Dr. John Jaquish Interview: X3 Bar Creator, Most Controversial Man in Fitness Answering Questions

Dr. John Jaquish Interview: X3 Bar Creator, Most Controversial Man in Fitness Answering Questions #

Full Transcript #

Mike: All right, I’m here with Dr. John Jaquish. Long anticipated, really grateful he took the time out of his busy schedule to make time for me, and answer some questions I know a lot of you guys have had.

I’m going to have a longer intro here to set the stage for what we’re trying to do here in this interview. You can see this is labeled, we might change this, but The Most Hated Man in Fitness. I don’t know if that’s true or not because I think he’s a good guy.

But I think maybe just misunderstood might be the right term and I think that’s true. I think a lot of the hate or misunderstanding related to going against you is probably because of your outspoken attitude, maybe the marketing or marketing claims, and possibly the title of the book.

We’ll probably get into this a little bit, the training system possibly, that just using bands, is only one set, about to be few exercises, maybe your take on nutrition. I’m going to stop there because there’s probably a lot of things that you have strong opinions on that we’ll get into. And I want to say I don’t disagree with much of what you said. I think maybe I have some areas I just have personal preferences. So I think that’s one area that I’ll talk about. Honestly, the way I come with the X3 is I probably sound like a fanboy and it sounds somewhat biased. I got them all sitting here as a nice little display there. I just like the product itself, how it looks, the branding.

To me, it’s like I don’t care if you said this thing cured cancer. I still would just like the product and I would just be buying it and using it regardless, of whatever you were saying. So yeah, that’s kind of where I’m coming from.

But what I want to do with this interview is to jump right into the questions. We got some relatively tough questions, common questions that I’ve been hearing. I’m sure he’s been hearing. And I told John upfront that instead of making this a traditional interview, he’s done a lot of interviews. I listened to a lot of them. They all started to kind of sound the same. Nothing against him. These are just traditional book tour stuff and setting the stage for his product and his brand, who he is.

I’ll reference some of his great interviews down below, especially his most recent TED Talk which has a lot of background information if you guys want to check that out. And this is a relatively new video. A lot of people have already seen it, so I’ll link that down below if you guys want to see that. What I want to do is break this thing up into three parts.

So getting into you, Dr. J, your background, your training history, answering some of those questions. Getting into the brand, the X3 brand itself, the products, and then also certainly variable resistance training and X3 training and just your overall take on those. So really briefly, just talking out, again, we got a lot of your credentials everywhere, but just a little bit about you. And then maybe clarify that too. The old question about did you go to an accredited university and are you a doctorate official? I’ll get to that too.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, that’s a funny one. That’s just really a rumor that was started by trolls. Now if you look up the university, the damning piece of information is, it didn’t start with accreditation. Well, no, university does, sort of like you’re not born with a driver’s license, you have to go pass a test. So when the university was founded in 1992, it didn’t have accreditation. So I got criticism because on day one it didn’t have it, but it has it now. And I liked going to Rushmore University. I thought it was awesome.

Now picking your university to do your doctoral degree, you have to decide if you want to go into academia. So it was a new university that didn’t have much of a reputation, but I knew I was going to go into business because I had already invented a series of medical devices that treated bone loss. This is when somebody wants to beat up on me. It’s like, okay, I invented a medical device, a series of medical devices, that reverse osteoporosis, a disease that kills as many people as breast cancer. And it’s the most effective way to address osteoporosis that’s ever been clinically trialed and it has no side effects. It’s like criticizing where I went to school is criticizing my third-grade spelling tests.

Mike: Well, it’s funny too because I don’t know if many people know about them, we don’t have to go into that because that will take a whole lot of time, but the OsteoStrong business and brand and what you’re doing is pretty amazing and what that was

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s a billion-dollar business.

Mike: I don’t think people know about it-

Dr. John Jaquish: You want to talk about my school?

Mike: Yeah, I should have prefaced this. I picked up your book a few months ago and I read the whole thing. It’s a great book. It’s also a primer to the X3 system. I think it should be kind of bundled together. Most of it’s the core content on the website regardless as far as the training content. But I think when I first saw this come out when it was very first, I probably had the first knee-jerk reaction most people said because I saw it. I’m like, okay, this sounds controversial.

And then when I clicked on just what you were and I saw that were bands, immediately in my head I just thought, okay, this is just he’s trying to sell this product and that was it. And I kind of disregarded it too. And I think that might be where most people are kind of stopping and ending with you.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, yes. So I get accused of a clickbait title, but scroll down your feed on YouTube, they’re all clickbait titles. They want you to click on them. So I could have called my book A Better Resistance Training Method and I would’ve sold 100 copies for sure, but I sold 200,000 by calling it Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time because a lot of people wanted to read it thinking, I want to read this so I can prove this guy wrong. Or it’s like, well wait a minute, I want to see what he has to say because that’s a pretty bold statement. So is it clickbait? I don’t know. I can back up that statement. I would say weightlifting was a good use of time, but now that we understand variable resistance, I don’t think it’s a wise choice of how to spend your fitness time or fitness energy.

Mike: Awesome, yeah. Well, I want to get to that towards that third segment and stand though. I normally do this, but I have so many questions and stuff with you. I don’t want to interrupt you, but I want you to make sure you say everything. People have asked a lot of questions. Again, we’re on the personal subject here, that okay, well either your body, this body transformation, you looking like this, either they’ll accuse you of first off, I guess the question is how long have you been using variable resistance? Is that all you’ve been doing? Do you just use X3? And how much of your results are attributed to the years… I’ve heard this criticism of you that all your size was put on through traditional means and/or “TRT” versus the actual X3 product itself.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. I was in a bad rugby accident. I was playing semi-pro rugby at 28 years old. A huge amount of testicular damage, went from a normal level of testosterone, I assume because I never had it checked, why would you at 28, to 163 nanograms to the deciliter? So I was told by my cardiologist, “You probably need to be on TRT, otherwise you’ll have a heart attack in your 30s.”

So of course I believe the same stuff that I heard on the news like, “Well wait a minute, testosterone, doesn’t that make people go crazy and kill their family members?”

Fortunately, I had a really smart cardiologist who’s like, “No, that’s just what they say on the news.” And so I got my prescription for testosterone replacement therapy.

Between the ages of 28 and 40, I was lifting weights the entire time with TRT and got nothing out of it, maybe five pounds of muscle. But I just put on a lot of fat and told myself, I was delusional like most people who just get fatter and they’re like, “Oh, I’m putting on some size, finally.” You’re just getting fatter.

And we will go into the whole, fitness delusion and how people think what they’re doing is productive and they’re just wasting their time.

