Skip to Main Content
By Decoding Superhuman on August 13, 2019

X3: 10 Minute Workouts, Reversing Osteoporosis, and Omad

X3: 10 Minute Workouts, Reversing Osteoporosis, and Omad

The always entertaining Dr. John Jaquish discusses reversing bone density issues, putting on 30 pounds of muscle after 40, the X3 Bar, and what it is like to thrive on one meal a day.

Who is Dr. John Jaquish?

Inventor of the most effective bone density building medical device, which has reversed osteoporosis for thousands and created more powerful/fracture resistant athletes, John is now, partnered with Tony Robbins and OsteoStrong for rapid clinic deployment. In the process of his medical research, he also quantified the variance between power capacities from weak to strong ranges in weight lifting, which brought him to his second invention, X3 Bar resistance band training system. The research indicates that this product builds muscle much faster than conventional lifting, and does so in less training time, all with the lowest risk of joint injury. Dr. Jaquish is a research professor at Rushmore University, speaks at scientific conferences all over the world, has been featured on many to the top health podcasts, is an editor of multiple medical journals, and is a nominee of the National Medal of Science.

Highlights

2:28 Reversing bone density issues in thousands of people

8:22 The invention of the X3 Bar exercise band bar system

13:05 Putting on 30 pounds of muscle after the age of 40

19:59 Muscle biopsy studies and recovery from workouts

23:09 Why muscle confusion exercise is wrong

24:59 You are seven times stronger in the strongest part of the range of motion

29:33 There is no such thing as cardio

40:42 One Meal a Day and Dr. John Jaquish’s diet

44:10 Why the Recommended Daily Allowance is a joke

49:12 Carnivore nutrition

57:19 Dr. Jaquish answers the final four questions

Full Transcript

Boomer Anderson: Welcome to Decoding Superhuman. This show is a deep dive into obsessions with performance and how to improve the human experience. Twice a week, I explore the latest science, technology, and tactics with experts in various fields of human optimization. I’m your host, Boomer Anderson. Enjoy the journey. Superhumans! My guest today is Dr. John Jaquish, and I say that name right up front because if you do any Googling on the man, he has quite the impressive profile. He’s the inventor of the most effective bone density building medical device which has reversed osteoporosis and osteopenia for thousands of people. But he’s also the creator of something I must say I’m falling in love with just a little bit, and that’s called the X3 Bar resistance band bar system. And today, we get into all different questions, not only related to the X3 portable gym or osteoporosis, but just movement in general. We talk about muscle biopsy studies and why they may be important for looking at things like recovery. We look at muscle confusion and why altering your workout all the time may not be the best idea. And then, we talk about how to use items like the X3 Bar variable resistance system while you’re on the road. Which, generally speaking, to people listening to this are on the road quite a bit. The show notes for this one are at X3 Bar resistance band bar system. That’s just the letter X with the number three. Enjoy my episode with Dr. John Jaquish. Dr. John Jaquish, welcome to the show.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks for having me.

Boomer Anderson: So I want to kick things off because there’s, you know, a rumor that you are the Tony Stark of the fitness industry. But I want to start a little bit with something else you were known for before we get in the X3 workout bar system, which is OsteoStrong. How many people have you helped with bone density issues on a global scale? If you have the number.

Dr. John Jaquish: About 600,000.

Boomer Anderson: 600,000 people. Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Boomer Anderson: That’s incredible.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. inaudible user base today.

Boomer Anderson: And I know you’ve partnered with Tony Robbins to roll out the OsteoStrong clinics, but do you mind just giving the listeners kind of a high-level overview of what the OsteoStrong experience is like?

Dr. John Jaquish: Gladly. So, I developed the devices, medical device, OsteoStrong to a clinic you go into, if you use said device. But the takeaway, like what the thing basically does is it puts axial compression on bone. So this is the axis of my humerus bone, right? So I want to press that bone end to end, and so what that machine does is it allows for the compression, tension and torsion, put on all the bones of the body, especially the ones that are susceptible to fragility fracture. Or I should say, susceptible to bone loss also, because you don’t lose bone density in your skull, but you do in your humerus bone or your clavicle or your femur. Femoral fractures are the ones that are associated with mortality rate, that could kill you. So it all started with my mother being diagnosed with osteoporosis and then as I got into learning about what the dysfunction really was, it’s a disease of disuse. It shouldn’t even really be called a disease at all, it’s like … You know, if I don’t train my biceps and they get smaller, that’s not a disease. That’s called, you know, not exercising right. Yeah, I mean, just like … But, but, the reason I think it had been traditionally seen as just a dysfunction associated with aging, seen as an aging disease, was because there was really no good way to trigger bone growth naturally. And so what I said to my mother was, “I’m going to find whoever in the world has the highest bone density, whatever population, I’m going to figure out how they did it.” And it was so easy to find them. It was gymnasts.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: The rate at which they contact the ground. It had nothing to do with their exercise or anything like that, it’s just the repetitive contacts with the ground were very controlled. Like the way gymnast lands, they try to make it exactly the same every time. Now, an impact is still an out of control event, so you know, ultimately, gymnasts on average retire at 19 years old for a reason. Because they get hurt. Simple. I thought, “Okay, what I’m going to do is I’m going to create a medical device which is going to give us the benefits of high impacts without the risks of high impacts.” So slow and controlled loading with robotics and computer monitoring, so that individuals can just get in a compressive position. So if I’m going to absorb a high impact force, back of the hand in line with the clavicle, 120 degree angle between upper and lower arm, and I would just … I would compress all the bone in a whole kinetic chain to the point where, you know, I would be far beyond my body weight. You know, maybe … Well, now, 10 times my body weight or something like that.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: inaudible to trigger that bone density adaptation.

Boomer Anderson: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I mean the way to describe it, like the most easy way is, “High impact emulation.” It gives the benefit of high impact without the risks.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So the real reason why I wanted to have you on the show is to talk a bit about what I believe is your latest invention, which is the X3 Bar resistance band bar system. But first, how much time do you spend exercising on a given day?

