Dr. John Jaquish, scientist, inventor of the X3 Bar
, and author of
Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time
shares the story of how his mother
being diagnosed with osteoporosis has led him to groundbreaking research and
inventions that get real results.
Dr. Jaquish and host of #ThePlaybook, David Meltzer, talk about a broad range of
topics including why people prefer harder challenges over a challenge that
lasts, setting reasonable expectations for yourself, and some of the most common
misconceptions about human health and fitness. The pair also chat about how
mindset factors into the pursuit of your best self.
Full Transcript #
David Meltzer: On this episode of the playbook, I have the incredible Dr. John
Jaquish. He’s the inventor of OsteoStrong, creator of the X3 Bar
. He
is a doctor and author of an incredible book with a great title,
Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio
, and There’s a Better
Way to Have the Body You Want. You’re going to learn this and more on The
Playbook.
David Meltzer: This is Entrepreneurs: The Playbook, where each week I bring you
some of the greatest athletes, celebrities, and entrepreneurs to talk about
their personal and professional playbook to success, and what made them
champions on the field and in the boardroom. I’m your host, David Meltzer.
David Meltzer: This is Dave Meltzer with Entrepreneurs: The Playbook and I have
John Jaquish, the inventor of Osteostrong, creator of the X3 Bar
,
PhD and author of a book that you got to read because it basically has a
philosophy that may be a little bit controversial but Weight Lifting Is a Waste
of Time. There’s a whole bunch of football trainers right now that I’ve been
related to for the last 35 years that are turning in their graves. Why is
weightlifting a waste of time, John?
Dr. John Jaquish: Here’s here’s what the book looks like right here. Now it’s
funny you mentioned football. I got 12 NFL players that are completely
subscribed to everything I say. And they’re not lifting weights anymore.
David Meltzer: Wow.
Dr. John Jaquish: So, well, it’s not that everybody was previously wrong. And so
there’s just now a better understanding, right. Like when automobiles first came
out, it was like, “Well, my horse never breaks down. So this is stupid.” People
said that. There was books written about it but obviously cars got more reliable
and it turns out your horse does break down. It dies. Or it gets dehydrated or
has a muscle cramp or something. And so the idea that there might be a better
way is frequently pushed away by people who have a tendency of being dogmatic or
being married to different ideas or ways of doing things. But there is
frequently a better way. And I discovered a one and I discovered one that’s
super convenient.
Dr. John Jaquish: And I describe it in the book,
Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time
. And since then, we were just
discussing before switching the show on, the professional athletes have really
grabbed a hold of this. So the Miami Heat, there’s an endorsement on the back of
the book by the Miami Heat. That’s the first endorsement right there. The
strength coaches and then a bunch of other very influential people signed on.
The whole Miami Heat team, some of the Detroit Pistons. There’s even some
players I can’t mention because I don’t pay anybody. But if you search
X3 Bar
and maybe The Lakers, there might be one or two really good
guys on the Lakers that use it also. There may be one of the most famous
quarterbacks of all time that uses it.
David Meltzer: You know what’s amazing too, is you take a step further and say
that So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want. So what
is the body you want?
Dr. John Jaquish: Well, that’s a great question because a lot of the intentions,
I actually put a quote from Milton Friedman in the book and he’s not a physical
medicine guy. He’s not a doctor. He’s an economist but what Milton Friedman
frequently said, which I admire, is to judge programs by their results, not
their intentions. And the reason that we ought to pay attention to that is
because we don’t do that. People don’t do that. It’s about intentions, not
results. And I mean, look at, I can say almost everything in politics would fall
into violating what Milton Friedman said. When it comes to the body most people
want, they want to be as strong as possible and they want to be as lean as
possible. And this is men and women and I hear all the time, “Oh, I want a
customized program.”
Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, really? Do you want to get fatter? I don’t think so. So
no. You can get the same program as everybody else. That’s just… Doesn’t make
any sense. No one has differing goals. Now, every once in a while, somebody will
say, “I want to make my legs… Like a female will say, “I want to make my legs
stronger but I don’t really want to work on my arms at all.” Okay. You can skip
the arm movements, right. So there is ways to tailor it, I suppose, but the body
they want or my vision of that is everybody wants to be stronger, which also
means more muscular and leaner. And those are also the two greatest drivers of
long life. So high levels of strength and low levels of body fat are the two
largest indicators if someone’s going to live a long time.
David Meltzer: You know, it’s amazing, you are a doctor and yet you subscribe to
a very similar philosophy of mine of studying and you study what you want to
study, not what people prescribe for us to study to which I consider to be
training. My oldest brother was a physician. And when I went to college, he
said, “David makes sure that you get educated. That you study and learn. Don’t
be trained.” He said, “I am a doctor. And I feel as if I’m well-trained, but not
well-educated. And I wish I would’ve studied,” which I came up later on in life
with this philosophy of being more interested than interesting and which led to
my mathematical equation of luck, which you seem to utilize all the time which
is what you pay attention to and give intention to equals the coincidences that
you want in your life. And X3 Bar
itself and your philosophy that
led to building this different strategy was because you were studying and paying
attention to and giving intention to something different than anyone else had
ever thought of.
Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.
David Meltzer: And do you use that now in this ideation of expanding upon what
you’ve done? What are the things you’re studying now?
Dr. John Jaquish: Different kind of offshoots of the same thing. What can I add
to the advice I’m giving? What’s the next edition of the book going to look
like? There’s some different products that I’ve conceptualized, and some I
prototyped, that I’ll get out there but it’s not like we’re going to completely
overhaul X3 Bar
. It’s pretty perfect. And it doesn’t need to be like
an iPhone where there’s a new one that comes out every year that’s way better.
No, it’s not like that.
Dr. John Jaquish: I see it as the ultimate statement of strength and fitness.
Not because we couldn’t make it shiny or next year or something like that but it
also is in a nice contained package. It works really well and it fits in a
drawer when you’re done with it. There’s a lot of things it addresses that are
just beyond the ultimate stimulus for muscle growth that it hits. And that’s why
it’s so valuable to so many people.
David Meltzer: And I think one of the greatest values, I’m a time person, I’m
doing a training on time management, is the effect in 10 minutes that you can
have on your body and your fat in just 10 minutes. Is that through consistent
behavior? It seems almost unbelievable when you’re talking to a doctor and I
obviously ran the most notable sports agency. I’ve dealt with some pretty
significant athletes and celebrities over the years. And when we’re talking
about taking shortcuts, a lot of the traditional leaders in this space would
tell you with fitness that you take shortcuts, that just means you’re going to
have to get out of line and go all the way back around to the front of line and
start over. But yet you’ve proven with some of the biggest names in sports and
doctors that it just can be done with 10 minutes a day. What makes that
difference?
Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a deeper level of exhaustion. So I tell people it’s
quick. I never tell people it’s easy.
David Meltzer: I love that.
Dr. John Jaquish: I also noticed that people are not afraid of [inaudible
00:08:52] they’re afraid of along.
David Meltzer: I love that.
Dr. John Jaquish: And I see that every day. People just say, “God, an hour a
day, I just don’t have that time. And I don’t even want to make that time.”
Because the next statement is, “Well, you got to make the time.” But I don’t
want to because if I had a free hour, I wouldn’t spend it working out. I would
spend it working or spending time with my family or something like that. So I
didn’t start with the intention of making something convenient. It was going to
make something that was going to be the absolute best stimulus for the body.
Dr. John Jaquish: It just so happened that it doesn’t take very long to get
through. So, that’s really where the time came from. It was just that’s the way
the body works, you stimulate it to grow and then you let it grow. You don’t
keep messing with it. And then the reason people do multiple sets when they lift
weights is because the stimulus is terrible. Like how many sets does your skin
need in the sunlight before you get a suntan? Right. It’s a silly question. What
do you mean sets? You just go out on the 4th of July and you’re outside for 10
minutes. You come back in your skin’s a little pink, then you get a tan. Well,
why didn’t you have to go out and then come in and let your skin rest and then
go out again and then come in and let your skin rest.
