Dr. John Jaquish On Why Weightlifting May Just Be the Worst Thing For You!

Dr. John Jaquish and I talked all about weightlifting, resistance training and everything in between on today’s podcast. We talk about what makes his X3 different from other resistance bands, why weightlifting may be bad for you, and so much more. Definitely an interesting perspective and a great conversation, enjoy!

Full Transcript

Robert: Well hello, ladies and gentlemen. Robert Sykes, [keto savage 00:00:02]. I hope you’re having a wonderful day. Today, I have a special guest, Dr. Jaquish on the line. He is the man behind the X3 resistance bands system that you may have seen in certain conferences or online, on social. It’s basically this cool little resistant band-bar set up, with an Olympic bar grip, and a floor plate. I’ve been super curious to try, I have not tried them before, but I’m going to after this conversation. This guy is an interesting character. He’s got some controversial thoughts, he’s going to say some things that probably are going to rub some people the wrong way, especially if those people are coming from a traditional training, body building background. However, I can consider myself pretty open minded, and I feel like getting the benefit of doubt, and I’ll try his product to see what I think.

Robert: That said, see what you think for your own self, see what you like what he’s saying, give the bar a try. Without further ado, sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation with Dr. Jaquish.

Robert: We’re live. John, how are you man?

Dr.John Jaquish: Fantastic. How are you?

Robert: I’m doing wonderfully well sir. Wonderfully well. I’m excited to get you on today, because I’ve met you before in passing, at a conference. I’ve used your X3 Bar variable resistance training system, and I’d love to just get some back story as to what brought that invention to the market? How did that even come to be, and what got you into fitness in the first place? And then kind of dive down the rabbit hole there.

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah, sure. Thanks Robert for having me, this is great.

Robert: Absolutely.

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah. So, what got me into… Well, the funny thing is I don’t see myself as part of the fitness industry. I don’t really see an industry at all. It’s just a bunch of trash products that don’t work, false claims and nonsense. Total lack of understanding the science. Even like the fact that cardio is still prescribed for weight loss, there’s been 40 years of research that says that’s probably one of the worst things you can do, yet, people still keep doing it because I guess gyms, they think people want treadmills, so they get treadmills.

Robert: Ain’t no telling me.

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s just, they’ll buy what they think people want, even if the people are wrong, it doesn’t matter. They don’t see their job as educating anybody, it’s just they sell memberships, that’s what they do. And beyond that, you don’t even need to show up, they can care less. In fact, they’d rather you don’t show up because then they can sell more memberships.

Robert: It doesn’t ware on the equipment then, if you don’t show up either.

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah, that’s right. So, I’m from the medical device industry, and I developed a medical device to treat bone loss. What I discovered in the development, in clinical trials of that medical device, was that human beings are a lot more powerful in specific ranges of motion than in other ranges of motion.

Dr.John Jaquish: So, if you get in the position where you normally absorb high impact force or higher impact force, like you go to trip and fall and you put your hand up in front of you, the back of your hands in line with the clavicle, there’s 120 degree angle between upper and lower arm. There, you can absorb or produce the greatest amount of force. Seven times greater than what you would lift. And there’s always been a difference noticed between eccentric and concentric, sort of like you can lower more weight than you can raise. You know, living creatures are like that. But that’s kind of irrelevant compared to what we can do with different ranges of motion, because that number is a seven fold difference.

Dr.John Jaquish: And so once I understood that, I thought, wow, weight lifting is a terrible stimulus for growing muscle, because you have seven times the capability, but you’re going to pick whatever weight you can handle in the weakest range of motion, which by definition, is really only training you in that weakest range of motion, where also coincidentally, you’re receiving the most joint damage. And I want to quote Peter [Rottier 00:04:28] here, a brilliant guy. “Weight lifting overloads joints and underloads muscle.” And I solved that problem. That’s where the X3 really came from, because I was the first guy to really document what the difference was. I had that information and I knew that, that information showed something very different than other fitness type studies had done. In fact, if you look at most sports performance studies, it’s like one type of bench pressing versus another type of bench pressing. It’s like no one has really ever challenged the concept of weight lifting all together, like moving a static weight across space. Who said that was right? That’s just been gospel for a long time, and should never have been.

Dr.John Jaquish: I wrote the book, Weightlifting is a Waste of Time, which is number one best seller in a whole bunch of different categories. It’s the Wall Street Journal best seller, has 1000 reviews on Amazon. Everybody should check that out. So I documented the hell out of the science. The reason we met at a conference was because once I launched this product and I realized that the absolute ultimate muscular stimulus device, which was super cheap and would fit in a backpack. If someone could get me access to the Olympic Training Center for free, and I’d say, I’ll never go, because everything there is garbage next to what I have. Again, I can put it in a backpack, or even in the drawer at my house.