Dr. John Jaquish: 10 minutes a day.

Boomer Anderson: 10 minutes a day, okay. So now, my puritan work ethic, Protestant mind, and a lot of the people listening here are saying, “10 minutes a day? That doesn’t seem like it’s possible, to look the way you do.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Boomer Anderson: How does it work?

Dr. John Jaquish: So it is a far greater … Well, let me go back to the bone density device for a second.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: What I observed when building the bone density device is that the forces that we were dealing with were so high, just in this impact-ready range of motion. Like I was explaining, like right here, back of the hand, you know. The 120 degree angle right here.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: So I’m looking at these loads and I think, “We’re missing something in fitness.”

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Like, when you lift a weight, you are limited by what you can handle in the weaker range of motion. Which means when you’re in the stronger range of motion, you’re hardly doing anything. Because you only have one-seventh the capability in the weak range. That means there’s so much more tissue you could stimulate that you’re not stimulating, when you’re holding a static weight. And it’s also not how we move, you know. A sprinter has a 180 degrees of flexion behind the knee, yet when they’re at full speed, they only use seven degrees of flexion.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Well if you have 180 available, why do they only use seven degrees?

Boomer Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Why doesn’t a fighter want to hit somebody right here and then follow through, so they get a full range of motion?

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Like, it doesn’t make sense. Like the way we put load on the body in fitness doesn’t make sense. It’s inefficient. Here’s another one. When you go and get a tan … I mean, you’re in Amsterdam right now, you have some sun-

Boomer Anderson: It’s sunny today. It is. We get sun like once every five days.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah, you can get a suntan in Amsterdam.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, so everybody listening in California, California’s not the only place for sun. So when somebody says, “Well how many sets do you do,” or, “I don’t believe you only do one set,” and I say, “How many sets do you do in the sunlight to get a tan?” And they kind of look at me like, “What?” Right. Weird/ridiculous question. And the active response is, “Only need one stimulus,” unless they are very low intensity.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Stimuli. Well then you might need to do it over and over again, but that tells you that the stimuli is awful. Just … It’s not very productive. And so what you can do with one set, the growth you can trigger with one set with X3 Bar fitness band bar system, which is by the way, I mean, that’s all I do, one set. You’re just going to trigger so much more growth. And so it’s just a matter of efficiency in the observation of the differences of capability, from impact-ready range to weaker range. And so I applied this to every major movement in the body you can do with a barbell, and then … Yeah, I thought at first I was going to write a book about band training. Because it was like, “Oh yeah, there is more resistance, we have bands.” And there have been people who have been trying to sell bands … Like there’s rehab bands and those work very well for rehab.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: In physio therapy, or physical therapy as Americans call it. The problem is when you get the bands heavy enough, this starts to happen. Do most of your listeners watch this video or do they-

Boomer Anderson: It’s … If you don’t mind explaining it, because it’s going to be predominantly released in audio.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay, okay. So when you try to curl with a really heavy band and some of the heavier bands were used for like pull-up assists. You put your foot through it and hook it over like a chin-up bar. So you’re kind of offloading the bottom of the pull-up. So I grab one of these things and I thought like, “Hmm, I wonder what I can do.” So I throw it around my back and try to do a push-up with it, I almost broke my wrists. Because they twist the small joints of your body. Your wrists and ankles do really well dealing with flat surfaces. We run fastest on a flat piece of ground, not on a bumpy piece of ground, right? So we don’t … Once our wrists start getting twisted and our ankles start getting twisted, you stand on a band and start doing a deadlift. You’re pulling up, you know, your sides. If you’re using a weight that should be relevant to strength, you could break an ankle. You know, the ankles don’t like lateral force. Ask anyone who’s played football that. You know? Right? Ankles hurt like that. And so then it’s like you’ve got two options, either you use lighter weight bands, which are just irrelevant, just a waste of time.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Or, I thought, “Okay …” Because I thought of just recommending, using lightweight bands. But no one’s going to trigger anything. So the scientific discovery will be useless because people are just going to be using only bands. Like that doesn’t work. So what I needed to do was develop an Olympic bar that would have hooks on the end of it that would rotate, and then I needed to develop a second ground to stand on. So another ground to stand on that would have a channel running underneath it where the bands could flex and stretch underneath and move freely. So your ankles and your wrists could be protected, so then we could do barbell exercises, which by the way a barbell exercise is like … You know, I asked Chris Bell this and he’s like one of the most knowledgeable power lifters out there. You probably know his brother, Mark Bell.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah. I know Mark quite well.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just hang out with him and I did a video of this, talking about like the strongest people in the world, do they use barbells or dumbbells? You know, barbells. Right. If you were to lift something heavy functionally, like if you were out in nature, you wouldn’t lift it with one hand.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, like now we go one leg at a time because we’re not kangaroos. We walk on one leg at a time, so doing power movement with one leg, that makes sense. Doing a power movement with one hand or separate things, that’s like trying to get a tan with candles. Now-

Boomer Anderson: crosstalk analogy.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a great analogy, because yeah, it’s light. I mean like, “Hey, can I get a tan from this?” No, you can’t. So, that’s why the barbell was so important. Like if you have something heavy you’ve got to interface with, you’re using both hands. So a barbell … And it had to be a specific length. I kept it as short as I possibly could, because when somebody is bench-pressing, I have this argument online all the time. People want to wide-grip chest press because they want to pretend they’re stronger than they really are. People like the wide-grip, it’s like you’re just shortening the movement. And at the top of a wide-grip chest press, you’re not contracting the pectoral to its fullest.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: A narrow grip, you are. So like the myth that like narrow grip is for triceps, that’s not true. It’s more for pectorals than it is for anything else, because the pectoral gets shorter as the humerus comes towards the midline of the body. And so like there’s … And as I was developing this like muscle growth so fast, like it came on me. Once I developed my prototype, at first, like I had a successful medical device business. I wasn’t particularly worried about starting another business, but I put on 30 pounds of muscle the first year, after turning 40.

