Dr. John Jaquish: Is Weight Lifting a Waste of Time? Q&A with Inventor of the X3 and Osteostrong

Full Transcript

Dr. John Jaquish: Let me give you the truth. If you use X3 to get stronger, it’s going to make you stronger than anything. Calisthenics are from when girls are around. Yeah. Cals for the girls. So keep that in mind, go to the park, some slow pull ups, put some suntan oil on and it makes you real shiny. Yeah, that’s what calisthenics are good for.

Kyle: Hello and welcome to the Louis and Kyle Show. Louis and I are curious college students looking to interview top performers, and we started this podcast with that goal in mind, a little over a year ago. And in that time we’ve interviewed over 55 amazing people, entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, people that are creating art and creating podcasts and writing books. It’s really been an incredible experience. And today we have another one of those amazing people, Dr. John Jaquish.

Louis: I don’t know if it’s been a full year, but we’re pretty close. It’s pretty close. But Dr. Jaquish is a PhD biomedical engineer. He started a company called OsteoStrong, which is a revolutionary treatment for treating osteoporosis. That’s not at all what we talked about. In the process of creating that technology, he learned about something he calls the force curve, which made him realize that we have dramatically more strength throughout different ranges of motion than most people realize. And that traditional weightlifting doesn’t access that additional strength from the range of motion. So he created a tool called the X3, which is a at-home workout resistance bar system to help people get additional resistance throughout the range of motion, to fully maximize their strength. And it’s been a kind of revolutionary technology. That’s him on the cover of the book that Kyle just showed for the people watching our video, for those not he’s totally ripped. And he was not totally ripped before creating this technology. And like two years, it completely transformed his body and he wrote a book about the fitness routine he used with the equipment and what he learned in the process and why it in his opinion is superior to weightlifting. This conversation dives into the nitty gritty about the fitness advice he gives, the nutrition advice he gives and the kind of business advice about dealing with people who are not accepting, what in his opinion is total facts, and in their opinion is just an opinion and how he deals with that, while trying to introduce a technology that goes against convention in such a dramatic way with a title such as Weightlifting is a Waste of Time. So it’s actually the number one bestselling book on Amazon in the men’s health category right now, just a fun fact. So anyway, it was a pleasure and really interesting to talk to him. He’s a controversial high energy guy, and it was one of our more fun conversations. So I hope you enjoy listening to the conversation which I’m going to switch to now. Dr. Jaquish, thank you so much for coming on the podcast with us. We’re excited to chat with you.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks for having me.

Louis: Absolutely. I have so many questions for you about fitness, dieting, exercise, a lot of the controversial opinions you have. I have binged your whole audio book, kind of this interview came together on short notice. So I’ve just got a ton of questions with you. One of the most, I guess, not alarming, but claims that most attacked my existing beliefs, before reading the book, is that carbohydrates aren’t a macronutrient. Can you explain kind of what that idea is? And if it’s something I should contest or something I should take your word for?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, first of all, that was a great introduction, but I will say that I don’t give any opinions. I have opinions on nothing. I present science. I present science, some of which, very little of which I have done, but mostly I want people to understand that these are not my words, I’m telling them. It’s other researchers that have come to this conclusion and I also don’t cherry pick. If there’s conflicting research on a subject, I will say there is conflicting research on the subject, but here, maybe the side that you have not heard about. So I’m not going to have like 20 pages on carnivore nutrition and 20 pages on vegan nutrition, because we’ve been getting that crap since we’ve been little kids and that’s untrue. And also, it’s been funded by Kraft and Nabisco and by the way, Kraft into Nabisco, they know vegans don’t eat kale. They know vegans, eat cookies and cake, vegan, cookies and cake. So that’s part of the reason that those biases are there. But I always call that out. So your question carbohydrates, I say, carbohydrates are not a macronutrient. Well Webster’s dictionary defines a macronutrient as something that is essential for life. And in 2005 the US board of nutrition determined that humans don’t need carbohydrates at all, ever, serves no purpose whatsoever, including fiber. And they of course have had hundreds of references. And I did go through and grab some of those and I put those in the book, Weightlifting is a Waste of Time, but now they’re actually harder on carbohydrates than I am because I do see a purpose. They’re not a macronutrient, but I see a purpose for using carbohydrates as a performance enhancement. So right when my workout started, I had 80 grams of carbohydrates. And you know what I mean? You can tell, I just worked out, like I got a lot of blood in my musculature. So I’m also out of breath a little bit, sorry about that. What you can do is use that to super hydrate muscle cells and then you stretch and you actually create room for more growth, mechanical growth space is actually a thing that has a lot of research on it. And instead of growing bigger cells, cells actually split and this process is called hyperplasia. Now distance runners need carbohydrates as they run also. So I can come up with two performance enhancement properties that carbohydrates have. But as far as muscle protein synthesis or living a longer life, or you need fiber … First of all, let’s go over how stupid the fiber recommendation is. Fiber is like oh, you need stuff like material to help clean out your system. That’s like having a plugged up toilet and throwing like 20 paper towels in and then flushing it 10 times. Does that unplug your toilet? No. It causes it to be even more plugged up. And now you’ve got to call a plumber because you’re an idiot. So like that’s like the fiber logic. It makes no sense whatsoever. It never did. And the research is very clear. You don’t need it. So I don’t know. But of course, what does Nabisco sell? Right? It’s just marketing. Like it’s marketing via science.

Louis: Yeah. I’ll tell you it’s-

Dr. John Jaquish: Marketing via science,.

Louis: Well, you look great judging from your Instagram and your post-workout vibes now, but I’ll tell you it’s even worse than you think. My sister is a self-proclaimed, self celebrating junk food vegan. That’s a new term where they celebrate the amount of processed vegan crap they eat. So it’s a whole new level of problems there, but I’ve-

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean that’s diabetes, she’s on the diabetes train.

Louis: I’ll send her this interview.

Dr. John Jaquish: You should get her on here and then I can hack over the whole time.

Louis: That’d be fun. I don’t know how it takes a while to open up someone’s mind.