Dr.John Jaquish: But I realized I needed to get, encourage people to have the most optimized nutrition, otherwise, you wouldn’t get results out of it. That’s why I like the keto community, because these are the people who are on the right track. If you think you need carbohydrates… I can disprove that carbohydrates are even a micronutrient at all, and I lay it out in just stark detail in the book.

Robert: Oh man, you’ve got to shade some light on that. How so?

Dr.John Jaquish: Say it again.

Robert: You’ve got to shade some light on that, you got me curious now.

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah. The amount of carbohydrates needed to survive and have every organ function perfectly is zero. There’s absolutely no need for any carbohydrates whatsoever. Micronutrients, I did an Instagram post late last night where I explained how if you already eat whole foods, not concentrated nut butters or whatever. Just fruits, vegetables, meats, whatever, how many calories would you need to get the recommended daily allowances described by the American Medical Association? Take a guess.

Robert: They’re predicting, what was like 2K or some of that calories, for most people.

Dr.John Jaquish: No, the ANA tells to eat 2000 calories a day and never more, but if you were to eat whole foods to your vitamins, you need to take in 27000 calories a day. Now, obviously no one ever did that. A rhinoceros doesn’t even do that.

Robert: Yeah, that’s quite a lot.

Dr.John Jaquish: That tells you that, first of all, the recommended daily allowances of vitamins were collected by expert opinion in the 1950s. So, not even a study. They just took a poll from doctors, and they just pulled a number out of the air. Now that you know you need 27000 calories, unless you have processed products, which we all know we should avoid for other reasons, well then the recommended vitamin intakes are a joke. Don’t pay attention to them.

Robert: Yeah. I don’t typically spend much time looking at that part of the label. I focus more on how I feel and perform overall, and it’s definitely not consuming 27000 calories.

Dr.John Jaquish: You’re right. Yeah, the whole recommendation is just a joke.

Robert: So, I want to back up a little further, man. Were you using traditional training methods before you developed this? Would you go into a gym and then just train using traditional barbells, dumbbells and just crosstalk.

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah, that’s crosstalk. For 20 years, I’ve probably put on five pounds of muscle, and maybe 25 pounds of body fat.

Robert: And what got you to start looking for, was it just your introduction to medical device sales that got you looking for a better alternative? Or were you playing around with things in your garage or something? Or what was the catalyst there?

Dr.John Jaquish: I didn’t do sales, I invented the medical device.

Robert: Got you, got you.

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s called [OsteoStrong 00:09:36]. I have all the patents on that. I invented it to treat my mother’s osteoporosis, and then I went and invented X3 for really kind of sports performance muscularity target market.

Robert: How did the bone strengthening, what was the mechanics behind that?

Dr.John Jaquish: It’s emulating high impact. When I look at who has the most powerful bone, it’s gymnasts, because of the rate at which they hit the ground. They sometimes get 10 times their body weight, where a weight lifter, most weight lifters can’t even do two times their body weight. Maybe on a leg press, but we all know that 45% is going into the ground and not on their body. I love these guys who stack 1000 pounds on a leg press, and they think they’re actually moving that. It’s like, when I push my car, my car weighs 3300 pounds, that doesn’t mean I can bench press 3300 pounds.

Dr.John Jaquish: People who say things like that are just beyond stupid, so, no point in paying attention. If you want to say fitness industry, it’s kind of the sad way that clowns post videos like that and think they’re strong.

Robert: What is the mechanism of the device, if it impacts or if it’s dictated by bone stress, impact stress.

Dr.John Jaquish: Bone stress based on axio compression. So the axis of a bone, the length. You press on a bone from one end to the other, and you distort the shape and length of the bone for a very brief period of time, around five seconds. Actually it doesn’t feel like a brief period of time because you’re putting incredible forces to the body. And then once the compression is released, the bone springs back into its natural position, but the bone matrix has been stimulated so that it starts to uptake minerals and build more structure. Where there are walls, you know the cross-section of a bone looks like a honey comb, and it becomes a more intricate honey comb, the more of this axio compression that is put through the bone.

Robert: Got you, got you. So it’s basically like a compressive device that you can just position over whatever bone it is that you’re trying to strengthen at the time.

Dr.John Jaquish: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yep.

Robert: Got you, got you. What about the X3 Bar resistance band bar system, what was the aha moment with that, that led you down that path?

Dr.John Jaquish: That was when I had the medical device developed, and I looked at deconditioned people putting thousands of pounds through the body. They weren’t deconditioned after they got to the point they could put thousands of pounds. But these are people who’ve never engaged in any type of fitness. Post menopausal population, and some of them are putting 1000 pounds through their hip joint.

