The Tony Stark of The Fitness Industry, Dr. John Jaquish Reveals How To Improve Bone Density, Reverse Osteoporosis & Be Stronger Than Ever

Dr. John Jaquish is the inventor of the most effective bone density building medical technology which has reversed osteoporosis for thousands and created more powerful/fracture-resistant athletes and is now partnered with Tony Robbins and OsteoStrong for rapid clinic deployment. He is also the inventor of the X3 bar, a technology that is proven to develop muscle faster than conventional weight lifting, all with the lowest risk of joint injury.

Full Transcript

Ariane Sommer: Fitness is a core pillar of health and well-being for those of us who focus on creating the best human experience possible, not only to look a certain way and to support peak performance but also to extend our health and lifespans. A significant number of people are not satisfied with traditional weightlifting or cardio routines though, feeling like they’re spending excessive amounts exercising without getting the desired results.

My guest today has spent years researching and developing improved approaches to health and fitness. Dr. John Jaquish is the inventor of the most effective bone density building medical technology, which has reversed osteoporosis for thousands and created more powerful fracture-resistant athletes, and that has now partnered with Tony Robbins and OsteoStrong for rapid clinic deployment.

Ariane Sommer: He’s also the inventor of the X3, a technology that is proven to develop muscle much faster than conventional weightlifting, all with the lowest risk of joint injury. Dr. Jaquish’s methods are used in training the world’s most elite athletes and associations such as the entire Miami Heat organization, various NFL and NBA players, as well as Olympians.

And Dr. Jaquish was also nicknamed the Tony Stark of the fitness industry and his book, Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want explains his non-conventional approach to human physiology and is also a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Ariane Sommer: I’m Ariane Sommer and I have passionately dedicated the last 12 years of my life to creating the ultimate human experience mentally, physically, and spiritually based on the most powerful ancient teachings and cutting-edge modern discoveries and technologies. The Superhumanize podcast is a show committed to sharing what I have learned from the world’s leading experts to help you achieve your full potential and create your best life ever.

Ariane Sommer: John, thank you so much for being my guest on the Superhumanize podcast today, I’m super excited to have you on.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be on the podcast.

Ariane Sommer: You know you are an investor, you’re a scientist, you’re an author and as I mentioned in the intro, you have helped countless people across the globe with health issues, as well as fitness challenges. And I would like for our audience to hear the story of how you found your life’s mission concerning bone and muscle health as it’s a very personal one involving your mother.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yes. My mother was diagnosed with osteoporosis about 13 years ago, she was very upset about it because she looked at the fracture risk data. And, when you’re over 50 years old, you have a bone fracture, you have a 50% chance of death within one year of that fracture. So 50% chance of death after 50. So she, at the time, was playing tennis, she was doing a lot of hiking, I don’t mean little like just walking around the neighborhood, she would do 20 plus mile hike. Yeah, and I mean up elevation, climbing upsides of waterfalls, stuff like that. We lived in Napa Valley at the time and our family live in Napa Valley. And so, there’s a lot of great hiking to do there.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so she was into that and then she saw her quality of life completely changing and she was upset. And so I said, “Okay, let me let me look into this.” And what I determined was that I could build a medical therapy device that could reverse her bone loss and build her bone more powerful than it had ever been by emulating high impact force.

So in this emulation, we need to get more force on the body than normal, we need to go to like impact level force absorption. And so with that series of devices, there are four devices, and you can now find them at OsteoStrong locations. So we’re in nine different countries now, with OsteoStrong with clinics everywhere.

Dr. John Jaquish: And people come in, they do a session, one time per week. The metabolism of bone is different than the metabolic rate of muscle or your lungs. So it’s not like a fitness waiting period, you can only go once a week otherwise it’s counterproductive. And then, so I started using it with her, and then as soon as I reversed her osteoporosis in 18 months, she had a bone density of 30 years old. So she had like perfect bone density. And she was in her 70s which is-

Ariane Sommer: Fantastic.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ariane Sommer: I have a quick question with regards to that. So obviously, with regards to osteoporosis, there’s a lot of factors that can play into that, and once you have it’s very, very debilitating, very difficult to deal with unless you’re fortunate and be able to use the therapy you’ve developed. the device you’ve developed. your strong device. But how does this loss of bone density usually develop for most people? What are the factors at play here? And what could people do to prevent that in the first place?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well most of it is just a lack of high impact. So, if there was a way to reverse it or stop it by doing yoga or something, there’s some research on yoga that’s taken some pretty crappy people, and put a little bit more load on different bones that they don’t normally load. But I mean, these are highly kyphotic people, so their head’s stuck way forward, and they’re hunched over. And so, a few results from there. But you can’t get impact-level loading. A gymnast absorbs 10 times their body weight sometimes when they hit the ground, how are we going to exercise 10 times our body weight? There’s no exercise with that.

Dr. John Jaquish: So it’s just … my point is, it’s not going to happen with anything that’s out there to any relevance, and in fact, I developed an iPhone app and it’s on the app store right now called Fracture. And if you download fracture, first you put in your weight and it’ll … you can try and jump and land and see how much force goes to the bone matter. And if it reaches the minimum dose-response to trigger bone density growth, but I could save you $2 and just tell you, no. Yeah. I mean, it’s like it’s the same answer for everybody unless they’re kids. So young people build bone density, once you pass 30 years of age you lose bone density because you stopped doing the high-impact activity.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, if there were something people could do like eating more carrots or jumping rope or something like that, I would have written a book about that, and that would have been the end of it. But such is not the case. You need huge, huge forces. You need to emulate what you did as a kid, yeah.

Ariane Sommer: I would like to know … to discuss with you how exactly OsteoStrong works, I know different positions are used. And in contrast to that what the traditional western medical solutions for treating osteoporosis are. Can you give us a rundown of that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. The clinic works like a therapy clinic. Come in, check-in with the front desk, you get assigned a technician. You get taken through the activation protocol which you’re put under whole-body vibration and you get a lot of muscles firing that you wouldn’t normally be firing. And then you go through and then you’re done. Now some of the clinics add in pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, but that’s an option.

