Dr. John Jaquish - Scientist, Wall Street Journal Best Selling Author, Partner w/ Tony Robbins, Inventor & Philanthropist

Dr. John Jaquish, scientist, and Wall Street Journal best-selling author. of Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want talks with host Ryan Alford of the Radcast about truly tapping into the potential of the human body.

Full Transcript

Ryan Alford: Hey guys, what’s up? Welcome to the latest edition of The Radcast. We’re getting radically fit today, folks. Radical, radical fit. I was like, “I can’t believe it.” Dr. John Jaquish, what’s up, brother?

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

Ryan Alford: So, we’re going to talk about Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want. That’s the attention-getter in and of itself.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s the title of my book.

Ryan Alford: And, the X3 bar. Doctor, let’s just start with you, man. Let’s start with your background. Let’s give everybody a taste for everything that you’ve been doing, you’ve been up to and we’ll start there and then we’ll dig into some of your journey and all those things.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure, I got started in life sciences. I had an MBA at the time, I just finished undergrad, I went and did my masters. I was doing marketing sales for a software company and I had always wanted to go to school for medicine, but my father wouldn’t pay for that. So it’s like, “All right, what will you pay for?”

Ryan Alford: No med school for you.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, and he told me later on, “You were going to do the medical thing anyway,” because he knows me. He knows when I read a book and I’m interested in it I remember every word. I can tell you what’s on page 65. So, he kind of just knew that that was going to happen. And so, what ended up happening was after… As I was working, my mother was diagnosed with osteoporosis, and for those of you that don’t know, it’s increasing the porosity of bone or the porousness, that’s literally what that means.

So, the bone becomes more brittle and it’s more likely to fracture, and a fracture in the hip joint after the age of 50 holds a 50% chance of death within one year. So, it’s a big deal, and osteoporotic fractures, they’re right in line, about the same amount of people are killed by breast cancer every year as by osteoporotic fractures.

Ryan Alford: Wow, you don’t hear about it as much?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, you don’t. Well, it’s because breast cancer is what does you in as opposed to the complications. So, it’s a little less dramatic. It’s like, “Oh yeah, my mother slipped and fell. She broke her hip, she was in the hospital, she got fluid in her lungs, got pneumonia, couldn’t move around, couldn’t heal from pneumonia and it eventually got her.”

And so, that was the kind of story that you’d hear all the time about osteoporosis and my mother was terrified and also she was very active back then and she still is now. So, I just felt sorry for her. I felt like she wasn’t going to be able to live her life anymore. And so I told her, “Let me read up on this. Let me understand more about bone health.”

Dr. John Jaquish: And, the approach I took was very different. I looked at how humans build bone density in the first place. So, the way we build bone density is through high-impact activity. Are you ever in a house with little kids and they run around? They sound like elephants, but they only weigh like 50 pounds. They’re pounding their heels on the ground, which gives them impact through the spine and that high impact, that abrupt force through the bone mass will trigger bone growth.

Now, the minimum dose-response for the hip joint is beyond 4.2 multiples of body weight as an adult. So, people aren’t getting that in the gym, which is why so many people have a bone density challenge later in life, even when they work out or go running or whatever, and now that I have worked in the fields for a while, it’s something I heard every day when somebody would say, “Well, yeah, but I work out. I don’t understand why I have this problem.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, you need to put 4.2 multiples of your body weight through your hip joint. You are not doing that. I don’t need to go to the gym with you. I know you’re not. Pro athletes don’t do that. So, something needed to be developed that was different. And so, what I did was develop a series of impact emulation devices. So, it gives you the benefit of high impact, places you in the position where you’d normally absorb the highest forces.

So like in the upper body, back of the hand in line with the clavicle, 120-degree angle, upper to lower arm, that’s how I would either absorb or produce the greatest amount of force. So, taking that research and how to position the body like that, I did and developed a bunch of prototypes, and now OsteoStrong is usually successful. We’re in 10 different countries, 150 locations.

Ryan Alford: Wow, and Tony Robbins got involved, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right, Tony Robbins is a partner of the business.

Ryan Alford: *How did that come to fruition?

