Dr. John Jaquish: The Most Effective Way to Get Results While Exercising and Keys to Longevity

In this podcast, we chat with Dr. John Jaquish, author of Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want and the inventor of the X3 Bar. Dr. John Jaquish began his experience in life sciences after learning his mother had been diagnosed with osteoporosis. In an effort to help, Dr. John Jaquish created a device to safely cause osteogenic loading events. His device has now helped over 30,000 individuals with their bone health. His second invention, X3, has transformed the way people work out.

Full Transcript

Matt Belair: We’ve got another phenomenal episode of the show for you today. We have Dr. John Jaquish on and we were talking about superhuman performance and also a very effective but controversial way of training. He wrote a book called Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want. So obviously that got a little bit of flak from the industry, but you’ll see why he wrote that book and the science he’s speaking about because his background is fascinating. He’s a scientist, he’s a doctor.

He developed a technology called OsteoStrong and the X3 Bar which is using bands as a way to train and get a better level of performance, not only for your body and your structure but to do it more safely.

Matt Belair: He’s got endorsements from the Miami Heat. And it’s just very uncommon. So in this episode, we talk about endurance, Pavel Tsatsouline’s training. I ask him about superhuman training, superhuman performance, keys to longevity, how we can train for strength, how we can train for safety, the two greatest drivers for long life, and the studies that he brings along about why this technology works, why it’s more effective and why you should use it.

So this is a fantastic episode. I know you’re going to enjoy it. Leave a review on iTunes, become a member at mattbelair.com. Join the membership. You can join by donation or even for free. I’ll be happy to add you to the members’ area if you just send me an email because the censorship is straight bonkers. And we’re overcoming that. We’re getting the word out.

Matt Belair: As I just mentioned, we had another million downloads the other day. So we have 5 million worldwide downloads. We’ve hit number one and I think 20 to 30 countries. I don’t know exactly, got to add them up, but it’s definitely over 20 countries around the world. And that’s all thanks to you guys for sharing the word, and I appreciate it. So even though they’re deleting, blacklisting, shadow banning, and all that kind of fun stuff, we are still getting the word out there. As always the best way to support this show is to do three kind acts wherever you are in the world today.

Matt Belair: And if you’re a person that wants a step-by-step master system for overcoming self-sabotage, strengthening your connection with spirit, overcoming fear, and designing and living the life of your dreams, check out the absolute phenomenal Soul Compass course. You can also go through the Quantum Heart Hypnosis audios. Those go through all the human archetypes about fear and courage, living your life purpose, connecting with spirit, making a positive impact in this world. There are tons of tools for that. So you can live your dharma, live your life purpose, live in alignment with the highest and truest, authentic you, and leave a legacy over a lifetime.

Matt Belair: And so if that sounds interesting to you, check out all of those things and you could also apply for coaching as well if you go to mattbelair.com/coaching, but all of the stuff that I create as far as programs and products have to do with that. Knowing for sure in your heart and your soul who you are, who you came here to be, what legacy you’re going to live and how to add mindset and peak performance to make that happen because it’s not so much knowing the direction that’s your highest self, it’s being able to walk it every day with all the things that life brings us.

Matt Belair: So that’s it. Let’s come into a state of peace and coherence before we dive into the show. Wherever you are in the world, just stop what you’re doing, take in a deep breath in through your nose, hold that breath, and let it out slowly filling every cell, every muscle, and every fiber of your being with peace, joy, contentment, courage, inspiration, connection, and ready to enjoy this phenomenal episode with Dr. John Jaquish. Hello and welcome to the Master Mind, Body, and Spirit Show. I’m your host, Matt Belair.

Matt Belair: Today’s guest is a doctor, inventor, and entrepreneur. He began his experience in life sciences after being told by his mother that she had been diagnosed with osteoporosis. To help his mother, he created a device to safely cause osteogenic loading events. The device was to trigger the effects of high impact loading, but without the risk of injury. His device has now helped over 30,000 individuals with their bone health. He is 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. And the inventor of the X3 Bar . Welcome to the show, Dr. John Jaquish.

Dr. John Jaquish: Matt, thanks for having me. This is great.

Matt Belair: I’m so excited to dive in because your model of the world that pisses a lot of people off, but I love it because I was telling you I just want the results, right? We were chatting a little bit before and whatever gets you the results is the thing that we use. And you did an interview with my friend, Jay Campbell, and that guy’s built like a Greek god. And so he’s all about science and results too. And so you’ve done a lot of amazing work, especially with the machine you invented. I can’t imagine how you would reverse engineer creating bone density.

Matt Belair: So obviously you have a science background, you know what you’re talking about. And I would just love for you to share a little bit about your background. What made you write this book and create this invention. And let’s move into a little bit about peak performance because now we want people to optimize their health, but I’m also curious about how do we create peak performance, and by definition, what does that mean to you?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, the discovery, so I was working on getting the post-menopausal population to be able to generate bone density so they wouldn’t potentially need for some of the medications out there which had some serious side effects. That was my mother’s drive, she didn’t want to do use any of the pharmaceuticals that were out there. And so I said, “Maybe I can come up with a better way.” And I did. But it’s also not for everyone. It requires you to generate a lot of voluntary force. So for example, it’s going to put you in a position where the back of the hand, back of the hand is in line with the clavicle, 120-degree angle from the upper lower arm, and you compress your bone mass as you move. And there’s a computer screen in front of you that tells you what you’re doing and you’re constantly being compared in real-time to your previous performance, your last sessions, your all-time best, and your beginning performance.

Dr. John Jaquish: So you have a lot of data in front of you and you’re always in competition with the previous version of yourself. So it works like a therapeutic intervention, not so much like an exercise, doesn’t feel like an exercise, is very euphoric when you use it, you feel great. But in the process of treating this bone loss, I realized that it is a sort of super high-performance type therapy that you can go through to make your bone mass incredibly powerful. My bone mass is two and a half standard deviations above normal. So hugely powerful bone. The chance of me fracturing is very, very low. And I continue to use the device, but well, I mean, hit and miss, I used to be around OsteoStrong devices. They’re called OsteoStrong found that the OsteoStrong clinics. I used to travel at least once a week and you only needed to do one session a week to get the optimal result.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, because of this virus outrage and fear that we’re not able to… You notice I didn’t say virus. Because of the fear, we’re not able to be around these locations once a week. And I’m certainly not. While I have not been able to do those osteogenic loading sessions, the effect lasts within the human body for 30 years. So I still, have very high levels of bone density. And as soon as I get back to it. I did a session, I was in LA last week. So I did one in Los Angeles. But it was in the analysis of the data where I realized that humans were so much more powerful in very specific impact-ready ranges of motion.

Dr. John Jaquish: So where you can absorb impact, and I just showed you that position, you can either produce or absorb the greatest amount of force. So when I look at the amount of force that people can absorb, it didn’t make sense to me that we would go on with weights. It’s like, “Wait a minute, we’re seven times here versus here. So why would we exercise like that? Why would we exercise with one weight moving through this entire range of motion?” Doesn’t make any sense. Now, there is the sport of the bench press, there is the sport of the squat and the clean and jerk and a lot of other different weight powerlifting movements, those are fine, but if it comes to what we’re going to do to make ourselves stronger, there’s a better way. And that was why I wrote the book, Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want.

