Welcome to the Human Performance Outliers Podcast with hosts Dr. Shawn Baker and
Zach Bitter. For this episode, Dr. John Jaquish joined the show. John is an
inventor, author, and scientist. John invented a device to place axial loading
to help reverse osteoporosis. Since, he has invented the X3 Bar
,
which is designed to lift heavy with less risk of joint damage.
Full Transcript #
Zach Bitter: Welcome to the Human Performance Outliers Podcast with your hosts
Dr. Shawn Baker and Zach Bitter. At Human Performance Outliers Podcast, we dive
into a wide range of topics revolving around health, nutrition, and physical
fitness. If you enjoy the show and wish to support us, please visit
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subscribing to us on your favorite podcast listening platform. Now, on to the
next topic. We are up and rolling cool.
Dr. Shawn Baker: All right. Cool. So, John. Thank you for coming on. You’re
pointing out that the little green screen Zach and I, or at least I always try
to put a green screen that goes with our guests. So, we’ve got
X3 Bar
and that’s one of your inventions. So, we’ll talk about that
for sure. Like I said, I just got done working out. I wanted to do a workout
with it this morning before I got on with you so I could have it fresh in my
mind when I talked to you.
Dr. John Jaquish: Nice!
Dr. Shawn Baker: But, John, tell us just a little bit about your background for
those folks that aren’t familiar with you or your work.
Dr. John Jaquish: So, I started developing a medical device about 10 years ago
that I call the OsteoStrong. So, my mother was diagnosed with osteoporosis. So,
I started just generally looking at what that dysfunction was. It’s a
dysfunction of disuse. So, when you don’t work out and you’re weak, we don’t
call that a disease. Maybe we should because then maybe people would pay more
attention to it. So, my mother had weak bone density. She was worried about all
the challenges that go along with that and fragility fracture. She knew that
there were the likelihood of an early death as a result of an osteoporotic
fracture is similar to that of breast cancer. So, what I did was I said, “Okay.
I’m going to see if I can figure out who the people on Earth are who have the
highest bone density and how they did it.” I found those people. It’s very easy.
There are a lot of clinical data on gymnasts. It’s the rate at which they
contact the ground that gives them this force through bone that triggers bone
growth. So, what I developed was an impact emulation device. So, that’s at
OsteoStrong locations. Now, there’s 70 clinics around the world in seven
different countries. They’re expensive and robotic and they’re $100,000. But
what I learned from that process, by the way, fixed my mother’s osteoporosis in
18 months. She now has a bone density of a 30-year-old woman and she’s in her
80s. Still doesn’t eat the way I’d like her to, but definitely address the bone
density problem. But one of the most interesting things about the whole research
project was how, when we did a small trial at a London-based hospital in East
London and worked with some of the staff at the University of East London, I
wrote the protocol of the study but then, when I got the data back, I’m looking
at some of the data. We have postmenopausal deconditioned population. These are
not high-performance athletes. These are quite the opposite. They were using
six, seven, eight times their body weight through their hip joint, self-created
force through the hip joint. So, we see that the human body is able of absorbing
absolutely incredible forces. The same thing on a chest press. If I put my hands
out here, I can either produce or receive the greatest amount of force in sort
of this position is 120 degree angle of inclusion from my upper arm to lower arm
and the back in the hand in line with the clavicle. That’s the position you
would normally assume if you were to receive high-impact force if you were to
trip and fall. So, I took all these biomechanics and then looked at the loading
that was happening in these impact graded ranges of motion. I thought, “Wow!
From a muscular perspective, if I were to come up with something similar from a
muscular perspective. We want full range not partial range and we’d want to be
able to use a lighter load where you’re weakest. A normal load where you’re in
the middle and then where the musculature is in the shortest position and you
have an axial alignment, a bone, then we want a hyper load. So, the force curve
kind of looks like this, for somebody’s who’s listening to audio, you can’t see
that at all but it’s like a hockey stick. So, basically, everyone knows what
they are in their weak range. Then, in the mid range, you might go from X in X
weight, 1X weight in the weak range. You might go to 2.5X and then you’re at 7X
capability at the top. This is how all lifts go, like the top of a deadlift,
everybody’s powerful on the top of deadlift, hence people do rack pulls, things
like that. So, I thought, “Okay. What if I can … " We’ve always had bands,
banded training. I thought, “Okay. Well, the problem with bands is, we typically
add them to weights. What if we just double down on the variance and kind of
forgot about static weight because, based on what I saw and I compared the data
that I had to … And, by the way, I did my PhD dissertation on the bone density
stuff. That was going sort of well on its way. This was like a hobby, this
strength training project. So because I was just curious. I had worked out for
20 years and I didn’t get a whole lot out of it. I mean, if I took my shirt off
at the beach, nobody would have said, “Hey. Do you work out?” I looked like a
regular guy. So, what ended up happening is when I embrace this, like really
going into the variance and the variance in capability and loading the body in
accordance to that. I realize we couldn’t use bands alone because the problem is
if I try and do a push-up with one of the bands that you guys are using with
X3 Bar
, your hands would be twisted. You could injure yourself. So,
the force that I was using and I started using like pull-up assist bands to try
and come up with some way to do a chest press and some way to do a curl.
Ultimately, the band by itself, if you’re going super light, like rehab weight,
it’s fine but you’re not going to get a workout out of that. Heavy equals
growth. If you can’t go heavy, you’re not going to grow. So, we’re trying to get
the body, we’re trying to game the system so that we can get even heavier loads
through the musculature, especially in the ranges of motion where we can handle
it. So, then I decided, “Okay, like band training, there’s a reason it never
took off because you just can’t get heavy enough but if I have an Olympic bar
that I can attach to and then I have a second ground, a ground plate that the
bands can move freely underneath and you can stand on top of, now we can do
anything we can do with barbell but we can do it with this strongest level of
variable resistance.” So, that was the invention of X3 Bar
.
Zach Bitter: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense, John. I think for folks listening
and not watching, think of a linear line graph versus an exponential line graph
or an exponential curve. That’s kind of what John’s referring to, where when
you’re going through that full range of motion, it’s not that even, distributed
force throughout. It’s that increase as you get higher. So, the other way to
think about it I guess would be like you go to the gym, sometimes you’ll see
these guys doing deadlifts or bench press and they’re have chains hanging on the
side of their stuff because they’re trying to make it heavier near the top of
the lift. That makes sense as well but from a logistical standpoint, a little
harder to have that setup at your home or you can [crosstalk 00:08:40].
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And then, the level of variance, also, because I see
some of these protocols where somebody might have X weights sitting on their
chest and when they go to extension, they might have 1.2X, whereas to stay
underneath the force curve, I want X on my chest and maybe 5X at the top, not
quite 7, because then you get kind of lost in the middle because there’s an
S-curve. It’s not linear with the way latex stretches, but the S-curve is not
exactly matched to the biomechanics curve and different movements are different.
There’s a different strength curve for the chest press that there is for the
squat that there is for the bent-over row, the actual strong position is in the
middle of the movement, not at the top of the movement. So, there’s a little bit
different biomechanics but we apply the same principles to all these movements
and really powerful results.
Dr. Shawn Baker: I’m looking at the [strength literature 00:09:40] as it’s
coming out recently. They talk about for muscle growth you have to sort of
maximally recruit or try to or maximally, intensively recruit these muscle
fibers for growth. They talk about you can do it lighter weights anything above
40% but the problem with that is that you got to do so many damn reps. I mean,
you’re sitting there. I might be up near 60, 70, 80, 100 reps before I get to
that point. I find that something where, if you’re super heavy weights, maybe
five reps or something like that. If you’re at 30, 40 reps, you’re still at a
pretty decent place.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Yeah, I do definitely recommend a higher rep count
because of that force curve. The more I understand that and the more I study
that and there’s big portions of my book which is called
Osteogenic Loading
. I really covered how
absolutely powerful we are in that stronger range of motion. It’s just, there’s
a lot of different strategies to get that in there. I just created a sort of
package around it. But now, you two have been using X3 Bar
. So, tell
me about your experiences.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I mean and I’ve trained. I think bands, I don’t know when
I was doing powerlifting 15, 20 years ago, I mean, bands were starting to come
in vogue. Then, of course it changed. Many people using reverse bands and also
but I used bands for my deadlift. I would put 400 pounds of the bar and I’d jack
it up with some bands and do some reps or sometimes I might go a little heavier
than that. That worked effectively for me. I felt there was some value in that
and the variable loading we got way back when, and I think it still is effective
even as an adjunct to standard deadlift training or you might do deficit
deadlift. So, I would combine deficits and bands and the kind of [mixed lot
00:11:49]. So, I’ve had a lot of experience with that. The one thing I would say
that I found with this is you’ve got to be motivated to do this the right way. I
think that’s because and I think the value-
Dr. John Jaquish: I know that. I was hanging out with Chris Bell last week.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I mean, I think the value is, with 500 pounds on your
back, you’re going to get squished if you don’t do it. With this, I mean, I
think you have to switch on mentally and realize is you’re going to have to go
to failure and it’s going to hurt and you’re going to have to continue going
when it hurts and you’re going to have to go and then you’re going to do those.