So I was one of those people for 20 years. Deep down I realized I was getting fatter and that was the only “size” I was getting. But I was doing standard fitness training, standard weightlifting. And I didn’t want to stop because I knew I would lose my size, what little I got from the time I was in high school, which honestly was probably more puberty than anything. I was just generally frustrated by the subject, but I still worked out four days a week because that’s just what everybody was doing. And I was just super frustrated.

But it was through the medical device that I realized humans are far more capable of producing force in very specific ranges of motion, the impact-ready ranges of motion. And so that’s where I started reading about variable resistance research, which there were many studies out there that showed that connecting bands to bars had weightlifters breaking records all over the place. Westside Barbel broke 200 records, world records out of one gym.

And really, what did they do differently? They would say they did a lot of things differently, but ultimately it’s just variable resistance. Now they applied it in some interesting formulaic ways, which I think were wrong. Now another thing was Arthur Jones. Arthur Jones had variable resistance, his, the CAM, or the Nautilus. So instead of a pulley, which is just a wheel, the pulley looked more like this.

So it was a CAM. So as you would push, the cable that would run over the CAM, the CAM would turn and it would place more force on the stronger range of motion than the weaker range of motion. The problem is Arthur didn’t have the same research. He didn’t have any research on variable resistance. It was just his idea. He noticed that when you go to do a pushup, this part is really easy. It’s when your nose is against the ground that it’s hard, so okay. So what he was doing is from strong range to weak range, he had a ratio of X to 1.2X, where you should be more like 5X out here. So he didn’t have the ratio right. And who could blame him because he didn’t have any information to go on? He was just guessing.

Mike: Well, even with the powerlifting, I’m sure some people would hear that, maybe push back and say, “Well, that sounds like maybe theoretical you’re taking a best guess, convenient guess.” Again, I’m just paying devil’s advocate here, best guess. But if someone said, “Okay, how do we know for sure? There are a lot of things that Westside may have done. How much of that thought do you think was from resistance bands? Or even just…

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I think all 200 records they broke were because of variable resistance.

Mike: Really? Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: I got a lot of powerlifters that tell me that. So that wasn’t my idea. But if you look at the research, the higher the variability, the bigger the difference. So the 5X thing was a combination of what I saw in the clinical trial and my medical device, in which people were 7X at the top. But it was just the combination of that and all of the variable resistance research that showed that the higher the ratio, the bigger the difference between the strong and weak range, the better the results.

Mike: It almost seems, and again this popped in my head now, but this would be something I could see the listener hearing this, that you didn’t invent the 41-inch band, that 41-inch band, that distance has been around for a long time, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Mm-hmm.

Mike: So it seems convenient, I’m not saying it’s wrong or that you just did that, but that that would be the, given what all the research you’re saying and the seven times and all the different, the levels that you’re saying should be ideal, that maybe there’d be a more ideal distance for certain people, that just conveniently throwing on the 41-inch and doing your whole system with a standard 41-inch band, I guess I’m jumping the gun here. Is that just best because it’s so convenient and efficient, just use a 41-inch band.

Or in a different situation, do you think there’s a better method? Because I can hear this, someone saying, that sounds awesome, but he just took a 41-inch band and threw it on a bar. Something you could have maybe thought of on your own, you know what I’m saying? I know no one has, no one has. So another point I want to say because, before you, I don’t think anyone else did that with a bar platform-

Dr. John Jaquish: No. Which is why I own all the patents that have anything to do with anything that looks like X3. But yeah, when developing a product, it’s like you’re going to start an automotive company. You’re going to start with probably an engine that you can buy as opposed to creating your brand-new engine. As engines have been around a long time, people already make good ones, you can start with a crate engine. So there are already 41-inch bands. The question was how do I conform to an existing part with the parts I’m going to develop? So the different distances, double up the band. Yeah, I’m the first one that was doubling it up

Mike: Really? Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: As far as I could tell. I never saw that before.

Mike: Let’s go back to Arthur Jones again and Mike Mentzer and well just I get stumped into, but just how influenced were you by just, and it is going back to with the variable resistance, we’ll probably jump into this too, but how influenced were you with what they were doing or just high-intensity high-intensity are some calisthenic people are done are there yellingg one-arm there high-intensity there yelling are training and/or how different is high-intensity training to what you’re describing here?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, variable resistance is a different resistance curve applied to the body. It’s the curve that is more similar to how our muscles activate, also considering the leverage points in the body. We have very poor leverage back here, we have much better leverage here. So it’s really like what are our maximum capacities in certain positions and then how do we most closely deliver, in line with those capacities, about where we are weaker? So it took a lot of experimentation, but ultimately getting that band doubled up or depending on the movement.

Mike: Well, maybe more specifically and jump into the specific training where I think your training is talking about the system has a one set philosophy, relatively low frequency, especially when talking about just exercises in general. We’ll get to frequency later on specifically. But Arthur Jones talked about really just doing one all-out set to failure. You’re talking about doing partial reps, how much of that was influential?

Dr. John Jaquish: So the fact that when all other stimuli are in the body and adaptation, it requires one intense experience. Sunlight, how many sets do you need to do in the sun to get a sun tan? Right?

Mike: Yeah. Well, I’ve heard this from Mike Mentzer. That’s why I think about when I hear you say that, I’m like, that sounds like something Mike Mentzer said or the Arthur Jones crowd was saying too.

Dr. John Jaquish: See, I didn’t know Mentzer ever said that. He made a lot of video or at least audio that now turned into video.

Mike: Well, the same kind of philosophy.

Dr. John Jaquish: So I didn’t know men said that, but the one set, it’s just like every adaptation we have comes from one experience. And of course, my background, my PhD dissertation was written about bone density. Bone density is the same thing. The minimum dose response for triggering bone growth in the hip, that’s the most important part of your body for bone density, the hip joint minimum dose response is 4.2 multiples of body weight. So they have people hopping up and down and getting four multiples of body weight. It did nothing because you need 4.2, not four. So it’s monumental in that intensity and adaptation, they go together.

Mike: Now you need that? Because I’m just thinking, what about again, somebody who just increases bone mineral density not doing something? You’re saying it’s not possible? So how would you explain, I guess somebody maybe did do that without any research saying, well, just traditional barbell weightlifting, they’re able to stimulate bone mineral density or bone growth without doing what you’re saying, without seven times, that’s what you said, seven times.

Dr. John Jaquish: It was 4.24-

Mike: 4.2, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: … minimum dose response. That’s what the research found and that lines up with what we know about adaptation, is there’s a minimum threshold. It’s sort of like if somebody goes and trains light, calisthenics people, they look just like yoga people because they’re not growing any muscle. They can fool themselves and do a ton of calisthenics and maybe even get lean and look athletic, but if you’re trying to gain muscle, there’s no getting away from heavy.