Dr. John Jaquish: Like I generally, I talk about there is a vegan community that is kind of religious about their nutrition. I mean religious about nutrition.

Louis: Yeah. I watched the vegan, I wanted to find as many conflicting perspectives because I was very persuaded by your book. So I looked up as much criticism of it as I could and I found the vegan gains video. If you’re familiar with that one.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yes, that guy is a go-go.

Louis: That was some funny stuff. But I have one specific question because this was kind of a very self-aware stupid moment I had when listening to your book, specifically on the … I’m going to mess up the word, the hyperplasia chapter about muscle hydration. You talk about how creatine is like a way to achieve it, and then in the next paragraph you’re like, but exogenous creatine leads to Parkinson’s. So I literally at the start of that chapter poured creatine in a glass, mixed it up and then before I drank it, you’re like, and it causes Parkinson’s and I dumped it down the sink right after hearing you telling me that. So what’s the verdict on that? Like, is it-

Dr. John Jaquish: Let me give you a little more. So isolated exhaust? So you get a ton of creatine from meat. That’s what I’m saying in that comment, I probably should have typically said that. That’s on a list of like 50 things, by the way, I want to fix in the next version of the book because I never said it was from meat-

Louis: I literally dumped it out.

Dr. John Jaquish: So you probably did the right thing pouring it down the drain, but yeah, so that’s what I meant to say. I just didn’t give the detail in natural nutrition you get a ton of creatine in meat and meat is all I eat so.

Louis: It’s a pre workout steak and then to maximize or just having it in the system.

Dr. John Jaquish: I eat my meat at the end of the day. No, you don’t need it to … Well in the way I talk about it as a vasodilator and retaining more water. Like if somebody were a vegan, I would tell them to go for the creatine, because they’re not getting any meat, right? I’ll be like, yeah, go for creatine pre-work. And so, I mean there’s no like hard, fast rule about any of these things because if somebody got, let’s say they just can’t get meat. I don’t want to pick on vegans. Somebody who just can’t get a hold of meat, you’re in the military and you’re stationed in some place where it’s just insanely expensive to have meat. And I know guys like these, so what do they do? They take their Fortagen with them and they take some creatine with them. I mean, from a vasodilator perspective, I hate saying it, just get viagra. It doesn’t matter what you tell your doctor, like, just hook me up, bro. Don’t say you’re using it to enhance muscle growth because they don’t know that, what MD is worried about that? None. So just say give me a little help, I got a girlfriend that’s pretty excited about me, which they believe when I say, because I’m so handsome, but they it’s just like you say, like “Come on.” and they’re like, “Okay.” like they’ll prescribe viagra, and then you just use it right before the workout. And then you have your carbohydrates right after the workout and the muscle swells. And you’ll notice the growth.

Louis: One more question for you about the veganism. And then I hope that Kyle and I will ask some higher level questions, we kind of got into the weeds right off the bat here-

Kyle: I feel like you should tell him that you were a vegan for a while, Louis. I think-

Louis: I was also a vegan for a long time. I’ve played the extremes, but-

Dr. John Jaquish: I tried it too.

Louis: But you tell this, one of the best parts of the book in my opinion is you say, we didn’t come into this research opinionated. We developed the fitness product first and then as positioned as people selling a fitness product, people wanted nutrition advice from us, we looked for what the best nutrition was to compliment this. If the answer we found was veganism, that would be the answer we were sharing, but it wasn’t.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Louis: So that’s why that’s not what you-

Dr. John Jaquish: I would have recommended anything and I was totally open-minded. I was just like, I want to give the users of X3 the most optimized way to be in the best shape as possible. And coincidentally being in the best shape as possible also will force you to live the longer and happier life because the two greatest drivers for long life or being lean and being strong. That’s it? So lean and strong, that’s clearly what X3 is doing better than anything else. So we got to allow people to get the most out of it.

Louis: Absolutely. So the most troubling criticism I did find from that vegan gains video that we laughed about a minute ago was you’re just now say no animal protein is the best source of protein, but Fortagen is vegan. Can you clear up that disconnect for me, that your protein supplement is vegan, but you recommend a meat diet? I’m sure there’s a great answer. I just wasn’t smart enough to clear it up.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s not vegetable. Louis: So where does Fortagen come from? I know it’s an amino acid profile, but how do you make that-

Dr. John Jaquish: And honestly we should be eating rotten meat, but there’s some safety issues there, right? I mean, you can get some … So the idea is the human digestive system and essential amino acids really steer us toward, like if the three of us were living a couple thousand years ago and we had to just kill like a whale that was halfway washed up on the beach or a wooly mammoth or something like that, more than 1000, 2000 years ago, maybe 5000 years ago, your body, we would feast on that thing. And the last couple of days that meat wouldn’t be so fresh and we’d be like chasing dogs and hyenas away and shit like that or whatever type of thing would be scavenging that. And so we’d be eating a lot of rotten meat and we’d actually get better essential amino acids from that meat, but you can make anything rot and have bacteria grow on it. So yes, the product is vegan-friendly, but it’s not made of vegetables and nothing died to produce it. But you know, like vegans, I don’t think they even know what bacteria is. I mean, it’s just like, well, is it animal or plant? It’s like, there’s more than animal and plant, sorry. I ruined a lot of vegan lives by telling them that, but whatever.