Dr. John Jaquish: So I saw I was just crystal clear to me. I’m seven times stronger in my impact-read range versus my weaker range, why lift a weight. We need a weight that changes as we move. So my first idea was, “Maybe I’ll just write a book about band training,” but then after thinking about it for a little bit, the problem is the bands that were available at the time, this was years ago, were pretty weak. They were weak bands, 20 pounds or whatever. You throw one around your back, you can do some pushups. You can do about as many pushups as you could if you didn’t have the band. So it’s like, “All right, this isn’t going to stimulate any growth.” Because if you want a muscle to grow there’s no getting away from heavy. You got to go as heavy as you can handle it. And so what we need is a strategy to get heavier, specifically in ranges of motion that we are more powerful because that takes the muscle to a deeper level of fatigue.

Dr. John Jaquish: So we need greater force for greater gains. Anybody can remember that, right? No one argues with that. It’s like, “Yeah, obviously, that makes sense.” Well, when I do my chest press with the X3, and I hook the band so that it’s wrapped around my shoulders, my back. And as I press out, I’m holding 550 pounds at the top, 300 pounds in the middle, and 100 pounds at the bottom of the movement. And so I go to fatigue and diminishing range. So I do however many full-range repetitions I can do without a lockout. Then I can’t do that anymore, then I go mid-range. And then the last repetition maybe just an inch off of my chest holding that 100 pounds. And I have exhausted every single range of motion and the growth stimulus is so much more powerful than regular weight training, which is why people put on 20 pounds of mass within six months after starting this. I mean, these are experienced weightlifters that are putting on 20 pounds of mass.

Matt Belair: It’s a bit hard to believe what you’re saying is people aren’t watching this video because you can see those little tiny arms that you push forward with. So I can’t see how you’re getting the results. And for the listeners and I’m being dramatic because his arms are fricking massive.

Dr. John Jaquish: Now they look like the legs on a rhinoceros.

Matt Belair: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re massive. Okay. Sorry, keep going. Keep going. It’s fascinating because when I came across this, I was doing a lot of the deadlift stuff and looking at the work at Palo Alto at Suitland, I’d never done a deadlift in my life, I never really did a squat in my life. I was doing mostly cardio-based and snowboard training and things like that. And by no means was I a fitness expert. I was just doing more cardio-based stuff. So then I started to do the squats and deadlifts and I got stronger. And then I learned about bands. And it made sense to me, “Oh, you’re,” like you said, “70% stronger at the top of the lift versus-”

Dr. John Jaquish: Seven times stronger.

Matt Belair: Seven times. Okay. Seven times stronger. So picking the barbell off the floor, if you can increase the load as you go up with the bands or the change, it started to make sense. And so what else is important about this type of workout when we’re moving into a performance, our strength, is this something that, when we think about superhuman performance, I think about strength. So the Pavel stuff with the kettlebell, what I see small people do with a kettlebell is phenomenal, how much weight they’re moving. Like, “Wow, that person is strong.” But then there’s also function and movement and cardio. And so how do you see the superhuman performance because I know you work with a lot of athletes as well, right? So we want to be faster, stronger, more adaptable, increased balance, all of these different things. And so I’m wondering if you could, well, anything more you want to say about that before I interrupted, please do.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s a great question. And unfortunately, a lot of fitness goals are conflicting goals. If you want to be able to run long distances efficiently and compete at that, you’re not going to be able to carry much muscle mass, some maybe, but not much. And if you want to be as big and as strong as possible, you’re not going to be able to run marathons. It’s not going to happen because you’re too big. The myth that bigger athletes have poor cardiovascular health comes from the fact that a strength athlete has larger muscle.

Dr. John Jaquish: So when I run up a flight of stairs versus when a guy, so I weigh 240 pounds, and if a guy who weighs 140 pounds who’s the runner, he goes up the stairs, he doesn’t break his sweat. He’s not out of breath. If I run up a flight of stairs, I’m out of breath, I got some sweat on my face. And why? Well, because my legs are four times bigger than his arm. And blood has the pump to that massive amount of quadricep and glue as I’m pushing my way up the stairs. So it’s, I got a V12 engine and that guys got a Prius engine, four cylinders, weak.

Matt Belair: Good on gas. Goes forever.

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, your body is going to adapt, I mean, in some ways, it doesn’t adapt in every way. The idea that you can adapt to drinking poison, that’s bull**. Works well on movies though. The Princess Bride was hilarious. But you adapt by putting your body in extreme environments. So the extreme environment is to go long distances on a small amount of fuel, your body upregulates cortisol which gets rid of muscle, as in you lose your muscle. And the other thing cortisol does is it preserves your body fat. So it doesn’t make you fatter, but it keeps you fat longer. So you look at distance runners and they’re skinny fat. They have a lot of flab and cellulite on them, but they’re not heavy people. And they also lose bone density so they’re likely to have fractures.

Matt Belair: Yeah. Is that the reason why it’s not recommended to do long-term cardio because it’s not good on the body over a long duration? If we think about the keys to health, being a martial artist, it is kind of that balance or CrossFit. They try to work that balance of like, “What’s possible here?” If you get super strong and you’re throwing, I don’t know, the snatch is, a pretty impressive one. If you snatch over 100 pounds, I’m impressed. I can’t even do the movement, but you got massive weight going up. That’s quite the strength. But then can you run and do all these things?

Matt Belair: So they try to mold that in. I feel like that’s what we try to do in martial arts as if I can be strong and then that guy’s going to kick my butt. Well, first of all, I’ll phrase it as what do you recommend for the average person? They just want to get healthy. They want to feel good. They want to go to the beach. So what should they be doing and what are some myths for that? And then maybe speak about the athlete that I’m, would like to go for, because me personally, that’s what I want, I want strength. I want unlimited cardio. And I know it’s a very hard thing to work out, but I’d love your opinion on it.

Dr. John Jaquish: So there’s a lot of ways they could have cast X3, as far as whether it’s speed or power. I could’ve adjusted the program. There’s one program for everybody. And that program will give you large musculature and it will get you incredible strength. It will also enhance your cardiovascular ability because the deep level of fatigue you go to it gives the cardiac system a better stimulus. In fact, and 100 different studies have proven this and they’re all compiled in a meta-analysis that I reference in the book. But cardiovascular exercise gives you the same cardiovascular health benefit, health. Notice, as I said, health, not endurance, as weight training does.

Dr. John Jaquish: So they both do the same thing. In my position is there’s no such thing as cardio. Cardio is just really shady strength training that doesn’t make you stronger because you’re going through the movement. It’s not like your body has a switch. It’s not like ketosis. You’re moving, you’re contracting muscles, you’re moving blood around to get an effect, but you’re getting much less of an overall effect when you pick a lightweight and just go, whatever, thousands of repetitions if you’re a runner. You’re not stimulating anything other than your heart to move blood at a very low-intensity rate. Now, we also know the greatest adaptations in the human body come from high intensity, not low intensity.