Dr.John Jaquish: So I look at that and I think, okay, impact ranges of motion, we can handle so much more. And I had the proof of that, and I realized I’m the only guy in the world that has this information. I’ve got to capitalize on this. And so, I started filing patents around just a really simple elegant design. It’s a bar, it’s a second ground you stand on, the ground plate, so you don’t twist your wrists or ankles. Because if you try and do, like when people say, “You’re still working out with bands?” I’m like, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about because a band by itself, that is of X3 weight, would break your wrists and ankles. Or you just won’t be able to complete a movement.” When I do a dead lift, it’s over 600 pounds. So these bands are not the important part. It’s the equipment. It’s the Olympic bar that’s for rotation in it, and it’s the second ground you stand on that allows the banding to move on its own without putting torsion into the smaller joints of the body.

Robert: Got you. How would you compare traditional dumbbells, barbells, cables, things of that nature, to traditional resistance bands, in the sense of the word, just the bands by themselves, not counting your Olympic bar and your ground plate. If you were just to compare those two, what would you say is the one?

Dr.John Jaquish: You mean working out with just bands?

Robert: Yeah, just bands versus just traditional movement?

Dr.John Jaquish: You can’t get a workout with… Because the problem is when you try and workout with bands, you’re either going so light, you’re not stimulating any growth, because there’s no getting away from heavy. You have to put incredibly heavy loads through the body. My chest press is 540 pounds, and I might hit that 25 repetitions. It’s that weight at the top of the movement, in the impact ready range, in the mid point, it might be 300, and at the bottom it’s only 100. And so, I will fatigue based on diminishing the range.

Dr.John Jaquish: First, I do however many full repetitions I can do, until I can’t do that anymore, and I cannot tolerate the high force at the peak. Then I do half repetitions. Then I do one-third repetitions, until I’m completely exhausted.

Robert: Just kind of like drop sets in the sense of doing the negative movement in a drop set, kind of with partial rep ranges?

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah. The problem with a drop set is you rest in between, and you let the [glycogen 00:15:26] begin to reset itself. So you never really have sarcoplasmic growth. And then you also don’t have hypoxia either. Two thirds of your growth potential, when you’re doing a drop set, you just throw away. I do tell that in the book too.

Robert: Have you had a hard time bridging the gap between people that are looking for, in the next innovation, when it comes to training, and just stuck on traditional mindset. Do they look at your X3 Bar resistance band training system and not give it the time of day? Or how’s that been?

Dr.John Jaquish: It really depends on the people. If they’re part of the weight lifting community, they tend to think they have all the answers. I’ve talked to guys who I looked at five years of their pictures, and I see absolutely no difference in their psychic at all. No difference in the lifts at all, yet, for five years, they’ll continue the same thing, expecting something different to happen all of a sudden. And I won’t be mean enough to point that out. I won’t be like, “Hey, my girlfriend warms up with your max.” I won’t say something like that. But I just point out, “What results have you seen?” And they don’t really know where to go with that, because I think they’re thinking, what I’m pointing out.

Dr.John Jaquish: But I want to be polite to all these people. I’m not going to get anywhere by beating up on anyone, but it’s a controversial message, and… Dr. Baker, I’m sure. You probably had Dr. Baker on your show, right?

Robert: Yeah.

Dr.John Jaquish: He really like the name of the book. He likes, Weightlifting is a Waste of Time. Because he said, “You could have called it like, The Variable Resistance Method, or something like that, and you would have sold a couple of hundred, mostly to your existing fans, and it wouldn’t have been the best seller or anything like that. But when you say Weightlifting is a Waste of Time,” and keep in mind, this guy is a world record weight lifter, and he’s a user of X3. So he gets it. And he even endorsed the book. You can look on the Amazon, one of the endorsements is from him.

Dr.John Jaquish: He says, “I called it a carnivore diet. I could have called it a zero carb diet, but I wanted it to be more aggressive, I wanted to get more attention.” And so, that’s part of what I’m doing. Now notice, I didn’t say resistance training is a waste of time, because I certainly do that. But I just do it in a much more intelligent way, so that I stimulate outrageously more growth. And I also point out in the book, a number of different studies that look at what the differences of the general gym going population is. Fitness is the most failed human endeavor. Most people see no results at all. I think 17% of people who lift weights, see absolutely no muscle protein synthesis, ever.

Robert: Yeah, just because the lack of proper form, lack of intensity.

Dr.John Jaquish: Or maybe, disadvantageous tendon layout. You can’t do much about that. Well you can, because X3 completely takes that out of the equation. But some people have a tendon insertion like in their pectoral, that’s at the top of their humerus bone, and they won’t make much progress lifting weights. They will with X3, but not lifting weights. And this is most people have that kind of attachment where they’ll have very little growth.

