Personifying High-Performance in All Aspects of Life with Your Physical Conditioning with Dr. John Jaquish

Dr. John Jaquish has devoted years to researching and developing improved approaches to health. He is the creator of the most successful bone density-building medical technology, which is now teamed with Tony Robbins and OsteoStrong for quick clinical rollouts. Find out more about restoring your body through exercise and nutrition.

Full Transcript

John Lee Dumas: Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Success Story Podcast. Today we’ll be talking about personifying high performance in all aspects of life with your physical training.

To drop these value bombs, I brought Dr. John Jaquish into EOFire Studios. John, who’s a Ph.D., has spent years researching and developing improved approaches to health. He is the inventor of the most effective bone density building medical technology, which is now partnered with Tony Robbins and OsteoStrong for rapid clinical deployments. His 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. We’re going to talk about why everybody or almost everybody fails in fitness.

We’re talking about rebuilding yourself with nutrition and exercise and focusing on short-term discipline instead of long-term motivation, and so much more.

Dr. Jaquish, say what’s up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

Dr. John Jaquish: Hey, good morning, Fire Nation. Something I disagree with is that I feel is pushed on everybody who wants to be an entrepreneur or a leader, is the idea that anybody can do this.

I worked with Tony Robbins for several years and this is right in his wheelhouse. And one day I was sitting with him, we were having a drink and it was like… I said, “How many people do you think you get to, at your shows.” Because books and tapes and stuff have no have of really telling. “How many people turn their life around?” He says, Maybe one or 2%." And I said, “No kidding.” And he said, “Oh yeah, I’m realistic about this.”

He says, “Most people, they get charged up by listening. And they have all the right information and they’re so grateful to have all the right information, but they’re just not willing to do it.”

And I have realized the same thing every time I get asked to speak about making sacrifices, it takes to really, let’s say, launch a product that’s never been seen by the world, a complete industry disruptive technology. I’ve done that twice now.

And when I say I had to not pay myself anything for seven years and I worked 60 hours a week. People just look at me and they’re like, well, I would never do that. And I’m like, right. You’re probably right. You wouldn’t. And so I think that being realistic about who’s pulling the trigger on doing what it takes, that number’s very small.

John Lee Dumas: So Fire Nation, I hope you realize the power of what we’re talking about here today, which is personifying high performance in all aspects of your life with your physical conditioning, guess what?

We’re not under the illusion that 99% of people that listen to this content are going to take the direct and amazing action and advice that Dr. Jaquish is going to be talking about here today. But you know what? We’re going to get across a 1%, we’re going to get across a 2%. And hey, when you have 128 million total listens of your podcast and two and a half million plus listens every single month, that’s actually, those start to be real numbers. I mean, Tony Robbins gets 10, 20-

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a lot of people. Yeah.

John Lee Dumas: 30,000 people are in those stadiums that you were talking about.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

John Lee Dumas: I’ve been in those stadiums. So those numbers are meaningful and they can compound over time. But I think it is really important just to have that realism. So I’m really glad you brought that up because, as I mentioned, in Fire Nation, we are talking about personifying high performance in all aspects of life with your physical conditioning. So think about this. So unfortunately when you look like a physical disaster, Dr. Jaquish, people believe it’s a reflection of your business. Can you talk about that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. There’s quite a bit of data, and this came out mostly in the ’90s when behavioral psychologists were looking at things that helped people do better in their business life and their professional life, and being attractive was one of the highest things on the list. Stated a different way, being in good shape.

Ultimately attraction boils down to how long somebody looks like they’re going to live. I know that’s very strange because you think about attraction and you think, what am I attracted to? Whether it’s… I’m just thinking of it’s the opposite sex.

Is it breasts or is it eye makeup or what catches my eye, it’s not like that. It’s more like people that look healthy are more easily trusted. They don’t look like they’re going to fall apart. And unfortunately, as the statistics show us when you’re a physical disaster, people don’t trust you. They think you have maybe no self-control or you’re not going to follow through. As somebody who’s overweight, one may end up thinking, well this guy can’t even control what he puts in his mouth. How is he going to handle me as a client?