Kyle: Yeah. I really like how you are polarizing. I think, I think it’s inspiring for me at least, because in our podcast, we’ve published 50 episodes now and we’ve done not a great job of really holding out and just saying our strong opinions. I don’t know why, I think there are a lot of reasons to it, but could you talk to us about where the confidence inside of you comes from to just be able to piss off people with every sentence, every book title no matter what?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s a good question. I’ll tell you what, the reason I speak with absolute conviction is because I’m absolutely right. So when you’re going to make a presentation that’s going to rattle somebody’s cage, I mean, most people just go to a job or they speak on some subject that tens of thousands of people have spoken out before and they may have a different PowerPoint than the other guy, but it’s the same shit over and over and over again. Nobody’s really trying to change anything. Well, if I get out of bed, I’m trying to change the world. So when I first came up with a bone density medical device, I researched it until I was at the point where I was like, there was no way I was wrong. Like I’ve taken a very simple and elegant approach to looking at was previously seen as a complicated biochemical problem, but I saw it as a mechanical problem. And so my solution was so much easier. These guys, and I’ve met the top, absolute top researchers in the world, I’ve had drinks with them. I cannot drink all of them, by the way. That’s kind of cool. So these guys are brilliant, they’re professors teaching very high level bone stuff, and most of them are research professors. So all they have is PhD students that they deal with. And then they look at what I have and kind of shake their head and they’re like, “This is awesome.” So they really want to punch holes in it. And they’re like, you’re not wrong. The worst thing I’ve ever heard and this is from like the top guy in the field, or at least he was like three years ago. So he probably still is, no much change is there. And he says to me, “How do you get people to use it?” And he just, he goes, “We can’t even get people to take their meds, they won’t take their pills.” And I said, “Well, it’s amazing because the pills make you feel like shit, but this makes you feel great.” It’s like literally an exercise or bone it compresses off. This is the humerus bone. We compress that bone from end to end with hundreds of pounds. I mean, I can put 2000 pounds from a humerus bone right here. So when that happens, the bone springs back into position, and then all the whole bone matrix, the honeycomb that you look at, like all the little walls that pulls in minerals and re-calcifies and builds more little walls and makes the bone more powerful. And when there’s somebody who’s lost a lot of bone density, like post-menopausal female who has osteopenia or osteoporosis, the bone starts to grow in density. And so I had to experiment with it. I had to research everything about it. And I could speak with absolute conviction that this is right now when it came to variable resistance, the big challenge I had to convince myself of. And so I’ll tell you the practice of the absolute conviction for the second time was looking at the bone density data and saying, wow, these post-menopausal women are putting like seven times their body weight, or eight times or nine times through their legs. The strongest people in the world can’t even do that. Now, of course, they’re only moving in about that far. And that far, by the way, is a compression of the bone. The fixture doesn’t even move. So I mean, their bones are actually being compressed and you can see it, but like, they’re so powerful in that range of motion. And one of the physicians, that study was done at the university of East London. And so I spent, a couple months in London going back and forth, making sure they’re using the product, right. I couldn’t be involved in the study for conflict of interest, but I wrote the protocol and methods for the study. So you look at this and they’re dealing with huge amount of weights and all the doctors were like, what do people even lift in the gym? Because this just seems like weights that, like guys in strong man contest, don’t lift. And I’m like, well, you’re right about that. And then I would look at, The American College of Sports Medicine keeps a database of exercise data, or they reference the database. It’s not theirs, but it’s part of the National Institute of health. And it’s the largest collection of health data, especially exercise-focused in the world. And so there’s like 20,000 people in there and it grows by about 2000 a year. We looked at that as far as what the average lifts are now, leg press doesn’t count because most of the weight in the leg press is going down into the ground. So you’re sliding it at a 45 degree angle. It’s like, oh, I leg pressed a thousand pounds, its like no you didn’t. Maybe half of that because the other half went into the ground, but that’s like math and it’s too hard for some people. I could go on for a long time about the jokes and the comments I get, every word misspelled. It’s awesome. So I’m like, okay, people are on average, unathletic people can typically start with 1.3 times their body weight. Athletic people, it’s 1.53 times their body weight. But then we have post-menopausal women using the bone density medical device, who are dealing with seven times, their body weight, eight times their body weight, nine times their body weight. So it was like seven, eight and nine right across the board. Like everybody was right in there. It wasn’t like there was one person with two multiples of body weight or four. It was all seven, eight and nine, every single person in the study. And so I thought, okay, after doing that calculation, comparing those two databases, I think I did like a Spearman row test. And I did a couple of different statistical tests that were just wrong. Like trial and error, how do I like show this? Basically you’re seven times stronger in your impact ready range than you are in your weaker range. So like in a pushup position, when your nose is close to the ground, that’s the weakest and when your arms are almost locked out, so 120 degree angle between the upper and lower arm and with the back of the hand in line with collar. So like, you wouldn’t do this, you wouldn’t put your hands up or down. It would be that exact position when you’re to catch yourself when you fall. And that happens to be the top of the bench press position naturally, unless you like bench press with a smith machine and you’re trying injure yourself because that’s what that does. So looking at that data, I knew, wow, we’re seven times stronger in one particular range of motion versus the weight that we pick, which really means we only pick a weight we can handle in our weaker range. And what do we know about the weaker range? You’re firing the absolute least amount of muscle-

Louis: And injury too.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and that’s where you overload joints. And like Peter Attia. I don’t know if you guys know who Dr. Peter Attia is-

Louis: Absolutely. I love the zero fasting app.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Peter says he doesn’t really care for weightlifting because it overloads joints and under loads muscle, like he was thinking the same thing I was. And so it was like, whoa, I think I just figured out how to fix this. We need massive variance and not just like a little band that you add your weights, like a huge difference between lighter and weak range to stronger range. And that’s what I did, that’s what I developed.

Louis: Absolutely. And I think one thing that you just mentioned a little bit ago, a lot of the criticism for you and the system come from people who don’t have anonymous profiles, misspelled names, misspelled all the words, and then all your testimonials are from like the Titans of like biohacking and these fitness industries. It’s Ben Greenfield and Dave Asprey.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s 40 profession athletes endorsing-

Louis: Entire sport teams.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Louis: Yeah. So I have a very specific question actually about pushups. And I’ve not been lifting weights mostly because one injuries and to just spin into calisthenics for a while, how do calisthenics fit into an optimal program with the X3? Should like the X3 be for strength and calisthenics are for skills because I enjoy them or if I bought X3, should I stop doing pushups and exclusively use that for my chest? Or where do the two kind of play together? So I’m sold that way, lifting weights I’m going to hurt myself and waste my time, but I do still enjoy calisthenics. So what would be optimal for someone like myself?

