Podcast 53. Dr. John Jaquish - Inventor of the X3, Author of “Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time”

In an episode with Dr. John Jaquish, the author of “Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want, Ken Gunter and his special guest discuss why “weight training” as it’s always been done is a waste of time and why static weight is an ineffective means for stimulating muscle growth, as well as the concept and application of variable resistance—and much more.

Full Transcript

Ken: What’s up everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Professional Athlete Podcast. We are joined today by Doctor. John Jaquish, as he allowed me to call him at the start of this interview, is the author of the new book Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want. He is perhaps best well known as the inventor of the X3. And if I could describe it, if you’ve never seen it, it’s an at-home fitness device and I think it’s also portable, but dare I say the very concept of this machine flies in the face of traditional weightlifting.

Dr. J is a biomechanical engineer by trade. His first invention, which is remarkable, was focused on osteogenic loading and helped countless individuals suffering from conditions of osteoporosis, build backbone density in a way that previously was thought impossible.

So he’ll describe today how that research and breakthrough led to him creating the X3 which uses the concept. And I enjoyed talking about this today and I think it’s so applicable and important, is using variable resistance throughout the entire range of motion to build muscle faster, safer, and more effective.

So look, I’m not going to pull any punches here. He comes with some hot takes and I enjoyed the conversation. And like I said, much of what he says flies in the face of the status quo, but I think there’s a lot to be learned from such an alternative perspective to the norm. And if you’re someone out there who’s kind of stagnated, you’re not seeing iamprovement, sometimes it pays to take a step back, look at things from a different angle and see if there’s a better way that you can be… if we’re talking about training, more effective.

Ken: If you’re looking for a way to get better or if you’re someone who is pressed for time but you don’t want to sacrifice the quality of your workout, man, I’m pretty interested in this thing and I’m excited to hear what people think about this one. I’m sure it’s going to have a strong reaction, and it’s up to you as to what that reaction looks like. So, with that said, if you are enjoying the show folks, please do leave us a rating and review. We greatly appreciate it. If you want to reach out to the show directly, you can do so at kengunter.com.

We would love to hear from you, and there’s a contact section there and I try to write back to everyone who takes the time to do so. So, thank you again. And this one ended up going a little long today, so let’s just cut to the chase here and welcome Dr. John Jaquish to the show. Here we go.

Ken: Dr. John Jaquish, welcome to the show.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks for having me.

Ken: Yeah. You know what, I know this is going to be a good one just based on the pre conversation. And I know it won’t be controversial at all in any way.

Dr. John Jaquish: Not at all.

Ken: Maybe a great place to start is giving a little background about yourself, right? Because I think a lot of the folks that we have come on, they’re either strength and conditioning coaches, or they work exclusively with elite athletes. But I think you bring a different perspective to the table that is worth calling out.

Dr. John Jaquish: I come from the medical device industry. People ask me, “How long have you been in the fitness industry?” And I’m like, “I’ve never been in the fitness industry.” It’s not where I come from. I developed a bone density device, my first invention to increase bone density. And it works better than any drug ever trialed. And I developed that about 13 years ago and brought it to the medical market, and you can find these at OsteoStrong locations. Tony Robbins is a partner in the business.

Ken: Not a bad guy to be involved with.

Dr. John Jaquish: No. No, he’s a great promoter. Gets people excited.

Ken: That’s true.

Dr. John Jaquish: He’s great. Great guy to work with. But I will tell you, he in person is the same guy who he is on stage. He’s not playing a character. He is that real guy. So, we actually, with just hands right in your face and he’ll yell something. And he’ll ask you a question, “What the hell were you thinking?” And he expects an answer.

Ken: Yeah. Well, okay. I’ll find out if I’m allowed to use this, but my father-in-law just met with Tony Robbins and he was over at Tony’s house and they were having a business conversation and all of a sudden, as the story goes, Tony’s like, “You want to check out the man-cave?” And they’re like, “Yeah. Sure.” And he hits this button. A portal opens.

Ken: Yes. He jumps down the slide and just disappears and lets out this massive just… I don’t know. What’s the word? Animalistic scream. And they’re just like, “What the hell just happened?” And I’m just like, “That’s exactly-”

Dr. John Jaquish: … the bowling alley. And… That his man-cave is… It’s not a cave. It’s like a auditorium with a bowling alley. And coincidentally, that’s where my medical devices are found. That’s where the OsteoStrong devices are in his house. And this is in Palm beach.

Ken: Awesome. Yeah. Well, and I was like, you know what, that’s exactly what I want from a Tony Robbins interaction. That’s exactly what I hoped for. All right. So, getting back to the point, totally understand. Come from the biomedical industry and you create this device and if I’m going to use this term correctly, what’s the type of loading? Osteo…

Dr. John Jaquish: Osteogenic loading . I created to describe what it is. And that’s the name of my first book.

Ken: Yeah. And that’s about improving bone density.

Dr. John Jaquish: Correct.

Ken: Correct. So, is that what led you to end up kind of discovering what ultimately created the X3, or kind of how did you make the jump from working in the biomedical field to creating this device that despite your views on the fitness industry has become a bit of a game-changer and a bit of a lightning rod.

Dr. John Jaquish: It was the research from the OsteoStrong devices. They gave me the idea. I looked at it and I was like, “Okay. Well, I have data that shows that people are seven times stronger in the impact ready range of motion.” Meaning if you go trip and fall, how do you protect yourself. That range of motion is super powerful. We don’t leverage any of that in any type of conventional strength training. And so, I’m looking at this and I’m like, wow, this data I’m looking at and the more I look at it, the more I realize that weightlifting is a waste of time, which is why I titled the book that. Now, I didn’t say resistance training, I said weightlifting. Also, I don’t mind kicking somebody in the nuts with a message that they’re not going to like. Just because they’re believing in convention doesn’t mean they’re right.

Ken: Yeah. Well, I think you also said cardio is a waste of time in which case I didn’t need any documentation. I just wholeheartedly believe that and adopted it. So, I was excited about that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, there are 100 studies…

Ken: Yeah. Well, no, and I would love to dive into that as well, but… So, I was telling you before we started, I did read your book. I enjoyed it. There was a couple of specific topics that I just thought were so interesting. Some of which fly in the face, I think to your point of the traditional approach to training. Some of it, as I read through it, I was like, oh, you know what? That aligns with some of the things I’ve heard some other folks in the industry who I do think are smart. It aligns with some of the same concepts that they’ve kind of been trying to preach and kind of getting out of this dogma of traditional strength training. So maybe a great place to start, why is weightlifting as you say, a waste of time?

Dr. John Jaquish: Because we have seven-fold different capacities from the weaker range to the impact range. Once you know that, once you know you can handle far more force in one position versus another, well then you also know you can exhaust the muscle to a much greater degree. I called it X3 because there was one study that showed people got three times the gain troubling amount of strength versus the control group using variable resistance. But the variable resistance in that study was kind of bulls***. It was X at the bottom and 1.2X at the top. It’s like, no. No. No. It should be magnitudes greater at the top. Maybe not 7X, but I do have some proprietary mathematics going on there where I identified over some repetitions what this would be, and I’m refining that, those mathematics all the time, but it’s… And that’s why I had to make special made banding. The latex is very different than a regular latex band, so the power curve is not linear at all. And nor should it be. It should be non-linear. It should look like this.