John Lee Dumas: See, Fire Nation, what I love about this is the reality that you have control over this type of perception. Because if you’re not where you want to be physically right now, guess what? You can get there. You can do what it needs to take to get to a place where you look good, where you feel good. And that will be a reflection of you.

And I’ve said this to a lot of people, Dr. Jaquish, and I’m kind of curious about your thoughts on this because people kind of look at me funny like, oh you can’t say that, or you can’t think that way. They almost make it seem like I’m discriminating in a non-acceptable way when I say I will never vote for a fat person. And I say those words all the time. I forget the exact name of that guy. Who’s that guy that was the governor of New Jersey forever?

Dr. John Jaquish: Chris Christie.

John Lee Dumas: Chris Christie. So obese. And he was like this wonder king in the political world, and this guy could barely waddle down a street. And I’m like, I could never vote for a person like that because that person can’t even take care of himself. How can I ever expect him to take care of me and take care of his constituents when this guy can’t even take care of himself? Why is he so popular? Why does he get elected?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, he’s an exception. And he was a very charismatic person. And I think if you listened to him long enough, he might have won you over, but.

John Lee Dumas: He would not have won me over. I would’ve been like, you’re still fat.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, you don’t take care of yourself, man. It’s like, how do we know you’re going to live right through your term? So, it’s an important thing if you got to keep yourself healthy, you got to be more trustable. And it’s not trusted as in they think you’re lying. It’s trusted as in, is this guy even going to be around or is he going to get sick?

John Lee Dumas: But, is there something too that comes up where I think you obviously would probably know the percentage better, but something along the lines of 60% of people being overweight, over 35% of people are obese, at least in America?

Dr. John Jaquish: 75% of males are either overweight or obese.

John Lee Dumas: Okay, so that’s insane right now. So think about that… And so I’m wondering if you’re obese or overweight, are you in a sense voting for Governor Chris Christie because you’re like, okay, well I’m fat and he’s fat and he can do it. So I kind of like that. They kind of doing it out of being like, well I’m going to support somebody who has the same kind of physical disasters that I have.

Dr. John Jaquish: It doesn’t work that way.

John Lee Dumas: That’s good to hear.

Dr. John Jaquish: We learned this through the Curve’s experience. A lot of studies were done on the franchise Curves. It was a fitness franchise in the ’90s and I think it’s a hundred percent gone now, but it was a ladies-only gym. And so the idea is it’s not going to be intimidating for women because men aren’t allowed in the building. But what was funny is people who would sign up for Curves, and it wasn’t very good exercise equipment. The reason they probably didn’t allow guys in there and they decided only women was because the fitness equipment was just junk.

I mean lawn furniture kind of like with no resistance, you just sort of move a little bit. But typically when somebody signed up there and they lost weight, the weight loss had nothing to do with what was going on. Probably had to do with their nutrition control. But when they lost weight they would quit and go join a normal gym because even heavy people don’t want to work out with heavy people. They discriminate against others. So there’s almost no getting away from it. If you want to be successful, you’ve got to look like success in all aspects of your life.

John Lee Dumas: Now see, I am really glad to hear that because I think that’s the kind of mentality that we just have to have across the board. Because if that happens, then there will be this good social pressure to let’s get healthy. Just like it used to be unbelievably socially acceptable to smoke. You would have some social pressure if you weren’t smoking. Like, oh come on, just have a butt. This is of course decades and decades and decades ago.

Dr. John Jaquish: Hey, drinking is still like that.

John Lee Dumas: It is so like that. Right now I’m on a hundred day, this is a personal solo challenge where I’m doing no refined sugar and no white flour. And of course, that means I’m not drinking any alcohol for a hundred days, which is fine with me. I’ve done this and more for a long time. But man, John, just have a glass of wine tonight. What’s going to be the harm? I’m like, well number one, it would break my a hundred-day challenge, which I’m not going to do for one glass of wine. Number two, I know how much one glass of wine, not just disrupts, but destroys a good night’s sleep.