Boomer Anderson: So Dr. Jaquish, just really quick here-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah.

Boomer Anderson: I hate to break on your story. You built this device and then you tested it on yourself for a year before releasing it to the public. Do I have that right?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Boomer Anderson: About a year? And during that time you said you put on how many pounds of muscle?

Dr. John Jaquish: 30 pounds, and that’s after turning 40.

Boomer Anderson: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah!

Boomer Anderson: That’s crazy.

Dr. John Jaquish: Nobody does that.

Boomer Anderson: And so I want to go in a little bit on the workout side of this and sort of how these workouts look, because I’ve had Dr. Doug McGuff on the show before, to talk a little bit about high-intensity training and time under tension. Could you walk through sort of a certain protocol, if you will, for the X3 variable resistance exercise system, and talk a little bit about how maybe the rep scheme would work, if there is a rep scheme?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yeah, yeah. So there’s two workouts, each of them are four or five sets, depending on if you’re doing split squatssplit squats or regular squats.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: You know, the split squat, you’re doing one leg at a time, which is really awesome.

Boomer Anderson: It sounds spicy. I’m hearing it right now and I’m just … My legs are excited.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I mean I never … My legs just look like anyone else’s leg, maybe a little harder, until I figured this out. Humans walk on one leg at a time, let’s just focus. And then all your body resource goes into one quadricep with one glute, which are your biggest muscles, right?

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: So you can fire one at a time a lot better. Like I’ll never go back to double leg squats again unless I have to show it to somebody. Like I do it for photography, basically. But … You did ask a question.

Boomer Anderson: We were talking about just kind of the workouts and rep scheme … Or if there is a rep scheme, because we’ve talked in the past on the podcast about high intensity training and kind of the absence of rep scheme, but more time under tension. And I would for you to just explain a little bit about that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Time under tension is not so relevant, because it would be time under variable tension.

Boomer Anderson: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Which is not really something you track because the weight’s different in every position that you’re in.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: The more contracted the muscle, the more weight is on you. The more you move into the weaker range of motion, the less weight is on you. And that is so … I’ll go through the whole thing. So each workout is four or five sets. That’s it.

Boomer Anderson: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Now they are the most intense sets you’ll ever do. Like there are power lifters, there are bodybuilders that will do one set with X3 Bar variable resistance system and say, “That was the best set of my life. I never thought I could fatigue a muscle to that degree.” This is why you only need one set. And so let me explain, so you do this one set … So let’s say I’m doing a chest press, I go through like … So when I do the chest press, I hit I think about 530 pounds at the top. We have an app that tells you because it’s based on your height and how much crosstalk it stretches. So over 500 pounds with this band I use at the top, and so I’m hitting this 500 pounds at the top over and over again, I might get to 28 repetitions, that’s the best I’ve ever done. And then I can’t get there anymore. So 20 reps hitting 500 pounds at the top, then I’m exhausted. But, I can still do like shorter reps.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: So I’ll start doing partials and I’ll do another six or seven partial repetitions and on the last repetition may just be one inch off my chest in the weaker range of motion. So I’m fatiguing all ranges of motion, something you cannot do with a weight.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, so-

Boomer Anderson: So it’s-

Dr. John Jaquish: Fatiguing the strong range, which is a much greater myofibril effect. And then the latter phases are continuing the sarcoplasmic depletion of the muscle. Getting rid of ATP glycogenic creatine phosphate. The fuels in the muscle cells that are there for contraction. So I am fatiguing the muscle to the most extreme degree from a structural standpoint, myofibril, and from a fuel-load standpoint from the ATP glycogenic creatine phosphate. Therefore, I’m going to get a greater effect than anybody ever could from anything else.

Boomer Anderson: Okay. So it’s basically one set of each of these exercises to complete failure, how often … Or do I have that right?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s correct, yeah.

Boomer Anderson: And then how often are you able to repeat that over the course of a week? Because I imagine for certain people, there’s different recovery rates, but for yourself, how often are you able to hit the X3 Bar portable home gym every week?

Dr. John Jaquish: So we know from muscle biopsy research, there was a lot of theories about this in the ’80s and ’90s. And we even had really smart guys like Arthur Jones-

Boomer Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: crosstalk the Nautilus, saying, “It takes a whole week for muscle to recover.” Well then, somebody did biopsy studies, where they cut a chunk out of … Like somebody will train, they’ll cut a chunk out of their muscle. Three hours later, six hours later, 10 hours later, 24 hours later, 36 hours later, 48 hours later. And what they determined was after 36 hours, you’re recovered.

Boomer Anderson: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: So-

Boomer Anderson: I need to find that study, that sounds interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s a muscle biopsy study. And a biopsy study is like, you know, that’s a really high level of growth.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So we hit every body part three times a week, so every 48 hours you just repeat the same workout. So we split the body two ways and so I’ll do like deadlift, bent over row, calf raises, and bicep curls in one workout. And then the next workout would be chest press, tricep press, overhead press, and squats. And then the squats would be split squats, so that’d be like two sets.

Boomer Anderson: And is there any … Just my sort of traditional thinking around exercise, that you need to switch the workouts every six weeks or so, is there any sort of adaptation that would require the switching of the workouts over a period of time?

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s another study you’ve got to read, muscle confusion theory. Totally false.

Boomer Anderson: Okay. All right, the sponsor for today’s podcast is a member of the toolkit that I use on an almost daily basis to upgrade my state of being and have used it actually for the past couple of years. The guys over at Neurohacker Collective have done a fantastic job. You’ve heard me rave about the original stack as well as Qualia Mind on this show. But now, I’m so excited because the suite of products has grown. You have Qualia Focus for that near-term bump. You have Qualia Mind caffeine free for all my caffeine sensitive listeners out there. But their latest products, which just came out, is oh so exciting. It’s called Eternus and it’s a 38 ingredient formula containing the most researched and premium ingredients on Earth for supporting cellular health. This is key to combating the symptoms of aging. If you want to check out Eternus, Qualia Mind, Focus, or any of the Neurohacker products, go over to neurohacker.com and plug in the code Boomer. You’ll get an additional 15% off your order. Enjoy. So the idea of switching workouts is just completely bogus.