Ken: Would you mind… for people listening, would you mind expanding on what is variable resistance?

Dr. John Jaquish: So, it’s when the resistance changes as you move. And the reason you want that is because you’re stronger in certain positions and you’re weaker in certain positions. And if you can adjust for that so that it’s the same level of difficulty throughout, then you’re engaging more muscle tissue. Most people… not most people. All people who lift conventional weights, pick the weight that they can handle in their weakest position. This means in the stronger positions, they’re not firing very much muscle at all. It’s easy. It’s like when you do a push-up. The top is easy, the bottom is hard. So, you want to weigh the changes so that you are truly engaging the maximum amount of muscle, which means lighter at the bottom, and kind of normal weight, maybe two-thirds of the way in, and then a sky highway at the top.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, when I do a chest press, I hold about a 100 pounds of the bottom. Which is nothing. 300 pounds in the middle, which is a lot. And then 550 pounds at the top. I even have a load cell video that is putting some ads, but I have not made a post out of it yet where you see just a massive difference in the amount of force. And as soon as I started training and fatiguing like this… Then also a fatigue and diminishing range as part of the protocol where first you fatigue the stronger part of the movement, then the middle part of the movement, and then the bottom part. So, the last repetition might only be one inch. But you fatigued the muscle to the point where you just can’t move anymore. You can’t move at all. Even the 100 pounds at the bottom.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, far more profound fatigue, and of course we know this about all adaptation. The greater the stimulus, the more intense the stimulus, the greater the change in the body. A very powerful abrasion on the hand creates callouses. But if you have a light abrasion over a longer period of time, you get a blister. So, the fact that we do multiple sets with weightlifting is a crystal clear example of why the stimulus is weak. Because if it were a strong stimulus, we would never need more than one set. How many sets do you do in the sunlight to get a tan?

Ken: Yeah. Well, ask my wife. Yeah. No, I hear you. And that’s one of the things I wanted-

Dr. John Jaquish: …one response.

Ken: So, is that with… With your workout protocol when you’re doing the X3, are you doing one rep? With… I’m sorry. I’m sorry. One set per muscle group or exercise?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ken: Oh, wow. Yeah. Because I saw… And again, speaking to… I can’t remember if I said this when we were on the air now, but a neighbor of mine uses the X3, swears by it. Lost a ton of weight, came over, looked like a different person. I was like, what the hell happened to Brad? What’s up Brad? And he’s like, “Yeah. I do it all. I do it in my bedroom. I use this one machine. I knock it out.” He’s like, “I have been eating well, so I lost weight.” He’s like, “I’m now eating s***, so I look a little less good, but I still feel fantastic and I don’t have a need for anything else.” And I was like, “Wow, that’s really interesting.” And I was wondering, how is he accomplishing getting in such a great workout in such a short amount of time, and it sounds like what you’re saying is if you fully exhaust the muscle and you work it in all parts of the muscle range or the range of motion rather to exhaustion, there’s not a need for multiple sets. Am I understanding that correctly?

Dr. John Jaquish: Multiple sets will actually set you back. There’s an over stimulus.

Ken: Yeah. Too much damage?

Dr. John Jaquish: More and more… There are inroads in your recovery ability, and you don’t want to do that.

Ken: Okay. So, when we talk about working through a range of motion because this is something that I enjoyed in your book. Understanding that you’re only as strong as you are in your weakest range of motion, right? So, I love the example that you give of the bench press. If you can’t get the bench off your chest where you’re weakest, it doesn’t matter how strong you are in the middle and the top, right? And what I enjoy too, is the understanding of, well, if that’s true, if you’re weakest at the bottom and you’re strong enough to get out of that, once you get to the middle and top, you’re not exerting as much force as you probably could. And so that kind of made me…

Dr. John Jaquish: Absolutely.

Ken: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I also say I understand the sport of the bench press. So, I hang out with the Bell brothers every once in a while, Chris and Mark. But I’m heresy to those guys because they lift weights.

Ken: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: They’re also riddled with injury. And I’m like, “Dude, what’s the point?” Is it to be as big and as strong as possible? I said to Chris, “You made a movie called Bigger, Stronger, Faster. It should be called bigger, stronger, faster, and injured.” Or we can get bigger, stronger, faster, and feel great. I have the full-body pain that I did when I was 18 years old. Yeah, sure. I mean, every once in a while my neck isn’t as great as I’d like it to be, or some little thing like that, but I have no joint pain whatsoever.

Dr. John Jaquish: No. I was lifting for 20 years, but I never lifted heavy enough to screw up joints because I understood what would happen. So, I played rugby in undergrad. For a couple of years and it was just… As I was lifting, I’m like, I’m just hurting myself here. So, I got to lower the weight. And then you can’t get away from heavy if you’re trying to grow a muscle. There is no escaping heavy. So, I know there are all kinds of companies selling products that are like, “Oh, lift lighter, just slower.” Bulls***. That’s not a thing. So, I was just like, wow, is this as good as it gets? Because I look terrible. And I put on a little bit of body fat, I think. When I turned 40, I was 190 pounds and had 16% body fat. That is far from impressive. I mean, yeah. Sure. People knew I worked out, but I wasn’t a fat slob, but it was like nothing special.

Ken: Now, you want to be.

Dr. John Jaquish: Hell no. Not at all. And I just thought… And why is it that some people grow and some people don’t? Why is it that… And I just… I was already a research scientist and I developed what I developed for OsteoStrong. And then I just… I wasn’t obsessed with it, but it was always in the back of my mind. And then as soon as that research came out, I did it through the University of East London, so I was in London for a while and watching this research and the MDs… Some of the MDs were subjects in the study.

Ken: Oh, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: And they were like, “This is… What are the forces like in a gym environment?” Because most of the people had never worked out before.

Ken: Interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: They’re osteoporotic or osteopenic. And so I’m like, I don’t know. I had data on this, but I’ll find it. And so as soon as I looked up the hard data, most non-athletic people use 1.3 times their body weight through their lower extremities. Most strength trained for more than two years, they use 1.53. Now, of course, when I know outliers, but outliers don’t matter in medicine. So, when looking at that, it was like we’re using sevenfold the amount of force with these people who have never exercised before. So, women were doing 6, 7, 8, 9 times their body weight through their hip joints for this and then voluntarily creating that force through their hip joints in the impact-ready positions only.

Dr. John Jaquish: Now, it makes sense because gymnast absorb 10 times their body weight, and they have the highest bone density of anybody and the highest level of strength. And I’m looking at this and I’m going, weightlifting doesn’t make sense. We need something that goes from this kind of loading back down because we still need a range of motion. We still need to activate the entire musculature. We still need a sarcoplasmic effect to maximize the blood flow into the muscle. Then, later on, I figured out we can get a massive hypoxic effect also, which is just that adjusts your myostatin levels and changes your genetic ability to hold muscle. So, that was a huge discovery. And it works perfectly with X-ray. You can’t do it with a weight, because most of the time you’re barely engaged. You’re engaged-

Ken: So, can we…

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re engaged in a position where you’re hurting yourself the most.

Ken: Yeah. For people listening, maybe you could define two things. So, and I know you said a brief example of impact ready, but can you give another maybe frame of reference as to like what that looks like maybe in the upper body? Like frame it. Like when you say impact, what that is.