Ariane Sommer: John, I’m so-

Dr. John Jaquish: You don’t need that.

Ariane Sommer: John I’m so sorry we lost audio after you said that you go, you check-in, we lost audio. I only saw you talk but I couldn’t hear you, do you mind repeating.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. Yeah, can you hear me now?

Ariane Sommer: Yes, I can.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. So, people check-in, they go through their activation protocol, which is standing on a whole-body vibration platform, gets muscles firing that weren’t firing already, like stabilization type muscles. And then you go through the protocol, you load bone on its axis. So this is the axis of a bone, so you load it from end to end so this way.

And so the … you go through the whole protocol and then after the loading is finished, then you’re done. And it takes, I don’t know, maybe 15, 10 minutes to go through the whole thing and it’s once a week. I didn’t design it to be convenient it just happens to be that the body’s looking for a stimulus, and the stimulus is … a better way to say this is the central nervous system only responds to your environment.

Dr. John Jaquish: If your environment is harsh, like a lot of force coming to your body well, then it has to respond by building a more powerful bone. And that’s how it works, is simple. And-

Ariane Sommer: And tell us a little bit-

Dr. John Jaquish: Go ahead.

Ariane Sommer: I’m curious about the vibration that you mentioned, can you explain a little bit more about that and why it is so beneficial.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, whole-body vibration has been fraudulently sold for the last 25 years, I think. It’s a great way to activate, which is a fancy word for warm-up, but you get to turn on muscles without wearing yourself out. So you could go for a jog and you can do some push-ups, do some stretching, and … well not stretching, you don’t want to … we found out you don’t want to stretch before an athletic endeavor. But the problem was, warming up wasn’t interesting enough for most people to spend a few $1,000. So what whole-body vibration companies did, and you probably had seen plenty of advertisements in Germany for just ludicrous things that these vibration companies were promoting, like bone density.

Dr. John Jaquish: But I mean, it was on a list of like, I don’t know, depending on the company, five to 10 different dysfunctions that would be fixed with this vibrating platform and none of that was true. So vibration is great for activation of stabilization accepted. Right and you see vibration platforms in the Denver Broncos training room, and you, I don’t know if they’re still there, but you used to see one with the Lotus Formula One team which I think became Force India then Racing Point and is now the S Martin team. Yeah, they like to change owners, I guess. So I don’t know if they still have their Lotus whole body vibration machine. I think the Williams team, though that’s not an endorsement, the Williams team is always dead last.

Dr. John Jaquish: But so people use whole body vibration just to turn muscles on. And then you just go through the bone loading protocol, it’s really simple. You go through four movements, there’s kind of like an upper-body movement where you compress your upper extremities, lower body movement, and there’s a core and a spine, and that gets every part of the body that bone loss would affect.

Ariane Sommer: Yes. And, with regards to you just mentioned it, environment, and how it can affect the bodily environment, how do environment and also diet affect our bone health?

Dr. John Jaquish: So there’s probably going to be some listeners that don’t like me for saying this, but it’s funny because you should never be upset by science. =And there’s a lot of people that are very upset about the science that I talk about, most of which I didn’t perform. I didn’t do the studies but because I’m just telling them what the studies say they’re theories.

So for example, vegans don’t like it when I say, there are more than 20 different studies that have all been compiled in a meta-analysis that show that if you’re primarily getting your nutrition from vegetables, you’re probably going to die a lot younger and fragility fracture plays into that like bone begins to break down much faster with vegetarian and vegan nutrition.

Dr. John Jaquish: And the idea is, oh you need your greens and there’s always some silly clown saying that. No, you don’t. An animal keeps you from eating it by running away. A plant keeps you from eating it by giving you a low-grade poison called an oxalate, all plants have oxalates there’s no exception. And so like oxalates are giving us all kinds of inflammation problems and now we know inflammation is a primary cause of most cancers, that and having the level of sugar that we have in our diet. Pretty much everybody’s like an unsupervised child when it comes to their food choices, so that’s a huge issue.

Dr. John Jaquish: So sugar is inflammation, oxalates are inflammation, so pretty much anything with carbohydrates in it, is you’re just breaking down your body.

Ariane Sommer: You know it’s interesting you bring up veganism, I am vegan. I used to be a huge meat eater, I mean German-born, I like to say you know my birthday cakes were made out of meat, right? So I use tons of meat, tons of dairy.

Dr. John Jaquish: Mine is right now.

Ariane Sommer: Yeah, so that was my diet and I love the flavor of meat, nothing wrong with that. And I went plant-based about, I think it was, yeah, 14 years ago. And since I’m also very much into bio-hacking, I do all kinds of blood tests all the time for me, everybody is different. For me, my labs have never been better. My hormone levels have never been better, my strength

Dr. John Jaquish: … scan?

Ariane Sommer: DEXA scan, no please enlighten me about that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Take a DEXA scan it’ll look at your bone density. And so it stands for Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry.

Ariane Sommer: Yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s just two x-rays that create a picture of your bone that can determine the density or porosity of the bone. But like right now, and this doesn’t necessarily apply to all vegans but, or vegetarians, the standard American diet is 70% plant-based and we’re fatter and sicker than ever and we have huge osteoporosis problems, it never used to be. So yeah, it’s because people aren’t getting the right amount of protein and collagen, and essential amino acids. Like essential amino acids are probably the most important thing people should be looking at yet they don’t, they’re looking at something else.

Ariane Sommer: I mean, essential amino acids I couldn’t agree more. I take mine every day, mine of course because my lifestyle choices are plant-based, but I agree with you most people are overfed and undernourished. And a lot of the plant material that gets eaten is very heavily grain-based, as you said, that causes very ill effects in our systems and is very processed. I think I can only speak for myself, I feel better than I ever have, I think everybody needs to make their own choices and informed choices with regards to diet and also look at the science. I’ll make sure to take that scan, bone density is super-duper important and, yeah, it’s a very, very interesting topic.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Make sure you get a DEXA scan.

Ariane Sommer: I will do that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because that may be one of the things that vegan nutrition isn’t making you better.

