Dr. Jaquish, not to cut in on that, but you actually just reminded me of the golf club industry now, because what they’ve been doing … So in my business I have a little bit of a golf background. I owned a golf training facility in New York City for 15 years. My brother was a professional golfer for inaudible. What the club company started doing is they started changing not the … yeah, pretty much changing the loss and the degrees on clubs. So if you were able to hit say your eight-iron 165 yards, they now are taking the seven-iron and they’re printing eight-iron on it, because that seven-iron you were really hitting 170, 180 yards. So now you’re picking up an eight-iron and going, “Wow, I used to hit this 165 yards, but I’m hitting this almost 180 yards. I’m going to buy this one.” It’s crooked. Everyone knows and everyone talks about it, but you’re discussing the same thing. Is that correct?

Dr. John Jaquish: Same thing, same thing. Women fashion, my mother spent a lot of time as a fashion designer. She taught fashion design in University of Virginia, and she talks about vanity sizing. This is great. So the big girls don’t want to buy the XL or the size 12 or size 16 or whatever. So they just make the sizes go up, and so that’s where a size zero came from because there was never any such thing as the size zero. And now they have negative one. So they just shifted everything to the right so all the Chunky Monkey girls are happy. Okay, did you lose weight because you now shop at the gap? No, you didn’t. So, okay. Sorry ladies, but that’s what goes on in the fitness industry.

Dr. John Jaquish: The title of my book, Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time, and down here it says and So Is Cardio. I say that because if your goal is to lose body fat, cardio is not the thing. You up-regulate cortisol chronically. Cortisol sacrifices muscular tissue, not fat. It protects body fat. So you’ll stay fatter longer if you like cardio, which makes sense because you’re stimulating the body to go long distances on a small amount of fuel. So it’s going to conserve fuel and reduce the size of the engine. That’s why it does that. Makes perfect logical sense, but the fitness industry has been teaching the opposite. Why? Because they buy treadmills. That’s why.

Don Saladino: I think there’s some value into that, Derek. I mean I do believe that the more cardio is not necessarily the better. I mean it’s a challenging discussion. I mean I’ve been a coach, Dr. Jaquish for 22 years and when someone has a body composition goal in mind and they’re like, “Well, do I just do more cardio?” It’s never an easy question. You’re almost sometimes telling them, “You know what? You’re doing two days, you can throw in a third day of recovery cardio. We can get some high intensity training in there to help maybe improve cardiovascular health.” Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: And that’s different. High intensity is totally different than steady state.

Don Saladino: Yeah. So yeah, and I know Derek has got a bunch of questions for you. But can you start talking about, you just very quickly just said, well high intensity is much different than steady state. Talk to us about that a little bit.

Dr. John Jaquish: So stabilization firing, which happens with anything that’s done in speed. So if you look at the head, the skull of a marathon runner as they’re running their head is bobbing up and down. If you look at the skull of a sprinter, it looks like it was lined up by a laser. So there is stabilization firing with the sprint, where there is almost none with the distance runner. And there’s a major hormonal difference in what’s going on while that exercise is happening, and the knock-on effect afterward. So what ends up happening is that stabilization firing that makes their skull stable with the sprinter is stabilizing their whole body, that afferent activation in mass has a growth hormone effect. And the first and hopefully only meta analysis I ever authored with Henry Alkire, he’s a co-author on the book also.

Dr. John Jaquish: We wrote a meta analysis together. By the way, never do one of those. They’re horrible. So much work. But we demonstrated that stabilization firing, and stabilization firing plus load had a tremendous effect on growth hormone whereas activities that have no stabilization firing have no effect on growth hormone. So for example, a free weight squat which is a lot more like a sprint because you get the stabilization. I call it the sprint effect, whereas a leg press. So somebody can go on a leg press and use three times the amount of weight that they would normally do in a squat. Now of course, people think like I press 2,000 pounds. No, you really don’t because instead of 45 degree angle most of the weight is going into the ground. But try telling that to the typical fitness guy. So I’m talking about that sideways that guy with a stainless steel ring on every finger, that guy.

Dr. John Jaquish: So yeah, those guys should just be pushed out of traffic. So when you look at the amount of stabilization firing, especially when you load it, you can have upwards of 2,000. I think the best study we identified was 2,600% increase in growth hormone. This is naturally created by the body with stabilization plus loading. And then of course, all other interventions that looked at non stability like the leg press, nothing. No change in growth hormone at all. So that’s the same reason why high intensity, I don’t like the word high intensity cardio, because that’s not really cardio. It’s high intensity training. Right?

Don Saladino: That’s fair. That’s fair.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So when somebody does sprints, catches a breath, sprints, catches a breath, they’re going to get a huge growth hormone effects. Also, remember the weight they’re dealing with as they sprint is incredible, because every toe strike can be three times their body weight. That’s huge. Sprinters don’t squat a lot. They don’t really need to. You can build powerful legs by running really fast, because you’re dealing with huge weight. It just doesn’t look that way, but the momentum plus the toe strike and your own body weight factored in there is an incredible amount of force.