I think there’s value in, we talked about on the phone early, this shorted range
of motion as you progressively fatigue and you keep hitting that until you
basically fail.
Dr. John Jaquish: Until you just can’t move. Yeah.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah, and that’s what I found that that’s where it’s very
effective. Now, I think, again, you got to be motivated. You just can’t get in
there and half-ass it and think you’re going to get anything out of it. So I go
in there. Then, the other thing I found for me with the deadlifts is when I
first did it because there’s such … That orange band, that thing that’s got, I
don’t know, you said, “640 pounds at the top,” when I’m [crosstalk 00:12:56].
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s 640 pound top of the deadlift for me but I’m six feet
tall and you’re …
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. 6'5”, so I might … Maybe it’s even more. I don’t know.
Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, it’s well over seven, I think.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah, so I’m in there banging it out. What I found is I quickly
realized I had to put a hook grip in because I was like holding it double
overhand normal, I found out. I was like, “Whoa. I can’t hang on to this thing.”
Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. So, I put a hook grip on there and then it’s fine. Then,
I can hang on to this thing but yeah, I mean, I find that as I’ve just got to be
motivated and I’ve got to be willing to hurt. Then, it works. It’s kind of my
heart rate gets jacked up even doing … I was doing biceps curls, which is not
something you think of as a … You don’t use a lot of musculature on the bicep,
normally. Normally, if you’re doing high rep squats then your heart’s beating
like a freight train but I was in there doing biceps curls. I was like, “Wait a
minute. I got a high heart rate after doing biceps curls,” which is pretty
interesting because I was doing the … I get to 15, 20 reps and then start
cranking out those partial reps. Then, I felt that pretty good, but I was, I
guess, just kind of figuring out which bands are appropriate for each exercise
takes a little [crosstalk 00:14:02]-
Dr. John Jaquish: A little trial and error there.
Dr. Shawn Baker: … play it, because I started out doing chest press. I was like,
“This one’s too light for me, so I got to switch the heavy one.” But yeah, no.
I’ve enjoyed it. I mean, I give you some feedback of things that I think that
would be maybe a potentially but it’d be neat, like if, I think you can make
some handles, you know like on a cable crossover bar?
Dr. John Jaquish: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. Shawn Baker: You know how the handles are. I mean, I think that you could
make those and hook it on there as well, so you could have a little bit …
Because I’m a pretty big guy. I’m pretty wide. So, I find that my natural grip
for the chest press would be a little wider than what I’ve got with the bar
there. So, I would you, again, I don’t know if there’s …
Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. Well, two things that is interesting. When you have …
The strongest people in the world, are they using barbells or dumbbells? They’re
using barbells. When you choose to move something functionally with your upper
body … Now, your lower body is pretty much one limb at a time. We walk on one
leg at a time, unless you’re a kangaroo, one leg at a time. But when you need to
pick up something heavy, you’re using both hands. The problem is, I think, with
the single side or bilateral versus unilateral. It’s like functionally, if we
had something to pick up, we wouldn’t pick up two heavy things at once. So, I
believe there’s neural inhibition that, which is why you can see somebody who
does a 400-pound bench press but that doesn’t mean they can bench press
200-pound dumbbells. It’s not just the stabilization and firing that’s going on.
There’s an inhibitory process. So, I really stuck to just barbell because it’s
superior but also funny thing you mention, a wide grip chest press is great when
you’re in a contest. It’s not great to grow your pectorals because the pectoral
is shorter if my arms are right in front of me, whereas when I take a wide grip,
I’m not able to really fully engage my pectorals. So, I designed the bar for
maximum muscle growth not like if somebody’s a weightlifter like Chris and Mark
Bell, for example. They kind of said, “How do I … I’m not going to stop
lifting.” And I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no. In fact, if you stopped, you would
screw that up,” because that’s a skill. A golfer will become a better golfer if
they do strength training, but if they quit golfing and do strength training for
a year and go back and try and play a round of golf, they’re going to suck. So,
it’s like you have one firing pattern but then the way you look at
X3 Bar
is this is for the maximum fatigue to trigger the maximum
growth. Like I told you, use it as your last set. Use it as you’re finishing
set. That way, you stimulate absolutely the most. And you’re right. It’s not a
shortcut. It’s hard exercise. You exhaust pretty quick. So, the workout’s quick
but man, you’re leveled when you’re done with it.
Zach Bitter: Yeah and, I mean, that’s kind of how I would describe my
experience, too, would be if I’m just pulling weight off the ground at the gym,
I’m going to fail at the pull-off point, not at the top point. So, like with
this, I can get another couple reps in before I hit that fail point because I’m
not trying to kind of push through the weakness to get to the strength. The way
I kind of explained it to a couple people who were more endurance-based like
myself so they would understand it is think of it like if I were to go out and
do a speed workout, it would be a lot more difficult for me to get a quality
speed workout in if I just went right into the workout and had the hardest part
as my first couple steps. Think of it like you do a little bit of a warm-up and
then you get into the sprint intervals or the whatever type of speed workout
you’re doing. So, you kind of give yourself a chance to get kind of going before
you hit the hard part, so to speak and kind of close that gap. That’s kind of
the thing I first noticed with it was that variance from the floor part in being
able to get those last couple reps out.
Dr. John Jaquish: Nice. Probably, the most interesting part of this whole
adventure, I mean, other than just like as soon as I have the thing developed.
This is really what I wanted to talk to you guys, was the nutritional
recommendations that had to come along with it. See, from the medical device
perspective and bone density, I had already picked up on the whole idea that …
Is it okay if I switch gears and go with the new-
Zach Bitter: Sure.
Dr. John Jaquish: I know you guys are not bored of that subject. So, I had been
reading these two meta-analyses on veganism, vegetarianism and how damaging it
is to bone density. So, now I didn’t have a horse in the nutrition race and as
soon as I prototyped the X3 Bar
and started using it and building
the protocols like we’ve been discussing, going failing with diminishing range,
fatiguing with diminishing range. I like the word fatigue better. Failing makes
it sound like you broke your arm. People who don’t work out don’t understand
that word. So, as I was doing this, I thought, “Okay. I need to recommend sort
of the better nutrition program.” I had been ketogenic for 13 years because I
read Bodyopus years ago, which was a crazy book written by a crazy person. I
don’t know. It was like, “Get 50 different things you can do to optimize
performance.” Pretty much 49 of those 50 things involved breaking the law and
totally forgetting about your health. It was one of the worst books I’ve ever
written but kind of interesting at the same time but the only thing that was in
there was ketogenic nutrition. I was like, “I could do that. That sounds
interesting.” It worked and it worked really well for me. Then, as I was
developing the medical device, I learned so much about how you want to avoid
vegan vegetarian nutrition if you want to optimize bone density. So, telling
basically the postmenopausal population, “Vegetables aren’t so great”. There’s
oxalates in there that are actually performance robbing elements. So, I was
telling, it’s very, very contradictory information especially with that
population. These are women 50 plus. They’ve heard their whole lives that they
need to have as many vegetables as they can possibly choke down. I’m saying,
“Yeah. I don’t think that’s quite right.” Then, when launching the
X3 Bar
, I came across, I really started doing it. It wasn’t just
ketogenic. It was like, “All right. How deep can I go? How much can I learn
here?” So, I came from a researcher’s perspective with a pretty clean slate
other than what I knew about bone density in nutrition. I landed on carnivore.
It was awesome. And another thing, you guys had Professor Jose Antonio on your
show not that long ago. One of the best podcasts of any podcast ever. That guy
is awesome. He’s the most researched guy in high protein nutrition. Once you
understand how much protein your body can absorb and turn into muscle protein
synthesis, there’s not a lot of room in your intestines for anything else.
That’s why the way I presented to people was people say, “Well, don’t tell me
carbs are bad because like energy,” whatever. If you understand muscle protein
synthesis and maximizing it, you don’t have enough intestines to digest more
than the protein you need and the fat that comes along with it, provided you’re
not supplementing or something like that.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah, I mean that podcast with Jose was pretty enlightening.
