EFR 476: The Biomechanical Flaws of Traditional Strength Training and Why Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time with Dr. John Jaquish, PhD

Dr. John Jaquish, PhD is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling 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 the inventor of X3, the most effective bone density-building medical technology, proven to develop muscle much faster than conventional weight lifting, all with the lowest risk of joint injury.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Dr. John Jaquish: Hi, I’m Dr. John Jaquish. And today, on Ever Forward Radio, we’re going to be talking about biomechanical inefficiencies of weight lifting and how there is a better way. And we’ll be talking going deep into why the biomechanics of weight lifting is incorrect if you want a muscle to grow. And I’ll show you a better way.

Chase Chewning: Today’s episode is brought to you by my partners and friends over at Legion Athletics. Make sure to click the link down in the show notes or head to buylegion.com/everforward. And you could save 20% off of your first entire purchase. Make sure to use checkout code, Ever Forward, for that discount. And for every time you come back, you can use code, Ever Forward, to stack those double loyalty points.

Chase Chewning: Welcome back, everyone. This is your number one source for inspiring content from people who are putting a purpose to their passion and truly living a life Ever Forward. Conversations and messages that will take your fitness, nutrition, and mindset to the next level. I am your host, Chase Chewning. This Is EverForwardRadio.com

Chase Chewning: Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time. Well, that is not only the title of his new book but a philosophy that Dr. John Jaquish fully, wholeheartedly believes. And in this interview, you’re going to hear a few things that may have you nodding your head, may have you scratching your head, and possibly may even have you in disbelief, may have you disagree with a lot of what John is saying.

Chase Chewning: And first of all, I would like to say I greatly appreciate anybody that is not afraid and is very confident in saying what they believe, saying what has worked for them, saying what they can even find the science to back up and support. And I do believe that John has done a lot of that here, but he’s, I’ll say a little controversial or at least a little controversial when it comes to the fitness truths that many of us believe, have been led to believe, and perhaps have even been implementing in our training and possibly even the training protocols of others, for all my other coaches and trainers out there.

Chase Chewning: John Jaquish, Ph.D. has spent years researching and developing improved approaches to health. And in fact, he is the inventor of what he claims to be the most effective bone-density-building medical technology that has now even partnered with the likes of Tony Robbins, and the company, OsteoStrong, for rapid clinic placement, and deploying here on Earth and elsewhere, out of this world, even on Mars.

Chase Chewning: John and I kick off the interview with some recent news of his integration, his involvement with NASA and his work, his device that is helping people not only get stronger, become more aesthetic, and train a much more efficient, smart way at the muscular level, but the bone level to save, preserve, and even improve bone density for astronauts, for other planet explorations, particularly Mars journeys. Yeah. This is happening. This may be the first real way that we are seeing astronauts able to train and preserve their health, their muscles, their bone density on space explorations, in other planets, and other dimensions. Who knows really where this world is going, but if Dr. John has anything to do with it, then wherever we go as mankind, we will be stronger at the bone level.

Chase Chewning: So, John is the inventor of X3. This is a technology that is proven to develop muscle much faster than conventional weight lifting, all with the lowest risk of joint injury. And those are two key concepts that John discusses in the interview today. Conventional weight lifting, why he is saying that is incorrect. Why conventional weight lifting and just the fundamental weights of fitness has flat out been wrong, per his belief. And one thing that I can get behind is injury prevention, why his device and his training approach is not only getting people results, I mean, hell, look at him. At age 40, between 40 and 44, he put on about 60 pounds of pure muscle, which is insane, and all of it injury-free. I don’t know about you, but training smarter, training-injury free to give me results, but to also help me in the long run, well, it’s got my intention.

Chase Chewning: So, if you want to learn more about what John has going on if you want to check out his works and expand more on his content through his book, Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time, now a Wall Street Journal bestseller, definitely want to check it out. I will have his content, his social, his website, his book, all linked, easily clickable for you down there in the show notes. Just scroll on down to episode resources and check it out.

Chase Chewning: I appreciate you tuning in today. I want to give a special shout-out again. Thank you so much to everybody tuning in. If this is your first time, welcome. Whatever platform you choose to listen to Ever Forward Radio on, it would mean the world if you would just tap that follow button, that subscribe button, whatever the platform says. That just really not only A, helps out the show to know that we got some new listeners out there, but B, it just makes sure that you never miss another great episode. So, without further ado, I want to say welcome to the show for all my new listeners out there. Welcome back to all my EF Nation fans and supporters and family. And here is Dr. John Jaquish.

Chase Chewning: I’m stoked because this is going to be an out-of-this-world conversation. We’re going to be talking about space. I had to get a dad joke in there sooner or later. So, let’s just get it out of the way.

Chase Chewning: Welcome, brother. You’ve got quite a bit going on over on in your world. Just incredible career. Incredible book. Just really climbing the charts and getting into a lot of hands of people that matter most. But now, your work is going to be extending beyond Earth. Could you go a little deeper there for us?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So, there was a paper published a couple of weeks ago in Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance. It’s the number-one journal for aerospace research. And the conclusion… I’ll read you a quote from the study.