Don Saladino: Well, what are some of … because you’ve obviously done a lot of research on this. So there becomes a really gray area. The first argument I get into with people is I think 90% of the people out there think they’re doing high intensity interval training and they’re not. They’re just in a way when you break it down, I don’t look at a four to one work to rest ratio as high intensity. People are just tired and they’re moving slowly, and they’re not able to create that maximal amount of output that I think high intensity interval training requires. They’re more if you’re measuring their heart rate, they’re more in a steady state range in that 140, 150 range for a 35, 40 minute class. And they’re again, this is what pisses me off about the fitness industry is that they’re marketing that is a high intensity class. It’s not a high intensity class by no means.

Don Saladino: And if you tried to get that individual to perform anything high intensity, they couldn’t because they’re used to moving around at that speed and with that output. Now in your opinion, you’re talking a lot about growth hormone response and high intensity interval training, which I didn’t know the exact science on that. But everything you’re saying right now, I agree with. I’m like, “Okay. No, this is all incredibly smart.” The leg press, the squat, I get it. Can you break down some specific numbers and research on maybe if someone is to do high intensity interval training, what’s the sweet spot? What range do they want to be in? Obviously, there’s not going to be an exact number, but there’s going to be a range. Can you give us that? Maybe work the rest ratio, anything specific?

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m just the wrong guy to ask for that.

Don Saladino: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I’m trying to think which scientist I know that would be fit to answer that one. Yeah. What I’m trying to do in that section of the book is point out you don’t need to worry about cardio necessarily. And also people who do strength training have an equal cardiac health effect. Now I will say there’s a myth with strength athletes that they have poor cardio. I tell the story really often with a friend in the Munich airport. And the Munich airport is like the airport of stairs. I think they tried to break the world record for how many stairs you had to go up and down to change planes. It’s just ridiculous. You’re just going up and down like, I don’t know, six times. It’s so dumb, but I don’t know. inaudible, so maybe they’re onto something. But I had to change planes and it was a particular time, and I was with a guy who weighs about 100 pounds less than I do.

Dr. John Jaquish: And we’re both running up and down the stairs and I’m covered in sweat. He’s like, “Your cardio is terrible.” And he’s a distance runner. And I’m like, “No, when I contract my quadriceps, I have to push blood into my quadriceps and mine are like five times bigger than yours are.” So it’s just a bigger engine. It’s like is a Formula One car a bad car because it burns a lot of gas? Not if you want to go fast. If you’re trying to conserve gasoline, then yeah, it’s a terrible car. So all depends on what you want. We become very purpose built with our training. So I have great cardiovascular health. In fact, I have a standard Western doctor who doesn’t understand anything about exercise at all for my general practitioner, and I keep him around because he’s so clueless because I want to see what physicians like that ask or wonder about, or how bad can it get sort of thing.

Dr. John Jaquish: So this guy, every time he does cardiac work on me, he goes, “Are you running marathons? Your cardiac health is really good.” I’m like, “Look at me, do I look like I run marathons? 240 pounds.” He’s just like, that doesn’t mean anything to him. He just knows I have great cardiovascular health. They do an echo on me or they do anything, and I’m great. So yeah, that’s why I focused what I was trying to convey to other people more like do I need cardio for weight loss … if I don’t need cardio for weight loss, do I need it for health? And I wanted to address that also.

Derek M. Hansen: Yeah. Sorry, I just wanted to jump in. I’ve been putting together my online course on running and sprinting, and I’m using animal models too. And I have all these videos of cheetahs. And like you said, the head does not move. It’s just-

Dr. John Jaquish: Lined up with the laser.

Derek M. Hansen: Yeah, it’s amazing. And I’m just watching what’s happening behind the head, and it’s going so fast whatever, 75 miles per hour. And then even some of the stuff that I’ve been doing like I was a sprinter and a long jumper, and now I’m doing longer runs with my wife and it kills me. It mentally just kills me. And when we go out and do sprints, I feel fantastic. If I do anything longer distance, I want to shoot myself. So it’s very interesting, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, there’s … I mean I wouldn’t want inaudible. Well, you should tell her that Dr. Jaq said you can’t-

Derek M. Hansen: I need a little prescription for that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I mean this is relationship advice inaudible. She can troll me on the internet, everybody else is.

Don Saladino: So yeah. So what do you attest your cardiovascular health to then? So you said the engine is fantastic, but you don’t do any cardio? Is it from all the-

Derek M. Hansen: Well, there is a great study, I don’t know if you guys know who Mel Siff was, but he kept showing the study about longshoreman in the old days. And they would always just lift things, and they said these guys had no problems with cardiac issues because of all the lifting and stuff they were doing. So there’s definitely some precedents for this.