Ariane Sommer: I’m super curious, and I’ll share my results with you and I’d love your input.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay.

Ariane Sommer: Cool. And then maybe you’re able to help me in case they’re not optimal, maybe you’re even able to-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, of course.

Ariane Sommer: … figure something out that I can’t do within my parameters.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I did develop a product that was … it wasn’t originally necessarily for vegans, but it would help vegans out a lot, it’s an essential amino acid. But the problem with essential amino acids, they’re great on paper, but the way most of them are made, they’re not absorbable by the body. And this is like the supplement industry 101 statement right here. What you’re usually paying for is in the capsule or the powder. That doesn’t mean your body can use it. So like when you get a solid vitamin, like a multivitamin and it says there’s vitamin D in there, there’s vitamin D in there, but your body can’t use it, so you just have very expensive urine.

Ariane Sommer: Yes. And explain with regards to the essential amino acidsessential amino acids so, what are the factors that make the body able to make it bioavailable to the body, and what are the factors that keep them from being available?

Dr. John Jaquish: So there’s a ratio that’s important for the essential amino acids. You got to get that ratio right. And like there’s a company Master … well. I mean they called it Master Amino Acid profile a long time ago, and they were kind of cancer. They would keep people from losing muscle, they would continue protein synthesis and replacement of cells, instead of breaking down and wasting away during chemo and radiation.

And so this was a very protect for them. And since then I worked with some of the developers of this cancer treatment and developed something called Fortagen, and which is an essential amino acid, it’s usable by the body, and it’s done with bacterial fermentation.

Dr. John Jaquish: So we are supposed to eat rotting stuff. So like thousands of years ago, let’s say we were in a tribe, let’s say in Germany, and we kill the mammoth. And we take down that mammoth and then we have a feast, we’d eat the mammoth, we’d probably eat it for like two days.

And then all of a sudden our last day, the last piece of mammoth that we would eat, we had to flick the magnets off of it, it’s rotting. But, pure as, I know it sounds gross like, oh gross. Well, yeah, anybody who has a problem, just shut up and listen because this is important, I don’t care you think it’s gross. We need that stuff. Now for sanitation reasons obviously, I won’t say just leave your chicken out on the kitchen counter for a week and then eat, I’m never going to say that, that’s a bad idea.

Dr. John Jaquish: But, we can get the benefits, we can get the fermentation without any of the ill effects of what actual rotting meat would be with Fortagen. Now Fortagen is bacteria and so bacteria is not an animal, so it’s vegan friendly. So vegans can get as much protein as they want with it.

Ariane Sommer: Interesting, great. And you know what you just said is fascinating because right now as we speak, like just the last two, three days, I’ve seen on social media and in news make the rounds, there is a trend of people on social media eating rotten meat. They eat it not for the health benefits though, they eat it because it makes them high. So this is a trend, this is happening right now.

Dr. John Jaquish: It makes them high.

Ariane Sommer: Yeah, that’s what they say. Any explanation for that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Higher levels of tryptophan maybe.

Ariane Sommer: Maybe, right? Because I was curious, I was like what’s happening?

Dr. John Jaquish: But I call that sleepy not high. But also I know like a lot of younger people they’ll take two melatonin and then fight to stay away. And it’s like, I guess you get goofy when you fight this … you become very comical.

Ariane Sommer: True.

Dr. John Jaquish: I suppose that’s a high also.

Ariane Sommer: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So yeah, I don’t know our … life is too easy. Everybody’s seeking the next way to get high, we need some bigger problems.

Ariane Sommer: True. And a lot of people are seeking highs, not actually to learn a little bit more about themselves or the world, but to kind of escape, and that makes it difficult. I mean there are so many fads going on, from what I just told you, the eating rotten meat on social media, and of course, there’s also a lot of fads and fitness, and you are a … you have been a trailblazer with regards to pointing out how the fitness industry has failed to make a lot of people fit.

And in your book, you explore the science that supports the argument that traditional weightlifting is a waste of time. And you lay out a superior strength training approach, and it’s been shown to put 20 pounds of muscle on people who’ve already been experienced with exercise and are drug-free.

Ariane Sommer: And can you explain to us, in a nutshell, what is the problem with the traditional type of weight training and why is it a waste of time?

Dr. John Jaquish: So, here’s the book by the way if somebody wants to know what it looks like, Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want, Wall Street Journal, a bestseller.

Ariane Sommer: Yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. No, and this is the first time anybody’s seen the hard copy.

Ariane Sommer: Oh, it’s really-

Dr. John Jaquish: It just came out, yeah.

Ariane Sommer: And for those who are not watching the video but listening, John is too humble to mention it here, but he is a physical specimen, what he writes about and says works.

Dr. John Jaquish: It does. Yeah, I mean, I don’t necessarily say, hey, look at me, I’m this really strong, muscular guy, I’m about 7% body fat right now and 240 pounds, six feet tall. So those are stats of like an NFL player. And it wasn’t … I mean it’s not easy you still got to put in the effort, but I have lifted weights for 20 years previous to that, and I didn’t put on anything. I got fatter, that was it. When I started if you look back in the videos you can see me when I launched the product, I only knew what it was going to do on paper, just scientific, and I knew I would become … I’d be in just incredible shape.

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean you can see just the definition of my arm, separation of the bicep right there, I’m in incredible shape. I don’t know how many listen to this podcast versus watch it. But it’s all because of that device, and it’s all because I discovered, through the engineering of the medical device, that it was more of the testing of the medical device, where I looked at how humans can have an ability to create these huge forces in certain positions and then not in other positions. So, I wanted to … when I looked at the data it said something different to me than it had to other sports performance people because, people have tested loading tolerances for, I don’t know, 50 years, 100 years, what can a human tolerate? And we knew what the landing biomechanics were, but I just saw something different.

Dr. John Jaquish: And the something different was, I looked at the data and I said, weightlifting is a waste of time. If you’re seven times stronger profile, you’re seven times stronger just short of lockouts of 120-degree angle right here and back of the hand in line with the clavicle, that’s the optimized position for absorbing or creating the greatest amount of force. So sorry for the camera shake there, I kind of bumped my tripod. When you consider that, that you’re seven times more powerful in the impact ready than you are in the sort of weight is against the chest kind of position, why would you ever train with the weight, it doesn’t make any sense? Because you’re losing out on the capability, what we need is a weight that changes as we move.

