Is Weightlifting a Waste of Time? A Deep Dive on Variable Resistance Training and Reframing Your Strength Workout

Dr. John Jaquish: If our capacity to create force is that great in its difference, then lifting weight is terrible.

Renee: Hey there. Welcome to the Biohacker Babes Podcast. We are your host. I’m Renee, a Certified Nutritional Consultant with a Master’s Degree in Nutrition.

Lauren:: What’s up? I’m Lauren, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, and Check Movement Specialist. We’re sisters, and we’re joining forces to empower you to become your biohacker and upgrade your life.

Renee: Our mission is to provide actionable steps so you can optimize your health, strengthen your intuition and support your body’s natural well healing abilities because life is too short to not feel your best every single day.

Lauren:: Thank you for joining us. Welcome to the show.

Renee: Welcome. Welcome to the Biohacker Babes Podcast. This is episode 119 of the Biohacker Babes. I’m Renee tuning in from Vegas, with my sister

Lauren: as well.

Lauren:: Hi, everyone tuning in from New York today.

Renee: Hello, New York. I love your beautiful background today. It’s a little change of scenery.

Lauren:: Thank you. Courtesy of my friend, our friend Mary. I have lots of greenery behind me. Oxygen is pumping today in this apartment.

Renee: You need that in New York. Thanks, Mary.

Lauren:: Oh, yes. Need the plants to counteract all the crap that’s in the air.

Renee: Always. Yeah. All right. We have a guest coming to the show today. We have Dr. John Jaquish. I don’t want to give too much away, but we’re going to talk a little bit about the X3 Bar in OsteoStrong. We’ll say that. So the X3 Bar, you have maybe seen me posting pictures on Instagram, of this fancy little piece of equipment that I have been using at home to get stronger.

Renee: Today we’re going to talk about the science behind why this piece of equipment works. But we’re going to dive into his book, Why Weightlifting is a Waste of Time, which is such a great type. I just want to say be open-minded, please. Everything we’ve been told for most of our lives about lifting weights and going to the gym and doing cardio, it’s not all correct. So be open-minded. I highly recommend the book. I read it in a couple of days. It was an easy read, packed with science, amazing research, and amazing testimonials. I recommend it. But he’s going to talk a little bit more about that in today’s episode. Especially for our female listeners, this is a great way for us to get stronger. Do not be afraid of lifting heavy and getting bulky. We need muscle. This is so important for overall health and longevity. I think this is such a great biohack.

Lauren:: Absolutely. I mean, we’ve been saying for so long that you don’t need so much cardio. He takes it a step further to say, “Maybe you don’t need any cardio at all.” Because with resistance training, he does make a clearer distinction between resistance and weight training. So if you reacted to the book about weight training, it’s not strength training at large. He’s just talking about weights, but he goes into how strength training gives us the benefits to our cardiovascular system that we need. So if you’re still doing a ton of chronic cardio, if you listen to us, you know that’s probably going to be harming your hormones, your adrenals, and your nervous system. If you just want overall health, longevity, functional strength, and to look good, this could be the solution, the biohack for you. He’s made it simple, taking away the guesswork. It’s a super safe, cool piece of tech. I have not read the book yet, honest confession. But I’m going to read it.

Renee: Because yours is in the mail, you have a copy coming.

Lauren:: It’s in the mail. It’s coming to me. But I’m excited because he is a scientist at his core. I appreciate how he just shares research. This is not an opinion. It is based on science. It is based on facts. But also he is I think a walking advertisement for how well this stuff works. So if you’re not watching the videocast, definitely look him up after this.

Renee: Oh yeah. His photos and these are in the book and I’m sure you can find him online, from day one and then end of year one and year two. I mean, you’ll be blown away by his photos. So it’s doing something.

Lauren:: Yeah.

Renee: With the cardio piece, when I do the X3 workout, I’m breathing hard.

Lauren:: Yeah. I’ve experienced that.

Renee: Yeah. So it’s doing something. For anyone tight on time, it’s a great biohack for that. It’s 10 minutes a day. I do it four days a week. Come on, everyone can do that.

Lauren:: Huge fan of minimum effective dose, if we can get it done. Then if you get it done, you can still do the things that you love, but pay attention to this podcast. I hope he hits this home that if you are doing chronic cardio, chronic weightlifting, maybe actually hurtinghurtverall health and longevity. So really, fun stuff. Renee, I was curious, did you do before and after photos after starting X3?

Renee: Not really.

Lauren:: You could scroll through your phone and find?

Renee: Yes. I can say our unofficial after photo photos were when we went to Cabo for our wedding anniversary.

Lauren:: I remember. You look amazing.

Renee: On the beach. Those were my unofficial after photos. Yeah.

Lauren:: Maybe you could find a photo of X3 Bar early on and do a side-by-side because I think you looked amazing. Awesome.

Renee: Thank you.

Lauren:: Yeah.

Renee: Thanks,

Lauren:: Cool.

Renee: Awesome.

Lauren:: You want to read his bio? Yes.

Renee: So Dr. John Jaquish, Ph.D. has spent years researching and developing improved approaches to health. He is the inventor of the most effective bone density building medical technology, which is now partnered with Tony Robbins and OsteoStrong for rapid clinic deployment. Inventor of X3, a technology that has proven to develop muscle much faster than conventional weightlifting, all with the lowest risk of joint injury.

Renee: Dr. Jaquish’s methods are used in training the world’s most elite athletes and associations such as the entire Miami Heat Organization, various NFL and NBA players, as well as Olympians. Dr. Jaquish’s book explaining his non-conventional approach to human physiology is a Wall Street Journal Bestseller. He’s awesome. We had such a great time chatting with him today. We can’t wait for you to tune in.

Renee: All right. Welcome, Dr. Jaquish wishes to the Biohacker Babes Podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Dr. John Jaquish: Renee,

Lauren: thanks Thanksgiving me.

