Discussing Muscle Mass with Dr. John Jaquish

Inventor of the most effective bone density building medical device, Dr. John Jaquish discusses how you can lose fat and gain muscle through variable resistance and his X3 equipment.

Full Transcript

Ali Kay: Hi, friends. Welcome to season two of Invest Your Best with Ali Kay. Come along as I casually explore what it takes for you to live your best life, mentally, physically, and spiritually by focusing on the things you can control: your thinking and actions. Come and listen as I have raw, real, and open conversations about what it takes for you to step into action to live your best life. It’s time to invest your best.

Ali Kay: All right, all right, all right. Welcome to the Invest Your Best podcast I am your host, Ali Kay. And on this episode I have on a guest. His name is Dr. John Jaquish. And he has a Wall Street bestselling book out there. It is called, get ready for this guy, the name of the book is called Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want

Ali Kay: Now, before I kind of give a little explanation about what this book is about and what Dr. John Jaquish and I talked about, I just want to first off say that I speak upon my experience with jump-starting a healthy lifestyle. And one of my goals is to always bring you a guest that will offer maybe just a little different perspective. And at the end of the day, I urge you to always go out and do your research before you apply the takeaway to your everyday life.

And Dr. John Jaquish claims that you can lose fat, gain muscle, and build the body of your dreams without having stepped foot in the gym. And he talks about this workout equipment that he has created. I don’t want to say machine because it fits in your backpack. It’s called the X3 workout equipment. And he talks about its effects and the whole idea of variable resistance. And it’s a very interesting and enlightening interview, and I can’t wait for you guys to listen. So stick around and stay tuned.

Ali Kay: We are here with Dr. John Jaquish.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks for having me. It’s nice to get a little bit different audience. And I’m also not a fitness guy. I don’t even view myself as part of the fitness industry. I come from the medical device industry.

Dr. John Jaquish: So I got my start developing a medical device that treats osteoporosis that ended up being more effective than just about any other solution out there that’s ever been clinically trialed. And that’s called Osteostrong. We have 150 clinics in eight different countries. They’re not fitness devices. They’re more of a treatment you go in for, and they’re like $125,000, and they’re bigger than a car, so you would not have that in your living room.

Dr. John Jaquish: I developed a strength training product derived from the information that I was gathering while developing the osteogenic loading devices, and then ended up doing several things that I saw as just medical device science, but it ended up kind of crossing over into the fitness industry, which is kind of funny because people were like, what’s a biomedical engineer? There are none in the fitness industry. Even sports scientists, there aren’t many of those in the fitness industry either. They kind of publish and do their own thing and the industry is completely ignorant to what’s going on in actual academic publication.

Dr. John Jaquish: So for example, for 40 years we’ve known that doing cardiovascular exercise is probably one of the worst approaches to losing body fat, yet people keep on doing it and have their hormones working against them, which is why it is so difficult when you do cardio to lose body fat.

Ali Kay: Yeah. See, I love to run. I love to run because of my mental health. It’s that time where I get alone, I can organize my thoughts. And reading your book I learned that one of the reasons why cardio is so bad for your health is because you are releasing the cortisol hormone. So tell me a little bit about that and how do we target the correct hormones? And as your book goes over the whole variable resistance, how are we targeting those hormones?

Dr. John Jaquish: So with cortisol, sustained cardiovascular activity increases cortisol from a chronic perspective. Cortisol is secreted when you get up out of bed in the morning, every time you exercise when you eat, but it’s this kind of thing. It’s not skyrocketing. And then it doesn’t stay there. But sustained cardio, which is like 30 minutes of sustained high heart rate, will secrete cortisol for long periods. And cortisol does two things. It eliminates muscle and it protects your body fat so you stay as fat as possible, as long as possible. So your hormones are completely working against you. So when you want to reduce your body mass people cut calories and then they go do cardio, they’re just losing muscle.

Ali Kay: And storing fat, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. They can lose weight, but the fat stays there and they lose the muscle. This is why you look at a marathon runner and then you look at a sprinter, and one looks healthy and one doesn’t.

