November 28, 2020

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/fitness-podcasts/variable-resistance-training/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:02] Podcast Sponsors

[00:03:51] Guest Introduction

[00:06:25] Why Lifting Weights Is the Wrong Way to Build Muscle

[00:15:03] A Workout Using the Variable Resistance Training Protocol

[00:17:31] Ways to Maximize Hyperplasia in The Muscles During Variable Resistance Training

[00:27:10] Podcast Sponsors

[00:29:08] Why You Shouldn't Worry About Your Muscle Fiber Type

[00:31:39] The Questions an Ideal Exercise Program Should Cover

[00:41:35] Why Doing Cardio for Weight Loss Is A Lie?

[0:47:30] Selecting the Best Variable Resistance Training Bands

[00:53:45] Whether or Not Drugs Are Necessary to Enhance Training

[01:00:05] How the Fitness Industry Has Failed to Make People Truly Fit

[01:03:29] Closing the Podcast

[01:04:16] End of Podcast

Ben:  On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

John:  If your goal is to show off and throw weights on the floor like a child or a CrossFitter, okay, then go for it. The development of the product brought me to a conclusion that strength training is a lot more simple than it really has been presented to us, but we're just doing the wrong thing. When you look at how the fitness industry has done, the leanest 1% of males are 11% body fat. That's not impressive.

Ben:  Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

Are you sick of lifting weights? Well, guess what, I've got another controversial guest on today because he thinks weightlifting is a total waste of time, and you're going to find out why.

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Alright, folks. It's been a while, it's been a while since I interviewed today's guest. But a while ago, I guess maybe like two years ago, we talked about how to work out in 10 minutes a day, how to increase bone density, how to gain muscle, not just maintain muscle but gain muscle with 10 minutes of exercise every day. And it was a really interesting episode in which we talked about this concept of variable resistance training and gave some really cool tips. And I will link to that original episode in the podcast shownotes, which you're going to find at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/wasteoftime. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/wasteoftime.

Why waste of time? Because this guy just wrote a new book called “Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There's a Better Way to Have the Body that You Want.” Quite compelling title and I thought it was going to be gimmicky when I got this book, and then I read it, and it's actually really good. So, I think I read it in like one night in bed, couldn't put it down, and then texted him the next day and was like, “Alright, dude. Let's do a show.” So, anyways, my guest is Dr. John Jaquish, and he's been made relatively famous not only for his work in building medical technology called OsteoStrong, which if you've ever been to a Tony Robbins conference, you've probably seen it. It's an extremely effective bone density building medical technology. But he also invented the X3 Bar, which is essentially like an Olympic barbell training system that you can travel with anywhere in the world. And we talked about that quite a bit in our last episode, and it allows you literally like hundreds of pounds of squats and deadlifts and anything else using this method of training called variable resistance training, which actually does save you a ton of time. And I personally travel with this thing all over the world.

So, anyways, I have a ton of questions after reading John's book. So, I'm going to shut up and welcome you to the show, John.

John:  Hey, Ben. Thanks for having me. You know, I'd never corrected you last time, so you've been saying my last name wrong for like–

Ben:  I never do that.

John:  It's pronounced Jaquish.

Ben:  Really?

John:  So, my fault, yeah.

Ben:  I think you should call it Jaquish, man. Jaquish sounds better. You talk to your parents.

John:  Yes, but it is the way it is. It's sort of like science that I tell people about that upsets them because it means they've been screwing around and pissing–

Ben:  Good segue, man. I like how you did that. Well, you actually talk about that in the book. You say that weightlifting has everything backwards.

And so, I want to jump in right there because weightlifting has been around last time I checked for quite some time, and now you're throwing a grenade in there and saying, “No, you guys got it wrong.” So, explain to me why you say weightlifting has everything backwards.

John:  Because we underload joints, I'm going to quote Peter Attia here, we underload joints and–I'm sorry, we overload joints and underload muscle. That's what he says. When we pick a weight we're going to lift–and let me preface this by saying if your goal is to grow muscle and develop your body, then weightlifting is a waste of time. If your goal is to pick up weights and throw them on the ground to make a loud noise, I got nothing for you.

Ben:  Okay. Now, when you say weightlifting, what's your definition if you say weightlifting has everything backwards? And if you say that if your goal is to just pick heavy stuff up and set it back down and waste your time, what are you referring to? Are you referring to like O-lifting, powerlifting, bodybuilding?

John:  It depends. It all depends on what your goal is. Your goal is to develop your body. Weightlifting is not something you should be doing. If your goal is to show off and throw weights on the floor like a child or a CrossFitter, okay, then go for it, but that's not who I'm really talking to, because I realize a lot of guys who lift weights, it's really about the way that they want to talk about lifting, not really developing their body. And that shocked me. I didn't even realize that was a thing.

Ben:  You mean you have found that guys tend to be more focused on the amount of weight that they're lifting than changes in their anatomy?

John:  Yeah.

Ben:  That surprised me, actually.

John:  Yeah, yeah. It surprised me, too. Because even people trying to have a serious conversation with me, they're like, “But what do I tell people?” It's like, who cares?