Renee: We are so thrilled to have you on the show. Big fan of the X3 Bar and OsteoStrong. Your book was awesome. So I can’t wait to share more of that with our listeners today. But I have to say as biohackers, one of the things that we love is looking at scientific research and saying, “How can we do something better or more optimally, more efficiently?” That is exactly what you have done with both of those. So we want to dive into more of the science behind those, bust some fitness myths, which you have done. But before we get into some of those myths, we would love to just hear, how did you come across this research? Why do you say weightlifting is a waste of time? Everyone wants to know that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. So for the listeners and anybody watching, you can see the cover, this is the book. Weightlifting is a Waste of Time, that is the name of the book. So I didn’t just randomly say weightlifting is a waste of time. I made it the title of my book. Now-

Lauren:: It’s awesome. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Now, notice I didn’t say resistance training is a waste of time. Because there are many ways to approach resistance training. I just believe that … Well, I don’t believe. I have the evidence to back up the statement. When we lift weights, we have very different capacities from the weaker range, like in a bench press when the bar’s on your chest versus when it’s away from you, when your arms are extended. There’s about a sevenfold difference in your capacity to create force. So you’re much more powerful in the range of motion. You would naturally absorb high-impact force, which just makes sense for self-protection reasons.

Dr. John Jaquish: But also when you look at the way we position the body when we handle weights in the weakest range of motion, it makes absolutely no sense. No animal in nature tries to load the body in the weakest range of motion for any reason whatsoever. We’re the only ones who do that. Coincidentally, well, let me take a step back. So I got my start in life sciences by developing a series of medical devices to treat osteoporosis. I did so for my mother. So my mother was diagnosed with osteoporosis. I decided I was going to build a series of therapy devices that would address this and give her the benefit of high impact without the risks of high impact. So I set off to do that. I did that and it reversed her osteoporosis. She’s in her 80s now. She has the bones of a 30-year-old, and so do millions of others who now use OsteoStrong.

Renee: Yeah. Can you share real quickly the research about the gymnast and the impact, what you found with that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. So I just took a different approach. I invented the devices before finishing my Ph.D. My Ph.D. advisor told me, “If you had finished your Ph.D. first, you would’ve talked yourself out of this.”

Renee: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s no way you would. It’s because it’s so crazy, unconventional. Unfortunately, even in Ph.D., when you get your doctorate in something, you’re supposed to do original research. But so much about the scientific method and the general approach and doing a literature review to be able to back up what you’re saying is more focused on what you can’t do as opposed to what you can do.

Dr. John Jaquish: In standard education, we do as much as we possibly can to stop creativity. That’s unfortunate because creativity is what solves problems. Doing things the same way everybody else did solves nothing. So yeah. Yeah. It’s just kind of a funny thing, and I don’t have a better idea as to how education should work. However, I don’t think cycling creativities is the right way to go. But anyway, so I did this for my mother, and it worked. Then it’s now in nine different countries, 175 locations. Yeah. They’re all independent. They’re clinics. They’re franchise clinics that treat bone loss.

Lauren:: That’s incredible.

Renee: Yeah, that’s amazing.

Dr. John Jaquish: But in the process of doing that research, it became very apparent to me that weightlifting is a terrible stimulus when you’re trying to grow muscle because you’re … I’m going to quote Peter Tia here because he made a similar observation. He didn’t take it to what happened next. But he had said in the past, that my problem with weightlifting is you overload joints and underload muscle. He’s a brilliant guy, listen to his podcast in the drive.

Lauren:: Yeah. He’s great.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Brilliant guy. Yeah, I heard that years ago. I’m like, “This guy’s on the same path that I’m on,” or at least his position, he thinks weightlifting is not that great either. So there’s a better way. What I first looked at was my observational data, which showed a sevenfold greater ability to create force in stronger versus weaker ranches. So for example, if I put my arms out, and I’ve got my arms out in front of me, back in the hand in line with the clavicle, 120-degree angle from the upper to the lower arm, I can either absorb or create the greatest amount of force of my upper body. If I lower the resistance down to right against my chest, I have hardly any ability to contract against that. That’s maybe half my body weight or my body weight or something like that.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s far diminished. It’s one-seventh what it is in the impact ready range. So I thought if our capacity to create force is that great in its difference, then lifting weight is terrible because we’re doing exactly what Peter Tia said. We’re overloading the joint, getting chronic joint damage, talk to any long-time weightlifter. It hurts them to get out of chairs. Most of them can’t even reach their arm over their head because they just have such chronically damaged joints. This is health? No. It’s not healthy. It’s stupid. So I just thought, all right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Then I also did a literature review on variable resistance. Well, there are some decent answers in variable resistance. The problem is nobody had got variants right at all. They’d have at the bottom of the chest breast, they’d have X amount of weight. Then at the top, they’d have 1.2x. Whereas it’s like, if you’re going to do repetitions, you probably need x versus 5x. So we needed a much greater ratio. Then there’s research that shows the greater the ratio, the greater the muscular development.

Dr. John Jaquish: So there was a path of research that supported what my idea was. So I realized very quickly, that we’ve always had bands training. But the problem is if you’re going to do anything relevant to strengths because there’s no getting away from heavy. If anybody’s listening, what I work with is there’s a strategy to use the heaviest loads in a very safe way because I think a lot of women go, “Oh, I don’t want to lift heavy. I don’t want to get hurt.” No. The chances of injury are almost zero. But you need a better strategy to employ the quote “heavy”. And heavy as relative for the person. So that you’re stimulating something, the body can change.

Dr. John Jaquish: So that’s what I set out to do. But I knew bands by themselves were worthless because you get a band that’s strong enough, and you throw it around your back to do a pushup, you could break both wrists. Our band, when I do a chest press, I push 550 pounds when I’m at extension when I’m out here. Well, 550 pounds wrapped around your wrist, if you got thrown around your back and you’re doing a pushup, outward rotation is happening to the wrist, you can break a wrist. I take seven pounds of a lateral force to break an ankle. Well, when I deadlift with the X3, I’m pulling 615 pounds for maybe 20 or 30 repetitions. It would break both ankles.