Chase Chewning: Going straight to the source. Even better.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I don’t want to be accused of embellishing the results of my product, so it’s better I just read it from a third party-

Chase Chewning: There we go.

Dr. John Jaquish: I did participate in the study from a methods perspective. So, the methods are how do we put this study together, who’s selected, what tests do we take to make sure we’re looking at the right things. And nobody ever said it did anything to hair growth, so why measure that? But you want to make sure that the researchers don’t decide to measure something that doesn’t matter because they often will do that.

Chase Chewning: Know how to dissect a study. Absolutely.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. So, I wrote the methods section. And then the results were complete… well, they weren’t a surprise to me at all, but I thought the analysis was really good. In just a couple of weeks, they saw a huge increase in bone formation markers in the blood tests and a decrease in the catabolic activity of bone, which is also seen in the blood tests. So, BAP and CTX tests showed that the bone is much more anabolic, like an 80% difference in the ratio it had before.

Chase Chewning: Meaning it’s promoting growth, right? Not degenerating, not breaking down.

Dr. John Jaquish: Promoting growth and stunting the catabolic metabolism.

Chase Chewning: In case anybody’s unfamiliar with that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because everything has a catabolic cycle, including your musculature. If you try and stay anabolic all the time, you will fail. You have to let the body get into a state of sort of like not protein synthesis before you can go back to protein synthesis. Most people don’t like hearing that because they want to imagine I’m badass and I get to grow all the time.

Chase Chewning: That goes against bro science, what he’s thinking about it.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, okay. I’m going to read you this quote. If the exercise apparatus could be condensed to the size of a shoe box to meet the weight and volume restrictions imposed by NASA, it could potentially serve as a countermeasure for bone loss and strength on exploration vehicles. Now, they’re talking about extended exploration. And I spoke on a panel before I was participating in any study they were doing with a group of astronauts and physicians from NASA, talking about extended travel in space, meaning Mars. We do know that Mars has some water on it. Now, it’s subterranean water, but it’s there. And was anyone, was any life form ever really there? We don’t know. And so, a lot could be learned by being on a similar planet. I mean, it’s not similar, but it’s the most similar.

Chase Chewning: We’ve got a few carry-overs, at least to get us started. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. But just to be on another surface is a big deal. So, the two biggest challenges for keeping a human healthy and alive are one, radiation poisoning, and two, bone density. With the absence of gravity, you lose bone density very fast. Now, NASA had come up with a system called the ARED system, which mimicked weight lifting. The problem with weight lifting is you’re not doing much for bone. In fact, for the hip joint, you need to exceed 4.2 multiples of body weight to do anything at all.

Chase Chewning: That’s pretty significant. That’s damn significant.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. That’s why when women lift and then they’re like, “Oh, I’ll never have to worry about osteoporosis.” And then they go to the doctor and they get diagnosed with osteoporosis and they’re like, “I can’t believe I’m losing bone density. I lift so hard.” Yeah. Well, effort doesn’t matter. It’s a matter of force.

Dr. John Jaquish: And this is something the entire sports performance world has kind of missed out on. And I don’t mean the scientific side; I mean, the gym side. Scientists know all sorts of things. They’ve known cardio was probably one of the worst things you could do for fat loss for the last 40 years, yet you walk into a big-box gym and what’s cardio for? Weight loss. Yeah. It’s a travesty. So, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: I got some work to do to condense what we have for space travel, but it’s pretty simple.

Chase Chewning: Pretty simple, he says. No big deal. Well, let’s unpack that a little bit. So, you’ve devoted your entire life to human performance. And that is at the core… I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Correct me if I’m wrong. But that is at the core of your work, what you’re putting out today, and everything you’re here to help other people do, is performing better, train smarter, really improve from the inside out. And I love your focus on the bone density component because really for longevity, that’s what we all need more of. Yes, we need to strength train. We need to do all these things to take care of-

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, having strong bone mass is so important to sustain life.

Chase Chewning: Well, what’s the difference then for sustaining it here and the biggest challenge you’re facing sustaining it off Earth?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s similar. It just happens faster in a zero-gravity environment. You start to degrade immediately when you’re in a zero-gravity environment.

Dr. John Jaquish: I don’t know how many people are going to be familiar with this term, but I’ll define it. It’s called tensegrity, meaning there’s tension on different things. And that tension preserves the integrity. So, it’s kind of like a contraction.

Chase Chewning: Okay. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so-

Chase Chewning: It keeps things stable.

Dr. John Jaquish: … the reason that our lower extremities have incredible stability is that we have our glutes and our hamstrings and our quadriceps and they are antagonists. They’re pulling and pushing. The tendon insertion for the quadriceps is under… when you’re relaxed, just laying there, the pulling and pushing at the same time is about 2,000 pounds.

Chase Chewning: No s***.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Chase Chewning: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: At all times.

Chase Chewning: Let that sink in.

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

Chase Chewning: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Because we have to be. It’s sort of like a telephone pole that has guide wires. And if you have a wire on one side, it doesn’t do much, but if you have a wire on both sides, it does a lot. So, that’s how organisms are built. That’s how cellular structure works, and tendon and ligament and skeletal muscle structure works. And so, you just need to keep that in mind when looking at the human body and what we need out of space travel. When you lose bone density, you lose the ability to safely move. You could fracture. And then you can’t attenuate a fracture. You can’t take care of it in space because the bone will never mend.