Dr. John Jaquish: You’ll do worse.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Because you’re learning a new movement pattern every time you do that, and that learning keeps you from getting into muscle protein synthesis. So like the whole P90X thing-

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Total BS. Doesn’t work. And there’s a great study, where they take people who just did barbell exercises, the same ones, and it was a big control group too. Like they weren’t screwing around, they really wanted to see like, “Which one is it?” Yeah, muscle confusion, not a thing.

Boomer Anderson: And I link to the studies to the extent that I can find them in the show notes because this is fascinating to me.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’ll make sure Chelsea sends them too.

Boomer Anderson: Okay. Perfect. The accommodative resistance element of it, or when I think of bands, I have experienced training in sort of a conjugate style. And there’s a little bit of a band … I guess Louis Simmons puts bands in his workouts as well.

Dr. John Jaquish: For sure. For sure.

Boomer Anderson: Can we talk a little bit about the significance of your bands and how it kind of differs for those who’re maybe a little bit more knowledgeable about conjugate programming, how it differs from the conjugate method?

Dr. John Jaquish: So, when looking in my research, I would say that … I demonstrated … And I’m talking about the clinical trial that we did in the University of East London. When I look at that data, and then I compare to what the American College of Sports Medicine keeps as average exercisers data-

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: The average people who go to gyms. Humans are seven times stronger in the stronger range of motion than they are in the weaker range of motion.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: So when we look at studies like Anderson 2008, who did the Louis Simmons sort of thing where it was like you had X amount of weight on the bar when it was laying on your chest, and 1.2X at the top, that’s just scratching the surface. That’s not what we need. Our capability is X on our chest and 7X at the top. Now there’s also a strength curve, so you don’t want to deliver 7X at the top, but maybe 5X. Because then you stay under that curve. Because the curve, it’s like if there’s X capability on your chest, halfway does not mean you’re 3.5. It might be 2X. You go another quarter of the way, and then that might be 5X and then the top is 7X. So, it’s an S curve. And then it actually drops off at the bottom because like when you lockout, muscles shut off to keep … You know, so you can’t break your own joints. When you look at what they do at West Side Barbell, what Louis Simmons does and the other guys who do bands on the bars, I support what they’re doing because they’re trying to … They’re using variable resistance to try and make people better weightlifters. But what’s my goal? I don’t care about what my bench press is. I also don’t want to go through the risk of injury. Right? Like who cares? Who cares what I bench press? I’ll never do it again? It’s totally not … The risk to reward ratio for me, not there. Won’t do it. But I am stronger and more muscular than most people who spend their lives online talking about their bench press, because instead I’m applying more variance as opposed to more weight. So if you look at that Anderson study, they were barely scratching the surface and they got greater gains with bands plus weights, than they did with just the weights. So when I tell people that story, they go, “Well you don’t know that yours is better than the one they did in the study.” And I go, “Okay, so they added a tiny bit of variance and got greater gains” So what do we need, more weight or more variance? Like you have to be an absolute idiot to not understand that.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s a lot of absolute idiots out there. So, uh, uh, yeah, that’s why I had to make it crystal clear. And I actually think explaining it from what I learned with the bone density research is actually a lot easier for people to wrap their head around, because they think like, “Wow, these little old ladies in this study,” you know, they’re post-menopausal females who were de-conditioned. So they were in not-good shape. They were putting six, seven, eight, nine times their body weight through their hip joints. I want to make sure that the listener understands that I had women in their 50s and 60s putting over 1000 pounds through their legs.

Boomer Anderson: That’s incredible.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. And it’s crystal clear when you see that, “Wow.” We have triggers in the human body for strength that we do not pull when we lift weights. But X3 Bar exercise band bar system does it.

Boomer Anderson: So on the X3 resistance bands system, and if you don’t mind just walking through, these 10 minute workouts, a lot of people may be thinking or have that kind of traditional way of thinking, that we also need to go and do either steady state cardio or some sort of cardiovascular exercise on top of that. Do you do that yourself? Or is the X3 Bar resistance band bar system all you do?

Dr. John Jaquish: X3 Bar fitness band bar system is all I do, and … So here’s why. There’s a great article which heavily depends on a meta-analysis that was done … The article, if somebody wants to find it, the article wasn’t a peer-reviewed publication but it’s got all kinds of citations in it. And the article’s called There’s No Such Thing as Cardio. And I love this article, because it in its entirety encompasses more than 100 different scientific studies looking at the cardiovascular adaptations of strength training.

Trusted by ProfessionalAthletes Worldwide

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Like if you get stronger, that high-intensity strength training gives you the same level of cardiac health that cardiovascular training does without repetitive joint damage and without the massive use of time. Now, I will say people get really mad when I say that. Even though there’s more than 100 studies that show it, but you know. But what I will say is if you want to be a great runner, you have to run.

Boomer Anderson: Of course, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right, so like somebody goes, “Well how long would it take you to run a marathon?” And I’m like, “Well inaudible miles, it would take me a couple minutes because I’m going to drive my Lamborghini.” It’s why I’ve got one. You know, he’s just … Who cares? I’m not going to … I don’t need to run, especially not long distance, like ugh. Like I’m not going to do that. But if somebody wants to be a great runner, they’ve got to run. Like that’s not the contest. Running long distance is not what keeps your heart healthy. Having the cardiac muscle adapt and be powerful, be able to pump blood to the furthest thing from your heart, your feet, that’s it. And so I don’t do any cardio. Now, another thing X3 Bar variable resistance system does … I published a meta-analysis in 2016, and that’s like the hardest kind of study to do. For the listeners that don’t know what a meta-analysis is, I know you know what it is, but yeah, I take research from all the research on one particular subject. Usually kind of narrow, and say like, “Let’s take all the studies and put them together and see what we get. Like is there so much conflicting information that we don’t have statistical significance?” So the answer … Some of these meta-analysis, they say the answers we don’t know. But I did an analysis on stabilization exercise. So anything like a squat, just a regular free weight squat versus like a light press. So there’s a study, one of the references I used looked at squats versus leg press, and this is the big, easiest way to describe it. The people who were doing leg presses were using twice the amount of weight. One group had a 600% increase in growth hormone, the other had no increase in growth hormone.