Dr. John Jaquish: The best connections I’ve made in life, I just did the right things to make these people come at me because most of the people where you want to get their attention, they’ve got hundreds of thousands of people trying to get their attention and you’re probably not going to get it unless they notice you first. I’ve had strategies of trying to get in front of certain people because I want to show them, very influential physicians, professors.

They’re being courted by pharma companies and stuff. You got to do whatever it is where you just happen to be in front of them all the time. So, one day I just get a call at my office and my assistant hands me the phone and some guy wants to buy the devices and I’m like, “Okay.” I take the call and the guy said his name was Tony, just Tony, that was it.

Dr. John Jaquish: But, the voice sounded familiar because he has a distinct voice, but I didn’t put it together who he was and he’s like, “I want one of your whole setups. I want all of them.” And I’m like, “Well Tony,” because I didn’t know who he was, “It cost me like $300,000 to put these prototypes together, that’s all I have, prototypes. These aren’t in production.”

He goes, “I’ll pay $300,000 for that.” And I’m like, “Who is this? What’s your last name?” And he laughs, and he goes, “This is Tony Robbins.” And I was like, “Okay, all right, now it’s making sense.” And I’m like, “Well Tony, are you going to help me get this all over the world if I get you one of these things at cost? He goes, “Yeah.”

Dr. John Jaquish: All right, so I screwed one together, went down to… At the time he had a place in a kind of near Palm Desert. It was in Palm Desert. He had a great house on a golf course, it was amazing, and I installed it in his house and showed him how to use it and we hung out for hours. It was great.

Ryan Alford: That’s awesome. Not every day does the phone ring and it’s Tony Robbins on the other end of the line.

Dr. John Jaquish: But, I think if you’re doing the right things you end up attracting.

Ryan Alford: That’s right. The law of attraction, manifestation.

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s a lot of distortions of that. I think people are like, “Write the word Lamborghini on the back of your hand,” and they’re like, “All right, One of them is just going to show up at any moment.” No, you got to work.

Ryan Alford: You got to work for it. That’s interesting though. So, how’s it distributed now? How’s it working? How does someone want to use it or…

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I met a guy, I’m glad he had the foresight for this, he says, “This is only going to work in a franchise model. And so, Tony was already sort of involved talking to me, but this guy showed up and he goes, “I want to make it into a franchise and I want to get it all over the world and that’s the fastest way to grow and that’s the only way to grow this.” Because as soon as people find out about it, they’re going to want to do it. You don’t want people to find out about it and then a center shows up in their town 10 years later. They have long forgotten about it. So, his name is Kyle, he’s the CEO of the company. So, he put the company together, raised the money, and then I’m licensing my intellectual property to that end.

Ryan Alford: I got it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Hey, I don’t know anything about running a franchise. So, I’m just sort of the science.

Ryan Alford: Great. You’re a doctor, obviously a super smart dude, but I’m hearing entrepreneur.

Dr. John Jaquish: Some people would argue with that.

Ryan Alford: All right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Usually, they can’t spell though. They’re the bodybuilding community.

Ryan Alford: We don’t count the trolls.

Dr. John Jaquish: They’ll say you’re dumb and they misspell you’re and they misspell dumb.

Ryan Alford: But, you sound like an entrepreneur though. Is that a thread of everything? Are you an entrepreneur at heart?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Ryan Alford: Does that come naturally to you?

Dr. John Jaquish: It does. I see the same problems that everybody else does, but I see different ways of solving them and it’s just a way of thinking. How else would we solve that problem? It amazes me how few people ask themselves that question, and you can think of hundreds of different examples. My favorite one is the iPhone. Every tech reviewer, except Walter Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal, said the iPhone was going to not only fail, but it was also going to cause Apple to go bankrupt. It’s now the wealthiest company there has ever been. I think their market cap report comes out today, or maybe later today. I didn’t see it, but I know it’s going to be ridiculous.

So, when the iPhone came out everyone said, “Well, it doesn’t have a keyboard,” because back then BlackBerry was the thing and it had a nice keyboard where every button you push you could feel the click and everyone’s like, “Oh, it doesn’t get better than this.”

Ryan Alford: I was involved with launching the iPhone, and so yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: Nice.