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s a meta analysis that I reference in the book, as well as a couple other studies that didn’t end up making … they were published after since talking about how strength training is equal or better than cardiovascular training or cardiovascular health. And I take the position and I don’t really water anything down, and I think that’s why I’m both loved and hated. Is like I said, there’s really no such thing as cardio. Cardio is just sheer strength training and it doesn’t grow any muscle, because really using blood will contract muscle. So what’s really the difference? It’s not like our body totally shifts gears and it’s like a different thing. Thinking and skeletal muscle contraction are different things. Cardio and strength is defined by the fitness industry, not that much. Just ones very high repetition focus and blood flow focus, and the other one is opposing. But they’re really-

Don Saladino: But isn’t that the difference? Isn’t that the difference between anaerobic and aerobic? I mean isn’t that what we’re talking about here?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, exactly. That’s what we’re talking about. Yeah. We’re kind of splitting hairs like it’s not just contraction of muscle. So that’s why I say do the most efficient thing to the muscle, which is strength training and then you’re going to get the cardio in. Now if you want to be a distance runner, you’ve got to be a distance runner. You got to run distance. There’s no other way around this, because you want the cortisone secretion. You want to diminish muscle mass. You want to store more body fat. That’ll make you a better runner, but that’s not really what people are looking for. You walk in a gym, nobody walks in and goes, “I’d really like to lose some muscle and get a little fat.”

Don Saladino: No, I get that but don’t … and listen, this is not at all … one thing you’ll realize about me, I enjoy these conversations. I’m never combative. I’m never trying-

Dr. John Jaquish: You do.

Don Saladino: I’m never the one who’s sitting down in a conversation like this trying to who’s trying to be the smartest guy in the room? I just like to learn, I like to we’ll leave this call and we’re going to be on very good terms. But what about for the individual say, and I love strength training, but there’s a cost to doing business. At a certain point, there’s so much strength training that your body is or is not going to respond to. Now there’s other things like how are your joints feeling? How is your muscle recovering? What is going on? And when you look at someone who is just, and the majority of the people out there are sedentary.

Don Saladino: If someone is getting an hour worth of let’s say lifting weights in the morning, and they’re sitting at their desk seven hours in the afternoon. And then they’re suddenly like, “I want to get on a treadmill and I want to walk where my heart rate is at 120 or 130 beats a minute. And I just want to get some of that recovery going, and I want to maybe burn some more fat calories and raise my PMR.” Whatever it is whatever you want to call it. Do you think that’s a bad thing?

Dr. John Jaquish: No. I mean it’s not what I would do.

Don Saladino: Right. What would you do?

Dr. John Jaquish: Some people just like it.

Don Saladino: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and I’m not going to tell somebody … the point of the book was documenting what’s best, but there’s a lot of things that are like the nutrition program I recommend in here. I expect 40% of people who read it, and this is probably true of all nutrition books, just to go, “Well, I got to have my pizza.” And they just ignore it. But then only a small percentage are going to do exactly what I do, which is pretty much eating one meal a day or meat, and that’s it.

Don Saladino: So one meal a day carnivore diet, you don’t eat any vegetables and fruits, nothing? No micronutrients?

Dr. John Jaquish: No.

Don Saladino: No. So how much meat are you eating in that sitting?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I recently cut back and added bacterial fermentation or amino acids. But before I did that, it was like three pounds. Three pounds of meat in one meal.

Don Saladino: And what’s the goal in mind? I’m just curious. When you’re eating, is it just to stay alive? Is it for … what’s that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Grow as much muscle as I can.

Don Saladino: Grow as much muscle as you can.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Don Saladino: I’m curious. How tall are you?

Dr. John Jaquish: Six-foot.

Don Saladino: Six-foot, and you said 250?

Dr. John Jaquish: 240 right now.

Don Saladino: Wow. Big Boy. No, for someone trying to build muscle, I mean I’m 6'1", I’m 215. So I mean you outweighed me by like 25 pounds. I mean that’s a lot. How do you think you’re … sorry, go ahead. I apologize.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s also like I’m 44 years old, so I really want to prove what can be done at my age because we know that 20-year olds can put on some muscle. Well, the 30-year olds can put on some too, but 40s not really. That’s when you see bodybuilders retiring, even with the drugs they can’t do it. And so I’m beating the odds by doing what I’m doing. And I want to see how far I can go and then where it stops? Am I going to continue to grow after 240? Maybe, I don’t know. I won’t know till I get there, because my training is far better than 99% of the population. I mean shameless self plug here, my product is fucking awesome.

Dr. John Jaquish: So it works really well, and it’s the only thing I do. So it works for all the NFL players. They use it. The Miami Heat uses it, they endorsed the book. There’s another bunch of NBA players, Andre Drummond on the Pistons. That’s his exclusive training program. Couple Olympic athletes, baseball. A lot of different sports are using it, and you can’t say the same thing about any other home fitness product. By the way, these are all people that are unpaid.