Chase Chewning: And is this what you mean by the title of your book, Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Notice I didn’t say resistance training.

Chase Chewning: Yeah. Very key, select word.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And so, I don’t mean… if you pick up a weight and it’s the same weight… well, let me back up. Let me say it the other way. So, what I proved when developing the bone density device is people have tremendously different capacities for creating force in one position versus another.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, when you’re doing a push-up, when your nose is one inch from the ground, that’s the hard part of the push-up. When your arms are almost at full extension, you never go to the full extension because then you disengage the muscle, you’re just propping yourself up on your bone mass.

Chase Chewning: That was a good push-up cue for everybody. Take note of that one. That’s a good one.

Dr. John Jaquish: Just don’t lockout. You’ll do much better with push-ups. I mean, not that you’re going to get much out of that, but for those people that think calisthenics are good, okay. They’re not bad, but it’s almost like…

Chase Chewning: Hey, if that’s all you can do, that’s all you can do, I guess.

Dr. John Jaquish: If you’re in solitary confinement-

Chase Chewning: There we go.

Dr. John Jaquish: … that’s your go-to

Chase Chewning: Touche, touche. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of my trolls have been in solitary confinement. Incarcerated at one point. Unreal, the losers.

Chase Chewning: They’re going to come at you for bashing the push-up. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. What the hell was I saying?

Chase Chewning: You were talking about not going to full extension on a push-up.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right, right, right. But if you look at the position where you’re almost at full extension, so 120-degree angle inclusion upper to lower arm, this is how you absorb or create the greatest amount of force in that position. So, that’s where we have a high impact. So, that’s where we would naturally absorb high impact. If you were to trip and fall, that’s how you would do it. That’s how you would brace yourself.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, knowing this and looking at those different positions and the drastically different capacity, I realized… and Peter Attia has said this. He says, “I don’t love weight training because it overloads joints and underloads muscle.” And he’s saying exactly what I saw in the study that was done in London on the OsteoStrong medical devices that I invented, but I was seeing it from a different perspective. He was just noticing that when people go into the weaker range, they have all kinds of injuries and they’re not stimulating a lot of muscular growth compared to what a muscle can do.

Chase Chewning: We’re not tapping into that hypertrophy-

Dr. John Jaquish: No.

Chase Chewning: … that most people are looking for.

Dr. John Jaquish: The training is just wrong.

Chase Chewning: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: If you have a seven-fold different capacity from the bottom to the top, seven-fold, and that’s what the information gave us, we have that great of a difference, then why would we ever train with a static weight? Whether it’s body weight, whether it’s a piece of iron, it doesn’t make sense. That’s not how the body works.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, now, there have been people who have tried to add variable resistance to weights, but they’re just scratching the surface because I had the categories defined of different sort of slices of action in the movement. And I realized that the difference was dramatic. So, when I do a chest press-

Chase Chewning: Dr. John Jaquish: … I hold it. I’m at the top of a chest press, I hold 550 pounds at the top of the movement. And I might hit that 20 repetitions. But in the middle of each repetition, I’m using 300 pounds. At the bottom, I’m using 100. And then I diminish the range as I go to fatigue. So, I start by doing 20 repetitions, where I go all the way to 550. Then I can’t get there anymore. It’s impossible. But I can still get to 300. So, I do a few repetitions with 300. And then the last repetition, I’m only using maybe one inch of the potential movement because that’s all I can do. And now, I’ve achieved every range of motion separately in one set while maintaining a limited blood flow because I’m never relaxing the muscle, never locking the joint. So, I’m getting a massive amount of hypoxia at the same time as well, which, of course, hypoxia upregulates… sorry, downregulates myostatin.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, this is the way we were always supposed to train. I mean, not necessarily with this particular device, but my device makes it easy to do. But this, like, fatiguing the muscle in this fashion will cause very rapid growth.

Chase Chewning: Am I hearing you correctly that the magic here is training within these various ranges of motion? It’s within these multiple ranges of motion with the different load capacities that are kind of the secret sauce?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. The appropriate force in the appropriate position.

Chase Chewning: When did you realize this? When did you realize that maybe how you were going about the training was not the most efficient, or you tapped into something that was just giving you much better results than you had to go deeper down this path?

Dr. John Jaquish: In the London study.

Chase Chewning: It was… so-

Dr. John Jaquish: That was also kind of the conclusion of my bone density work. It’s like, all right, now my invention is in process of a positive clinical trial. At least it looked that way to me. I didn’t have all the data. And I was not the principal investigator for conflict-of-interest reasons. So, I was kind of an outsider, just making sure the technicians knew what they were doing. But I realized that I could completely defeat the concept of weight lifting by documenting what was already in my head and what was in the study because I wrote the study. So, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: And then looking at other pieces of literature, which are pointing at the same thing. There have been 16 other variable resistance studies and even one that showed the greater the proportion of variance. So, the higher degree of difference from weak range to the strong range that you were using, the greater the effect. So, that was the best study I found, because I knew, like, it’s got to match your output capacity. You can hold X on your chest and you can hold 7X at almost full extension. Well, we need something that gives us that.