Ben:  Well, I should say it surprises me for a recreational exerciser, who I would tend to place into the bucket of doing many things for aesthetics, sometimes for functional athleticism, but often for aesthetics. That's a lion's share I think of bros walking around the gym, for example, and many women as well. But then in the sector of athletics, professional athletics, whatever, CrossFitting, Spartan triathlon, you name it, I know in those situations, it wouldn't surprise me that people are more focused on performance metrics than anatomical or aesthetic metrics. So, I think it probably depends on the audience that we're talking about here.

John:  Sure, sure, sure. So, for people who want to develop, change their bodies, especially in the most extreme way, what you need to do is load the body in accordance with its capacity. So, when I was doing the research with the bone density medical devices that I invented, it was very clear to me that we could put people in the position they would normally absorb high impact forces, and they could massively load the body, like I'm talking deconditioned elderly women who had never exercised in any way in their life. After six months, we're putting five times their body weight through their hip joint, maybe even seven times their body weight through their hip joint. Well, that's weight that a weightlifter can't even use with full-range movement. So, I'm looking at just the impact rating range of motion and I thought, “Wow, humans are capable of so much more in this position that you would normally absorb high impact.” And so, it's a combination of leverage with the different positioning of different bones. So, there's that factor, but that also comes into play when the muscle is, the target muscle is at its shorter position, not shortest, but a shorter position. And so, when we isolate these positions, humans are capable of seven times more than they are in a gym type environment because in a gym type environment, you're picking–

Ben:  When you say a gym type environment, you mean lifting weights typically in what would be called an isotonic-based format? You pick the weight up, you put it down. You're talking about instead something that we discussed a little bit in the last podcast, but I'm going to make the assumption that some people may not have listened to that. You're talking about instead keeping a high amount of tension on the muscle throughout a full range of motion as being a superior way to train, and that is your definition of variable resistance training?

John:  Correct. And the high tension is variable in that–the tension needs to be magnitudes higher in these impact positions, and then it needs to drop off. So, when I do a chest press, when I'm just short of lockout, I'm holding 540 pounds. As I let the weight come towards my body, when I'm in the halfway position, it might be 300 pounds, and then it's $100 at the bottom. So, I might do 25 repetitions and get to that 540 pounds 20 times. But then after I've done that, I can no longer continue, like I've gone to fatigue, but I can still get to the halfway point. So, I do half reps.

Ben:  Because you still have strength through half range of motion, you don't have strength through full range of motion, so you can essentially keep on cheating through half reps at that point.

John:  Well, I don't call it cheating, but–

Ben:  Yeah, but a lot of people understand that language. You know what I mean.

John:  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd call them half reps or something. So, I'm getting to that 300 pounds. And then, the last few repetitions may only be that 100 pounds in that weakest range of motion, but now I've fully fatigued the muscle. And fatigue, that is–you know because you use it, but it is a far more profound level of fatigue. And the more intense the fatigue, the greater the adaptation. And so, people grow very quickly.

Ben:  Right, Okay. So, I want to summarize for people who may need to get the quick and dirty summary here of variable resistance training. And again, go listen to my other podcast with John if you want a deep, deep dive into the science of variable resistance training. But essentially, when you walk into a gym, you'll find that some weightlifters are doing things like hooking cables, and bands, and chains, and all sorts of things like that to barbells and dumbbells to allow the actual weight to change as they move through a range of motion based on the idea that the body is naturally stronger at certain points of a lift. Meaning that as John just explained, if you're like halfway through the–let's say a bench press, you're actually going to be producing more force than you might be able to at, say, the very bottom of the bench press. And you might be able to produce even more force than that at the very top of the bench press.

And so, using variable resistance like chains, or bands, or something like that would allow you to challenge yourself during the entire lift, and then furthermore, when you pair that with, as you poop out during a set and you begin to not be able to move through full range of motion, you can simply continue to do reps moving through partial range of motion, again still using some type of variable resistance apparatus. And what you're saying, John, is that if your goal is to actually maximize your time working out with a minimal effective dose of exercise, and your goal is primarily force production/muscle maintenance/muscle building, that it's a pretty dang good way to train in an extremely time-effective manner.

John:  Yeah. I think it's the only way. I would never waste my time lifting weights now that I know what variants can do. I mean, unless I decided I was training for like an actual weightlifting event because then you have to get good at the sport of lifting a static weight through an entire range of motion. That's a completely different subject.

Ben:  Okay. Got it. So, with something like variable resistance training, what I'd like to do–I have a lot of other questions for you about things you talk about in the book like cardio, and blood flow restriction training, and some really interesting things you have on growth hormone and testosterone.

First question I have for you regarding variable resistance training, since we're on this topic already, is what does an actual workout look like? Let's say I've got your X3 Bar. Let's say I'm going to use your X3 Bar and I've got my bands, they're hooked up to this bar that you develop that's like an Olympic training barbell but it fits in a suitcase, and I've got all my equipment, what's the actual workout look like to be able to adhere to the variable resistance protocol that we just talked about?

John:  So, we do a push-pull split, which is pretty standard. One day, one workout. The next day, the next workout. It takes 36 hours for a muscle to completely recover and complete muscle protein synthesis. And we know this through muscle biopsy studies as a very high level of evidence. So, we have complete recovery and adaptation between workouts. But each workout is really just four sets. So, it can take you 10 minutes. The reason we do multiple sets is because the stimulus is lousy. Like when I say to somebody, they say, “Well, one set is ridiculous,” and I got to say, “Okay. How many sets do you need to do in the sun to get a suntan?”