Dr.John Jaquish: Or, somebody like Mike Tyson, who has a tendon insertion point at the base of the humerus, I shouldn’t say the base, the end, like closer to the elbow. That is someone who can build strength in their pectorals very easily. Which is why Mike Tyson can be three, four inches from someones face, and hit them with almost full power. That’s his strategy. He ducks inside the box, where his opponent can’t hit him, but Mike can do almost 100% damage in that range. And this is the biggest genetic difference.

Dr.John Jaquish: You know how many people have been disqualified from sports because they have abnormally high testosterone?

Robert: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr.John Jaquish: You do know, or you don’t?

Robert: Yeah, I compete in natural body building. So there’s a lot of talk of testosterone, what’s natural levels, what’s abnormal levels.

Dr.John Jaquish: There’s only one athlete in the world, ever, that has been disqualified for having such a high natural level.

Robert: Who’s that?

Dr.John Jaquish: Someone from Africa. She had like 1200 nanograms to the deciliter, and she’s female. There was no drugs involved. They actually measured her blood levels for a consistent period of time. It’s not fair to let you to compete.

Dr.John Jaquish: When you hear these internet commenter clowns say like, “Well, genetics.” It’s like, “What do you mean, genetics? You sure you know what you’re talking about? What about genetics? Is it hormones?” I hardly ever heard anybody say tendon attachment points. But that’s the real genetic difference, and it’s well documented, and I lay it out in the book really clearly. But people don’t know this, mostly because there’s nothing you can, until now, there was nothing they could do about it. So, why talk about it?

Robert: Just to kind of play devil’s advocate. There’s been several successful athletes that have seen amazing progress using traditional methods. Is that all due to just their tendon attachment points?

Dr.John Jaquish: Primarily, yeah.

Robert: And you’re probably going to have a hard time-

Dr.John Jaquish: Maybe some other things going on. They may have lower myosin production, they may have… My point is, they don’t have big hormonal variances. So there’s a lot of people think, well they got probably testosterone. That’s not a thing. It’s really not a big difference. You can have deficiency, but most athletes are around 1000 nanograms to the deciliter.

Robert: What does your training look like currently? You haven’t used the dumbbell or barbell in several years now. Correct?

Dr.John Jaquish: No, I would have never used dumbbells because when you use your upper body, think about it logically like, here’s a question. The strongest athletes in the world, what do they train with, dumbbells or barbells?

Robert: Power lifting using the barbells.

Dr.John Jaquish: Right. And they don’t use dumbbells because dumbbells, they’re very bad at stimulating growth. Your central nervous system, if you go to pick something heavy up, you’re going to use both hands. Otherwise, it’s just not what the human body does.

Dr.John Jaquish: Now, the lower body is different, you’re actually better off stimulating one leg at a time, because unless you’re a kangaroo, you walk or run on one leg at a time. We don’t hop around. One leg at a time, is what we do. But in the upper body, we use two hands, when we have to deal with anything heavy. So, that’s why the people who train with barbells are far stronger than people who train with the dumbbells. So, I would never touch a dumbbell. Maybe just to crack the door open.

Robert: What about, is there a differentiation between strength, obviously being one goal, versus just a primary focus being inaudible. The classic power lifting, versus body building debate. Is there one better than the other in that department, from a how you train strategy? Is it more efficient to build muscle with a dumbbell, more of a unilateral movement?

Dr.John Jaquish: No, dumbbells just activate far less muscle. So, you’re getting far less growth, far less activation, far less of an exercise. Again, I tell other people, “Oh yeah, kettlebells are really where it’s at.” And I’m like, “Well, really? Are you sure, because why don’t strong people follow with those?” They might not know how to explain it scientifically like I do, but that’s what the body does. You would use both hands. The research shows there’s 20% less activation of the entire muscle.

Robert: Talk to me about your X3 Bar exercise band bar system then, from a power lifting, body building standpoint. Would somebody be able to have the muscle tines, the hypertrophy, the strength, if they train exclusively with that?

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah. And that’s what we see with about 20 NFL players, 40 NBA players, and I have a whole athlete wall on the website. There’s maybe 50 altogether, professional athletes using the product, which is huge because most home products get one or two people they pay. I don’t pay a single athlete. I give them my free advice, that’s it. They’re allowed to call me. They actually have my direct line. That’s the exchange. I say, “Let me put your picture on my website, and you can have access to me.” And I help them, and all of them tell me they’re stronger than they’ve ever been.