Chase Chewning: Yeah. How do we get there?

Dr. John Jaquish: Not the same weight. Because feel you pick X, X would be different with a weight lifting model. But when you get to the top, you’re capable of so much more.

Chase Chewning: Being capable of more is great, but why does it matter? Being able to move more weight or I should say accomplish more in our workouts, why does this matter? Is this where we’re talking about hypertrophy and bone density and kind of just being the best mash-up of both? Why does this matter?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s got to be like… when you’re training, there’s no getting away from heavy. Some people can use drugs to get around that problem, but that’s massive amounts of drugs and it’s an inefficient approach.

Dr. John Jaquish: The chronic minor joint damage that happens with each workout you do when you train with regular weights, that builds up. And guys that were all about the bench press in their 20s, they get to the 30s, and they can hardly hold a cup of coffee without pain. Yeah. You know guys like that. I know a lot of guys like that.

Chase Chewning: I’ve gone through a lot of that. Focus every Monday on International Chest Press Day. Next thing you know, blowing out my shoulder.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. Just chronic pain. And it’s not a mystery. They’re just destroying the joint. And that’s what weight lifting is going to give us. So, yeah. So, I’m delivering this better way of doing it.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I chose a more controversial path. I could have called my book The X3 Method or whatever. And I’m quoting Shawn Baker here because Dr. Baker, likes the title, even though he’s a world-record weightlifter. And he’s like, “Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time is an awesome title because if you called it The X3 Method, people would have been like, ‘Oh, whatever. It’s just a book about the product.’” And there are only about 20 pages out of 250 that are legit about the creation of the product and then everything else is more the rationale, like, pointing out what doesn’t work.

Chase Chewning: What are some of the rationale there? Give us maybe the top-two things that just flat out don’t work that you’re-

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, the difference in output capacity.

Chase Chewning: Okay. Which we touched on.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s outrageous how different it is. And you got to train accordingly. Why wouldn’t you? When I explain this to somebody, if they understand it, and that’s a big if because as I’ve found a lot of not-smart people out there.

Chase Chewning: Well, help us understand it then. What are some things that we can latch onto here to better understand this process?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, everyone who’s done a push-up knows that there’s an easy part of the push-up and a harder part of the push-up. And we can attenuate that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Now, because most of the comments on the internet are jealousy-driven, haters and stuff like that, they taught me something really interesting because immediately, it was sort of like, “Well, what about this guy? And what about this guy? And what about this guy who didn’t use my product and became muscular? And it’s just like, okay, that’s not science. And also, we know there are performance-enhancing drugs out there, so why would we care? What about whoever? It doesn’t matter. And you’ll notice that the majority of the people I work with… some athletes are probably chemically-enhanced. I don’t ask. It’s none of my business. Some of them have told me, but I don’t know if they’re public about it, but these are bodybuilders.

Chase Chewning: Sure. Yeah. At that high level.

Dr. John Jaquish: And then all the NFL guys, I work with 16 NFL players now. And so, I give them regular sort of check-ups about their form and stuff, how they’re using X3. And basically, I give them the X3 and in exchange, I give them coaching with it. That’s the deal. So, no money. And so, I’ve had over 30 athletes do that. And I also had the entire Miami Heat team, which gave up on weight lifting. And that’s why they endorsed me and let me use their name, which they never do. Yeah. NBA teams are very guarded about their brand. And so, I’m incredibly grateful for the chance to help those guys.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I started realizing, like, so many people try going to the gym. And I’m talking tens of millions, actually 100 million, like about one-third of regularly works out either at home or at a gym-

Chase Chewning: I believe it. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: … at any given time. Who’s in shape? Who walks down the street with an impressive physique? 1 in 6. 1 in 6 males over the age of 18 has done or is currently using steroids. 1 in 6.

Chase Chewning: 1 in 6.

Dr. John Jaquish: Who looks impressive? Now, this is subjective so it’s hard to… some studies show what the lowest one percentile body fat is. It’s pathetic. It’s almost 11%. It’s like 10.9. That’s the leanest 1%? It pretty much shows everybody involved in fitness, with rare exceptions, has failed. So, why defend what we’re doing?

Chase Chewning: What do you mean by failed?

Dr. John Jaquish: They’re not in shape.

Chase Chewning: Not in shape. Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And body fat is great because it considers muscularity. The more muscular you are, the lower your body fat is, by definition. So, I just see the fitness industry as the most failed human endeavor. Fitness is just so failed.

Dr. John Jaquish: As I said, 1 in 6 people are taking anabolic drugs, but who’s in shape? Maybe 1 in… is it 1 in 600? No way. Grab any 600 people. Is there somebody who looks like a statue in there? Hell no. 1 in 6,000? Maybe. I’d say 1 in maybe 60,000.