Ben:  With traditional weightlifting, you're saying that multiple sets become necessary because you're training inefficiently, but what you're saying is that if you're doing single set to failure variable resistance training in the way we just described, you can get away with just one set?

John:  Anything more would be over stimulus. There's one correct way to do it, and it is one set. That's it.

Ben:  How many reps?

John:  We go higher reps because you're using higher weight. It's mostly for safety purposes. So, we go between 15 and 40 repetitions.

Ben:  Okay. Got it. And then, are you resting it all in between any of the exercises in the push sequence versus the pull sequence, or just go on exercise, exercise, exercise?

John:  Yeah. You just feel like you've been hit by a truck after every set. So, it's a hard set you'll ever have.

Ben:  Yeah. I actually borrow a little bit from like the strong first [00:17:03] ____ crowd and in between sets, kind of do like a boxer would, like some bouncing, some moving around, keeping the blood flow going. And then, once I feel ready, I'll go and tackle the next set to failure. I'm typically doing this like in my hotel room, or in a park, or where I happen to be exercising with minimal equipment. And so, I'll just bounce around. Typically, it takes me around 60 to 90 seconds, and then I'll go on to the next set. So, it takes about 10 to 15 minutes through the full routine.

John:  Yeah. That's right.

Ben:  Okay. So, that's what the actual routine looks like. Now, I want to backpedal a little bit here and actually get into a little bit more of the science behind this. One thing I want to ask you about is hyperplasia, which you discussed in the book. Meaning that muscle cells and muscle fibers can split to form additional new fibers, and that's basically what hyperplasia is. And you talked in the book about ways to actually maximize, not hypertrophy, like an increase in the size of the muscle cell or the muscle fiber, but hyperplasia, again an increase in the number of cells and fibers. Now, when it comes to hyperplasia, why did you write about it in the book? What does that have to do with variable resistance training?

John:  It happens to very high-level strength athletes, and you can get more of the effect by going through specific protocol. I wanted to give the person who reads the book, who maybe doesn't know what X3 is, something that's very valuable that they're not going to find in hardly any other books. There's 32 pages out of 268 that are specifically about X3. I didn't want to make the book like necessarily a commercial for my product, though I do talk a lot about it because the development of the product brought me to a conclusion that strength training is a lot more simple than it really has been presented to us, but we're just doing the wrong thing. Like, picking up static weight is just garbage next to using a high level of variance with variable resistance. So, I just wanted to give people something that they could apply like the next day. But also, yeah, it's super useful because in the hyperplasia protocol, it works especially with what we do with amplifying cellular hydration.

Ben:  Yeah. I get that, I get that, but what I'm asking is can you explain to people like how you actually maximize hyperplasia, like what's your strategy for maximizing this increase in the number of muscle cells and muscle fibers that's going to obviously when stacked with muscle fiber hypertrophy going to allow for significant adaptations when it comes to just your overall muscular development?

John:  You want to create as much internal pressure in the cell and a relaxation of the cell at rest. So, when you're going through muscle protein synthesis, really, the biggest constraint to hyperplasia and cellular growth has to do with the external pressure of the fascia that surrounds the entire muscle. If you can get that to relax by super hydrating the cell, and also by stretching the muscle while it is super hydrated, you create a little bit of extra space, and that extra space allows or encourages the cells to split.

Ben:  Okay. So, this would be like if I had a balloon, and let's say that that balloon is the actual muscle fiber or muscle cell itself, or let's say it's full of muscle fibers or muscle cells, right, what you're saying is that the balloon, the lining or the skin of the balloon would be the fascia. And if we can pull that balloon in all directions and stretch, stretch, stretch it so we got more room for the muscle cells or the muscle fibers to multiply, to increase in number, which is what hyperplasia is, and then simultaneously put a whole bunch more fluid in that balloon so it presses even more against that fascia that we've stretched, that based on what research has shown about hyperplasia, that combination of hyperhydration and stretching would result in an improved hyperplasic response?

John:  That's right.

Ben:  Okay.

John:  That's right. There's a friend of yours who really made this discovery. It was Professor Jose Antonio.

Ben:  Oh, no kidding.

John:  Yeah. He documented the hell out of it. This was his dissertation project.

Ben:  So, for the stretch part, are you just saying–I mean, like, do yoga or stretch in between your sets? What does the stretch part involve?

John:  I wouldn't say yoga. You'd want to really get a hard stretch for 30 seconds, and I would do all the stretching after. But you stretch the target, the muscles that you just worked.

Ben:  Okay. Yeah. I think there's one study that you cite in the book where they took some pretty rapid measurements of flexibility adaptation after stretching and found that if you can hit the muscle like within about six minutes after you finish the workout, like for your post-workout stretching, and then you hold for around 30 seconds, which allows more blood flow into the muscle, that's kind of the way to do it. So, for example, if you were doing the X3 Bar and you did one single set to exhaustion of the chest press, well, at some point in that six-minute window following your full workout, some kind of stretch for the chest like, whatever, a hang from a pull-up bar or a chest stretch against the wall, or anything like that, you'd get in that position, hold it for 30 seconds, give the fascia a nice deep stretch. And that, if you combine it with the hyperhydration, which we'll talk about in a second, would allow for maximizing hyperplasia.