Dr. John Jaquish: And it just so happened that 16 different studies proved my point, they’re already … but nobody saw a product there. Now, a lot of people have tried band training, but the problem with bands is obvious. Some people work out with bands and they’ll get nothing, no result. Because, you can either go light, which going light does not … there’s no getting away from heavy. You got to put heavy loads on the body to change the body. But when you get heavy, like if I take a heavy band and throw it around my back, and I go to do a push-up, this happens to my hands, and my hands get twisted outward, and I could break my wrist, if it’s heavy enough to be relevant for strength.

Dr. John Jaquish: So we needed a way to protect the wrist and protect the ankles so that you could truly have limitless potential. So we have a situation where there just wasn’t anything like that so I created it and filed patents in 47 different countries, and fortunately, I have defended my patents and I’ve shut many companies down. Yeah, yeah that feels good.

Ariane Sommer: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because like-

Ariane Sommer: And that’s a huge problem, you come up with something that’s cutting edge and innovative, and everybody wants to jump on the bandwagon and copy it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well first, everybody tells you, you’re stupid. It’s wrong, and weightlifting is better, and you’re just trying to scam people, and then they try and copy you. It’s thankless, absolutely thankless. But, it’s the public and a lot of really stupid people out there who, it’s not that they don’t want to understand, it’s that they lack the intelligence to understand, and it is a huge problem in the world, in the real world. Most people do what they do because the person next to them is doing it. Most people cannot grasp a new concept. So like when the original iPhone first came out, the majority of the public was like, looks stupid, it doesn’t have a keyboard, and back then Blackberry was like the king of smartphones, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: And I mean, that sounds crazy because you look at Blackberry, back when they had keys, it was junk. You’d open up a website, and especially if it was like a news website, and there’s like ads, it would cut up the website and put it in this narrow little window that was infinitely long, and you weren’t sure if you’re reading an ad or the article that somebody sent you. It was such garbage. Anyway, so Apple comes out with their iPhone and because it didn’t have keys on it, people were like, “That’s stupid, it’ll fail.” But Apple knew that they only need to get maybe three, 4% of the population to go, “Oh, this is great, it’s a way better experience.”

Ariane Sommer: Yep. And that’s all it takes what-

Dr. John Jaquish: And then everybody follows. Because people are stupid and they would just follow. They’ll just follow with their neighbor does. And it’s fine, people are mad at me and, hey nobody likes Steve Jobs, the guy has had amazing disrespect through his whole life. And I mean, he didn’t care.

Ariane Sommer: You got to-

Dr. John Jaquish: And neither do I.

Ariane Sommer: And you know this is something interesting you say because it takes a lot of mental fortitude and perseverance to not just create something, but then to follow through and see it through successfully. And what is it … I mean, do you just have this … is it just innate in yourself or are there certain things you do in your mind? Are there certain practices that even when times were tough, and I’m sure there have also been lots of ups, I mean people know, you’re around the world, but I’m sure there were also hard times? So what pulled you through these times, and just kept on charging ahead to the place … and get you to the place where you now have been for many years?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a great question. You have to look at the people who are unable to understand and especially jealous people because they’re the trolls, the people who come and insult you. They’re insulting me because I’m succeeding. Like if I had a stupid product, I wouldn’t hear from anybody. It would just be like crickets. No comments on my ad, no interaction with my Facebook page or my Instagram account. But I have a user group with 28,000 people in it and I have a million Instagram followers, so I’m doing okay. And people are highly interested in what I’m talking about.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I just don’t worry very much. Like when I see people who are just in dissension, okay, so you’re either not smart enough to follow along, which is fine, you will find everybody else is doing it because you’re just a follower. And that’s like, I don’t know, that’s half the population or a little less than half. I was amazed, I looked at some of the statistics of one of our groups of people, and that’s the 28,000 people, we’ve only had to kick out 200 people. I was shocked. I would have thought it was 2,000. So it’s like a lot of people are confused and skeptical, but then they read more. And then like, “Oh, I understand this guy makes perfect sense.”

Dr. John Jaquish: And then somebody will attack the product and then lose the argument. I’ll show him the science and other people are like, “Hey, dude, pay attention, there are hundreds of testimonials on that site. On the Facebook. And the Facebook page is great because you can’t fake that. Like everyone who’s posted their before and after results, they’ve been on Facebook since whatever, 2000 or 1999, right? And it’s like, you can’t go back in time and make all this stuff up, they’re real people with real results and you can see it. And so the angry people will first attack the science and then they lose that argument, and then they’ll attack me personally. Like that has anything to do with it. I mean, if you don’t like me that has no bearing on whether the product works.

Ariane Sommer: Right. And I’d like to feel personal attacks can be for a lot of people, for the majority of the people personal attacks, whether we admit it or not, for a lot of us that’s really like ah. How do you deal with it? Does it just go in here, go out there, or?

Dr. John Jaquish: I played rugby when I was in university. So um, yeah, nothing felt better than hitting some. And again, I’ve never hit anyone out of anger but I’m not an angry guy. But when you take one of these angry people and just allow them to be jealous, like they’re jealous, especially in the fitness industry because unfortunately, most people in the fitness industry don’t make much money at all. I mean it’s a horrible industry, they still tell people to do cardio and there have been 40 years of research that tells you that cardio protects body fat, so it keeps you fatter longer, and it breaks down muscle.

Dr. John Jaquish: So it gives you the opposite of what you want, yet they still sell. So I mean the fitness industry is not due for any awards in science. So I don’t feel sorry for anybody. But, the problem is, there’s a lot of jealousy because these guys believe they’ve worked hard their whole lives, and they’ve got nothing. And then they see me who they think I kind of came out of nowhere and never mind I developed a medical device that’s one of the most successful interventions probably in the world, ever. So I’m just kind of shocked, so why are you having a problem with me? All of a sudden, everything’s a problem where, I didn’t go to a good enough school, or I’m not that muscular.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I’m also, I don’t take any performance-enhancing drugs. So, yeah, are there people who look like absolute mutants out there because they take performance-enhancing drugs? Sure, I don’t see how that has any bearing on any conversation that we’re having. That’s a thing they admit now so, the whole bodybuilding community is like the kind of come clean about it. It’s pretty much a drug-induced sport, and there’s a reason you don’t see natural bodybuilding very often.