Ryan Alford: I’m very aware of it. I worked with Verizon Wireless in their marketing, so yes. I was very involved in all of those discussions of the BlackBerry versus the slider device and not having a keyboard. No one’s ever going to use a touch screen. You’re exactly right.

Dr. John Jaquish: People were saying that and Walter Mossberg just said, “You might think you know everything about touch screens, but I promise you to don’t.” Because he read the technical documentation, and I don’t think he knew exactly how it was going to work, but he knew it was nothing anyone had ever seen before. So, his attitude was just don’t assume, try it, and I think that was a technological marvel.

I think what I did for exercise science when I invented the X3, the X3 is much more simple and elegant, but it works better than anything that has ever been out there. Variable resistance works better than anything that’s ever been out there, and for some reason, the fitness industry is very slow to understand or apply that. I think part of it is there’s just the ability to understand science is lacking in fitness.

Dr. John Jaquish: There are sports scientists. Most of them go into coaching for strength conditioning coaching for NFL, NBA, college teams, and while they know what they’re talking about, it doesn’t really… The knowledge doesn’t make it into the industry because the fitness industry is selling supplements and selling gym memberships. So, there’s not a lot of motivation to help people get results unless it happens to be with their fat loss product or whatever.

Ryan Alford: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so, it ends up being kind of a… I think fitness discussions, especially online, really degrade to an achieved ignorance. So, it’s like people went out of their way to learn sort of the way things are, in quotes, but the way things are is wrong and I could disprove the way people approach cardio, I can disprove the way people approach strength, and those are the only two things they’re out there doing. Yeah. So, the full title of my book is Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time: And So is Cardio. There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want.

Ryan Alford: Did it all start with the osteopetrosis and your mom? Is that the passion for fitness, it all centered from there and built?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I never would’ve entered to fitness ever. I thought it was a dumb industry catering to highly unintelligent people, and you only need to go on… Just read the comments on a Generation Iron article. You’ll fall on the floor laughing, almost every word misspelled, either no punctuation or punctuation all misused. It blows my mind, but there’s just something about the lowest common denominator and an interest in fitness, and I think your listeners will appreciate this, at first we targeted a little more traditional audience with X3.

So, when launching the fitness product, we developed the ultimate strength building, muscle building product, and it’s cheap by comparison. Most people have a home gym, they spend $5,000 on it. This one’s $500, but instead of… They just didn’t get it. They didn’t understand why variable resistance was better.

Dr. John Jaquish: And, then you show them a bunch of studies and there’s no way they can read them. So, it’s almost like it’s written in a different language. So, we pivoted quickly and I think any entrepreneur needs to realize, your advantage as a new company and as a person who’s doing something that’s never been done before, you can change your strategy in an afternoon, whereas a huge company can’t do that.

Ryan Alford: They can’t turn the ship fast enough.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, so immediately when we started looking at busy professionals, well busy professionals, so they’re smarter. So, they won’t go to the gym and get no results year after year after year. A stupid person will do that and just think one day they’ll just wake up and look like Arnold Schwarzenegger even though nothing’s happening. A smart person just won’t do it.

Dr. John Jaquish: They’ll say like, “Well, I’m doing what I was told to do, but something’s missing. So, I may just take a hiatus from fitness for now until I come across some better information.” And, that was the majority of the people that were first into X3, and they just said, “Yeah, everything you’re saying is right. I tried doing everything like everybody else was doing it and just got no results out of it.” I laugh at the fitness industry because people are so passionate about supporting the traditional way of doing it, yet almost nobody’s fit.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m not talking about Gold’s Gym in Venice, California. That’s where all the pro bodybuilders train. Most of them are not naturally trained anyway, so they’re taking all kinds of drugs and that’s up to them, that’s fine, but if you go into Planet Fitness anywhere in America, the people in there look no different than the people at the Pizza Hut. Where are the results? Why is it that everybody I know with a really good six-pack has a supplement contract? Think about that. It is so rare to have a chiseled abdomen and it’s so rare that the people that have that are paid to show it next to a bottle of whatever.