Mike: Yeah. And I guess the argument maybe again, would be those, because I’m sure some calisthenic people are yelling one-arm at the screen right now would be, well maybe they are. It’s we’re just maybe saying semantics here, they’re doing some sort of progressive calisthenics adding weight on-

Dr. John Jaquish: Or all of a sudden they’re doing one arm pull-ups.

Mike: Right, okay, right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well then that’s not really what we would typically call calisthenics, you’re adding-

Mike: Right, right.

Dr. John Jaquish: … so yeah, even they have to go in that direction ultimately. Otherwise, if you’re not using progressive overload if you’re not introducing a slightly greater experience where more force is going to the target muscle progressively.

Mike: Well, it’s very interesting. So just to end that point with Arthur Jones and everything, you’re saying as far as his whole training methodology, you’re just somewhat maybe weren’t familiar with it, the high-intensity-out stuff, but just doing one all-out set, or that didn’t play a factor at all? Because the similarities are so apparent when I look at your programming and go back and look at what those guys are saying.

Dr. John Jaquish: Definitely. So here’s what they got right, is it takes one set. The problem is the stimulus that they’re dealing with with regular weights is poor. So in their application, I can understand why it didn’t catch on because people tried that and then they did five or six sets for body parts, and well in the beginning they grow more from five or six sets than they do from the one. So they just kind of ignored that.

Mike: Is it poor application or is it poor, just that’s hard to get to failure in one set using traditional barbells and a machine? Or is it just the combination?

Dr. John Jaquish: The fatigue you go to only involves the weaker range of motion, but when you’re using variable resistance, you first fatigue the strong range of motion, then medium ranges of motion, and then you fatigue the weakest range of motion. So you’re truly taking the entire muscle, all the cells to fatigue. Whereas in a normal set of weightlifting, I don’t care how hard you’re trying, it’s only a small percentage.

Mike: And then let’s wrap up the personal stuff and then get into company brand stuff. You probably get a lot of haters, so how do you deal with just haters and negative feedback? Because I think as far as what I’ve seen, you’re up there. Not the top of the sphere, but you could get some. You have your own following though, for sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, so okay. I’ve never said anything controversial. I’ve never made any claim that didn’t have scientific research to back it up. That doesn’t mean people like what they hear. For some reason, we live in a society of cry babies, who when you show them evidence, they’re like, “Well, okay.” It’s science. It’s not here for you to like, it’s here for you to learn from. If you choose to ignore it, okay, that’s your choice. But ultimately whatever your sport is, or if you’re one of those guys who thinks you’re Mr. Olympia is the next backyard barbecue where you could take your shirt off, somebody’s just going to be bigger and stronger than you because you just ignored the obvious.

I’m making it obvious. I could not be more crystal clear about this. variable resistance will grow muscle faster. Now I also say faster, however, that’s not quite true because most people don’t grow muscle at all. Most people are just… in the gym, thinking that it’s going to happen. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is nobody wants to believe they’re wasting their time. So they’ll go and repeat the same that did nothing over and over and over again, thinking maybe I need some Chromium picolinate in my diet or they believe some ad or something like that. But when I make that statement, weightlifting is a waste of time, I can back it up. The top percentile of body fat in this country, in the United States, is 11%. It’s 11.7, I think. So almost 12%. Well, the best 1% is you can sort of maybe see their top two abdominals, who’s fit? I think the problem, social media has delivered this problem, but we got the 12% issue.

And then if you search for not getting any results from weightlifting, I made a post about this yesterday, was which my Halloween post on InstaThere theThere’ser a billion search results when you say weightlifting is not working or I’m not getting results from weightlifting. Well, are there a billion articles in existence on a planet where there are only nine billion people because everybody’s just doing great? I don’t think so. They’re screwing the pooch left and right. They’re Googling it, but they’re not admitting it, because I had to admit it. Maybe that’s just waving a flag and saying, I don’t know. But they’re not coming to grips with the reality that most people are not getting any results.

In my TED Talk, I talk about the genetics of tendon positioning where most people, myself included, my tendon insertion, my origin, my pectoral is here, insertion is here. Some people have a mutation, so it’s over here. And those are the people that end up in the NFL because everything they do, they can leverage more muscle, they’re engaging more muscle. They’re almost doing band training inside of their body. So they’re enabled to activate more muscle than the rest of us. But the rest of us want to go and emulate what the pro athlete does, but that guy’s an outlier. So what he does is not going to work for you.

Mike: You’re saying with your product, in just X3, and this was a question I was going to ask you towards the end too, okay, the pushback I would have with what you just said would be that people aren’t getting results because it just takes a little time, some dedication, consistency, and most people just don’t do that. They give up before they start. That would be one thing that pops into my head and just yeah, improper programming or whatever. I’m not saying they’re all lazy. I think they’re just not knowing what hard work is, as far as pushing people in the gym.

And I don’t know if you’re saying that just the weightlifting and the traditional means, going to the gym just doesn’t work or it’s not as efficient as say your product, here’s what you do, here’s the plan. You just do it and you’ll more likely see results than just spinning your wheels in the gym, not knowing what you’re doing. Is that more or less what you’re saying? Or you’re saying there’s a flaw in just going to the gym that is inherently not as efficient as just using variable resistance?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s so inefficient that most people beyond just beginner gains, there’s a great Reed study that I referenced, I think it was two posts ago that talks about adults and weight training. So they allowed people, it was like 104 adults that they trained for a year and they measured their results. Now, I believe they got their gains from the first couple of weeks because that’s just how it works with most people. But the point of the story wasn’t what they gained over a year. The point of the story was subsequent years and what would happen if they just continued to train. Not a single person grew any muscle after the first year.

Mike: This sounds a lot like high-intensity people’s claims too, because I’m not saying it’s bad, but it sounds so similar to what you were saying, that a lot of people just get in the gym. They’re used to it in the volume and find something that works initially and then just spin the wheels. That system no longer produces results, just going in there, pumping up.

Dr. John Jaquish: I think if you’re holding a static weight, all systems will produce that same result because there are so many limitations in the human body for picking up a static weight. Think about what we do functionally. When we sprint, we use seven degrees of flexion behind our knee, yet we have 180 available. Your only strong range training is when you’re sprinting. Why? Why not use the entire range of motion? Well, it’s super inefficient, that’s why. Now when it comes to growing muscle, blood flow is huge. You need massive blood flow. So a full range of motion is good, but the same resistance through the entire range of motion. No, that’s awesome.