Dr. John Jaquish: Why didn’t you have to do that five or six times? Because
that’s the way we lift weights. They’re both adaptive responses, same kind of
thing. So why are we behaving one way with one thing and another way with
another thing. And then let’s also just look at the fitness industry in general.
It’s probably the most failed human endeavor. How many people work out? Males
over 18, 23 million. Who’s in shape? You just walk down the street in the
average American city or walk in the average gym, the people in the average gym
don’t look any different than the people in the average pizza place. They’re not
in shape. It didn’t work.
David Meltzer: How does nutrition play into the system? Because some people
say…
Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, I mean, you can’t be eating pizza and gaining… You’re
not turning pizza into muscle. People don’t love that piece of advice but it’s
true.
David Meltzer: Okay. You seem very truthful. One of the other issues is fear you
were talking about earlier and you and I both are friends, I think you actually
have partnered with Tony Robbins, who’s taught me so much about the practice of
ending fear, about clearing the interference or the ego-based consciousness.
That even to me, the medic consciousness that exists within my own unconscious
competency, as he would say, you have learned a lot about making decisions based
on fear. Has that been applied to how this X3 system
works with
people? So they’re overcoming or practicing ending that fear that somehow they
can’t be consistent. All the different variables that are in the conscious
subconscious and unconscious mind that tell us it’s much easier to sit on the
couch and have a happy meal than it is to spend 10 minutes with true impact on
my body.
Dr. John Jaquish: Right. I find that the fear and the laziness are not really
there or they’re there but in a very, very cursory way. Once you show people
they can actually get results because I think most people are really lazy about
fitness because of what I just said, where are the results? So many people are
going to a gym and getting involved in fitness programming and they don’t look
any different a year later because there’s more than just showing up and working
out. There’s the nutrition part but most workouts are lousy. And that’s why I
talk about cardio not giving us what we want. You want to be a marathon runner,
you got to run marathons but that doesn’t mean by running marathons you’re going
to be lean and beautiful and look like a model. You’re not.
David Meltzer: It doesn’t mean you’re going to live longer. You know, I think…
Dr. John Jaquish: [inaudible 00:13:13] Right. So people that do steady state
cardio for extended periods of time, they’ll chronically increase cortisol and
cortisols job is getting rid of muscle and preserving as much body fat as
possible. So it keeps you fatter longer. It gives you exactly the opposite of
what you think you’re getting. And the book is full of examples like that. The
fitness industry completely misreading science. Somebody sat on a podcast
yesterday, somebody said, “Fitness industry is misled.” And I’m like by saying
misled you’re implying there’s a leader. They’re just screaming monkeys,
terrible. There’s no leadership there.
David Meltzer: It’s amazing because you remind me of Dr. Connolly who created
MET-Rx, the original MET-Rx and working and studying.
Dr. John Jaquish: That guy’s cool.
David Meltzer: Yeah. Bioactive dairy proteins. And when he first explained to me
just the basics of American mythology of nutrition, we don’t even understand
what the measurement of energy means and that people will talk about calories
and not understand that you could have the right calories or you could have very
few calories in the wrong calories and gain fat, not have lean muscle mass. And
that these bioactive dairy proteins are extremely impactful as well. If somebody
is sitting here listening to us today and there’s billions of dollars spent in
this space and they’ve been through the litany of the QVCs and the online
ordering and all the hype that exists with different mechanisms to be in shape.
And they’re at a point where they say, “You know what? It’s just a matter of
discipline. All these programs work. If I stick to it every single day, whether
it’s Suzanne Somers' gig or Jay Steinfeld’s gig or Dr. John’s stuff, if I do it
every day, I’m going to get into shape and be healthy. What would you say to
that?