Dr. John Jaquish: Let me give you the truth. So you use X3, you get stronger. That’s going to make you stronger than anything. Calisthenics are for when girls are around. Yeah. Cals for the girls. So keep that in mind, go to the park, some slow pull ups, put some suntan oil on and it makes it real shiny, yeah, that’s what calisthenics are good for. Because it’s not variable resistance. Like when you’re holding your arm up, you’re not able to put more resistance right here than you are here and so it’s just like lifting weights. Now, there are people who apply variable resistance to calisthenics and that’s just called having really shitty form. That’s another great way to get injured. So they’re keeping really hard.

Louis: Exactly.

Dr. John Jaquish: I see CrossFitters that are like 40 pull-ups and then you watch them, you’re like again, you watch them do this up and down and you’re like, yeah, that’s zero, zero, zero. Okay. And also you won’t grow from that. So don’t , yeah.

Louis: I was a skinny guy doing 30 butterfly pull-ups back in the day, so I was trying to get stronger being vegan at CrossFit. I’m a product of the misinformation, clearly.

Kyle: Do you now and not back then, but on the X3, one of my mentors, he used the X3 for working out. He loves it.

Louis: He’s very successful.

Kyle: Hooked up with Ben Greenfield, so he got it through there. But his question that he wanted me to ask was does it ever make sense to do greater than one set per exercise?

Dr. John Jaquish: Generically, no, because you get so devastated with one set. Now there is something, you know the way you don’t have two girlfriends at once?

Kyle: Yeah, I know for sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s the fucking pain yes, you got to remember what movie you saw with which one? So you just don’t do that. You guys should probably write that down. So it’s just too much work and also they tend to not get along. Like you can get two kittens and they’ll play, get two girlfriends, no, they won’t do that. So the problem, if you know you’re going to do a second set, is you subconsciously half-assed the first one. There’s no way around this because your body knows it’s going to have to do it again and then you have a lousy for a sec. So that’s problem number one. Problem number two is that because of the variance, you can devastate a muscle so fast with X3 with just one set. Like why would you do a second one? Like is then you’re just diluting, you want to get as much work done in a short period of time, right? Like that is intensity your stimulus. The more intense the sunlight you can get on your skin in a shorter period of time, the better your tan’s going to be. If you get a hard abrasion on your hand, you get a callus. If you get a light abrasion for a long period of time, you get a blister. So like all stimuli to the human body that can create an adaptation has to do with the intensity of exposure in the brief as possible period of time. So that’s really the answer, I’ve giving an answer like a thousand times. I don’t know, like a lot of people find it satisfactory, but then, unfortunately Dorian Yates was in a perfect world, we would only do one set, but we don’t live in a perfect world so I do too and it’s like, dude. Now of course he’s also lifting standard weights, which have all kinds of biomechanical inefficiencies, which is why I would never spend my time lifting weights. As the book is called, Weight Lifting is a Waste of time, that’s where I’m coming from. If you can get such perfect exhaustion with one set. By the way I put on 60 pounds of muscle with this thing, and I’ve never been sore, I’ve never done more than one set, I can play like you guys probably don’t put that. I don’t know if anybody plays golf anymore. I think golf courses are going to be turned into cemeteries or something. Do you play golf?

Louis: No, I said they’re going to be used as cemeteries for vegans.

Dr. John Jaquish: Probably. Yeah, probably. So yeah, I can go play golf. And the reason I use golf as an example is you can’t have a pump and play golf unless … And I mean, it’s not because of the pump, it’s because the joints are irritated and you lose some accuracy because you get some neural inhibition. Like your joints are like they don’t want to move now sit down, except you’re not sitting down and playing golf and still like your accuracy just sucks. Like the day after you lived or the day you lived, I just got done lifting, I can go play golf right after this podcast. No problem.

Louis: I think that you need to make your before pictures, easier to find because that’s one of the biggest problems that I’ve found to in doing research. Yeah. Just you look like you’re huge now and you were just a much bigger than the average dude. It looks like at the start of this journey and that like, I think gives some people some trouble saying that you put on 60 pounds because it’s a big recomposition. You’re already a big fringe person. I don’t know. Exactly. That’s why it’s a recomposition like you don’t look 60 pounds heavier in the sense that you’re just like some people make a more dramatic change because they started out as less of a total beginner. I don’t know. I was going to say that neural inhibition as well I think that’s one of the things that really clicked for me when reading the book that, and thinking of weight training or not weight training, that’s just my bias there. Thinking of training in terms of maximizing the hormonal response, super interesting. So I want to ask one question that a mentor of mine, it’s actually the local rabbi at Alabama, one of the Ascii I wanted to ask, he’s kind of a bio-hacking rabbi redefined, but he’s been doing 16, eight for quite a while. Like last time we spoke, you were super into it. And then I hung out with him last night and he’s like, I stopped doing it because I feel like it was bringing diminishing returns. And so his question to me, kind of thinking with a historical question, what’s this?

Dr. John Jaquish: Did you see my last Instagram or my second last Instagram post? Oh, no, I like said 16, eight is like that’s a first step, you do that for one day and then you move on to one meal a day because that’s the problem. It’s like it really doesn’t do much for you.

Louis: He did it for a couple of months and then felt like it wasn’t providing benefits anymore, so he was-

Dr. John Jaquish: Exactly, we just talked about this.

Louis: Reading his intuition correctly.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Louis: So the progression is to go more difficult, not more difficult, but longer periods of fasting.

Dr. John Jaquish: The longer the fasting period, the better. But also when somebody is lifting, you’re a performance athlete, I have learned that my willpower is a little bit stronger and by a little bit, I mean like insanely stronger than most people’s. I’ve done five days, no food. I’ve done three days, no food, no water. Like just to check it out. But I realize, in fact, I just filmed these, a new set of nutrition videos yesterday that really keeps the normal person in mind. There’s nothing normal about me. Like I will run an experiment that people would think you’re probably going to die if you run that experiment. But of course I know the clinical literature and I’m like, “No, I’ll probably be better than I am now.” But whatever, you can think that. So 16, eight, it’s just not long enough. The benefits of fasting start after 12 hours. So you’re only getting four hours of benefit out of 16 eight. So just push that out, push it out to 24 hours, get 12 hours of fat loss and then of course your, your one meal a day make that carnivores. So the body can store fat, it can store carbohydrates. In fact that’s really how it does, but it can’t store protein. So if you’re going to overfeed, over feed on protein, and then you just got to sleep with the window open because you’re going to be hot. You’re going to thermogenesis. I’m like boiling at night.