Mike: All right. We’ll probably hit that again in a second. Let’s jump to just your company and the brand. A big pushback I hear a lot just with your products is that we can maybe do the same issues, the high cost and just the fact that there’s the exclusivity in nature of it. That I can only get certain products unless they buy in initially. So I guess what’s the business? Why the rationale between the business model and maybe the price tag of the X3 product?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, you mean like to get the force bar, you already have-

Mike: Yeah, yeah. Instead of saying, I can pick and choose what I want, like you à la carte in the package, I don’t know if it’s something like that. Or just buy the bar, or just yeah, just buy the bar itself. People might say, I just want the bar. I can maybe-

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah, yeah, so okay. So I borrowed this philosophy from Apple Computer. I’m not going to let you buy something so that you can use it inappropriately and have a bad experience because then you’ll say X3 doesn’t work. So get the whole package and use it correctly or… Those are your options. So if somebody just wants to buy the bar, it’s like, well, okay, you can’t use it without the ground plate.

Without the ground plate, if you put any heavy load on your ankles, you’ll break an ankle. So why would I sell you something that you’re almost guaranteed to use incorrectly? Buy the whole thing. It’s a safety thing, but also just an experience. If somebody buys the bar and thinks they’re going to stand on a heavy band and do 500-pound deadlifts, they’re going to have two broken ankles and they’re going to say, “Well, X3 hurt me. No, X3 didn’t hurt you…

Mike: Well, I think that might get into where yeah, we said earlier, I think it’s yeah, your confidence in your brand and your product I think comes off. I think anybody who has a company probably is going to stand by and have some outlandish claims or any kind of a claim, anything. But I think with difference with you is that I think you live by and have no problem saying what you’re thinking about your product to the masses versus someone-

Dr. John Jaquish: I know the research, that’s the thing. I don’t know everything about sports science. There’s a lot of aspects, it’s like so many different facets to sports science. But when it comes to variable resistance, an inch deep and a mile wide… Wait, did I say that right?

Mike: That’s what I was thinking.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m an inch wide to a mile deep, that’s what I meant to say. So when you get all of the… I did…

Mike: That’s okay. I got what you were saying as soon as you said it, but yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. It’s one of those things where if you just look at it enough, you’ll just say, wow, I need to do everything I can with variable resistance and to hell with everything else. And of course, as soon as I made this decision, which is right around my 40th birthday, well, I decided about six months earlier when I had my prototype developed. On my 40th birthday, I picked up my prototype from the machine shop. It was a race car kind of custom builder. I put on, what was it? 30 pounds the first year, 30 pounds of muscle the year I turned 40, which is usually after 40 you’re not gaining anything at all.

And so I thought that was spectacular. And then I continued to gain more after that. So for me, it was 20 years of weight training that got me nothing. And then a year, one year of variable resistance gave me 30 pounds of muscle. I’ve been trying for that 30 pounds of muscle… before that, and it just came. It didn’t come easily. I had to go to fatigue for sure, but I was going to fatigue with weights, killing myself with weights.

Mike: Were you doing that system pretty much more or less? Were there any tweaks to what you did at that time as far as the exercises you chose? Sets, reps, frequency?

Dr. John Jaquish: I’ve changed my position on a couple of things. Mostly because newer research came out and we just learn more. I used to tell people not to use straps because they wanted to develop their grip strength. But there was a study about a year ago that said you’re not going to be able to develop your back fully unless use straps. So if you’re doing any other grip exercises. So now for deadlift, I think it’s okay to use straps, not for the other-

Mike: I think that’d be good for your product too. Because I’ve heard people complain like oh, that you can drop the thing on your foot, which I think as long as you’re holding it properly, it starts to get heavy holding onto your alternating grip. You’re gnarling so intense, I don’t know how you’re going to possibly do that without some sort of warning. But I could see you just marketing, selling some straps along with it. Probably save that user error of hurting yourself, not only, but also lift some more.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, the whole idea you could drop it on your foot, it’s like I see almost every time I used to go to the gym, somebody would drop something like, yeah.

Mike: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Drop weights, try not to drop them on yourself. That seems self-explanatory.

Mike: How about the cost of the product? Just justifying, I just did a video about this today. I think the cost makes sense to me as far as marketing. If you’re going to find something similar with just base-level parts, I think to me it makes sense. But I do think off the cuff, if you looked at it initially, it can turn people off. I think as people are thinking $500 weights, equipment when you see bands and a bar.

Dr. John Jaquish: So in the world of social media, people will have a tantrum about price no matter what. I met an X3 customer, an X3 user. The guy makes vinyl stickers with Disney characters, so he has to pay a license fee to Disney. And the stickers are nice. They’re vinyl, so you stick them on whatever, and they’re probably going to last for a long time. It’s like two bucks a sticker. The guy gets death threats daily from mothers and parents. “How dare you create a sticker with Mickey Mouse.” And so-

Mike: That’s true. That’s a true story.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s a true story. And the guy was just like, “Hey, you’re doing the Lord’s work. You’re just saying it how it is, and you’re selling an amazing product and people are going to complain about the price.” And then he told me the story of his business. So there’s just going to be people who complain about the price of anything, I don’t care what it is. But when it comes to X3, the people who complain about the price are the people who have never seen it. It’s like once you grip it and feel it and realize it’s solid steel all the way through, you can load the thing with 1,000 pounds of multiple bands if you want to if you need that level of force. And most really strong people do because, with variable resistance, you’re dealing with more weight than you ever would within a gym.

So it needed to be built with an exceptional level of quality because you’re just handling so much more weight. And that’s why I changed the strapline of the product to a greater force and greater gains. And now we have the force bar, which you have sitting right behind you. That force bar records and analyzes all the force you’re creating in one set, in the form of the total force. So we sample three times per second to see how fast or slow somebody’s going into repetitions, and how much time under variable tension there is, so we can get a metric to quantify progressive resistance. There hasn’t been one before. People count reps, but in one set you do fast reps, another set you do slow represents, it’s different. And there was never really a way to tell, until now. Now it’s like laser precise.

Mike: And how about just the product seems so simplistic? Well, first going back to what you said, because I was one of those people when I first saw it, again, it seems kind of overpriced. But when I got it, right away, the packaging and how it was branded, again, I don’t even want to talk like this because it sounds like I’m just, again, giving lip service to you in the company. But I’m like, this is awesome. The way it’s packaged, the way it looked. And then of course using it and then using it properly, which I was not. I think part of it was because I was kind of falling on, I didn’t didn’t care about resistance bands. After a while, I started using it enough and they’re kind of annoying, strapping them up.