Chase Chewning: Well, could you also make the argument then, I’m just playing devil’s advocate a little bit here, could you make the argument that many people do it not for the physical change or for that kind of 10%, sub-10% goal, but rather just many other benefits, personal goals, just how they feel, longevity? Or are you saying even at that level, because they’re not accomplishing-

Dr. John Jaquish: Changes would happen if they were doing something that we’re a worthwhile investment of time. They would be leaner and stronger. Nobody goes to the gym and says, “I want to get fatter or weaker.”

Chase Chewning: I agree. I agree. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: They want to get stronger and they want to get leaner. By the way, those are the two drivers of long life: high levels of strength and low-level body fat. Two greatest drivers of long life. And that is uncontested. So, that is weird in medicine to have something that is completely uncontested, but those two things are.

Chase Chewning: Well, when we talk leanness, aren’t we then more so talking nutrition? I mean, look at competitive strong men of the world.

Dr. John Jaquish: Nutrition’s certainly a part of the equation.

Chase Chewning: Yeah. I mean, these guys get huge. And they’re not lean, but they’re strong as hell. I mean, deadlifting 1,000 pounds. They’re not walking around sub-10% body fat for damn sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: No. But again, I’m trying to talk about the entire population.

Chase Chewning: General population. Okay. Got you.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, no, who exercises. So, that might be 100 million people in the United States or 100… what?

Chase Chewning: It’s up there.

Dr. John Jaquish: 10?

Chase Chewning: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: 110 million people in the United States. And who’s fit? Nobody. Almost nobody. And they’re not getting any results. So, why hang on to the… why not just open your mind to learning something new?

Dr. John Jaquish: And I have found out that as I talked to groups of people and I look at my targeting, like, if I target readers of Forbes or readers of The Wall Street Journal, they read the book, buy the product, and then email me six months later and they’re like, “I put on 20 pounds of muscle. This is awesome. I’ve been trying to do that in the gym for 10 years and got nothing.” And I get that email five times a week. Something like that.

Chase Chewning: So, go there for us, please. Is it then to achieve a greater level of fitness, to make all of our efforts fully matter, in longevity, in physique, in all the things, is what I’m hearing you say is that we need to have… what’s the best way to say this? We need to become more educated. We need to become more overall educated around things outside of just fitness so that we can understand them when we’re given something more scientific-based?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, most fitness education is false information, like, cardio is for weight loss or some clown I had to kick out of my users’ group the other day was like, “NFL players do one-rep maximums every day.”

Chase Chewning: Come on.

Dr. John Jaquish: An NFL player will never-

Chase Chewning: Come on.

Dr. John Jaquish: … ever do a one-rep maximum because their arms and their legs, working, are worth millions; not working are worth zero. They could lose their contract if they injure themselves. Their coaches will not let them do a one-rep maximum.

Dr. John Jaquish: I know who does one-rep maximum exercise. It’s morons, like, people who are looking for an injury. That is just idiotic.

Chase Chewning: So, then what is that, that magical threshold for someone… I’m going to make a statement here. Someone looking to do a one-rep max is probably looking to test their peak strength. Is that a poor goal, in your opinion? Is there a better way to test strength, not having to go to a one-rep max?

Dr. John Jaquish: I see that. I have the same respect for that as I would for somebody trying to see how much alcohol they can drink before they need their stomach pumped at the hospital.

Chase Chewning: Really?

Dr. John Jaquish: Some people think that’s cool, like, they got to a 2.0 blood alcohol content. Yay.

Chase Chewning: Yeah. I mean, maybe some frat parties back in the day, but I’m intrigued by this statement of going to a one-rep max-

Dr. John Jaquish: No, you got to be way dumber than a fraternity member to do that.

Chase Chewning: Wow. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: It would happen at our parties, but it wasn’t our members that did it.

Chase Chewning: So, you’re saying one-rep max is useless.

Dr. John Jaquish: Totally. Yeah. You’re not going into any sort of fatigue that the body can respond to either. So, I think the whole endeavor is just… I guess you can make a cool video for Instagram.

Chase Chewning: Well, isn’t that the kind of like-

Dr. John Jaquish: If that’s what your objective-

Chase Chewning: It could work. I mean, hell, back in the day, I’ve definitely… I probably definitely have done that, recording an AMRAP, going for a one-rep max, because yeah, I guess to your point, I mean, there is a lot of it just looks good, but also could it not be, look at what I’m capable of? Look at my human performance level? Or is even that a detriment?

Dr. John Jaquish: But that’s like saying how drunk you can get, like, look at how badass I am, look at how much alcohol I can drink. I see it as the same. I don’t see that as healthy. You’re risking a life-altering injury so you can show everybody how tough you are.

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, this is why in CrossFit, they throw the weights on the ground. I’ve even seen a video of somebody dislocating their shoulder while throwing the weight down so he could make a loud noise and look cool. I mean, these people should be put to sleep.

Chase Chewning: Damn. I mean, there is, I would agree, you’re increasing your risk of injury a lot. I mean, when you increase your load, you’re increasing the risk of injury. Flat out. Increasing load and unnecessary ranges of motion? Yeah. I mean, you’re asking for it, in a way.

Dr. John Jaquish: Just why? And the objective is to be big, strong, and lean; the objective isn’t to take the greatest risk of injury.