Dr. John Jaquish: Alcohol destroys your sleep.

John Lee Dumas: Destroys.

Dr. John Jaquish: If you need better sleep, I got some news for you. You just cut the booze out.

John Lee Dumas: Cut the booze out, baby. Cut the booze. The deep sleep, the REM sleep, it just literally goes away. Especially the deep sleep completely goes away. And I track this stuff every single day. My HRV, heart rate variability, goes way down, it’s just not nearly as where I want it to be. But I want to keep moving because we have so many great things I want to talk about. But let’s talk about why everybody’s failing. 75% of males are obese or overweight. Why is everybody failing at fitness?

Dr. John Jaquish: This is one of my… I have a couple of life missions. I got started in life sciences by developing a medical device to treat osteoporosis. But my thing now is why do we fall back on standard fitness when it has failed 99.9% of the people? Probably nine out of 10 or 19 out of 20 people that you know that habitually go to the gym, whatever, it’s three times a week, and have done so for years, they don’t look any different than the day they signed up. True?

John Lee Dumas: True.

Dr. John Jaquish: So really what we have is outliers. So a very few select people get in good shape and everybody else just basically stays skinny if they were skinny and don’t put on any muscle, or fat if they were fat and still don’t put on any muscle. And it’s just sort of mind-blowing because people still go back to sort the fitness basics that keep on failing us.

Now I wrote in my latest book, Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time, and so is cardio. So you look at the different things that like cardiovascular exercise does for us, it’s exactly the opposite of what we think. Cardiovascular exercise protects your body fat as in it’s going to make your body stay as fat as possible as long as possible. And if you think about it, that makes sense. If you want to turn your body into an endurance machine, well, then it wants to preserve the storage, it wants a bigger backup gas tank. And then the other thing that happens when you do cardio is you lose muscle.

So typically, when people get involved in the cardiovascular program, cardiovascular training, endurance training, I’m not talking about high-intensity intervals, that’s very different. Like sustained long cardio. The other thing, as you’re operating regulating cortisol is you’re losing muscles. You’re losing muscle and you’re preserving body fat, which creates a body that is often referred to as skinny fat. So very little muscle, but a lot of cellulite, flab, and loose skin. The opposite of what people want, yet people are lining up to get on treadmills every day.

When it comes to weight training, most people have a tendon layout in their body that does not allow them to grow from lifting weights. Now I say most, I got a study that says 23% of people cannot grow muscle at all when they lift weights. That was in 2005, a really good study.

And that’s what triggered me to go look at the reasons people fail, instead of looking at who succeeds and trying to emulate that. And then you realize that people who succeed are all genetic outliers because when you compare the two groups…

Now I’m going to describe the pectoral insertion, the middle of your chest sternum. So that’s where your pectoral muscle starts. It goes across your chest, one direction or the other depending on if you’re talking about right or left. And then typically attaches at the beginning of the humorous bone, the upper arm bone.

So at the very top where your shoulder joint is, that’s where that tendon is inserted. However, a fraction of 1% has it attached further down the humorous bone sometimes even at the other end. What does that mean? That means some people have a lever inside of their body to give them leverage on the weight they’re lifting by activating more of the muscle.

But this is a very small percentage of people. Mike Tyson has that mutation so he can punch someone who’s three inches away from his face and he has access to almost full power. And if you know that and you watch him box, he ducks. He is almost like a crab who walks without using his hands underneath his opponent’s striking and gets right up in the guy’s face. Hits him when he is three inches away and knocks the guy out. And it only took Mike’s coach, I think one minute of watching him and he says, that guy will be the best boxer world has ever seen, because he recognized the genetic difference.

There are just people with these genetic outlier tendon layouts and typically they become NFL players. They become the stronger people in the world.