Don Saladino: Can you tell us about the product, though? I’d like to hear, Derek, I want to hear about the product.

Derek M. Hansen: Yeah, yeah, likewise.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So it’s the strongest approach, and I don’t mean strongest as in you get stronger. I mean the greatest amount of variants in variable resistance type exercise. So a lot of people who bench press with variable resistance will put bands on the bar, and they’ll be holding it on their chest. And they’ve got X here, and then they go to 1.2X at the top. Well, what we have is more like X at the bottom and five X at the top. So for example, when I’m doing chest press, I’m holding 100 pounds at the bottom, but just short of lockout I’m holding 540 pounds. And I even have videos where I have a load cell in that load chain, and show the digital output of how much force I’m creating. So you go from 100 to 540 and that’s like 200, 300 in the middle. And it goes up very quickly, very steep strength curves.

Dr. John Jaquish: So that’s what the outputs of the human body are, and I demonstrated that in one of my own studies, but that’s been demonstrated in a bunch of other studies. So 16 other studies they have been done on variable resistance, and the ones … all of them have positive outcomes. And the ones that show higher levels of variance are the ones that come out with the best result. And I think the only reason, and this stretches back to the ’90s. And so the reason I think that nobody had come up with a product other than nobody really, but I thought about it was no one really knew the right amount of variance. Like what is it? Is it X and 1.2X or is it X and three X? No one really was able to land on that, and I think Arthur Jones tried to narrow that down with his cam for the Nautilus machines, but he was still just shot in the dark. And he was I think was X and 1.3X. So yeah, I just-

Don Saladino: This sounds like training with chains and bands, though pretty much. That’s what you’re pretty much referring to in a way?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, the chains and bands they’re the wrong level. There’s not a high enough level of variance, because if we have 16 studies that show by adding variants you get more and then with weights, you get less than this other thing, what’s the variable that matters? Is it weight or is it variance? Obviously, it’s variance. So what’s the right rate of variance?

Don Saladino: And when you’re saying variance, you just and I apologize. When you’re saying variants, you mean 100 pounds at the bottom and 500 pounds at the top. You want to see a wider discrepancy between where the weight is at the hardest point, and you want that way to increase. You want to have the largest increase in weight as if they the lift is getting lighter?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, because then we can fatigue the body in a diminishing range. So we can fatigue the impact ready range or the stronger range, a lot of people call it. I called it impact ready when I developed my medical device, which is now this whole thing I started. That’s called OsteoStrong. It treats osteoporosis, it’s the most effective osteoporosis treatment in the world. And it’s found in 140 clinics in eight different countries. It’s an expensive machine though, so I don’t talk about it on podcast when it’s like $125,000. It’s not like you’re listening-

Don Saladino: Oh, my God. I can’t crosstalk. No, I’m sorry that’s a little to lose it now. 125 grand.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, it’s a medical device to treat a disease state.

Don Saladino: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Osteoporosis, which kills as many people as breast cancer. So yeah-

Derek M. Hansen: Would that be something you could use like in the International Space Station, where they do have bone density issues?

Don Saladino: Yeah, that’s a good point.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I wrote a paper with some NASA physicians recently and that should publish in a couple of months. It’s in peer review now.

Don Saladino: So let me ask you, and not to jump off the topic. But several times you said people either love me or hate me. So you feel like your conversation with … like when you were sitting down with us today, were you hesitant? Were you like, what direction is this going to go? I mean I know you don’t give a shit.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s okay because people have hard questions on me, and I prefer to get the hard questions because I have answers. And so I’d rather somebody see a podcast where there’s a real conversation. Sometimes the podcaster is already an X3 Bar resistance band training system user, and they’ve already put on 15 pounds of muscle or something like that. So it’s pretty much just like praise in the podcast. That’s cool. I mean, certainly makes my day. That’s easy and like pass it around, but I’d rather be criticized because I can come up with the answers. I know the research backwards and forwards. So yeah, somebody is like, “Well, what about this?” ?And then I give the answers. There’s actually one guy I did a podcast with, I won’t mention his names because I don’t want to get clown clicks. But this guy, he asked me what he thought were really hard questions and I just fired off the research.

Dr. John Jaquish: And he was like, “I never thought about that, or I’ve never seen that study.” I was totally caught flat footed. But he was on the attack the whole time, and that’s a better podcast. I even told him I’m like, “Thanks for not giving me the standard questions.” I thought it was pretty cool. But then this guy goes and makes a video afterward. And then he just says, “I think this and I think that.” And it was like just his opinion on what I said, but I already just proved it with science everything he said. So not only was the guy a little bitch for hiding from me, and you’re not having me on the second part. But then it was just like he just was giving his opinion. So it’s like what a dickhead. And all the comments were just people were like, “You’re a loser. You weren’t prepared to ask tough questions.”