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re going to trip and fall yourself with 120-degree angle between upper and lower arm in the back of your hand in line with your clavicle. So like this. That’s how you catch yourself. So, I can absorb force here or I can create force here that has that incredible levels.

Ken: Oh, you mean with the X3.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ken: Ah, interesting. I mean, that makes sense.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, blood’s flowing into the muscle, but can’t leave. So, you’re suspending your ADP, glycogen, and creatine phosphate, but very little. Not a lot even gets in when the muscles constantly contracted. So, you use the fuel that’s there and you create a massive deficit, but for a period of time, and this is what helped me figure out what the axis of myostatin regulation was. It’s the heart. No one’s ever written that down. I’m the first guy to put that. I put that in my book, but there’s so much evidence with blood flow restriction tourniquet work.

Ken: Yeah. I’ve heard a little bit about that.

Dr. John Jaquish: You can do that, and when you do that, you’ll increase the size of your pacs. Well, you’re not constricting any blood that’s going to the pacs, how’s that possible? Then the sort of myostatin observation was made and it’s like, okay. You have to make the human heart blinded to your musculature whenever you’re exercising and you can’t do that with a weight. And the problem with the tourniquet is you get neural inhibition. There’s a reason why tourniquet training you use one-fifth the amount of weight you’d normally use, so you don’t get any of the testosterone receptor site stimulus. So, as I said, there’s no getting away from heavy. You got to go heavy. And so… Ultimately, what I worked on was a better way to go heavier than you ever could, with more reps than you could ever handle. And then a greater level of fatigue, and hence you get a hypoxic effect, you get a sarcoplasmic effect and a myofibril effect from fatiguing the stronger range that nobody does.

Ken: Yeah. And can you talk about the benefit of working out all ranges of motion? Let’s say we’re doing a curl, right? And I believe if I’m understanding all this correctly, the weakest point in the range of motion is right when you go to… your arms extend and you go to lift that weight, is that correct?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, with a curl, you have a lever arm. And when you’re curling something, it’s heaviest when that lever arm is at its longest, which is when you’re kind of halfway. So…

Dr. John Jaquish: Longest, which is when you’re halfway. So… Right. And it’s also when you get to the top, you’re not using your bicep hardly at all, because at the same lever arm, it’s not really… It’s more weighted on the bone.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, the weight’s going down the radius and ulna and being held in place by the deltoid. Now, don’t do… This is outside of X3. Do a drag curl, pull the bar, and let it just rub from your torso down to your belt line.

Dr. John Jaquish: And then, you’re engaging the bicep and you’re not having the biomechanical inefficiencies. Now with X3, it’s better, obviously. If it wasn’t better, I wouldn’t have designed it. Wouldn’t have invented it but-

Ken: And that’s something that… I just worked out this morning after listening to your book and it made me reconsider the way I was doing all my reps.

Ken: So, as an example, right? Doing just… Because I don’t have the X3, I do like using bands in the gym when I can, and I understand you have an opinion on how the efficacy of that… But it made me think like, look, to your point, when I’m doing a curl, there becomes a point where, yes, I’m doing the exercises as it’s traditionally done, but is it getting me closer to the adaption that I want, right?

Ken: To your point, it’s a lever. And at some point, that weight gets transferred in the biceps, it’s not working. And I was like… I was like, “Where else is this showing up in all the places where I work out?” Which I thought was interesting. So, understanding, maybe, curl isn’t the best exercise to think about.

Ken: The way we traditionally lift weights, right? If the most work is being done at the weakest range of motion, what is the actual… This might be a stupid question, but I’ll ask it. What is the actual benefit of working the muscle and the stronger ranges of motion?

Ken: Is it working a different muscle? Is it making the muscle contract harder? And therefore you get better growth and hormonal response? What’s happening there?

Dr. John Jaquish: The answer was the last thing you said. The hormonal response is also from muscle protein synthesis.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sam, we talk about muscle protein synthesis and sports performance all the time. But you know only two-thirds of the people can stimulate any of that at all, right? That was-

Ken: So, why is that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Because they’re not able to get to a level of fatigue that is meaningful in any way to grow muscles. So, the best thing you’re ever going to do is get sarcoplasmic growth, which is just storing more ATP, glycogen, creatine phosphate, the fuels. They store more fuel in the cell.

Dr. John Jaquish: But this is a person who… The first two weeks they lift, they gained five pounds of muscle, and then nothing ever happens again, which is a lot of them. And I often talk about people just defend weightlifting like it’s their religion, like talking to a vegan.

Dr. John Jaquish: And it’s just like… This is just crazy s**. And then, an unwilling… or willful ignorance to anything else that’s happening. So, I say, “Why are you defending an industry that… I’ll be generous and call it a 99% failure rate. Look at people who go to the gym, and looked like s**. Almost all of them, whatever… It’s either 90 to, depending on how you want to judge it. It’s 99% or 99.9%.”

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re like, “Who’s the fit? One out of 1,000 people? One out of 10,000 people?” Why is it that everybody has a supplement deal that has visible abs on Instagram?

Ken: There’s a lot of snake oil out there for sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, that’s not my point. My point is, it’s rare to get somebody that looks impressive. So, why defend an industry like that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Also, one out of six males over the age of 18 in the United States have used or are currently using anabolic steroids.

Ken: How many?

Dr. John Jaquish: One out of six.

Ken: One out of six.

Dr. John Jaquish: I cited that study in the book.

Ken: Males over the age of 18?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right. One out of six has used or is using.

Ken: Hmm.

Dr. John Jaquish: I suppose that’s the fat guy who tried a cycle of testosterone and just ate pizza and didn’t lift but that includes that guy, too.

Ken: It just sounds so high. I’ll check out the stuff… That just sounds high. That sounds high to me.

Ken: Yeah. No, I’ll link to everything.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, obviously, performance-enhancing drugs are not the answer because almost everybody who used performance-enhancing drugs looks like s***, too. So, what’s the real answer? Their training program is ineffective. That’s the answer.

Ken: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: What they’re doing is obviously not doing anything. You can go to a gym. And I know Venice Beach, there are some big guys in there. Other than that one gym, and maybe one gym in Ohio, you walk in any other gym and it’s just a bunch of guys with baby arms and double chin.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s all there is. Just everyone’s just totally average. Why are we listening to the same garbage that turned us into nothing over… Whatever. 10 years of lifting for the average person ultimately ends up quitting.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I put down on the back cover of the book, and a lot of people read it, and they’re like, “Dude, you’re right. I worked out for years and I didn’t see much out of it.”

Dr. John Jaquish: And the biggest genetic difference. There’s only been one person, since the dawn of time, who’s been banned from professional sports because they had an unnatural level that their body created of testosterone.

Dr. John Jaquish: One person said that… there’s a woman from Africa-

Ken: That’s insane.

Dr. John Jaquish: Who… She had, I don’t know, 2,000 nanograms per deciliter, normally. And they’re like, “We can’t even let you participate. It’s so unfair.”

Dr. John Jaquish: I don’t know what she looked like. She probably wasn’t pretty, but that’s only happened once. So, the genetic difference between strength athlete, or a person with a very developed physique versus not.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I’m not talking about human size, there’s a factor with human size. Birth weight is a big driver, how big you are. But that also means how tall you are. I don’t know what the birth weight of Halfthor was, the dude who was in-

Ken: I know Thor.