Dr. John Jaquish: I’d say no, not all programs are created equal. Yeah. There’s
programs you can do for years and you won’t change anything.
David Meltzer: And last question, what about the programs that are the 90 day
programs, right? Yours is a program for life. It’s something that you do 10
minutes a day for life, which is the most attractive thing. When I started
learning about fitness for me and someone said, “Dave, you got to pick
something. Minimum an hour a day,” They said to spend on my health, including
meditation and nutrition planning but you need to pick stuff that you’re going
to do the rest of your life. It can’t be this 90 day program because it’s just
going to come back… Why does the 90 day program and the 30 day program
sometimes set you back farther after 60 or 90 more days?
Dr. John Jaquish: Well, that’s the exact reason I don’t have that. Well I kind
of do, I have a 12 week program but very often the expectations are
unreasonable. Like someone’s going to work out at home for an hour a day, like,
“No, I’m not.” They might do that once or twice. They might do that over the
course of a few weeks. They really decide to give up their social life and go
for it. But then they see the almost nothing results they have. So then they’re
like, “Oh, forgot this.”
David Meltzer: I can’t even get people to say thank you twice a day for 30
straight days. That’s how far in our own way it is. In fact real, real quick, so
I’d love to get a mindset question to you. Why do we get so far in our own way
that we can’t be consistent about things? What do you think it is about the
mindset that doesn’t allow us to be consistent?
Dr. John Jaquish: A lot of fear-based decision-making. A lot of procrastination.
There’s this whole movement of pictures and memes online where you’re looking
for fitness motivation. And I hate these things because it’s always some picture
or group of pictures of total outliers in fitness. A guy who is a bodybuilder,
his name’s Jeremy Buendia, probably the genetics to have one of the more
aesthetically pleasing physiques than ever. If somebody had carved a statue and
made it look like that guy, people would be like, “Throw that statue away.
Nobody looks that good.” So I don’t think there’s anything motivating
necessarily about that but what you should do is want to be a better you, which
is you can see that in increments and you can congratulate yourself for that
over increments.
Dr. John Jaquish: And when all you have to say to yourself is, “All right, I’m
going to stick to my principles today. So today, I’m just not going to be a
loser. I’m going to stick to my diet. I’m going to do my workout routine. And
maybe finish reading the book that I was reading,” save yourself a couple of
those real simple, going through the motions stuff. Because when you go through
the motions, things start to become automatic. And when they’re automatic, you
don’t think about them. You just do them then their habits.
Dr. John Jaquish: And that’s what you need, that discipline. So somebody every
day can go and get something done that they need to, driving them towards their
goals but they only have to make one decision, just don’t be a loser today. The
next day, they got to make that same decision. Say, “When I go to bed tonight,
do I want to be a loser or do I want to have stuck to my principles?” That’s
another huge thing I teach.
David Meltzer: Well, I love the questions that you raise. The book is called,
the new book here in August,
Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio
, and There’s a Better
Way to Have the Body You Want. Not everybody is naturally beautiful like Adrian
Peterson, who’s a good friend of mine who when I’m with him, he takes his shirt
off, he’s eating, Popeye’s Fried Chicken with a big dip in his mouth. And I’m
like, “How the heck do you have that body and breaking every rule of nutrition?
It has to be genetic.” Anyway, thank you so much for dispelling the myths and
allowing people to empower themselves. Please if you’re going to have a takeaway
from John, it has to be, don’t be a loser today. And definitely read
Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time
. I love that, man. You can find it
anywhere. This is Dave Meltzer with the incredible John Jaquish here on
Entrepreneurs: The playbook.
David Meltzer: I Hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of The Playbook as much as
me. On a personal note, I just wanted to thank everyone for making The Playbook
such a success. Don’t forget to continue it by sharing, subscribing and
listening to your favorite episodes. This is Dave Meltzer with The Playbook.