Dr. John Jaquish: I think part of the weight lifting community… there’s a guy who tore his pec the other day doing a bench press. And I don’t know his name, but I know he was being spotted by Larry Wheels so he’s probably someone noteworthy. But he tore a pec. Full tear. You could hear it snap in the video. This was a couple of days ago.

Chase Chewning: Oh my God.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I’m just looking at that and I’m thinking, like, you didn’t need to do that. That was so unnecessary. It was a one-rep maximum. He wasn’t going to get any stimulus out of it anyway, but it was like, yeah, just video for the fans. But at what cost? Who knows how well he’ll recover. He’ll probably lose range of motion. No doubt, there’s going to be a huge chunk of scar tissue in the middle of where the action needs to happen in the stretch and shortening of that muscle. So, that guy, it’s career-limiting or career-ending what happened to that guy.

Chase Chewning: Well, in that, isn’t the stimulus more nervous system? Isn’t that we’re pushing the limits, testing the limits of our CNS in a feat like that? Less muscular.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s trying to get the body to recruit more. I mean, there are powerlifting contests. And I’ve been to a couple of them. And about half of the people in the audience are in a walker or a wheelchair or hauling a cane. And they’re former lifters.

Chase Chewning: Damn.

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, I don’t know. If that’s what somebody wants. If you want your comfortable life to end at 40? Okay. Be my guest. But I’m going to be whistling on my way to work and skipping at the same time. And I’ll bounce a tennis ball right off your forehead when I see you and you can’t do s*** because you’ll be worthless. That’s not how I want to live the latter half of my life.

Chase Chewning: Well, John, help us do that. Help us not do that the latter half of our life. This first half of our life. Walk us through-

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. I mean, be big and strong forever. That seems to be the objective.

Chase Chewning: And that seems to be what you’re accomplishing there with your protocols and with the X3 device. So, I mean, break it down for us. What can someone expect when they’re picking this up? I mean, what is the protocol? What can they expect? Why would somebody want to grab this right now instead of picking up a weight again?

Dr. John Jaquish: So, well, the safety. It’s more effective. You’ll grow muscle faster. And it’s just incredibly safe. I mentioned a tennis ball a minute ago. You can step on a tennis ball and slip and hit your head on the pavement and have brain damage.

Chase Chewning: Waking up and living is a hazard to our health. I mean-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I like that. That’s nice.

Chase Chewning: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So, yeah. There’s the risk to everything. Every time you get in a car, whatever. But there’s very little risk when you use the product properly. It delivers incredible forces. It lets you go to a level of fatigue you could never, ever achieve with weights.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. The fatigue, it’s devastating. One set of even one-legged squats, which is the way I do it because I’m not a kangaroo. I run on one leg at a time. This is so hard. I’m like a two-legged squat is dumb.

Chase Chewning: Shots fired.

Dr. John Jaquish: yeah. One-leg squats and putting hundreds of pounds through one quad and one glute. And the real reason you want to do that, other than the obvious functional reason that I mentioned, is that if you can push all of your body’s resources into one quad and one glute, as opposed to both, you have more resources to get more output out of that muscle. You’ll take it to greater fatigue and it will grow much faster.

Chase Chewning: So, am I hearing you correctly that… are you saying that training independently, training muscle groups versus the typical compound is preferred?

Dr. John Jaquish: Only the lower body.

Chase Chewning: Only the lower body.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, a one-legged squat is still a compound movement.

Chase Chewning: True. Yeah. You got multiple joints going through different ranges of motion. Yeah. Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you’re going to deal with something heavy, you’re not going to use one arm.

Chase Chewning: I guess, what I meant to say was isolation. Training isolation. You’re training one quadricep at a time, instead of both. Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Just in the lower extremities because that’s how we use them. But if you’re going to pick up something heavy, you don’t use one hand. You use two hands. So, you want the two-limb engagement of the upper body. You want one-limb engagement in the lower body.

Chase Chewning: So, then-

Dr. John Jaquish: So-

Chase Chewning: Yeah. Please go ahead. This is-

Dr. John Jaquish: So, the protocol. We split the body into a push-pull split. That’s been proven to be pretty good. And it hasn’t been anything better.

Chase Chewning: I don’t think anybody would disagree with you there. Yeah. Push-pull. Legendary.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. There’s enough research on that to go, “Yeah, that works.”

Dr. John Jaquish: And then there are four sets per workout. Four sets. Because you do one set with X3 and you are devastated. You can’t do anything after that. You got to sit down and you’re gasping for air. And then you’re done.

Dr. John Jaquish: It takes about 10 minutes a day. And you do it six days a week. So, you hit every muscle three times a week. And you have one rest day, which moves around for me. I mean, just because I… like, I got a flight to take tomorrow.

Chase Chewning: Yeah, yeah. Of course. Everybody is different. But to that point, would you say training to such fatigue is necessary for everybody? I mean, that’s really what it takes? I mean, no matter what the preference is, what the goal is?

Dr. John Jaquish: Hundred percent. There’s no getting around heavy. You can’t avoid it. So, I mean, if you want a muscle to grow… and in fact, the only thing that influences testosterone receptors… and I think it’s so funny these people who are taking anabolic drugs and they’re injecting so much testosterone. It’s like you don’t have the receptor activity.