Ali Kay: So, I’m on this whole journey. I lost 70 pounds and I’ve watched my body transform. And now I’m kind of in the point where I love working out and I’ve realized that I need to heavyweight into my lifestyle to kind of see that change. And your whole method is variable resistance, how this is superior to basic weightlifting the heavyweights. Do you agree that lifting heavier really will get those changes? And what exactly is variable resistance?

Dr. John Jaquish: So if you want to develop your body there’s no getting away from heavy. None. If you’re not going heavy, you’re getting nothing. That’s what controls testosterone receptor site activity. Not necessarily production, but receptor sites. So even for people that use performance-enhancing drugs, if they don’t put a heavy load on the body, nothing happens.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I don’t want women to be afraid who are listening, because even a feminine shape has the muscle to it. And I think a lot of women are mostly scared because of the outliers they’ve seen or the women who use performance-enhancing drugs and they end up looking like men. Yeah, your body won’t do that. You don’t need to worry about that. Some of the most feminine-looking women are lifting. They’re not doing cardio.

Dr. John Jaquish: Cardio even causes rapid aging, damage to the skin. You don’t have enough ability to create enough protein synthesis to fix all the damage, so the skin is kind of a lower priority than organs, obviously than internal organs. So you end up just in a lousy situation. So there’s no getting away from heavy.

Dr. John Jaquish: However, the problem with heavy weightlifting is that’s where injuries come from. What I focus my time on after developing the bone density medical device was, how do we get heavy loads on the body in a much safer way than weightlifting? So when I looked at the bone density research when you’re doing a chest press and the bar is at the bottom, you can hold X amount of weight. But based on the research, you can hold seven times that amount of weight when you’re at full extension. Well then, if you know that you’re sevenfold more powerful in one position versus the other, why would you ever use a static weight? You need the weight to change. That seems obvious.

Dr. John Jaquish: Louie Simmons over at Westside Barbell did it in a way to train professional strength athletes, and he was one of the first guys to do it in that manner. And in his one gym in Ohio, they’ve broken 400 world records in strength. So clearly the method works. But he was doing something very elaborate and was very specialized. You needed the whole gym. And my objective was just to condense this into a device that fits in a backpack. And that’s what I did.

Dr. John Jaquish: I also realized I had the proper ratios. Because a lot of people have known you’re stronger at the extended position of a pushup or squat than the bottom position. If you and I were just like goofing around, I’d just go, okay, let me show you how weak your legs can be. Move your upper legs so that they’re parallel with the floor and just stay there. And your knees would be just shivering and you’d be in pain. But if I told you to just bend your knees by two inches, you can stay there all day. And so that’s the difference. That’s where that seven-fold difference comes in. So what we needed to do was a heavy load on the stronger part of the range of motion and then a much lighter load so that we preserve joints.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because coincidentally, there was a study from 1999 … So basically what it’s saying is axial loading of the bone mass will trigger the growth of tendons and ligaments, making the joint capsule stronger. The joint capsule is all tendons and ligaments that are around your elbow joint or any joint. Benjamin & Ralphs, 1999. That’s the name of the study. When you look at that you realize that by stretching the joint, you’re just damaging it, and it grows when you load it when it doesn’t hurt.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, the weaker range is needed from a blood flow perspective, from a hypoxic perspective, that you’re not locking your elbow when you’re training and keeping it slightly bent, which is something I teach people to do, keeping constant tension on the muscle. And these are like the principles that are all perfectly executed in what I developed.

Dr. John Jaquish: And then of course I wrote the book, Weight Lifting is Waste of Time. And I wrote that explained the rationale behind what I did. Because I think sometimes people look at the product and they were like, okay, it bands, it’s an Olympic bar, the bar swivels to keep your wrist optimized, and then there’s a plate which keeps your ankles from being injured. But because it’s simple and elegant, that doesn’t mean it’s not effective. I mean, look at an iPhone. There are no buttons on it. Everybody thought, there’s no keyboard, it’s not going to work, but they were wrong.

Ali Kay: Right. Now we can’t live without it. Yeah. Tell me about your system. Because I’ve watched videos of it. I’m dying to try it. But explain for the listeners that are listening too, it’s essentially a band like the workout bands and a metal bar. So explain how the weight gradually increases. How does it work and just describe it a little more for the listeners?