Boomer Anderson: Did the squat have no increase in growth hormone?

Dr. John Jaquish: No, the squat had the 600% increase.

Boomer Anderson: Oh. Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And it’s because of stabilization fire.

Boomer Anderson: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: So that was my theory, because that paper made no reference towards mechanisms and I wanted to have a mechanistic discussion. Because … Like let’s figure out how to trigger growth hormones, and so all 23 data sets that I found were all stabilization based. They were all about stabilization and showed massive changes in growth hormone, you know, as a result of this. And so with X3 Bar variable resistance system … Only a thing that adjust how much growth hormone was force. So it was the force your body is dealing with while it has to fire or stabilize. So if you just stand on one leg, there might be a little bit of growth hormone creation but, you know, nothing to get excited about, nothing that’s going to create any change.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: The people who squat, and this was very heavy squatting we were doing, they saw a 600% increase. But the people who added like extreme of loads strategically, and they kind of did it with isometrics while stabilizing and, you know, they had different ways of doing it. I mean these are studies, these are not necessarily exercises you go do.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: But if you can get the force higher than you would normally handle, in a full range movement, you can have a 2000% increase in growth hormone. So that’s one of the other elements of X3 Bar resistance band training system, is I knew when we’d be doing squatting or deadlifting or overhead pressing, you’re going to get massive up-regulations of growth hormones. So that’s when lean without doing cardio.

Boomer Anderson: This is amazing. I guess the logical question I have to ask here … Actually, before I get into that one, there’s … We look at sort of the movements that the X3 portable gym can do, the one thing that I see is potentially … I don’t want to say “missing,” but the bottom portion of the deadlift, how would you mimic that with an X3 Bar? Do you have to get a wider base or is there a way to do it already?

Dr. John Jaquish: So … I mean ultimately, your goal in your deadlift, when you deadlift, is to make your traps, your spinal rectors, and your hamstrings as strong as possible.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: I would argue deadlifting with a bar isn’t really deadlifting because, you know, the weight’s that big around, it keeps the bar that far off the ground. Why don’t you pick it up one inch from the ground? Like, if it’s like we want to have that conversation, it’s just like, “Okay.” A regular deadlift is BS because you should be picking it up right off the ground. Of course, that would mean you’d even be using a far lower weight, which would be even more worthless in the stronger range of motion. So when you go down towards the bottom, like the tension would get released right at about the place where you’d grab a regular deadlift bar and you’d have a standard 45 pound plate on it or if you had like a plastic five pound CrossFit plate that just like a 45 pound. I love those.

Boomer Anderson: Oh, that’s great.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I see these guys like throwing those things against the floor, trying to make the biggest noise possible. Like, mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah-

Boomer Anderson: It’s like they’re trying to do-

Dr. John Jaquish: crosstalk

Boomer Anderson: I love the squat snatch and you hear somebody drop it with a big thud, and all of a sudden you look over and it’s 30 kilos, or something like that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah. It’s great. What can’t you do with the X3 Bar fitness band bar system?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh boy, you’re asking a biased guy.

Boomer Anderson: I know, I know I am.

Dr. John Jaquish: So like some people say, “Well you’re not doing any direct ab work,” and you know, okay. Yeah-

Boomer Anderson: But you’re activating stabilizer muscles.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Boomer Anderson: I imagine there’s some abdominal-

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m not doing any, you know, grip work either, but you can see in, you know, my forearms-

Boomer Anderson: Yeah, will you take a picture of your forearms right now and just show it to people, because the point being is that while you’re not doing grip work, there’s pretty heavily defined forearms here.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. My forearms, you know, they look incredible. Like all I’m doing is a deadlift for that. So, the stabilizer muscles, they naturally fire when you’re stabilizing.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: So like I don’t think doing direct ab work is needed. I don’t do it, and my abs look fantastic. So, like that’s something, you know, you get a question about and I just deadlift, squat, that’s your abs.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: You know? So what else doesn’t it do? Ultimately, you’d ask anybody who really likes lifting weights. Can you hit every part of the body with a barbell? Yeah, pretty much can.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: So yeah, that’s … It’s just straightforward. And I think the other thing about X3 Bar resistance band bar system, like most people who buy it, buy it for the reason I designed it for, which is it’s a total weight training replacement. And I would argue, like once you understand how X3 Bar exercise band bar system works, there’s really no reason to lift weights anymore. Because it’s inefficient, and people get very upset when I say that, especially if they have some sort of emotional tie to it.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah, if somebody owns a gym listening to this, they may be throwing stuff at the wall right now.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, but what I would say is just … A lot of gyms, just get X3 Bar portable home gyms. Like, just do group classes or training sessions with X3 Bar variable resistance system, like the people coming into your building will do fantastic because you’re going to a deeper level of fatigue, triggering more fatigue of more tissue and the growth adaptations are ridiculous. And if you go like on the X3 Bar resistance band training system users forum on Facebook, there’s almost 9000 people on there right now, and that number’s growing every day, that have amazing before and after transformations. Putting on, some of them, 10, 20 … I think it was even half of all people that have put on 30 pounds of muscle. And the product’s only been out just about two years, and you know, the first year we only sold like 2000 of them or something like that.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Now we’re crosstalk

Boomer Anderson: In that period of time, is that the 12 week period of time that you usually see … The program that comes with the X3 workout bar system

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, no one’s putting on 30 pounds of muscle in 12 weeks.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah, that would be … You know, there’s peptides and serums and things we can get into too.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s thermodynamically impossible. But there’s a lot of people who are putting on, you know, that kind of … I have to say there’s 10 guys who have put on 20 pounds of muscle in six months.