Lauren:: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So bands do nothing and there’s no getting away from having them. So considering these things, I thought, “Okay, I have to invent another device.” Because what the bone density devices do is build bone density. They’re not variable resistance. The movement for the bone density devices is a millimeter. You don’t move much at all. So we needed something different.

Lauren:: You’re talking about with OsteoStrong, we’re just working on isometrics. But with the band’s resistance, we’re getting all parts of the exercise. Is that what you mean?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. You need a full range. The idea that you don’t need a full range, that there’s plenty of literature on that. There’s some conflicting literature, but the overwhelming majority says the full range is required mostly for sarcoplasmic growth purposes. So there are two there aren’t types of growth. There’s myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic. Myofibrillar is more like the density of tissues. Sarcoplasmic is more the contractile fuels that are retained within the cell.

Dr. John Jaquish: The majority of muscle mass and mass is also relative. So women shouldn’t be afraid of that. A properly shaped female body is a muscular one, but it’s very feminine looking as well. So these muscles are … Most of the effect you see is sarcoplasmic. Myofibrillar, the people with my almost exclusive myofibrillar growth are the gymnasts because they have … They’re not sifting through a range of motion. They’re absorbing incredible forces in very abrupt, short periods. So that creates myofibrillar growth for them. So the tissue density is incredible, but there’s not much volumization of that tissue.

Lauren:: Right. Their joints are still really taking a hit. So you’ve already solved quite a few problems. So we’re working through a safer range of motion. We’re taking a lot of the guesswork out because a lot of we’ll just say women because that’s a majority of our podcast listenership, walks into a gym. They’re like, “I don’t know which weight to pick up. I don’t know what to do with it.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Lauren:: Sometimes it hurts your hands depending on what kind of weight it is, the shape of it. You’ve taken out all of these variables into a very, very safe range of motion. I don’t want to jump too quickly to the bar because I will talk plenty about it, but you’ve made essentially the variables slim to none, and almost anyone can get a great workout out of it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Lauren:: That’s amazing.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Lauren:: I know that you’re not a cardio guy. Can you explain how strength training is just as helpful to our bones and our muscles and functional strength? Maybe for health and longevity, is that the only thing that we need?

Dr. John Jaquish: Strength training is the only thing you need. Not necessarily for bone density, I would not have developed OsteoStrong if strength training were good enough for bone density. It’s not. The minimum load that is required through the hip joint to trigger bone density growth is 4.2 multiples of body weight. So people don’t lift that. Even the strongest people in the world generally do not lift that. So it’s very difficult to affect bone with weights, even with X3, which you train with even much higher weight.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s not high enough. With OsteoStrong, I’m loading my lower extremities with 4,000 pounds, and my upper extremities with about 2,000 pounds. My core with six or 700, and my spine with about 1500 pounds. So tremendous forces are designed to compress and distort the shape of a bone. So when the bone bounces back into its normal position, it’s pulling in minerals and re-calcifying, rebuilding its bone matrix to be more complex. The more complex, the more of those little walls inside of the bone, which increases the density of the bone make and the bone more powerful. I now have a bone density that’s plus 2.3. So 2.3 standard deviations above normal. That’s superhuman level.

Lauren:: Cool. That’s amazing.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. There’s not much on record outside of if you’re just looking at a fracture. Because a fracture can go very high, it’s not a fair contest because the fractures have a different wall structure in the fracture that doesn’t reconcile with the rest of the bone. So generally, a healed fracture is the strongest place in your body other than your skull. Yeah.

Lauren:: So over what period can you accomplish that type of change in your bone density? Probably not for you because you’ve been playing with it and researching it for so long. But if someone were new to this type of training, how quickly given the periodization and the programming that you’ve developed, how quickly could you potentially see a change?

Dr. John Jaquish: You see a significant difference in two years, and it also begins to taper off. People grow the most bone in the first two years. So what I tell people is unlike a workout program, if you’re working on your bone density, you can build your bone density very high in that period, in those two years. Then you may never need to worry about it again. Once you build bone, it stays with you for about 30 years. Yeah. It’s not like a muscle. Muscle goes away. Yeah. Bone, not so much. It’s much longer metabolically.

Renee: Now circling back to the cardio thing. So I’m going to say don’t do cardio, but that doesn’t mean you’re saying don’t support your cardiovascular system?

Dr. John Jaquish: No. Strength training. Yeah. Strength training does just as much for the heart as joints training does. But there’s a myth. The myth is that strength athletes have poor cardiovascular health, and I’ll tell you why. As a guy, I used to travel through Russia, and we’d always change planes in Munich. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Munich airport, but it’s tairport’srts stairs. You got to run up and down the stair,s four times just to switch flights because you got to go through immigration downstairs, and you got to go back up.

Lauren:: I love that. I get some of my highest step counts when I’m traveling through airports.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to go back downstairs, go to baggage claim, come back upstairs, check your bags again. Because I’m never flying with the same air group. Russia just … I normally fly United, and they’re not that great in Russia. So yeah. So I’m running all over the place. Up and down the stairs, up and down the stairs. Usually, I’m wearing a suit and tie because we go right into a meeting when we get there. Because I typically try to fly out of London, and I had an office in London for a couple of years. So I’d be flying in. Then this guy weighs a hundred pounds less than me, but he’s a little chubbier. He’s a cardio guy. So we’re running up and down these stairs, and I’m covered in the sweat. He is like, “Wow. Your cardiovascular health is terrible.” He said, “You should be more like me. You should do more cardio.” I’m like, “No, it’s not terrible. My legs are four times bigger than yours are.” So when they carry a-

Renee: Yeah. Carrying a little bit more mass.