Dr. John Jaquish: [inaudible 00:22:28].
Dr. Shawn Baker: We’ve got this sort of dichotomy. There’s people out there
saying, “Protein is evil and we should minimize it and just kind of improving
our longevity,” and all this stuff. I think it’s just so much more nuanced than
that. We’ve got a guy, interesting, is coming on, Keith Baar, who will go into
some of that nuance on things around mTor and how you want to differentially
express it for muscle but there’s other times you don’t do it, so you couple
high-protein diets with exercise, particularly resistance training. Then, I
think that’s where the magic starts to happen. But I do want to continue to talk
a little bit about muscle growth because I think it’s an important topic and we
can get back to nutrition and obviously … I think carnivore diet is a wonderful
tool. I think we’re learning more and we’re seeing that all these people are
getting healthy doing it that we’ve kind of misguided ourselves with nutrition
for years. But one of the things because I’ve heard you talk about absence of
soreness because most of us think this is a process of muscle building. You get
in there. You tear yourself up. You’re sore for a day or two and that means
that, now we’re going to rebuild. I’ve heard you kind of have a different take
on that. So, I’d like to hear a little bit more about that particular thought
and how this sort of style of training, how supposedly does it build muscle more
efficiently than the more traditional tear it down, build it back up type of
thought?
Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. So, when you do a set with X3 Bar
and you
first fatigue the strong range, which is something you typically cannot do with
a weight. Then, you diminish the range and the reps get short, you’re fatiguing
the mid range with a lighter weight, which is something, again, you can’t really
do with a weight. Then, finally you get to the fatigue in the weaker range using
a lighter weight but so much of the tissue has already been shut off because of
exhaustion. It’s a much deeper level of stimulus but people notice, “I don’t get
sore. I thought the soreness had to do with growth.” Well, a lot of soreness
that people sense is like microtearing. Really there’s three ways we increase
strength. There’s the myofibril-type growth, which is the aggressive protein
synthesis, the actin, myosin coming together to make new myofibrils. That is
from a structural fatigue of muscle, so this is very explosive powerlifting can
get this. Gymnastics can get this with high-impact absorption, myofibril growth.
Typically, bodybuilders, they don’t get a lot of this. They get more
sarcoplasmic growth. So, they’re exhausting the tissue. They’re wiping out the
ATP, look like it’s doing the creatine phosphate as fast as possible or as fast
as they can possibly do it. By doing that, they’re showing the central nervous
system, “Okay, we used all the fuel in this cell. Now, we got to add the fuel
back and as adaptation goes, we’re going to put some more fuel in that cell.”
So, sorry, the third type of strength adaptation is neurological. So, and this
is another thing like when you did the Highland Games, things like that. Once
you get that technique, all of a sudden, your output is double what it was a
couple months before, because you trained your body how to fire as many cells as
possible to get that job done. That’s a skill so somebody who’s built a lot of
raw output with X3 Bar
, it doesn’t mean they’re going to go and win
the CrossFit Games if they’re not also participating in those other events in
practice because they got to train the neurology. So that’s really one of three
places that strength is coming from. It’s been, I believe, kind of a distraction
that these microtears are really the answer when you look at … There’s more
microtears with marathon runners than there are weightlifters. They’re not bad,
they’re not good. They’re a consequence of exercise but they don’t lead to
growth necessarily. So, when you don’t get sore from X3 Bar
but I
still see people swapping 20 pounds of body fat for muscle in a couple months.
They’re certainly growing but they never got sore. That’s part of the reason why
there’s none of the tearing. I think that has to do with these heavy loads being
used in the weaker range of motion. I think it’s pretty hard on the joints and
it’s hard on the musculature too. So, the recovery time is pretty quick.
Zach Bitter: That makes a lot of sense, John, when I think about it, too,
because within my sport of kind of trail running at the ultramarathon distance,
the running kind of joke or comment that we always say is, “You finish a race.
The next day, your quads are just thrashed.” Everyone thinks it’s the uphills
that did it. No, it’s the downhills that [crosstalk 00:27:54].
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s strike. Yeah. The deceleration that you must
embrace as you’re contacting the ground plus the velocity of basically a fall.
Yeah. That’s a gymnast-type stimulus in massive repetition that’s very hard on
the muscle.
Zach Bitter: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. It’s the same reason why, if I went out
and did a training block that was just on flat ground and then decided after
that … I mean, I could get really fit doing that at that environment and then I
switched to environment that had a lot of downhill running in it, I would have
to do a fraction of the percentage of that downhill running based on the volume
I was doing before. I would be way more sore the next day just because I hadn’t
exposed was my body that sort of eccentric contraction. So, it’s really
interesting to kind of think about it from that angle.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about the [C.L.S. 00:28:48]
because we talk about this thing I call Young’s modulus, where we look at the
elasticity of different compounds and we have something for bone and in
orthopedic implants, we try to match bone to things like titanium and stainless
steel and cobalt chromium alloys and stuff like that so they match a little bit
but because I think it’s … I see these different bands in here. I’ve got the
orange one, which I guess you have for the people that have a little stronger in
certain ranges, but do you find that … What’s been your experience with
different … I’ve got my girlfriend. She’s tiny. I mean, she’s 110 pounds, 115
pounds. So, she struggles with the white one, I mean, just because she’s little
and depending on the exercise but I mean, are you finding that different people
of different strength levels have different … Do these bands accommodate that
for everybody, because I know what it does for me and I’ve got to stick to the
three heaviest ones for the most part.
Dr. John Jaquish: So, when I tested X3 Bar
because I wanted to make
sure that it was good enough for the strongest people out there, so the
individual I felt like I was addressing was somebody like me, like an executive.
I was traveling all over the world for this medical [vice 00:30:08] project. I
liked to exercise, so I thought, “I can bring it with me wherever I go.” I got
my whole gym with me and it weighs 12 pounds, like I put it in my check bag. So,
that was awesome but also, when I’m at home, I can have it in my office. So,
middle of the day I can just bang on a workout. Then, head to lunch. So, it was
that. That’s who I designed it for but I wanted to take the regular guy and give
him the type of stimulus that will turn them into a person who feels like a
high-performance athlete, dramatic strength increases, dramatic body composition
improvements. If you’re not already male and maybe a little bit stronger, yeah.
Shit’s heavy. So, my girlfriend struggles with … Well, she struggled with the
white band in the beginning but now she almost never uses the white band. In
fact, she deadlifts with the dark gray, which is the third heaviest one. She’s
about the same size as your girlfriend. So, yeah. I mean, they build the
strength but yeah, it’s … I think sometimes somebody sees X3 Bar
and
goes, “It’s a rubber band trainer.” Yeah. It’s a rubber band trainer where you
can do six, 700-pound deadlift, 500 pound chest press. It’s no joke. It’s going
to put massive force to your muscle, which is going to trigger some serious
growth. So, it’s not easy. It’s not like she’s going to chat with her
girlfriends while she’s lifting.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Hey, John. We talked about this on the phone a little bit.
There’s a lot of people that are proponents of what’s called HIT style training.
It’s basically kind of … This would certainly, at least in my understanding, fit
that bill to some degree, where it’s just go to failure as hard as you can. I
don’t like throwing failure but go to full fatigue.
Dr. John Jaquish: I know what you’re talking about.
Dr. Shawn Baker: But I mean, what is the deal with frequency here and timing,
because it seems like I walk around the house, it’s in my horse … My gym is
basically a frigging horse stable. We don’t have horses, so I’ve got my gym
equipment in there. I’ll walk down there and I’ll go in there and I’ll just jump
in there and do a set of something just periodically throughout the day. Is
there any, and I know you’ve got a little sort of suggested workout routine
where you do three or four of these exercise one day and three or four days of
these the other days. Can they be spaced out like that because these things only
take a minute? I mean, you get in there. You bang out a set and you’re done in a
minute. I mean is it something you could do throughout the day, or I mean … And
I do appreciate the travel aspect of it because when you go to a typical hotel,
they got a few dumbbells, a treadmill and maybe a freaking 1990s BOSU ball or
some garbage in there that you can’t-
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. It’s garbage.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I mean, it’s not-
Dr. John Jaquish: If you’re interested in running at all, the treadmill is a
complete just letdown. It’s a total piece of garbage, yeah.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah, but I’m just wondering about the frequency, because a lot
of the HIT proponents are, some of them are like, “I workout once a week.” What
are your thoughts on that sort of stuff?