Boomer Anderson: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And they’re just regular guys who started using it and kept posting their pictures.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Boomer Anderson: How did you alter your diet? Or did you alter your diet at all? I guess said another way, what does your diet look like on an everyday basis that allows you to sustain this kind of regular-

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I’m a busy executive. Still doing OsteoStrong, right? So, in fact, I just got back from the annual conventions on inaudible. What I’m saying is I’m busy, I travel constantly. Like I designed this to fit in my lifestyle as a total, total fitness replacement. And I drop it right in my checked bag. Like so I don’t go anywhere without my X3 Bar, you know like-

Boomer Anderson: And that’s it?

Dr. John Jaquish: They see me, “Did you bring your X3 Bar fitness band bar system?” And I’m like, “Does Thor go anywhere without his hammer?” What are you inaudible of course I brought my X3 Bar resistance band bar system. So that’s number one. The other thing is I needed to develop a nutrition program, because like before I started this, I didn’t really pay much attention to nutrition. I had been ketogenic for 13 years, so way before it was cool because I read Bodyopus by Dan Duchaine, which was a terrible book, absolutely terrible book. But that one part about ketogenesis … Every other recommendation was like totally insane. You know, taking like a handful of Sudafed before you go for a run.

With X3, you train with Greater Force to trigger Greater Gains

Boomer Anderson: What?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it’s like health goes right out the window in this book. Go read it, it’s-

Boomer Anderson: I kind of want to read it now, just because of your … It’s crazy.

Dr. John Jaquish: I think somebody’s making a documentary right now. I think someone is, I think Chris Bell told me, it’s called The Menace of Venice Beach. And like this guy, he was a Venice Beach guy, and yeah, it’s about him. It’s about him and his sports performance observations and how it just like … This guy was like everything dangerous was like a good idea to him. Anyway, so I’ve been ketogenic for 13 years. But not taking it that seriously, not really understanding the lack of need that the human body needs for any carbohydrate whatsoever. You know? There’s essential fats and essential proteins. Name an essential carbohydrate. Let me ask you a question. If you … We’re hitting all the points that people get so upset at me, I mean even though-

Boomer Anderson: I’m absolutely happy to go here, by the way.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m just throwing out stuff that’s been published in academic literature, not by me. So, you know inaudible go write … I think this one was done at like Cornell or something like that. Go write the university, tell them. Tell them they don’t know what they’re doing! So there’s a study that looked at how many calories it would take to get to the minimum recommended daily intakes as ascribed by the American Medical Association. I want you to guess. Take a guess. How many calories you would need to take in a day? Just whole foods, no supplements. Just fish or chicken or vegetables, fruits, whatever.

Boomer Anderson: I have no clue, because the logical answer would be like 2000 because that’s sort of the-

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. They recommend 2000.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah. But-

Dr. John Jaquish: The recommended daily intakes, you would need 27,000. It’s almost like the recommendations were written to sell vitamins.

Boomer Anderson: Fair point.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So when people say, “Don’t you look at your micronutrient?” And I’m, “No. Why would I?” Like clearly, the recommendation is a joke.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah. And Greg Potter, who’s from humanOS, has made this comment to me before, that these RDAs are quite a joke and like there’s certain people that are naturally going to have the deficiency and still be fine.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right.

Boomer Anderson: So yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, people from Nordic countries have vitamin D deficiencies. Does that mean they’re sick? Because like for me, I get a lot of time in the sun and like I basically have a perpetual sun browning tan. And I got kind of like a rosacea, you know, which makes my face kind of red. I mean, I know I shouldn’t ever really be in the sun, being a guy whose rosacea gets triggered by sun. Well I like the sun. I don’t care if I look red. I hope somebody thinks I’m Thanos someday because he was kind of cool, before they killed him. So ultimately like I’m just not paying attention to carbohydrates and to micronutrients. But let me get back to the question you asked, which is how did I figure out my own nutrition? So I’m on the road, I’m working, and even when I’m in my office, I put in … I have an 80 hour work week. I work every day. And you know, my girlfriend’s not always thrilled when I’m constantly on my phone when we’re hanging out, but she’s a very understanding and very sweet girl. You know, very thankful that I met her. Now, I’m hustling all the time. So I’ve got to have a nutrition program that fits in with my lifestyle. So as I’m experimenting and looking at different things I can do with ketogenic nutrition, how to stay in ketosis, how my appetite’s suppressed, how I could have a shorter eating window and a bigger sort of insulin restricted window.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: How … What are the best strategies to do it? So Dave Asprey is a friend of mine, I’ve been on his podcast. I talk a lot to him about what to do with bulletproof nutrition and what to do with bulletproof coffee. I call it, you know, it’s under restriction because fasting really means nothing. Whereas it’s not really what Dave’s doing. So, because you know, bulletproof coffee’s got butter in it and medium chain triglyceride … Therefore, it’s got a caloric impact. So not an insulin inaudible.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: So actually if you have, I think it’s less than 50 calories of just about anything, you know, will trigger insulin. So you know, ultimately it’s the insulin response return to avoid, trying to stay-

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: You know, and then getting into autophagy and things like that. So as I started researching this more and more and understanding how much protein the body really needs to grow mass. If you want to grow muscle, you should be having 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight, or a gram per pound. You know how many people get that? Like-

Boomer Anderson: inaudible

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh it’s people who’ve been lifting weights for years, and they only get half the amount of protein they need.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So, I did not … As I’m looking at this, I think, “I need to make my whole nutrition program around protein.” Because if I look at the fact that I need 220 grams of protein a day, because that’s what I weigh, 220, or 100 kilos, I need to be just having, you know, steak or whatever. Like there’s no room in my intestines for anything else. And so once I came to that realization, I came across Dr. Shawn Baker, and-

Boomer Anderson: I love his stuff.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yeah. Baker is awesome. Like he really … He’s just got it figured out. I did his podcast recently, I hope it turned out well. I didn’t hear it. But it was great, great conversation, even the Bell brothers liked it. You know?