Dr. John Jaquish: And, if only one-tenth of 1% or one 100th of 1% is that impressive level of fitness, well then why is everybody doing what they’ve been doing now? Of course, the real answer is genetic, but it’s not hormonally genetic. It has to do with where the tendon is attached. So, some people have an advantageous tendon layout. So, instead of… My pectoral origin is on my sternum, but the attachment is right under the bicep, but some people have a mutation, so it’s on the other side of the bone. They have a longer lever and that lever is elastic in itself, and I think it’s so funny-

Ryan Alford: What you’re describing is that the problem though is, let’s be honest here, if it’s the average is, what, fifth-grade reading level, you’re too smart and too intelligent for your good when trying to market or sell the product because it’s just easier to say five-minute abs.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Simplistic messages, do get a lot more attention, but they’re not working.

Ryan Alford: No, but that’s just what people want to hear. It’s crazy.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, I know and it is funny what people want to hear, and I used the term a minute ago, achieved ignorance.

Ryan Alford: Yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: I came up with that and I’m going to try and drill that in everyone’s head. I like that term, and either side of politics, there are people who you’ll see their position on things and it’s like, wow, you went way out of your way to being misinformed.

Ryan Alford: Yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: You tried hard to only read the things that reinforce your existing opinion and you ignore the rest of it, so it’s achieved. You worked hard at being this stupid, and most people are like that, and whether it’s weightlifting or politics, I see people on political issues just not even understanding the words they’re using, but they don’t care because to them it’s not about knowing what’s right, it’s knowing that they’re right.

Ryan Alford: Right. I love it, so what made you develop the X3? I’ve read as much as I could read, I was going through your website reading all the reviews, all the science behind it, but where did the prototype for the X3 come from? What was the origination of that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, that’s a good story. The physicians in the clinical trial in London were like, “We’re putting incredible amounts of force to the body,” this is with the bone density device and they’re like, “What do people use when they go to a gym? What kind of weight?” The forces are so high because these postmenopausal women, that’s the subject of the study with postmenopausal women, were putting six, seven, eight, nine times their body weight through their lower extremities.

Remember, the minimum dose-response is 4.2. So, they’re going way beyond that. And so I said, “Okay, I’ll find out what people normally put through the body.” Now of course, when it’s weightlifting data, it’s full range training data, so weak range and impact range. So, like in a pushup or chest press, the weight part is back here.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, it turns out that most people who are beginning can lift 1.3 times their body weight and the advanced lifters, meaning like the top 10%, are 1.53 times their body weight, so not a lot of strength gain there, but that’s the way… Now, of course, somebody will be like, “Oh, I leg press like 1,000 pounds.” A leg press is like a parlor trick because most of the weight is going into the ground. After all, you’re pushing at a 45-degree angle. I can push-

Ryan Alford: It’s called leverage.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, I can push a car. A car weighs 4,000 pounds. Does that mean I can bench press 4,000 pounds? No. True raw weight, either on your shoulders or in a front squat on your clavicle, 1.53 is the highest level of loading that the top 10% of people see. Now, I was blown away like, “Okay, so the human body is capable of so much more and we’re just not tapping that potential.” So, when you’re in the stronger range of motion, you’re capable… And I did this by comparing the different data sets, you’re seven times more powerful in the impact of a ready range of motion than you are in the weaker range of motion. But when we lift, we only pick the weight based on the weaker range of motion. So, the weaker range of motion is the only place you’re stimulating muscle, which by the way, you have the least amount of muscle firing and you’re getting the most cumulative joint damage. Do you know who Peter Attia is, Dr. Attia?

Ryan Alford: I heard of that name. I don’t know where, but I have.

Dr. John Jaquish: He’s a smart guy. He’s got a podcast called The Drive.

Ryan Alford: Maybe that was it.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s mostly medical, and he talks about… He says, “My problem with weightlifting is that you overload joints and underload muscle.” And, it was great. Somebody sent that to me and he probably said it at the same time, right then when I was working on this and I’m like, “Wow, that guy identified the problem perfectly. That is the problem with weight training.” It just doesn’t place force where it should, but it places a lot of force where it should, and so what if we had a weight that we could change as we move.

Now, we’ve had band training for a long time, but the problem is most bands that people have seen are just weak, five pounds. That might be great for like rehabbing your shoulder, but it’s not great for anything else, or the bands can get more powerful and I ended up making my bands because there wasn’t anything powerful enough.