Ariane Sommer: It’s also something I want to talk about with you a little further down the conversation and, you know what you’re just saying there is a German saying, I’ll translate it right now. I’ll say it in German too, foreign language meaning, a great horse has 1,000 faults. What amazing means is that, when somebody sees a great horse, they’ll try to nitpick it apart and try to find all-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ariane Sommer: … wrong. And I think-

Dr. John Jaquish: I got an American expression for you. This is from Bay is for Babe Ruth. The loudest boos are from the cheap seats. The poorest people are always the angriest. Yeah, right? Because they got to go home to their house, look at their misery that they’re in and they’re furious. And they got to find somebody to blame. So all of a sudden it’s my fault. So now, but I welcome it, I love it. Because they feed in me. So for every clown that’s mad that I drive a Lamborghini every day and my girlfriend’s gorgeous, and the whole list of wonderful things, that all this success has brought, and I really … and I’ll rub it in anybody’s face. I’ll post a picture with me, with my Lamborghini, but then the captions are not about how great I am because of a Lamborghini like, so what if you want one, go buy one. They’re not that … well, maybe they are.

Dr. John Jaquish: But point is, the caption is always about something scientific, and something that they could find useful. But I love the rage because when they throw a childish tantrum, thousands more people come. And when those thousands of people come, half of them will read my book.

Ariane Sommer: … be on your side and what you’re saying here is a crucial thing, a lot of people are wired in a way that when they are faced with negative emotions of others, they’ll allow that to drag them down. And what you’re doing instead is using it as fuel. And I think this is something we can switch that flip in our brain, something that I-

Dr. John Jaquish: And I see it as they are the ones making me money, so I, often at the office I’m like, I gotta go water, my idiots. Just throw something out there that they’re going to get furious about and come after me and say, “No, you’re wrong,” and they’ll have no justification for their position at all. There’ll be no research whatsoever. They’ll insult me personally. When you insult someone personally, now that does work to a degree to get somebody discredited, but, you’re not buying me, you’re buying my product. So if you trash me, okay, maybe I’m not perfect, or maybe I am because I can’t defend myself everywhere. There’s like thousands of websites that have something nasty to say about me, like tens of thousands probably.

Dr. John Jaquish: And I’m not going to go on bodybuilding.com there’s a bunch of nasty threads about me and these are the people who are not allowed in the military because they’re not smart enough because they’ll kill somebody. They’ll shoot themselves in the foot or something like that. Amazed at the misspellings, we have spell check, it’s automatic, I don’t know how you did this. But it’s a really common thing and I love these guys because their rage becomes my money. So yeah, yeah, they’re accomplishing the exact opposite of what they want to. And in the meantime, everyone else is just sort of sitting watching this disaster, total train wreck, from any perspective and they’re like, yeah but the product is awesome, get it, try it. Like, yeah I’m helping people.

Ariane Sommer: And it also … you’ve helped a lot of people across the world and you’ve improved athletes, you have improved the health of tens of thousands of people around-

Dr. John Jaquish: There are 40 athletes, 40 professional athletes right now that I consult with regularly that use the product. Just did a video with Terrell Owens, he’s one of the best football players to ever play the game, he’s a receiver. So like Tom Brady’s a famous guy, nobody hits him. But Terrell Owens people had to hit him, he was the guy who scored all. So an amazing football player and he’s anX3 user so I didn’t even need to ask, he wanted to help out and he loves the product. So, yeah, I don’t have any problems with growth or growing the audience, or anything like that, just the controversy is driving … the controversy and the success.

Dr. John Jaquish: Like on the back of the book, there’s an endorsement from the Miami Heat. Professional teams never let you use their brand because that’s them, that’s the most powerful thing. But they gave me written permission to use that quote from the strength coach and listen to its Miami Heat. Normally you’d have to say, this is from like sports team in Miami, you wouldn’t be able to say basketball legally. So because they did that I can talk about it. And that’s nice.

Now there’s a lot of other famous athletes, like lots and some of the most famous athletes in the world use X3, but I don’t have an arrangement with them to be able to use their name, and some of them want a huge amount of money for me to use it. But then if you pay for it, even though they’re already using the product and we have no relationship, once I start paying them it kind of tarnishes the relationship.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because then it’s like well it’s a paid … you’re a paid guy so, what else are they going to say other than that your product’s perfect?

Ariane Sommer: Sure. And with the X3 bar, you created something very unique. Can you explain to the audience, to those who have not encountered it yet how it works?

Dr. John Jaquish: So it’s using the world’s heaviest latex banding, and then a bar to protect your joint … well hang on one second, I’m just going to go get it. If anybody can see the wine barrel behind me.

Ariane Sommer: Yep.

Dr. John Jaquish: That is where I store it. So very thick banding, and then there’s a plate you stand on also which protects your ankles from injury. But then the bar it’s anodized aluminum on the outside, and then it’s solid steel on the interior. So it’s not hollow like a regular Olympic bar. This thing will hold well over 1,000 pounds. And we do have people that use 1,000 pounds when using this. Now keep in mind, it’s lighter where your joints are at risk and it’s heavier where you’re in your more powerful position. So think about it this way, Peter Attia, you know who Peter Attia is.

Ariane Sommer: Of course.

Dr. John Jaquish: Dr. Attia has a very, very famous quote, and I quote him all the time. He says, “The problem of weightlifting is you overload joints and underload muscle.” And so he’s never really been that much of a fan of weightlifting. He does all kinds of athletic stuff like long swims, long runs. He’s very healthy, he’s a big advocate for ketogenic nutrition. And he has his podcast called Drive. If you’re listening Peter, I’d love to join you on your podcast. But this is really it and this is what keeps the wrists from bending, the wrist is always neutral when grabbing a hold of this bar and pushing forward, or pulling for the pulling exercises. So, yeah, that’s X3 and it is the absolute best home gym you’ll ever have. Normally a serious home gym will cost $5,000 for a power rack and weights, and then you also lose a room of your home or a garage.