Louis: I heard you mentioned on we’re friendly with Nicholas Hutchison. We interviewed him a couple of months back and have stayed in touch. And you mentioned that that on days you’re not fasting, you have to keep your house at like 63 degrees, otherwise you’ll burn up and most people be uncomfortably cold? But when you’re fasted, you don’t have to do that. So that’s pretty interesting to be able to directly observe that effect in yourself.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, I have to choose settings faster, not faster on my air conditioning system. I was walking in, flip a switch. . Yeah. But if I come back from the steak house, sometimes I’ll have a little less Fortagen and enable myself to eat a 64 ounce steak. Those lasts like eight ounces, it’s work. But if I turn the AC down to like 64 or something like that, Oh my God, it’s like much perfect feeling hibernate.

Louis: Yeah, I just connected the dots that the meat sweats are a real thing.

Dr. John Jaquish: What?

Louis: I said, I just connected the dots that the meat sweats are a real thing.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah.

Louis: That expression deserves to be an expression apparently.

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

Kyle: I have a question for you-

Louis: Yeah. Go for it Kyle.

Kyle: A little off topic here but Louis and I liked this concept of the permissionless apprentice. I think it’s coined by a guy named Jack Butcher and visualized you, but there’s this character in your story, Henry Alkire, who is just really interesting to me. It seems like he sort of just came into your life full force, and then that’s a pretty valuable intern that he turned into. So could you tell us a little bit about him and-

Dr. John Jaquish: He’s my best friend also.

Kyle: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. He’s a biomedical engineer also. Do you want me to drag him in here?

Kyle: Sure.

Louis: For some context, for people listening, the book tells the story where John’s still working on OsteoStrong and needs an intern to help him prototype something and he’s like a freshmen at Cal Poly if I’m getting that correctly. And then he proceeds to be longtime business partner, co-inventor for a super long time.

Kyle: Right. It’s like I already do this.

Dr. John Jaquish: Unfortunately he’s in the middle of running an experiment. I got some pretty awesome stuff in the works. But Henry is I think he’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. Just brilliant. Yeah. I mean, he’s like, he’s a lot younger than me. He’s started working with us when he was 18.

Kyle: How did that happen. When I was a freshman-

Louis: How did you you all find each other?

Kyle: … I don’t have like the skills necessary to jump into some biomedical company.

Dr. John Jaquish: I was like, we hired him to do CAD work. But he was aerospace engineering at the time and he immediately switched to biomedical engineering. He was just so fascinated with what we were doing and he read my book and the first book, Osteogenic Loading. And then, yeah, we just worked really well together. And I mean, we can kind of finish each other’s sentences now I’m certainly I’m abrasive and he is the opposite of abrasive. So, like sometimes I’ll be like, “Hey, should I say this?” And he’s like, “No, the national guard may be called if you say that.” Yeah. So sometimes he’s a great sounding board, but really smart guy. And you all make a scientific argument and then 99% of the time, he’s like, yeah, you can make that. And then the other 1%, he might be like, you can make that stronger. Because … I’m actually conservative when it comes to writing. But when I say stuff, I’m a little more, I don’t know, like if somebody’s of a group of people is being irrational or generally unintelligent or I’ll point it out. I won’t pick out an individual though. So somebody, will be like, and I’ll pick somebody actually likes somebody, “Well, what do you think Layne Norton?” And I’m like, “I actually think Layne’s really smart, good guy and he references a lot of research.” I mean, he doesn’t like fasting and he’s kind of picked a side in what has become like a religious war. I recommend caloric deficit and fasting. Like, why does it have to be either or? In fact you can gain muscle while on a caloric deficit, if you had a protein surplus. So who gives a shit, it doesn’t matter. There’s good research for both. So just apply both. I’m not a religious war kind of guy. If somebody wants to be a vegan, I can help them but it’s certainly not what I’m getting at.

Kyle: Right. So I have a couple of questions you had mentioned Henry’s a very smart partner and he’s working on something really exciting. It just kind of reminded me of a question I want to ask you. So the X3 Barstandalone as seems like an incredible piece of fitness equipment. Question I have for you is you have a lot of other stuff on your website that is expensive and interesting, which is a dangerous combination. And the vibration plate, the supplements, the Ford agenda, coffee replacement, how essential to achieving optimal results is adding the additional ad-ons versus just buying the X3 workout bar system. So if I’m pretty sold, that I want the X3 Bar variable resistance training system but I’m on a college budget, should I be beating myself up for not being able to afford the vibration plate or is that like really icing on the cake for the extreme person?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s a great question, I’m glad you asked that because the vibration plate will give you an extra 5% fat loss because of the instability firing and the upregulation growth hormone. It’s great, but don’t go into debt for that. I would say X3 Bar resistance band training system is as high as a priority as you can make it, Fortagen is right there too. I mean the less you get tons of red meat, when you’re in college, I don’t know how your cafeteria is, but mine was always all you can eat. I would just have like platter of steaks. I mean, I don’t know I was on the rugby team. They didn’t like any of us, also we’d start food fights and we’d wrestle in there and knock over. I hated this. I think a lot’s changed since I went to college. I’d say a lot.~

Kyle: Well, I was thinking about the fraternity. I was going to ask you a question. It doesn’t really play into anything, but I know you’re the president of the fraternity. I was just going to say that if you’re transplanted into the fraternity house today, I think that you’d still be able to enjoy it somewhat. I don’t think it’d be that difficult.

Dr. John Jaquish: That definitely this is true.

Kyle: Because I was hanging out with the undergrads.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. About last year. And it felt like right at home. And then they got in huge trouble, right after that for doing all kinds of stuff they weren’t supposed to do. And I’m like, “Wait, we’re not supposed to do that.” But still I was all by my fraternity. You can still see my fraternity logo is branded on my arm, maybe most amazing fraternity, most amazing experience. So what the hell did you ask me before we got outside.