Dr. John Jaquish: So the bands I had to have custom-made. They are about 50 to a hundred times more powerful than the bands you get at Walmart. So a band is not a band. Like a tire on a toy, a truck is different than a tire on my Lamborghini. Ali Kay: Yeah, I’d say so.

Dr. John Jaquish: The weight is so high if you didn’t have the bar, if you were like trying to do a pushup, your wrists would get bent. You could break your wrist by using force. You need that bar, you need the plate the stand on.

Ali Kay: That’s interesting. And then with weightlifting, you talk about the week range muscles. That’s essentially where we injure ourselves. We’re trying to deadlift all this weight because we can do that with the other muscles. But essentially, getting to that position is where we hurt ourselves with the weak range muscle. To explain, with the bands, how does that work with the actual weight? Because I saw the demonstration that someone was doing with the deadlift with your product, how basically the weight gradually increases with the bar. How does that work?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, weight lifting is generally ineffective because whatever weight you can pick up through the weak range is irrelevant in the strong range. It’s like nothing. So you’re only exercising the muscle where you have the least amount of tissue firing. It’s not like doing anything. It’s something. Some people do succeed with weights. The biggest genetic difference has to do … It’s not biochemical. It’s mechanical. For example, your pectoral attaches at the sternum, middle of the chest. And then on the humerus, usually right underneath the top of the bicep.

However, some people have a rare genetic mutation where it inserts at the bottom of the humerus bone and they have much more mechanical leverage. So if you take a group of NFL players and look at where their tendon attachments are, they have long lever arms within their body that give them an ability to engage more musculature. But this is rare. When you look at the true development of a male physique, how many males are truly developed? Maybe one in 10,000.

Ali Kay: I know so many guys and women that are spending hours at the gym and honestly not getting the results. But I kind of just wanted to talk, I know a lot of my listeners are like, okay, I want to start a healthier lifestyle by incorporating the right foods and working out. So what do you suggest for someone who has no idea about the fitness industry? They’re starting from scratch. What do you suggest the foods that they should focus on? What should they do to get effective results? And another thing is time. People don’t want to spend hours at the gym. So what can they do so they’re getting the most out of their time?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s really important … I mean, the book’s cheap. You can get it on Kindle for a couple of dollars or get the audiobook so you can listen to it while you drive. Yeah, I think that’s where to start because it’s written from a place where you may have been an advanced listener, but it’s written for an audience who’s just interested in getting in shape and is willing to admit that the standard recommendation doesn’t work. Even if they can’t view themselves very accurately, which is a thing. People don’t view themselves very accurately.

Ali Kay: Real quick, I wanted to interrupt this podcast and give you the health tip of the day. So today’s health tip of the day has to do with the brain. And I want to give you seven quick ways that you can start improving your brain today.

Ali Kay: The first way is by positive thinking. Of course, you can tune into positive thinking through meditation or deep breathing. And this helps the brain because it helps you release stress and anxiety.

Ali Kay: The second way you can improve your brain is by moving your body. Now actually, when you do physical activity, that helps protect the brain from oxidative damage and mutation. So just another benefit as to why you should move your body every day.

Ali Kay: Number three is through laughter. When you laugh you release endorphins, which are those happy hormones, and it makes you feel good on the inside and the outside.

Ali Kay: The fourth way you can improve your brain is by changing your scenery. When you change your scenery it helps reset your brain and the way you process information.

Ali Kay: Number five is to tune in and listen to classical music. Listening to classical music helps the right side of your brain tune in and look at situations from a different angle.

Ali Kay: Number six is to get more sleep. We hear it all the time. But when you sleep your brain catalogs what you’ve taken in while you were awake.

Ali Kay: And number seven, the last way that you can start improving your brain is by keep on learning. When you continue learning, the left side of your brain loves higher-level thinking such as brain games and riddles, so feed it regularly.

Ali Kay: And that is the health tip of the day.

Ali Kay: Let me ask you something. The reason why I intro-ed you as a fitness pioneer is, someone who’s just scrolling your Instagram, obviously your body represents what I think a lot of males want. So is this from the [X3 system(/products/x3-bar/)] and variable resistance?