But then the efficiency of it and then going slow, because I was just used to going faster. I feel like I kind of had to go faster. How I felt more of a benefit from I.t once I started using it, I’m like, okay, now I can see, yeah, I see that this works a lot better. How do you avoid just the knockoffs? I think there’s going to be, you set the stage for this type of market it seems, or I don’t want to call it a market, mean this area. How do you avoid knockoffs on something is relatively simplistic as far as a bar platform. And do you think there’ll be some improvements on the line? Do you have any thoughts about how to just capitalize on what you’ve built here? You’ve already capitalized on it, but I guess hold down the fort, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh yeah, there are advancements. The force bar is such a big advancement, being able to quantify progressive resistance, nothing does that. Not in any serious way. You could say maybe Tonal does, but the problem is strong people can’t use tonal. Tonal is designed for sort of an elderly woman, just because it maxes out at 200 pounds of force. Well, when I do single-leg squats, I’m holding 350 pounds on each leg.

So what’s Tonal going to do for me? Nothing. And there’s no getting away from heavy. That’s the other thing. So the competitors, the knockoffs, I’ve shut down seven companies already and seized their assets because I have patents, over 30 patents on various aspects of the design and the technology. So while it’s simple and elegant, I own it.

Mike: Okay. All right, cool. So that’s a basic good answer. Let’s get into just the variable resistance science. So we kind of already hit this a little bit, but a common pushback I hear. You’ve kind of already said this, but I guess what would be your answer again directly, if someone’s saying, especially for a home gym, why waste? I already got a squat rack and some dumbbells, so let’s just stick to what… I already know what you’re going to say, people already got into it. Just what kind of “works”? It’s been around this many years. Why break something-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, right. My answer is, does it? Does it work? Hey, if you’re one of those guys who’s a genetic outlier, and no matter what you do, there’s an NFL player I met who told me the most muscle he ever put on was the summer he was in high school when he was mowing lawns for a job. And he said he put on 45 pounds of muscle in the summer, and the guy was just an absolute muscle-building no to the machine.

Mike: I’m convinced most athletes would be better off not doing anything, honestly. I’ve heard that from Bo Jackson, who was told just not to even do anything because you’re wasting your energy, wasting your time.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right. Also, he might become like Bo Jackson, it’s a shame his career was so short, but it’s like if he put on any mass, it might’ve slowed him down. You’re right. He was like, just don’t do anything, you’re perfect. So he is one of those with the longer tendons. And so everything he does it’s like he’s using rubber bands inside of his body.

Mike: Well of course, I’m thinking people are going to think, well, guess again, my thing, my thought process would be that if I was selling your system to something else, I would personally say, and I know you’d probably disagree with this, but I would say they’re both useful tools. I heard someone say the other day, which was great, that some comment in some video that you had or somebody’s video, that the X3 is the biggest middle finger to the fitness industry because you’re telling me I can do all this resistance training so much more effectively and efficiently with these things that weigh less than 10 pounds by themselves but produce equal to or greater results. So that’s something I’m kind of thinking about.

But I can see someone else saying, “Well, I do get good results. I’m working out, I’ve been using weight my whole life,” et cetera, et cetera. I guess the pushback and also, you probably have, we didn’t even talk about the sof after this, the wear and tear in the joints. That’s something else I know people constantly suffer with. I have a cousin, who just literally wrecked his shoulder, a young-age firefighter and 100% it was from chronic weight training. There’s no question, we’re doing something wrong consistently.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure, so yeah. I do kind of disagree with the… To me, it’s not fair when I tell somebody what’s in the literature, there’s no ambiguity. In most subjects that are researched, there’s one answer on one side, like eggs are good for you, eggs will kill you kind of thing. Or vegetables are great for you. Oh, they’re loaded with oxalates. No, they’re not good for you at all. When it comes to variable resistance, it’s only one side. It gives you way better results, and no one has found anything different.

There was one study that claimed the variable resistance was less effective, but the exercising group was allowed to train with however much weight they wanted. And the variable resistance group was only allowed to use TheraBand by itself, so it’s like five pounds of force. So the people that trained with five pounds didn’t do as well as the people that trained with however much weight they wanted to train with. Okay, so that study was designed to be fraudulent, and it was. But it’s like once you read it’s just like, okay.

Mike: Well I did look at some of the references you had in the book, and I’ve seen some in the past. I think you’re right, that variable resistance does work. And in some instances, you might probably say all instances, it would outperform resistance training in general, but-

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, for sure.

Mike: … you had one in there, I think, that I think people have criticized the idea of like, well, there’s one group that had resistance bands, one that was using resistance bands and weight training. And the argument would be, well, the other group, they were still using weights in some fashion. Or I guess if you’re saying if you’re comparing resistance bands to traditional weights, traditional weights still had, there’s a history of traditional weight training working and producing results. So even just that point alone, how would you address that of just looking at research studies saying what weight training has done from X?

Dr. John Jaquish: I would say weight training has some results, but it goes back to the delusion. It’s like the studies, who volunteers to be in a strength study? People who like strength training. Why do they like strength training? Because they get results from it.

So you’re going to get a higher percentage of genetic outliers. But my first reference in my book, Petrela 2008, 27.6% of people who lift weights will never grow any muscle no matter what they do with regular weights. That’s a huge group of people.

Mike: And you’re saying that would not be the case with resistance training. There’s not just some genetic thing or just doing something improperly. It was a matter of just the weights somehow not working for them.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, that’s not what the study concluded. It just said that these people, when training with weights, will never be able to grow muscle. That would’ve been a much better study and would help me more. But no, that’s not what it researched. So I don’t want to overstate what that study said. What the study said was these sets of people cannot grow any muscle. I’ve never met a person who can’t grow muscle with X3.

Every person who’s come to me and it’s just like they hear my talk track and they’re like, “Dude, I’ve been lifting weights for a long time, and that’s done… for me. And then I got X3 and I’m a month in and I look different with my shirt off. Muscles are finally growing. I’ve been trying to get them to grow for years.” So that’s addressed. But also when you understand the tendon and ligament thing that I talked about in the TED Talk, certain people engage more musculature when they move and it’s less than 1% of the population. And these people, these are the ones that end up in the NFL.

And the rest of us, maybe some people have, instead of the tendon insertion here, it’s a little bit further over on the bicep, but it’s not necessarily at the other end. Because there’s variation, it’s not like one or the other. But for the most part, I don’t think it’s successful. When you look at the data in control for things like genetic outliers are attracted to being participants in studies. When you take out the fact that most of the messaging came from fitness marketing in the first place. It’s funny, people accuse me of being manipulative in marketing, nobody’s more manipulative than the fitness industry because 99% of people get injections… nothing. They go for years, they don’t look any different.