Dr. John Jaquish: And it’s funny I get messages all the time it’s like, “Hey, you saved my marriage because now my wife doesn’t have to park outside.” And I always thought like, why weren’t you parking outside? I don’t know. Maybe next I’ll be a marriage … yeah.

Ariane Sommer: You know, I still have to try your bar, I am super intrigued by it, looks, and I know from so many people just swear by it and what an effective device it’s been in their lives. And with regards to strength training, and you also, we talk about controversy and social media, and how it actually can fuel our missions too-

Dr. John Jaquish: Completely.

Ariane Sommer:… take it too personally. So what are some of the most widespread and also dangerous myths of strength training that you have dispelled, and that a lot of us still believe?

Dr. John Jaquish: Boy, a lot of them. There’s no such thing as the anabolic window. So exercising and then feeling the need to stuff yourself with either nutritious food or nonnutritious food, no such thing. Doesn’t exist. And it’s been proven, there’s research, so this is not my opinion. Everything I’m saying here is backed up by research that was done by others, so it’s just really strange that people get mad when people get mad at me it’s like, why don’t you call the university? Why don’t you call the journal and tell them to resend the article course? That will never happen because these people are just clowns. So, cardio.

Ariane Sommer: Yes, you mentioned-

Dr. John Jaquish: Cardiovascular exercise. It’s terrible for what people want. Now, if you want to be a marathon runner, you got to run a marathon, period. But, you got to understand, the purpose of … so the body reacts to environments, right? If you’re in an environment where you have to go long distances on a small amount of fuel, what is the way to do that?

Well, let’s look at automobiles. If you want an automobile to go a long distance with a small amount of fuel, like an economy car, what’s it going to look like? It’s going to have a very lightweight frame, it’ll have a large gas, it’ll have a very small engine, weak engine. So if you look at a human that’s designed for the same thing, you see very low bone density because why would you carry around a heavy chassis?

Dr. John Jaquish: Why would you want … if what you have become is you’re a human Prius, you’re a human Prius, it’s an economy car, right? So nothing against Prius but like distance runners are more like human Prius. So the very small amount of energy, very poor accelerations, very lightweight frame. So you don’t want to … it is crash tested so it’s no lightweight.

But when it comes to runners, they have very low bone density and they have fractures all the time. And distance swimmers also, swimmers are worse, because they don’t get any impact at all. And cyclists too, no impact. At least runners are getting a little bit of heel strike, but not much. The proper way to strike is the mid-foot, shoe kind of screwed us up, but running coaches have kind of figured out how to do it right now.

Dr. John Jaquish: So you’re becoming this Prius and so you’re weak chassis, very low muscle because as I said, cortisol gets rid of muscle. It metabolizes the muscle and then preserves body fat. So you look at most runners and you call them skinny fat. So yes they are lighter-weight people, but they got cellulite all over the backside, they just look off.

And then if you look at the opposing type of athlete, the power path, that’s an athlete that’s not like a Prius at all. That’s an athlete that’s meant to go a short distance with great speed and power. So they’re going to have higher bone because they go through high impact. They’re going to have a larger engine. What’s the engine? It’s a muscle, so they’re allowed to carry more muscle.

Dr. John Jaquish: You look at a sprinter, even in their upper body, they’re muscular. And the reason why is when you throw your arm back when you run, there’s weight in the arm that pivots your pelvis as you move so that your next toe strike, and by the way, sprinters run on their toes, not a midfoot strike.

So the next toe strike is further. And so they’re always training the whole body so that they’re incredibly balanced and they’re using the weight of their upper body to propel themselves further, just via momentum. And so sprinting is very energy efficient, you look at how much work gets done, you don’t need a lot of fuel in your body to run very quickly. But you are limited in how long you can keep that speed up.

Ariane Sommer: Yes. And you know-

Dr. John Jaquish: So whether it’s 40 or 100 yards if you look at the difference between 100-yard time and 200-yard time, it’s way more than double for most athletes running the 200 yards. So you instead of becoming that Prius when you do strength training, you’re becoming a Formula One, you are built for power, and everything in you is powerful. Your bone is powerful, muscle is powerful. I think it influences some psychological things also so that your sort of mental fortitude becomes a lot stronger. Now that’s a theory, that’s not backed up in science.

Ariane Sommer: ‘Sure, I can only-

Dr. John Jaquish: I have to say that.

Ariane Sommer: Yeah, I can only speak from my, of course, I’m not a power athlete, I’m also not considered a powerlifter. But, the more defined my body is, the more lean muscle mass I have, the better I also feel. And talking about muscle, should we worry about our muscle fiber type?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, that’s great, thank you. That’s like another total myth. Your body can change what type of muscle tissue you have. So you do a lot of sprinting, your muscle type is more geared towards that. So type one, type two fiber, it doesn’t matter. A lot of people are like, “I’m all slow to it.” Okay, well by choice, or do you think you were born that way? And because they’re not. You’re not born that way.

And things can change. Also, we have proven in the last 20 years that there’s such a thing as hyperplasia happens not just in infancy, but in adulthood. So you can split muscle cells, you can grow the thickness of the sarcomeres, so the density of the muscle and as well as how much contractile energy is stored within the cell, so ATP, glycogen and creatine phosphate.

Dr. John Jaquish: So there are two types of muscle growth, there are myofibrils, that’s like the density of the fiber and which also influence the size, and then there’s the fuel, contractile fuel that is held and that’s sarcoplasmic growth. Then you can also split the cell. So there’s a lot of different things that are going on that we very carefully designed the X3 to do all of.

All of the math and that’s why it worked so well and, yeah, we have hundreds of just brilliant testimonials. And the strange thing, initially I targeted fitness people for the product. And I realized that this is a crowd of people that the majority of them cannot grasp scientific research. They just weren’t smart enough.