Dr. John Jaquish: Very strong guy, the strongest man in the world kind of person. I don’t know what his birth weight was, but I’m guessing it was high.

Ken: And I think that’s probably a safe bet.

Dr. John Jaquish: Bigger people have a high birth weight. But that’s not really what we’re talking about. We’re talking about development. So, the biggest genetic factor is where your tendons insert and the distance.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, our pectorals attach to our sternum and 99% of the population it’s underneath the beginning of the bicep. And so, the action of the pectoral is pulling the humerus towards the midline of the body.

Dr. John Jaquish: But some people… And these are the people who turn into strength athletes. These are the outliers, the anomalies. They have a tendon insertion that’s further down their humorous. And they have that similar type of geometry throughout their body. And they engage more musculature when they lift.

Ken: Interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: Very rare, but it happens. This is the last chapter of the book. We’re talking about what is the difference and how is… That’s where I cited the steroids study.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s not drugs. Some people were taking drugs, obviously. One in six… A third… What is that? One-sixth is 23% of the population has been or is using anabolic drugs, but less than 1% are fit.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, is it the drugs?. Clearly not. There’s another thing. And so, this very small percentage of people, no one knows what the prevalence of this tendon mutation is, but those are the people that end up being strong.

Dr. John Jaquish: Drugs or not, they’re going to be strong, no matter what they do.

Ken: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so, that’s the genetic difference. However, remember what I said about lever arms?

Ken: How do you, what?

Dr. John Jaquish: How do you defeat a lever arm?

Ken: Boy, I don’t know. Don’t put me on the spot, man. Come on.

Dr. John Jaquish: No. You used the word. variable resistance.

Ken: I did know the answer. Son of a…

Dr. John Jaquish: You did know the answer. right? So, when you place the massive variance on that lever arm, it becomes meaningless. And now, everybody gets the same workout that the fittest NFL guy has. And doesn’t matter anymore.

Ken: And that’s why the bands that make up the X3 are so critical because, to your point, when you were talking about the bench press, and maybe it’s 100 pounds, at your weakest, 300, the middle, 500, or maybe it was more at the top. But it’s that band giving the progressive resistance as you move through that range of motion.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right. So, now the genetics of tendon insertion are meaningless for everyone’s on the playing field.

Dr. John Jaquish: Everybody can grow just like… And I love using NFL players. So, I work with 15 of them. And more NBA players, but NBA players aren’t really seen as strength athletes, even though they are very strong. They’re just too tall. They don’t look jacked. They look tall.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, somebody sees an NFL player is in great shape. And for the ones that are using X3, they’re like… It takes all the disadvantages out of lifting.

Ken: I know. And that’s what I want to ask you, too. One of my big questions was, who is the X3 right for, right?

Ken: And I know… I’ve seen Tom Brady uses it. There are a couple other guys who I’ve seen on your Instagram or just in their own Instagrams.

Ken: So, that’s one of my questions is… Is this for the person that’s just concerned with general fitness, wants to look good? And you already said as much. Is there an application here for the elite athlete as well? And maybe if the answer is yes, could you expand on why?

Ken: Because it does fly in the face of the tradition of, “Look, we need to go through these specific blocks. We need to go hypertrophy, strength, power, speed, and realization.”

Ken: Where does the X3 fit in there?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s a great question. I’ve never been asked that question before.

Ken: It’s a first!

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, also, when it comes to high performance to elite athletes, it’s not… It gets a little foggy because the average guy, was a lawyer. Let’s say a lawyer or plumber, or whatever. Just busy professional. It’s like, they want to be lean, look good. They want their wife to look at them when they take the shirt off and be excited, right?

Ken: Look good naked, man. That’s the end of the day, man, that’s what I’m trying to do.

Dr. John Jaquish: You want your kids to look at them like you’re a superhero.

Ken: Dude, you nailed it. That’s it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I get out of my car and little kids will run up to me and be like, “Are you Thor?”

Dr. John Jaquish: And I’m like… It’s great. That feels great.

Ken: Absolutely.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s what most guys want. However, when we’re talking about elite athletes, they’re not paid to look good. They are paid to perform. Now, I tell all these guys, and this is how I don’t get into fights with the strength coaches. The Miami Heat endorsed X3 in this book on the back. I don’t know. Do you have the book with you?

Ken: No, but I do. Yeah, I have the audiobook.

Dr. John Jaquish: It doesn’t come with a cover, right? So, Lanny, endorsed it because it’s like, “You’re keeping our guys injury-free, and they’re getting stronger.”

Dr. John Jaquish: And so, it’s a huge win for them, but… This is how I don’t… Because everyone says to me, how the hell are you not fighting with these strength coaches? Because they have strategies and opinions that they’ve been studying for 20 years. They don’t change.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I said, “Well, when you tell them they need to keep doing everything they’ve been doing except for the heavy weightlifting,” and I say heavy weightlifting and so they’re like, “We don’t do any heavy weightlifting.”

Dr. John Jaquish: And why? Because once you sign your contract with a professional team, they tell you, you can’t get injured. Otherwise, you lose your contract. And the strength coaches know that.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, getting hurt in the gym is not a thing. So… I read somewhere, some Internet clown was talking about, how NFL players do one rep maxes all the time.

Dr. John Jaquish: Absolutely not. They’re not going to go through that risk. For what? Ruining their $20 million contracts, so they can claim on Instagram that they bench a lot? That’s not what they’re paying for. Nobody gives a s*** when they bench.

Ken: Strength and condition coaches aren’t going to put their career on the line so that-

Dr. John Jaquish: No-

Ken: He has the O-line with the biggest one rep max. They’re trying to make them stronger, healthier.

Ken: I guess… Well, and… Using bands to create variable resistance isn’t new. And I think you’ve even mentioned it as much in your book-

Dr. John Jaquish: No.

Ken: And I believe you were probably referencing Westside Barbell, right? Those-

Dr. John Jaquish: Weighted bars all the time.

Ken: Yeah. And so, today I was like, “I haven’t done this in a while. Let me throw some bands on the bench.”

Ken: The first thing I had to do is dial the weight way back. That was number one. But number two, it was like, man, it just progressively gets so much more difficult to get to lockout.

Ken: And I’m glad that you made that distinction that like, “Don’t lockout. Don’t come back completely to rest. Keep the muscle under tension,” because that’s something that I missed.

Ken: But it seems like intuitively trying to… Even though I don’t have the X3, but trying to replicate it with what I have. To some extent, it’s like, man, there’s a notable difference going through an exercise in this way.

Ken: So, just curious as to how, maybe, those elite athletes were implementing it. Is it just during part of their training, all of their training in season, but also if you don’t have an answer right now, that’s not a problem either?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, I do. It’s a little different, but what I tell them is the skill-type drills you guys do. Don’t ever change that. X3 is not going to make an NBA player shoot a basketball any better. It might make him more stable while he shoots, so his performance may go up, but he still got to do the shot drills. He still got to do the foot drills. He still got to have the agility.

Dr. John Jaquish: X3 won’t give you any of that stuff. So, you have to do that stuff if you’re going to be a professional athlete. You need… Because performance is a mixture of raw power, and then whatever the agility is for the training.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, somebody who’s a professional rower isn’t going to do the footwork, right?