Dr. John Jaquish: And, what we saw was that if you tried to use this banding just by itself, you could real yourself. If you stand on a heavy band and try and do a deadlift with it, well, your ankles are getting lateral force, it only takes seven pounds of lateral force to break an ankle, but when I deadlift with the X3, I deadlift over 600 pounds.

Ryan Alford: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I do not want that force going into the ankle joint in any sort of lateralliteralo, we needed interfaces, we needed a new ground to stand on, which allowed the banding to run underneath, unencumbered and we needed an Olympic bar, so the wrist could rotate, but you could always stay neutral. My Olympic bar is actually a pretty smart invention because of the rotation. So, a bar that could handle that rotation and hang on to hundreds and hundreds of pounds of banding and then the plate. And so, then after developing that… At first, I thought about just writing a book about band training, but the problem is a band by itself is worthless.

Dr. John Jaquish: And, we’ve known this because a lot of people have made the observation that you have a strong range and a weak range and, wow, banding could really help, but then they start doing like a curl with bands and then they’re like, “Ow, my wrists hurt so bad.” Right, because your wrists are being twisted outward the whole time you’re doing it, you can’t get a workout there. You have a process called neural inhibition, which just shuts your body down, shuts muscles off because you’re receiving pain, or you actually create a real injury, and then you’re not training at all.

Ryan Alford: What’s the program with the X3? Walk listeners through what the structure of the program, the workout routine are like.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I do it six days a week. You start by doing it four days a week.

Ryan Alford: Do you do anything else besides the X3?

Dr. John Jaquish: Nothing.

Ryan Alford: Everybody watching the video, if you’re listening, you can’t see it, but this is why you should be watching the IGTV or YouTube, simple plug, but you look great.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks, man. I’m in better shape than I ever imagined I would ever be in. I’m in the best shape of my life, 45 years old. I have veins showing in my abs. I’m 240 pounds, six feet tall. I frequently cannot believe I’m in the condition I’m in. I have zero pain. I wake up feeling just like I did when I was 18 years old, nothing hurts, and I have two hemorrhage discs in my back from rugby. I just don’t feel them. They’re still there, it’s a permanent engine injury, but I have so much muscle supporting my spine because of the X3 deadlift that…

And here’s another thing, I can deadlift 600 pounds for very high repetitions, 20, 30 repetitions, but the risk is almost gone. Deadlift, as we all know, it’s one of the best exercises for your entire body, your trapezes, from the base of your skull, all the way down to your heels, the whole backside of your body is involved in the deadlift.

Dr. John Jaquish: Most people don’t do it though because they’ve hurt their backs doing it. So, you’re in your 20s and you go for a record deadlift and you feel a little pinch and then you wake up the next morning and you’re twisted up like a pretzel, and a couple of months later when you’re able to walk again, you’re like, “Yeah, I’m not doing that heavy deadlift again.” And, that’s the end of people’s heavy deadlifting, and, the NFL guys that I work with and the NBA guys, they’re not allowed to do anything heavy because if they get injured, they can lose their contract. NFL players may have a contract with a dollar amount, but that compensation is parsed out on a per-game basis. If they miss a game, they get paid zero.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s all about the game. So if you get hurt during training, that’s on you, and so they try and have them do things that are going to lower the risk, and getting stronger is a distant second to keeping from getting injured. So, they of course love X3, and you can see them all on the website. I think I got 19 NFL players that gave me their endorsement for free. A lot more NFL players use it that would not give me their endorsement for free for obvious reasons, it’s your brand-

Ryan Alford: I can’t blame them for that.

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s a guy, I think he used to be in New England. He’s a pretty good quarterback. A lot of people have heard of him, and there are others-

Ryan Alford: He might play Florida now?

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m not keeping track, but I can’t mention the names of a lot of guys who use it because it’s their brand, I understand, but…

Ryan Alford: What about for the average Joe listening? Maybe they’re working out now, they’re listening to this podcast going, holy s***, everything I’ve ever read and been taught about weightlifting may or may not be true.

Dr. John Jaquish: Not true.

Ryan Alford: Yours is six days a week, but what’s the standard recommended routine?

Dr. John Jaquish: Six days a week.