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: And they love lifting weight, so like I hang out with Chris every once in a while, whenever I can, and we do an X3 Bar resistance band training system workout together. But you know, he’s definitely not giving up on weights. crosstalk

Boomer Anderson: crosstalk he likes-

Dr. John Jaquish: Your whole … You know, that’s been their thing for forever, I get it. But Baker, once I came across Baker, and started learning about carnivore nutrition, it made way more sense. And the data that supports carnivore nutrition is stronger than the data that supports anything else. And so, you know, like we have epidemiology research that shows that eating meat is bad for you, but when there’s clinical trial research … So epidemiology is like surveys, right?

Boomer Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: And it doesn’t control for other variables, so like nitrate meat, they found 1000 people in one of these epidemiology studies that were eating nitrate meat. Which means like an Oscar Meyer hot dog. You know? Like a gas station, low quality hot dog that you can leave in your freezer for, I don’t know, years on end. You can … They were eating nitrate meat every day for 40 years. Now you know somebody who’s eating a gas station hot dog ever day for 40 years, are they doing it for their health?

Boomer Anderson: Generally speaking, they’re doing it for convenience, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well they’re doing it for convenience and also because they clearly don’t care about their health, so they’re all probably smoking more, drinking more, maybe doing hard drugs more, and so like if they die younger, it’s kind of irrelevant. Like these aren’t people who are doing it, you know, for any type of health reason. So it’s a stupid study. But, when they run like a clinical trial, they track people who’ve been eating meat for a certain period of time, and have a meat heavy diet and they compare with people who have a vegetable heavy diet. The meat people are healthier.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: So … And then as I started learning that, that has become my recommendation, is carnivore nutrition.

Boomer Anderson: So are you doing then one meal a day, or is it spread throughout the day? How do you structure your meals?

Dr. John Jaquish: Great question. It depends on where I am and what I’m doing. So I prefer to do one meal a day.

Boomer Anderson: Okay. And 220 grams of protein in one meal.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So that’s like-

Boomer Anderson: That’s a good steak.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, usually it’s three steaks. Yeah, I mean, right?

Boomer Anderson: Yeah, I mean it sounds delicious.

Dr. John Jaquish: It is. For sure, definitely, I’m satisfied at the end of that meal. But it’s kind of hard to choke down for some people. Some people really don’t want to sit down and make eating steak their job. So, sometimes I do two meals and also like if I have a dinner meeting with somebody, I don’t want to sit there and order like a platter of steaks.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: And inhale it when they get, you know, like a tiny piece of fish or something. You know, because then I look like a glutton, right? It’s like I have a problem, like, “What’s wrong with this guy?”

Boomer Anderson: Or you spread the story around enough that everybody just kind of expects it and-

Dr. John Jaquish: inaudible strong people, they know.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Whenever they have a dinner with me, it’s going to be a platter of steaks.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. But you know, I also do charity work in San Francisco and I meet with a lot of people. I don’t really want to make … That’s not my whole … My whole being isn’t talking about nutrition. So, you know, on a day like that I’ll do a meal earlier, get some of the inhaling of meat out of the way, then I’ll go and have like a normal sized meal.

Boomer Anderson: Dr. Jaquish, before we get into the final four questions, looking at the X3 Bar variable resistance system and just looking at sort of the construction of it, I know because I’m in the X3 Bar portable home gym users forum on Facebook

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Boomer Anderson: There’s a lot of people who have tried to build it. The bands are constructed of different materials I imagine, and then the base. Do you mind just talking about how it’s very hard for people to just go to the Home Depot or I guess Praxis here in the Netherlands and build it themselves?

Dr. John Jaquish: So another thing I thought about was just telling people how to make one. Because I didn’t really want to bother with running another business. Like I just thought, “Maybe I could just tell people what kind of board to buy and how to …” You know, and then I realized the kinds of latex banding, of the quality that we ought to be using, doesn’t exist. And so it really has to do with the number of layers that we use, so our bands are thicker in depth, so there’s a width you know, and then there’s a depth. And so ours are deeper, which is why they … I mean, you find a band with the same width, typically ours have 30% more force, because they’re 30% thicker in depth. So that was part of it, so I wanted these bands to … Like I said, the biggest band, the X3 Elite Band, is 500 pounds for most people. Like a five foot 10 person is 500 pounds in a chest press. It’s 640 pounds when I do a deadlift.

Boomer Anderson: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Boomer Anderson: That’s a pretty spicy deadlift.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah, but at 640 pounds at the top, then you only need 100 pounds at the bottom. So I can hit that 640 pounds 15 times. Right?

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: So I thought about telling people just how to build it, because I didn’t want to bother with this. And then once I started looking into it, I thought, “Okay, this needs to be a special things. Like I need to make it, and it’s got to be an Olympic bar if it’s going to roll with the man and so the band doesn’t ever turn,” because if you have something that’s static and you rotate your hand, you can injure your wrists. There’s a reason why all Olympic bars roll like that. So I had to have an Olympic bar and I had to have that place, and the plate needed to be able to handle 100s of pounds, like over 500 pounds, because we’re so much stronger in that stronger range. So it actually has a greater requirement than most fitness devices, and any other home fitness device is … They’re limiting because they’re just using the same weight in all ranges of motion, so we’re not going to go near these inaudible So it really needed to be built with an incredible quality that had not been seen in really anything. And so I decided I had to go and make it. You know, just telling people that they can go do it on their own, they can’t. Like it’s … The homemade ones, I guess it’s okay, so they can try a little bit of X3 Bar resistance band bar system type training, but ultimately those things … They can hurt themselves, I could see them making it out of like a lead pipe or something like that, or steel pipe. Pipes are not structural reinforcement tools. Like they don’t make buildings out of pipes. Pipes are made to be buried in the ground and you put wires in them. That’s what metal pipes are for. Or gas, or whatever. But you don’t build a building with them, you don’t … So it’s like what’s going to happen is somebody’s going to load up one of these things and they could actually really hurt themselves.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah-

Boomer Anderson: I can’t … I’m just picturing like a YouTube bloopers video actually.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just ultimately … I want to make sure that. I’m not negative on that, you know, when I see somebody do it, it’s like … I don’t really give them a thumbs up or anything, but I don’t tell them they’re going to hurt themselves because it’s just … I’ll let somebody else do that. People have homemade cars too.