Dr.John Jaquish: Most NFL players never get stronger after they sign their contract, because when they sign that NFL contract, they’re told they’re never allowed to get injured. And if they get injured training, it’s their fault. They have to know their limits. Most of them don’t even train to fatigue. They certainly wouldn’t do something stupid like a one rep maximum, which by the way, nobody should be doing. But they just stop training heavy, completely. And so, X3 gives them an opportunity to train heavier than they’ve ever trained, with more repetitions, with more growth stimulus. And they get the opportunity to grow the thickness of tendons and ligaments, which is not seen very readily with regular weight training.

Dr.John Jaquish: So, their joints feel better, stronger, they go a lot leaner because of the stabilization effect. There’s a meta analysis that my co-author and I, Henry Alkire wrote in 2016. And what that shows, is that stabilization firing, plus load, can move your growth hormone past 2600% above baseline.

Dr.John Jaquish: When you do that, now growth hormone is not anabolic, it’s anti-catabolic, and it will speed up lipolysis. So people start getting leaner and preserve their strength, and of course, grow, because the heaviness activates more, because you’re training a lot heavier, it activates more testosterone receptors. So the testosterone they have in their body, naturally in their body, is used in the musculature, more so than any other type of athlete who’s training with regular weights. So they’re stronger, they’re leaner, they’re faster, their joints feel better, and they don’t go back.

Robert: Break down like your training split, just a really good optimized training split using exclusively the X3 Bar variable resistance training system. Because one of the big selling points is it’s just a big time saver, so you’re not spending an hour and a half in there with the bar, you have very short efficient workouts. Are you doing multiple body parts in a given workout? Or how is that structured typically?

Dr.John Jaquish: We do a push-pull split. We do it every other day. It’s a six days a week training, but it takes about 10 minutes. I didn’t even design it to save time. So, when somebody says, “Oh, my favorite part is, my workout is done in 10 minutes.” It’s like, yeah, it’s true. It’s also the hardest workout of your life. I never tell anybody it’s easy. You feel like you were hit by a train after you finish one of these. It’s actually, it’s just over very quickly. It’s four sets each workout.

Robert: Four sets. And just kind of explain that. Talk about the shorter range of motion as you fatigue. For instance let’s say, you can do squats, dead lifts, curls, press, you can pretty much do all the movements with this set up, right?

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah. Everything.

Robert: What does crosstalk dead lifts, for instance. How would you structure that?

Dr.John Jaquish: So, with the push-pull split, dead lifts would be on a pulling gig, dead lifts. You do calf raises on that day, because you get a lot of calfs with the dead lifts, so we won’t put those together and then we do a bent roll and a curl.

Robert: And each is getting four sets, each movement?

Dr.John Jaquish: Say it again.

Robert: Each movement is getting four sets?

Dr.John Jaquish: No, each movement gets one set. Never do more than one set.

Robert: Got you, got you.

Dr.John Jaquish: inaudible, because there’s such a deeper level of exhaustion.

Robert: And with those sets, that’s when you’re doing, you’re basically going to fatigue at the full range, then you do the mid range, and that low range.

Dr.John Jaquish: Correct.

Robert: One set may be 20 reps, for instance, but just increasing level of fatigue as the set gets longer and longer?

Dr.John Jaquish: Right.

Robert: Got you, got you. I’m curious man, not to give this thing a try. I’m a big advocate for one of my former employers was, he trained exclusively with resistance bands and body weight movement, that’s all he’s done for the past 11 years. And then when he interviewed with me, I had him do dead lifts, and he was ripping four or five off the ground, like he’d been doing it for years. That was kind of my first eye opening moment to the effectiveness of resistance bands. But I’ve never really used the X3 Bar fitness band bar system to an extent, but I’ve got several clients that are big fans of it. So I’m curious to give it a try man.

Dr.John Jaquish: Nice. You will enjoy it. It is the easiest way to getting an incredibly heavy workout, and… I shouldn’t use the word easy, it’s not easy. But it’s the most injury free way.

Robert: Yeah.

Dr.John Jaquish: And unless… When I talk to younger athletes, and we’re talking 18, 19, 20. They never think they’re going to get injured. And so, that’s not really my target market. When I talk about injury prevention, they roll their eyes like, I’m so bad ass, I’m never going to get injured. Like mm-hmm (affirmative), okay. Well, have a nice day, because they’ll be back.

Dr.John Jaquish: What we actually did was I first launched the product, I was talking to fitness industry people who, they can’t get out of their head… The ultimate program is an ultimate program with weights. And when I say, “No, you’ve got to take a step back further and you’ll see just how inefficient and ineffective weight training is, because you’re not designed to handle the same level of power. Look at sprinting, sprinting is one of the most efficient things we do. We only use seven degrees of flection behind our knee. Why? We have 120 degrees available, why do we only use seven? Now, we all do this naturally, so nobody really stops to think about it. There’s academic research on it, that’s why we’re powerful. Just in seven degrees.