Dr. John Jaquish: So when they contract, they’re drawing more blood. My heart has to work harder to just do a few contractions. That has nothing to do with my cardiovascular health. This guy has very little muscle mass in his leg. So I mean, like a typical runner, he has quite a bit of fat because they’re skinny fat.

Lauren:: Skinny fat. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. What happens to runners is they upregulate cortisol. Cortisol does two things. It gets rid of muscle. So he’s lost a lot of muscle, and it preserves body fat. So you stay as fat as possible for as long as possible. That’s what cardio does. It’s exactly the opposite of what people think. People think they get on a treadmill, they think they’re losing weight. But they’re not.

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean, they might be losing scale weight, but they’re losing muscle because of that chronically elevated cortisol. Now, there’s no such thing as a bad hormone. Your body does not make bad hormones to hurt your feelings or make you fat or whatever. But cortisol does a thing, and it’s an important thing. But you only really want it elevated for a very short period. Every day you get out of bed, your cortisol goes up and then goes down. It doesn’t mean getting out of bed is bad for you.

Renee: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right?

Renee: We do need that in the morning.

Lauren:: Yeah. Renee and I both experienced this firsthand. Mine was directly related to overdoing cortisol. I’m a dancer. I’ve been dancing my whole life, and I taught a dance cardio class. You see the short-term benefits. You’re like, “Oh. Burning a lot of calories. Whittle down for a month, you feel good.” Then that very, very quickly comes back, and you realize the cortisol is high. We experienced what was then called adrenal fatigue, like elevated cortisol, dropped to the basement, and had the cortisol belly. Soon enough, the output is not making any changes any longer because you realize it’s damaging the entire system, mainly your nervous system and hormones.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. I mean, as women, it can mess with menstruation. You start having your periods, and then you can have stress fractures. You can start losing bone density, and chronic cortisol.

Lauren:: That’s what I had,

Dr. John Jaquish: You had that?

Lauren:: I ended up with two stress fractures in my SI joint.

Dr. John Jaquish: Ow.

Lauren:: Yeah. It was bad.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Lauren:: Well, at the time, I was dancing a lot, which I mean was cardio, right. Dancing four or five hours a day and not eating enough. My bones were probably just so weak.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Renee: Now she has the X3 bar.

Lauren:: Yeah. That was 20 years ago.

Dr. John Jaquish: Nice. Good.

Lauren:: Yeah. But so yeah. So the cortisol, my understanding is if you’re doing more chronic cardio, than endurance, you almost need that ability to store more fat. Right? To be able to fuel your body long-term?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. The idea is your body’s deciding you’re an economy car. It wants to make your gas tank bigger, and your engine smaller. But nobody wants to be the economy car. Nobody wants to be extra fat and extra weak because that’s what cardio does for you. You just got to keep that in mind. Now, if you want to be a great runner, just know you’re going to be weak, and you’re going to carry around extra body fat. But if you want to be a great runner, the terrible physique is part of the package.

Renee: Yeah. Well, we always say to our listeners, if you want to run a marathon because it’s for your favorite charity and you’re raising money or it’s fun for you, go for it. But don’t do it because you think it’s quote-unquote “healthy” or going to make you live longer.

Lauren:: Yeah. Not going to help longevity.

Dr. John Jaquish: No. If you want to support your charity, write a check.

Lauren:: Don’t ruin your body over it. Yeah.

Renee: Yeah. That’s where I am.

Lauren:: I mean, so what do we do with sport-specific training? So obviously we’re talking about health and longevity here. It’s almost getting the minimum effective dose to be healthy and have enough functional strength. But for athletes that have chosen their life’s work or like I’m a dancer or I have to dance and essentially do cardio for two and a half hours in one sitting, where do you see the strength training fitting in there? What can we do to kind of balance out? Or is it just do your life’s work, be done, recover as soon as possible?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Hey, you’re in the military. You’re not going to tell your commanding officer, “Hey, can we get some Hummers or Jeeps down here? Because I’m not going to do any cardio.”

Lauren:: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Renee: Yeah. Good luck with that.

Lauren:: My torso is a little elevated today. Can we just …

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren:: Put our feet up.

Dr. John Jaquish: Ideas are not thought of when you’re in the military. You do what you’re told.

Lauren:: And most professions. You’re going to upset a lot of people.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I mean, I would … Yeah. Sometimes you just got to do what you got to do. Now, fortunately, other than special operations people, they have to run a lot. They do a lot of cardiovascular exercises. But they need to be able to go those distances without a boat or a car or something like that because they’re usually sneaking into places, then shooting people, then sneaking out.

Lauren:: Zip it.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s the job. So you’re not going to preserve a lot of muscularity. That’s funny. Of the Navy seals, I’m friends with, as soon as they get out, they cut the cardio immediately and focus on strength training. They have a discipline so they typically … Of course they k, now me so that they get an X3.

Lauren:: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So they’re all in great shape now.

Lauren:: Now, so what about someone like a dancer, a performer like myself, I’m not performing now. But if you do need what we call that endurance to get through a show, do you think that something like resistance training can prepare you for that? Or do we still need that support training?

Dr. John Jaquish: It can. Right? The more power you have, the less your heart rate is elevated acoconsistentlye easier a power movement is, how do I want to say this, the less sustained a heart rate’s going to be. You want a lot of variation in your heart rate, and that keeps cortisol from spiking. So high intensity interval training does not do this to cortisol. High-intensity interval training is much more like strength training. So if you want to be closer–

Lauren:: If done correctly yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Then kind of catch your breath, and be explosive, and catch your breath, that’s the way I would do it. I played rugby as an undergrad. At the sprint, I was very fast. Sprint during a play. Then we’d reposition, I’d kind of walk back in position. My coaches would be like, “How about showing a little hustle on the field?” I’m like, “I’m trying to get my heart rate down.” If I walk instead of running back into position, I’ll be ready to sprint again. Or maybe you don’t give a shit. Of course, they know. They’ll think, “Oh yeah, I want to sprint again.”