And when I was at the TED Talk, I said, “Okay, raise your hand if you know multiple people that are all about going to the gym and they’ve been doing it for years and you would never know they’ve ever exercised.” Every… hand goes up. Of course, that’s most people who go to the gym. They’re not getting anything out of it. But it’s this, the fitness industry has done a great job of showing you genetic outliers and acting like that’s normal. Like for example, people even manipulate themselves into believing this shit because they want to believe it. Think about this. So I say social media is delusional. People go, “Well, maybe it is, but not for me.” Oh, okay. Well number one, how many fit people are there on earth? Maybe like 1,000, like 2,000. We’ve got 9 billion people, 8 billion people. Where are they? Where are all these people hiding that are just in great shape? My argument is there’s only a couple of hundred or maybe 1,000 or maybe 2,000, maybe 3,000 if you want to be crazy. But we’re all following the same mother…

Mike: So you’re saying that’s just mostly-

Dr. John Jaquish: Most people are following Chris Bumstead, everybody knows who Jeremy Buendia is. Here’s a way, any-

Mike: It’s genetic though is what you’re saying. You’re saying it’s genetic, is what these outliers are walking around. That’s not so much the training they’re doing. They could be doing anything.

Dr. John Jaquish: I think drugs are involved too.

Mike: Okay, but yeah. But still, I think that’s a hard pill for people to swallow because I hear what you’re saying and part of me still doesn’t know if I’m grasping if you mean that. You think that the majority of just going to the gym, traditional weight training techniques just don’t work. Which I think that is what you’re saying.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Mike: Because part of me, I would think most from what I’ve seen, but my own experience is that it generally doesn’t work for people who aren’t putting in consistent effort. People aren’t consistent, they just put in full effort. That would be my 2 cents on the matter.

Dr. John Jaquish: I would argue that they don’t put in consistent effort because they’ve been at it for a while and they look in the mirror and they’re like, nothing’s happening.

Mike: Fair point.

Dr. John Jaquish: One of the weirdest things about X3 is we almost have 100% compliance. We ship a unit to somebody and they use it and they-

Mike: Well, I think that’s what’s beautiful about your system. I think that if I were to say regardless of whether people want to believe what you’re saying or not as far as the history of weight training not working or working, I would say at the very least you have a package of a system that I think for the exercise that is there, if you follow what’s on the card, your explanations on how to do it, I think people will 100% see results in a very simplistic-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I made it easier to follow.

Mike: Yeah, it’s very efficient and very simplistic.

Dr. John Jaquish: But let me roll it back to people’s attitudes when it comes to fitness. So if you’re into fitness, everybody’s following the same 100 or 200 people. I’m aware of this because everybody I know who has a great six-pack has a supplement contract. They’re making money with it, all of them. So it just shows you how rare that is. Somebody with an incredible set of abdominals. It’s really rare and we’re all pretending like everybody’s going to end up like that as long as we’re consistent at the gym.

But here’s how I prove to everybody that they are delusional and they’re not looking at an accurate picture of the world. 75% of the Western world is overweight or obese. If you look at your Instagram followers or who you’re following, if you look at who you are following on Instagram, are 75% of those people overweight or obese? Because if not, you’re… delusional. You’re looking at people, you’re constantly putting in your brain that what’s on Instagram is what people look like and it’s not even… close.

Mike: Yeah, I think that’s a fair point for sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. When I go to a grocery store, high school kids will come up to me. I could be with my wife and they’ll stop both of us. And they’re like, “What do you do? How are you in this kind of shape?” They act like they’ve never seen anything like me before. And I think the reason is, they haven’t. They see it online and they want to talk to these people, but then they’re like, where are all these athletes hiding?

Because I never see them at the gym. It’s just a bunch of guys that look just like the Pizza Hut. In most gyms, unless you’re in Venice, California, you walk into just about any gym, and the people at Pizza Hut you could just interchange the crowd and no one would know the difference.

Mike: How important is your system, following your system? I think we could probably, I know you said that everyone who uses this system is successful. I would probably, if I was like a betting man, I would bet there are some people out there who probably are not, just in the sense of maybe not doing it correctly.

Dr. John Jaquish: Statistically you’d be right.

Mike: So how important is this following that system to the T? Let’s talk specifically about the actual training system. We got the device, we got the exercises. How important is doing the one set and just the frequency you’ve laid out and even those exercises?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s pretty important only because of the way people do it wrong if they don’t understand the principles behind it… That’s why I tell everybody, to just follow the program. Just don’t try and adjust anything. Don’t think by adding a set of pull-ups, you’re going to get double the growth. That’s what it says in fitness marketing kind of thing, but I very carefully plan the whole protocol and programming out. And the people who follow it, they do great. The people who try and adjust it, do pretty well. They’re not not growing, they’re doing all right. But it’s not exceptional.

Mike: Do you still follow the system to a T and how do you progress each week? Is it slower? Is it two steps forward, one step back type of thing? Or how does that look for you? Just progress on the X3.

Dr. John Jaquish: So several studies have come out recently about the frequency of training. I know you wanted to talk about this.

Mike: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So there’s several studies and then it became a meta-analysis. And I think there’ve been some subsequent studies and they pretty much all come to the same conclusion. And that conclusion is that if you train a muscle group once, two times, three times, or four times per week, you will have the same amount of growth.

So back to Mike Mentzer, this says, and Arthur Jones, it says that both of them were wrong about overtraining. So there’s no detriment to training a muscle too frequently. However, there’s no gain either.

Mike: Good point.

Dr. John Jaquish: So really what this is saying is all you’ll need is one stimulus per week. So I had trouble swallowing this because I loved training every day. And so I decided to run the experiment. I’d be like, well, I’m a hypocrite if I don’t follow this research because basically if there’s new evidence, I will put it to the test and see how it fits. And maybe I’ll discover some limitations of the study or maybe I’ll determine that the study, there’s something wrong with it and maybe we need to see a similar study to learn more about what happened. Because it’s usually not right or wrong, it may maybe described incorrectly.

So what I then shifted to was doing just one set. I was always one set per exercise, but I exercise each body part one time per week now. Now I know that training volume is crazy low, but I have my digital display, I have my phone in front of me, and I’m going to show you my results here over the last, so this is my force bar application. I’m going to go to the year-to-date, statistics, I was already strong before this calendar year started, but I have gone from an average total workout force created of 10,000 pounds to over 70,000 pounds. So sevenfold increase, and if you see my exercise time, I have worked out for 11 hours, six minutes, and 17 seconds this year.

Mike: Wow, that’s awesome. So wait, when did you start doing the one exercise a week? So you do one session a week, or is it one A workout and one B workout or one upper and one push-pull? So you do two workouts a week?