Matt Belair: Is that why the Orangetheory type of thing has come out. And I guess I’d need the distinction between cardio and then endurance. Because if I’m going into combat and I gas out right away, I’d want to have the right training, what would you suggest is the protocol for that type of training? Because if I’m gassed out after round one, then I’m going to get my butt kicked in round two.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, we see MMA all the time. Some guy walks into the octagon and he looks way stronger than the other guy, just outlasts him, and then he’ll just take over.

Matt Belair: All the time, like the Diaz Brothers, they have that, that skinny effect. They do the triathlons, they never look ripped, but you see as the rounds go on, they have this unlimited cardio, but you see the super ripped guy, oftentimes his cardio is challenging. So do you have a suggestion for that?

Dr. John Jaquish: It depends on the individual. As X3 goes, I tell everybody to do the same thing, including the NFL and the NBA because I work with a lot of guys in both of those. And I like working with those guys because they’re drug tested. After all, then we can see what’s going to happen to somebody when they take their training to the next level with X3. So I tell them, just do the program exactly how it’s ascribed. And then the other stuff that they do, the drills that they do, like an NBA player has to train for some endurance. So they want to limit muscle growth to a degree so that they can be able to move.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so ultimately, the best thing to do for your endurance is to lose muscle. They’re opposing goals completely. So if you’re going to have great endurance, but you also want to be as muscular as possible, cut your goals in half on both sides because that’s what you’re dealing with. Anything better in one category just means worse than the other. So I don’t see a need for most people to have great cardiovascular endurance. We don’t live in a time where we’ve got to carry a bucket of water for two miles. We just don’t. We have bicycles, a very efficient machine. The most efficient machine ever created is a bicycle.

Dr. John Jaquish: So I don’t look to do that. And even back when I was in university, I knew enough because I had already been studying this kind of stuff at the time. And so as a rugby player, I had lower cardiovascular endurance because I was a little bit bigger. What I would do is, I’d sprint. Sprinting and slow running are what you do as a rugby player for 80 straight minutes. But what I would do is I’d sprint then I’d walk. And so was I slower to reposition me? Maybe a little. But was I able to perform? Yeah, I was because then when it came time to sprint again I was ready. Whereas the other guys who would trot around the field, lasted about 20, 30 minutes in the game, and then it was just like, “I can’t do this anymore.” And they weren’t even as big as me.

Matt Belair: Right. Well, it kind of reminds me a little bit of Pavel Tsatsouline. And I don’t know how you feel about his training or his ideas. He helped help me create strength when I had never researched that before. I’d never done the deadlift. I’d never done the squad. And that’s actually why I found that your device would be fantastic right now because a lot of the world, well, Canada, we’re locked in. So I got myself another kettlebell and his focus is pure strength. If I want to just be strong, that’s great. After all, I’m not putting on huge muscle mass because then I will sacrifice on my skateboard and I’m at 210 pounds. Might not be the most ideal.

Matt Belair: And so that’s why I kind of changed my training and use these things here and there. So can you talk about his protocols for just strength training? What does a person do for super strength? This is my curiosity. Then I want to ask you about the average person for guys and girls. What do they do? They just want to have healthy bodies. They want to have energy. I’d love to hear you talk about that as well because I feel like there are my personal questions for you and then there are the audience ones. I kind of want to ask both.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. So when he says strength, what he means is neurological adaptation. Being able to switch on more muscle fibers quicker. And that’s a great adaptation to have. And so his kettlebell training focuses on that, which is why he gets stronger, but not necessarily size. Now, that’s a lot like when a pitcher throws a ball over 100 miles an hour, throws a fastball. It takes a lot of time to train for that, to be able to fire that much muscle, to be able to get that ball to go off your fingertips and be able to throw it at that speed.

Dr. John Jaquish: So that’s what Pavel is doing. And so the skills with an awkward object that you’re having to manage around you, they translate well into martial arts and maybe even things like snow skiing or snowboarding or whatever because you’re able to manage your body weight plus an awkward object around you and maintain balance. But I would define that as skill training. There’s not a lot of hypertrophy going on. X3 is very much in a different direction. You do get the skill of switching on muscles, but grossly because we’re not doing anything with the upper body with a single hand. You can hold 20% more weight if you’re using both hands versus one hand at a time and then adding those two loads together because the body is too unstable with a one-handed loading. This is specifically for muscle mass.

Dr. John Jaquish: So that’s the way I sort of sculpted the X3 program. And the reason I did that has nothing to do with a performance at all. It has to do with vanity. People don’t buy products, people buy better versions of themselves. And there’s some mindset stuff in there. What do most people want? They say, “I want to be strong.” And I’m like, “No, bulls***. You want to look good. You want to attract more women.” And they’re like, “Well, yeah.” Every time. Do you want to win the kettlebell contest? I mean, do they? Yeah, they probably do. They’ve been training for it. It would be cool. Be cool to have a trophy. Be cool to post on the internet about it, but ultimately focus on… I feel like I’m having such a great impact because I’m focusing on people and showing them how they can look so much better. **Dr. John Jaquish:** And there is a massive market there. But most things don’t make people look any different. While neural adaptations can come on fast, like learning how to swing a golf club or throw a baseball or a kettlebell, managing a kettlebell all around your body. What’s going to change is quality of life, the most for you, when you look impressive. I’m not just teaching people that it’s all for the show because it’s not, I mean, I am strong. I can pick up some small cars, and I could never have done that before when I was a chubby 190 pounds. I was a chubby guy when I turned 40, just nobody would think that this is a guy who will ever be fit. And then a couple of years later I gained 45 pounds of muscle and lost 16 pounds of body fat and I looked absolutely dynamite.

Matt Belair: And I hear what you’re saying and I kind of had that idea with it. It reminds me of a book that I read. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, Psycho-Cybernetics. And this guy was a surgeon and he would just talk about how people would come in and want surgery and how he would talk to them and figure out what the inner world was doing. And very often people weren’t comfortable with their bodies. And so often a lot of men and a lot of women, want to get to a place where they feel confident in their bodies. I want strength. I don’t care. I like that your body looks good, but know that you know each area, but for most people, you’re very correct in that where they want to look good and you feel good.

Matt Belair: When you’re proud of your body, the way it works, the way it functions, I think Socrates had a quote that said, this is a perfect one. Socrates would like this because he said, “What a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty of his body,” or something like that. The strength and beauty-

Matt Belair: Yeah, the body was capable. So I feel like that’s the function of what you’re doing, which, it’s interesting because the bands in that idea are a relatively new concept of this progressive loading. And how that is having performance and strength and there are other areas for it. So I think that that’s important. And then is this as effective for women as well, or is this mostly for men?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, it’s probably more so effective for women because guys will take the risk of lifting heavy and still be able to get some results. Women, don’t like that risk. If they think they’re going to get injured, no, mm-mm (negative), that won’t do it.