Lauren:: Right, right.

Dr. John Jaquish: I was getting the benefit of the variability of heart rate. So I never had the cortisol problem.

Lauren:: Yeah. Luckily recovery is coming a little more trendy. But still, you go to a group fitness class. If you are recovering between sets, yeah, you’re going to get that judgment. It’s really unfortunate. But hopefully, we’ll keep changing that as a matter of-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. Well, the fitness industry-

Lauren:: Is backward

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, it’s terrible. Just stupid advice. I mean, this cortisol research has been out for 40 years. It’s not like this came out last week.

Lauren:: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So for 40 years, they’ve been ignoring the obvious. But yeah, it’s one of those situations where the fitness industry, it’s not led by scientists at all. It’s led by business. Usually t, hat business is selling gym memberships.

Lauren:: Yeah. That makes sense.

Dr. John Jaquish: So selling of gym memberships, it’s kind of they’re just selling the dream of being in shape. Then once you sign up, they don’t care if you ever come.

Lauren:: Yeah. They don’t care. they want you there more, more and more. Pay more money. But no personal attention.

Renee: No. They don’t want you there.

Dr. John Jaquish: They only want it there if you’re buying personal training.

Lauren:: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: In fact, they’d prefer you not to show up because if everybody showed up with a membership, there would be a collapse.

Lauren:: Wouldn’t be enough machines.

Renee: Yeah.

Lauren:: Yeah. I heard that Planet Fitness, I think they said 85% of the members don’t even go. I mean, they have a great business going on because it’s so cheap.

Renee: Yeah. $14 a month. Why cancel?

Dr. John Jaquish: You pay $9 a month.

Lauren:: Oh man. They got you.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. It’s designed for people who care so little that they’re probably never going to go. That’s the design. Now if somebody signs up there and decides to go, okay, well, they go. That’s why there’s a building that they can go to. I also point it out frequently. I mean, not everybody’s a lazy ass. About 50% of men in America do strength training. Either at home or a gym, at least st twice a week. The leanest one percent of males in the United States is 10.6% body fat.

Dr. John Jaquish: So percent body fat is a really important metric because it considers muscularity and obviously how lean you are. The more muscular you are, the leaner. Yeah. Right? You add muscle, you don’t add body fat, and you’re leaner. The difference between 9% or 8.5% versus 10.6% is night and day. That’s where you can see somebody get fit. So if the leanest 1% are still not in shape, why are we defending this industry? Because I get attacked. I’m the most hated guy in the fitness industry.

Lauren:: Congratulations.

Dr. John Jaquish: Hey.

Lauren:: It’s an honor.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Renee: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. They’ll say, “Weightlifting is not a waste of time. It’s done great for me.” Then you look at the person, and they have baby arms and a double chin. I can’t say that. I’m not going to insult somebody. Never mind the fact that they’re insulting me, but it’s okay. I own the business. I get it. I mean, I just look at them. It’s just like, “Do you believe this bullshit you’re telling people?” You’re in terrible shape. You’re probably a diabetic. Do not defend what you’ve been doing. I promise you it’s not working. I can almost guess with extreme accuracy what their hemoglobin A1C score is. Yeah. They’re fat and sick. Then they’re saying, “Oh no, weightlifting is perfect. It does everything I need.” Okay.

Renee: Yeah. Look in the mirror and then tell me again. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Lauren:: So another question about hormones. What about testosterone and growth hormone? Especially for women, I think women are afraid of that. They don’t want to get bulky. So why do we need those? How does the presence training help increase those?

Dr. John Jaquish: So everybody has testosterone, both men and women. Men have estrogen too, by the way.

Renee: Sometimes too much.

Dr. John Jaquish: But as I said, there’s no such thing as a bad hormone. Your body isn’t secretly plotting to destroy you. The whole “I get too bulky when I lift” I hear women say that. Here’s what’s happening. Either they’re looking at women who are taking the performance-enhancinjectionstion and they’re not realizing that they’re looking at basically a phony body that’s drug-induced. So that’s frightening women because a lot of women who don’t look feminine, it’s because they’re taking men’s hormones. They’re taking a lot of testosterone or some derivative thereof. I know some other women that are like, “Oh, every time I lift, I get big.” No, every time you lift, your appetite goes up. Instead of eating more protein, which is what you should do, you eat cupcakes. So you’re not getting big, you are getting fat. That’s the reality.

Lauren:: Thanks CrossFit for that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, right.

Lauren:: Finish your wide. Let’s have some-

Renee: Donuts.

Lauren:: Some donuts and celebrate. It’s insane.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Lauren:: Let’s just drive glucose, like toxic sugar into the cells.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, pretty much.

Renee: What’s up, Biohackers? Renee here. You may remember Lauren: and I had Wade Lightheart from BiOptimizers on the podcast back in September where he shared his top tips for fixing digestion, increasing nutrient absorption, and supporting overall recovery and health. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, definitely go back and check it out. It is jam-packed with so much great information.

Renee: Wade is such an awesome guy, and he’s so passionate about health optimization. You’ll hear that throughout the episode. It’s pretty incredible. But he’s so passionate that he ended up starting a line of supplements because he wanted people all around the world with one of the most common health issues that people experience. That is a gut issue. So things like bloating, gas, indigestion, acid, reflex heartburn, all of those, but also nutrient deficiencies. I mean our food supply is, unfortunately, so nutrient-depleted that a lot of us are walking around with these micronutrient deficiencies. So that’s something else that he’s trying to help people with.

Renee: Also poor sleep quality, that’s a huge issue. Then slow recovery. After a tough workout or a stressful day, we want to get you back in the gym as soon as possible. A lot of their supplements help with that too, which is super, super cool. So

Lauren: And I tried all of their supplements. We were blown away by the high quality high-quality and the results of the product. We always like to try anything before we share it with you all. We were so in love with these products that we were like, “We have to have weight on the podcast and tell everyone about BiOptimizers.”