Louis: You gave me a pretty solid answer there about saying the X3 Bar portable home gym is truly the priority and everything else.

Dr. John Jaquish: Fortagen is really cheap. If you take one scoop of Fortagen replaces an eight ounce steak in protein value, when someone was like, “Well, it’s more expensive than whey protein.” Yeah. Well, I wouldn’t put whey protein in a cat’s litter box. It’s fucking worthless. So well, eight worth, is it 18%-

Louis: Better than broccoli.

Dr. John Jaquish: Better that broccoli, right. It’s just higher value. It’s great. You certainly can’t get an eight ounce steak for $2.

Louis: No, you can’t. Not even-

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s what it is, $2 is a saving. So I would say it’s the cheaper option, but also it will keep you lean as hell. So what I do right now is I do before, because I got 250 grams of protein. I got to have one gram per pound of body weight. I’m 240. So I do four doses Fortagen. So that accounts for 200 grams. This is like, so I did a video about this nutrition yesterday. This is kind of like the minimum commitment nutrition is what we’re calling it. And I actually prefer it. And I’m like the one with the … That’s where I was going when I was talking about like, I have a willpower, my willpower is insane, but sometimes maybe the easier approach is the one that’s just sustainable. More Fortagen and I actually spend way less money because I only eat like, I would normally go to a restaurant and get like the steak for the whole table, the 64 ounce porterhouse, I don’t do that anymore. And I’m going to steak house tonight and I’ll probably have the eight or 12 ounce filet. It’s not like they don’t have blast over me anymore.

Louis: You got enough protein from the Fortagen because it’s so-

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, you’re getting the majority of it. Yeah.

Kyle: You’ve got to skip the stake or appetizer before the steak entree now, so that’s good.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I’ve done that too. I’ve had a steak for an appetizer, like three steaks for my main course and then when everybody else is eating dessert, I’ll get like a small filet.

Kyle: That’s hilarious.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Kyle: So my last question for you, we share in that our mothers-

Dr. John Jaquish: Wait, one thing.

Kyle: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s like X3, Fortagen and then I would say like, if you want a coffee replacement, IN-Perium is great. It’s like an energy drink with an appetite suppressant. You know, it’s like a pre-workout, but the medium. So if it’s replacing something that you already doing anyway, then it’s kind of, the net cost is zero. So instead of coffee and Starbucks every morning, you have an IN-Perium and you’re keeping a lot more money in your pocket, that covers everything. I wanted to fully the answer to that question.

Louis: No, thank you for that.

Kyle: Yeah, we appreciate it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks for the question, it was good.

Kyle: So my mom has osteoporosis. Her mom does too. And you that’s close to my heart and that’s actually the reason that I found you in the first place. It was months and months ago. But like what exact prescription should I give to her? Because she’s not going to tear through any sort of scientific articles or if I tell her something, I think she’s pretty much going to say, okay, like, I’ll do whatever it takes. So what should I tell her that she should be doing to make it better or extend her life or-

Dr. John Jaquish: Is there an OsteoStrong location near her?

Kyle: That’s what I was going to ask you.

Louis: There’s some in Alabama. I haven’t looked up. I don’t know about Birmingham, but the state.

Dr. John Jaquish: Birmingham has one. Yeah.

Kyle: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s a couple in Alabama actually. In fact, they’re run by a guy. His name is Josh Fandrich, huge X3 user, really strong dude.

Louis: I was going to say he is he huge.

Dr. John Jaquish: He’s huge.

Louis: So I have another question for you here. Kind of I’m sure you’re familiar with the 80, 20 principle, just like 80% of the causes come from 20% of the inputs. So what would be, you have a lot of opinions in the book, not opinions, a lot of arguments made in the book about testosterone and optimizing testosterone. What would be the highest, biggest mistakes to avoid and/or biggest changes to make to just like three to five things total, maybe for everyone for better testosterone overall. Because you make a really good argument about the importance of that for every result you want as an athlete?

Dr. John Jaquish: So the biggest issue with testosterone, how do I answer this in a politically correct way? They’re chasing the wrong thing. It’s not the testosterone that counts. It’s how many receptor sites are open. So your body’s going to use what it wants to use. So like when you’re hungry, your body needs to make some cells and it needs to process some other stuff it’s like when ghrelin and leptin get upregulated when you’re hungry and that happens for various reasons. So to get a testosterone receptor site activated, there’s only one way to do it. And that is put extremely heavy loads on the body. And so you can have a natural level of testosterone, which I do, and you can grow a lot more muscle. If you can put staggering amounts of weight on a muscle. Now and I course recommend doing it without a weight, do it with variable resistance. If there had been an EAD because people were like, is there any easy way at home they can emulate X3 portable gym. And I’m like, well if there was, I would’ve just written a book about that and not bothered developing a consumer product because there was no harder business to run a consumer product business. So yeah like when I chest press, I hope 550 pounds here, 300 pounds in the middle and 100 pounds at the bottom of the chest press. When I get to that 550 pounds and I hit that 20 times, that’s like a really big deal. That leaves an impression on the musculature. Totally exhausting, but because I get to those peak loads, those receptor sites just open up. So that natural level of testosterone I have is just grabbed and used. Yeah. And I get because there’s 15 NFL players I work with and they ask me all the time and they’re like, “You’re bigger than I am, why didn’t you go in the NFL?” I’m like, “I don’t have the genetics for it.” And they’re like, “Yeah you do.” No, I don’t. I think they’re oversimplifying it. You got to be fast. Not being injured. A lot of things that go into the skill of an NFL player, not just the raw strength, but I’m like, I looked like this after I turned 40. And I figured some things out and I’m like that, that’s why you called me. That’s why, your strength coach said, look into this guy because there’s some things about like using testosterone, which don’t require a supernatural level. You just use more of it by having a strategy, which is what the whole book talks about. A strategy to apply more force into the musculature than it’s ever seen.