Dr. John Jaquish: So, when we look at … There’s a muscle biopsy study, which I
believe was done in 2012, which looked at when protein synthesis is done after a
strength training session. I know Arthur Jones theorized it took a week and
Dorian Yates and Mike Mentzer, two bodybuilders. Arthur Jones, by the way, for
those listening, he’s the inventor of Nautilus. So, then two bodybuilders really
focused on what Jones was talking about. They would say somewhere between four
and five days and two weeks depending on what it was. So, I think there was a
period of time where Mike Mentzer was squatting like once every other week with
one set. So, I thought, “Okay. I’m looking at these different recommendations.”
I really wanted to find something that was a little more than just someone’s
opinion and trial and error. So, when I found the muscle biopsy study, protein
synthesis is done in 36 hours, so you can hit a muscle … We wait 48. It fits a
lot better on your calendar to hit the same muscle every 48 hours so there’s
workout A and workout B. You do workout A Monday and then B Tuesday and just
repeat and take Sunday off so you hit every muscle three times in a week. I go
up in reps either full or partial reps just about every workout and I have for
two years. I put on 45 pounds of lean mass and lost 16 pounds of fat in that
period of time. So, I believe in that study. It’s a great study. Biopsy study’s
pretty conclusive. So, it’s not like epidemiology, so yeah. Yeah, so that’s
really what built the protocol. One set is what’s recommended because ultimately
when we look at stimulus and adaptation. When somebody says to me, “Well, why
only one set?” I said, “Okay. Well …” If I’m looking at a person and they have a
suntan. “Okay. You have a tan. How many sets did you do in the sunlight to get
that tan?” They look at me like, “What?” Right. You stimulate once and there’s a
response. So, bone density, the minimum dose response. This is a great piece of
cocktail party conversation you can dazzle your friends with this. 4.2 multiples
of body weight is required to trigger bone growth in the hip. If you do not meet
or exceed 4.2 multiples of body weight, you trigger nothing. So, you can have
3.5 multiples of body weight loaded to your hip and a hundred loading cycles.
You get nothing. You exceed 4.2 multiples of body weight one time. We see with
bone turnover markers, with blood tests, you can see the bone metabolic rate
changes past that level of one experience, which, by the way, could last a
hundredth of a second. So, for a gymnast, is when they absorb high impact. So,
the way we adapt, we really need one stimulus that’s of the minimum dose
response. So, when it comes to the X3 Bar
sets, we’re going to such
a deeper level of fatigue than we are with regular lifting, you only need to do
one set. So, if you wanted to do … Now, if you spaced your sets out. If did
chest press and then took five minutes off and took a phone call or something
like that and then went back to it, that’s not a problem if I don’t immediately
do triceps after my chest press but I’m only going to do one set of chest press.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah, I mean, and that’s the way I’ve been playing with this.
Like I said, I think the key, though, is just you’d have to really just, you got
to go until you can’t go. I think that has to be-
Dr. John Jaquish: [crosstalk 00:37:51]. Yeah.
Dr. Shawn Baker: … very important part to this. When I asked about traveling, I
mean, you ever think about making a bag for this thing, because it looks like
you could have a little X3 Bar
bag or something like that.
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s in the process.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Oh, it is? Yeah. I was going to say.
Dr. John Jaquish: [crosstalk 00:38:05] a nice travel case for it, yeah.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I was going to say that would be … I’m just thinking
about things I would say because I fully intend on bringing it with me when I
travel just because, for me and I agree with you for some of these but I’ve been
lifting for years. I like going to the gym and I like doing the deadlifts and I
like doing the high poles and the snatches and jumping and all that stuff so I’m
not going to continue to stop doing those things just because. I can say there’s
skills and I think there’s benefits for doing that but again, I think the
confusion comes in where people talk about bodybuilding, putting on muscle, and
then actually the display of that muscle. You have to do the skills to do that
efficiently. Like I said, any sport you’re going to be in. Like you said, you
use the golfer analogy but, like I said, I still like to be able to sprint fast
and jump high and do all those things so I got to do those things but I mean the
strength and the muscle growth is going to be a tool to get me there, because a
lot of people, they want to frame everything through bodybuilding as the
pinnacle of all athleticism and health. I’m like, “No. That’s not it.” I mean,
that’s muscle growth but-
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a plus.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I mean and there’s a lot of unhealthy bodybuilders. I
mean, there was, unfortunately, a guy just passed away recently. I can’t
remember the guy’s name but of course, the vegans are saying, “Good job. Glad
you’re dead because you ate meat.” I mean it’s just the craziness that comes out
of various people.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Everybody that has a heart attack, it’s because they
had like a burger once.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah or they happen to breathe air, too. I mean, goodness, we
should all stop breathing air, perhaps. But yeah, I mean, that’s the interesting
thing and I do like the way that you frame it, is to do it as like a finishing
set for a lot of things. Honestly, I haven’t tried that yet. I’m going to get in
there, because I’ve got a home gym. I maybe get in there and do a regular
deadlift workout and then go in there and throw this in as a last set. I’m sure
I’ll be completely satisfied.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s also a tool. I recommend everybody who’s already
got a training program, who’s already conditioning for something. Shawn and
Zach, you guys are conditioning for a couple of things that you’re doing. You
got to blend that in and figure out how to dovetail it right into what exactly
your protocol and your goals are. For most people to get the product down, it’s
all they do. That’s all I do. I do nothing other than X3 Bar
. I
continue to put it on mass but I’m also trying to prove a point. I would like to
get back to sprinting at some point. I was a great downhill skier for years. I
kind of stopped doing that just because I don’t want any distraction from what
my mission is at the moment. So, I’m just pure X3 Bar
, not because
that’s what everybody needs to do but I’m really trying to show everybody what I
can do when I just take this simple elegant little tool and massively change my
body with it.
Zach Bitter: Yeah. I had one question kind of follow up with what Shawn was
asking, too, before about kind of using it like a setup where you kind of have a
busy schedule for the day but you know you’re going to have a couple minute
breaks here and there. You just quick hop in and do a set and then bounce back
to what you’re doing and just break it up throughout the course of the day. I
was listening to a podcast with Dr. Andy Galpin. He was talking about kind of
this idea where a lot of times people, they’ll go into the weight room. They
will kind of interchangeably think about strength versus kind of explosive
power. The reason they were kind of talking about it was because they were
discussing this situation where they had this guy who is just a monster on
weights. I think he was like a mixed martial artist of some form, but when it
came to, they were analyzing his punching power and they noticed that it was
really lacking compared to how strong he actually was. There are guys who were
much weaker than him punching way harder. They said it was because he didn’t
have a whole lot of explosive power through his punch. What they did is they
kind of switched him from doing his more traditional three by five sets or
something in the weight room to doing more sets with lower reps to take
advantage of this kind of first rep phenomenon where you’re going to get the
most explosive part of your lift out of those first one or two sets. So, trying
to leverage the amount of volume he was spending on those first reps in order to
improve his power. That really helped that explosive part of it. Is that kind of
something that you look at with X3 Bar
or training as another kind
of angle to what is your goal here versus kind of how someone is going to
implement that?
Dr. John Jaquish: So, from a raw output standpoint, we’re engaging more of the
musculature because we’re changing the weight as we get into a more capable
range of motion. So, X3 Bar
would have helped that or would help
that guy in switching on more musculature but there’s also, like I mentioned
with the golf swing or with a powerlifting movement, there’s a neurological
process. There’s a firing pattern. You have to do both of those things but yeah.
You would also and there’s a couple of different philosophies when it comes to
lifting and long-term potentiation. First, you get a short term potentiation,
meaning you train the body how to fire it, and then firing in that pattern
becoming almost automatic. That’s a long-term potentiation kind of thing. When
you look at that, it’s different strategies to get more tissue to fire in a
shorter period of time in that the two different sort of philosophies I’ve
heard, one has to do with if you can draw a straight line on a piece of paper
real fast, sort of like you can jerk a weight and make it move through space
really quickly. But if you draw a straight line really slowly, it’s a lot harder
and a lot more stabilization has to take place to keep that line on that piece
of paper straight. So, when you lift slower, stabilizers have to fire, which
makes you more balanced. The more balanced you are, the less neural inhibition
you have. So, if you lose your balance during lift or something like that, you
just lose your strength like your muscles start to shut off. So, I’ve always
been a big fan of that philosophy. It’s very difficult to do like a randomized
control trial on two different protocols because there’s so many different
biomechanics issues with anybody who has athletic or you test this on. So, I
wouldn’t say there’s anything inclusive but I would have somebody try and get
the heaviest loads of their body with moving slow and control, so they can get
the stabilizers active. That may be part of that guy’s problem. I’d love to see
what his lifts look like.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Hey, John. Speaking of stabilize, there’s one thing that you
kind of see with this is because when you’re used to using machines or weights,
they’re very well-balanced. I find with the X3 Bar
, there’s just a
little bit of, you get a little of that going in there. I know a lot of people
have used bamboo bars and different things to sort of force that to happen and
you have to stabilize it. It’s not as sort of because that tension on the band
is pushing you down. Like I said, it’s not controlled by a cam on a machine.