Ken: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Like an NBA player will. So, it’s very specific and that’s very tedious, but that’s the job. So, it’s not-

Ken: Can we… Yeah, sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off there. One question that I have, and again, this made me take a step back and think about my approach. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of tempo and the role that plays and bringing a muscle to exhaustion? Because that’s something that I thought was really interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So, a lot of people don’t like my answer to that. But my answers are scientific. It’s just… And I tell these guys, especially the NFL guys, like, “Man, that’s hard.”

Dr. John Jaquish: I go, “Look, I’m not here to give you the answer you want. Also, this is not my opinion. I’m basing this on published research.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Now, some of the subjects I’m going to talk about, especially Nutrition, have conflicting research. So, we can get into that a little later, but-

Ken: Yeah. I don’t know how much time you have. I would love that. If you have to run in 10, we can hold off. But I would love to ask you.

Dr. John Jaquish: Let’s keep going. This is fun.

Ken: Okay. You got it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I’m telling them like, “I want you to go slow,” and I say, “Think about this. If you’re going to draw a straight line on a piece of paper, it’s easy to draw a straight line fast. Do it slowly. It’s a lot harder, a lot more musculature has to fire to do it slow and controlled.”

Dr. John Jaquish: The goal is just to exhaust the maximum amount of muscle tissue. If you’re going to do that, two seconds up, two seconds down. You just want to thrash around with the thing and… go fast. You’re not going to stimulate that, that much. There’s a lot of momentum involved and… You’re just not firing the most amount of muscle. So, you can do that. I tell people, “Don’t get wrapped up in the reps. Get wrapped up in shutting the muscle down. Maximum fatigue.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Reps don’t mean much. There is a way of quantifying what you’re doing. So, the tempo is two seconds up, two seconds down. Some people go three seconds up, three seconds down. Mostly, I just put an option in there because people like to mess with stuff. Everybody wants to have their take on their exercise program. I hate that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Every time somebody buys a Harley Davidson motorcycle and they just can’t wait till they take it apart and put some other s*** on it. And then, you work on it for six months, and then you’re like, “It looks worse. You ruined it.”

Ken: Right. It’s like-

Dr. John Jaquish: They’ve been building motorcycles a long time. They make them good-looking. Just buy it.

Ken: Right. .

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m not a huge fan of this company. I prefer Lamborghini, which is why I drive a Lamborghini. But Ferrari, if you mess with their car if you like put another exhaust system on, or something like that, an aftermarket thing, they won’t touch it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Like, “F*** you. Even if you want to go in, and do another service, they’re like, “No, you ruined it.”

Dr. John Jaquish: I love that.

Ken: Someone just gave me a great quote, and I’m going to ruin it. But what was it?

Ken: A giraffe is a… F***. What is it?

Ken: Anyways, a giraffe is like a… When men try to create a horse or something. It’s like they end up just trying to… They get their hands in, and they’re like, “Well, I like the long legs. You know what? I like spots.”

Ken: And by the end of it, when you’ve tried to add all these things to something that… There was already a good framework to begin with. It ends up being a monstrosity.

Ken: And giraffes are great. My kids love giraffes. Don’t hate on giraffes too much.

Ken: But… Well, one of the things, too, that this has made me think about is, where are all the places in my reps or my sets, or whatever it is, right?

Ken: Because I don’t train in this way, and I’ve quite frankly just been introduced to it. But I’m like, “Man, where in my workout am I cheating on a rep? Where am I using the momentum? And where, just for the sake of completing and mentally being able to do more weight, am I taking away from the game that I could be getting by doing it correctly?”

Ken: And so, thinking about the focus being taking the muscle to exhaustion was… Well, that’s something. That’s interesting. And it got me excited because it’s like, “Man, maybe there’s an opportunity for more gain that I’ve been leaving on the table.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Absolutely, there is. And that’s what the NFL players tell me because they think they’re all at their peak, by the time they get into the league. And they tell me all the time, I get messages every day, like… Like, “This is changing me. And I never thought I could get more powerful than I was.”

Ken: Yeah. Well, there’s that. But then, also… I’ve seen people do drop sets, right? The drop set, like, “Just keep pulling weight off the bar and keep going.”

Ken: What I was interested in to see your approach of… I don’t know exactly the term, but like progressive exhaustion throughout the range of motion.

Ken: Could you talk about that a little bit? Because I think even for people who are really into fitness and strength training, that’s a very alternative approach to trying to achieve that end.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, when the diminishing range, that’s what I call it. When I’m doing repetitions with chest press and I’m hitting 550 pounds at the top, and I can’t get there, then I do the 300-pound repetitions. And then the last repetitions are 100 pounds.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I could barely move. I can’t even move 100 pounds. That’s how exhausted I am. That’s far more exhausted than weights will ever take you.

Ken: How many times a week are you working out? Say, upper body. Or do you do full bodyy when you do it?

Dr. John Jaquish: We do.

Dr. John Jaquish: It was like… We could toss a coin of upper, lower push ball. I think the body works a little bit better with push ball, but for somebody who’s trying to look good for photoshoots, might do the muscles they want to be pronounced on one day, and the muscles they don’t really… Those aren’t necessarily pronounced.

Dr. John Jaquish: You don’t get a pump in your quads. Or if you do, you look weird, right? So, you want to pump in your deltoids, and then your traps, and then your pecs, and then your triceps, so that’s what’s going to make you look like a champion.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, you can split… in an aesthetic way, or you can split it in a push-pull way. But I just tell everybody to do push-

Dr. John Jaquish: … way or you can split it in the push-pull away, but I just tell everybody to push-pull.

Ken: Yeah. Are you for push, are you doing push twice a week, three times a week? I’m curious to know.

Dr. John Jaquish: You hit the muscles three times a week.

Ken: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Then we have studies that show that muscle protein synthesis concludes in 36 hours.

Ken: Yeah. What is the implication of that? Help me. Help my dumb brain.

Dr. John Jaquish: No, contrary to popular belief, muscle damage means you grow less, not more because the protein synthesis has to attenuate the damage. Damage brings you back to where you were when you started. It’s not like you tear the muscle and it grows back bigger. That’s an oversimplification. Oversimplification is another word for wrong. There’s great research that shows the least amount of damage, the maximum amount of growth. So these are all why we do one set, we go to fatigue, absolute fatigue, one time, and then anything else is damaged. Why would you want damage if you know it’s not going to grow you at all?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. About when somebody starts working out, they receive a lot of damage in the sore like when they’ve never worked out before.

Ken: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: I remember when my pecs were so sore when I was like 14. I first got my gym membership and my dad would just take three fingers and just stab me right there. I’d be like, “Ah” and he will laugh because it was so sore. But then as you live for a couple of weeks, it’s like-

Ken: Yeah, but you don’t get that anymore.

Dr. John Jaquish: … you’re not sore anymore. Well, okay. Your body got used to it now. Now you start… This is part of the reason why muscle confusion theory has also been disproven. There’s even a position statement with the ACSM. They’re like, don’t do that. Just take the same workout month after month, year after year if you want the maximum amount of growth, because they’ve tested the two. Mixing it up, don’t do it. People ask me the stupidest questions online like, “What do I do to mix it up so it doesn’t get boring?” I’m like, “I don’t know. Do you get bored brushing your teeth? You ever used a toilet brush instead just to mix it up, just to be fun, just to add some spice to your workout, you idiot?” No, just do it right.