Dr. John Jaquish: Basically. I split it three ways. So I did push upper body pull upper body, and then legs.

Mike: Okay, but you’re saying if someone wanted to, as long as they hit one of those core exercises a week, they’re good.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Mike: Wow, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Now for me it became so difficult breaking my records every time that when I read this research, I’m like, I’m going to give this a shot because I bet if I rest a week and then go back to it, I’ll blow my numbers away. And it has happened pretty much every week this year, as you saw in that chart.

Mike: How about just obviously you’re still looking and performing well. How about just overall? How does that make, in the grand scheme of people who might say that’s strength maybe, as far as hypertrophy, just your body size, everything else, how’s that looking versus when you went from one set from that frequency dropping so much?

And I guess the same question, I don’t even want to ask it because I know the answer already, but is that the only thing you’re doing, is just X3?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, that’s the only thing I do. You knew that.

Mike: Yeah, I knew that. But I had to ask because people were going to say, are you doing… Which is still kind of hard to believe. I think the only downside of the system, it is so efficient and so effective. But I could see that the gym rat that’s in all of us, like you, with just your history going to the gym. It’s like maybe you want to do something else or that’s the other question I had was are there inherent limitations? I guess that’s the thought that goes through my brain, is like, well, would there be something better if I could rig something? Would there be a better back exercise to do instead of the bent of a row? You know what I mean?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, okay. That’s the first good question I’ve got in a long time. So yeah, ultimately, if cost was not a thing, we just were going to build a home gym and you were going to make it variable resistance and you had an X3, but you want to go to the most extreme degree, could you rig something up that’s as efficient or even better? Yeah, probably. But I could easily spend $100,000 on that.

Mike: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and ultimately, a friend of mine, Matt Winning, he’s a world record powerlifter. He’s got a variable resistance squat device that, it’s like the greatest thing I’ve ever used. It’s $30,000 and it’s one movement.

Mike: Well, this is some, and again, I don’t know how you feel about I’m just pushing other things on you, but there’s this other thing I heard about that’s this JYM, the Jim Stoppani, the guy, he’s like a supplement guy. He’s making this thing with body elastics, the company that makes the two bands, and they’re making this apparatus that’s supposed to be less than 600, 800 bucks, I don’t know. It folds out, but it’s variable resistance.

So it’s variable tension, but it’s pretty unique, the way it’s anchored. You can do benching, basically all sorts of stuff from it. I’m just asking, if someone were to say pound for pound, that one has more exercises, more options, possibly could do all the things your thing’s doing and better. How would you compete with something like that? Would that be 

Dr. John Jaquish: It doesn’t sound very portable.

Mike: Okay, the portability.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Am I going to have the only effective variable resistance home gym system forever? No. Yeah, there could be things that are great in one movement and suck in another. So I think I have to decide really, are we blowing up the gym? Are we getting rid of gyms? Are we graduating from the idea that we got to go and hang out in a hive of sideways hat losers and pathogens and bacteria? I don’t know if you know this, but the average dumbbell, because of the knurling, because you can’t clean in the knurling, has more viruses, bacteria, and pathogens, 23 times more than the average public toilet seat.

Mike: I believe that. I’ve gotten way less sick from not being in the gym for the last three or four years. And I’m like, that’s the thing that was probably causing a lot of issues.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s the disease exchange. You can give someone what you got and you can pick up something else. What convenience.

Mike: Well, let’s wrap up with this. Where do you see just the future of X3 and just what are your plans for the future with the product and just the brand?

Dr. John Jaquish: So I’m making a documentary film about variable resistance, not just about X3. It’d be like all approaches to variable resistance because while I make a super convenient product that, boy, I believe is better thought out than any product I’ve ever seen for the breadth and depth of the strength training, mass building movements that people need, I want to go into what the powerlifters are doing with variable resistance. What pro athletes are doing, how NFL players, NFL players love X3, but they already had variable resistance stuff in their gym.

So it was really weird. I go to talk to these NFL players and I’m giving them a big dissertation and they’re like, “Oh, we don’t even lift weights. We only use bands. Your system can just get us heavier than what our set-up has at the training facility.” Of course, this blew my mind. I was like, “Really? Are you sure? Because that sounds crazy.” So a lot of pro teams have rejected weights years ago and are sticking to variable resistance movements, mostly because of what Westside Barbell did. Westside Barbell does not get enough credit. I think part of it is as soon as people started talking about variable resistance, they started calling it accommodating resistance I think it was sort of like, is it Kleenex or bath tissue? They wanted to own their term. And by doing that, they just got left behind.

Mike: Yeah, that’s a point.

Dr. John Jaquish: Which is just unfortunate, but yeah.

Mike: And you told me in the future your thought is if you crystal ball if everything goes as planned, that you think people are going to look back at weight training is pretty archaic.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. I think in 15, 20 years people are going to look back, there’s going to be kids that go like, “Do you realize our grandparents used to pick up iron weights, like rocks, and they thought they would be fit by doing that?” And kids will laugh and be like, “What a bunch of idiots.”

Mike: Well I got to ask about the EGYMs. That was the other question I meant to bring up to you. Just the future because machines are now our big equation, just technology. What’s the limitation between using resistance bands and just using a machine replicating variable resistance or is there any limitation to that?

Dr. John Jaquish: No.

Mike: You got to address Tonal.

Dr. John Jaquish: … like Tonal, I think Tonal is a great product, but it has a cap at 200 pounds because otherwise you’ll tear it right out of your… Because it’s got to be installed in the wall of your house, also has to be attached to something load-bearing lyin. But then they cap it at 200 pounds. So it’s like day one, I wouldn’t have been able to use that with any sort of relevance, because-

Mike: But if it was strong enough, theoretically it could surpass the resistance band, it would do the same thing as variable resistance, but just with a computer, with whatever magnetic-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. There’s no way to work your chest with the way that works.

Mike: Well, couldn’t you do just yeah, laying on a bench, just from the bottom? I have that Speediance thing where it’s coming straight down. I just turn it on, turn it off and it’s like this. I’m lying on a bench.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay, yeah. Sure, yeah. There could be a lot of different spring-loaded or magnetic clutch.

Mike: We didn’t even talk about… And then we got to get out or we can wrap it up. But I know we didn’t even talk about the distance. I know that’s a big thing why do you have that distance in the X3 bar? Why do you have it so close, say for chest presses? That’s the big thing.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, that’s a great question. So ultimately, when you take a wider grip, you just go down, the range of motion is just shorter. So taking a wide grip is something that lifters may do in a competition, but what they do in competition and how they train two very different subjects. So X3 is designed for growth, not for competition. So where are your pectorals more contracted? Is the humerus bone closer to the midline of the body or further away? Closer.