Dr.John Jaquish: So, why don’t we approach everything like that? Sprinting is very efficient, why do we try and go as inefficient as possible when we lift weights? Because it’s literally the least efficient thing you can do to stimulate the body.

Robert: Speaking of running, do you do anything for cardio, like more cardiovascular strength conditioning outside of the bar?

Dr.John Jaquish: There’s over 100 studies and most of which I site in the book that show that strength training actually gives an equal or better cardio vascular stimulus.

Dr.John Jaquish: Cardiovascular health is higher is weight training athletes than it is in actual cardio athletes. My position is, there’s really no such thing as cardio. Cardio is just really shitty strength training that doesn’t stimulate any strength. And the reason I can say this is because of the hundred studies, but also the big myth came from somewhere, where I understand why people misunderstood.

Dr.John Jaquish: So, I weigh 240 pounds, and when I’m at the Munich airport, inaudible Munich airport, but it’s like, in your change of planes, I go to Moscow. I used to go to Moscow very frequently. So, you fly into Munich, you’ve got to go through customs there, and then you’ve got to go through the Russian checkpoint, and then you grab your bags and recheck your bags. And so you go up and down the stairs six times. I do not know why they designed this airport, where you’re just sprinting up and down stairs to get to your flight.

Dr.John Jaquish: I’m with a guy who usually, who I used to travel with, who weighs about 100 pounds less than I do. So he’s like a what, he weighs 140 pounds and I’m 240 pounds. And what happens is that, I’m out of breath by the time we board the flight to Moscow, and he’s like, “Oh man, your cardio is terrible.” And I said, “No, my quadriceps are just five times bigger than yours are, and they draw a lot more blood.” So I have had to have my heart push more blood into my legs, because I’m built for speed, for power, for instantaneous power availability, whereas you’re not. And so the size of the musculature has so much to do with how hard the heart has to pump. But from a cardiovascular health perspective, I may be equal or better than you, because the goal is not to be able to run 20 plus miles, the goal was to live a long time. Right?

Robert: That makes sense, it’s a good point. I’m definitely an advocate of being able to pick up and run five miles without it killing you. I think that’s important for anybody to be able to do. It makes sense for sure.

Dr.John Jaquish: Absolutely. But for a strong guy, if you take a 250 pound line man, and you say, let’s go run five miles, he’s going to be like, “Can I get an Uber for the last four?”

Robert: crosstalk.

Dr.John Jaquish: He doesn’t want to do that because it’s not what his body has been trained to do. crosstalk matter.

Robert: What about with this year and COVID obviously, and all the gyms being closed down. I would have to imagine that’s had a massive, resulted in a massive increase, interest in traffic towards your site and sales of the bar because it’s just people looking for options outside the norm right now.

Dr.John Jaquish: I would way rather live in a world where we were not scared of something that kills less people than the flu. But unfortunately, we live in the world that we live in, and fear is the new currency, so this year has been great, as unhappy as I am about it.

Robert: Have you gotten a lot more of hardcore believers because they’ve started using your bar as the norm?

Dr.John Jaquish: People who would normally just X3 for traveling, it’s 100% of their workout, and they’re like, “I’ve put on more muscle.” I hear this all the time. “I’ve put on more muscle in six months, than I have in the past 10 years of weights.” I probably have received over 1000 emails to say exactly that.

Robert: You get a lot of people that use your product for several months, and then go to see how that strength correlates to traditional barbell movements, and notice that their maxes have all increased? Or does it not translate very well, I would assume it has a pretty good correlation there?

Dr.John Jaquish: No, it translates very well. I will say though, weight lifting movements, traditional weight lifting movements, do have a skill involved. You can take someone who’s strong, like farm boy strong, and then put him on a bench press, and they’re strong, they can pick up a lot of weight, but they’re wild, they’re all over the place. They don’t have a lot of control of these bar.

Dr.John Jaquish: You’ve got to remember a bench press is like swinging a golf club or throwing a baseball. There’s a skill you need to stay proficient with. So, if you’re a competitive weight lifter, you take six months and you say I’m going to just focus on X3 to really build up some muscularity, some power, and then come back to weights before the competition. Give yourself a few weeks to get the skill back, because if you try one time, you won’t be as good at the skill.

Robert: Yeah, that makes sense.

Dr.John Jaquish: A little rusty. So there’s a no muscular component there.

Robert: So for the people, probably a lot like myself that are going to have a hard time just stopping all traditional lifting cold turkey, would you recommend using the X3 Bar resistance band training system on their off days from the typical lifting, or doing it before normal training or after?