John:  That's right.

Ben:  Alright. So, how do you hyperhydrate?

John:  So, I do a vasodilator and then a small amount of carbohydrates after the workout. So, vasodilator before the workout, which can be on a medium effect you'd get from glycerol or epimedium, which are both natural–well, I mean, what's natural?

Ben:  Yeah. I mean, well, they're vasodilatory agents, right? I mean, they'll be like arginine, citrulline, nitric oxide, beetroot, anything that's going to open up a blood vessel you're saying will assist with hyperhydration?

John:  That's right, that's right. And then, of course, the more powerful ones would be like Viagra.

Ben:  Yeah. I actually know a lot of athletes and lifters who really dig Viagra, and I've used it prior to workouts, and I've discussed this I think when we did our podcast on blood flow restriction training on other podcasts with Jay Campbell. Like, there's a lot of benefits to sildenafil, the active component of Viagra in terms of the nitric oxide response that make it pretty potent for working out. And that's also the reason it's banned by WADA because it's pretty potent as a pre-workout. But yeah. The vasodilatory part makes sense because if you're going to hydrate a cell, you obviously need more blood flow to it. But there are a couple other compounds that are interesting. One I used to use before it became banned, or on the banned substance list, and that's glycerol, just like straight glycerol powder–

John:  It's off the banned substance list now.

Ben:  Okay. It's off now, alright. Yeah. I haven't been following the banned substance list so much since I quit competing.

John:  Yeah. This is just a supplement, like people were like, “Come on, guys.”

Ben:  Yeah, but it draws a bunch of water into the muscle. And also, that's kind of a one-two combo because it also has a vasodilatory effect, which is interesting because glycerol is dirt cheap. I mean, you just get glycerol on Amazon. And you're saying you would use something like glycerol for the hyperhydration with a vasodilator. And then, the other one would be something that I think many people are familiar with as a cellular hydration amplifier, and that would be just basic creatine monohydrate.

John:  That's right.

Ben:  Okay. So, let's summarize thus far. You're going to work out for 10 minutes with variable resistance training, single set to failure, push one day, pull the next day, something like a four workout a week, or you could even do a full-body protocol. I kind of like the full-body protocol almost every day. That's the way I sometimes do it when I travel. It's also because I just like to move every day. And then, beforehand, some type of vasodilatory and hyperhydrating substance to maximize hyperplasia, then afterwards, stretch each of the muscles that you worked for about 30 seconds, and that's kind of the hack for minimal effective dose getting hyperplasia and hypertrophy using variable resistance training.

John:  Yeah. I mean, the only time I would ever recommend carbohydrates would be in that 30-minute window after, after you stretched because carbohydrates also replace glycogen very quickly when you're glycogen-depleted. So, right after a workout, before the gluconeogenesis starts for somebody who's ketogenic. So, you can absorb–and I believe now that the research would say–the research I cited says anywhere from like 0.5 to 0.7 grams per pound of body weight. I've been going a little lower than that because I feel like I have an insulin event if I go to that recommendation. So, I'll go below half. So, I get maybe 40 grams of carbohydrates.

Ben:  Okay. Got it.

John:  Which is small amount. My muscles look like they're going to explode.

Ben:  Yeah. I mean, that's the old secret from–for my days in bodybuilding, once you did your morning pose off and judging between the morning show and the evening show, I mean, I do pancakes, bread, just as many carbs as I get my hands on and I'd just be swole by the evening. Sometimes I put on 12, 15 pounds in a day just between morning and evening.

John:  Would your stomach be bloated also?

Ben:  A little bit, yeah. And a lot of times, you'll see bloat in some bodybuilders when they're posing for the evening shows because–

John:  Oh, yeah. Looked like they swallow the sea turtle.

Ben:  Yeah. You get fermentation, and yeah, it can definitely happen. I'm not saying it's a healthy practice, but that's how you do it.

John:  Nobody ever said bodybuilding was about health.

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I want to ask you a few other questions. While we're on the topic of hyperplasia and muscle fibers, one of the things that you believe, or at least you talk about in the book, is that you shouldn't worry too much about your unique muscle fiber type. And a lot of people are doing–don't do muscle biopsies, but a lot of times like genetic testing to see, “Am I more type 1 versus type 2? Should I be doing strength training versus endurance training?” And you say it doesn't really matter that much at all. Why do you say that?

John:  Yeah. So, it pretty much says people do strength training regardless of what type of muscle they have. So, slow-twitch versus fast-twitch, it really has to do with the speed at which a cell turns on. And we're talking about microseconds. Now, it just so happens that people with a lot more slow-twitch become better marathon runners, people with a lot of fast-twitch become better sprinters. However, when it comes to building of muscle, especially size, it doesn't matter.

Ben:  Well, I think that if you are doing strength training in the way that we've described, and you actually are going to failure, you're recruiting every muscle fiber. You're recruiting both slow-twitch and fast-twitch. You're not just working type 1 or type 2 muscle fibers in isolation, you're working all of them. And I think one study you talk about in the book is how total muscle fiber mass increases, but the ratio of fiber types remains constant proving that all the fiber types are affected.