Renee: So a couple of our favorites. So Blood Sugar Breakthrough is our number one pick for regulating blood sugar levels. The combination of ingredients to control blood sugar in this product, you aren’t going to find anywhere else, which is great. Also, Mazymes, are great digestive enzymes. This is going to help you break down your food, and optimize digestion. Also, increase nutrient absorption. So you’re going to get more out of the current you’re eating.

Renee: Then one more off throughout you all, Magnesium Breakthrough. It has seven different forms of magnesium in one bottle. This is unheard of in the supplement industry. Seven in one. So this is going to help support quality sleep, reduce stress, support our immune system and so much more. We can’t rave enough about BiOptimizers for top-notch supplements. So if you’re curious to try some of these products, go ahead and head on over to BiOptimizers.com. I’ll put that link in today’s show notes. Of course, do not forget to use the discount code “biohacker babes”. That will get you 10% off. All right. Let’s get back to the show.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Also going low carbohydrate or zero carbohydrates are much tougher for women than it is for men. But the reality is fructose only occurs in nature at the end of summer. Fruit, you only get fruit at the end of the hot season, just about before it’s going to be cold. Now, looking at animal models at times is great because you know animals when they participate in the study, it’s not like they were out drinking the night before, and they’re going to lie about it on the survey. Animals do what animals do. They’re pretty consistent about that. So they’re way better to study than humans in many regards because humans lie all the time on those surveys. After all, they want to give the answer that makes them feel better, not the truth.

Dr. John Jaquish: Bears give themselves Type II diabetes at the end of every hot season. So they switch from eating deer, and they go to eating honey and berries as much as they can. So switching to Type II diabetes is like an extra gear in your body that helps you get as fat as possible very quickly. So why would you want that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, you’d want it if the winter’s coming, and you’re not going to get a lot to eat. Let’s say you’re a bear, and you’re just digging a hole and sleeping in. So you can sit in that hole for a couple of months, which they do, and just live off their body fat. They don’t need anything, they don’t hunt. They’re not asleep the whole time. They’re just sitting there.

Lauren:: So we should put diabetics in the hole in the crowds.

Dr. John Jaquish: Say it again?

Lauren:: We should put diabetics in the hole, just have them hibernate.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, it’s funny. Because we don’t need to survive brutal winters, and we don’t need an extra adipose layer of tissue, there was always a question. How did the Vikings row a boat from the Nordic countries into Europe or Canada? Those boats they had, they brought no food with them.

Lauren:: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: What would they do? They would just get fat as hell. Then they’d get in the boat and start rowing. They would just burn their fat. They were just massively ketogenic. That was their fuel. There would be no eating at all.

Renee: That makes sense. I mean humans in the winter probably. Yeah. When you couldn’t get food, you had to burn your fat for fuel. Then in the summer, you’d load up on what was available.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right.

Renee: Now we have food 24/7.

Dr. John Jaquish: So back to the bears. Bears give themselves Type II diabetes as a method for survival. So I argue, that Type II diabetes is not a dysfunction of the human body, it’s a function of the human body. We just stimulate it all the time, and it becomes toxic. We also don’t need to fatten up for the wintertime. So we don’t even need that metabolic system at all.

Renee: Right. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because of quickies and ice cream, we have to upregulate and screw up our insulin sensitivity all the time.

Renee: Yeah. Even with quote-unquote healthful foods, there’s still never a shortage of calories ever. That’s kind of a problem. 24/7. You can get anything you want.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Especially in New York.

Renee: Especially in New York.

Lauren:: New York and Vegas.

Renee: 24/7, whatever you need. So with carbs, is it appropriate to save most of our carbs for postworkout, or let’s just talk about postworkout nutrition in general. What are your thoughts? I know the anabolic window myth, the carb situation. What would you recommend?

Dr. John Jaquish: While the anabolic window is a myth, it’s not there’s some special time where you consume nutrients, and you become super anabolic, and your body efficiently uses that. So when I say there’s no such thing as an anabolic window, that’s what I mean by that. Because previously, some people were pushing a that there’s some secret half-hour period where half-hour eat 10 cheeseburgers, and it just all turns into muscles right after a workout. Yeah. Total bullshit. What you can do is the protein, no matter what you eat or when you eat it, you do most you’re growing at night.

Dr. John Jaquish: While the body can’t store protein, it does stay in your system for quite a bit. You do go into protein synthesis during the day to a degree as well. The protein, you want to get one gram per pound of bothe day of quality protein. There are different strategies to do that. I find that once people figure that out, and I’m 240 pounds. So getting 240 grams of protein from steak would require me to eat two and a half pounds of steak. I eat one meal a day because I want a fasting benefit. So have you ever sat down eating two and a half pounds of meat? Yeah. Yeah. That last pound-

Lauren:: No.

Renee: Not even close.

Dr. John Jaquish: That last pound, you don’t like it.

Lauren:: I can imagine.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s work.

Lauren:: I’d love to come back to the bar because I’m just so fascinated that such a small piece of equipment has such profound effects.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Lauren:: So can we come back to why the resistance over the bells? So when people get sore, they think that’s how their muscle is growing.

Dr. John Jaquish: Not at all.

Lauren:: Yeah. So can you explain how? How the resistance training is getting that growth without the damage?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. It’s fatigue. So people thought damage lly the stimulus. You’ll hear some clown at a gym. You got to break the muscle fiber, so then they grow back stronger.

Renee: Diets. Come on.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Renee: Everyone’s about the diets.

Dr. John Jaquish: And the most positive thing I could say about that is that is an oversimplification. Oversimplification is another word for wrong. Yeah. All damage causes protein synthesis to repair the damage. You don’t get any growth at all. You end up being back to where you were. So it’s only when you’re just taking the muscle to fatigue without damage that you start growing more muscle.