Dr.John Jaquish: crosstalk recovery. So don’t do that. I would just say, one day a week, go back and do your lifts, and then the rest of the other five days, do X3. You’re going to get your results out of X3, and I ask people all the time that are really worried about their lift numbers, and I’m like, “Do you compete?” And then they go, “No.” “Okay, well what’s your goal when you work out? Is it to be as strong and as lean as possible? Or you just want to talk about your bench press?” They laugh, and then they’re like, “Well, strong and as leans as possible.” I’m like, “Who cares?” It doesn’t matter.

Robert: That’s true. Lifting for me is like therapy as well. I like the time that it spends, so I don’t know if I’m going to get enough therapy in 10 minutes of using the bar. I have to blend the two a little bit there.

Dr.John Jaquish: Probably a little. I would say, you could… Oh God, my fans are going to kill me for saying this, but if you’re like the guys who are really into lifting, use X3 as your finishing set because… I’m going to get everybody hate with this statement, because your regular lifts, they’re not doing shit for you anyway. So, you can spend your time doing that, and then actually get a real training stimulus in the end.

Dr.John Jaquish: I’m very pointed with my comments. I don’t mind rattling cages because I can back up my position. You read the book, people who actually took the time to read the book. Anybody who bitches about what’s in the book, didn’t read the book. It’s very obvious. They try and argue with some scientific point, it’s like you missed every principle of basic human physiology. Go back to high school dude. You don’t understand anything. And the people who do support it most emphatically are medical doctors. My whole life people have been saying, “Oh, medical doctors don’t believe in exercise.” No, it’s not that they don’t believe in exercise, they fail to see the science. Where’s the science that justifies the squat or the bench press? Just because people have been doing it and they’re having scientific measures taken, let’s take a step back and say, “What about this whole practice, does it make sense?” An orthopedic surgeon would say no, because more injuries come out of weight training than results do. Where’s the win there?

Dr.John Jaquish: Insurance companies won’t pay for you to go weight training. Why? Because they pay for more injuries as a result of weight training. They’d rather you just eat Cheetos on the couch. You will cost them less. Also, the less money you cost them, the healthier you are, it doesn’t matter what… I see people all the time who are constantly having joint issues with their feet, who workout all the time, and then they’re like, “Well, I’m a fit guy.” They can hardly get out of the chair without tears coming to their eyes, and I’m like, “Really? Are you? Are you sure? Because I bet in 10 years, you’re going to have a walker.”

Robert: Yeah, let’s talk about that for a second. Let’s compare with traditional high bar back squats with the barbell for instance. The strain that’s happening to your knee joints for instance, that compared to the X3 Bar variable resistance training system. You’re doing a front squat with the X3 Bar portable home gym, right? Not a back squat?

Dr.John Jaquish: Nobody should do back squats. Loading weight on the back of your neck, why did we ever think that was a good idea?

Robert: Yeah. So from a joint standpoint-

Dr.John Jaquish: I mean really, like we are sagittal, we bend forward, that’s how we pick stuff up. Loading stuff on the back of your neck, is never anything humans did. Just not. You should see, when I speak at a conference and there’s a bunch of fitness guys in the audience, they’re like shivering, they’re so mad. But it’s like okay, justify it for me. Give me the research that says loading things on the back of your neck is a great idea. Of course the physicians in the audience, they’re laughing. They’re like, “Praise the Lord, this guy’s awesome.” Because they hate that shit. They get more patients coming in, they’re like, “I can’t turn my head and it hurts, I’m depressed, I’m thinking about suicide.” And then they’re like, “What hurt your neck?” And they’re like, “Every time I go to squat…” And the doctor is like, “Stop right there. Stop squatting.”

Robert: What about the knees. Talk to me about the knees. What’s happening there? What’s the difference between traditional and the X3 Bar resistance band bar system?

Dr.John Jaquish: You’re forced to throw your butt back more so, when you front squat. So, superior position. But you can do that with weights too. But with X3, the weight drops off as you enter into the weaker ranges of the motion. You might only be handling your body weight plus 50 pounds at the bottom. But at the top of the squat, I might be doing my body weight, plus 400 pounds.

Robert: So on that, I’m trying to visualize the other platform now with the ground plate and everything. And when you’re… I like going really, really deep on my squats. When I’m going super deep, those bands are probably not going to be taut, right?

Dr.John Jaquish: Right.

Robert: So I don’t start getting resistance until I’m probably a little bit above parallel. Correct?

Dr.John Jaquish: Well, you still have your body weight. That’s resistance.

Robert: Right. Besides that?

Dr.John Jaquish: It depends on how tall somebody is. I’m six foot, and I don’t ever have zero load.

Robert: I’m five-seven. So you get your beat there.

Dr.John Jaquish: How tall are you?

Robert: Five-seven.