It’s just kind of you fighting against this sort of resistance. It’s almost and
I don’t know. Can you speak to whether advantages of disadvantage of that
particular phenomenon?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yes. In summer of 2016, I published a meta-analysis on
stabilization firing and how it connects with upregulation pulses of growth
hormone. So, there is one of the references in that meta-analysis. It wasn’t
included in the meta-analysis but it was a reference that I use. When you
compare free weight squats and the growth hormone effect we see somebody who
does a, I think it was a 12 rep to fatigue set. They can increase their growth
hormone levels by 600%. You take somebody on a leg press who’s using almost
double the amount of weight. You know how much growth hormone they got out of
that? None. No change over baseline. It’s because the stabilizers are there to
switch the musculature on. That’s how we’re wired. That’s how we are. So, I like
anything that challenges the stabilization. What I ended up finding in that
meta-analysis was I found 23 different published datasets that showed that
stabilization firing in rapid succession increases growth hormone. If you add
load to the stabilization as in, like you can stand on one foot and there’s some
stabilization firing but if you stand on one foot and you’re holding something
heavy, like a 100-pound bag of sand. Well, now, all of a sudden, your obliques,
your quadratus, your spinal erectors, your traps. There’s stabilization firing
going on all over your body to keep you from tipping over. That’s a much more
upregulatory experience for GH, and we saw that as upwards of 2,000%. Now, one
thing that’s a principle of X3 Bar
is, like in overhead press, your
core is firing in an overhead press of any type, but when you’re using
X3 Bar
, you’re holding a low weight when you’re at the bottom when
the bar’s close to your face but then, as you get into a stronger range of
motion, you’re holding a weight you might not even be able to get there, might
not even be able to unrack because the weight goes up as you go into the more
contracted position. Then, you can look at the core of somebody. It’s just
jackhammering. Your core is just vibrating because there’s so much stabilization
firing going on. Then, we get that growth hormone benefit, which is why some of
these people who use the product, they lose body fat a lot quicker.
Dr. Shawn Baker: What you doing with that X3 Bar
? What’s your
experience been so far?
Zach Bitter: Yeah. It’s been great so far. I’ve been using it quite a bit at
home. It saved me a couple trips to the gym. I’ve been mostly doing deadlifts
with it. I’ve actually brought it on a couple trips with me, too, because it’s
pretty easy to throw into a rolling duffel and kind of bring with you on the
road.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I mean, I found particularly the deadlift I’ve been a
pretty decent deadlifter and I pulled over 700 pounds and I know when I use this
big orange band that it’s pretty tough. It actually, for a band workout, it
definitely simulates the heavy lifting. I think you’re right. It’s very nicely
suited for travel for sure. It’s a good, certainly accessory exercise for many
people. I think a lot of people can use it as a primary training tool depending
upon what the goals are but I think the key I found is you’ve got to use it as
designed and that includes really pushing to failure. When you get there, you
really know it. It definitely gets your heart rate up, even things like biceps
curl, I find my heart rate jacked up after doing that. So, I think I’ve been
pretty impressed with the product overall in certain situations for sure.
Zach Bitter: Awesome and Dr. Jaquish has a poster that comes with it that gives
you a kind of a breakdown on kind of the moves and different lifts that he
addresses with the two … And over to x3bar.com
for products, videos,
and training programs. Now, back to the show.
Dr. Shawn Baker: I mean, because obviously there’s no cardiovascular … Well, I
shouldn’t say that. I should say there’s no traditional cardio in this sort of
thing. I mean, talk about the cardiovascular effects because, like I said, I was
in there doing biceps curling and my heart rate was up, which was a little
surprising me. I mean, like I said, I’ve done 20 reps squat routines for years
and you get done with a set of 20 rep squats with 300 pounds or something and
your heart rate’s jacked up and I mean-
Dr. John Jaquish: I’m with you for sure.
Dr. Shawn Baker: But I’m seeing that on just on biceps curls, so let’s talk a
little bit about cardiovascular benefits of weight training in general or you
can sort of specify to the X3 Bar
.
Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. There is a few meta-analyses that look at strength
training versus endurance training. Now, again, there’s a neurological firing
pattern mid-foot strike that Zach knows, that when you get your foot strike
right when you’re a runner. All of a sudden, a lot becomes easier, you become a
much more efficient machine. So, there are those elements of what happens when
you do cardiovascular exercise. However, just from a cardiac perspective, the
research pretty clear that strength training and endurance training can both
give you a really healthy cardiovascular system. So, brief episodes of very high
intensity work really have the same impact on cardiac health as the longer
sustained-type activity. So, I don’t do any cardio nor will I. I’m just going to
keep doing X3 Bar
. Now, like you said, Shawn, I am leveled when I do
a set of X3 Bar
. I got to sit down. I’m just totally gassed and I’m
waiting for my heart rate to go back down before I do my next set. Each
workout’s only four sets. So, don’t really have to worry about but then, after
all, I can go about my day but it is a devastating experience because you’re
taking the muscle to a deeper level of fatigue. You’re calling for more blood
flow. You’re using more oxygen and blood. So, it forces your heart to pump blood
hard.
Zach Bitter: Yeah and I think sometimes too, when people look at, it really
depends on what your goal is. If your goal is just cardiac health, then if
you’re time crunched, you’re probably better off ripping off a few sets on the
X3 Bar
or doing some sort of HIT workout than you are to spend 60
plus minutes doing something really slow for those benefits, unless your goal is
to be able to run slow for a long period of time, in which case, then it’s
specificity-type mind-set.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Ultimately, somebody who’s running for distance, your
goal is to fire the least amount of tissue over the longest period of time. You
want to be efficient. So, firing a lot of tissue is not what you want to do. You
want it to be the least amount that can carry your body forward. So, it’s
certainly a very different goal but from a cardiac perspective pretty much the
same. There’s a great article that references a number of meta-analyses. I don’t
remember who the author of this particular paper is but it’s called There’s No
Such Thing As Cardio. It really describes cardio as just a different type of
strength training, like everything. It’s just strength training. You’re
contracting a muscle. You’re trying to get more performance out of the muscle.
It’s referenced all the way through really well. It wasn’t academically
published. It was just somebody who made a bunch of observations and was trying
to talk about the same thing we’re trying to talk about how strength training,
cardiovascular training. They’re both great, but from a cardiac health
perspective, if you’re doing one or the other, you’re going to have a healthy
heart.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I mean do you find that … I mean, how do you do with,
because you’re training I guess every day except you take one day off a week, I
guess. Is that how that works?
Zach Bitter: Yeah.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Do you find that you play with nutrition around training time
or what are your thoughts on … I know because we’ve had a lot of protein
researchers on talking about nutrient timing and getting protein in around
workouts. Are you finding that that has an effect on what you do?
Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, short answer is no. I try and workout with no food in
my system, just to get the maximum blood flow out of musculature. So, then
that’s for performance. I usually eat afterward. Now, there’s also no such thing
as the anabolic window. That’s pretty well-understood. The whole idea that you
need to get your protein in, like whatever 20 minutes after you eat, or my
favorite is you need a carbohydrate drink, you need some sugar crap before and
after you workout. None of that shit’s true. So, I typically workout and then
I’ll have either one or two meals in a day but just as long as I get my 300
grams of protein in in a day. It’s usually at the end of the day because that’s
when I’m hungry. That’s it. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know. I don’t try and
time it at all. I’m growing faster than I grew when I was 16 years old. So, I
know it’s working. I know the recommendations that Professor Antonio and all the
higher protein research. That works.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. It seems like any effect of eating within an hour is
minimal at best. I mean, I think some of the studies show even 48 hours or
something like that. So that window is really a barn door. Do you know because
I’ve got your little cheat sheet on the workout you do. I saw you’ve got a
couple bonus workouts with split squats and the kind of cable crossover type.
Are there any other exercises out there that you’re doing besides those that you
can use the X3 Bar
for that haven’t been described already?
Dr. John Jaquish: Great question. The answer is no. I’m doing exactly what is on
the training website on jaquishbiomedical.com, or the x3bar.com
training program website. That’s exactly what I do but I’ve seen people, I
hesitate to say some of the smarter exercise science fans out there can come up
with some different variations because I’ve said that in the past. Then, I’ve
seen people do not so smart things with it. That may increase chances of injury
or just like you can see all kinds of fitness products used in really not so
clever ways. In fact, you go on YouTube and it’s-
Zach Bitter: There’s full Instagram accounts dedicated to that.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. It’s like, yeah, just injuries everywhere,
anything. So, I hesitate saying, “Go ahead and invent your own way to use it.”