Mike: Yeah, closer, yeah. I’ve also just heard in general, the point of rotation, whatever the point is moving, that point of rotation should be closer to that. So the hands closer to the shoulder-

Dr. John Jaquish: I just point that out to people, taking a wide grip is great if you’re in a contest.

Mike: What if you got just a bigger, wider person? There are probably a few and far between, but I guess maybe, I don’t know if that’s something you ever thought about. If someone could have the option-

Dr. John Jaquish: I’ve trained with Cedric McMillan and X3 was perfect for him. I got great pictures from that training.

Mike: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. And then also some of the linemen in the NFL, some of them struggle to, but once they’re in place and they start pushing it, no, they’re great. And as soon as they’re done they’re like, “That’s the best set I’ve ever done in my life.”

Mike: Awesome. Well, I think you’re onto something for sure. And I wanted to wrap up just saying, even when I started recently, I did the one set maybe a month or two ago and I was like, yeah, I just feel like I needed more and that might’ve been more psychological because I’ve gone back to more the one set thing and I can tell you right away, just in the for sure some exercises like the lunge, we didn’t talk about your squat belt, which is awesome. But immediately the reps just kept going, each workout taking, doing literally that one set for that one time. I think I took in, that it was a week between sessions or at least four or five days between each leg session and felt every time it was progressive, so I got stronger each time. So there’s something to that for sure.

Dr. John Jaquish: When you know only have one shot at it, you do it right. When you know you’re going to do it a couple of times, you’re kind of half-assing it the first couple and then the last one you’re already exhausted from a cardiovascular perspective, you’re already exhausted from a muscle glycogen perspective. So the fatigue you might be 

Mike: Well, you can just take the days off because some days I was doing a day on, I would do an A, B, the upper, lower is what I was doing, mixing other stuff. But I would start with that single leg lunge as the first leg exercise each time and it wasn’t going anywhere. And I think it because once I gave myself at least four or five days completely off of that leg and I came back to it, that was fresh and it was just each time now it just goes up.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yep, that extra rest. Oh, interesting. As far as the exercise interval, before, the argument I was making was you want to work every muscle every 48 hours because there’s a great muscle biopsy study, I think there’s only one because there’s not a long line of people that are willing to have a chunk cut out of their muscle every six hours to see when growth stops. I wouldn’t volunteer for that. Those studies showed that muscle protein synthesis stops within 36 hours. The problem is okay, that’s when muscle protein synthesis stops. So that might be where you can conclude flooding your body with a high amount of protein.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that at that 36/48 hour limit, you can reapply a similar stimulus because we don’t know all of the other things that it takes for the body to set the stage for that. So the metabolite buildup, is it possible to… There’s all of those metabolites, if you stimulate and you don’t have them there, then you can’t get any growth. And so it’s the weakness of the biopsy study because, after the biopsy study, you can’t tell that person to go train again. After all, they’ve had six or seven chunks cut out of their muscle, and they’re not able to train for probably a month. So it’s the cadence that was potentially incorrectly assumed. And I think what we learned from that 1, 2, 3, or four training stimuli per muscle group yields the same result. What that’s telling us is you just got to wait longer for the metabolites to come back and we just don’t have a good read on that. We haven’t even identified all of the metabolites.

Mike: And among other things, that just might need more recovery and repair other than muscle protein synthesis and just metabolites. There could be a lot of other things, central nervous system fatigue and stuff like that. 

Dr. John Jaquish: Ultimately I know when I wait a week, I smash my record every time.

Mike: Yeah, awesome. Anything else? I’ll put all this stuff where to find you. I think that was awesome. I think we covered a lot of ground. Hopefully will be putting some people at bay, but maybe not. You might’ve angered a lot more people from this.

Dr. John Jaquish: Maybe, maybe not. I just think that if you’re willing to ignore so many pieces of scientific evidence, you’re getting left out. Don’t do that. Like I said, I’ve yet to meet somebody who bought X3, we have 300,000 customers, so I don’t know them all, but I’ve yet to meet somebody who’s been using X3 and just cannot grow muscle.

Whereas almost everybody I talk to, it’s like, “How long have you been going to the gym?” “Oh, four years.” “How much mass have you put on the four years?” And they go, “Well, I pulled a hamstringing.” It’s like they come up with excuses for themselves that it’s a bullshit story they’re telling themselves. Basically what, they’re saying is they haven’t made any progress at all in four years.

Mike: I think you’re sincere 100% too, that’s the big thing. I think people might look at you off the cuff or just the program with a book and be like, this guy’s just trying to sell me a product and a thing.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Mike: But I think for sure the level of confidence in what you’re saying, I think for me, definitely you’re 100% sincere in what you’re saying. Also, you’re speaking your mind, so I think that might be some people who aren’t used to hearing. But you say it how it is. But I think at the very least, I think people can respect that.

Dr. John Jaquish: I have the same personality type, you know the Myers-Briggs personality type?

Mike: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’ve got the same one as Donald Trump. So I understand, my whole life, I’ve just said it how it was. And people were like, “Well, how could you say that?” And I’m like, “How can you not accept what I just said?”

Mike: Yeah. Well, I think the argument I always tell people, is if you were just trying to shill and just sell a product, it would be easier to not do what you’re doing and just here’s the product, here’s for sale, can use some of more flashy marketing and not be so on your face or not be so confident and say all these things that are so divisive from a fitness standpoint that might turn some people away. So I think-

Dr. John Jaquish: I get trolled about nutrition and even my team here is like, “Man, don’t talk. We don’t make any money out of nutrition. Why are you telling people to have low carbohydrates?” They’ll get better results.

Mike: We didn’t even get into that. You were talking about, you told me some study one time about what was the minimum need for glycogen replacement.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, it’s 0.3. It’s 0.3 multiplied by your body weight in kilograms. So I weigh a little over 100 kilos, but let’s just say it’s 100. So that would mean 30 grams of carbohydrates per day is my saturation point.

Mike: And that was based out of where? Where’d you hear that again? Just so people can look up.

Dr. John Jaquish: Meta-analysis, About Menno Henselmans, was one of the authors of that study.

Mike: And that was already published you said, or recently published?

Dr. John Jaquish: It was recently published. In the book, I say much higher carbohydrate recommendation. But this one is a lot lower and it was done with much more scientific rigor and it was a better study. And of course, the fewer carbohydrates I end up eating, the leaner I am, even while getting stronger. So I’m going to stick with that.

Mike: Awesome. Well, let’s wrap it up there. I appreciate your time.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Mike, this was great.

Mike: Awesome.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, if you get any other questions, and I’m sure there’ll be more after this, we can do it again. We can address the new set of questions.