Now, does that mean that the rest of us should do what they’re doing? No, because we don’t have that genetic layout. However, if you look at how they load the body, because of the lever they have, they have variable resistance inside of their own body. The long tendon is also elastic. So there’s something elastic inside, it’s like a rubber band inside their body that’s offloading the weaker range of motion and then allowing them to handle the real weight in the stronger range of motion.

Now, how can humans bypass this? Any single person with regular genetics like me who… I spent 20 years lifting weights, I maybe gained five pounds of muscle. Basically what put more muscle and weight on me was puberty. I started lifting weights very early in high school. But the reason I wanted my learner permit or my motorcycle license was so I could go to the gym. I didn’t care about anything else. I already saw my friends.

It was like I just wanted to go to the gym. And so 20 years of weightlifting, I was lean, I had that part figured out. At the end of high school, I weighed 130 pounds and I was six feet tall. So that’s skinny.

And once I figured this out about tendons and ligaments and started doing a literature review on variable resistance, then it all started making sense because variable resistance studies showed tremendous muscular growth.

And I thought, well, what I need to do is create a variable resistance product. And so after I launched my medical device and that’s now all over the world. Osteo Strong clinics are in 10 different countries, 160 different clinics. So after that was launched and it was well on its way, then I launched the X Dream, which allows anybody to sort of grow all the muscle they would want.

And then, of course, muscle is a metabolic engine that will then make you leaner because that metabolic engine is running at all times, even when you’re sleeping.

John Lee Dumas: So this is all fascinating to me. And Fire Nation, I hope you kind of go back and listen to this a couple of times because it kind of makes you open up as to some of the things that may have been holding you back from doing what you need to do in the weight room for all these years.

And in a quick side note that’s on topic, though. Holy crap. I just got done watching the Mike Tyson documentary on Hulu. It’s called Mike. And I’ll tell you, Dr. Jaquish, if you have not seen that, it is so fantastically done. It’s a docudrama-

Dr. John Jaquish: Is it a new one or is it the one that came out in 2009?

John Lee Dumas: It’s brand new. It’s a docudrama. So the character that plays Mike Tyson, I think this guy is one of the best actors I have ever, ever seen. He is so fantastic. It’s next level. The thing is entertaining. But it is so interesting. You really kind of closed the loop for me that that was open since that documentary, and I just watched it a few days ago. Because this is a new documentary, is why that coach was so convinced when he was 13 years old that Mike Tyson-

Dr. John Jaquish: His name is Cus D’Amato. Because D’Amato watched Mike fight for one minute.

John Lee Dumas: One minute.

Dr. John Jaquish: And he knew. He’s like, that’s the guy.

John Lee Dumas: Now they don’t explain why in the docudrama, but now that you just explain it, I’m like, oh man, that’s what he saw was the…

Dr. John Jaquish: He saw the full power

John Lee Dumas: The full power. And that’s so crazy. And of course, it came to be true. I mean he went like 44-0 before he started losing a couple of fights, but that was because of his demons and his destruction.

Dr. John Jaquish: He was destroying himself.

John Lee Dumas: He destroyed himself. If he had had a focused regimen and just said, you know what, I’m just going to be like a Kobe Bryant in the boxing world and just get up every day and take care of my body, take care of my mind, and just become the best athlete I can be, he would’ve been unstoppable until age finally caught up with him at whatever point that would’ve been for him. So we have so many things we’re going to be talking about, Fire Nation, nutrition, exercise steps, short-term discipline, and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