Ken: Now you’ve got me thinking about people brushing their teeth with a toilet brush.

Dr. John Jaquish: I don’t have much of a bedside manner.

Ken: No, I can’t imagine.

Dr. John Jaquish: Good.

Ken: Okay. You threw me off here. One of the things that I did want to ask you about too is… Boy, do we want to dive into diet yet? I remember what my question was.

Dr. John Jaquish: Why not?

Ken: I live in the world of oversimplification. I did subscribe to this belief. Yeah, you break the muscle down, it grows back. It heals, grows back stronger, whatever. You’re now-

Dr. John Jaquish: You and everybody else. When I first heard that, I’m like, that makes absolutely no sense because that’s an injury.

Ken: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Scientifically, it doesn’t make sense, but I didn’t question it because I didn’t…, we don’t cover adaptation in biomedical engineering schooling,-

Ken: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: … medical school. You ask any MD, how many classes did you have on adaptation? They’re like, “Adaptation of what?” Like suntan, callous, muscle?

Ken: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Uh-uh (negative). Never really went over it.

Ken: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: That might be part of the reason why your MD doesn’t know anything about exercise science unless he or she is a practitioner of such.

Ken: Right. So what is happening then? Because you talked about it a little bit. If you can help piece it all back together, I imagine it has to do with the hormonal response. What’s making the muscle grow then if it’s not what we misunderstood as breaking it down and building it back up?

Dr. John Jaquish: So the heavier you go, especially if you’re using a high level of variance, they have you go in those impact-ready ranges of motion. When I hit that 550 in my chest press, it’s like all the receptor sites in the muscle are just wide open, like we want testosterone. It’s not a matter of how much testosterone you have, it’s how much testosterone is the muscle asking for. You can’t force testosterone in a receptor site. The receptor site has to be willing. That’s how you get the maximum amount used. That’s so much in the body. If you eat and you don’t work out, you’re probably going to… You eat like you’re working out, you’re going to get fat.

Ken: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So the guys are like, “I’m going to take two weeks off.” And they’re like, “Oh, my God, I got so fat when I took two weeks off.” Right, because you ate the same way. I’m sure you have friends who’ve done that.

Ken: You’re talking to a guy who just had a, I think 12 rolls of sushi and banana bread for lunch. Not always, but I ate that, and then I was like, “God damn it. I’m talking to Dr. Jaquish today. Why did I do that?” So I’m ashamed. All right, here’s another question for you. Really quickly because then I do want to move to diet. Because unlike you, in a way it is like you, very controversial approach to diet nutrition. What is your warm-up look like when you hit the X3? I believe it’s in your book and online it says, “Hey look, you get a great workout done in 10 minutes.” So are you warming up before that 10 minutes? Is the warm-up part of that? How does that work? Because often, a warm-up alone might take someone 15 to 20 minutes.

Dr. John Jaquish: I do some one-legged balance squats just to make sure I don’t feel vertebrae out of place or something like that, don’t feel any injuries, but I’m talking 30 seconds of warm-up.

Ken: And it hasn’t inhibited your muscular growth. It hasn’t caused an injury.

Dr. John Jaquish: Mm-mm (negative).

Ken: Interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: The first few repetitions, remember we go high reps because the weight’s so high. I don’t want somebody who can handle that 550-pound band to be using it, doing it like four reps. It’s not going to do much for them. But if they let go and that bar catapults towards their chest, they’re going to be hurting. Now, if I get hit with 550 pounds, I’m like, “Ow” and I just do it again.

Ken: Yeah. Come on, now.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because I can handle that weight, right?

Ken: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So we adjusted the repetitions to higher. Also, another benefit of that is they get a lot of diminishing range.

Ken: How many reps? Yeah, how many reps are we talking?

Dr. John Jaquish: Minimum, 15, maximum, 40, slow and controlled repetitions.

Ken: Oh, wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah. Much higher repetition because you’re using more weight anyway. As I said, we’re going heavier. The amount of reps is irrelevant if we’re still going heavier than when we’re doing an eight rep weightlifting set. I go way heavier. What could I do with 550 pounds on a bar? Avoid it. That’s what I can do. I would never get under that. I’m 44 years old. I’m never getting under a bar like that.

Ken: Do you have any data regarding folks who train on the X3 and then do step back into the traditional weight room? Is there a measurable difference in terms of strength gain? Because what I would be interested to see… I know there’s that Cornell basketball setting. It’s Cornell basketball in wrestling and talking about using variable resistance for so many training and additional-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yes, that study.

Ken: Yeah. Do you have any study or data that supports, “Hey, by training on the X3, even do these high repetition ranges when you do go back into the weight room.” Because there are people who… They’re powerlifters or maybe that’s their sport. Even though it’s not ideal, that’s the desired outcome.

Dr. John Jaquish: Of course.

Ken: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, right. I acknowledge that there are strength sports. When you’re a powerlifter, the bench press is a skill as well as it is raw performance. You have to be able to balance the bar. There’s always some clown that wants to run some scientific whatever, and they don’t know what the f*** is going on. They’ll be like, “Well, I went back to the bench press and I can barely control it.” Yeah, right. If you’re a golfer, you got to keep swinging a golf club. If your sport is the sport of the bench press, you have to keep practicing that movement.

Ken: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: If you’re going to be a powerlifter and you want to see gains accelerate with X3, you still got to do your lifts. Maybe not 10 sets of them, but you got to keep and practice that skill. Now, if what you were doing was a machine bench press, I don’t know.

Ken: Blasphemy.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Like a Hammer Strength thing where you just put the plates on it and swings upward, which is awful or whatever. Yeah. I don’t know anybody in Hammer Strength, but I got some s*** to say. But anyway, you can go and way outdo what you would normally do on a Hammer Strength, chest press because they’re not balancing anything. We would go right back into the bench press or the squat or the deadlift and powerlifting move and you haven’t been practicing that skill, you’re going to be a little rusty for maybe a week or two. Then you’ll beat your previous numbers because you have more power. So you’ve got to train the skill. Right. There are NFL players. They see me and they’re like, “Dude, you’re in better shape than me and you’re twice my age.” I’m like, “Yeah.” And they’re like, “How come you’re not in the NFL?” Because I got in this shape the last couple of years. I’m over 40.

Ken: So a lot of your strength-based gains and body composition stuff has happened in your 40s. This isn’t just maintenance of work you’ve been putting in since you were a teenager.

Dr. John Jaquish: No.

Ken: This is the ability to build, strengthen-

Dr. John Jaquish: I looked nothing special. As I said, people could tell I probably lifted. I had a bigger neck, I guess, and that was it. I was 16% body fat or no, I think it was 19%. Yeah. I lie right now, I lost 16 pounds of body fat

Ken: Yeah. We just did… I think it just went live today. Now people know how fast I record these. We just launched an episode all about body fat percentage and body fat. That was a lot of fun. I do want to get your take on diet. Actually-

Ken: Yeah. Maybe we can start by focusing on the protein needs because I know even… Your book, your literature, anything that you put out, you say, “Hey, look. The X3 is fantastic,-

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

Ken: … but you also need to fuel the right way.” What do people need to be conscious of when they start thinking about nutrition to support the work that they’re putting in on an apparatus like the X3?