Ryan Alford: So it is-

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s exactly what I tell people to do.

Ryan Alford: How long a day is for the average person? How long do you go?

Dr. John Jaquish: So, it’s supposed to be a 10-minute workout, but the larger your muscles become, the more blood that muscle draws. So when I train my legs, my legs are big. I’m hands and knees gasping for air at the end of a set and it takes me a couple of minutes to catch my breath. So, it takes me a little bit longer than 10 minutes. If somebody looks at the forum, we have a forum on Facebook, there’s a guy named Daniels, a 300-pound bodybuilder, he’s 6'5” I think when that guy’s done with a set, the same thing, just gasping for air. It’s because the muscles are larger. When you see a 14-year-old kid doing bicep curls at the gym, he can go to fatigue, and like five seconds after he is done he’s like, “Okay, on to the next one.”

Ryan Alford: Ready.

Dr. John Jaquish: A bigger guy looks at that like… Coincidentally, this is where the myth comes from that big strong guys have terrible cardiovascular endurance. No, we don’t. We just have a bigger engine. So, there’s a guy I used to go to Russia with and we’d always switch planes in Munich and Munich is, I think, one of the worst airports in the world because they make you run up and down the stairs like four times because you got to go through immigration and then they got to look in your bag, even though you’re going onto another country anyway, and so you’re running up and down the stairs four times and then you get to your connecting flight, and of course, I’m gasping for air because I’m skipping steps, and my buddy who weighs 100 pounds less than me, he’s a British guy and he’s like, “Oh, your cardiovascular is terrible.”

Dr. John Jaquish: And I’m like, “No, you are just the size of a woman and when you contract your quadriceps, there’s not a lot of meat there.” With me, there’s three, four times as much, so it’s a bigger draw on my heart, which makes it seem like I’m out of breath, but my cardiovascular health is potentially greater than yours because endurance and health are not the same things.

So coincidentally, there’s a meta-analysis that I referenced in the book that is the collection of 100 different studies averaged altogether. It turns out that strength training is better for cardiovascular health than cardiovascular activity, which we call cardiovascular activity. And of course, the irony is, does your body know the difference between cardio exercise and strength?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, of course not. You’re moving, you’re contracting muscles, blood’s moving around. Cardio is just really lousy strength training that has no effect. It does a little bit on the heart, but certainly not on the musculature.

If anything, you upregulate cortisol and you diminish your musculature while protecting your body fat. Most people don’t realize chronic cardio will keep you as fat as possible for as long as possible all while getting rid of muscle, which is exactly the opposite of what people think they’re getting and there are 40 years of research here, but as I said, the fitness industry can’t read the research.

Ryan Alford: People are comfortable. They like getting on those machines for 45 minutes and barely breathing hard.

Dr. John Jaquish: I think it’s kind of a marketing thing. People who market cardio equipment, it’s a high margin business, right?

Ryan Alford: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: You sell like a Peloton or you sell a treadmill for a couple of thousand dollars, you’ve got a marketing budget that can convince people that that’s exactly what they need. The only thing missing in their life is a giant piece of cardio equipment in their guest bedroom.

Ryan Alford: They look so nice.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, right.

Ryan Alford: I always love seeing the commercials. It’s this pimp, New York, Manhattan, a condo and you look out the window and you’ve got a beautiful apartment, you’ve got a bike in the corner. It’s like, “Eh, I could go without the bike.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, exactly. Yeah. They always show some epic view.

Ryan Alford: Exactly, you’re killing the view with that bike. Let’s see an X3 in the picture. I bet it tucks away in the closet nicely because I’m about to order one when I get out of this room, I can tell you that right now.

Dr. John Jaquish: Your X3 will fit in a drawer when you’re done with it.

Ryan Alford: I love it, but obviously, I know you talk about this in the book and I’ve noticed the growth of the site and the other things it’s certainly about the workout, but a diet that’s more important-

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s no escaping, and it’s a couple of things. It’s one, most people are protein underfed. They don’t get enough protein or enough quality protein, and there’s really bad information that’s being pushed all the time. Vegan sources of protein, yeah, you can eat P-protein all day long, but it’s not utilized by the body which we measure by nitrogen output.