You can do that if you really know what you’re doing. The problem is, a lot of
people think they know what they’re doing and they don’t. So, yeah. I just stick
to what’s out there. If somebody could show me like a different protocol and
something that might be helpful, I’ll definitely try and make a training video
so people do that right. Then, of course the paperwork that comes with the
X3 Bar
, I say like, “Don’t deviate from the program.” I mean, part
of that is just the liability. Somebody does something stupid with it. It’s
like, “Okay. Well, nobody told you to do that.” But ultimately, it’s a tool. You
can put it to work in different ways. Now, like hook grip. You just mentioned
hook grip with your deadlifts. Most people don’t know what a hook grip is. I
mean that’s a serious deadlift term. Also, I don’t think most people can handle
a hook grip because it’s pretty hard on the thumb against this. There’s some
discomfort there. So, yeah. I don’t use a hook grip because I don’t tell anybody
to use a hook grip, but if you want to do that, you’re going to do great.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I found for me, I had to use a hook grip because the
bands were heavy enough that if I didn’t, it was pulling out of my hands
particularly as I got to lockout with that dead orange thing, because the first
day I did, I wasn’t thinking about it. I normally hook grip anyway. I’ve been
doing it for years. I’ve pulled over 700 pounds with a hook grip on a
conventional bar. So, I found that and you’re right. It’s absolutely, it can be
very painful on the thumbs and it takes a while to build up to that but I think
for me to get the benefit of not my hands grip failing before my back does. I’ve
got to have something to hold on and to hook. I guess you could potentially use
straps like you could on a regular bar as well if you wanted to do that but I
don’t see any shame in using straps. If your grip’s failing, you want to work on
your back. I mean if you’re going to compete, then you need to develop that but
we’re talking about a different situation. We’re speaking about sport.
Powerlifting, you got to be able to hang on at the bar, so that’s an important
[crosstalk 01:00:32].
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Although building your grip strength, that’s really
important.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Well, yeah. I mean, I would argue it is, but I mean, like I
said, at the same time, it may take a while for your grips strength to catch up
to your back. I mean, it just makes sense. I mean our backs are huge. Our
forearms are relatively small and having big hands helps a lot for that sort of
thing, so that’s another advantage there. And speaking of safety, because I
mean, I’m sitting there. You thinking because there’s so much force on the
thing, if you somehow lost the bar, would it smack you or something like … I
mean, is there … Talk about potential of misuses for this, because I don’t want
anybody in there to kind of get hurt. So, what sort of potential silly things-
Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Shawn Baker: … have you heard of people doing in potential [crosstalk
01:01:14].
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s serious strength training. So, you got to hang onto the
bar just like other serious strength trainings. So, if you’re benching and you
have a heavy load up above your body, most people realize if they let go of
that, it could hurt them or maybe even kill them. Now, the good news is there
have been people who have let go of the bar. Coincidentally they were, I
believe, doing something reckless, of maybe handling the orange band, For a six
foot tall person, it’s a 500-pound chest press at the top, I see some people who
are trying to use that band who really should not. They haven’t graduated to
that band yet but trying anyway. The good news is, it’s not like 500 pounds is
going to come crashing down on you. The bar, which weighs eight pounds, will
catapult towards you at speed but ultimately, it doesn’t have the kind of mass
that’s going to crush bone. It’ll smack you. It’ll hurt. Could knock the wind
out of you but probably the worst thing that’s going to happen. One thing, when
you do have somebody who’s doing a tricep-type press so that the band comes
around your deltoid and goes in the bar and so you’re pushing out with your
triceps, you got to wrap your thumbs. Not a suicide grip. So, they call it the
suicide grip for a reason. So, we make sure to instruct people to use it
correctly. It’s just the same kind of warnings like you can’t not pay attention
because it’s not weights, because it’s still giving you incredible amounts of
force but I’m glad you brought that up because yes, that is a thing. We do
definitely try and educate people on that.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I mean, I think anybody, that if you use one of those
heavy bands, you feel pretty quickly that there’s a lot of force out here and it
can kind of move you around, that sort of thing. The other things like don’t
step off the platform while you’re engaged with pulling. That would be another
potential I think issue for people. I don’t know if you have people that have
done that sort of thing but …
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Or ride off of it.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah, right. Exactly, so that’s … Because when I used to do
Highland Games, we would throw a 56-pound weight. You get spinning with that
thing. That thing would knock people over, I mean. You need to see how much
force it develop when you’re doing these sorts of things. So, I mean, the
potential there is certainly there, so you can’t … Like I said, I think if you
get the usual fitness bands, they’re so weak that you’re not going to anything
with this, but these are definitely … Let me ask you, how long are these bands
projected to last, because I had some bands I used for years. They were decent
bands. They eventually kind of dried out and they lost their elasticity. I just
threw them out, but I mean, what is the projected half-life on these things?
Dr. John Jaquish: So, what the factory tells me … Now, I had the … So, there’s a
width to the band and there’s a depth. So, what X3 Bar
has going for
it is our bands are a lot deeper than any that have been produced to date. So,
they have a lot more power in them than what other latex bands are. Now, when
you’re talking about bands that are drying out, those are petroleum-based,
whereas the X3 Bar
bands come from trees, so it’s tree rubber, tree
latex and much more powerful and it’s layers. So, the bands don’t snap. They
fray like a rope. So, a band will … If you cut one by accident or some people,
they take their X3 Bar
camping and they make the mistake of doing it
on gravel. So, the gravel can cut into a band and the band just starts coming
unraveled but it’s not going to destroy itself to the point where you’re going
to end up smacking yourself because the bars, I mean the band snaps. It’ll just
sort of unravel. So, each one of them is 30 layers of latex. I’m told by the
factory that they should last to nine years, provided they’re not like
intentionally damaged or just with neglect or something like that. But the ones
that I started testing with two years ago, I’m still using. Those weren’t
custom-made for me. They’re a little weaker than the actual official
X3 Bar
ones, but I have those in my place in San Francisco and
whenever I’m there and I use that, they’re fine. No sign of wear or anything.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Can you combine two bands as one like an in-between, like add
that little white one to get-
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. For sure.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Okay. Cool.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven’t done much experimentation
with that. Now, sometimes when I travel and I want to travel a little lighter,
I’ll leave one band out or something like that and just stack a couple bands up
but the gradients of those things are … There’s a pretty strong difference
between each one. So, throwing in the white band on top of whatever other band
you’re using can be very productive. Also gives you the chance of a more
progressive resistance, though I think that term gets sort of overused and
people get, for some strange reason, way too excited about what progressive
resistance really means. I don’t know why.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I mean, I guess that’s the difference in the mind-set
because you don’t really know how much weight you’re using. You’re just kind of
like … I think there’s an advantage of that because when I train with weights,
I’m like I’m going to get X amount of weights for X amount of reps. Then, that’s
in my mind but with this, it’s just go until you fail, and I think, you don’t
know what the load is, I mean, at any given time particularly with … You might
know because you’ve tested it and stuff again.
Dr. John Jaquish: Of course.
Dr. Shawn Baker: But I don’t. I’m just like I’m going to pick something I think
… Like I said, and we talk about band selection, because I think that’s an
important concept of where you want to be.
Dr. John Jaquish: So, we have an app coming out where you enter your height. You
then go and that’s part of your account. Then, you pick what band you’re using,
what exercise. It tells you what your peak force is, and then it records your
peak forces in it for each full rep. Then, how many partial reps, so you count
both full and partial. Then, it tracks your progress week by week. So, we’re in
prototype. I’ve been testing it every day. It’ll help.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Speak about because I saw in one of your training videos, you
talk about not going into full lockout. You stop a smidgen before you lockout
completely. What’s the thought behind that?
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So, constant tension, one of the … And this is like the
difference between how a lot of power lifters will view the way they want to
move and a bodybuilder. This is something that a lot of funny things have come
out of bodybuilding but I think this constant tension concept is something that,
from a muscular growth perspective, is pretty brilliant, in that we don’t want
to shut the muscle off ever when we’re taking it through that experience. So,
when you lockout, like when you’re the top of a bench press and you lock your
elbows, you’re disengaging a lot of the musculature and loading the bone, but
the problem is you try to get the central nervous system to say, “Okay. We don’t
have enough muscle here and we need to grow more.” So, showing the central
nervous system that there’s a deficit of tissue and you do that by turning the
muscle on and then turning it off, turning it on, turning it off is that as
intense an experience is keeping it on the whole time and not locking out. So,
I’ve been just short of lockout because you’re in maximum efficiency.