Dr. John Jaquish: Only one thing is just quality protein. Yeah. Four studies are all referenced in the bookthat shows you can gain muscle mass at a caloric deficit if you have the right amount of protein. So you can be getting leaner and bigger at the same time. So all of that’s a myth. Bulking, cutting, bulls***. No need to do it like that. Carbohydrates aren’t even a macronutrient anymore since 2005.

Ken: Yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: No need whatsoever in the human body. Now, I can apply carbohydrates synchronized with a workout for replenishment of muscle glycogen. You combine that with stretching protocol after your workout. Maybe if you also put a vasodilator in there like Epimedium, HydroMax, or if you want to do it right, a Viagra. You push a lot of blood in the muscle, and when you stretch it, you can create the splitting of muscle cells, hyperplasia. There’s a lot of research on this and Professor Jose Antonio, who’s the top protein research guy. He’s also the top hyperplasia research guy. By the way, get him on your podcast.

Ken: Yeah, man. I just wrote his name down.

Dr. John Jaquish: Professor Jose Antonio.

Ken: That sounds really interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: The world should listen to him way more than they do.

Ken: Yeah. So protein, does it fall in line with the generally accepted protein recommendations? I know a lot of folks talk about the one gram per pound of body weight.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it does. People pay attention to that, but… I see posts all the time. Somebody will be giving somebody else advice. That’s where you see the stupidest comments on the internet.

Ken: The internet comments and message boards aren’t scientifically cited.

Dr. John Jaquish: … But yeah, if people still say, “Well, you got to eat your calories if you’re going to put on mass.” No. You got to eat your calories if you’re going to put on fat. So yeah, keep eating the carbs if you just want to store is fat. Why is it that carbohydrates occur in nature only before the cold season? Why is that? Why do we ship vegetables all over the world? Why?

Ken: Is that true? Do they only grow before the cold season?

Ken: My agriculture knowledge is pitiful. People are going to write me, “You don’t know about how bananas grow, you idiot?”

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re not going to get grains anytime… Harvest season is always in the fall, right?

Ken: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So you only have a couple of weeks or a couple of months. Also, we genetically engineer fruits and vegetables to last longer now.

Ken: Yeah, that’s true.

Dr. John Jaquish: But before, they were… Let’s say you and I were in a tribe and we knew where the peach tree was. We would go and gorge ourselves on peaches and get fat for the winter like a bear gives itself type 2 diabetes every year. It uses type 2 diabetes to get as fat as possible so it can sleep the whole winter. Because you can live off your body fat. You can go fast for months. We know that even humans can do that. To live off the body fat, you got to have a high level… You better be a fat mother f***** first before you try and pull the winter without food.

Ken: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: But you can. It’s been done before. We already know the answer to this question. It’s not a theory. So you can do that, and then also, the more adipose tissue you have, you can protect yourself from the cold. Lean people die in extreme cold whereas people with more adipose tissue are more likely to survive. That’s why carbohydrates show up when they show up because they’re there to make you fat. If you don’t want to be fat, don’t eat them except for the hyperplasia protocol that I talked about. Also, if you’re a distance runner. Zach Bitter just broke the hundred-mile run record.

Ken: Oh, wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Ran a hundred miles.

Ken: I wasn’t aware of that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. There goes the world record. He’s a carnivore. He doesn’t eat carbohydrates unless he’s in the process of a run.

Ken: Interesting. Since you brought it up, you now actually… You said that you do use carbs as part of that protocol.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ken: Maybe I should assume, but that is correct, okay. You stick to a carnivore diet, correct?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Ken: How long have you been doing that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, pure strict, four years.

Ken: Four years.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ken: I know you get asked this all the time, but are you tracking… Do you know what I mean? What’s the word I’m looking for?

Dr. John Jaquish: Do I do blood work?

Ken: Yeah. Are you doing blood work? Are you tracking things over time?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. My cholesterol is a little high, but we know now that cholesterol doesn’t matter. The people with a higher LDL, low-density lipoprotein, live longest.

Ken: Really?

Dr. John Jaquish: Low-density lipoprotein was called bad cholesterol up until a couple of years ago. All the research that supported taking statin drugs, it’s all been disproven. So if you’re taking statin drugs… Oh, God, I have this ex-girlfriend who was so mad at me when I said this. She’s like, “But my family has died of it.” I’m like, “Okay. Irrelevant.” They probably died of a lot of things. Not that though, because that is associated with longer life, not shorter life. So I don’t care.

Ken: I’ll have to read up on that. Yeah. But I agree. I could not be less of a qualified medical opinion, but so often, those things go hand in hand with so many other complications. There are so many other chronic diseases.

Dr. John Jaquish: Also, how do you feel when you eat two pounds of steak and 10 scrambled eggs? Like you’ve been fired out of a cannon. You feel great.

Ken: Do you really?

Dr. John Jaquish: I do. Yeah.

Ken: Now look, I love eggs. I like steak. I’m a cheeseburger man more than anything. I actually eat really healthy. I don’t know why on this particular podcast I’m acting like I eat terribly all the time, but yeah. I don’t know. I do enjoy eating vegetables. I feel like I feel better when I do, so I’m so interested in the fact that you’ve done the carnivore diet for so long. To your point, you feel shut out of the cannon and after four years, your numbers, it sounds like there’s nothing to be concerned about.

Dr. John Jaquish: Nothing.

Ken: Is the carnivore diet, is that something that for the right type of person, it makes sense, or is this something that more broadly, and I don’t mean to paint you in the corner, we’re going to start giving nutrition advice, but is this something that the human body more broadly is equipped to deal with? What does the research say?

Dr. John Jaquish: Absolutely. I really don’t care for it when somebody says, are you on a keto diet? Because there’s really no such thing as a keto diet. The process of ketogenesis begins with the absence of first, carbohydrates, but more strongly, the absence of any insulin whatsoever. You get insulin even from drinking water. You want the highest form of ketosis, dry fast.

Ken: Oh, wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: No water, no food. Your body will rift through body fat. By the way, I’m doing that today. I haven’t had water since last night.

Ken: Really? How long are you doing that for? Is that like that 18-hour window? Is it shorter when it’s dry?

Dr. John Jaquish: No.

Ken: Is it longer, God forbid?

Dr. John Jaquish: It depends when I’m going to do my… There’s one supplement I take called Fortagen. It’s actually vegan-friendly because it’s made out of bacteria. Yeah, because that’s not an animal. Bacteria is just not, so it’s vegan friendly. I said it’s vegan-friendly and people insulted me. The carnivores went, “Why the hell would you make a product for vegans?” It’s just like, “Dude, it’s not a contest. I want to help these people.” What are they going to eat healthy with their ineffective eating disorder? I see veganism just like anorexia and bulimia. Anorexics and bulimics think they’re healthy too, by the way.

