March 6, 2018

SuperHuman Radio: Dr. John Jaquish – Highlights

Highlights of the SHR podcast. Learn about the most powerful fitness device: X3 Not Weights, not cardio, better.

Full Transcript

  • And history will show, that your contribution to physical culture by coming up with the X3 bar is well deserved. So before we start telling people about X3 bar, and I’m gonna tell everybody something right now, you have to be open minded when we start talking about this. Because you’re gonna think you know what this is, and you don’t. How did you come up with this? What was the deal behind it?

  • So my background is in bone density research. I invented a device that puts axial compression—so this is the axis of bone, the length of the bone – and we put force through that bone in positions where we would naturally absorb high impact forces. So when you trip and fall, you protect yourself.

The big issue here. If I look at what people can do with full range of motion, which means you’re limited by your weaker range of motion hence why we call it the weaker range. So studies on bench press, sticking point, this is all part of the same, the same discussion.

So when we look at that, and then we look at what a human is capable of at extension, so like when I’m on a bench press when my arm is out here: what I am capable of with a 120 degree angle of inclusion upper low arm, is incredible. It’s actually seven times greater than what I’m capable of in a weaker range of motion.

So I’m looking at this and I’m thinking, we’re missing out. We are leaving the games at the gym, we’re not getting it.

  • But in.

  • Or anything, like, that I lifted, never really got much results out of it. I was a pretty average guy. And then I started reading about west side barbell and how you would add bands and chains to some of their lifts. And then there was a great study done by Professor Anderson with Cornell Athletes, and they divide the athletes in the two different groups.

One group did, they used less resistance than they would normally use, and then added bands. So let’s say they had X weight here, and then add extension, let’s say, 1.2x or 1.3x. So hyper loading the strong range and offloading the weak range.

They grew three times the amount of muscle, I should say strength, I mean muscle is strength all together, but three times the amount of strength in a given period of time compared to the control group, who is just doing their regular training tested pre- to post-.

So ultimately, I look at both groups who are lifting weights. The difference is, one group added bands. So, and I take that, and, this is another thing, ‘cause people will look at the science of X3 and go, “Well, it’s not this,” and they pull one sentence out of one study, and they don’t know how to read scientific documentation, because there’s a reason I have multiple references. It’s because I’m pulling things from different places. So then when you look at my research out of London, and you take the two and you cross observe: forget the weight. We need more variance.

  • Yes.

  • It’s actually, I still want to stay strong, but we always talk about, “Oh, I want to train smarter.” You wanna train smarter? It’s called the X3 bar. Because you can be as strong as you want, but in the weak places where you normally injure yourself, it’s dynamic for you.

  • Yeah, the weight drops off where you’re at risk.

  • It’s so beautiful.

  • And it’s so, so very quickly. So it comes with the X3 12-week program. I think on week three, I don’t remember, I filmed it a couple of weeks ago, well more than 12 weeks ago. So, we get into what’s called diminishing range of fatigue, so you do however many reps you do, and then you go to fatigue in the strong range, and then you ratchet back and do reps in the mid range, ‘cause you can’t get to the strong range anymore, ‘cause it’s a very high weight.

  • Oh interesting.

  • Yeah, and then you–

  • So you actually take it, you actually take the muscle to several levels of failure.

  • In one set.

  • In one set, yeah.

  • So you’re not letting a massive amount of blood in to recover ‘cause the problem with pausing if you’re doing the board press, you pause and your body immediately starts to recover from that.

  • Right.

  • So it’s really not as intense an experience as this is. This is absolute fatigue of the muscle in all ranges of motion simultaneously.

  • I love it, I love it.

  • Or in degrading ranges of motion called diminishing range. And the effects, you basically need one set per body part. That’s what I did for a year when I prototyped it, ‘cause even though I looked at the data, I thought this just really seems too good to be true. I experimented with once I got the prototype built, oh I should say that at first I was just gonna write a book about ultra heavy band training but go find somebody that’ll make you bands that will hold, two, three, 400, 500 pounds and train with the bands, the problem is a band, wants to be, it wants to conform, right. So it stretches and it doesn’t just, it doesn’t form a shape of a bar, and so your wrists get twisted. And your ankles, if you’re dead lifting with a 400 pound band, and stretch, your ankles are bending inwards–

  • Oh hell yeah.

  • And your ankle does not like lateral force.

  • Right.

  • So what happens is you have neural inhibition which instantly starts shutting muscle off. So when you’re uncomfortable when you’re lifting something, you’re getting a crummy workout, or not one at all, because muscles are beginning to shut off. And so, within two days of experimenting with these heavy bands, I’m like this is not gonna work.

I gotta develop an Olympic bar so I can grab here and grab here, but I’m gonna do an overhead press where it can rotate. So the X3 bar is, it’s an Olympic bar—full steel Olympic bar. I coated it in rubber.

A lot of people don’t understand that the whole thing is actually tested. The same spec as that of a rogue, an Olympic bar which has some significant cost behind it. People look at it and go, “Why is it so expensive?”

It’s an orbit bar, and the bands are not like the goofy little rehab bands that you can find at Walmart. These are hundreds of pounds at extension to deliver. Not only are you getting more force, but you’re getting more force at more repetitions, so–

  • And at appropriate points in the muscle contraction, and this is the interesting thing about it.

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