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah. There’s a couple of things I would have you do a little differently. There’s band shorteners.

Robert: Got you, got you.

Dr.John Jaquish: Don’t worry. I’ve got you taken care of.

Robert: Cool.

Dr.John Jaquish: Because there’s all kinds of people. So many power lifters are shorter guys, and they needed help. And so, really all you do is you take a spacer, which is just like a piece of pipe, and you just put in the chain next to the hook, and you look at some of my stories on Instagram, there’s always somebody that I put on my stories on Instagram, every day, who’s using a band spacer.

Robert: Nice.

Dr.John Jaquish: Yeah.

Robert: What if they’re super tall people?

Dr.John Jaquish: 40 NBA players, not one of them has complained.

Robert: I guess that’s proof in the pudding, huh?

Dr.John Jaquish: Including some guys who are heading to Hall of Fame, like Andre Drummond. There’s a bunch of pro athletes that would not let me put their picture on the website, even with my help and everything like that, because their name is just worth so much. And I’m talking like some of the best guys in the NFL and some of the best guys in the NBA. And I understand it’s their brand, they’re like, “No, I can’t do that because that would… Normally I would charge somebody…” Let me give you an example. There’s a quarterback who maybe considered best quarterback who ever lived, who asked for 49% of the company, if he uses his name and image. And I’m just like, you’re asking for, depending on how you do the valuation, like 50 million dollars. No.

Robert: That’s a big ask.

Dr.John Jaquish: In another year or two, more people will know X3 than they will know you. And there’s like a long silence on the phone, and he’s like, “All right, well, I guess we can’t come to an agreement.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m sorry. I can’t.” Cool guy though. I thought his proposal was so unreasonable. Wow, really? You thought I would go for that? I don’t know, but whatever.

Dr.John Jaquish: Besides, I have a stronger engine for building a following than any of these guys, because I’m so controversial, the haters do my work for me. The more people I piss off, the more stupid things they say, because they don’t actually read what I’ve written, because they’re probably not smart enough to read it. There’s a reason why in fitness, the two most popular web services are Instagram and YouTube. Pictures and videos, because these clowns are illiterate. Think about it. They’re not reading articles anymore.

Robert: Yeah, I think-

Dr.John Jaquish: Something to wrap your head around.

Robert: Yeah.

Dr.John Jaquish: That is the fitness industry, just angry, really unintelligent people. And that’s not everybody, of course, but these guys, the angrier they are, the more hateful videos they make. It’s great because then somebody goes, I want to see what this guy has to say to everybody’s trashing. Then they read my book, and they’re like, “This is genius. I’m going to buy the product, I’m going to buy one for my father too.”

Dr.John Jaquish: These guys, they’re my useful idiots. I love putting them to work.

Robert: I actually don’t consider myself a useful idiot by any means, but I will read your book-

Dr.John Jaquish: I don’t consider you one either.

Robert: I will read your book, and I will try, I’ll X3 Bar exercise band bar system an honest [cods 00:48:26] try, as they say, and I’m going to track everything. So I’ll be able to have a pretty good idea to the results of it all, and I’ll share my findings with my audience for sure. But yeah, man. I’m always down to try something new, mix things up a bit. So, I’ll give this a shot.

Dr.John Jaquish: You are headquartered in Austin, right?

Robert: No, I’m just North of Austin, I’m in Arkansas.

Dr.John Jaquish: Okay. Are you anywhere near Fairhope?

Robert: No, we’re in Central Arkansas, but we’re moving to Northwest Arkansas next year.

Dr.John Jaquish: Okay. There’s an OsteoStrong facility, that’s the medical device. And they do a lot with X3 there also.

Robert: Nice. Nice.

Dr.John Jaquish: The guy who runs Fairhope, he has two, you ought to check out the OsteoStrong website. There’s two very successful OsteoStrong locations in-

Robert: You said Fairhope?

Dr.John Jaquish: In Arkansas. Yeah.

Robert: Let’s see here. There’s a Fairhope Alabama. Are you sure it’s Alabama?

Dr.John Jaquish: I’m speaking of Alabama, sorry. I don’t go to a lot of A states. I don’t go to Alaska either.

Robert: It’s all good man. People make that mistake all the time. People think I’m in Alaska, half the time.

Robert: Cool man. I will definitely check this out. Where can people go to find out more about the book, the Bar, you. What’s the go to website?

Dr.John Jaquish: I created a landing page so I don’t have to give five handles out. It’s doctorJ.com. D-O-C-T-O-R, the letter J.com.

Robert: Awesome man. I will link out to that. I certainly appreciate the conversation, the controversy, everything. You got me curious, and I’m going to dive in, man.

Dr.John Jaquish: Thanks Robert.

Robert: Take care brother.