Chase Chewning: What do you mean by that?

Dr. John Jaquish: If it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s just going to go right through your body or it’ll cause other problems. It’ll convert to estrogen and that’ll be a problem.

Chase Chewning: So, what does benefit those receptors? What does help with that testosterone receptor?

Dr. John Jaquish: Only one thing: heavy. Putting heavy loads on muscle forces the receptors to look for testosterone. And if it’s there, it goes right in and grows the muscle.

Chase Chewning:** Can I ask you a question? If you don’t mind sharing, how old are you currently?

Dr. John Jaquish: 44.

Chase Chewning: 44. At 44, I think you’ve got a very, very great kind of line in the sand of training up to this point and then training after this point for the next many, 104 years of your life. What is on the horizon for you? Knowing what you know now, training how you trained up to this point, and knowing what you know now with the X3 and just these various protocols and fatigue, where are you going? What is the future of 44-plus and training?

Dr. John Jaquish: In training? Not in the business?

Chase Chewning: In training.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I just want to see where… we all know where genetic potential used to be. And there was a study, which is used as the basis for the fat-free mass index, which is really what every jealous loser uses to accuse somebody of taking steroids because you know every internet commenter believes everyone bigger than them takes steroids. You’re the pinnacle, dude. Yeah. These guys should for president. They’d probably get it. I mean, the bar is set pretty low now.

Chase Chewning: You got some trolls in your community, man. We got to get somebody in there and moderate.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, but they’re great because they throw a tantrum, they tag 100 people, and then like 20% of the people who come, they’re like, “Actually, this makes sense.”

Chase Chewning: They’re like, “Hold up.” Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And I mean, I can see, like, Chase in your eyes, when I first started talking about this, you were like, “Oh, that’s going to piss people off.”

Chase Chewning: Oh yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: But you’re also nodding the entire time because you’re like, “I can’t say you’re wrong.”

Chase Chewning: What you’re saying makes a lot of sense to me. What you’re saying also is challenging me in a lot of, I guess, norms that I’ve come to accept. Yeah. For sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. You’re going to a group of people who believed it was a certain way. And now, you’ve got to go, “No, no, no, all of that was wrong.” And then I also have to say, “By the way, you didn’t get any results out of that.” And they hate thinking about that because it’s like, “Wait a minute, I’ve been training for years. And really, what have I gotten out of it?” Because that makes them depressed.

Dr. John Jaquish: And also, I think with a lot of the trolls, it’s not like their physique is the bragging point because they look like s***. It’s like training and then extra-large pizza because I’m a powerlifter. Yeah.

Chase Chewning: Hey, hey, pizza’s dope.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Chase Chewning: Never going to catch me against that.

Dr. John Jaquish: But these guys, I think the way they define their lives, they don’t have anything going on professionally, otherwise, they wouldn’t have the spare time to-

Chase Chewning: There’s nothing else to latch on to perhaps, right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right. So, they’re losers. And I think all these guys… and you can see them coming. They always have a screen name that’s like Billy Badass or Tommy Tough Guy.

Chase Chewning: Shreds for Life.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right. And they define themselves, like, the the character they are in… what they imagined in their life, but the one they’re just pretending to be on the internet is a guy who lifts dangerously heavyweights. And they revel in that. It’s like the guy who tore his pec, a lot of people were immediately saying he’s a hero.

Chase Chewning: I don’t know if I would agree with that.

Dr. John Jaquish: The homeless guy that overdosed on crack. Is he a hero too? Because I think they both made poor choices. And I don’t see the difference.

Chase Chewning: Well, let me go back to my original question. The choices you’re making at 44 and beyond, I mean, someone who knows what you know and trains how you train, you’re not going to stop. So, 44 and beyond, what does training look like for you now?

Dr. John Jaquish: I put on 60 pounds of muscle since turning 40. I was out of shape at 40.

Chase Chewning: In four years, 60 pounds?

Dr. John Jaquish: I played rugby as an undergrad and I looked like a regular guy. I didn’t look like a lot of the other rugby players. And I’m going to tell you why. That’s the last thing I want to say.

Chase Chewning: All right.

Dr. John Jaquish: We are coming up on the hour so I’ll get to that next.

Chase Chewning: It’s very intriguing.

Dr. John Jaquish: What your goals are, I don’t believe the genetic potential is based on that stupid fat-free mass index study, which, by the way, assumed that you reach your muscular peak at 16 years old.

Chase Chewning: Oh, come on.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s what the study said. Everybody references the study. They never read it.

Chase Chewning: Jesus.

Dr. John Jaquish: This is referenced in the bodybuilding community constantly. This study is so foolish. The researchers just imagined everybody’s in the best shape at 16 years old.

Chase Chewning: Nowhere close for me. That’s for damn sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s the most muscular you’re going to be. And whoever made that decision, they… that should have been caught and peer-reviewed. Somebody should’ve read that in the peer review of the study and been like, “No. Who said that? Where’s your reference for that statement?” And we all know you reach your muscular potential in your mid-30s.