Matt Belair: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: So they’ll go high reps, slow speed, and just the tendencies, and there are some psychological studies on this. But I also want to out with bands, people see there’s lower risk, but the problem is when they try and I distracted myself earlier. You throw a heavy man round your back, one that comes with the X3, the 600-pound band, you can’t do a pushup with it. Even if you can do it, if you can just chest press with the bar, and the reason is that your wrists are twisting outwardly and you’ll break them.

Dr. John Jaquish: So without the bar and without the plate that you stand on to protect your ankle. So it’s all about the interface. The wrists and the ankles are the interface points. If you don’t protect the interface points, you’re either going to train so light, you’re not going to do anything. You gain no strength, nothing. You’re just wasting your time. Or you go heavy enough to create an injury. So that’s why the bar was so key. That’s why the plate to stand was just absolutely necessary. And every once in a while to see somebody use the X3 and they were like, “Ah, I didn’t want to drag the plate on vacation.” So they’re just standing on the band and they’re trying to do a 300 pound deadlift. And of course the ankles, if here’s the bottom of your feet, your feet are doing this. You break an ankle doing that.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I tell them, “Don’t do that. You didn’t bring the plate, you might as well have left everything at home. You’re not going to accomplish anything other than maybe an injury.” So I push that people have to use the thing right because not everybody understands why the plate is there, why the bar rotates. The bar has to rotate to keep your wrists neutral. So you’re always driving down the radius and Alma, not like this, not like this. So that’s why there’s rotation in the bar. You can see, I can spin this bar and this stays parallel with the ground. So there’s a reason for that, but a lot of people don’t know that. There have been customers who send us messages that say, “Oh, my bar is broken, it rotates.”

Dr. John Jaquish: And I’m like, “What? Yeah, of course, it rotates. That’s to keep you safe.” Like, “Oh.” So because I get those responses, I want everybody to stick to the program. And then get what’s being delivered. Now, are there others drills and stuff they add on top of that? Like I told you, the NFL and the NBA, didn’t change their drills at all. They just went from lifting weights to doing X3. And they’ve had incredible results ever since. Speed, differences, injury reduction. The Miami Heat, that’s the only team that’s not, and you see they endorsed the book which NBA and NFL teams don’t endorse anything because it’s their brand. It’s very valuable.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, they gave me in writing, “You can use the quote from our strength coach with the brand of the team because you’ve helped the team.” And so they’re the least injured team right now. When they play they’re safe. They’re stronger, faster and they don’t injure. And for guys in the NBA, injuries are, that’s what determines how a team does and they can avoid injuries for a season.

Matt Belair: Well, I have a comment. First, I remember when I watched you and Jay speak, I was like, “Okay, I’m going to look at this thing. And you get things like the Bowflex or whatever. I used to love infomercials and I want to get all that kind of stuff. And when I started to look in the science of band training and what you were working on and how simple it was, because I knew about squats and deadlifts and how things worked. I was like, “Wow, this is a very minimal and effective system.” And you need to show up and do the work, but this hits everything.

Matt Belair: And so you don’t have to over-complicate it. And every day Joe, who’s like, I don’t know what to do, can go and apply this and get results if they keep using it. And when it hits all the most important aspects of health in my view, most of them anyway. And then so, I thought that that’s just an impressive system as well in itself, but then I’m curious about the athletes. Are you saying that the Miami Heat, just stopped doing deadlifts and front squats? Because that’s how I would want to use it. And with this lockdown, I’m like, how can I use this to increase my strength and then improve my ability in other sports?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, they do their deadlifting and their squats with the X3. Matt Belair: Awesome. And so if someone was looking for straight-up strength gains in squats and deadlifts, is it a safer alternative? And does the band have that much resistance to keep the evolution of the athlete going?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yes and yes. It’s much safer and you’re going to lift more repetitions. Because of the variable resistance, you’re able to deal with more weight with more repetition. So like I told you, when I do a chest press 550 pounds is the peak force. And I might hit that 20 times. Now that doesn’t handle that weight in all ranges of motion.

Matt Belair: Yeah. And can you do simple math on that because I’m not going to be able to? Let’s just say your squat is, I don’t know, for the average person, let’s say your squats 200-pound max, how does that differentiate in the X3 Bar? So once you get to the seven times stronger amount, what are you going to be pulling in that scenario? Because you can see as you talked about earlier, the load of it. How much you lower your body is doing. So that way you’re testing the body because it seems like you’re only really being tested at, the bench press is off the chest and then you get so much stronger and then the squat, you sit down and you got to get out of the hole. And then you get gradually stronger.

Matt Belair: So if you’re looking for adaptation in the body and what the body’s capable of, it seems to make sense that you’d want to use something like this. And then my final thought on this is I see people sometimes, you go to the gym and they do the most terrible squat where they get the bar off and they put 800 pounds of load on there and they’re just kind of-

Dr. John Jaquish: And they’re hunching their back.

Matt Belair: Yeah. They’re kind of just holding the weight. Or they do a deadlift where it’s off the rack. They’re kind of just doing shoulder. Is there a benefit to that? I don’t understand that.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’ll start with the deadlift. Is there a benefit to a rack pole? Yeah, sort of, from a neurological standpoint, you’re training the body to fire a lot more tissue in a shorter period. So especially for the guys who compete, so explosive deadlift, I mean that’s part of the competition. You got to be able to get a quick off the ground. That would be beneficial. Also, the loading of the tendons and ligaments at that high degree will force fibrocartilage uptake. And that was from a 1999 study by Benjamin & Ralphs. Well, it shows that if you compress the joint at multiples body weight, you get a change in fibrocartilage uptake. So basically the tendons and ligaments get thicker and more powerful.

Dr. John Jaquish: So you’re switching on more muscle faster. You’re building your tendons and ligaments and you’re going to get a bit of myofibril growth too, but you’re also missing out on any sarcoplasmic growth and any chance for hypoxia which is keeping the blood in the muscle so that your heart basically doesn’t see that muscle anymore and then downregulates myostatin so that you’re able to gain more muscle mass all over your body. So that’s sort of the intention with the tourniquet training, you seem to do that where they’ve put a tourniquet around their arm.

Matt Belair: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I got you.

Dr. John Jaquish: Blood flow. But the X3 Bar does it anyway if you keep constant tension, because basically when you’re at the top of moving when you’re lifting regular weights, you’re doing nothing because you can handle seven times more. So you’re just kind of sitting there with the weight. So you’re only taxing the muscle when it’s at the bottom part of the movement. The squat, the hard part is getting out of the hole. The top is just like, eh, it’s easy now. Once you get past a certain point you know the guy is going make it up.