John:  Yeah. You did a better job explaining than I did.

Ben:  Right.

John:  You read the study.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. No. I did my homework. So, basically, you don't have to say, “Well, I'm more like type 2. Therefore, I should focus on maybe a heavier set, lower reps,” or, “I'm type one, so I'm going to do high rep, low weight.” Just do the full single set to failure in the manner that we've described exhausting yourself, and then moving through the range of motion that you're actually able to handle even after a previous range of motion is exhausted and you're basically going to utilize every muscle fiber. And it's almost very similar to something like–if you were to–let's say you're injured or you're rehabbing and you have to use electric muscle stimulation, anybody knows that that can make you super sore because that electrical muscle stimulation is just grabbing every single fiber, often fibers you haven't been using, or muscle groups you haven't been using. And what we're talking about is trying to get the same effect using something like variable resistance training.

John:  Right.

Ben:  Okay. Got it. Okay. So, that was a question I had about the muscle fiber composition ratio. And then, I also wanted to, and this might be a little bit more of an involved question, but you talk in the book about the questions that an ideal exercise program should answer, and you specifically have a few criteria. And I want to ask you questions about the–you really have three criteria. One is that you want to get the max amount of hypoxia, meaning, low oxygen in the actual muscle that's being worked, and myostatin downregulation. Why is that and how can we get those?

John:  So, we have noticed through different research studies and different protocols, mostly with blood flow restriction, that we get a downregulation of myostatin when we create a hypoxic effect in a muscle. And this was mostly obvious when they do blood flow restriction studies where somebody's obviously restricting their extremities, you can't really restrict your core, but they would notice pectoral growth when somebody would do blood flow restriction in the legs. So, it's obviously not something that's affecting the local muscle that is constricted, this is system-wide, and this is how the myostatin effect was discovered with blood flow restriction. But blood flow restriction has some limitations because your body–well, let me just stick with myostatin. So, we knew that keeping the blood from returning to the heart, however we do that, is going to downregulate myostatin. And for those who aren't familiar with what that does, that changes–

Ben:  Google myostatin knockout bull, or myostatin knockout mouse, or myostatin knockout dog, and you'll see what he means, giant muscle-bound animals.

John:  Giant muscular animals, right.

Ben:  Yeah, because myostatin is a–it's a myokine, it's protein produced and released by myocytes and it inhibits myogenesis, which is basically exactly what we're talking about, hyperplasia, hypertrophy, muscle cell growth, muscle cell differentiation, pretty much all of that is encoded by that gene. And so, you want to inhibit myostatin and you're saying that one of the better ways to do that is by inducing some kind of a hypoxic state within the cell as you're training?

John:  That's right.

Ben:  Okay. So, how would one achieve that if they weren't going to use something like tourniquets and do blood flow restriction?

John:  Yeah. The problem with tourniquets is your body knows there's a tourniquet there, and that's why you can only train very light because you have all kinds of neural inhibitory processes going on. If you've got something clamped on your arm that's keeping blood flow from happening, that's why you got to cut the weight by 75%. But if you just use constant tension with variable resistance, which is part of the standard due to every exercise with X3 encompasses this. You get that hypoxic effect, but you also are using a lot more muscle cells because you're allowed to train much heavier than you even would–I mean, forget about training with blood flow restriction, you're heavier than you would in a normal gym environment.

Ben:  But, it requires constant tension. If you go to full lockout or you rest in between reps, that's not going to do hypoxia. That's one thing that I've seen in the literature, is that it does require constant tension under load. So, if you're one of those people who's doing intra rep rest, or you're, whatever, locking out at the end of a chest press, holding it there, taking a few breaths, and then going through the range of motion, you're not going to induce hypoxia.

So, you have to move through full range of motion in a manner that does not involve resting at lockout or resting at the beginning of the range of motion to induce that hypoxia, if you're not using something like blood flow restriction bands or Kaatsu bands, right?

John:  Right.

Ben:  So, the idea behind the blood flow restriction, of course, is that, if you were injured or you could only use lightweights or, maybe, you're traveling and you don't have variable resistance training on you or something like that, you can get the same effect with blood flow restriction training.

Now, I actually want to correct you about something you put in the book, though, John, that I disagree with you on. And, I disagree with you on this point. You say that because blood flow restriction is training light because you just can't train heavy when the muscles are restricted from blood flow, that, therefore, if you're training light, you're not going to stimulate testosterone receptor activity or trigger testosterone or upregulate growth hormone. Now, that's true if you're training light in the absence of blood flow restriction. But, there are a variety of studies that show a hormonal response that is significant to low-intensity, low-weight blood flow restriction exercise. So, I still think that you get a significant growth hormone and testosterone response if you are training with light weights if the muscle is tourniquet or if you're using blood flow restriction.

So, I think that you were kind of right when you wrote that in the book. But, at the same time, I think that that goes out the window if you actually are restricting blood flow, from all the literature that I've seen.

John:  Interesting. So, to the same degree? [00:37:16] _____

Ben:  No. You're never going to get as high as you would with a high-intensity, high-load protocol, but what they have done is compared blood flow restriction training under light load to regular training under heavy load, and the testosterone response is a little bit higher with the heavy load without the blood flow restriction training, even though you get a pretty significant testosterone response even with low load training with blood flow restriction bands.