Dr. John Jaquish: But all of that shit gives me sales, because they listen to me and then listen the other guy and they’re like, “Well, Jaq knows what he’s talking about. So I have to get one of those things.” Or how to read the book. Maybe there’s somebody still skeptical, read the book. It’s like six bucks on Kindle.

Don Saladino: So the book is … what was the book again?

Dr. John Jaquish: Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time and So Is Cardio.

Don Saladino: Hold on, but I thought you resistance train, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yes. I did not call the book resistance training is a waste of time.

Don Saladino: Right, right.

Dr. John Jaquish: I called it Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time.

Don Saladino: Yeah, you said weight lifting-

Dr. John Jaquish: You got to get people’s attention. Dr. Baker really loves the title of the book. He brags about it all the time. He’s a big X3 Bar fitness band bar system user too. You know Dr. Shawn Baker, the carnivore guy?

Don Saladino: I know the carnivore guy. I was unsure that that was his name. But if he’s referred to as the carnivore guy, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, both-

Don Saladino: He’s the one who published the book. Did he publish The Carnivore Diet?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Don Saladino: Okay. I know exactly. I know the book, is what I’m saying.

Dr. John Jaquish: He’s a big X3 Bar portable home gym user, and he endorsed the book. We get great endorsements. Forrest Griffin wrote the foreword to the book, light heavyweight champion. We got a NASA endorsement, Miami Heat, Ben Greenfield. It was great, great endorsements for the book. And and Dr. Baker. And he said, “You could have called the book the better band training method or something like that, or the variable resistance is the future.” And he would have sold a couple, but nobody really cared. We called it Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time, you’re basically walking around and walking up to a bunch of people and kick them in the nuts. And that’s my style. I played rugby, I don’t fucking care. I’m either going to win or I’m going to lose, but I came to win. So-

Don Saladino: Do you have a picture? I want to see what this thing looks like. Derek, do you have anything? Does-

Dr. John Jaquish: Thank you.

Derek M. Hansen: Nice.

Don Saladino: So can you can you walk us through this right now?

Dr. John Jaquish: So the 540-pound band, so it’s an Olympic bar. So these rotate, but my hand can always stay neutral. So I can be grabbing this and I can be going through not a full range of motion. We don’t lock out. I mean people who care about muscle growth shouldn’t really lock out. I mean unless you’re a power lifter, and your job is a lock out. But really, what’s a power lifter? About 99.9% of them are just fat guys with gym memberships. Yeah. So you go through a range of motion and you don’t lock out at the top, you keep constant tension. And then right here is the bottom. You don’t need a super stretch, that’s bullshit that’s been disproven.

Dr. John Jaquish: So you go through a nice slow and controlled range of motion, pushing a little bit of a decline. It’s easier on the shoulder joint. And you still get the same pectoral activation. And so on 540 pounds here, let’s say 300 pounds here and 100 pounds here. So I go until I can’t go any longer to get to that 540. Now I’m just doing shorter reps until I can’t get there anymore, and my last couple of repetitions may only be one inch. So that’s how that works. And when you do a squat, it’s a front squat. Don’t do it in a dress shirt, because I’m just about to rip this one.

Don Saladino: So you’re pretty much completely fatiguing everything at every point of the range of motion of that movement, is basically what you’re saying.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Don Saladino: So what are you going into? Hitting, like you’re probably not even warming up. Are you doing a feeler set, and then you’re just going and attacking one set? Are you just going in and just saying, all right I’m just-

Dr. John Jaquish: No, because the weight is so high at the top which is what matches our biomechanics, you go so uncontrolled and you do much higher repetitions. So when also think where joint injury and soreness occurs, that’s going to be at the bottom of the movement. Your joints still get sore because of what you do at top of movement as the bottom. So when we lighten the bottom, we can still go to fatigue by using diminishing range, but we don’t have to give ourselves any joint damage. So-

Don Saladino: How is this translated? Have you ever gone back into the gym, and have you gone under a typical bench press, dumbbell press, pull ups, squat, something to be able to relate what you’re working on with things that you might have done 10, 15 years ago? And have you seen, can you talk to us about that a little bit?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well yeah, the first two years I put on 45 pounds of muscle so I was way stronger. But that’s a great question, because you can become stronger but lose the ability or diminish the ability for skill. So like if a baseball pitcher goes and puts on a little bit of muscle and keeps pitching, he’ll pitch faster. If a baseball pitcher doesn’t pitch for two years, lifts, is he going to be a better pitcher? No, he’s going to be worse because he didn’t keep that firing pattern. Golf, that’s another perfect example. You’ve got that firing pattern and sometimes if you don’t play golf for a while, it’s not quite right. And you got to get back into it. So I wouldn’t just jump under a bar with weights on it. In fact-

Don Saladino: No, I get it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. So sometimes you’re like my bench press went down, I’m like bench press twice a week for like a month and then see where you are, because let’s say you did a year of X3. You put on muscle, but you’re not working on the skill of the bench press because that’s a neurological thing. I just tell people, be mindful of that. Also, my goal isn’t to be better at the sport of the bench press. I don’t care what I bench press. My goal is to be as strong and as lean as possible. How I get there makes no difference. I’m just going the most efficient path. And that’s the market that’s out there. There’s a group of people that really is interested in how much they bench. Okay, I mean they’ll do better if they mix X3 in with their training, but they still have to do that training. And so if you want to be a distance runner, you got to run distance. That kind of thing.