Lauren:: That makes a lot of sense. It also explains why so many people don’t have the right variables. They either do too much volume, do seeing any changes, or maybe do too little. So maybe you can explain the programming with the X3 Bar. You say one set is enough.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I think the real problem is that weightlifting sucks. The fact that people do more than one set is symbolic of how bad it sucks. Because how many sets do you need to do in the sunlight to get a tan? Right?

Lauren:: Well, I’d say it’s personalized. Depends on what you’re absorbing.

Dr. John Jaquish: Or you just need to go out in the sun one time. Before you burn, you come in. You put a hat on or some sunblock, and then you’re stimulated. You only need one stimulus to get the adaptation. Same with a callous. Same with any other adapter response.

Renee: Was the problem the time? Sorry, go ahead.

Dr. John Jaquish: No, the fact that we think we need repeated exposure to a stimuli shows you that the stimuli are just garbage. It doesn’t work. So why pay attention to it? Something better is needed. Now when you do X3, if you do it right, there’s no way you can do a second set because you are devastated. You’re so exhausted at the end of it. I can see Renee smiling. Yeah. Yeah.

Renee: Yeah. Well, because I mean, I think most of us have been brainwashed into thinking that we need all these sets. So when my husband and I started doing X3, I’m doing maybe 25 reps, say. I’m dead. I’m like, then you can’t do it for another-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, completely. You’re doing the diminishing range too?

Renee: What was that?

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re doing the diminishing range?

Renee: I don’t know. What is that?

Lauren:: Where you drop down so you fail. You drop down and fail.

Renee: Oh yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re going to go to the T. Let’s say instead of going full range repetition, you can’t get there anymore. There’s a weight so high up So then you start doing half repetitions.

Renee: Oh yes. Okay. I didn’t know whether it was correct.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Renee: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: You’re doing that. Okay. Yeah. We call that diminished range.

Renee: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: So yeah. That works so well. Takes you to complete fatigue in all ranges of motion, something you can never do with weight. Yeah. It just stimulates the body better and you recover much better.

Lauren:: I mean, so is it because of the time under tension, just isn’t great enough with the weight? Can we possibly achieve this with weight, just if we alter the variables?

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s no way you can achieve it with weight because you have a different capacity in every different position. But weight is always the same weight. It always weighs the same amount no matter where you are.

Lauren:: Right. So you’re not going to load e-centric the same way you can do-

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So I can’t have a weight be 550 pounds at the top of my bench press and be 300 pounds in the middle of a bench press.

Lauren:: Unless you have a really good friend.

Renee: Two friends.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right? Yeah, no. The only person that can spot you, in reality, is your central nervous system. Your friend doesn’t know shit. You can’t have a spotter do anything of value other than maybe just keeping the bar from dropping, which is a spotter’s job. But actually mediating what your central nervous system can’t make up the difference for, your buddy is not connected to your central nervous system. He or she does not know and never will. You’re not going outsmart that. But when you’re training with variable resistance, you just go to your maximum output, the range shortens itself because of neural inhibition. Your central nervous system keeps you from getting to that fully extended position at some point because you can’t, because that amount of muscle has shut down. So you only have a portion of your muscle, portion of your muscle fibers that are still working for you. So then you train those in the diminishing range.

Renee: Yeah. The nervous system is really cool like that.

Dr. John Jaquish: So it’s complete fatigue of muscle. It’s so fast also. The most attractive part about X3, now I learned very quickly. At first when I launched it, I targeted the body building fitness community. Everybody told me not to do this, including really influential people in bio hacking. Maybe somebody I just did my second podcast with, maybe that guy.

Renee: Say no more.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t want to out the guys saying something nasty. But he goes, “I don’t think you understand the fitness industry.” He says, “Fans of standard fitness and bodybuilding are the dumbest people on earth. You will never succeed by targeting these people.” I was like, “All right. Well, let me give it a shot.” So I didn’t listen. Within three days, I realized he was right about everything he said. These are the dumbest people. So I pivoted to busy professionals, and that’s where we stayed because a busy professional is they’re willing to read something. Well, first of all, they can read. So let’s look at fitness a little further. Most fitness information is on Instagram and YouTube. Pictures and videos. Wonder why? They can’t read, that’s why. So really unintelligent people, like spectacularly unintelligent people. Because why?

Renee: Wait. I’m a visual learner.

Dr. John Jaquish: I would rather read and article than watch a video.

Lauren:: Right, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Because I read. They can’t. So it makes perfect sense. I always wonder when somebody sends me a video, it’s like, “Who has time for this? Can I just read an article please?” Because I mean, I’m a pretty quick reader. I can read, I don’t know, five, six pages in a couple minutes.

Renee: Yeah. I prefer that over an hour long video. I’m like-

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, you’re a normal, intelligent person.

Renee: Thank you.

Dr. John Jaquish: But the people we’re talking about, not so much.

Lauren:: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So once I pivoted to busy professionals, a lot of busy professionals, they want to have all aspects of their life working. They want their mind optimized, their spirituality optimized. I’m not going to get into that. People always ask me to make some spiritual comment. I’m like, “I’m a scientist. I can’t do that.” They want everything working, but a lot of them realize, they’re smart enough to realize, wow. I went to the gym when I graduated from college, every day for five years. Nothing changed. So there’s probably something better out there. I just don’t know what it is. They quit. They quit going. Then they read Weightlifting is a Waste of Time, which is the first step. When I contact with a customer, they read the book. They’re like, “Oh my God. It’s a totally different approach. But wow does it make much more sense than regular weightlifting.” That’s the flow of how I acquire customers. It’s really the busy professional.

Renee: Well, I also think that you are a walking research. You are a testament that this certainly works. So I’d love to come back to the bar again and talk about some of the programming. So you’ve basically broken the days up between push and pull. Everything can be a push and pull. We’re getting our primal patterns. Do you think that there … Well, one, I want to know the reasoning behind the programming. But also, do you think there is room for other things like mobility? I know you’ve said that resistance training does increase mobility. Maybe you can say from a personal perspective, do you do anything else? If you want to share that.