Ultimately, if you look at electromyography in the tricep, for example. So, just
a single joint movement for simplicity sake. That’s a good one to look at. So,
your tricep has a curve. Then, it drops off right at the very end, when the arm
gets straight. That’s to keep you from being able to break your own elbow, so
you don’t have the power in your triceps when your elbow is locked because,
otherwise, you just destroy your own joint. So, it’s neural inhibitory processes
start shutting the musculature off. So, those ranges of motion, from a stimulus
standpoint, you don’t need them. You don’t want them. Now, again, if somebody’s
trained to be competitive at the squat, they probably don’t ever want to squat
where they don’t lockout at the top because that’s just what they do. So
slightly different approach but that’s why, when I instruct people, because the
objective behind the product is to be as strong as possible. That’s really the
top track and there’s just other ways to apply it but the way the product is,
where I positioned it and the programming around it is just to absolutely
maximize strength and mass.
Dr. Shawn Baker: How are you, because I’m curious about this, because when you
say, “Actually maximize strength,” how do you assess that, I mean, because
normally I would maximize [inaudible 01:11:07], is I would say, “How much weight
can I pick up on a barbell,” but if I’m never doing that, then I don’t … Where
do you get the feedback that strength is being maximized?
Dr. John Jaquish: That’s why I need to do the app
.
Yeah. It’s absolutely required. You’re right because people are … There’s a
user’s group, X3 Bar
users group. There’s, I think 6,500 people in
it, where they’re talking about how they’re using their X3 Bar
and
they’re counting their repetitions. They say, “Okay. My chest press is 15
repetitions with a black band and then I do five partial repetitions after
that.” Then, the next day or two days later, they might do 15 and then seven
partial repetitions. So that was that was a better score. Ultimately, also I
don’t want people to get too wrapped up in weight because, when Tony Robbins
uses it or when you use it, you’re stretching the band further, so it’s heavier
for you than it is for me, a six-foot-tall guy or some of you is shorter than
that. So, what the app will do is the reason it asks everyone’s height is it’s
going to calculate the exact weight for each movement with each band. Then, they
can track it that way.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I mean, I’ve got particularly long monkey arms. I’ve got
39-inch sleeves. So, I mean, I suck at bench press. I mean, I got to a 400-pound
bench press when I was powerlifting, but I mean, even then, I was just like I
was one of the … For a heavyweight powerlifter, I was like … Most of those guys
had a 500-pound press. I mean, I could always deadlift close to 800, so I could
catch them on the deadlift but my bench was always awful for me. But look, talk
about this-
Dr. John Jaquish: And you’re at a massive genetic disadvantage for bench press.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Well, yeah, for bench press, sure. So, but anyway that’s just
the way it is. You’re good at some things, bad at others. Talk about speed or
repetition because there’s some people that talk about acceleration momentum,
not being as effective. Do you talk to people about the speed of the repetitions
or does it matter? I mean I see with some of the lighter weights, it’s easier to
go lighter bands. You can go a little faster. Is there a band where you have to
kind of go slower or what’s your thought on that?
Dr. John Jaquish: Slow and controlled. I tell everybody, “Slow and controlled at
everything.” It goes back to the neurological … Well, when I was doing my
dissertation, I noticed … I pulled a lot of information out of some of the
neurology research. In fact, I consulted with Dr. Raj Singh, who’s Director of
Rehabilitation at Barrow Neurological, which is one of the best neural rehab
places in the world. So, he was talking to me and he said, “Do you really need
to look at the H-wave reflexes, what is initiating more tissue to be turned on.
So, in neural rehab, they’re looking at individuals like, “How do we get them to
fire more tissue,” because some of these people are heavily damaged and they
don’t have a lot of signaling. So, the slow and controlled movements, remember
that analogy I gave you about drawing a straight line where the slow versus
fast, you draw it slow, you got to fire a lot more musculature. So, it’s the
same philosophy with these, you’re kind of like one or two seconds, like the
kind of cadence where the chest press is like one, two, like that. Nothing jerky
at all.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. Well, I thought if the band is-
Dr. John Jaquish: Another thing, momentum matters when you’re moving iron, when
you’re contracting against something that’s pulling back against you with
variants, momentum doesn’t matter. Momentum’s not even a thing. You’re punished
for trying to use momentum, because there isn’t any.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I find, particularly, if you select the band correctly,
then you have to … I mean, you’re basically going slow. I mean, you can’t go
very fast. It’s just basically impossible.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right.
Zach Bitter: And that answered a question I was going to ask. So, I was thinking
if the lower part of the rep is going to be the easier part, then if you get up
to speed, you could maybe carry momentum in, but if it, like what you said with
the iron versus the rubber band thing, I guess that would become a non-issue at
that point.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It just doesn’t make a difference.
Dr. Shawn Baker: The other thing I’ve seen you talk about is not letting slack
get into the system, into the man’s, the range. If I were to do a deadlift and I
were to let the bar go all the way to the ground at my toes, there’d be
basically almost essentially no resistance. So, you want to make sure you
maintain some level of resistance. Talk a little about that.
Zach Bitter: Its intention.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So, like we don’t lockout at the top, we don’t want to
let the muscle relax at the bottom. So, it is constant tension. So, the bottom
of the chest press, the bar is actually not laying right against my chest. It
might be hovering an inch or two above my sternum. Then, I’ve go to push away
because I want to keep tension through that muscle the entire time. That’s back
to that bodybuilding philosophy of constant tension. You want to fatigue the
muscle as much as possible. You don’t want to turn it on and then turn if off or
turn it on and then turn it off. It’s on. It’s firing. Its contracting until you
just cannot move anymore.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I want to go back to the bone mineral density thing
because I know you … Tell me, remind me the name of the big system you have, the
$100,000 system.
Dr. John Jaquish: OsteoStrong.
Dr. Shawn Baker: OsteoStrong. So, do you feel that this thing has a potential to
do similar, that the OsteoStrong does, I mean, for the most part or what are
your thoughts on the bone density?
Dr. John Jaquish: They’re pretty different.
Dr. Shawn Baker: They’re pretty different? Okay.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. OsteoStrong is really targeted at bone. So, we’re
emulating high impact and we load the bone on its axis, so that the range of
motion of movement at an OsteoStrong movement may be a millimeter. That movement
comes from the compression of the kinetic chain. So, you’re compressing the
small joints. You’re compressing, when you’re doing upper body-type presses,
there’s upper extremities, the lower extremities but compressing the radius, the
ulna, compressing the hip joint. So, that axial compression shows there is a
range of motion but it’s tiny. It’s just to get incredible forces through the
bone mass to trigger an adaptation there. So, I would say somebody who wants to
be explosive, OsteoStrong is going to give them an athletic benefit from a speed
perspective. So, we’ve seen people cut like their 40 times from OsteoStrong
because you’re really that most explosive moment is, like I said, the impact
ready range of motion. So, the impact ready range of motion, you are able to
fire the most amount of tissue, either in absorption of force, deceleration,
like Zach, when you run downhill, or from an explosive perspective, a fighter
wants to hit somebody when they’ve got the 120 degree angle of inclusion between
the upper arm and the lower arm. They don’t want to have their hands close to
their face. So, same kind of thing. So, OsteoStrong just looks at that. Then, it
allows people to self expose the loads. Also with OsteoStrong, the stimulus is
five seconds, so five seconds of compression. The software kind of forces you to
load slowly and then you discharge very slowly, too, so it’s almost like a kind
of yoga experience. There’s nothing abrupt. The software encourage you to go
very slow and controlled because you want the benefit of the neural inhibitory
process. If something’s not feeling right, you don’t want somebody to fracture
because you have neural inhibitory process and the computer screen for
biofeedback monitoring you while you’re going through these different loading
events. So, it’s very safe and very effective. What I tell, sometimes I’ll speak
to an elderly population is going to be coming into an OsteoStrong and they’re
worried. They hear, “Oh, wow. I hear women put a thousand pounds through their
legs. Is that possible? Can I get hurt? Will I break anything?” They don’t want
to get hurt. I say, “Okay. Everybody do this.” I tell them to put their fist up
in the air. I say, “Now, think about this. Can you squeeze your fist hard enough
to break your own finger?” They usually look at their own hand and they go, “No.