Derek M. Hansen: Yeah, like Tom Brady has popularized the use of bands for his training, and he talks about it not making him stiff and sore and all that. And is that obviously something that you’re doing with some of the athletes you’re working with?

Dr. John Jaquish: You ever seen a video of Tom Brady using the X3 workout bar system?

Derek M. Hansen: He actually uses the product.

Dr. John Jaquish: I won’t say yes or no, I’ve seen one. Or Dwayne Johnson, seen that?

Don Saladino: I mean listen, Dwayne loves his iron paradise. And he like-

Dr. John Jaquish: He does. He does, yes.

Don Saladino: He dose, and Brady is on a different level because Brady clearly, I can’t see anything with him doing any weight … I’m sorry, weight training, excuse me, but resistance training he is doing but-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s difficult getting the endorsement. So when there’s a few best in the world type athletes use X3. And I was like, “Hey, can I use you on my website? I can’t offer you anything because I want to be able to say and then pay you, but all I want to do is put a small picture like one inch by one inch on the website.” And a lot of athletes have been really cool about that. They’re like, “Yeah, I love the product. Absolutely. Go for it.” They’re like, “Yeah, no, just don’t put it in the ads or anything.” Okay, because if I get somebody to the website, then they see all these pro athletes using it they’re like, “These guys are some of the best in the world, they wouldn’t be screwing around with it if it was stupid. So clearly it works.”

Dr. John Jaquish: But some of the really top guys, I mean like best in basketball, best in football in the world. They really want some outlandish stuff like half the company kind of thing, which is what one of these best in the world guys wanted and I was like, “No, not a chance.”

Don Saladino: I get it. I think I mean now we’re switching the conversation to a business talk, it’s just like you could have the best product in the world and if no one is marketing it, you’re never going to make a penny on it. So it’s like, all right, well am I better off owning 1% of a billion or am I better off owning 99% of 100? And I think that’s where only you can make that decision, because it’s-

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, because I know I’m not having trouble selling it. I think one of the smartest things I did was I made myself the model because when I started, I was not big and chubby. And so I lost 16 pounds of body fat and put on 45 pounds of muscle.

Don Saladino: What’s your body fat now?

Dr. John Jaquish: Last measured, eight.

Don Saladino: Eight percent.

Dr. John Jaquish: Eight percent. Yeah, so like in the same condition as some of the running backs that I work with.

Don Saladino: Interesting.

Derek M. Hansen: What’s the price of the product, because I think it’s hard to get that out there as well?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s $550. So for an actual best home gym that does something, not some plastic handles and I don’t know, PC yarn or whatever is being passed off as a home fitness product today. I think it’s the cheapest home gym there is that actually does something, because you can get a power rack and bands and weights and all kinds of stuff. But you’re looking at you get something good, you’re looking at three to $7,000. This is $550 and when you’re done, it fits in a drawer. There’s also a footplate. The ground plate that you stand on that acts as second ground so the bands can try like for a deadlift. Deadlift squat, overhead press, all those movements so your ankles are protected.

Don Saladino: And how many bands come with it? How many bands come with a unit?

Dr. John Jaquish: Four, and then there’s an extra one for incredibly strong people. By the way, by incredibly strong, like most of the NFL players can’t handle it. And those are some of the strongest people in the world. So I basically did that band. It’s like anybody who says band training is for sissies.

Don Saladino: inaudible kind of thing.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m like, “Okay, show me how to do a chest press with this.” And of course, I can do 20 of them and they can’t do one. So I’m like, “So you’re an expert, right?”

Derek M. Hansen: Has it been selling well during COVID, because there’s been a run on weights and gym equipment and everything?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I mean hate admitting that, because this whole thing sucks. But yeah, I mean people are going to have to work out at home. I think there’s a general attitude like home cooking products are selling really well, because people are like, “Who knows when we’ll be able to go to a restaurant? Maybe we will only be able to go back one week, and then somebody will sneeze and then we’ll shut the whole country down again.” So it’s like I’ll just take care of this myself. I’ll work out home. I’ll eat at home. I’ll have friends over. Whatever. Yeah.

Derek M. Hansen: And once we can travel again, I assume you can travel pretty easily with this device?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah, I keep one in my suitcase.