Kyle: Great. Well, I think we’re going to transition now into what we call our bonus round. Just some rapid fire, just like little things that we want to know about. My first question is what’s your favorite car? I know I’ve seen you with a Lamborghini, Ferrari, just what’s your, your pick of the litter right now.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m really loyal to the Lamborghini. Like they just make such a bad-ass car. It’s faster. The shifts just boom. I mean, you feel like you got rear-ended every time you shift, it’s just a staggering amount of power that you don’t need, which is kind of like me.

Kyle: Which one, Huracan?

Dr. John Jaquish: The Huracan is very drivable. So you got to realize that Lamborghini build the event door to set the record at the Nurburgring and they did. They set it and they said, first Huracan set it. So it was the fastest car in the world for like two years. I think it was like the longest anybody’s ever held that record. And it was a Huracan peripheral Montay, which is basically what I have. I have the peripheral Montay without the wing. So I think the wing is just like tacky. And the last thing a Lambo needs is a wing. But if you look at which one they put in Lamont’s in Daytona and Sebring, the three most important races outside of formula one in the world, it’s the Huracan. They don’t race event door, it’s too big. It’s too wide, it weighs an extra thousand pounds or two more cylinders, it’s a bad trade off. It’s really good at long straights, which is the Nurburgring has a lot of, so it’s like, it shines at like 220 miles an hour, which even on a racetrack is like, kind of no one goes that fast. So it’s the Huracan. I checked out. I checked out the Ferrari. That’s not even out yet the FA, they invited me to a special thing and I got the drive that they also had me drive the Portofino. Yeah, don’t get that one. A Portofino is just like like a prettier M3. Just get the BMW. Portofino is not. I mean unless somebody really cares just about owning a Ferrari, is this the least expensive Ferrari, but it’s not fun to drive. It’s cool. It’s luxurious. That’s about it. Like number sets it all. The FA is really quiet. It’s a pleasant experience. That’s not what I want. I want a brutal experience. I want the girl sitting next to me to get out of the car and be like, “Ah, I’m so uncomfortable.” Like, yeah, it’s right. Yeah. So like, I didn’t get this for your entertainment, I got it for mine.

Louis: That makes sense.

Dr. John Jaquish: And then, yeah. It’s so much fun to drive that car. There’s a couple other things that I looked at and I liked but I like probably the replacement to the Huracan will be whatever Lamborghini replaces the Huracan with. And I’ve made them crystal clear. I’m like, put me first on the list. Like you call me you need $100,000 deposit, I got away this first one’s mine.

Louis: Well, that is awesome. Clear, passion about cars there. And it seems like you apply similar level of research interests that you do to fitness nutrition.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, if you care about something, those things I don’t care about that I may spend my money on, actually no, that’s not true. I care about just about everything. Like stakes you guys know what a cinder grill is?

Louis: I do not.

Dr. John Jaquish: You need one, let’s hear it. Like you will know the best steak houses in the world with a cinder grill.

Louis: Can you paint a picture for me? Like nothing’s come to mind in my head.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s about this big, maybe like, like 1.75 feet by 1.75 feet, it’s about eight inches deep and you open it up and there are two grilling surfaces. So cooks it evenly all the way through to like, like I get things everything’s rare for me. Sometimes it’s like a cold, bloody center is what I want my steak. I like it almost raw. Well, let’s say I’m going to do a rare steak is because like I have friends over or something like that because nobody else eats it raw other than me, so I’ll do it for like an hour and a half. So a thick like Chateau Brown, two inch thick steak cooks evenly all the way through like an hour and a half. And then you sear it for like 20 seconds and it is because of the algorithm and the calculation of warming it throughout evenly, it’s just like, you don’t even need to let it sit. Like even at the temperature, it is exquisite. Love it.

Kyle: Right. I’ll get that on the budget for sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, definitely.

Kyle: Yeah. I just Googled it quickly and it does not look like what I thought it was going to look like. Then I love how passionate you are about these different things. I think it’s awesome.

Dr. John Jaquish: I actually promote that company that I have no financial-

Kyle: Right. Maybe they shoot us so some dollars for publishing.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Best way to cook her. So they’re like, Oh, you want to be in a Billy? And I’m like, no.

Kyle: I have a question. So when I first started looking at this, it seems like new-age technology, but when you begin to dig into it, I think there are some historical examples of things that people used to do that are sort of in line with variable training. Do you agree with that? . Well, that would be a good example. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Chains and banning. Typically, you would see guys doing variable resistance based on what they saw from the videos at Westside Barbell. Now Westside Barbell is a little different because they’re trying to specialize every athlete in the breaking world records and because of the biomechanics or previous injuries or something, they may have a mid range that’s got an issue that they need to build up. And so they’ll just load them in range. And you know, somebody’s doing sort with tiny reps to try and activate more musculature in the mid range. They’re almost doing like physical therapy for the world’s strongest people. Very fine tune stuff. And there’s a reason that one gym has broken 400 strength records in the world.

Louis: And that’s the one in Ohio?

Dr. John Jaquish: Say it again?

Louis: That’s the one in Ohio?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And they did it all with variable resistance. So my approach very resistance is just, it’s very generic and it is very much for the person who’s not the professional strength necessarily. And they don’t need any rehab. It’s like if you need joint rehab, just go get joint rehab and then go use the X3 Bar variable resistance training system. Like if you can’t raise your arm over your head, well, that’s a problem whether you’re strength training or not. So you should probably address that problem. I don’t want to take anything away from Louie Simmons and what they at West side. But they were on a track where nothing was really quantified because that’s what I did for this. Like, everything is measured. Everything is explained with scientific reference. So it’s not my opinion. It’s not just my method that’s can be measured or judged against anybody else’s method. If you look at the science, it is absolutely superior. Anybody who read the book would know that. And coincidentally, the trolls I have, they never read the book. It’s obvious in their comments. I’m sure everything you saw negative and they never tried the product and they never read the book.