Dr. John Jaquish: So by varying the resistance, it’s equal hardness everywhere you are. So it’s harder the bottom, hard in the middle, and harder the top. And it’s no harder or less hard in any particular place, but you can handle more weight at the peak. So more force to the muscle means more testosterone receptors or alive and then your body makes more testosterone. And then, of course, if you keep constant tension you get into hypoxic benefits, so that changes your genetic potential of the whole muscle. Another thing is that somebody who’s not using X3 is not going to get that benefit.

Matt Belair: These are keys for longevity too, right? Testosterone, especially along with the youth of today, seems to be testosterone deficient. So just to be clear for me, because I don’t know too much about this. You’re saying it’s this of the muscle. That prolonged force that’s going to create the testosterone reaction in the body? So that type of training every day, you’re going to be producing that within the body. And then if you do cardio, for example, you’re not going to be producing that because the body doesn’t need to create it for the force you’re putting out because it’s the very low impact

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. You downregulate. You lower your testosterone with cardio.

Matt Belair: Got it. And so for longevity too, for men, what I’ve seen is strength and muscle are very helpful, right? Having more muscle density and strength is very helpful for long-term health. Is that true or am I just making that up?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s a awesome question. And there’s a big section of the book about it. I want to find out, once I invented this product, the world’s greatest strength training device, it’s super simple, super elegant, anybody can do it. Probably going to put every gym out of business or there’ll be gyms that are just filled with X3s, either one of the two. But I’m like, I want to look at, what does muscularity do long-term? Because you heard it, what is it called? And these guys are extreme caloric restriction like 50 calories a day and then they say they’re going to live 300 years, except that never happens.

Dr. John Jaquish: You just never hear from the guy again. So I imagine, any guy who’s said that is probably done and they just didn’t make a thing out of it. Or he’s waiting to die, whatever. Because I mean, first of all, if you’re going to be an adult male in weigh 100 pounds, is that a life worth living because you look like you’re going to die for your whole life and you have the strength of a decrepit person. So what’s the point of that? So I wanted to find out what is, I mean, is it possible that we’re damaging ourselves by long-term, by growing that much muscle? Is the expression, the candle that burns twice as bright only burns half as long? Is that true of human life?

Dr. John Jaquish: So I found the answer. And the answer was absolutely obvious. The two greatest uncontested drivers of a long life are high levels of strength and low levels of body fat. So strength athletes will outlast. And of course low-level body fat, I know a lot of powerlifters, they don’t care about body fat, but they should because they want to live a long time. And also being in a lower weight class means you get to compete against weaker people, which is good if you want to win, right?

Matt Belair: Wow. Cool. Yeah. And I’d seen that. So I appreciate the clarity. And so what would you offer to people who they’re just looking for, “Hey, I’m a regular Joe. I’d like to stay in shape.” What are your keys to health and how do they apply them?

Dr. John Jaquish: So it’s funny you mentioned that. When first launching the product, we went after an exciting fitness audience. And we realized, and I had been warned that don’t try to market anything scientific to fitness people because they’re really stupid. And I found that to be true. There’s a lack of intelligence in fitness fans, not in the industry necessarily, but the fact that cortisol in cardio, that research has been out for 40 years, yet you don’t hear that at the gym. Well, why? They tell you, “If you want to lose weight, you should just do cardio.” That’s the worst advice they can give. It’ll give you the opposite.

Dr. John Jaquish: But for 40 years they’ve been saying the wrong thing. Does anybody care? No. Because all they’re there to do is sell memberships. And then also, let’s look at the fitness industry in general, who succeeds. There are millions of people who work out and talk about working out, but do these people look exception? Are they in exceptional condition? Or are there hundreds of thousands of people who are just a 10th of a second short of the 4.3 40-yard dashes? No, not even close. Pretty much the people who go into the average plan of fitness don’t look any different than the people who go into the pizza hut.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s the same. People are out of shape. Even people who fanatically work out seem to be out of shape. The leanest 1% of males in the United States is 10.6% body fat. That’s the best 1%. That’s pathetic. That’s like, you can see your top two abs. And because body fat is a great metric because it considers muscularity too. The more your muscularity goes up, the lower your body fat does as a percentage of your body weight. So when I look at these statistics, it’s just like, “Why is anybody defending the industry? Everybody fails at it.” I know people that have worked out for 20 years that don’t look any different. They just got older. That’s about it. And so I see now all those people like you who have adapted, but let’s talk about the majority. I bet you know 10 people that go to the gym all the time and they haven’t gotten anything out of it. Am I right?

Matt Belair: Yeah. What I see too out there is there’s so much information as far as food, diet, the right protocol, things like that. And a lot of people who don’t prioritize fitness for their life, just need something simple. I know a buddy who, he got a great result on that, what does that thing with, that Chuck Norris endorsed it. He just loved it. Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s got that-

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s like a sled moves.

Matt Belair: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in the TRX, I like that. You can get results with anything, but I think that the idea for most people is-

Dr. John Jaquish: Total Gym. It’s called Total Gym.

Matt Belair: Yes, Total Gym. Yeah, Chuck Norris. Once you get Chuck Norris, you are going to sell out. That’s your problem. Once you get Chuck Norris, it’s sold out for life. But just keep something consistent that creates the results because it can be disheartening when you go to the gym, you don’t know what you’re doing often. That’s why you get trainers. You through all this process and all of a sudden, as you said, vanity is an important thing for people who want to feel better. They want to change their body, they want to look a certain way.

Dr. John Jaquish: They pulled a lot of people in. I’m not saying that I designed a product that just addresses vanity and all the problem. People are getting so much stronger, healthier as a result of what they’re doing, but their driving force, why they want to do it, ultimately, is to look better.

Matt Belair: Yes. And that’s the truth. And it’s kind of the fishing hook that brings people in. They say, “You know what? I don’t feel confident about my body.” And so while there’s probably these other factors, I’m not working out, I’m not eating right, I’m not doing this, but once the body starts to adapt and you see that change, it then gives you motivation for those other elements. Then you start eating a little bit better. Then you’re a little bit more consistent with your workouts. Now we’re working on mindset. And then we’re working on, to me, the highest goal is the spiritual realm of saying, “Who am I, what I come here to do.”

Matt Belair: And when you don’t feel good in your skin, you don’t feel confident to go to that next level. If you are injured or your health is not in a good form, you are not using imagination and your spiritual ideas and who you are in any capacity, you kind of have to do that. So it is kind of like that fishing hook that says, “Look, let’s get the body the way you want to look and feel.” Because it’s going to do both. It’s going to help you look how you want to look, to fit into the dress or to have the muscles at the beach, but also it’s that thing that says, “Okay, now what?” I’ve got the body. Now, I can work on the mindset, I can work on the other things because I feel better about myself.

Matt Belair: And so that’s kind of how I see that progression. And I think it’s, 90% of the USA, 90% of Canada, and a huge thing that we’re seeing in the world right now are people not taking care of their health. And what I’ve noticed in people who are having peak performance, you need to do that. And that’s what I like about yours, is very simple. There’s nothing very complicated about it. So you want to speak on that? And I’d love for you to speak on the mindset too because you’re an interesting guy in the sense that you are a scientist, you want results. And so how do we integrate this as a package for a way of life? Because I feel like most of my listeners, they’re the everyday Joe, they do want that result.

Matt Belair: And I get it all the time because it’s a spiritual, “Podcast.” We’re talking about life purpose and things like that. And connecting with a greater spirit and all that kind of fun stuff, which is great, but I’m an athlete. So I’ve always seen a lot of nonsense in places that people don’t see that nonsense. And so I was like, from the athletic perspective like, “Oh, how do you stay in shape?” And there are all of these different things. And so I’d just love your opinion on that of what should they do for the average Joe? And then how do they add the mindset element to it?

Dr. John Jaquish: So I said, we initially went after fitness fans and I talked myself out because they just weren’t smart enough. You’d show them a scientific argument and they would just make just completely, I can’t even say their profanity and how many times they called me gay. And by the way, who does that anymore? Really? Is that still an insult? I mean, maybe it is in some trailer park, but come on guys. No one cares if someone is gay anymore. Shut up.

Matt Belair: Yeah, yeah. I get a lot of flak out there. That’s funny.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yeah. And I just got attacked for just presenting science and I’m like, “All right, these guys are too dumb to understand.” So I switched and immediately we started targeting busy executives. So busy executives are looking to optimize because think about the typical loser. The typical guy that has nothing going on. He has two hours to spend at the gym. Now he’ll say, “I make time.” No, nobody wants you around. That’s why you have the time. I’m stereotyping these people, but stereotypes exist for a reason.

Dr. John Jaquish: And as I got to understand this market a little bit better, there’s no hope for a lot of these people. I don’t know what it is about fitness that attracts these people, but I think a lot of it is just jealousy-driven people. They want to be in shape so they can ridicule others who aren’t. Maybe that’s the motivating factor. I don’t know, but disgusting attitudes and disappointing people.

Matt Belair: I want to just chime in one thing that you just said there because I think it’s important. I would say that my audience is sensitive. And so when we talk about that attitude, I’ve been to the gym and I’ve experienced this quite a bit of really, really terrible attitudes. Not always, but it’s like a shocking thing. And I can say that it exists and you wonder, “What the hell?”

Dr. John Jaquish: Something about fitness drives these people.

Matt Belair: So they do exist. And so when they throw it at people like you it’s annoying. So I just wanted to throw that in there because a lot of people might not know that because I didn’t go to the gym. I was always a martial artist. So the spirit and martial arts gym is very different, but-

Dr. John Jaquish: Respect. Everything about martial arts is respect.

Matt Belair: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Respect others, respect the art, respect the person who’s teaching you. And the more respect you give, the more open you are to learning.

Matt Belair: Yeah. 100%.

Dr. John Jaquish: Totally.

Matt Belair: And so when I go to the gym, I was like, “What is happening here? This is such a weird thing.” It was new for me. And I was an adult and I was strong, but I was like, “This is a really weird thing. I don’t understand.” It’s just a negative feeling. So I know what you mean. So I just wanted to throw that in there for people. And it’s kind of similar, not all surfers, but when I surfed, I thought they were going to be the best people.

Dr. John Jaquish: Not there to help you.

Matt Belair: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The friendliest I found were the skaters, where, whatever shape or size or whatever, again, it’s that openness to learning I feel like it’s important. So I just want to throw that in there because it is relevant and it’s kind of shocking. I’ve gone to a lot of gyms around the world, and not always, but very often it’s just like, very, very confusing attitude at times. And so that’s another reason why in gyms they separate men and women for multiple reasons because women have a different attitude most of the time.

Matt Belair: And so it’s just something to factor in when people, want to be strong and they want to take care of their body. They want to understand what that’s like. And with a sea of nonsense, it’s kind of hard to sift through. And what you’re saying is, “Let’s look at the science here. Let’s not have to butt heads and throw stones at people. Let’s see what works. And whatever’s better, let’s use that. Let’s see if it’s going to get the result that we want.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Perfect. Thank you for that interjection. That was beautiful. And like I said, once we switched to people who were open-minded to learning something new and something that might work better, they weren’t sure the first time they heard me give a one-minute lecture and an ad or just came across my Instagram. They were like, “Well, I want to see what this guy has to say. He could be right about something.” And then so, they watched a bunch of videos or now they go and read the book, and then they’re like, “Wow, this makes perfect sense. I want to apply this to the letter and get great results.” And they do. That’s how it’s grown. And it’s just looking for the people with the right mindset.

Matt Belair: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so it’s also the willingness to try, right? Anybody can, especially now in today’s climate, everybody can throw stones everywhere and any machine or thing will work if you put the effort into it. And you can also do the due diligence yourself. I went through some of the studies you posted, and I was looking at Westside Barbell and how they would use the resistance bands and talk to my other buddies who are incredibly strong. I was like, “Oh, there is something to this. This is fascinating.” And so ultimately we got to take responsibility for our health, and if you go to the gym too, you’ll see the weirdest stuff people do it just blows your mind. Every time I see a Barbell Curl, I’m like, “You don’t know what you’re doing.” Or you just want massive biceps. And if that’s what you want, great, that’s what you want. But my function is a little bit different. Do you know what I mean?

Matt Belair: So I was like, there’s not a lot here, but the whole point is if the gyms were like martial arts studios or skateboard parks, we’re looking at, it’s like, “Hey, why do you do that? What’s the result you get from that? Is it helpful? What are you going for? Oh, you’re training for a triathlon. That’s amazing. What is your training schedule like?” Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Matt Belair: And so you have this openness. We don’t all want the same goals, but the spirit of the training, the spirit of how you do it, I feel is important. And so I think that what you’re offering is a very interesting thing. And it does have some very fascinating science. What I like about it is, it’s not complicated. People will get lost in complication. It does seem to be proven effective. And so you try it and see if it works, and that’s kind of what I’ve done in my life is, I’ve heard the craziest claims. Imagine going into the spiritual realms and say, “You do this and then you get this experience.” Well, I’m stupid enough to go try a lot of those things and be like, “Ah, there you go. That one didn’t work,” or something that.

Matt Belair: So I appreciate what you’re saying. And what would you recommend for, just people getting started and overcoming the fear of getting into the gym, getting healthy? What are your staples of you, you want to get fit, you want to look good, you want to feel healthy? How do you define that for yourself?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I define it just how the academic literature defines it. We need to be as strong as possible and as lean as possible. Also, sometimes when somebody asks me questions, I’m just going to say what the academic literature says because, I mean, no one’s listening because they want my opinion. It’s like, “Well, scientifically, what’s correct?” Because I don’t have an opinion on most of these things. And also, like we said before the show started, if somebody could prove to me that eating candy bars was going to put on more muscle than steak, well then I’d probably be in candy bars, but no one’s going to prove that because that’s just stupid idea. But we know then because we’ve been following the literature.

Dr. John Jaquish: So ultimately, the right answer is the right answer. And there’s no room for emotion. Now I do also realize that a big motivator of some of these people that we’re talking about, the kind of bad attitude people, they’re not looking for results necessarily. They’re looking to create videos so they can brag about themselves on the internet or very sort of ego-driven and I’m better than you sort of attitude.

Matt Belair: Well, if they are ego-driven, they should be figuring out how to put some of that, the muscle slab on there, and see what works.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, but it’s too many steps. So they can use the s***t form in an exercise and then brag about how strong they are later that evening. Gaining 20 pounds of muscle, that requires you to read something, pay attention, maybe watch some videos, learn something. Learning that is something they’re not interested in doing. They have all the answers. I’m going to tell you about your favorite study you didn’t even know existed. Are you ready? You’re going to like this.

Dr. John Jaquish: So Dunning Kruger, 1999, it was a very unique study and it was done in a broad population, so big sample size. And it looked at people who had a certain ability to perform tasks, whether it was math problems or puzzles or whatever. And then they had a certain… It was their competence, and then their competence versus, and this is how it was scored, versus what they believed their competence was. So the smartest people would get 100% on everything, but they would believe there were 95% because obviously the more you know you don’t know.

Dr. John Jaquish: The dumbest people believed they were the best. Absolute conviction that they were the best. They know everything. And I think this explains a lot of political discussion on the internet. The least informed people are the ones with the strongest presentation of their other opinions or position on things. They don’t even know the words they’re using, but they are convinced that they are right and they know everything about it. So this is just amplified with fitness because fitness is like we were talking about, seems to be a very attractive thing to a group of people, not the whole group, but a group of people that’s kind of dysfunctional. So you all of a sudden, you see people who’ll just, they’ll throw themselves on their swords for what they believe in, but they’re wrong. And you can prove them wrong, but they won’t read what you post.

Matt Belair: And there’s a lot of factors to that, right? Like the whole Instagram fame game and all that and younger people. And that’s why I like, a lot of the show, I want to have people who’ve been older. You could be young and come on the show, but I’ve also valued people who have gone through a lot of experience and know right from wrong. There is wisdom in age. It’s like, “I made all these mistakes and now I know.” The number one thing is being open to learning. I’d chat with you all day. There’s a lot of other questions I’d throw at you, but I know you probably got to go. Is there anything that you wish that I had asked or that you want to leave the listeners with?

Matt Belair: And if you did have time, I’m curious about other studies around mindset. I’ve done a lot of studies on visualization, peak performance, things like that. I’ve also seen one on strength, where they visualize sprinters running, the same muscle fibers would go fire off in the body and then also with strength too.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. We will talk about that.

Matt Belair: Great.

Dr. John Jaquish: So mindset, I’ll start with mindset study, but then remind me to go back and talk about squats, because we talked about that earlier and that was fun. And I think the listeners should hear that. So mindset, there was a clinical psychologist involved in the second clinical trial that was done around my first invention. And it was, how did you assess your health in the beginning? How did you assess your control over your health? And then we asked the same questions towards the end, six months later, towards the end of the study.

Dr. John Jaquish: Now, these people in this study were all sufferers of metabolic syndrome. So type 2 diabetes. It was a night and day difference towards what they believed they had control over in the end. In the beginning, they saw their health as a very frustrating subject. It was something that was completely out of control and they were just waiting to die. In the end, they felt like they had complete control over it. And they believed they would live as long as they chose to.

Matt Belair: That’s powerful.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s a mindset.

Matt Belair: Sorry to cut you off. I should just let you keep going, but I’m just saying, that’s the key to health. If you don’t have that confidence in your body, it’s your vehicle in this environment? The reason I’m confident, even in combat to say what I want to say, to do what I want to do is because I trust my body. And so if your body is breaking down on you, that’s not a great thing. If you’re not proud of your body, love your body as it is 100%, no matter if it’s all frigged up. And trust that we’ll adapt and create it to what you want to go, but whatever it shapes, let it be that. But no, you work with this thing. It’s its integration. That’s what martial arts is, mind, body, spirit.

Matt Belair: And so many people don’t have that. And if you don’t have that confidence in your body, you’re not having all these other confidence in your health, in your mindset, in your career, in your entrepreneurship to take all the nonsense that you take because I’ve seen some of it. So like I said, some of the listeners don’t know what it’s like out there, which I find funny, but it’s like, “Hey, you don’t need to be an a-hole. We could have a discussion, but you’re not choosing that. You’re choosing something else. And it’s not cool.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Matt Belair: Yeah, you wouldn’t say it to my face. It’s just like, I’ve experienced a lot of that this year. So I get it. Sorry, please continue. Because I think that, that is so powerful. That’s huge. And so whatever we can do to gift that to people that, that’s a really powerful thing.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Well, also a lot of the angry trolls, don’t talk about things that have already been successful. For me, inventing a device that reverses osteopetrosis faster than any drug ever tried without a side effect, they ignore that. But of course, they’re like, “My university wasn’t good enough.” Or, “Mr. Olympia doesn’t use it.” The current guy, I don’t even know who that is. But it’s just like, also we kind of know bodybuilding is just like a lot of drugs in that. So, I mean, did the winner lift weights harder, or did you just do drugs harder. We don’t know. Only that guy knows. So I tell people, “Don’t look at bodybuilders because you don’t know what you’re looking at. Look at NFL players. You want to see what strong athletic people look like, look at guys that are drug tested. That’s what’s possible.”

Dr. John Jaquish: And I think most of what I see out of the NFL players that I work with, no, I could never have looked like an NFL player with standard weights. Once I got X3, now when I work with these guys, they’re like, “Wow, you’re in better shape than all of us.” And there are of course in their 20s and I’m 44. So they’re like, “How are you in this kind of shape?” Well, the heavy force has changed the body, right? Yes. I have a better strategy of putting heavy forces through the body. And that’s all its own. And they’re like, “All right, let’s get started.” That’s how I do them, but of course, they’ve got a mindset too, because they know what’s possible. They know what they could do when they were 18, 19, 20.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s real easy to get somebody back than it is to get somebody there the first time, especially if they’re older when they do it the first time. When you started deadlifting, that was a huge mental step because you had never done it before. And how old were you when you started this?

Matt Belair: I think I was maybe 29 or 30. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s like learning a new language. You learn a new language when you’re a kid because you’re not worried about sounding dumb. Everything you say is dumb. Sorry about that. So when you’re unfamiliar versus familiar, when you’re one of these NFL players and you know that you have the effort, you have the ability. And then they look at me and they’re like, “Well, this guy did it. And he was never in the league. I can do it.” So that’s powerful. But like I said, you always need to have that mental

Matt Belair: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know you got to run, but I’ll just quickly remind you of the squats and anything else that you want to leave the listeners with.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yeah, the squats. So a lot of people, we’ve discussed this. They like to argue even if they don’t understand the subject they’re arguing about because they have nothing better to do. And like I said, the Dunning Kruger effect, nobody wants these people around. The bottom 20th percentile is not even allowed in the military for intelligence testing because they’ll shoot themselves in the foot, they’ll shoot one of their fellow soldiers, they’ll drive a vehicle right into a water tank or something. They’re dumb. So they’re not allowed to do anything other than pushing a mop as Professor Jordan Peterson likes to say.