Dr. John Jaquish: So I switched the target to busy professionals. Because busy professionals, want to look and feel great too, just for different reasons. They might not be on an athletic field, or they might be on an athletic field over the weekend. But time means, and an efficient workout also means time efficient. And so because it was a time-efficient workout and the results were better than weight training, so I have athletes that used to work out for two hours a day like Terrell Owens, for example, used to work out for two hours a day. Now his workouts are 10 minutes and he’s in better shape. The guy can walk back onto an NFL field at 47. I mean he’s a Hall of Famer but I think right now, he’s better than he was when he was playing.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so, I see this over and over again and, I mean, yeah, people complain about it, but those are just the jealous ones. It’s, sorry, I mean, this is reality. There are hundreds of testimonies, and the reason I brought that up is that most busy professionals don’t want to take shirtless pictures and put them on the internet. So in the beginning, I had a lot of trouble, they would take some pictures and then they’d just to me. And it’d be wow, it’s great, can I put them on the website. And they’re like, “Hell no. I work for JP Morgan. I work in finance, I can’t have shirtless pictures of myself on the internet.” And I was like, I mean, I get it.

Dr. John Jaquish: If I did something else, I probably wouldn’t put shirtless pictures of myself on my Instagram account. But I do what I do.

Ariane Sommer: Right. And I mean what you developed and it’s just a great hack if you do want to say and time is … precious time is our most precious commodity no matter what you do. You also have a hack for doing push-ups in a way that alters the amount of muscle and the positive effects we can get from it. Would you share that with us?

Dr. John Jaquish: Where did you find that? Wow. Okay, yeah. When somebody does push-ups, especially with the de-conditioned population that we have, most people can’t do them. I mean these are pretty de condition people but, what I would say is, you can handle lowering weight, you can handle more weight in a lowering back than you can in raising it. So what you do is you put your knees on the ground and do the push-up. And then as soon as you’re up, not to lockout but you know right here because you don’t want to lockout in really anywhere, it just damages your joints. Then you pick your knees up and you lower yourself with your entire body weight and then repeat the process.

Dr. John Jaquish: So yeah, that’s in essence, it’s not variable resistance because we want to vary the resistance throughout both the eccentric and concentric movements, and we’re not doing that, but it’s a way where somebody who can’t do push-ups can start. Because when they say, “I can’t do one.”

It’s like what are you going to say, keep at it? No, there’s a strategic way to get that started and I think I started that off, like sometimes elderly people will contact the company and they say, “I’m beaten up, everything hurts and I want to do X3 because it seems like that would be much easier on the joints.” And it is way easier, which is by the way, how I attract the NFL and NBA players were because they have joint injuries.

Dr. John Jaquish: And if they can lift heavy without joint risk, they are in. And then and then all of a sudden they’re like, “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been.” And then they didn’t see that coming, they didn’t think that was passed… with the X3. They just believed it was probably as good as, but a lower chance of injury, even though I tell people all the time, this is way better than a weight workout. So, what’s the initial question?

Ariane Sommer: About the pushup hack.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right. Yeah so like elderly people they can’t do a push-up, I get them doing the push-up. And so then it’s like, “Wow, I’ve gotten stronger by doing this.” And then it’s like, okay, so now you’re ready for X3. But, it doesn’t matter where you are in your physical development, it’s where you’re going and that’s just you versus you, it’s not you versus anyone else.

I tell people, yeah I get the genetics question all the time. Well, don’t you just have good genetics? Well, a lot of people say that about muscular people because they want an excuse as to why it hasn’t happened for them. Like somebody who’s never been financially successful likes to imagine that everyone who is, inherited at it all, or they cheated it out of somebody.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s the socialist idea, sort of the religion of jealousy. Somehow I’ve been ripped off and the same is true when it comes to physical development because there are guys who honestly have worked hard for years and not seen any results. And this is my summary of the fitness industry, I would say the fitness industry might create maybe one out of 10,000 people. Did I lose you there for a second?

Ariane Sommer: No, you’re back.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. Oh, good. Yeah. So maybe one out of 10,000 people are exceptionally fit, and most people who go to the gym, don’t change. So I don’t know why anyone’s even defending the fitness industry in general. Because, while they might say, “All the pros do this or that, or their favorite bodybuilder, he would never use bands or X3 or whatever,” first of all you don’t know that, and that individual may be an X3 user.

But second of all, why isn’t everybody who has a gym membership, why don’t they just have a beautiful body? Why do the people at Pizza Hut look just like the people at Planet Fit? Same people, fat, weak, why if it works so well?

Dr. John Jaquish: The answer is it doesn’t work, works for a few. And the genetic difference, as it turns out, and I did research this thoroughly, and I put it in the book, this is like the last chapter book, it has to do with tendon layout and how some people have a tendon insertion. Their pectoral tendon, most people inserts right here. And for some people, it inserts at the other end of the bicep. So what happens when your pectoral insertion is here, you have more leverage on that bone, you have a longer lever arm. And a longer lever arm means you can deliver more power. So that’s a mechanical advantage that they then when they go to lift weights, they can gain muscle much easier.

Dr. John Jaquish: But when you look at what X3 is a variable resist, you take that human limitation out of the equation completely, and now everybody has the same ability to build muscle like the most muscular guy. And so that’s really why the fitness industry has failed so much, is because everybody’s looking at the genetic outliers, the people that have an advantageous tendon layout, or they might be taking performance-enhancing drugs, I won’t take that out of the equation. But it’s like, doesn’t it bother anybody that it’s so uncommon to be exceptionally fit and yet, they will go to a gym year after year after year, and nothing changes? Their big fat gut is still there, their double chin is still there, and they still have baby arms.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yet, they’re not putting it together, as I said, these people aren’t necessarily smart and I don’t know what it is about the fitness industry that attracts… I think it’s, there’s some involvement in the fitness industry that are just, and maybe they have like little man disease or something like that. They feel inadequate so they’re going to sort of go to the gym and build up their body and show everybody that they’re the tough guy. I think that that’s a little bit of that. And I’ve been looking for a psychological paper on that.