But, here's what's interesting. The growth hormone response is the same between low-load training with vascular restriction and traditional high-load resistance exercise. So, long story short is you actually can get a hormonal response with blood flow restriction training.

John:  Okay. You're not really going to get any, it's just a lower.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly.

John:  So, well, there'll be a second edition. I can–

Ben:  Yeah. Well, got into the weeds a little bit. So, what I mentioned was that you said there were questions that an ideal exercise program should answer. And so, one is we got to induce hypoxia in myostatin down-regulation. That makes sense. Number two was you said that you need to get stability firing if you want to get a really high growth hormone effect. What does that mean, stability firing?

John:  So, my co-author and I in 2016 did a meta-analysis of different destabilization type protocols, and then, destabilization type protocols with weight added, and how much of a growth hormone effect there was. Because, it was very observable, like a standard squat, free-weight squat, there's a growth hormone effect. But, there's like a leg press or leg sled type of exercise where you might be using a lot more weight. There is no growth hormone event at all.

Ben:  Because you are not having to stabilize the muscles as intensely when you have that kind of–Well, they're both close kinetic chain exercises, but the leg press obviously involves far less stability mechanisms than something like a squat.

John:  That's right.

Ben:  So, if I'm using the variable resistance training, if I'm doing the X3 Bar and if I'm at the top of, let's say, a shoulder press and my muscles are shaking, the best way I can describe it is the muscles are shaking, they're very unstable. What you're saying is that, if you can induce unstability during a workout, then you've seen literature suggesting that that's going to amplify the growth hormone effect.

John:  Yeah, in the meta-analysis, we got 23 different data sets.

Ben:  I wasn't aware of that. Actually, that's really good to know.

John:  It's magical. Once you realize this is why people who train with barbells, it's like, “Do you use any machines?” I'm like, “I don't really get any results out of machines.” That's why .

Ben:  So, that's number two. And then, number three, you said that you have to make the weights that you work with heavier to trigger the maximum possible amount of testosterone up-regulation and the greatest activity in testosterone receptors. To me, that third point seems to be the most straightforward. All you're saying is that you're not going to get a testosterone response that's significant by lifting light weights with, probably, the only exception being–

John:  [00:40:35] _____ heavy. If you want to grow, it's got to be heavy.

Ben:  It's got to be heavy. With the only exception being blood flow restriction training. If you just can't lift heavy loads, you're still going to get a greater testosterone response than nothing at all.

John:  Right.

Ben:  So, that makes sense. So, basically, there's a lot of stuff we're stacking here. We want hypoxia. We want myostatin down-regulation. We want instability.

John:  It's true.

Ben:  We want the maximum load that we can lift. Ideally, if we can, we want some type of vasodilatory substance or hyper-hydrating substance beforehand. We want to push the muscle through failure through each of the different ranges of motion, preferably, an unstable environment. And, if we are doing this correctly, not wanting to waste a lot of time, we're achieving that all in one single set. That's kind of the summary of everything we've discussed so far.

John:  You're an amazing interviewer, dude. God, you do your homework. Yes, exactly.

Ben:   I love to geek out on this stuff.

John:  Me, too.

Ben:  So, this is all are very cool.

So, what about cardio? Because I've interviewed way back in the day the guy who invented super-slow training. And, he said that you get so much peripheral resistance in the arteries and vasculature, moving away through a slow range of motion, that you see a decreased blood pressure response, an increased stroke volume in the heart, and all these things that you normally get through cardio, I think that was Doug McGuff that I interviewed about this, you can get through resistance training. So, we're not even talking about cardiovascular health, but we're talking about weight loss. You say cardio for weight loss is a lie. And, I'm curious why you say that.

John:  Most of what I chose to talk about is what the mainstream is looking for, which is aesthetic. Most people do cardio, when you ask them, “Why do you do cardio?” And, they're like, “Well, I want to be lean.” I don't think it's a very good way to approach being lean, because you get a much longer cortisol effect.

Ben:  And, I should mention, a decreased growth hormone and testosterone response.

John:  Well, that's right.

Ben:  We're talking about chronic cardio. We're not talking about–

John:  That's right. Sometimes, an hour cardio. More than 20 minutes. 20 minutes seems to be the threshold. So, when somebody's doing a lot of cardio, they're up-regulating cortisol in a chronic manner. And, cortisol's objective is, really, diminishing muscle mass and protecting body fat, holding as much body fat as possible. And, that's really the opposite of what somebody wants when they're doing cardio.

Now, I know a lot of cardio people do a lot of cardio and they don't care how much muscle mass they have. I'm thinking of a lot of women, which is unfortunate, because I think women who hold a little bit of muscle actually look incredibly feminine. But, that's sort of the question that a lot of women have, like, “I don't want to look like a man, so I only do cardio.” And then, they end up just sort of being skinny fat. So, they have diminished muscle mass, poor posture. They're slumped forward.

Ben:  I don't know, man. If Gwyneth Paltrow does it, it must work.

John:  Yeah, let's talk about the rocks she tells people to hold in their vaginas that cause infections. Do you want to talk about that?