Ken: I will say this. I did it because my… I’ve told this story at an earlier episode. My dad was sick. He had all sorts of chronic health issues and in an attempt to get him to make a change at hopefully, I thought would help, I did try to go on a vegan diet. I will say when I did that, I was surprised that I felt really good, which is interesting. So I’m open to it. I’m also open to the concept that a carnivore diet could make sense as well. Because what I do generally is I eat meat. I try to eat a lot of vegetables and I eat grains. I try and eat better carbs and I stay away from packaged foods. So I’m open to all of it, and so that’s why I’m used to-

Dr. John Jaquish: The biggest problem we have is food that comes from a chemical factory.

Ken: Yeah, preservatives.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I prefer somebody eat sugar than drink-

Ken: … conservative. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I prefer somebody to eat sugar than drink a Diet Coke because Sucralose is like gross fungus in your intestines. Dude, there are people. I’ve actually done this. I took a Diet Coke out of a woman’s hand and gave her a lecture and I dropped it right in the trash, and she started crying and said, “I thank you so much.” I convinced her.

Dr. John Jaquish: But I’m doing this because I care. She looked like a mom. She’s watching kids, and talk about all the things that the Sucralose is going to do to you, and I’m like, “Just don’t go backwards. No more Sucralose for you.”

Ken: Right, right, right.

Dr. John Jaquish: It worked. “You like drinking water?”

Dr. John Jaquish: And she’s like, “I do.”

Dr. John Jaquish: “That’s great.” It just pisses me off how toxic this crap is, and meanwhile, instead of talking about this, we’re talking about a vaccine, where we could just fix this problem by being leaner and stronger.

Ken: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that’s the way everything is. It’s like we want to slap a Bandaid on everything, and I’m not speaking about COVID.

Dr. John Jaquish: Everybody wants an amazing way.

Ken: Yeah. It’s like an ounce of prevention is whatever that saying is.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ken: I’m with you there. So man, this has been really interesting. The fasting, if we don’t mind, before we wrap up, what is the purpose of doing the dry fast? Is that just something that you do periodically? Is it something that you do when you’re preparing for a specific event? Or what’s the thought behind doing that for you?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s kind of a new experiment.

Ken: Okay, here we go. I like it.

Dr. John Jaquish: One of the hard things to explain is fasting. I can say, “You need to give your intestines a rest. They’re not supposed to be working at all times.” And while people can hear that, they’re like, “Well, do we know that?” No, we don’t. Now, we see very positive effects from giving them a rest, but that’s not good enough for most people.

Dr. John Jaquish: I need to look always. If you look at the variable resistance research, which is like chapter two in the book, if you just read that one chapter, you will realize that X3, it’s the Holy Grail, it’s the Excalibur. It’s everything everybody’s been looking for and just didn’t know could ever exist, and it’s because all of the studies in the category are like, “Variable resistance is awesome.” And there’s even one study in there that says, “The higher amount of variance, the more the muscular gain.”

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s like I paid somebody to write it, except it was written before I even started this thing. It’s awesome. If people bothered to read, which is why I like my haters, I don’t think they can read, because most of the messages, I get a lot of misspellings. They’re the bodybuilding.com people. They’re dumb.

Ken: Right, right, right, right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, just insane lack of intelligence. If you don’t know, read. Why is it that the most amount of fitness data, fitness content, is on Instagram and YouTube, pictures and video?

Ken: Oh, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: See where I’m going with this? Yeah, that’s illiteracy.

Ken: I do see a little bit of that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ken: Well, yeah. Then I think, what’s tough too is, it’s difficult to parse through what’s accurate because so much of the research is conflicting.

Dr. John Jaquish: Or buyable.

Ken: As an example, we’re biased. Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: That research is paid for by Kraft and Nabisco. And why? Because Kraft and Nabisco know the vegans don’t eat kale. They eat cookies and cake.

Ken: Right. Well, okay. So then that very well may be fair. Right? But I talk to you, you’re very convincing, and clearly, I think something that I do enjoy about your work is, you wear your body of workaround. Do you know what I mean?

Ken: You represent what you’ve built and you can see like, “Look, the person who created this is seeing tremendous results.” But then you can talk to someone else, who is vegan, and they can roll out 10 studies that are equally as convincing. So I’ve given up on trying to decide who’s right.

Ken: But what I’m interested in is, it works for you. I’m interested in why it works for you? And then letting people, to your point, if they’re willing to put in the work and read, make hopefully an educated decision for themselves. Because I’ve done 52 of these podcasts now and I’m still like, “What the hell do I even think now that I’ve talked to so many people?”

Dr. John Jaquish: Now you probably just have more information that’s confusing.

Ken: That, yeah. I think there’s a bit of that too.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Ken: I think there’s a bit of that too. Well, this has been awesome. I’ve had a lot of fun. I appreciate you taking the time.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ken: And I think like I said, one, I want to try the X3. I’m going to see if I can borrow it from my neighbor for sure, maybe even pick one up for myself. But yeah, I just enjoyed the book, and almost more than anything, just making me pause and think about, “Okay, wait.” Of all the stuff I’ve been doing in the gym, I’m all about efficiency, I’m all about trying to optimize my time, and I’m like, “Man, how much of what I’m doing is inefficient?” And to your point, am I doing way more sets than needed if I took a different approach, focused on variables?

Dr. John Jaquish: You, using that, the answer’s yes.

Ken: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: But why people do multiple sets with weights is because the stimulus is just bad.

Ken: Hmm.

Dr. John Jaquish: And that shows you, you don’t need multiple sets of any other stimulus in nature, except for weights, so maybe we’re doing it wrong.

Ken: Yeah. Yeah. No. Man, I love it. So hey, thank you. Oh. For people who want to follow along, where can I direct them? I know you have several sites and you’re on Instagram. Where’s the best place?

Dr. John Jaquish: So I created a landing page also, so you don’t have to learn how to spell my last name. It’s just DoctorJ.com. D-O-C-T-O-R, the letter J.com.

Ken: Perfect. Perfect. And that’s the best place, and I’m going to line to some of the other sites. DoctorJ.com, is that where people can find some of the research who do want to do some of the reading as well?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Well, they can find the book there. They can find the read-through page, where I put little clips, little captions about health or carbohydrates or other fake news that I just blow up. And then I put the APA academic references there, so they can look up the study if they want to.

Ken: Awesome.

Dr. John Jaquish: And some people do, and usually, regular people don’t know how to read a study anyway, so it’s like, “Okay.” No, they’ll say, “Your conclusion of this is wrong,” and I’m like, “It’s a direct quote. It’s not wrong. You just don’t know how to read it.” They’re like, “Okay.”

Ken: Yeah. Well, I fall in the category of knuckleheads who wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of a lot of that stuff anyways. So why is-

Dr. John Jaquish: The problem with it is a lot of jargon and abbreviations. So if you bother to look all that stuff up, you get it. All of those statistical tests are kind of hard. When you go to the average person and say, “Give me the difference between the Spearman Rho test and an analysis of variance,” they won’t know the answer.

Ken: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So when calculating the P-value, I do peer review for some other medical journals, and I’ll be able to figure out if they used the wrong statistical test based on what they’re trying to do, and that’s a mistake that researchers make.

Ken: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: So I know if researchers-

Ken: To the average person, good luck.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. If researchers are just making a mistake, the average person is not going to know that’s going on.

Ken: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, I’ll give myself a little bit of slack there.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay.

Ken: Well, Dr. J, man, thank you. This was awesome, and we’ll have to have you back in the future.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome.