- By The What's a Hero Podcast on February 2, 2022
Episode 043 with Dr. John Jaquish
The What’s a Hero Podcast focuses on heros and what constitutes a hero. Episode 043 features Dr. John Jaquish Ph.D., a scientist, inventor, and best-selling author who is currently advancing osteogenic loading research and speaking worldwide about its implications. He is the inventor of the X3 and author of Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want.
Full Transcript
Ken Frownfelter: This is Episode 43 of the What’s a Hero Podcast with me, Ken Frownfelter. We’ve had a couple of people on here who have been, oh, physical fitness guys. We’ve had, we had Mark, who was with LAPD. We had Jeff, who was, who’s a teacher, who was that guy who makes sure that he wants to work out because he’s combating his diabetes, and then he passes it on to his kids at school.
Not diabetes, but working out, the whole desire to do that. We’ve had several people on here. I’ve had Tony Mendonca on here, who is the director for an entire Karate Federation. All these guys have always talked about fitness and always talked about getting healthy and doing things that they should do, which have been things that drive them to be better and know that will help their longevity in life, and help them do the things they need to do.
Ken Frownfelter: With that being said, we, as first responders, as nurses, as teachers, as veterans, don’t even sometimes think about our health. We don’t think about things that we need to know to make sure we’re better, and that we do things that we need to do. We go to work. Some of us work in graveyards. We’ll stay up late at night. We try to keep going on caffeine and whatever junks lying around the office or whatever, and then maybe stop by and get a hamburger on the way, and keep going because our job and the need for us is just, it doesn’t stop.
So, we kind of have to take our health and everything else, including that, and kind of put it in the backseat, right? But we don’t realize how detrimental that is to us as we go through life, and as we get older, when we retire, when we do all these things, and where things are going to go with us when we get to that age, where either maybe our bone density kind of wanes with osteoporosis or something.
Ken Frownfelter: Or, we start getting bad knees, or we have bad backs, or we have all these different things that we can combat at a younger age, that we don’t necessarily. Well, I want to talk about that today. That’s one of the things that we’re going to talk about today, and I’ve got somebody on the show who is probably smarter than several of my guests, and a lot of my guests will admit, yeah, he probably is smarter than me.
But, I guarantee he’s smarter than me. But he’s been known as, he’s been called the Tony Stark of the fitness industry, which is kind of goofy, right? But if you, once we get into it, you’ll see why he’s called that. He’s an author, he’s an inventor, he’s a scientist. He’s invented an entire workout system, based on a piece of equipment that you could put, you can carry with you in the back seat of your car, and can always have with you.
Ken Frownfelter: There’s so much that this guy has done, and a lot of the things that he’s done was because there was, there were things that came up in his life that said, “You need to do this,” and mostly, there was one specifically for the health of his mother. So, he does all these things and says, “I’m going to start developing this and researching this stuff, so I can get into it.” All of that makes it fascinating, and the fact that he loves and he wants to advance health and fitness and everything else, and longevity for first responders and veterans, it’s just amazing. So, without further ado, I want to introduce to you Dr. John Jaquish the show. So, Dr. thanks for coming on. I appreciate it.
Dr. John Jaquish: Ken, thanks for having me. That was a very detailed introduction. I love it.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh yeah. You’re welcome. You got to do a little reading on somebody before they come on the show or at least know who they are. Right?
Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.
Ken Frownfelter: So, no, it’s amazing all the stuff that you’ve put in there, and you’re not that old of a guy. So, you’ve got a lot of life left to do a lot of researching and inventing.
Dr. John Jaquish: I’m probably younger than I look. I’m 45.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, see, that’s no problem. We’re both 45, but you’re still smarter than I am. So,
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, that, when you’re like trying to say who I’m smarter, than, I’m like, I don’t know if we should be doing comparisons.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Well, I don’t, I know a lot of folks on here who would say, “Yeah, that guy’s smarter than me. Yeah. I’ll tell you what, they-” Dr. John Jaquish: Whenever, so inventing stuff is strange in that a lot of peopl, when you invent something and it works and people like it, obviously there’s some business rewards and financial rewards.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: That, and it’s interesting, when you’re successful, almost no one is happy for you. There are a few who understand your struggle, and they’re just pleased that you’re doing great. Most people, not so much.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: In fact, look at how Elon Musk is traded on social media. Most people just hate the guy. He’s like-
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: But, why? Because he’s successful? Yeah. That’s why. So, I get that, but also like being the face of my brand.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a lot easier to launch a company … if you want to avoid criticism, launch a company that has no spokesperson. You just have a corporate message.
Ken Frownfelter: Right, yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Except, people follow people. People don’t follow brands. Like, look at the popularity that Apple gained because of Steve Jobs.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Now that he’s not there … Now, they’re already the most pthe opular consumer electronics company, but like the viewership of some of their keynotes it’s-
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Nominal compared to when Steve Jobs was there.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Because jobs were just like a dynamic inventor guy who like, was just kind of breathtaking to listen to because really, he didn’t listen to anyone. He just developed what he thought would be a cool thing to have, and just so happened, the guy was right every time.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: There’s a couple of things that he worked on that weren’t super successful or the world wasn’t ready for.
Ken Frownfelter: Sure.
Dr. John Jaquish: Like, the iPad was developed before the iPhone.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: I didn’t know that.
Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, he just decided, he put it in a vault for 10 years, because it was like, I can’t get anyone to subscribe to this, because it’s too weird of a computer. But if I package it in a phone and people get used to that interface, well then that’ll just be another computer to them.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So, you had to have a couple of years of iPhone before the iPad could-
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, that’s … I didn’t know that. Yeah. But, you have to start thinking about that person that, who follows people. You look at like, I don’t know, let’s say Jocko Willink, for instance, that gets in my head right away. His face is on everything. People follow him. If they just said, “Hey, follow that book, Extreme Ownership or whatever,” people, but okay. “Yeah. I read the book. I put it down, and then I’m done, and I’m moving on.” No. Get to know him, and all the stuff that he does with it.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. Absolutely. It makes sense.
Dr. John Jaquish: He is also, he’s not … Jocko’s selling a lifestyle.
Ken Frownfelter: Sure. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s not about a book or a supplement or a product. He doesn’t sell alarm clocks, despite getting up very early every morning and letting everybody know he’s up early every morning.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: So Jocko’s lifestyle, and I actually, he’s a great marketing example, because that lifestyle he’s selling is like a, I’m not going to be messed with and I’m also going to outwork you.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: In almost any environment, a guy like that will be loved. It doesn’t matter, if you have that attitude, if you live that lifestyle, I don’t care where the hell you work, you’re going to be one of the most valuable people there.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. Yeah. That’s true.
Dr. John Jaquish: He delivers value.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s just, you’re supposed to deliver 10 points of value, you deliver 20 every day.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: You’ll be running the place soon enough.
Ken Frownfelter: It’s that, don’t be mediocre and just be more than mediocre. You don’t have to be the number one, but if you’re in that top 5%, you’re going to be, yeah. So, who is John Jaquish? Where did he come from? Who was little Johnny growing up?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So, I grew up in the suburbs of San Francisco and then spent my younger adult years in San Francisco. That used to be a cool place. I call it the People’s Republic of San Francisco, now.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: It is, as our past president would say, a s***-hole country.
Ken Frownfelter: Sure, because it’s awful?
Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, and like, I have a lot of friends in law enforcement. Four of my buddies are FBI agents that are in the San Francisco office, so they observe San Francisco, but San Francisco isn’t their jurisdiction.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: So, they’re looking at California from a counter-terrorism standpoint, fraud, bank robbery. These guys have been working on a lot of federal crimes. You rob a bank that’s FDIC- insured, that’s a federal crime.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: So, that crime is to be investigated by federal law enforcement or the FBI.
Ken Frownfelter: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So, a lot of interesting stories, but the exception to logic and reason is always the City of San Francisco.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: So, I have another, really good friend who I brought into my charity group, but I’ve known him since we were 18, because I recruited him into my fraternity, also. So, he is a fraternity brother and we’re in the charity group together, and so we’ve been friends for a long time, and he’s a homicide detective, and I won’t give the details, but like most of the homicides, he’s not allowed to investigate.
Ken Frownfelter: Really.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: For what reason?
Dr. John Jaquish: He can’t touch it. Some political reasons.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh he’s oh, huh.
Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. Yeah. It’s like, oh no, no. Don’t investigate that.
Ken Frownfelter: Wow. See, that’s and that’s just so crazy.
Dr. John Jaquish: I’m not talking about corrupt politicians. I’m talking, the person’s whatever, the wrong caller, whatever.
Ken Frownfelter: Sure. Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: The department doesn’t want to be accused of harassment or anything like that, so they just don’t investigate it.
Ken Frownfelter: Wow.
Dr. John Jaquish: Also, the City District Attorney, I don’t know if you’re following this nightmare, but this guy just really doesn’t want to prosecute anyone. Kind of glorifies criminality.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: You’ve heard about it?
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, you bet. You see people getting out on, they get arrested or whatever, and there are no charges filed on them. Yet, they did something incredibly heinous or whatever. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Like felony. They commit a felony and they just get let out. Yeah. So, I got tired of it. You should, if you live in the City of San Francisco now, you should expect your car to be broken into regularly.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah, and back then, when you were a kid growing up down there in the ’80s, it wasn’t like that, I’m guessing.
Dr. John Jaquish: It was nice.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, I used to take, when I was, I was younger than 10. I mean, I might have been like eight, nine. I remember I would take the subway system from the suburbs where I live, and I’d get my buddies and we’d all park our bikes. It’s called the BART, Bay Area Rapid Transit.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: So, we’d get on a BART, and we’d go into Chinatown, reasons middle of the city.
Ken Frownfelter: Uh-huh (affirmative)
Dr. John Jaquish: From the suburbs.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Like, I mean, we’re all like nine, 10 years old, right? Like no one even questioned the fact that we were traveling alone.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, that’s funny. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. No one. I mean, there’s police and we’d be like, “Hey,” and they’d just wave back, like no big deal. This is just a bunch of nine-year-olds by themselves. We’d go to Chinatown to get the really crazy fireworks.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Like the M-100s.
Ken Frownfelter: Sure. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: The dynamite kind of thing, because it was always easy to find like the sparklers and the things that make bright colors, what they call safe, insane.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Right. You want the stuff that’s going to blow up a mailbox. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Right.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I want the unsafe and insane ones.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: As everyone did.
Ken Frownfelter: Exactly.
Dr. John Jaquish: I don’t want a sparkler. What can we put into the trash can where it’ll bust the trash can?
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. John Jaquish: That was awesome.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. So, you go into … yeah, I remember going to Chinatown down in San Francisco, this was back in ‘09, maybe ‘10. But I was with my wife and my, I had my kids, I had my uncle. I had my cousins with us. We went as a group, but you didn’t consider going down there by yourself, especially as, I wouldn’t have had my kids going down there at nine years old. Man, that’s yeah. But, in the eighties, early mid-eighties, it’s a different world. Different.
Dr. John Jaquish: When I was an undergrad, we used to just drive into Mexico.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: All the time.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Buy fireworks, and when you’re over 18, you can drink down there and like, whatever. It was just, that was our vacation spot, Baja.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. We would, when we-
Dr. John Jaquish: That now.
Ken Frownfelter: When I was in the Marines, we would do the same thing. From Camp Pendleton, you go down to Tijuana for the weekend and it was just a different world. I mean, I don’t know. So, you get into, you go into you into school and you start growing up and you start figuring out what you want to do. Do you play ball and stuff in school?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, like my father, he’s an engineer and scientist. He worked for Defense Research Laboratories, which was a weapons contractor underneath General Motors. They want to get out of the weapons business, and in fact, they weren’t really in it per se, like his project was the lunar roving vehicle.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, wow. Cool.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So, the car on the moon. Yeah. My father worked on that, and he and eight other guys, and that was it. That was the whole team. Then there was, they had a billion-dollar budget.
Ken Frownfelter: I’ve got that. No, I don’t have that.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: I mean, it’s kind of crazy.
Dr. John Jaquish: It was at a time when eneral Motors knew if they got a car on the moon-
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: … and it worked, that they could brag about that forever.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, you bet.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. But if it didn’t work, nobody at NASA was allowed to say it was General Motors, because the last thing they wanted was-
Ken Frownfelter: Sure.
Dr. John Jaquish: Of course, a GM-
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, that was a Yugo. I’m sure it was.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Right.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So, it became public knowledge after all three robotic vehicles worked.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, that’s cool.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and you can see them through telescopes, and their batteries all blew up a couple of years ago.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh really? Up there, on the moon?
Dr. John Jaquish: On the moon. Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: Because we left them up there, yeah. Wow. That’s, well-
Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, there was no mechanism for taking them home.
Ken Frownfelter: No. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: The batteries exploded. Over a certain amount of time, a battery will do that.
Ken Frownfelter: Wow. I didn’t realize that
Dr. John Jaquish: Because there’s no wind up there. There’s no atmosphere. Like, you can are the blast mark off the side of the roving vehicle.
Ken Frownfelter: Wow. I’ll have to look that up. That’s pretty cool. I didn’t know that. So, did you, you played ball, you played sports and stuff in school?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. High school wrestling, swimming, and track. Then, when I went to undergrad, rugby.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, and did you know you wanted to be a doctor? Did you, did you have ideas of wanting to do something else?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I wanted to go pre-med. My father wouldn’t pay for it. I’m like, “All right. Well, what will you pay for?” He goes, “Business,” because he, what he told me was, everything scientific comes so easy to you. Like math came so easy to you. All science classes were just like, ike most people were frustrated by chemistry.
Ken Frownfelter: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. John Jaquish: I got, I did projects in chemistry that took people a semester. I did it in like an hour.
Ken Frownfelter: Wow.
Dr. John Jaquish: People were like, “Is this it? I showed the teacher, “Did I accomplish this objective?” He’s like, “Yeah, it was a semester’s worth of work. You did it-
Ken Frownfelter: In a night.
Dr. John Jaquish: Sitting in the back of the room. All right. Like, so you’re passing. Yeah. So, I just, the science stuff was easy for me. It was the other stuff. Like, I didn’t like English class. I don’t like it when somebody could just sort of give me their opinion, and then that was like the basis of the grade.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Opinion.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Like,the way I worded something or the subject of my essay, I was just what, like, who cares?
Ken Frownfelter: Right, and there’s no value to it. There’s no, I guess, tangible end state that you can base something off of.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s just a different thought process. My fiance loves to write.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, she’s a very good writer, but to me, it was more like … it was just, writing was a mechanism of explaining a scientific process, always.
Ken Frownfelter: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. John Jaquish: So, when I went and when did myPh.D, it was like, all I wanted to do was perfect the skill of academic authorship.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s funny,because when you publish a paper, a lot of times it’s acronym-heavy. You read any scientific paper and there are statistical tests that nobody’s ever heard of, but they might be the right one for showing the differences between one data set versus another data set, or something like that. The better I got at academic writing, the more I realized that while that’s important, what will ultimately be even more important is being able to convey the power of these messages to everyone.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Or, at least to a large portion of the population. I mean, like let’s face it. I think it’s like 18% of America can’t read it all, or has to like sound out the words. They’re functionally illiterate. so_
Ken Frownfelter: I didn’t know it was that high, now.
Dr. John Jaquish: I read that statistics somewhere. I mean, that might be wrong about
Ken Frownfelter: No, I mean, I guess that could make sense. I just didn’t, I didn’t know. Honestly, I didn’t have a number to go put with this.
Dr. John Jaquish: I think it was reading past the sixth-grade level.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, wow. Okay. So, as you said, was the sounding out the word, so you’re reading much slower in sounding it out, to where now you’re trying to sound it out and then you have to go back and then remember, realize the definition of each word and as you’re going through. So, you’re-
Dr. John Jaquish: Right.
Ken Frownfelter: The comprehension is-
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Being able to communicate with a broader population, while still being accurate, because there’s an expression we use. Oversimplification is another word for wrong.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: You oversimplified it. Gone over, like it’s so simplistic, it’s just incorrect.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I see that most fitness information that’s readily available and you do like a Google search, and you find some guru’s website or whatever, is just like, all there is an oversimplification. Also, all there is wrong.
Ken Frownfelter: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Dr. John Jaquish: Let me give you an example. Probably the worst thing to do for body fat loss is cardiovascular exercise.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Chronic cardiovascular exercise up-regulates cortisol. Cortisol does two things. It gets rid of muscle. It cannibalizes muscle and protects your body fat. So, you stay as fat as possible, as long as possible. So, it’s doing two things that are the exact opposite of what anybody wants.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: You lk into any gym, at any time, and the most used equipment will probably be the room full of treadmills.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. That or the elliptical or something similar to
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It doesn’t matter what cardio equipment you’re using.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s not effective. It’s giving the opposite of what they think they’re getting. You tell people this, and they’re like, well, but that’s not what anyone else thinks. I’m like, well, first of all, thinks … you’re talking about opinions. There are 40 years of research supporting what I’m saying.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. I had a friend who was-
Dr. John Jaquish: This has been known by scientists for 40 years.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. I had a friend who was, he was an avid bicyclist. I mean, he biked, he biked miles and miles a day. I had, we had another friend, we were talking about him. He goes, “How come he’s if he bikes much, he’s always doing. I see him riding around all the time, sweating and all this different stuff, but he’s got, he’s chubby. He’s as chubby as …” I said, because, and I agree with you and I didn’t know the full science of it. I haven’t read the studies as you did, but I had that understanding that cardio’s, yeah, it’s good. It helps you get your blood flowing, and you want to make sure you have something, oxygen going in your lungs, so you’re moving those. But if you rely solely on that, you’re not doing anything, because muscles need to work too. Now, I bet you that his, on-the-bike guy, his legs are solid. His quads and stuff are solid, but that doesn’t translate to the rest of him.
Dr. John Jaquish: Probably not because it’s not enough force to actually recruit enough muscle to show the central nervous system that there’s a deficit in the amount of tissue or the fuel systems within the musculature, because there are two different types of muscle growth. There’s sarcoplasmic and myofibril growth. One has to do with the density of the tissue. The other one has to do with the fuel that gets stored within the cells. You’re doing neither in cardio. Cardio is, like, there’s no such thing as cardiovascular exercise. I think people think that their body has like a switch, and it’s like, oh, we’re doing strength training, and it switches into strength mode. Then, you stimulate strength, and you go into the cardio mode, and you stimulate cardiovascular endurance. Now, the body didn’t have any idea that there is a difference between those two.
Dr. John Jaquish: If you got to look at strength-training, it takes musculature to fatigue, most of the time, to some degree, in both regards, sarcoplasmic and myofibril, and there will be a growth stimulus, provided you have the proper amount of protein. Protein is all that counts, by the way. Anybody that tells you to need calories to grow muscle, they’re a fucking retard.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s only protein. That’s all that matters. I have been, so I used to be kind of a chubby guy, but when I started this X3 … I shouldn’t say when I started the company, because I started the company years and years before, but we were licensed in the intellectual property of the bone density devices to OsteoStrong. That was our business model. Launching our own fitness thing wasn’t what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be the representative, because I wasn’t even in shape, but I was like, well, I know how this works. So, it’ll certainly work for me like everyone else, and I had never been in shape. I mean, yeah, when I played college rugby-
Dr. John Jaquish: Or been in shape really? I mean, yeah, when I played college rugby, I was in shape. But if I put a shirt on, you’d never know it.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Like I just looked like a regular guy.
Ken Frownfelter: So it’s that thing where it’s as a 19, 20, 21-year-old your metabolism’s fantastic, you’re in better shape than you’re probably ever going to be in the rest of your life. And you can do a lot of things. And I just talked about this with a couple of other guests previously and we’re smart. Or we think we know everything at that age and we don’t, but on the other side of it, we don’t realize the health that we’re in because our body is burning at such a high rate that we’re able to compensate, overcompensate for ourselves and our shortcomings.
And then when we get older, we forget about that. So there’s that side of it, where you don’t realize that’s why you have all those young guys in the military, whatever, being able to just have that, they’ll be able to go miles carrying a big old rucksack and their knees aren’t killing. You get a couple of 40-year-olds doing the same thing and they’re going to stop, think back, and…
Dr. John Jaquish: Tell you the truth, the reason the 40-year-olds have sore knees, chronically is because of those rucksack runs.
Ken Frownfelter: That’s true.
Dr. John Jaquish: Sorry but yeah, I mean like a lot of lifting, moving, let’s say just any weighted materials, if not done perfectly will create some level of chronic damage. And yeah. I mean like Marines in their pack runs. Like, I don’t know many Marines that have knees that give them zero pain.
Ken Frownfelter: That’s true. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: I know a lot of them that have pain in their knees every day.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And I mean, but hey look, I mean the point of the military isn’t to get people in shape.
Ken Frownfelter: No. It’s to go win wars.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s going to win wars. Well, now if you tune in it’s about inclusivity.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh yeah. And diversity and equity.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s about a whole bunch of stuff that’s not going to win a war.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I mean, I can’t wait to hear about like the war that never happened because they were like, well, we were going to fight these guys, but then we saw what kind of diversity they had. And we were like we’ll just surrender.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. I read a thing the other day that said that they’re now going to start including in allowing gender swap. The VA or the military is going to pay for that. These guys, they can’t get stuff for their backs. They can’t get stuff for their PTSD. They can’t get stuff for, they’re waiting in line years.
Dr. John Jaquish: But we’re going to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars to help somebody transition.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. it’s like, come on. How are we going to win a war with this? That’s our job.
Dr. John Jaquish: We won’t.
Ken Frownfelter: That’s our job is to go win the wars and fight and keep our country.
Dr. John Jaquish: The thing is other countries who would potentially be aggressive with their neighbors, not necessarily us, but like Syria or let’s say China invading Taiwan.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh yeah, sure. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: They want Taiwan back. They don’t think Taiwan is its own country.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. They think they own it.
Dr. John Jaquish: They think it’s theirs. And they can create that argument. Like it was Chinese people that populated that island. It was a Royal family from back in the day who basically fled China and all settled in Taiwan and they created their own country there. No one was there and they declared it their own country. It was recognized by the United Nations. And now China’s like, yeah, it was never yours. It’s ours.
Ken Frownfelter: If they didn’t have, the way that Hong Kong was, they had, they had England backing up and saying no, it’s ours. And there was an understanding, okay. But on this day we’re going to get it back. And Hong Kong still says…
Dr. John Jaquish: Different setup though, because Hong Kong was leased to the United Kingdom for a hundred years.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. And there was that. Yeah. Like it was…
Dr. John Jaquish: Mine was making money.
Ken Frownfelter: There was that end date that they knew they were going to be coming back. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Also, like they knew they were going to get it back and they knew it was not theirs to even give an opinion about until they got it back.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Same thing with Macau. Macau is the same. And I love it’s one of my favorite places in the world. I love Macau.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh really? I’ve never been there.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So it was leased to Portugal for a hundred years. And it’s like their gambling place.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh right, right. I have read that. That was Macau was known for its casinos and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: They’re weird though. So there’s like no swimming pools anywhere.
Ken Frownfelter: Really?
Dr. John Jaquish: Cause you go to Vegas and everybody wants to go to like a beautiful pool. Like what? They don’t do anything. Nothing. Yeah. Like the Wynn hotel in Macau, I don’t even think it has a swimming pool at all.
Ken Frownfelter: Wow. And they just, they go to the hotel, they go to eat and then they go to gamble and they,
Dr. John Jaquish: But the bars nightclubs are almost impossible to find like really? But if you’re gambling, they just bring you Fri drinks. Yeah. It’s all about gambling. Wow. So it’s not like Vegas at all.
Ken Frownfelter: That’s crazy. I didn’t know that
Dr. John Jaquish: They do have good restaurants, so I’m pretty happy about that.
Ken Frownfelter: That’s good. So, man, we’ve hit a couple of topics, but I want to kind of, we got to kind of develop how these things come about. So you go to school for your Ph.D. in business, right? Is that correct?
Dr. John Jaquish: No, no. My Ph.D. was in biomedical engineering.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay. But your dad was…
Dr. John Jaquish: I got my MBA first. Yeah. So I got my master’s in business and then I did. And he paid for my MBA and then when it came to my Ph.D., I got a scholarship.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. And so then you go into that, knowing that’s what you want to do because it comes fairly easy to you or whatever, but then you still got to work for it. It’s not everything’s easy. You still got to bust your hump to get the things you need to get done.
Dr. John Jaquish: Anything worthwhile is not easy.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. And then you go into, at what point and you graduate and you’re in a practice at this point. Correct? What did you do right after college?
Dr. John Jaquish: No. So Ph.D.’s research. They don’t practice medicine.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: So I wanted to research my invention. So before I started my Ph.D., I had developed bone density devices. And then I knew to launch them I had to have the ability to write academically and I needed their credential. So it was pretty much just any school that was willing to let me study my invention. Surprisingly enough, not many will allow you to do that. They want to impose a project on you.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Okay.
Dr.John Jaquish: That you have no interest in at all, which is just boring as hell. Like why would I want to do that? Seems like a waste of six years.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Especially when you have something sitting in the back of your brain saying this needs to be studied, this needs to be researched. This needs to be…
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Right. So, yeah. And so that was kind of the objective of the Ph.D. and it went well.
Ken Frownfelter: Now your mom got osteoporosis at a certain point, right? That catapulted…
Dr. John Jaquish: That’s what got me to research bone density. That’s got what got me to develop the OsteoStrong devices. And we have 150 clinics around the world with OsteoStrong. That’s the name of it, OsteoStrong and we’re in 10 different countries.
Ken Frownfelter: And what did it do for your mom that helped you determine that this thing was going to be beneficial for other people? I mean, did she get healed from it, or what happened?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah, her bone density went back to the level it would be at 30 years of age and she was in her seventies at the time.
Ken Frownfelter: Wow. And what was it?
Dr. John Jaquish: Bone density, well, she was lower than 2.5 standard deviations to the negative.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: Off of what’s normally a 30-year-old of her gender and her race. So different races of people have different bone density levels. So we try and normalize it like you want to be at this level, this is normal for a person of your gender and race, or this is below average or above average. So my goal was to get her back to average, which is the 30-year-old level.
Ken Frownfelter: At 70 years old right? Is that what you said?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And OsteoStrong locations are doing that every day.
Ken Frownfelter: You don’t hear about osteoporosis too much anymore. I mean, I guess it’s still a thing.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a shame like it ends as many lives as breast cancer.
Ken Frownfelter: Really? I didn’t know that.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s just not as dramatic. Because what happens is somebody breaks a hip, they go to the hospital, there are complications from the fracture, and then they die of pneumonia. There’s a 50% chance of death from an osteoporotic fracture over the age of 50, within one year.
Ken Frownfelter: Wow.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Right? I mean that’s terrifying.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. Holy cow.
Dr. John Jaquish: 50’s not that old.
Ken Frownfelter: No. That’s five years away from you and me. And you’re looking at, I mean, I don’t plan on breaking a hip, at least I don’t want to, and I know people that are, they’re working hard jobs and they’re in their mid-fifties and they could lose everything because they work hard jobs. It’s not…
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. They could lose their lives.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. And you know, just on the basic thing. Now, does that mean with that, that’s something that you guys can help, I guess, mitigate in people as they get older and stuff like that?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. We can reverse the bone loss. Now it doesn’t work like it has to do with your effort, like how much bone compression you can create is what will trigger the bone density to come back. So some people go to use it and just don’t try. Now does it work for them? No. Might as well just sit on the couch. But you could say the same about any physical medicine intervention. If you go to physical therapy after having a shoulder replacement and your therapist is telling you to do full outward rotation and you’re kind of going here instead of here, well, you’re going to lose mobility in your shoulder and that’ll be permanent. But some people, just can’t be bothered. They’re just too lazy.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. And yeah, you’re right. It is a shame. It’s like laying something out, hey, you can use any of these tools here. And just to go build that and you say, well, I’m just going to use this hammer and this nail, well, you got to cut the wood first. No.
Dr. John Jaquish: Or nothing. Or you just sit there.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: So OsteoStrong works very well. Now some people do have some biochemical differences. Like if you have thyroid dysfunction, it’s not going to work well for you, but you will find that you have thyroid dysfunction.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Once you find that and you treat that, then you can grow bone density.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: So those are some of the caveats. Nothing out there medically is for everyone. There are always complications, different cases, and other variables that could influence the outcomes. So, this whole adventure brought me to what helps out law enforcement and first responders the most, which was the invention of X3 which is the greatest strength training device ever. And like you said, it fits in a backpack or a drawer or the backseat of your car, in the trunk of your car. I keep one in the trunk of my car and my car’s a Lamborghini by the way. So it’s a tiny ass trunk.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. You barely get groceries in there.
Dr. John Jaquish: Ever imagine. Yeah. I mean, it’s like hard luggage. I don’t care how small your suitcase is, it won’t go in there. But the X3 will.
Ken Frownfelter: That’s cool. With the osteoporosis, with all the stuff working towards bone density and everything, did that lead you to develop the X3. ? So what exactly is the X3? So for people that maybe don’t understand.
Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, this is the most important part of the X3. So it’s a bar, but it’s an Olympic bar, so I can rotate it. You see how I’m rotating it. Do you see how this stays parallel to the ground?
Ken Frownfelter: Okay. Little hook that stays. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And so like it’s made so that you’re neutral loading of the wrist. So you’re putting the loading down the radius and ulna of the wrist. So you’re never like this. You’re never like this.
Ken Frownfelter: Not into bending that wrist, yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. So like the ultimate comfort in the wrist and like the Olympic bar is probably one of the only smart things in fitness that’s ever really been a thing. Some of the machines that come out, it’s like, yeah, they seem beneficial, but you could also illustrate how they’ll never trigger a growth hormone event.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: Machines just don’t. It’s because there’s no stabilization involved with the recruitment muscle.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. The first one I think of is that adductor machine where you sit there and you spread your legs and those stupid things, these people just doing them wrong or whatever. Not the way they’re intended. And they’re just all over the place.
Dr. John Jaquish: I could see like a bodybuilder trying to make everything pop out getting some benefit out of that. But there’s no health or function benefit. Like you’ll never see an NFL player on one of those.
Ken Frownfelter: Right, yeah. A full athlete, an active, usable athlete. Now, as you said, a bodybuilder, they’re there for show and they’re trying to make sure things are good, but yeah, no, I agree with you. You’re not going to be an active, usable muscle. Because it’s small enough, it needs to stay small to do the job that it does and it does whatever job it is and it’s good.
Dr. John Jaquish: I didn’t design it to necessarily be strong.
Ken Frownfelter: No, I’m talking about that little muscle, but, but no.
Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. But when I was looking at what’s required to grow the absolute maximum amount of muscle, not much. You need some serious heavy forces, which can be provided by latex banding. But you know, I say latex bands, most people have an idea of the five-pound rubber tube that they can buy at Walmart. And nobody will ever get stronger from using one of those. And they’re right. But what we’re talking about is very different than that. When I do a deadlift with the X3, just with the heaviest band alone, so I’m not stacking bands up or anything, it’s 615 pounds at the top.
Ken Frownfelter: Geez.
Dr. John Jaquish: On my deadlift. Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: Holy cow.
Dr. John Jaquish: And I’m hitting at like 20 repetitions. So I’m getting the benefit of loading my spine, my spinal records, my trapezius muscles, and my grip strength with that level of force. But because the force changes as I go down into the weaker range of motion, it drops. I can not only fatigue every range of motion individually based on the diminishing range of repetitions. So I go however far into the red side, I keep doing full repetitions until I can’t anymore and then I do partials as far as I can go. And so the first part might be three quarters and the next one might behalf and then I might get three or four repetitions there. And then maybe it’s one-quarter repetitions, but I might be able to do 10 of those.
Ken Frownfelter: Right, yeah. It’s because it’s…
Dr. John Jaquish: not.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. And so the whole time you’re loading your muscles, you’re loading your spine, you’re loading your bones. And so it’s helping that. So what’s the difference between using regular weights and then that, and I guess because you came from the bone density research world, to get into that?
Dr. John Jaquish: So my best-selling book is weightlifting is a waste of time. So weightlifting’s wrong. Just an incorrect read of human physiology. Now, if you are participating in the sport of weight lifting, okay. That’s a thing. Okay. And you’re going to need to keep lifting weights just for the firing pattern. Just for the motor skill.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: Of moving that weight in that lift. So sometimes powerlifters, get so upset when I say weight lifting is a waste of time. And I’m saying that in the context of developing a human body, not criticizing a sport.
Ken Frownfelter: Right, okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: If you want to develop the human body, what you want is variable resistance training. There have been 16 studies on variable resistance training and all 16 of them made weight lifting look like it was a waste of time by comparison because when you can put heavier loads on the body where the musculature in question is stronger or can recruit more tissue versus having a lower load in a weaker position. Well, most people listen to this podcast. I won’t illustrate with my hands or anything, but think about doing a pushup right? When your nose is close to the ground, that’s the hard part.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: And then when you’re almost at full extension, that’s the easy part. So you could do short repetitions, one-quarter repetitions almost the whole day, and never get tired, but full pushups. How many can most people do in a set? You know, I don’t know, maybe a hundred.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: And maybe the strongest guy will just collapse.
Ken Frownfelter: Right, before they have to stop.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right around a hundred repetitions.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then they’ll take that 10 minutes, five-minute, two-minute break or whatever, and then they’ll be able to do more again, but not as many as they just did.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. But for a lot of different reasons. When you lift standard weights, I’m going to quote Peter Attia here. I don’t know if you know who Dr. Attia is.
Ken Frownfelter: Sure, yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So really smart guy. And he generally says his problem with weight lifting, is it overloads joints and underloads muscle. That was the exact observation I made. But I saw it from a different perspective because I could see what the maximum potential was in the strong or impact ready range of motion versus the weaker range of motion. There’s a sevenfold difference. So like when you’re at the top of a squat, you can handle seven times more load than you can when your legs are parallel to the ground. So once you know that, and most people intuitively do know that they’re not questioning what they’re doing. So they’re not trying to critically think about it.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: But when I frame the scenario like I just did, it leaves you to think, well, if you’re seven times stronger in one place or said differently, seven times weaker in another place, why would you ever train with a weight? That doesn’t make any sense. Because you’re only going to stimulate where you’re weakest. The weakest range is where you’re firing the least amount of tissue by definition.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Right. Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: And also building the maximum amount of cumulative joint damage.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay. Right. Yeah. Cause you’re, everything’s being just…
Dr. John Jaquish: Think of the pack runs.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I mean, when the knees bent is when it’s hurting you. When you’re going uphill, that hurts. When you’re going downhill, with shorter steps, you’re controlling your fall. You don’t hurt your knee from that.
Ken Frownfelter: I guess the moving the compounding with cartilage meniscus, whatever the say on the knees…
Dr. John Jaquish: That can be a challenge too because it’s abrupt, it’s not a controlled thing.
Ken Frownfelter: But likasu said, you are controlling that fall, so you can adjust how you land, whether you’re pushing into your heel and now you’re using your muscles to help take that. But a lot of times people will, when they’re lifting, they get their muscles. They’re getting that point who ere they’re getting fatigued or whatever. And so then now they start adjusting to those joints like you’re saying, and I hadn’t even thought about it like that. I’ve had knee surgeries and stuff before, and I had to adjust how I would work out or I would do karate or something like that. And just my physiology and just determining how that goes and learning that as opposed to keeping off of those joints and keeping off of things that are going to cause more pain and not realizing that you’re… That blows my mind. I guess it’s astounding that it’s been there the whole time. And I didn’t even think about it. That you are stronger holding that as opposed to getting down there and having your quads parallel to the ground. Because it’s not something you think about.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah and think about it this way. You can pick up something heavy, hold it close to your body and you can walk a long way. But if every step you took, you had to squat down to where your legs are parallel to the ground. You might not make it two or three steps.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So also when you take the stronger range of motion to fatigue, now we take all ranges of motion to fatigue, but there’s a constant question. Are you able to stimulate any growth from that? Well, you’re firing the most amount of tissue where you are strongest. So is it going to stimulate more growth? Yeah, obviously. Is it the maximum? No, probably not. Because other parts of the muscle are more likely to fire when you’re in your weaker range of motion. So you want to fatigue all ranges and that’s what we do. But if people only got stronger in the ranges that they were using, think about a sprinter. They use seven degrees of action behind their knee.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: Very little movement behind the knee. They have 180 degrees available. They only use seven of those 180. So if they were only getting stronger in that one small range of motion, they wouldn’t be able to get out of a chair.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: They’re strong in all ranges of motion. Why is that? So, they’re taking the maximum amount of tissue to a very high level of fatigue when they sprint therefore the growth is shown in strength, the upward difference in all ranges of motion.
Ken Frownfelter: And I guess that would be, that would go the same thing of just say, a long-distance runner and they’re running hills or just of somebody running and they go run hills, they’re using more load in that as opposed to somebody that’s running on a flat surface for just miles or whatever, right?
Dr. John Jaquish: Correct. Sure. Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: And I guess because you’re pushing harder. I would always when I because I also teach karate for kids and adults and one of the things we work on is always that explosion. You want to kind of be able to explode off of your feet and get those small muscle fibers to just go quick and people burn out quickly on that and they just say, okay, I’m done. And it’s just muscle not getting used and just not being used to getting used. Is that correct?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. There’s some stabilization firing that up-regulates growth hormone, but it’s not going to condition you to let’s say throw a baseball or swing a golf club. Because those are skills, right? Like your output, you may be able to throw a much faster fastball after using X3, but you also got to practice pitching. Because you got to be able to control that power. You can’t control that power, you’re not going to be a pitcher. Like here’s some guys, I know some guys in law enforcement who built very powerful musculature, but never really bothered with a lot of the subduing, someone who’s resisting arrest and he’s never focused on that. Everybody did it in the academy, but not everybody practiced that regularly. And I’ve seen really strong police officers get overpowered by some person on PCP or whatever. Whereas the people who are better at that skill, even if they don’t have a powerful physique, they win that game.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, so you…
Dr. John Jaquish: They win that game.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: So you got to have both.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. And so with X3, you’re looking at the maximum amount of effort and output in a minimal amount of time, correct? You don’t need to go … because there’ll be guys that go to the gym for an hour, two hours or whatever and they’re lifting weights or whatever-
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. The goal in designing X3 had nothing to do with saving people time. It just so happens that the best stimulus for the most growth is brief.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: When somebody tells me their workout’s two hours, whatever, three days a week four days a week. I know their workout sucks.
Ken Frownfelter: Sure. Yeah, no, I agree.
Dr. John Jaquish: I can stimulate much growth and if they’re big, they’re probably taking some sort of performance dancing drug or whatever. All right. I mean like the body doesn’t need that.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Like here’s another thing, with X3 you only do one set.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: any adaptation that the body has, whether it be a callous see I got some pretty brutal callouses, a suntan, how many sets do you do in the sunlight to get a tan?
Ken Frownfelter: Right you just one Saturday afternoon or whatever.
Dr. John Jaquish: You just go outside and you, it was bright you get a tan.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: If you get too much, you get a burn. Right? So what most people are doing to their musculature by doing multiple sets is just the equivalent of a sunburn. They’re just hurting themselves, creating damage. By the way, muscular damage, and micro-tears are inversely related to growth. So if you damage the muscle, the idea is you tear the muscle, and then it grows back bigger.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Wrong. If you do that and you have that level of soreness and everything guaranteed, you will never grow.
Ken Frownfelter: Really?
Dr. John Jaquish: Until you change so that you stop the damage. Because you want to fatigue the muscle. As soon as you damage it, the muscle protein synthesis goes to fix the damage and just brings you right back to where you were. There is no getting bigger.
Ken Frownfelter: So you should not be sore where you’re having a hard time walking or you’re having a hard time, “oh, I can’t even move my arm” or whatever.
Dr. John Jaquish: No.
Ken Frownfelter: It should never get to that point.
Dr. John Jaquish: Like if you’re iron deficient, you could get to that point. So a lot of vegans have trouble with that. Because they don’t have iron in their diet or enough.
Ken Frownfelter: Sure.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So there are other reasons why you could be sore, but really when you have the proper nutrition and the proper stimulus, like the last 60 pounds of muscle I gained, which is since turning for me, I’ve never been sore not even one day.
Ken Frownfelter: Wow. And there’s that thing where people say, are you ever sore? Are you sore all the time? Because I’m sore. People hit the gym, especially coming up by the time this episode airs, it’ll be after the first of the year. And you go to the gyms or wherever and you, or you drive past them and you see just cars upon cars in the parking lot and stuff like that. And then people are like, “oh, I’m so sore.” And then they stop because they got so sore that doesn’t have to be a way of life. There are alternatives.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a mistake.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, it’s only just not knowing what the right thing is. People are bombarded with misinformation all day, every day. A lot of fitness professionals don’t help because the ones that are given some of the most attention, are their bodybuilders.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: You notice NFL players don’t tell you what their workout is.
Ken Frownfelter: Sure. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: You notice that? Yeah. Well, part of it is that’s not their brand. Like they win games, right?
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: That’s their brand.
Ken Frownfelter: Win games, sell shoes.
Dr. John Jaquish: The thing about their workout is just like, they don’t care at all.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: The most meaningless statistics are like, you know who benches what? I don’t care. They’re winning games. That’s what matters.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. You hear about bodybuilders’ time. If you’re talking about workouts, you hear about bodybuilders weightlifters, or you hear about movie stars. The Thor workout, Captain America workout, something like that. And those guys you’ll look-
Dr. John Jaquish: At all of the above usually highly inactive. A lot of these guys, like remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger said he did a two-hour workout in the morning and a two-hour workout.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: High-intensity weight lifting at night.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: And he ate 10,000 calories a day. It’s like all of those things, none of these things are possible. And then later on he admitted now his workout was more like 20 something minutes. And it was like five days a week.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Yeah. You see those things you read in magazines or whatever. And you see a lot of younger guys doing this by reading those and seeing those things. And then they post on Instagram or wherever they post and they get these pictures. Oh, I’m making gains and stuff, but there’s not a lot to them. I knew a guy one time and we were working some martial arts with him and he was just, he’s active, he played ball in college, did a whole bunch of stuff. And I worked him for one minute fighting a guy in a padded suit. By the time he got done with that one minute, he was puking in the trash can. He was done. He was out of gas completely. But this guy was an athlete and he’d done all these things and it took him a little bit to realize some of the stuff that he’s done that just were no benefit to him. And I think a lot of people don’t realize.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah a lot of the bodybuilder powerlifter mindset is lust focused on getting bigger. And what a lot of these guys don’t realize is they’re just getting fatter. They eat a lot. And they’re like, oh, I’m trying to put on some muscle and so the scale weight goes up and they’re proud of themselves, but they haven’t even gained an ounce of muscle they’re just fat.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. So before X3, developing that, what were you doing? Or you said that you weren’t even really in that good of shape, correct?
Dr. John Jaquish: Oh I was lifting. I was lifting for 20 straight years, but I never really saw results. Didn’t matter what I did. And I was eating the proper amount of protein. And now I think this is most people who work out. Like they go to the gym for years and years and years. And you know, maybe they see some changes the first couple of weeks, but they don’t see much after that. And they just keep going thinking at some point, as everything will change, but they never grow. If they’re fat, they stay fat. If they’re skinny with very little muscle years later, they’re still the same skinny guy with very little muscle.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. So what’s the trick? And I think I know the answer to this, but coming from a doctor’s going to be way more a little more gravitas into. But what’s the trick to those people who are working to try to get in better shape, either gain weight, or lose weight or whatever. What do they do as opposed to going to the gym and trying to do the New Years’ resolution?
Dr. John Jaquish: You’re not going to expect this answer.
Ken Frownfelter: Sure.
Dr. John Jaquish: In the last chapter, weight lifting is a waste of time.
Ken Frownfelter: Weight lifting is a waste of time. Get it.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. The biggest difference is genetic. Like you hear people like say, oh, that guy’s good genetics. That guy’s bad genetics. Usually, the person who has a muscular physique people just goes, oh, he has good genetics, kind of cop-out. Like, no, I have terrible genetics. And most people walk up to me and ask me most people, this may happen. If I’m in a grocery store, this may have happened 10 times when I’m in a grocery store, somebody will come up to me and be like, are you in the NFL? Are you an MMA fighter? Like they want to know like, why the hell do I look like this? And I’m like, no, I’m a scientist.
Dr. John Jaquish: I have a fitness product and a fitness concept that is highly applicable to the broad population. Now here’s the problem with standard weightlifting. Most people now, I don’t know the exact percentages because this study has not been done to determine how prevalent this genetic mutation is. Most people have a very specific tendon layout in their bodies. So like their pectorals, for example, the origin is on the sternum middle of the chest. And then it’ll connect like the insertion point will be right at the top of the humorous bone. So that’s your upper arm. So the top of the humorous bone, you may see that that’s where the connection is. So between the humorous, the top of the humorous bone, the contraction of the pectoral moves the humorous towards the midline of the body. But some people, instead of having it connected at the top of the humorous, have it connected at the bottom.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh? Down closer to their elbow?
Dr. John Jaquish: Closer to their elbow.
Ken Frownfelter: Wow.
Dr. John Jaquish: Opposite end. And people with this mutation tend to have it all over the body. Now two things are important to have a longer lever arm inside of their body. So the entire humorous bone is like a lever when doing a bench press. Whereas for me, it’s not a lever at all. So then on top of that, what do we know about tendonous tissue. It’s elastic.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: It stretches and then with incredible fierce power snaps right back in position. When you’re sprinting 20% of the energy, that number might not be right. It might be 12%. I got to think about that one. But anyway, a significant amount of energy is what they call recycled energy. So as you stretch your calf into a toe strike in the sprint, so your foot’s going into flexion as it springs back.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: As you push off the ground, there’s a percentage of energy that is because the tendon is stretched and it just snaps back. It doesn’t require you your energy output at all.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, okay. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: So knowing about the elasticity attendance and the different placement to create leverage is why some people who have that mutation start to pick up weights in high school and they just grow.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: Six months or a year later, they look like they’ve been lifting weights for 25 years.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: And this is why most people who try and follow whatever program it is that some bodybuilder does. It’s like that bodybuilder might have that mutation and they don’t. And they’ll do the same thing. They’ll be like, I’m not getting anything out of this. And so first came the bone density research where I realized we have a variable capacity for output that is so different.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Depending on the position you’re in. Then realizing some people have that mechanical leverage and elasticity built into their biomechanics. That’s like, oh, there we go. That’s the difference. That’s why some people can lift regular weights, which is inefficient. And they end up growing anyway. So really what X3 is, is it’s that same advantage, but it’s on the outside of your body instead of the inside of your body.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Now you have leverage. Now you have elasticity.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. So that’s where the whole idea of relaxing during whatever athletic competition you’re doing, you got to relax through it. Contract when you need to do the thing. But then when you’ve done say hit the ball, then you need to relax your body and let your body this that elasticity, just coming to the-
Dr. John Jaquish: That’s different. That’s just conserving your energy. That’s not the geometry of force output.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: So I’m specifically about the geometry of the force output.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, so you’re talking about output, not directly after the output.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Because the output is ultimately the loading that goes through the muscle in question, which is going to determine how powerful that growth stimulus is.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: So even the guy with the advantageous tendon layout, he’s going to be able to lift more as a completely untrained individual and he’ll be able to grow much faster.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Because you can take that tissue to a much deeper level of fatigue. And the objective with X3 is a level of fatigue that goes even beyond that. This is why 19 NFL players have given up on weightlifting and they’re just using X3 now.
Ken Frownfelter: Really and they’re seeing some results, are they?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah they’re in the best shape of their life.
Ken Frownfelter: Really?
Dr. John Jaquish: Some of them are in their thirties
Ken Frownfelter: Wow.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, better than they were in their twenties. Because they can train. So X3 allows you to train heavier, but it’s a strategic way to train heavy. So you switch on more testosterone receptors, and you stimulate growth faster in because you’re offloading in the weaker range of motion. You don’t get the joint damage.
Ken Frownfelter: Ohyeah.
D r. John Jaquish: Without joint damage, you can keep going and keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. Whereas most people who just lift regular weights they’ll grow until they’ve damaged the joints bad enough to where it’s just too painful.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: And most people experience that. Especially if they don’t have that mutation, they experience that very early in their lifting. So they go from having a one rep maximum, by the way, one rep maximums are stupid. Don’t do them. And they don’t stimulate any growth.
Ken Frownfelter: Right?
Dr. John Jaquish: Like let the high school kids do that. Adults should never go one rep maximum. But these are observations from back when people did one rep maximums all the time. You’d see a guy whose one rep maximum bench press was like 120 pounds. So not a strong person.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: But at that point, they’ve benched so much, they can barely put their shirt on their shoulders hurt so bad. So is that person going to get through a 300-pound bench press? No.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Yeah. There’s no-
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, because the cumulative damage is… They just can’t do it. Or it’s just so painful it stops them. So what they do is they switch to machines or they start doing limited range or they start doing, this is one of my favorite ones, super slow. Which is super ineffective because you’re training with like way lower weight. I mean, it’s as dumb as cardio it’s like, and I tell people there’s not any such thing as cardio. Cardio is just really strength training that’ll never make you stronger.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: But it will wear out your joints. And I see this happening and I’ve got the answer. I know exactly what they need to do to avoid these problems. Can be as strong, powerful, and build the physique they want, they just got to learn. They got to learn what’s in that book.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. And so in addition to that, your diet is huge, correct? Diet is, and they say that one-third of everything is your food, your exercise.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah that’s bull.
Ken Frownfelter: Blah, blah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Here’s what it is. People are like, and you hear like how you look is going to be 80% diet, 20% exercise. No. That implies that you can slack on one or the other. And they want to know which one they can slack on.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. Okay. Yeah. The truth is both exercise and nutrition need to be 100% correct.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Now how I define that a hundred percent is very different than how many others would define it. You need to be able to get the maximum stimulus into the muscle. And so a large portion of the book is about how I accomplish that developing X3, or you can accomplish it by going into a gym with chains, and fans, changing the weight from the contracted position to the weaker position. You want a wide ratio of force. Now, the reason I developed X3 was screwing around with chains and bands and trying to hook on stuff. And like you might spend half an hour setting up for your bench press, which you’ll only do one set of.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: So, I mean withX3, it takes one second to set it up, and then you got everything you need. But I’m not saying anybody needs to buy my product.
Ken Frownfelter: But you should.
Dr. John Jaquish: But like about 30 pages in this is a 250-page book, about 30 pages is about that product specifically. But the concept of the product is also discussed in there. And that can be applied in multiple different ways, so it’s like if you’re training with variable resistance, you’re probably going to win. If you’re not training with variable resistance, you’re probably not going to win. Now that people are reading this book, we sold 150,000 copies of that book, making it a bestseller.
Ken Frownfelter: That’s cool. Very cool.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And so the people that read it, there’s a reason that the Miami Heat gave up on weight training and they just use X3. They even endorsed the book it’s right on the back cover.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t realize that they had done that. I hadn’t even-
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: That’s very cool.
Dr. John Jaquish: So for them, injury avoidance is really what pro athletes are most interested in, but they know they need to stay strong.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: In fact, talking to a strength coach about getting their athletes stronger is almost a ridiculous conversation, because the number one thing the strength conditioning coach is concerned with is not getting the athlete stronger. It’s keeping them from getting injured.
Ken Frownfelter: They’re getting stronger. They’re stronger as it is. And they do work out they’re going to get stronger.
Dr. John Jaquish: So pretty much, they’re told like an NFL player, they injure themselves lifting and so they have to skip a game, their pay is docked for that game. They don’t get paid for that game.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. That’s not so good. Not when you’re-
Dr. John Jaquish: Literally when you’re in the NFL, you get paid per game. If you show up ready to play any game you can’t play, you will not be paid. So if you’ve got a five million per season contract, it won’t be five million dollars if you skip a game.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Or you get hurt and can’t be at a game.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. I see. Yeah. So making sure you’re not injured is the trick. And that’s something that looking at the first responder world, the folks like that, who they’re not professional athletes necessarily.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right.
Ken Frownfelter: But they should be a tactical athlete. They should be capable of doing physical things. And so whether that’s your firefighter that has to climb stairs with a whole pack on and tools or your SWAT operator who has to carry all this gear. Those guys are the ones that work out but they’re not working out correctly. So they get injured and like, “oh yeah, I’m dealing with this ankle thing.” Or “I’m dealing with this back thing” and still trying to wear their stuff and taking more of a chance of getting injured again.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. There are’s no do-overs in law enforcement. Like if you kick down somebody’s door and your knee’s throbbing, you can’t tell the suspect who’s running at you with a machete to “hang on, man, hang on. I have a knee issue here.”
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Little time out, they don’t do that.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. And so you take this chance now you can injure yourself for life and you lose your career. And I’ve talked about this before with those folks. So the military has the VA. And if you get out of the military, because you get hurt, you have the VA to take care of you for the rest of your life. The law enforcement and firefighters don’t have that. They don’t have a VA after if they get hurt and they’re out of it anymore. So the trick is, to work out correctly so you’re in shape enough to do the things because you still got to do your other training. You got to practice your door-kicking skills and other stuff like that. But if you take care of that being physically fit first, all that stuff will come easier.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yep.
Ken Frownfelter: So that’s a huge thing. And that’s not something that a lot of people think about. So if people want to get the X3 or they want to learn how to work out with it. I’m assuming it comes with various exercises and programs.
Dr. John Jaquish: Everything. There’s a workout card, but there’s a URL on the card where you can see everything in the video.
Ken Frownfelter: And do you have programs for it? Because I seem to remember looking at your website and there’s like a calendar or a program or something like that you can do specific-
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s assuming you’re starting with very little experience exercising. I recommend everybody just go through that. So there’s not something that they… Like a lot of people don’t understand constant tension, which is a principle we apply, they don’t understand diminishing range. And they wouldn’t because I came up with that term. So they wouldn’t know what that is. So they need to watch all videos, but it takes I don’t know 20 minutes.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: And then you can become an expert on how to program.
Ken Frownfelter: You order it, you get it whatever day that night, you watch all your videos and you’re ready to work out by the next morning to just start hammering away.
Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. And you said in conjunction with your book, that weightlifting is a waste of time. With your book, you can get that and read it and that’ll explain more about how to work and how to use X3 and all that stuff. Right?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And it talks about nutrition also. It’ll break a lot of things that you were told about nutrition. Now you need eight glasses of water a day. No study ever proved that. That was made up by Gatorade. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. How many times have you heard that’s stupid stuff?
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: That was made up by Kellogg to sell cereal.
Ken Frownfelter: Sure.
Dr. John Jaquish: Which when it came out, I think like the 1930s, like cereal was a new thing and people didn’t eat breakfast back then. Breakfast might have been like a bite of toast and a sip of coffee before you walked out the door or was nothing. I like the concept of eating first thing in the morning before you go to work was just not a thing. People did it on the weekends, but they also slept in, right?
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: So maybe they had a real breakfast and a late lunch or they did like a brunch kind of thing, but yeah people didn’t eat three meals a day.
Ken Frownfelter: What’s your suggestion for water intake so it’s not 8 glasses of water or whatever.
Dr. John Jaquish: So ironically, it’s not fair for me from eight glasses of water. I can have six glasses of water in a day, but I just do it based on thirst and I only drink in a four-hour window.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: So I’m dry fasting for 20 hours a day.
Ken Frownfelter: Wow.
Dr. John Jaquish: No food, no liquids. 20 hours a day.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And so there’s a great study from 2013 in Germany where they took 10 people and they give them no food or water for five straight days. They had better hydration after no water for five days.
Ken Frownfelter: Is that because your body starts saying, “okay, I’ve got to find water somewhere” and so it starts lubricating itself from stores inside yourself?
Dr. John Jaquish: You are a smart guy. That’s exactly what happens.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s called metabolic water. It starts pulling water out of fat cells.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: The only cells that are stored and it makes perfect sense right. You dehydrate those cells enough and they destroy themselves.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, okay. I see. So that’s the same thing with intermittent fasting. What you’re saying is that your food intake… you’re not eating for a certain amount of time. And then you’re it’s taking
Ken Frownfelter: … you’re not eating for a certain amount of time.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Yeah. And it’s so funny, like the caloric restriction people who like to bash the people who promote intermittent fasting. It’s like, it’s largely the same mechanism. Your body only burns body fat when it is done with the digestive caloric sources.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: So if you’re calorie deprived, let’s say you’re like me, you’re 240 pounds, six feet tall. Your basal metabolic rate plus activities are 3,300 calories a day. If you’re at a 2000 calorie deficit, which is huge, so you’re eating 1300 calories a day, you can spread those 1300 calories out throughout the day and you’ll have poor insulin sensitivity, which is not great. But most people have poor insulin sensitivity, which is why they get viruses so easily. But you can lose body fat doing that, but you’re only metabolizing the body fat when you are absent of food or said another way, in a fasted state.
Ken Frownfelter: Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: Because 1300 calories spread out over the day will probably be like really tiny meals/snacks. You have some calories, your body gets through them real quick, and then you go back into a fasted state.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Now I do the caloric restriction thing, but I also do the intermittent fasting. Now my intermittent fast is shorter. They’re only 20 hours. I used to do five-day fasts, but with water. So I’m dry fasting now. Dry fasting, you get the results much faster, but you can’t go as long.
Ken Frownfelter: Is it every single day, every day of the week, seven days a week? Or do you…
Dr. John Jaquish: I intended to do this seven days a week. However, I got engaged. So schedules are sometimes challenging. When I’m told, “Oh great news, we have a brunch tomorrow,” and I’m like, “Hmm.”
KenFrownfelter: “We’re reading these people for dinner.” “Oh, okay.”
Dr. John Jaquish: Right.
Ken Frownfelter: Because the whole trick is, I’m don’t know-
Dr. John Jaquish: weekends. I’m dry fasted 20 hours during the weekdays and maybe Sunday, but Saturday, a pretty small chance I’m going to stick to that.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. Because I know for me, you sit there and you look at something and you… I’ve always liked the food since I was a little kid. I was a chunky little kid. And so what I would do is I would eat when I could. And so I have to have it not in front of me. I have to avoid food if I want to intermittent fast or I want to fast. I have to avoid it, so I can focus on what other things I need to do.
Dr. John Jaquish: Being distracted is so key in nutrition control. And that’s why coronavirus hurts people when they were stuck at home because they’re stuck at home. They got nothing to do and they’re just looking in their pantry. And they’re like, “I could eat everything,” and they did. And it shows.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. Because everybody would only… “I couldn’t go to the gym.” That doesn’t mean you can’t work out. I mean, you can still do things. You should still be able to do things. I haven’t been a part of a gym in, I don’t know, a long time. And I work out every day. You can do stuff all the time. And now if you get X3, you can work out all the time and you can take it with you.
Dr. John Jaquish: I’d love to do a study. I mean the Olympic training center would never let me do this. But I would say, “Let’s take a group of people who are strength athletes, same sport. Divide this group in half. Half of them use the Olympic training center. So, the best equipment in the world. Whatever they want to do, I don’t care. They can work out for two hours a day. It doesn’t matter. Then the other group just uses X3 at their house for about 10 minutes a day, six days a week. The X3 people will blow away the Olympic training center people.
Ken Frownfelter: And you would put money on that.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yep.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. That’s cool. And that’s not something that you see too often. You see-
Dr. John Jaquish: No, I mean like there are guys-
Ken Frownfelter: That’s cool.
Dr. John Jaquish: … who will gain more muscle. For the first six months, there’s this group of people in particular. I like looking at the six-month number. First six months, gaining 20 pounds of muscle mass. That’s unheard of. That’s unheard of, for like a drug-enhanced stat. Well, maybe that’s normal for drug-enhanced. I don’t know much about that, but-
Ken Frownfelter: That’s unheard of.
Dr. John Jaquish:… it’s uncommon. And so there are guys who are coming up to me and they’re like, “I put on 20 pounds of muscle with X3 .” I’ll be approached at an airport or something like that. For some reason, I bump into my fans all the time at airports. I schedule myself, as I get to the airport extra early, just in case I run into somebody because they’ll make me miss my flight.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh wow. They just want to sit and talk.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And so I try and be polite and it’s like, after 10 minutes, I’m like, “Well, I’m here because I got a catch a plane, so…”
Ken Frownfelter: No, you’re here to see me. You don’t seem to understand.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right.
Ken Frownfelter: Everybody comes to the airport just to stand around.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right. What the hell was I saying?
Ken Frownfelter: I’m sorry. I knocked you off.
Dr. John Jaquish: No, that’s all right.
Ken Frownfelter: You were talking about how people… That you can get this stuff with X3 as opposed to going to a gym.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. Guys will tell me, “I got more out of six months with an X3 than I did with 20 years of weightlifting before that.” Yeah, I hear that story, I don’t know. Maybe every day, maybe every other day.
Ken Frownfelter: Man, that’s cool. And that’s not something that…There are a lot of people who, one, won’t go to a gym because it’s all intimidating. Because there’s all this different stuff. And people are people, and humans are humans, but guys, girls, anybody can use this. Right? It’s not just you have to be a college athlete or something like that. If you’re a-
Dr. John Jaquish: There are people with no exercise experience in their sixties get it, and they do phenomenal. Andthere ares NFL players that get it and they do phenomenal.
Ken Frownfelter: So a soccer mom in her thirties or forties can just pick this thing up and work out. Do the 10, 15 minutes, 20 minute day thing.
Dr. John Jaquish: And then you do. Yep.
Ken Frownfelter: And they’re going to make way more gains or difference, progression, whatever than they would be getting up every day and going to the gym and making sure they do the same thing on the treadmill or the elliptical or whatever.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: And they’re not going to feel different because they’re trying to do something and you got these huge bodybuilder guys,
or these teenagers or whatever that are making all this noise, trying to show off, which changes the whole attitude, the mentality of the gym in which you’re at.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, the ego lifting.
Ken Frownfelter: Right, right. Or the girls over in the corner with their Instagramming or they’re taking photos of their tight pants in the mirror and stuff like that. They are people that don’t want to do that. They want to have some kind of gain or they want to have some kind of progression with their health and their fitness.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. But keep in mind the two groups of people you just described, they find you annoying.
Ken Frownfelter: That’s true.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s like, “This guy comes in. It’s like, all he wants to do is work out.”
Ken Frownfelter: Right. He’s not on the-
Dr. John Jaquish: My favorite is the CrossFit people. Like there’s a great video of a dude who did a lift and then dislocated his shoulder in the process of throwing the bar against the ground because they all have to do that so it makes a loud noise. So everybody knows they’re strong. Right?
Ken Frownfelter: Oh, okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: I guess they have to do that because you’d never know somebody’s strong by looking at them when they do CrossFit.
Ken Frownfelter: And that’s what it’s about too, is you have to look strong. You can’t just be a good person, or you can’t just know that “I’m healthy. I’m going to be able to do what I need to do.”
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: And it’s unfortunate because social media tells us that we have to be this, or we have to look this way. And you may not look that way, but you can be healthy and you can be strong and you can be all these things, but you don’t have to look…
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And social media also, I tell people… I say this less because we have a lot of pro bodybuilders that are using the product. I tell them bodybuilders aren’t the best people to look at because you don’t know what you’re looking at unless you understand that sport.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: There’s performance-enhancing drugs in that sport. That’s not a mystery.
Ken Frownfelter: What? No.
Dr. John Jaquish: But it’s a lot more prevalent than you think. I know. Right?
Ken Frownfelter: No.
Dr. John Jaquish: Who knew? Yeah. So there are performance-enhancing ng drugs. The other thing is they get lean, but somebody who’s at 6% body fat and dehydrated looks like a skinned cadaver.
Ken Frownfelter: Right, yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So they go to extreme dehydration. So, in the study, I was talking about how the people were better hydrated after not having any water. So what the bodybuilders do is they load up on water a couple of the days before the show. So they hydrate and their body is trying to dump all the water because they’re drowning on the inside kind of thing. And I mean, they don’t go to renal failure because you can kill yourself by drinking too much water. They don’t go to that level, but they get in there. And they over hydrate, and then the next few days, then they’re losing all the water, but then they don’t drink any. And then on top of that, they’ll probably, this is very common, take diuretic drugs.
Ken Frownfelter: Just to soak them up. Right?
Dr. John Jaquish: Well, the diuretic drugs force them to urinate even more.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: So they’re losing even more water.
Ken Frownfelter: All their liquid, yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: And so what the diuretic drugs are designed to do is take somebody who has high blood pressure and lower their blood pressure, dehydrate their blood a little bit. But when you’re taking somebody who’s already dehydrated and you give them a diuretic, that can kill them. And it has with bodybuilders, many times. Still, you got to realize what you’re looking at when you’re looking at a picture of a bodybuilder, that guy looks like that for a few hours, maybe one day in six months.
Ken Frownfelter: For that photoshoot or that magazine or whatever.
Dr. John Jaquish: Just for that photoshoot or just for that-
Ken Frownfelter: That competition or whatever.
Dr. John Jaquish: Just for that competition. They don’t look like that every day. I like it when people look at NFL players because they never get dehydrated. They got to perform. So that’s not something they can do.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. They got to perform for half a year.
Dr. John Jaquish: And they’re tested like you wouldn’t believe for performance-enhancing drugs. They can’t get away with anything anymore. And what do you know? They’re still strong and they’re still very healthy. So those are my preferred athletes to look at. And also, I like helping bodybuilders because a lot of people pay attention to bodybuilding, but I prefer helping out the NFL guys because when you show what an NFL player can do, you know there’s no funny business. There are no drugs, and they have to perform. So there can’t be any other chemical manipulation that would compromise their performance. They’re not going to do that.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: They want to be the best football player they can.
Ken Frownfelter: And so they work on that. They work on their fitness, their nutrition, and then they work on their skill to cap all that off in whatever position
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And the most important thing they do is injury avoidance. So they want to train in a way where they’re less likely to injure, which is why they love X3 so much.
Ken Frownfelter: And I think that’s huge for the first responder world because the last thing we want to be is injured.
Dr. John Jaquish: A first responder is almost exactly like an NFL player and nothing like a bodybuilder.
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: The bodybuilders when they’re dehydrated at that show, there’s the use of stimulants sometimes so they can just keep from falling over, just they’re so exhausted. It’s funny, bodybuilders would tell you, “I’ve never looked better than when I was at that show. I’ve never felt worse.”
Ken Frownfelter: Wow. And that’s weird. I mean, it makes a huge difference.
Dr. John Jaquish: They look so great. They look super healthy. They look superhuman and healthy. They’re not healthy.
Ken Frownfelter: But I mean that goes to show you, just because what you’re looking at isn’t actually what it is because inside it’s a dry ghost town. Their organs and everything are just, they’re craving. They’re screaming for water. They need some fluids. They need some food.
Dr. John Jaquish: Now I will say there are some people who do it more responsibly than others. And they’re typically the ones who are more successful than the reckless guys. And you could say that about a lot of different things. But I still tell the regular person who just wants to get in shape, “Don’t spend your time staring at the physique of bodybuilders.”
Ken Frownfelter: Right.
Dr. John Jaquish: That should not be your goal unless you want to do that. If you want to be a bodybuilder, okay.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. But if you want to be an athlete…
Dr. John Jaquish: If you just want to be a good guy. If you just want to look good if you’re barbecuing, with your shirt off, standing by the pool. So your wife gives you the thumbs up because she’s proud that you look dynamite.
Ken Frownfelter: She’s telling all her friends, “That’s my manover there.” Yeah, that sort of thing.
Dr. John Jaquish: That’s what you want. Right. You want your kids to look at you like you’re a superhero. You want to catch your wife looking at you up and down, like, “Wow.”
Ken Frownfelter: The other thing I think about is, a lot of people, especially, let’s take first responders, just because that’s a lot of my listeners. They go do stuff on their weekends, on their time off. They’re hiking or they’re rafting down rivers, or they’re boating, or they’re doing whatever and their active stuff. I think of it like if you’re in good shape if you’re capable of doing things and you’re fit and all that stuff if it comes down to being able to help somebody because you’re in better shape like if somebody falls out of a boat during a rafting trip or something like that, are you going to be able to help get them, get them into a boat, swim over there, whatever the case maybe? Are you capable of doing that? Or are you not because you have an injury or because you’re so sedentary in your lifestyle that you couldn’t do that, and there’d be two people that need rescue now or whatever the case may be.
Ken Frownfelter: And I tell people that all the time, are you able to be that thing? Because we’re looked at as people that need to help other people. And that same thing with like, let’s say nurses or whatever. You’re walking in there saying, “You should quit smoking,” and then drive out of there and they see you off the property, smoking a cigarette on your break or something like that. People are looking at you. So if you get in shape and you’re telling people, “Hey, do this,” or you’re there to help somebody, you should be able to help them instead of not. That’s just my thing I think about often. And if you get in shape, if you’re able to do it, then do it and do it right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: Doc, I appreciate you coming on today. It’s enlightening, just knowing all this stuff that you’re talking about and ways in which we can-
Dr. John Jaquish: You can tell I’m excited about all-
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s my favorite subject. You don’t have to twist my arm to talk about any of this.
Ken Frownfelter: And it’s cool. I do want to let everybody know that… Where could people find you and your stuff if they wanted to?
Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. My last name is very complicated to spell, so I created a landing page where everybody can find me. It’s very easy. It’s doctorj.com, D-O-C-T-O-R, the letter J, .com.
Ken Frownfelter: doctorj.com. They can find you, they can also find X3 and everything else on…
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. You click on the superior exercise link, which brings you to X3 . Superior nutrition brings you to Fortagen. That’s the only supplement I take. It’s a highly refined bacterial fermentation protein that is five times more usable by the body than whey protein. So it’s incredibly inexpensive, super powerful. There’s a link to OsteoStrong there, as well as the book. Yeah, it’s all there.
Ken Frownfelter: And people can get the book on Amazon too if they wanted to look there. Right?
Dr. John Jaquish: It takes you to Amazon.
Ken Frownfelter: Oh does it? Yeah, okay. To find a book and that is Weightlifting is a Waste of Time. It’s a red book. There’s a muscley dude on the front, so if you’re trying to figure out.
Dr. John Jaquish: That’s me, yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: I’ll put links when I post this on social media, so there’ll be links to all your stuff, and see if we can get a picture of the book on there as well, so people know what they’re looking for.
Dr. John Jaquish: Perfect.
Ken Frownfelter: So, that’d be perfectly cool. Hey, just for everybody else that if want to talk to us at The What’s a Hero podcast, you can get ahold of us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. I’m on LinkedIn. You can go to our website, thewhatsaheropodcast buzzsprout com. And you’ll see every prior episode we’ve had and links to all podcast platforms on which you can go there.
Ken Frownfelter: And with that you can download all the episodes that you want to download and have them at the ready. So if you don’t have service, you decide that you’re going to go up in the mountains and you’re going to go work out with your X3, you can pop in The What’s a Hero podcast and listen to us, downloaded. And it’s free. They’re all free. So go do it. Enjoy it. Plus Dr. Jay has been on a ton of other podcasts, too, all these other folks. And so he’s got a ton of information out there. Read his stuff. He’s a pretty smart guy. He’s a fairly good-looking fellow, I’m guessing his fiance thinks so.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s only her opinion that counts. I don’t need anybody else’s.
Ken Frownfelter: That’s right. So don’t worry about how he looks, just buy his stuff. Read his stuff. And learn from him, because he’s got a ton of information that’s just usable.
Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. If anybody has a burning desire to follow me, I’d suggest Instagram. I create more content for Instagram than anything else. I prefer the platform. I’m always on the move, so it’s always easy to post on Instagram.
Ken Frownfelter: I agree. It is. It is. It’s a cool platform. I like it myself. Do you have any final thoughts for everybody? If you can have one little final thing, what would you like to tell everybody?
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s easy to fall into thinking the things you’ve been taught were right. And I know I’m breaking the paradigm on a lot of different stuff, nutrition and exercise. Fitness is the most failed human endeavor. Depending on how you define what fit is, I would say maybe, one in 100,000 people is how most of us would define fit, which is why everybody that I know who has a defined six-pack has a supplement contract also. That’s how rare it is. It shouldn’t be. If you look at the cover of my book, every male should look like that. I didn’t go through any risk to get that. I did a couple of years of training with X3 and, as I said, I put on 60 pounds of muscle. I’m in the best shape of my life, and I’m 45 years old. Like if you saw me at, at whatever 25 or 30 or 35, you’d hardly believe it’s the same person.
Ken Frownfelter: Really. That’s pretty cool.
Dr. John Jaquish: I have the same face, but my physique is completely different.
Ken Frownfelter: Yeah. And usually, people start saying, “Oh, 40, I change. And things just started downhill. I get this stomach and I get the love handles and blah, blah, blah.” And you’re done at 40.
Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah. I’m like better and better and better all the time.
Ken Frownfelter: Right. That’s so cool. That’s so cool. And it’s X3 and fit, and nutrition, and just knowing what you’re doing.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.
Ken Frownfelter: And you can learn from it. You can buy his book and read it, and you’ll learn it. That’s great. So I appreciate you coming on.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, thank you.
Ken Frownfelter: This is so informative, so much information. And I’ve got all these questions that are probably burning in my head, but it’s like overload. So I’ve got to get the book. I’ve got to read the book, and I’ve got to go work out with an X3 , just so I can know what I’m doing.
Dr. John Jaquish: Okay.
Ken Frownfelter: So those of you guys listening, I want to thank all our nurses out there, our teachers, those people that serve other people, our firefighters, our EMTs, and our police officers. You guys are out there on the frontline, making sure that we can live in the world that we live in, the United States, where we have this opportunity to do things and become better and help become stronger to serve other people and protect other people. And it’s a rare thing.
Ken Frownfelter: And those of you guys, those vets, those military guys that are out on the front line, doing that, keeping our country what it is. I appreciate you guys. And don’t let all this garbage saying that you guys are less or whatever, be fighter ready, be that warrior ready, and do the things that it takes to get in shape, to be stronger mentally and physically, and prepare yourself to do the job that you need to do. So, Dr. J’s way of doing things is one way that you can do it. And it’s easily accessible and he’s accessible too. If you see him, he’ll talk to you. But don’t expect that he’s now your best friend. Come on. Use a brain.
Dr. John Jaquish: Ken and I talked a little bit before the podcast about how many people want to email me directly.
Ken Frownfelter: He’s busy. He’s got the stuff. He’s got another book to write at some point, I’m sure.
Dr. John Jaquish: I do.
Ken Frownfelter: He’s doing research. . That’s right.
Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome, man.
Ken Frownfelter: But anyways, you guys, thank you so much for being out there doing it. Dr. J, I want to thank you so much for coming on. It’s been nothing but a pleasure. And your whole team, tell them, give them a high five for me.
Dr. John Jaquish: All right.
Ken Frownfelter: And Merry Christmas, because it is before Christmas-
Dr. John Jaquish: Merry Christmas.
Ken Frownfelter:… that we’re burning this. So for Dr. John Jaquish, I am Ken Frownfelter, and this is The What’s a Hero podcast. We are clear.
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