Don Saladino: Seems lightweight, and it seems simple.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, the whole thing weighs 15 pounds. Yeah, this is like eight pounds. It’s solid steel in the middle, anodized aluminum on the exterior.

Don Saladino: I don’t think anyone can argue whether it works or not, because this is a form of resistance training. This is a form of band training that you pretty much have just in my opinion, probably have anchored better than 99% of the other products out there. I mean-

Dr. John Jaquish: I love that conclusion. That’s great, both of you.

Don Saladino: So I think if anyone is going to turn around and they’re going to say this is bullshit, it doesn’t work then I think they need to assess what they know about the anatomy and fitness, et cetera. But I think you start getting into some weird conversations about 45 pounds of muscle in a year. That’s a lot of muscle.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a lot of muscle.

Don Saladino: It’s a lot of muscle to do, and then you’re obviously going to have your skeptics out they’re going to say, “Well, was there any type of TRT involved in there? Was there any type of performance?” What’s that?

Dr. John Jaquish: I love when somebody says, “Well, what’s the amount of TRT?” And I’m like-

Don Saladino: Well, I would never ask that. I mean I would never ask that.

Dr. John Jaquish: I know you wouldn’t.

Don Saladino: I wouldn’t, because I think it’s an irrelevant question. It’s like what do you-

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s like if it’s beyond a natural amount, then it’s not an amount of TRT. It’s an amount of performance enhancing drugs.

Don Saladino: So can we shift gears on that? Can you start talking about that a little bit, because you’re obviously well versed in it if you don’t mind?

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. Yeah, I was in a bad rugby accident. You’re supposed to well, everybody says to wear a cap in rugby, but hard to sprint with that. So nobody really does, just hope I don’t get hit in the garage. Well, I did. And so I got banged up pretty bad. I started having cardiac problems. They were like I was having palpitation. I could be on the rugby field and all of a sudden covered in sweat. My heart just like short beats. I just collapsed on my knees. Oh, my God, what the hell is going on? And so I go to cardiologists, and they’re like, “Your heart muscles are really weak.” And I’m like, “I play rugby. It’s 80 minutes of sprinting and stopping. What are you talking about?” And so guy is like, “Your echo doesn’t look good.” Like sonogram of the heart.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so the guy says, “I’m going to send you to an endocrinologist, and we’re going to do all the panels but I think you’re low in testosterone.” I’m like, “There’s no way,” because I was pretty strong. I was strong, I weighed 160 pounds. And this was when I was 20, 25. No, a little older. Maybe 26, 27. And then so I had 163 nanograms per deciliter, and normal is between 800 and 1,200 nanograms per deciliter. So they’re like, “Your testosterone is so low, you may have a heart attack in your 30s.” And so because apparently there’s as many testosterone receptors in the heart as there are in all the rest of the muscles combined. So that’s the largest reset. And this is why I like people who use incredible amounts of testosterone, they have cardiac problems because the heart gets enlarged.

Dr. John Jaquish: Coincidentally, drug free athletes get an enlarged heart too, that are focused on strength. I think it just has to do with up-regulating testosterone receptors. So I don’t want to really blame that necessarily on exogenous testosterone, but so then I got the prescription. And now testosterone replacement therapy as defined by WebMD is different than steroid use, because it’s a replacement dosage. It’s replacing what’s supposed to be there, and that’s all it is. So there’s no amount. It’s the amount that’s right for you to replace what’s not there. And since my natural production was just destroyed, then I got the prescription and I went back to a normal level of testosterone. But it didn’t do anything. I think I might have put on maybe five pounds of muscle in the next few years. So I felt better, my heart felt better. My rugby game got a lot better, but there wasn’t a huge muscle mass moment. And this was when I was 28. And I started X3 after turning 40. So big difference.

Derek M. Hansen: Yeah, I certainly had a number of friends who’ve had testicular cancer, and then they’ve had to do the same thing and they’re doing pretty well right now.

Dr. John Jaquish: Nice.

Don Saladino: Very interesting. All right, I mean I thought that was incredibly cool. Derek, do you have anything else?

Derek M. Hansen: No, I just want to get some information out to our listeners about how to get in touch with John, and follow and see more pictures on the beach with Ferraris and …

Dr. John Jaquish: The Ferrari, the Ferrari pictures are all about them trying to get me to sell my Lamborghini. Lots of it is with my Lambo, so I have a Lamborghini. Yeah, Ferrari doesn’t make a fast car anymore. I don’t know what’s wrong. They make beautiful cars, but the naturally aspirated V10 in the Lamborghini, there’s nothing like it. I shake the ground when I walk into a parking structure. It’s awesome. It’s like ridding a fucking dinosaur. Scream. I love it.

Don Saladino: Good for you, mate. So Dr. Jaquish, can you let our listeners know where they can find you, your Instagram and where they can find your product?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yes, I put everything on one landing page so I didn’t have to give out 10 websites.