Ben:  No, vaginal infections aren't on my list of things to discuss today.

John:  [00:44:08] _____ that. People should look into that.

Ben:  Yeah, just Google that. Long story short is that what you're saying is that you're getting a down-regulation of the growth hormone and testosterone that you would normally want to be able to enhance lipolysis and, also, be in a more anabolic phase.

John:  Right, you want high-growth hormone, and you want low cortisol.

Ben:  And, at the same time, you're breaking down lean muscle tissue, which is going to obviously affect overall metabolic rate and even non-exercise-based activity thermogenesis, the rest of the time that you're not training. And so, I think that's all pretty straightforward. But, I do want to mention that I do cardio. I do. And, the reason for that is that I think it does have a place when it comes to metabolic efficiency and some amount of fat-burning efficiency. I'll explain what I mean here in a second. And, I also think that there is something that is, and even Dr. Andrew Huberman kind of talks about this in some of his neuroscience research, there's this meditative low blood pressure, decreased stress response to this concept of constantly moving forward.

Now, the caveat here is that, for me, cardio means that I'll get up in the morning fasted and walk up and down the farm road with the dog for a half-hour, or I will try to hit 15,000 steps a day just by engaging in a low-level physical activity throughout the day. I'd no longer do my one-hour beat down on the treadmill at a moderate intensity or a long two-hour hammer fest on the bike where I'm just chronic cardio over and over again.

So, I define cardio in two different ways. One, I define as a more kind of ancestrally appropriate. I'm hunting. I'm gathering. I'm gardening. I'm moving slowly throughout the day. And, I think that's perfectly appropriate for metabolic efficiency, for fat loss, and even for some of the overall health benefits, from de-stressing, simulating meditation to a certain extent, constantly moving forward.

But then, when you cross the threshold to I'm just going to hop on the elliptical trainer for 45 minutes and jam or I got my one-hour treadmill session, or I'm just going to go ride the bike down the trail for an hour out and an hour back, don't fool yourself into thinking that that is going to accelerate weight loss, fat loss, specifically. But, do know that it's going to inhibit any amount of lean muscle gain and, probably, decelerate or even impair any type of aesthetic performance. That's kind of my approach to cardio.

John:  You got it.

Ben:  Alright. So, do you do that, by the way? Do you do much walking or just kind of low-level physical activity throughout the day?

John:  Not really.

Ben:  Because you're kind of jacked. And, I don't find many super jacked guys who move a whole lot. It's like Dan John's “Mass Made Simple.” I interviewed him about that book. He's like, lift weights, eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and watch football the rest of the time.

John:  I would not eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But, yeah, basically.

Ben:  Maybe, an almond butter and blueberry, I don't know, crepe on a lovely sourdough bread or something like that. Maybe, we should redefine peanut butter and jelly.

John:  It sounds better, but I'd probably just do this thing.

Ben:  Kind of. Just give me a ribeye. So, I've got a few other questions for you, John, because I know that people might wonder about this.

Variable resistance training. I'm going to go to Amazon. I'm going to grab myself some of the top-ranked elastic training bands on there or some elastic tubing from Rogue Fitness or whatever or, maybe, my local sporting goods store, take that back and start doing this single set to failure training, just holding the bands and holding the tubing. And, I'm curious, what you think about that. Because I seem to recall in our other interview that there's a difference in the elasticity of certain forms of bands.

John:  Unfortunately, my initial plan when I realized what humans were capable of, the seven-fold difference, how strong we are in the impact-ready range of motion, truly fatiguing your muscle at. We needed banding that was far more powerful than anything that was available. But then, the problem is when you get a pull-up assist band, so there were some bands out there that had a lot of power in them. They could offload your body weight by a few hundred pounds with pull-up assist. You know what I'm talking about when you're hooking around a chin-up bar. If you throw one of those heavy bands and, of course, X3 bands are five, 10 times even heavier than those, in trying to push up with it or a squat or something, you could break your ankle or your wrist. Those are really powerful. And, they're putting lateral force through joints that should not have lateral force put through them.

Ben:  Because, as you are moving the resistance band through range of motion, it's pulling both laterally and vertically?

John:  That's right. And so, I realized, people were just going to get hurt if they tried to do this. They weren't going to get any results at all. They're just going to get a different type of injured than they would with regular weights. So, I realized, we needed an Olympic bar. An Olympic bar is a brilliant invention, and it works very well. Our bodies interface very well with an Olympic bar. Why I say Olympic, because of the rotational nature of that.

Ben:  So, you're not holding the elastic band in your hands. The elastic band is, instead, attached to a bar, so you're eliminating a lot of that lateral pull while still maximizing the vertical and the long bone loading.

John:  Right.

Ben:  And, what about the makeup of the band itself in terms of potential to snap or break at higher resistances? I don't know exactly how elastic bands are made. It's not something I've studied up on. But, fill me in on how you keep the band from snapping or being able to withstand really high loads.

John:  A lot of different ways. So, with the kind of high-density band we needed to trigger muscle growth, they needed to be non-petroleum based. So, most of them are petroleum-based. So, they're made of oil. And, those have a tendency of stretching out.