Louis: I’ll tell you the most, like the red flag on all of them is if they include pictures, they’re like, you could just build this for $100 and it’s pictures of people with twisted ankles and twisted wrists doing one eight of the resistance. And like they’ve read not even the first chapter.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. I explained why bands by themselves are worthless.

Louis: They’re great for like 10 to 20 pounds of resistance. But after that-

Dr. John Jaquish: They can go to rehab.

Louis: Yeah. But your wrists and ankles on anything meaningful are just going to not cooperate.

Dr. John Jaquish: Or they’ll break.

Louis: That’s what I meant. It’s very uncooperative.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Louis: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Like you do a dead lift and you let the bands run down underneath your ankles and you put some serious, that’s a serious heavy band. Your ankles are turning inward and ask anybody in the NFL if the ankle joint likes lateral force. I mean, I think that’s probably the other than brain injury, I think it’s the number two career ender in the NFL.

Louis: Yeah, that tragic injury on Alabama’s football team beginning of the season, Jalen Waddle just tore his ankle right up opening play of the season and just ruins careers.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Right.

Kyle: He’s back. I definitely sold on the X3 Bar exercise band bar system and we’re definitely going to be customers of yours in the future. We really appreciate you coming on. I think it’s a good place to end where we started with none of that. He doesn’t have an opinion. There are no opinions. It’s just science and it’s just full circle back to here and with variable resistance training. So thank you very much for your time today and sharing it with us.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome guys.

Kyle: And that wraps up our conversation with Dr. John Jaquish. It was just a really fun little hour of talking with him and feeling his energy, which is obviously off the charts. So a few lessons that I learned from that conversation, the first of which was how he had to really question a lot of conventional wisdom in order to reach the conclusions that he reached. And in order to do that, you have to be willing to think that or to accept that what you thought in the past was wrong. And then to build off of knowing that and finding the answers through like a objective look at data. At one point Louis is like, he was saying how he liked in the book that if the data showed that a vegan diet was the best way to eat, that he would have included that in the book, but it just wasn’t. So it’s like an interesting way of looking at your assumptions and then building from, I guess first principles. My next thing is that the X3 Bar resistance band training system is just a really cool piece of machinery. And I’m sure that in the future we’ll see different shootoffs from Jaquish biomedical that’ll really blow our minds. But so far we’ve got the X3 Bar variable resistance training system and it’s in the living room and I’m really excited to wrap up this ultra so that I can go use it. And then the last thing is, is that within fitness, you think about muscles and you think about how far you can run and all these different things, but really what we should be optimizing for is our endocrine system and how just important hormones are and hormone production regulation are in the pursuit of just overall health and fitness and how it’s sort of, it’s hard to track, hard to measure hard to understand it, but that is what we should be looking at for fitness metrics.

Louis: Heck yeah, I completely agree. And especially that third one, some of the fun difficulties of doing these conversations with authors and reading the book is I forget what takeaways are from the conversation and what takeaways are from reading the book and prep for the conversation. And like, did that come up or did I just read that from him? But that was my biggest takeaway from the book, which I would recommend Weightlifting is a Waste of Time. Dr. John Jaquish on Amazon. My biggest takeaway from that book was that weightlifting or just athletic activity with the goal of changing your physique and performance is all about hormones. But my three takeaways from this conversation, the first one was his defense of why he recommends only doing one set to failure of every exercise. I thought he had a really interesting defense for that. He said, if you do a second set, you’re always going to have to ask the first one, because you need to leave some in the tank to be able to do that second set, so you never reached your exhaustion and you’re kind of just wasting your time. I found that to be really persuasive logically, and we will find out if it’s experimentally true, when I start experimenting with the X3 workout bar system which has Kyle mentioned, is in the living room with Fortagen, his protein supplement. We went with both. So we’re going to try the X3 Bar variable resistance training system supplement with his amino acid profile, which is vegan, but doesn’t contradict his carnivore diet, which he addressed in this interview. My second takeaway is about carbs and fasting. I thought that was really interesting how he kind of, like Kyle said is just willing to present the literature. The literature says carbohydrates aren’t necessarily necessary for any human function and carbohydrates … Sorry, I got distracted, but-

Kyle: I got distracted.

Louis: Carbohydrates aren’t necessary for any human function. And that’s a very, very, very, as Kyle said, a controversial opinion. And we’ll see if we agree with that. I’m experiencing with it as well because I love to experiment. Haven’t had much carbs, not over 50 grams in like a week every day. So we’ll see if that comes through. And then when I asked about my rabbi’s fasting protocol, he said, the way to graduate from 16 eight not surprisingly is to spend more hours fasting. So I experimented with that as well. Did a 36 hour fast over the weekend after this podcast and really enjoyed it. Last takeaway kind of like what Kyle said about just the mental difficulty of being such a contrarian, of having such strong opinions that disagree so dramatically with reality and kind of after reading this book and being like, okay, this makes sense. And I’m like, why isn’t everyone-

Kyle: With reality but with convention.

Louis: Yeah with other people’s sense of reality or whatever you want to call it, but kind of just takes time to change consensus is something I’ve started to realize. It’s like Celsius. For example, that sports drink is super popular now. And like once I find out about something, I’m like, “Oh, why doesn’t everyone know about this?” And it’s just because it takes a long time for things to go into people’s minds and especially to change people’s strongly held opinions. So everyone, especially in when everyone is so married to their existing ideology, like veganism like weightlifting and when presented with arguments to the contrary, it’s very difficult to change their minds. But that is all I have to say about this episode. We make a lot of other episodes, like Kyle said in the beginning, we have about 55, 56 ish other really great interviews. I would highly encourage you to look in our feed and check out some of the recent episodes. We published one with Scott, young author of Ultra Learning. Another awesome book that’s crushed it on Amazon, a foreword by James clear. That’s a fun fact. Then the episode before that with Nicholas Cole, he talks a lot about how he’s been so successful writing online, bodybuilding and just about any skill he wanted to pursue. So those are two interviews. I would highly recommend checking out if you enjoy this one, if you want to support the show, please leave us a rating on iTunes to show that you think what we’re doing is something that we should keep doing. Thank you so much. And we’ll see you in a week with the next episode.