John Lee Dumas: Dr. Jaquish, we are back and I want to talk now about nutrition. Because there’s a phrase that I tell all my friends and maybe you can say, John, stop saying that as much as you do because it might not be as true as I think it is, but I tell all my friends that are like, yeah, I went for a five-mile run today. I’m so proud of myself. I always tell them, to say, listen, Frankie, you can’t out-exercise your mouth. So whatever you’re doing exercise-wise, please mimic that nutrition-wise because you’re just running a trend through going backward in that case. You’re taking three steps forward, four steps back. So talk to us about rebuilding yourself with a few nutrition and exercise steps.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s worse than you think, John. Our nutrition is so critical and the engineered foods we have are so awful that I can spend… I’ll give you an example. I spent about three months preparing for a photo shoot recently. The photo shoot went great. Best shave of my life. I’m a natural athlete so I don’t take any diuretic drugs or anything like that. So didn’t particularly dehydrate outside of normal, just not drinking any water before the morning before the shoot. So it took me three months to get to, I was in like 6-7% body fat range. Went off to the photo shoot, took it easy, and went back to normal eating. And normal for me is still super low carbohydrate, but with rib eyes instead of lean cuts, I’m like back at 9% in me maybe a week.

John Lee Dumas: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I stepped on the scale mornings ago and it was like… Now, a lot of it was water, I was down to 230 pounds and now I’m like 246. What the hell? Some of its water. You can diet for three months but you can screw all that up in one week.

John Lee Dumas: Let’s talk about the steps, though. Give us some nutrition steps.

Dr. John Jaquish: The first step is just cutting refined sugar out. And that’s tough. I know it sounds pretty easy and fits people, they’ve been doing that for years. But most people buy products that come in packages. For me, it’s pretty much just whatever’s at the meat counter. But I’ve been doing this for a while so that doesn’t feel weird to me. That feels normal.

So there is refined sugar in everything. If you want to put steak sauce on your steak or on your ribs or something like that, that’s like maple syrup, that’s just sugar. And it’s just in everything. So that’s like number one. Stop using sauces, and stop drinking your calories. You’ve probably heard that expression before. Because with any soft drink and even a diet one, the problem with the artificial sugars is they still keep you wanting sugar. They just sort of keep you addicted but you’re not getting any calories at the moment.

So, not helping you. Also, they can have some negative impact on your gut microbiome. So step one is cutting out refining sugar. Step two is getting your protein back. So getting enough protein is a really interesting subject because once you realize how protein gains, there’s no room in the intestines for much else.

You’re supposed to get one gram per pound of body weight and there’s a new meta-analysis that undercuts that just a little bit. But still, once you realize that, it’s like you got to eat protein like it’s your job if you plan on gaining any muscle. I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday. I was like, how much protein do you normally get? He goes, oh I get plenty. I have lunch with some fish and then dinner, maybe a steak or something. It ended up being like 45 grams of protein in this guy’s whole day. I’m like, yeah, you should add a zero to the end of that number.

He’s kind of a bigger guy. He’s just like, what do you mean? Yeah, you’re getting like 10th of what you need. And that puts things into perspective. Once you do that, and like I said, you don’t have room in your intestines for junk food when you look at how much nutritious food you need. And I think that’s a little bit why when… I hate the sport of bodybuilding, it’s not even a sport, it’s a pageant. But bodybuilders, they’re eating all the time and they’re in great shape. Whereas most people who are just lean are sort of talking about pseudo-starving all the time. Well, neither answer is quite right to get in great shape, but you certainly will live a happier life by putting on a little bit more muscle because you need quality calories and you’ll be a happier person eating a significant amount of quality calories and you don’t feel deprived. I don’t ever feel like, oh I’m just starving myself. I’m miserable. It’s not like that at all.

John Lee Dumas: Fire Nation, I really hope, again, you’re hearing these steps about nutrition and how my little phrase of you can’t out-exercise your mouth is not even going far enough because of how important that is. And there’s a fantastic book that finally got me to understand how much sugar and white flour are drugs. We’re talking literal drugs just like heroin and cocaine is drugs.

Dr. John Jaquish: They compare… Yeah, I’m not sure which book you’re going to mention, but some studies compare people’s desire to have more sugar, very similar to the need of cocaine addicts and not so… Heroin was like, it kind of

John Lee Dumas: Well, yeah, maybe opium’s going a little too far, too. I honestly am so convinced, though. I don’t even like to say compare. I just like to say it is the same because it’s like, of course, so many people make so much money and so many people’s jobs are so dependent on the sugar industry, on the white flour industry that it’s so taboo to say that they’re drugs, but they’re drugs. These are drugs.