I don’t think I can.” Right, because of neural inhibition. Your body is going to
shut your musculature off before you’re going to self-create an injury when
you’re being controlled about it, when they’re … But now it’s an out-of-control
event like a high impact, like you fell down a flight of stairs or something
like that. That’s an out-of-control event. So, that’s different but as long as
we keep it in control and slow, which is with the software and the robotics
inside the device are designed to do, you’re kept safe and you can load bone and
grow bone very quickly.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Hey, John. How would you recommend somebody that maybe they’re
training for a sport and they have other workouts to do? They’re still going to
continue doing that. I mean what would the workout frequency look like for this,
the X3 Bar
, if they wanted to add that in?
Dr. John Jaquish: So, it depends on really like the sport that they’re doing. It
was very surprising to me. So, the Miami Heat uses X3 Bar
. The way
they pretty much do exactly what I do because … Well, for a couple of reasons.
One is when you’re shooting a basketball you need to be accurate. You don’t want
to be sore. So, they really like the X3 Bar
because they can do a
heavy workout and trigger some muscular growth but there’s no soreness so their
shot doesn’t get screwed up. So, it was like the strength coaches there, Eric
Foran, what a stud. He just immediately saw the product and is like, “It’s
perfect, perfect for the players.” So, they do it pretty much how I do it.
They’ll even do it before they go and do the practice. So, it’s not really
something that’s going to get in the way of the other things that you’re doing.
It’s just something that’s going to be very effective and amplify the
effectiveness of what you are doing. I would caution someone who doesn’t want to
put on mass. It might not be your product if you don’t want to put on some size
because you’re going to grow. That’s probably one thing. Every once in a while,
I come across somebody who really they want to stay in a weight class or
something like that. You got to be careful because you’re going to go through
some serious muscular protein synthesis. So, if that’s not what you want to do,
then that may not be a good fit.
Dr. Shawn Baker: John, are you guys looking at any kind of, I mean, and it may
be too early on. I mean, is there anybody looking at any research on this
particular product out there? I mean, are you guys doing any kind of biopsies or
anything like that at this point or is that something in the works?
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s in the works. Yeah. There’s two universities that are
just starting some analysis. I think they’re both really going to get going on
the research when school gets back in in the fall. But two universities have
reached out to me and said they’re highly interested in doing some research.
There’s research on variable resistance but not variable resistance is this
strong. So, I’m excited to see how that goes. I know it’s going to be smashing.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Well, awesome. How long has the X3 Bar
been out
now? It’s been about a year or something like that.
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, like 18 months. I’ve been testing it for a little over
two years because the first year, I developed the thing. I spent $2,000
building the first bar and I had a ground plate out of stamped steel, which cut
every hard hardwood floor I used it on. So, I apologize for all the people whose
floors I ruined. A couple hotels, too, but oops. But, when I first developed it,
I was busy with the bone density medical device stuff. I wasn’t planning on
starting another company. So, I just was planning on using it for myself. So, I
got halfway through the first year and put on 30 pounds of muscle in my first
year. I’m over 40 years old. I thought like, “Nobody does that. I have to launch
this. This thing’s awesome.” So, it was first theory. Then, as I got it into
practice, I had to launch it. And the funny thing, I brought it to a couple
different fitness companies because I thought, “Okay. I’m busy. I’ve got a great
business already. I don’t really have time for this.” So, I brought it to a
couple of different fitness companies that I won’t mention, because they said
some pretty dumb stuff to me, but basically, they were afraid of science. They
said, “You got a scientific argument. That doesn’t work in fitness. Nobody cares
about science. No one understands it.” I said, “Are you kidding me?” I would
imagine … They all said the same thing. “No one cares about science. There’s
nothing scientific at all in fitness. Everyone’s just doing the same stuff. We’d
rather have shinier dumbbells than come out with something that has a scientific
argument because nobody will get it.” I thought, “Okay. I don’t believe that the
whole world is that stupid.” So, I’m going to launch it myself. That’s why I
ended up doing it. Now, I do think a large percentage of the world is pretty
stupid because of what they’re eating, right?
Zach Bitter: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I mean, we definitely eat whatever. It’s just, it’s
pretty bad. John, tell us what you have coming up. I mean, it sounds like you’re
traveling quite a bit. Do you have any kind of stuff that we need to know about
in the near future?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. There’s all kinds of projects that are going on. I’m
working on a big project with UFC, so sort of the strength and mass programming
for the UFC. I’ve been working with Forrest Griffin on that. By the way, you
should probably get him on your show. Really interesting guy. Man! He’s got some
stories about MMA joint injuries. He and a guy named Duncan French head up the
Human Performance Institute at the UFC in Vegas. What a training facility.
Awesome! They’re just cutting edge everything. So, I worked on a lot of the
X3 Bar
programming there and did a lot of video. I’m going to launch
a big video program for the UFC using X3 Bar
in just a couple of
weeks. Really excited about that. Some other things that are really, really
preliminary, some other sort of influential people that we’re working with, but
ultimately all I want to do is get the product in the hands of the people who
are really just going to use it and enjoy it and talk about it like you guys.
So, and also the sort of breadth of different types of athletes are figuring out
ways to apply because I’m not going to think of every way to use it. There’s a
gold medalist swimmer who’s been using it. Shawn, I think he lives near you. He
applies it in sort of a slightly different way with his swim coach and her name
is Wilma Wong. She’s brilliant woman who’s trying to do all kind of … You’ve
probably heard of her. Yes. You’re nodding. She’s trained a bunch of pro
swimmers. She’s got a slightly different protocol, kind of higher reps type
thing. She’s mixing some sort of extreme flexibility in between sets, which I
think is an interesting approach. I got to learn more about what can come out of
that but it’s a bright future because there’s all kinds of ways that people can
apply the product. It’s so simple and elegant and easy to use, easy to put away,
easy to store, easy to carry with you.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I mean, the one thing I’ve seen people say, because it
takes you a few seconds to kind of get things set up in position, but then I
think about if you go to the gym, it takes you a long time to set that stuff up,
too. I mean, for me to load a barbell up to five, 600 pounds, it takes five
minutes to do that. I mean, I got to carry the weights back and forth and then
I’m just thinking with the bar, I have to kind of make sure the band is even on
both sides but I mean because there’s criticism about well, you got to play with
it and get it right but, I mean, I’m just thinking about anything you train, you
got to do some of that. It’s really that.
Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, you mean taking the time to do it right? That’s the
problem?
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, you can grab a pencil and use the wrong end of it.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Sure.
Dr. John Jaquish: Go write and it won’t write. So, I’m going to go, “Pencils
suck.” Like, “Okay.”
Zach Bitter: It is funny what people will choose to complain about with that
type of stuff, too, because just to get to the gym is going to be longer than it
would take to even come close to adjusting the bands properly on something like
this.
Dr. John Jaquish: Or doing your whole workout and taking a shower, brushing,
probably have a mistake. Yeah. You got to go through all that in the time it
takes to drive to the gym. Yeah. It’s so convenient.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Well, Joe. Thanks for coming on. I’m looking forward to
continuing to use the product and see what it does because, like I said, I’m
open-minded but at the same time, I’m all about results. So, I’ll be happy to
see. I’m in my 50s now.
Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome.
Dr. Shawn Baker: It gets harder when you get older, for sure. It does, but I
mean, if you keep plugging, you can continue to do stuff. So, this is kind of a
cool tool to add to the tool bag, I suppose.
Zach Bitter: I think so.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Zach, got anything else?
Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I’m also using it with so many guys that you’re
connected with Max Schweitzer, a friend of yours. He got in great shape. Now,
he’s doing it like you’re going to be doing it. Like you’ve been doing it,
finishing set kind of thing. But he’s just become incredibly conditioned. Just
an absolutely shredded individual. Then, of course, Chris Bell is using it. I’m
going to make sure that we also share stories to make sure that we’re exchanging
best practices and so everybody can optimize what they’re doing.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. I would say, Max’s also doing a carnivore diet and so is
Chris.
Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Put all that dead meat plus training is a good mixture, for
sure.
Dr. John Jaquish: Sure is.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Awesome, guys.
Zach Bitter: Awesome. Yeah, thanks for taking some time, John, to come on the
show. If there’s any other … Cameron, did we ask you if you had any spots to
find you like social media or anything like that that you want us to share?
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s @drjaquish
on Instagram or Facebook.
Dr. Shawn Baker: Yeah. Then, the X3 Bar
has its own-
Zach Bitter: Own website.
Dr. Shawn Baker: … [crosstalk 01:32:10].
Zach Bitter: We’ll link all that to show notes, too.
Dr. John Jaquish: x3bar.com
. Yeah. Thanks, guys.
Zach Bitter: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again for coming on and have a good rest
of the day.
Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome, guys. Thanks.