Dr. John Jaquish: So when these people give their feedback, and of course they have limitless time, nobody wants them around. So they’re on the internet. It’s very interesting because you never change their mind. After all, they’re not capable of independent thought. So what you have to do is wait for those people to have their neighbor get it. And then they see their neighbor doing it, and then they’ll think it was their idea the whole time. Remember when the first iPhone came out?

Matt Belair: Now, I can’t even imagine that. I was like, “Wait, what does that look like?” I think I had a number, I might’ve had the first one.

Dr. John Jaquish: I had the first name. I still have it.

Matt Belair: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: No, no, no, no, no, I saved that because I knew it was going to be groundbreaking. Do you know what I mean? It wasn’t just another phone. But what I knew back then was that people are so small-minded that they’re going to get caught up in the detail. So all tech reviewers, except for one guy who worked for the Wall Street Journal, and he’s retired now, but his name is Walter Mossberg. He’s the only tech reviewer that said this thing’s going to be a smashing success. Everybody else said it was just the stupidest thing ever because it didn’t have a keyboard because BlackBerry owned the market back then. They had a nice keyboard. And so a Mossberg who was like, “You guys haven’t seen what a touchscreen can do yet. So this thing is going to be hugely successful.”

Dr. John Jaquish: He was the only guy who was right. I hope they sent him a fruit basket or something like that. They can certainly afford to send him a nice one. But ultimately, so many people were just sheep. They were just saying, “What we need is a better version of what we already have not to go into some complete different direction.” And they were wrong. And so it’s okay because my customers are smarter people. They’re like Walter Mossberg. They’re like, “Oh, different way, more efficient, better results. I’m in.” And so the other people they’ll come along. They’ll come along whether they like it or not, because it’s just the better path. And nobody works out for the sake of a workout, they work out for results.

Matt Belair: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, do you want to touch on the squats thing because I think you forgot to talk about it?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. it’s so funny. Sometimes just like a group of people who already sit down and they got their arms folded at a conference. So they showed up to show me how bad their attitude is and to not listen. I say, “Okay, who here thinks a squat is a functional exercise?” Of course, everybody raised their hand. And I said, “Oh, you guys must train kangaroos.”

Matt Belair: I would’ve raised my hand.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. Yeah. Everybody was like, “Of course a squat is functional.” Well, unless you’re a kangaroo, no it isn’t. You should squat on one leg at a time because we walk on one leg at a time, we run on one leg at a time. We make any agility move one leg at a time. The only time we use two feet is to stop. And we’re not practicing stopping, we’re practicing going. So ultimately what we need, we need something to put more force to one leg at a time. So with X3, we train one leg at a time.

Dr. John Jaquish: Think about what you can accomplish, and this is where I win people over. Think about what you can accomplish when all of your cardiac and oxygen-producing organs and abilities are going into one quadricep and one glute. You just doubled your fuel to your legs by making that one change as you train. The other thing is sort of a deep sigh and they kind of all nod and I’m like, “Wow, hadn’t thought about that.” Well, you get exceptional light growth when you train one leg at a time because you got all your resources going into one leg at a time, which is going to double your output capacity.

Matt Belair: Yep.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s all I got.

Matt Belair: Makes too much sense. I’d love to go into some of the sports psychology stuff, maybe on another day and another call, but I feel like a lot of the stuff you’re addressing is, “Hey, this is the science. It’s all backed by scientific literature. What are your goals? If you have something that works better and you can prove it, fantastic. And here’s something that produces fantastic results and it’s simple. And a lot of the good workouts and the good strategies are very simple. If you’re a more complicated athlete, feel free to adapt and test your own methods. But if it’s good enough for Miami Heat and it reduces injuries, it’s bit safer.

Matt Belair: And you’re hitting the big ones, deadlifts, which we know generate a lot of, wait, I don’t even know what it generates, says a lot of strengths. See, I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m comfortable with that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. There’s neural adaptations, there’s muscular power adaptations and myofibril growth.

Matt Belair: See, there you go. So I know you need to do the deadlifts and I don’t know why I ask people like you, and you need to do the squats because it generates a lot of these, whatever you need the body to do, I just call it strength. I get stronger. That’s what I know and that’s what I like. And so you’re hitting that with that machine where the other ones don’t. A lot of these other ones like TRX, I love that. It’s a really great thing. I use it for a while, but it doesn’t give me what I need as far as strength, squats and deadlifts. It’s a different thing.

Matt Belair: So I can use it for skateboarding and agility and stuff like that, but I do need that squat and deadlift resistance to gain the strength and some of the other stuff that I want to happen. Well, this has been great. I appreciate you coming on the show. Is there anything else that you want to leave those listeners with? Where do they go and check out X3? You have some videos on there. You have some videos on YouTube. You get to see Dr. John’s massive arms. That’s fun in itself. And if you have any questions, I think there’s some spots for people to do that as well.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. The best place to find me, I created a landing page, which has links to my YouTube and Instagram. I’m mostly active on Instagram. It’s just so streamlined. Facebook is just kind of a mess. But anyway, anywhere you want to get to me, just go to doctorj.com, D-O-C-T-O-R and the letter j.com. And you can find everything from there.

Matt Belair: Awesome. Cool. And the study is, and if you want to give him a hard time too. I don’t know, although my audience will be nice I’m sure. But thanks so much for coming on this show. This has been a pleasure. We’ll stay in touch. Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks, Matt.

Matt Belair: Yep. See you later guys. Bye. There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the absolutely extraordinary Dr. John Jaquish. I hope that you enjoyed that show. It’s so fascinating since this episode, I kind of look more into bands again because I was getting into them. And it’s kind of exploding. So this technology and these studies are getting out there about how you can train safer, how you can have more load, how you can apply all these different things to have a very different workout than just the gym. But you could sense in that podcast that Dr. John has taken a lot of flak from different people out there that really prefer weight training and things like that. But the proof is in the pudding with the technology, what you can do with bands. And so whether it’s X3 Bar, whether it’s getting to the gym, whatever it is for you to just own your health, to take care of your body.

Matt Belair: I personally, I love the kettlebell. I’ve been using band training with my strength training, deadlifts, and training for martial arts and things like that, athletics, and as well as just doing something that you enjoy. So whether it’s boxing or skill-related or outdoors or biking or something, make your fitness enjoyable so that you can sustain it over a long period of time. Take care of your body. That’s how you’re going to have the secret to health vitality, improve your mindset, improve your quality of life. It all starts with health.

Matt Belair: And so no matter what road you take to get there, just be sure to prioritize that, make it fun, make it your own and engage in the journey. So thank you guys so much for listening to this show . I invite you to leave a review on iTunes, become a member at mattbelair.com, center for the email list, you’ll get a gift pack of meditations and some cool stuff in there. Morning Meditation, Success Hypnosis, all kinds of cool stuff.