Don Saladino: Perfect.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s doctorJ.com. D-O-C-T-O-R, the letter J.com.

Derek M. Hansen: Wow.

Don Saladino: I’m jealous to begin with. That’s like how easy is that, doctorJ.com?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, apparently Julius Erving is fishing now. So-

Don Saladino: Charge his ass. Charge his ass if he wants it. Actually, no, don’t give it up.

Dr. John Jaquish: I wouldn’t.

Don Saladino: No, that’s too good.

Dr. John Jaquish: I wouldn’t give it up for a million dollars.

Don Saladino: Good for you.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a million dollar URL. Absolutely beautiful. There’s great pictures of me there.

Don Saladino: Awesome. It was such a pleasure having you on. You were very entertaining. Really nice.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks for asking real questions, because this is where real skeptic is, because getting the people who are just already famous is like all right, well they’re already famous. It’s like I hardly want these guys over. I want people to hear this podcast and be like, “Jaq inaudible, I hate him.” And then they’re listening and they’re like-

Don Saladino: Listen, between Derek and I, we’ve been in this industry a long time. And that’s why we’ve seen a lot of stuff. And I think that’s why I’ve gotten to the point in my career, I’m 43 years old. I listen a lot better than I did maybe 10 years ago. And it’s just, it’s interesting to hear experiences and things you’ve gone through, and how you’re building your business. And there were a lot of … I can understand how people out there want to get combative. I mean some of the things skeptics are going to-

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, and my style is to kick them in the nuts.

Don Saladino: You’re right.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m actually trying to do that. I want to piss off more people, because when they ask the questions, then I got the answers. So I-

Don Saladino: Just get you that answer. Just get me that answer on the sweet spot when it came down to high intensity interval training. That’s the answer that you owe me. All right?

Dr. John Jaquish: I can definitely-

Don Saladino: What?

Dr. John Jaquish: I can definitely find that.

Don Saladino: Find that because it is an interesting question, because we start getting into now and before … we start getting into the topic of high intensity interval training, and at what point? It’s like okay, well we can … and I’ve heard certain people, certain coaches, “Well, you can maintain a max speed sprint for say four seconds or five seconds or six seconds.” Whatever that number is. So anything you can’t maintain max intensity for isn’t high intensity. Well, I understand that outlook. But are you getting your heart rate up to a max intensity zone when you are doing that type of training? How many repeats would you have to do to get your heart rate up to that point? So what are we looking at here?

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean it’s like your heart rate is going up and your speed may be going up, but I think this is happening. They’re crossing each other. And even after you slow down, your heart rate still goes up.

Don Saladino: Yeah, of course.

Dr. John Jaquish: 10 seconds.

Don Saladino: Of course, but-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, you got to pump blood to recover the muscle.

Don Saladino: But my question is, are we measuring high intensity training by how high the heart rate is getting, or are we measuring it by how much output are we requiring the body to produce? Because those may be different answers at different times.

Derek M. Hansen: Mm-hmm (affirmative), I would think so. I would think so like again, going back to the cheetah, it does about a 15-second run on its hunt. And then it takes 35 minutes for it to recover before it can pull the carcass into a tree.

Don Saladino: That’s incredible.

Derek M. Hansen: And then it takes three days for it to recover so it could do the next thing. So I don’t know what its heart rate is, but it certainly needs that recovery time after that effort.

Don Saladino: That’s incredible. Incredible.

Dr. John Jaquish: I really-

Don Saladino: It’s interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Don Saladino: We don’t need an answer now. I mean I think I’m still trying to figure it out.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m thinking about how I would find the answer, and I think I know. I think what I would look for is blood over time. Blood moved over time, and what the highest rate of blood flow like let’s say per minute would be in different protocols. That’s how you would identify that. That’s how I’d try and identify that.

Don Saladino: Blood flow to the organs or blood flow to the muscles?

Dr. John Jaquish: Just aortic wave.

Don Saladino: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Just heart pumping, because it’s hard to determine where everything is going. I mean you could do that with-

Don Saladino: Makes sense.

Dr. John Jaquish: Either with an MRI say if that study exists. Blood flow per minute. Let me work on this. I bet you the data is out there.

Don Saladino: Yeah, we’d love to hear-

Dr. John Jaquish: I bet you nobody has described it like you’re describing it. So that can be-

Don Saladino: How about this. If you find out, shoot Derek and I a message and let’s get you back on and talk about it. I think that’d be a lot of fun.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’d be awesome. All right, I’ll figure it out.

Don Saladino: Thanks again. This was a trip today. I had a good time with it. Maybe we’ll come in with some more difficult questions next time.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thank you. I love it.

Derek M. Hansen: Awesome.

Don Saladino: Dr. Jaquish, thank you so much. It’s such a pleasure having you on.

Dr. John Jaquish: Bye.

Derek M. Hansen: Thank you very much.

Don Saladino: Bye-bye.