And guess what, we use drugs every day in different… I’m drinking a cup of coffee right now. That’s a drug. There’s caffeine in there.

So be thinking about that, Fire Nation, be thinking about that. I want to end with a bang, Dr. Jaquish because we’ve been talking about a lot of cool things. And a lot of people are like, okay, well man, I’m going to have this year’s goal of doing X, Y, and Z. They try to have this long-term motivated plan. January 1st is coming up in a little bit. Let’s talk about focusing on short-term discipline instead of long-term motivation.

Dr. John Jaquish: Man, I always say that. When people look at pictures of their favorite athlete and say, that’s my motivation, the problem is you’re putting an entire fitness journey into one thought and that fitness journey requires you to go many days of responsible eating, many days of responsible exercise.

So when people do that, somebody says, hey, we’re getting pizza for lunch, are you coming? The person who looks to motivation, they’ll say, yeah, sure, my diet will start tomorrow. Or do I deserve a break today? Usually, they don’t. But it’s just an excuse. So it’s easy to find an excuse and it’s easy to break from what you’ve promised yourself you’re going to do. But a disciplined person is not like that. Because when it comes to discipline, you wake up and you say, I’m not going to screw anything up today. I’m going to stick to all my principles. I’m going to… Let’s say it’s a fasting day.

Let’s say, it’s not your workout day, you’re not growing at night. So you might as well eat nothing. And I’m a big supporter of that. A huge section in my book Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time on the benefits of fasting. But it’s like you know you’ve gone a day before eating nothing.

Let’s say you had a couple of international flights and the connection times were tight and then you looked at the in-flight meal and you’re like, yeah, no thanks because it’s just gross. So it’s like everyone knows they can do that. So just for today, let’s just do it perfectly. And what do you know? It’s not so hard. It’s just one day, right? Well, then you wake up the next day and you say the same thing to yourself. I’ve just got to get through today. I don’t have to think about what I want my body to look like four years from now. That’s kind of a toxic thought because it’s so far away, it gives you room for excuses. You just focus on what’s in front of you at the moment and then you’ll do it right every day.

John Lee Dumas: Let’s end with a bang. Give us one key takeaway from our entire conversation today. Then give us the best way that we can connect with you to learn more, about any call to action you have. And then we’ll say goodbye

Dr. John Jaquish: In some way, in some manner, training with variable resistance. There are a couple of different ways to do that. I talk about those in my book, but this will trigger everyone to grow. So if you’ve lifted a weight before and thought like, wow, yeah, I kind of put a lot of work into that and didn’t get much out of it, check out variable resistance.

Check out my book, Weightlifting is a Waste of Time, it’ll change your life and your training. You don’t need a buy my product necessarily. I do think the product is a very convenient way to go at it into a home gym, cost $550 and it’ll blow away a 5,000 power rack home gym, as far as results. We have 40 professional athletes that use it. Mostly NFL players. They’re the biggest and strongest guys pretty much in the world. I know powerlifters try and act like they are, but I highly doubt they would turn down a 20 million contract with the NFL, and instead make like $500 a year with their powerlifting needs. So that’s the key piece of advice. Just variable resistance. Train with variable resistance.

John Lee Dumas: Fire Nation, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And one more time, just for Fire Nation, Dr. Jaquish, what are the places you want Fire Nation to go to connect with you, learn more from you, and keep getting this kind of content?

Dr. John Jaquish: Doctorj.com. D-O-C-T-O-R, the letter J.com. There are links to all my socials. I spend the most time on Instagram. I give away a lot of free information. Every one of my posts has got some reference science and something that’s actionable that you can do every day to make your life better.

John Lee Dumas: John, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, and your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, brother. And we’ll catch you on the flip side.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thank you.