Dr. John Jaquish: I do nothing else. So I do exactly what I recommend other people do. Also, this is really important. So there’s 19 NFL players I work with. I have them do exactly what I do, but I tell them, “You need to do your football drills also.”

Renee: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: While this can create a lot of raw power in your musculature, I mean, it’s not going to make you a better receiver per se until you go through all those movements. So don’t tell your conditioning coach, “Oh yeah, I’m don’t need to do any drills.”

Lauren:: I quit. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: X3 will make you bigger, stronger and leaner. X3 will not make you a better football player. You got to do your drills.

Lauren:: Yeah. Sports specific drills.

Dr. John Jaquish: Same with the NBA. So the entire Miami Heat. In fact, they endorse the book and teams almost never do that. I got a lot of people, Miami Heat lawyers saying, “You’re allowed to use this quote from our strength coach.” Teams just never do that because they value their brand very highly. Because I really help that team out. They’re one of the least injured teams in the NBA, and they’re good. So keeping injuries down has a lot to do with strength conditioning.

Dr. John Jaquish: You’ve got to get them conditioned so that they’re less likely to injure. One thing people don’t realize about NBA players, and you’re talking about somebody who’s 6'5" and above. The tore on joints is far greater than it is with a regular size person. Every tendon, every ligament in their body has much more pressure on it. So they’ve got to take care of it. They want to build the thickness and those tendons and ligaments. Be very careful, very considerate about what they do so that their training is really optimized, and they get the most out of it.

Lauren:: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: They can stay in the play longer.

Lauren:: Yeah. Great. Then mobility, how are we affecting mobility? Obviously sport-specific or depending on your goals, you would add that in, but how does that generally affect-

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, generally, you go through the movements of X3, you’re going to increase the mobility in those movements. But is that everything? No, no. If you’re a dancer, for example.

Lauren:: Of course.

Dr. John Jaquish: You’ve got to go through those type of movements and reinforce those neural patterns. Now you may be better protected from injury. You may be more powerful, like your ability to propel yourself off the ground, depending on what kind of dance it is, will be increased. Your ability to land and control yourself will be based on drills that you have to go through to practice. Because just because you can get higher in the air, it doesn’t mean you’re any more graceful landing unless you practice that. So yeah. I’m really careful. I do think from a strength explosiveness speed and general conditioning, X3 does answer all the questions. But does it answer all questions in sports? No, of course not. Nothing.

Renee: But what about just overall longevity? Getting up off of the floor, being able to pick up your kids?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yeah.

Renee: Different.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. See there, we’re talking, now you’re talking the language, more the busy professional cares about. A lot of women are like, “I would just love to be able to pick up my kid again. I lost the ability. My kid gained a little bit of weight. It’s just like everything hurts when I go to pick him up.” Then of course, three months later, they’re like, “My kid got even bigger and now I can pick him up and carry him anyway.” Right. So that’s a quality of life thing. Yeah. You don’t need to do any other drills other than just doing X3 and then picking up your kid.

Lauren:: Cool.

Renee: That’s amazing. I will say a Testament to the X3 bar, my husband and I bought it during the pandemic, and all the gyms were closed.

Lauren:: So smart.

Renee: We used to have all the dumbbells and the barbells. Then we moved, we sold everything. So in our new house, we were like, “We don’t want to buy all the equipment.” I said, “Now’s the time. We got the X3 bar.” All we did was that four days a week and walk, walking was our cardio, whatever. Not to sound egotistical, but we both looked really great. We looked great. My husband was more ripped than he’s ever been in his life.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Renee: Everyone was like, “What are you doing?”

Lauren:: I can attest to that. You both did look phenomenal.

Renee: Oh thank you.

Lauren:: Yeah.

Renee: More him than me. I’ll boast about him.

Lauren:: No, I believe your upper body strength really changed from at least a visual perspective.

Renee: Thank you.

Lauren:: Yeah. Very cool.

Renee: Yes. So big fan over here. Dr. Jaquish, thank you so much for all of your amazing knowledge and wisdom today.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Renee: Before we let you run, we want to ask one final question. If you can give our audience a final piece of advice, something they can start doing right away to optimize their overall health.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. Well, let me ask a couple questions first because I don’t want to give the same advice that other people give. Okay. No, I got something. Get all the fructose out of your diet. Doesn’t mean you need to get all the sucrose out of your diet. There’s two places you get carbohydrates. One of them is almost guaranteed to be stored as fat, and that’s fructose. So remember what I said about fructose in nature and how bears use it?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, the problem is pretty much anything sweet, the weed’s got a lot of fructose, and you store that. Even if you’re at a caloric deficit, there’s evidence that says it goes to be stored as fat before your body can actually use it. So it’s just got a different path than the body. That path is contributing to Type II diabetes to obesity, to chronic heart failure. It gives you a lot of what you don’t want. So try and … When I do my pre-workout, so about 15 minutes pre-workout, I’ll do 40 grams of glucose tablets. So it’s pure glucose. It is in the form that the body uses it. You can find this in any drugstore, and it’s cheap as hell. In fact, every drugstore has their own private label. So there’s nothing new or special like glucose tablets. I mean literally any, it’s fine. They’re all the same. But that is a place where you can get carbohydrates, and it’s not going to come and bite you in the ass later.

Lauren:: Yes. Great, great advice.

Renee: Great advice.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Lauren:: Thank you so much.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay.

Lauren:: Thank you for spending your time with us today. I know you’re going to a wedding. You look awesome.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks.

Lauren:: But for our audience, we’re going to send them to your website. DrJ.com. Definitely check out the book, the X3 Bar. We’ll send everyone your way. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome.

Renee: And thanks to everyone that tuned in today. We’ll see you next time.

Renee: Love this episode of the Biohacker Babes Podcast? Head over to Apple Podcast to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. We truly appreciate your support.

Lauren:: Until then, happy biohacking.