Chase Chewning: Well, for you, it sounds like at 40. 40 to 44, you put on 60 pounds?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, yeah. But I’ve been using a training tool that’s far more effective than any training tool anybody ever had. So, I believe that I’m an anomaly right now. I won’t be whenever… because right now, we have 100,000 X3 users.

Chase Chewning: Wow. Congrats.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. We’re doing great. And so, those 100,000 people are catching up with me. And so, that’s going to become the norm in a couple of years. We have 30 professional athletes on the website that don’t get paid to endorse. The entire Miami Heat basketball team, no money exchanged hands. They just love the product and they’re willing to let me use their name.

Chase Chewning: So, you’ve got to keep setting the bar at 44 and beyond. You got to keep setting the bar. You got 100,000-plus people. You’ve got professional athletes nipping at your heels.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Yeah. So, what I have to do is get to a point where I believe I’m at my genetic potential. And then I want to make a big deal out of, like, this is what males should be in condition like. And when I hang out with the NFL players, they’re like, “How the hell are you doing this?”

Chase Chewning: Oh, I can imagine. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m in the same or similar shape as a running back or something like that. I’m 6 foot, 240, about 8% body fat. And so, they’re like, “Man. Some of them are like, “For a white guy, you have really low body fat for how big you are.“And it’s just superior training.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I do have superior nutrition. So, I came out with a supplement that is spectacular and very effective. Most anabolic thing anybody I know has ever taken, maybe other than a drug, though I’m told it’s more powerful than some of the drugs out there. And it’s just a refined protein. Yeah. It’s made out of bacterial fermentation. It’s a different approach to getting the right protein, but we’re supposed to eat rotting stuff. All animals do. We don’t for sanitary reasons, but we’re missing out on some of the most powerful growth factors. Essential amino acids are all over bacteria, but we eliminate them, .

Chase Chewning: Well, there’s something for round two, John. I want to be mindful of your time here, man. I mean, definitely a lot to think about. I’m sure the person listening is like me, kind of nodding their head quite a few times, but other times, they’re like, “Hold up, wait a minute. I don’t know. I don’t know. Let me go back. Let me kind of rethink some things.”

Chase Chewning: But I appreciate you pushing the envelope. I appreciate your challenging schools of thought because without this, we would never grow. We would never advance. We would never train more efficiently in ways that you are finding to just work so damn well. And all of these things help us become more aware and help us move forward in life. And that’s the whole premise here at Ever Forward Radio is instilling more awareness and attention into these variables that we can control, that we can fine-tune to increase our performance in our fitness, nutrition, and mindset. So, with that said, man, I’d really to know your interpretation. What does that mean to you? How do you live a life Ever Forward?

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m not sure I understand the question. Oh, just assimilating these things in…

Chase Chewning: Exactly. Yeah. And kind of taking awareness of all these things and changing protocols.

Dr. John Jaquish: Always refining the understanding is important and looking for other references that can help me explain more simply. One of the problems with the way science is presented often, it’s so simple, it’s oversimplified. And over-simplified is another word for wrong. We see that with some of the pandemic talk, like, the idea that it’s impossible to stop a virus that’s smaller than a water particle, an airborne water particle, and then we wear masks. Well, last I checked, if you get right next to a mirror and breathe on it through a mask, there’s steam on the mirror. So, the mask does nothing, but we’ve oversimplified it to make it wrong so that the regular person can understand it.

Chase Chewning: I see that analogy. I see that. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. We all know it’s smaller than a water particle. Everyone’s heard that. Why?

Chase Chewning: I mean, the whole comparison thereof is the oversimplification of science, so much so that we’re often potentially doing things wrong or even just very inefficiently. And that is going to hinder our performance, hinder our growth, and in many ways, I would say, even keep us stagnant.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Well, there’s cholesterol. It was oversimplified.

Chase Chewning: Oh yeah. Dumb.

Dr. John Jaquish: Cholesterol collects at points of inflammation in the arteries and can cause a blockage. Well, instead of looking at what collects there, let’s look at why it’s collecting there, which is inflammation.

Chase Chewning: Let’s look at how to keep it moving.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s really inflammation that causes heart disease, not cholesterol, which is why now LDLs have been sort of taken off the American Heart Association’s list of contributing factors to chronic heart failure and other cardiac dysfunctions. It doesn’t matter what your LDL is. Doesn’t matter. So, somebody’s like, “If I didn’t have Fortagen , I’d be back to what I did before.” I came up with Fortagen because that’s a super protein. I was eating two and a half to three pounds of steak a day in one meal.

Chase Chewning: Heavy.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so, people would be like, “You’re going to have a heart attack.” And I’d just be like, “You don’t have no f***** clue what you’re talking about. Go away.”

Chase Chewning: Well, John, if they want anything more, they got to get the book. And we’re going to have all that down in the show notes, video notes for everybody. Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want. Now, a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Congratulations again, man.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks.

Chase Chewning: And this is shoebox really interesting approach to how fitness may be the most failed human endeavor. Definitely food for thought, man. Thank you for your time.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome.

Chase Chewning: For more information on everything you just heard, make sure to check this episode’sshow notes or head to everforwardradio.com​.