Protein that is digested and becomes waste is seen as nitrogen in both urine and fecal matter and we can measure that. So, when you have vegetable sourced protein, less than 9% of it goes into building your tissue. The other 91% or potentially more than that, just goes through you in a form of waste. Part of the problem that humans have in comparison to some primates is our intestines are like one-third the length.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, animals can draw more nutrients out of certain things, but we just can’t. Our intestines are not long enough. So, we’re genetically better at consuming more nutrient-dense foods and the thing that matters is the essential amino acids, so not necessarily protein per se because a steak is 38% available, eggs are 48% available for utilization by the body, so not anything is 100 other than bacterial fermentation and you asked about the product I came out with, Fortagen. That’s bacterial fermentation, it’s 100% utilized by the body, and so I’ll do four doses of that, which would equal-

Ryan Alford: Per day?

Dr. John Jaquish: 200 grams of protein and then I only eat one meal a day. So, that keeps me-

Ryan Alford: All the time?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right now all the time, until I get to a percentage of body fat that is uncomfortable. So, I want to take it to where I feel like it’s difficult to manage or I’m just not happy there, it’s uncomfortable. So right now, my latest experiment, which is after the book… The book came out about a year ago. So, I’m doing dry fasting 20 hours a day, so no food, no water for 20 hours. Then, I hydrate, do my workout and have a sizable meal, and then after about four hours I stop all fluids and then repeat the process. Dry fasting, by the way, I know that’s going to be your next question.

Ryan Alford: Yep.

Dr. John Jaquish: Why would you dry fast?

Ryan Alford: Yes, why dry fast?

Dr. John Jaquish: So, your body can only become so dehydrated. Also, a lot of what you’re told about dehydration and hydration are kind of silly, the idea that we need eight glasses of water a day, that was never in any study ever. There’s a study in 1945 that shows that you just eat regular food there’s enough moisture in the food that you don’t need to drink any liquids at all, so that’s the science.

Ryan Alford: So, there’s no benefit of the filtration that water… I’ve read data, it seems like that’s the one thing that stood the test of time is people saying, “If you want to lose weight, drink a lot of water.”

Dr. John Jaquish: So, it’s not like water’s keeping you from losing weight.

Ryan Alford: All right.

Dr. John Jaquish: However-

Ryan Alford: Maybe it’s that waffle you had this morning with lots of syrup.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, so when you get a little bit dehydrated, your body has another source of water it can tap into. It’s called metabolic water.

Ryan Alford: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s the water that’s in fat cells, so as the body starts drawing water out of the fat cells, the fat cells can destroy themselves, which is a more permanent type of weight loss, than caloric restriction or even intermittent fasting, and there’s so much nutritional argument going on right now between intermittent fasting and caloric restriction. I do both. Both of them have merit. I don’t know why you wouldn’t do both, but fasting does have some unique benefits.

Ryan Alford: So, intermittent fasting for you is how many days without food?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, I’ve gone five days with no food, but I was well-hydrated during that period. Now, you don’t want to drive fast for more than 20 hours, and not because something bad happens after 20 hours that we know of, we don’t, but that’s pretty much the longest Ramadan fast that’s been done and that’s… So, you can’t, based on human ethics boards at universities, tell people they can’t eat or drink, but if someone’s doing it for religious reasons, like with Ramadan, we can study that and more than a billion people do it every year and have done so for hundreds and hundreds of years and nobody’s ever been hurt.

Ryan Alford: Most intermittent fasting, I think, that I’ve… I’ve done it a few times myself is like 16 hours. You can eat from 11:00 to 7:00, but then from 7:00 PM to 11:00, you don’t eat, something like that.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, that would be more like a 20-hour fast period. I’m doing the same thing dry fasting. Okay. Dry fasting gives you results two or three times quicker with fat loss and it also accelerates autophagy, so cellular regeneration. I used to have a couple of scars. I had my fraternity letters branded into my arm and it was super thick. You could see it even years and years after being in the fraternity house, but as soon as I started intermittent fasting and going into a autopha, the scar started eating itself from the inside, it’s almost gone now. There are people who look at it and they’re like, “Did you have your fraternity brand removed?” No, it’s just eating itself from the inside.