Ariane Sommer: And of course, it’s a huge industry, billions and billions of dollars, and a lot of people, they’re trying to find a way to better themselves, and of course they’ll go somewhere that is generally accepted as this is the place where you optimize-

Dr. John Jaquish: They’re followers, it’s what I was saying earlier. They’re just going to go like lemmings to where everyone else, and do what everyone else is doing, even if it’s wrong.

Ariane Sommer: So you’ve already shared some of your practices and some of the things you have done in your life, how you’ve dealt with certain situations, how you’ve developed certain things like your business with us. And there’s a question I ask every guest, I’m particularly interested in your answer if you would share with us which practices have helped you perform better in life mentally and physically and that you’ve kind of kept overall this last year.

Dr. John Jaquish: So I am only prepared to talk about something when I can speak on it with absolute conviction. So, I get, it’s funny, some of my professors from Sacramento State where I went to undergrad, they’ll be like, “Hey, you want to come to speak to my class?” I say, not really. Because no one’s going to follow my advice. When I talk about how many weekends I didn’t go out and I worked, and how many … like when I started my company I went four years, my income was zero. And like, they’re just not going to do that, so what’s the point? Why? Why go tell them? Maybe I’ll get through somebody and they’ll be like, “Wow, that was a lot of sacrifices. I can make sacrifices like that.”

Dr. John Jaquish: I also tell people to start, like if they’re planning, if they have an idea, and they want to start a business, do it young. Because when you’re married and have kids, you don’t want to risk the financial future of your child and your partner, right? When you’re young, you don’t have anything, hold me back, take the big risks, and that’s what I did, and it worked. And I was also right about what I was saying so you got to be right. And the other thing, it’s hard to say is like, hey, if you want to succeed, you got to come up with an idea for something that no one’s ever come up with before.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s like, that’s really hard advice. Yeah so, I don’t give that advice. I talk about just being able to … and especially if you’re going to change the world. Most people that are talking about most things are repeating what they were taught, that many other people said before, so there’s no controversy, there are no questions, there’s no nothing. But also, you won’t get much attention for that, and you won’t generate if it’s for a business, and just … you’re not going to generate much income for the business. But if you’re coming with a controversial message, if you’re coming with a message that, and again, I don’t know why people get upset by science they don’t like, it’s not for you to like, it’s for you to understand, that’s it.

Dr. John Jaquish: And if you want to do it differently, let’s say somebody wants to continue lifting weights even after they read the book, okay, you can do it the inefficient way, but when you’re using a cane when you’re 50 because you were squatting heavy ass to the floor, and that’s the way it’s done, I’m probably going to knock you over. I’ll just push you over. I told you that was going to happen. I would only do it to a select few people, by the way, not everybody. But yeah, I have some good friends that will just … they’re all about the heavy squats, and they complain about needing a knee replacement at like 30 and I’m blown away, like, you know you’re damaging yourself that much.

Dr. John Jaquish: And by the way, getting a mechanical knee, that is not like a magic solution. There’s a whole list of problems that can come with that mechanical knee. So I don’t know, some people are so married to a certain idea that I just kind of leave them alone like, okay, well enjoy that.

Ariane Sommer: Everybody needs to make their own choices. I highly-

Dr. John Jaquish: But look at the Biohacker Community. When you take somebody who’s looking at what’s going on in the body and, by the way, all the populations I described, the Biohacker Community… Because these are people, wonderful people who are looking for a better way. I don’t know what way … there’s the way we’re doing it, but is there a better way? Is there a better way to brush your teeth? Is there a better way to get higher quality sleep in a shorter period? They’re willing to read an article about that because wow, that would really … they could have an extra two hours and they can just get six hours a night and feel like they got eight hours of sleep? That would be amazing.

Ariane Sommer: Absolutely, yep.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and by the way, you can do that. You have to stop drinking-

Ariane Sommer: Oh yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Stop drinking alcohol though. Yeah, that’s how you do it, stop drinking alcohol. So when we look at all these little things, and like I said, most people are … it’s a smaller population now because X3 is becoming ubiquitous. It’s like we’ve sold more than 100,000 units and when exercise fanatics get together with other exercise fanatics and one guy brings his X3, chances are the other people when they hear from that one guy are going to go out and get an X3. I think something like 75% of our sales is from word of mouth.

Ariane Sommer: Perfect.

Dr. John Jaquish: And we are spending millions on social media advertising still. So it’s just, sales are just doing this and we have an exit survey and it’s like, oh, a friend told me. and a friend told me seems to be like, like I said, it’s like the 70% or 60%, or-

Ariane Sommer: Yeah for everything that you’ve said also, I highly recommend it for people who want to learn more about it, we just scratched the tip of the iceberg here and I know there’s so much more you have to share, I’d love to talk some more with you also in the future if you’re available. But for people who want to delve deeper, 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: Yep, right here, one more time.

Ariane Sommer: Yep, get into that book. And for people who want to learn more about you or reach out, where can they find you? Where can they find more about you? For those that are not yet acquainted with you.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. Yeah, my last name is a little tough so, I got a landing page. It’s doctorj.com. D- O- C- T- O- R, the letter J .com. And you can find my Instagram there. Also, follow me on Instagram, couple of times a week I give free advice, and then I show the science that I’m basing the advice on. So, somebody wants to question if it’s good advice, they can go read the science if they want it.

Ariane Sommer: Fantastic. And I am going to follow up on your recommendation, I am going to take the bone density test. And if it’s not-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, send it to me.

Ariane Sommer: Yes, please, because I would love to. If it’s not to my satisfaction, I’d love to find a way to enhance my bone density keeping within my lifestyle parameters, and I would love to be able to come to you and seek your advice.

Dr. John Jaquish: Perfect.

Ariane Sommer: Awesome.

Dr. John Jaquish: You got it.

Ariane Sommer: John it’s been-

Dr. John Jaquish: All right.

Ariane Sommer:… really, really cool to talk to you. Learned a lot, got a lot of things to look into, it was great fun. I’m super grateful you took time for us today, thank you for being my guest.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome, thanks for having me.