Dr. John Jaquish: A hundred percent. I gained 60 pounds of muscle with my product. And I lifted for 20 years before developing my product. I maybe gained 15 pounds over 20 years. And some of it was fat.

Ali Kay: What foods did you focus on while … I mean, still to this day. What do you focus on to build that muscle?

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. This is a controversial answer. I only eat meat. I don’t eat vegetables. I don’t eat fruit. I don’t eat grains. I don’t have fiber. I don’t take any supplements. I don’t have scurvy. I don’t have any other deficiencies. My vitamin D is fine. My iron is perfect.

Ali Kay: Okay. So explain your typical day. So you wake up, what do you do for breakfast that incorporates meat. Just tell me your basic day.

Dr. John Jaquish: So I don’t eat breakfast, but I’ve been experimenting with Ramadan fasting. There’s some great research on Ramadan fasting. You can’t tell somebody in a study they can’t drink water, but the good news is if somebody does it for religious reasons, you can study it. So a lot of great information on Ramadan fasting.

Dr. John Jaquish: And it’s become the new thing I’m looking into because I’m an American wrestler. So I wrestled when I was in high school. I played rugby when I was an undergrad. But I wrestled, and one thing, we just called it cutting weight, but we dry fasted all the time to make weight. So you could drop that five or six pounds, you weigh in, and then you have a Gatorade and two cheeseburgers, and you’re ready to press somebody, grind somebody’s face into the mat and win because you have an advantage. You have more muscle than they know. And I was good at it.

Dr. John Jaquish: And the weird thing is of all performance athletics, I would say MMA fighters who do this, or at least they used to, there’s kind of a rule against it now. But I mean? Who’s going to monitor how much water you’re drinking. So American wrestlers and MMA fighters, including the guy who wrote the forward of my book, former light heavyweight champion, Forrest Griffin, we talk about how we would cut weight and cutwater, and then you’d rehydrate, but then you’d be leaner than you ever were. And the reason is you’re dehydrated so your body starts pulling moisture out of fat cells and then destroying them. And this is very important for people who have lost weight, you still have all those cells, they’re just smaller. But if you dry fast, you destroy them and they don’t come back.

Ali Kay: That’s very interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And so that has a lot to do with my interest in dry fasting. Usually, start my day with a quadruple espresso. I know. No judgments here.

Ali Kay: Me too. Me too.

Dr. John Jaquish: I might have a dehydrated IN-Perium, which is a product that I make. It’s got a little medium-chain triglyceride, some electrolytes, but then I have it with very little water. So the electrolytes are kind of disabled. They can’t do anything. Because I mix it in a sort of like a paste and just pour that into my mouth. I don’t want any moisture. And then the whole day I don’t eat or drink anything. Then after the sun goes down, I have anywhere from, if I’ve used my protein supplement Fortagen, I have about half a pound of meat. If I don’t, I have about three pounds of meat.

Ali Kay: And then when do you work out? Are you a morning workout? When do you incorporate your workout into that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Afternoon. Like right after this podcast. But I always find time for it.

Ali Kay: Right. You make time. You make that commitment. So is your X3 product available to purchase? If so, where can we find this?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. That’s x3bar.com. But if you want to find anything related to me, the X3 product, the book , where I suggest people get started, and then the super-efficient protein that’s on the truck, I just created a landing page. Because my last name is such a difficult thing for people to remember and even say.

Ali Kay: Yeah, I’m going to call you Dr. John. Am I fair to call you Dr. John so I don’t butcher your last name?

Dr. John Jaquish: How about you call me Dr. J? Because that’s my landing page. It’s doctorj.com . D-O-C-T-O-R, the letter J, dot com.

Ali Kay: All right. Well, thank you so much for coming to the show. I have to say, I think you’re my most interesting guest so far because you go against everything we’ve been taught, which I think is very interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: I don’t have the answers for everything, but I do have the answers to the questions you have.

Ali Kay: Yes. Well, thank you so much for coming on here. Guys, go check him out. You will not be disappointed. And go check out his system. I know I’m going to go check it out right now. And thank you for listening to another episode on the Invest Your Best podcast with Ali Kay.