Ryan Alford: That’s crazy. Let me ask you a different question. So, I talk with people that are successful all the time, like yourself, and steer you a little bit away from the fitness and the chemistry of all of this, talk about, what are your variables for success? What’s made you successful? I always like to ask entrepreneurs that I bring on the show if you’ve thought long enough or if you boil it down to certain characteristics.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, the hardest thing to do as an entrepreneur is to launch something no one’s ever seen before, a new concept, and I’ve done that twice. So, the bone density device was like, nobody had ever seen anything like that before and I had to argue with physicians all over the world. I spent like seven years flying everywhere talking about it. I would not even know what country I was in sometimes. I’d just be like, I wake up at some conference center and I’m like, “Where am I? What country am I in?”

Dr. John Jaquish: When you’re doing something like that, you really have to try and understand your audience and what they would need to understand what you’re saying. So, as soon as I realized physicians, don’t care about how shiny your brochure is or how good your website is at all. In fact, if you just give them data, you just send them a spreadsheet and say, “This is what we got out of the study and here’s the data,” some of the publications were just worded in an academic manner and published, and as long as it went through peer review and it had the statistical significance, they were looking for, that was it. And, it’s honestly a really refreshing group of people to deal with because all they need is the evidence.

Ryan Alford: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: But when it comes to the consumer, and also now we live in a time where I think there’s… Science is highly misrepresented, especially in this pandemic. So, it’s like they say three or four and they say, “Well, we’re doing this by the science.” And if you’re aware of the science, every single thing you’re doing is against what the science will tell you to do. So, it’s just something they say, so it’s kind of lost what it should mean, science in general, but it’s okay because like I said, you’ve got to learn how to communicate and each group that you’re marketing to, they might just communicate in a different way. So, I really started summarizing the science, but I’m also careful not to oversimplify. Oversimplification is just another word for wrong.

Ryan Alford: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I really worked hard at trying to get some of these things explained in a way where at least a portion of the population would get it because at some point your market is never everybody. It’s the group of people who’s most likely to understand because when they get it, other people will just look at them and go, “Okay, so that works. I don’t understand any of that science crap, but okay.”

Ryan Alford: I love it. As we wrap up here, tell me where everybody can kind of keep up with all things Dr. Jaquish and find the X3.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Ryan Alford: And, where I’m going to be ordering Fortagen later.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Ryan Alford: I’ve gotten tired of whey protein, anyway.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s only 18% usable, by the way.

Ryan Alford: I know, I’m like, “Damn, I’m wasting a lot of-”

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s so funny, so many people think the key to their success is their whey protein, and a lot of times I just don’t want to say it. They’ll come on the forum and they’re like, “I got X3 and I have six months of whey protein I’ve been saving for the start of this.” And I’m like, “Ugh, all right.” I’ll let somebody else break them the bad news.

Ryan Alford: Break the news.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I created a landing page. My last name is kind of difficult for some people to spell. So, my webpage is just doctorj.com , D-O-C-T-O-R, the letter J, dot com.

Ryan Alford: Hey, I remember that, Dr. J.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right. Well, Julius Erving’s fishing right now, so he doesn’t need it.

Ryan Alford: He doesn’t need it.

Dr. John Jaquish: No. So, I probably do the most on Instagram. If you’re going to follow me on one social media venue, that’d be it.

Ryan Alford: That’s cool, man.

Dr. John Jaquish: And, you can find everything-

Ryan Alford: X3bar.com still-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah,X3bar.com but if you go to doctorj.com-

Ryan Alford: You get all the links in there.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’ll say superior exercise and superior nutrition. Superior nutrition takes you to Fortagen, superior exercise takes you to the X3bar.com website.

Ryan Alford: Cool, brother. Man, I really appreciate you coming on.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks for having me, super fun.

Ryan Alford: It’s great. The RadCast is all about breaking trends. I want people to get out there and get off the damn exercise equipment and do something that works.

Dr. John Jaquish: __ That’s right.

Ryan Alford: I love it, brother. Hey guys, you know where to find us. We’re at theradcast.com . Search for all the content today, search for X3 Bar . You’ll find everything about Dr. Jaquish. We’ll see you next time on The RadCast.