Boomer Anderson: That’s true. That is true.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sometimes the axle comes off and they crash and die.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah, you can see it with those guys too.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s just if it were a do-it-yourself type thing, I would’ve just written a book about it because I wouldn’t have wanted to bother.

Boomer Anderson: Dr. Jaquish, I want to thank you for taking the time to come on the show today-

Dr. John Jaquish: Absolutely.

Boomer Anderson: And I want to transition into sort of the final four rapid fire questions, but before I do that I want to thank you because I got an X3 resistance bands system for my father, who doesn’t like going to the gym. And you know, the fact that you made it so easy to use and everybody has 10 minutes in a day, like he is now exercising a lot more. So thank you so much for that, and-

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome.

Boomer Anderson: In fact, I’m going to get one too, just because I’m looking forward to running it, just kind of seeing what it does for my powerlifting. This is going to be great.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and it’s for somebody who does lift, who actually wants to be good at the sport of lifting, you’re going to get better if you use X3 Bar resistance band training system.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: The way you do it is you do your workout and then you do your X3 Bar fitness band bar system at the end as your finishing sets, because you’re wiped out after X3 Bar. crosstalk the other way, that would not be productive.

With X3, you train with Greater Force to trigger Greater Gains

Boomer Anderson: That would be an interesting way to see like, “What’s your minimum bench for the day.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right. Yeah-

Boomer Anderson: But-

Dr. John Jaquish: Finish with X3 Bar resistance band training system and you’re going to trigger much more growth.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I think for a lot of the people listening that are of the executive entrepreneur type, you travel with this all around the world, and this is something that you can simply just pack into a suitcase and go with, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Boomer Anderson: Absolutely.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Just drops right in my bag.

Boomer Anderson: Dr. Jaquish, I want to go now into those final four questions, which I’m playing with a name here, maybe we’ll call it the Four Horsemen or something like that. But first question for a person who works 80 hours a week, hustles all the time, how do you unwind?

Dr. John Jaquish: I just keep going. I don’t really unwind. I have a great time with my friends, I have a super group of friends in San Francisco. And I’m a very social guy, but yeah, like I’m just kind of clenched fists all day, every day. You know, don’t need it.

Boomer Anderson: I guess the next question that comes to mind is what is your top trick for enhancing your focus?

Dr. John Jaquish: Hmm. Just eliminating distractions. I think most people spend most of their time worry about things they can’t do anything about. Like let’s say politics for example, there are people who spend hours every day just screaming about political stuff. A waste of time, and they’re not effecting anything. Not changing anything about anything, just shut up. Get to work. Do something that you can actually have an effect on, like if you just went and did something, created something, learned something. Took that time and just took an online course for whatever, you know? Doing impressionism painting in Amsterdam, you can get that.

Boomer Anderson: Yeah, exactly. Van Gogh.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, inaudible in Amsterdam. So, you know, if you just invested your time in that, just stop worrying about the things that you cannot affect. And when … And most things in your life you cannot affect. Therefore, you’ve just got what’s right in front of you. You just got to go to work.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: And if you focus on that, you can get so much done.

Boomer Anderson: What book has impacted your life and how you show up to perform in it the most?

Dr. John Jaquish: Hmm. I would say studies have impacted my life much more than books have.

Boomer Anderson: We can rattle off some studies.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anderson 2008, that was an amazing study. That was why I called the product X3 Bar resistance band bar system. Because it showed greater gains, in that study. But you know, of course, X3 Bar portable home gym is actually a lot more than “Greater Force, Greater Gains.” And people say, “Oh you can’t quantify that.” Okay, at some point, someone will do a trial with it and it’s going to show a lot better than that. But that study was great. Another one was … Talked about bench press angles and power delivery, and that was done by Mukherjee and foreign language 01:02:40 in 1999. And that was amazing because they just had people benching in a very short range, and they showed massive … They were fatiguing in the strongest range of motion. Now, people who weren’t having a sarcoplasmic effect at all, so they weren’t growing mass, but they were growing some significant power. Just myofibrillar adaptation, and so that was a very telling study also, one of my favorite references. So when someone says, “Oh, you need to use a full range of motion, you need to have the same load through the full range of motion.” Yeah, not true. That’s my go-to study for that. Another one, I think Colton 1998, which was … That’s my go-to, like vegans-are-mad-at-me study, you know? You crosstalk

Boomer Anderson: Ah, we all need one of those.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and I show them this study and this study shows that people that take multivitamins die younger than people who don’t.

Boomer Anderson: That’s great.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, and it’s an epidemiology study and it still has all the weaknesses of epidemiology, but it’s just a great response, like don’t tell me micronutrients … Don’t tell me that. Like that just, you know, that issue is like … It’s a joke.

Boomer Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative). Dr. Jaquish, where can people find out more about you?

Dr. John Jaquish: They can follow me on social media. It’s @drjaquish on Instagram or Dr. John Jaquish on Facebook.

Boomer Anderson: Beautiful.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Boomer Anderson: Dr. Jaquish, thank you so much for taking the time today, this has been absolute pleasure.

Dr. John Jaquish: Great, yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed it. You ask great questions.

With X3, you train with Greater Force to trigger Greater Gains

Boomer Anderson: Thank you. This has been amazing and I’m sure everybody’s going to get a lot out of it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks man.

Optimize your health through science

Sign up for our newsletter to get a regular dose of science-backed tips, tricks, discounts, and more.

By clicking “Subscribe,” you agree to our privacy policy & to receive emails/texts with updates.