There's a reason they're cheap. They don't last very long. And so, people think they're getting stronger, but what's really happening is the band is getting longer. So, that doesn't do anybody any favors. And, those do break from time to time.

So, what I needed to do was develop something that was layered. So, a layer could fail but the whole unit would not fail.

Ben:  Got it. So, that is probably why, if I leave my X3 bands out in the weather, which I have before, sometimes, I'll notice that the outside layer starts to peel away a little bit. That's why?

John:  Yeah.

Ben:  Got it.

John:  And, one layer, it's like a rope that's a little frayed. Does it still work? Yeah, sure. So, it's [00:51:19] _____ with nicks in their bands and they go, “Is this okay?” Yeah, it's fine. If you get a tear all the way through, which somebody can do because they hook it on something by accident and then they just tear it, well, yeah, you need to replace that.

Ben:  So, the layering of the bands is one part. Having the band attached to a bar so you get basically superior mechanical leverage on the bar. And then, the final piece that comes with this X3 bar setup is the ground plate. And, that's interesting because, a lot of times, I'll train barefoot. And so, I'm standing on top of the actual elastic band itself, and it seems to–I think we even talked about this in our last podcast. It pulls up on your ankles. It'll snap out from underneath your foot. And so, you kind of figured out how to create this lightweight plate that the band just kind of goes underneath.

John:  Yeah, the band slides freely underneath your feet and it doesn't twist your ankles.

Ben:  So, your ankles aren't rotating inwards. I've seen you do, I think, 600, 700 pounds peak force on a deadlift. And, I believe that was using–What's the heaviest X3 Bar band called?

John:  The Elite.

Ben:  Yeah, the Elite, the big orange one. It hangs in my garage. I've used it a couple of times, but I'm not even to that level yet to be able to. I'm not quite as strong as you.

John:  [00:52:43] _____ deadlifts all the time.

Ben:  But, that would literally break the bones in your ankle if you were standing on top of the actual band itself.

John:  Absolutely, right. The reason I didn't develop the product first and then wrote the book later was that I needed to come up with something that was actually useful for strength training first. Because, the bands, by themselves, they're just not that great.

And, I see people writing nasty things on social media about, “Band training is stupid because it just doesn't work,” or, “I don't like it,” or whatever. And then, people send me the link and they're like, “Go, straighten this guy out.” And, I'm like, “Well, why?” Band training by itself doesn't really work.

Now, they may be misquoting the science. They may not understand exactly what's going on, or why bands by themselves aren't so effective. But, when I hear somebody say, “I hate bands,” I'm like, “Well, me too.”

Ben:  Exactly, the type of bands that we traditionally think about.

Now, I don't know if you get this much, I've heard a lot of people say that, if you're working out and you're getting the type of results that I see in a guy like John working out 10 minutes a day, you got to be on the gear. There must be some kind of hormones, testosterone, something like that going on. What's your take on that? Because I've seen that kind of floating around out there as well.

John:  Every high school kid with a visible bicep vein is accused of being on steroids by, usually, people who have never worked out or, at least, don't look like they have ever worked out. And, that's unfortunate. I work with 12 different NFL players directly and 40 different NBA players. I got another 15 professional athletes around the world. And, these guys are all in incredible shape and they're all drug-tested, while the bodybuilders aren't. Everyone, except for the bodybuilders, are drug-tested. And, it's amazing they have absolutely amazing physiques. They look similar to me, and they're not on anything. You don't need to be on anything.

Ben:  Well, granted, also, I haven't messed around that intensively personally with what we just talked about on this show, that the hyper-hydration with the vasodilatory substances, followed by the stretching for the hyperplasia. I would actually love to kind of guinea pig this on myself using that full protocol. Probably, creatine, glycerol, Viagra, another nitric oxide precursor, do the variable resistance training, do the stretching afterwards. And, I could do a little one-month experiment, just to see any transformation in my own body. Because, actually, it would be interesting to pay attention to how much you would get if there is that amount of a myostatin down-regulation.

Well, it's super interesting stuff. Obviously, we could about this stuff all day long, but the X3 Bar, and you guys are still manufacturing it. People can still get it, right?

John:  Yeah.

Ben:  Alright. Cool.

John:  We're sending out thousands of units a month.

Ben:  I don't remember, we have a special discount code for you, guys. I think you save, what is it, John, 50 bucks? Something like that?

John:  Yeah.

Ben:  Okay. So, if you guys go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/wasteoftime, I'll link to my other interview with John. And then, I'll also make sure, I think the code is BEN, if you go to the X3 Bar website. But, I'll double-check, and I'll hook you guys up with whatever discount that John and I can work out for you. But, I'll just put all that over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/wasteoftime. And, I think, probably, after this discussion, I'm going to go hit my X3 Bar this afternoon, just because, whenever I chat about stuff like this, I don't know about you, John, but it just makes me want to go do it. Yeah, I'll probably be out there in the driveway later on today with my X3 Bar. I can't promise I'll have the Elite band out. Sorry, man.

John:  It's okay. You need to be pretty ready for that. A lot of people order it and they're kind of beginners, and I say, “Well, keep it as something to work towards.” We don't really want to discourage somebody, but at the same time, it's like, “You don't need that, man.” Most of the NFL players can't use it.

Ben:  You know what? One thing, by the way, did you hear my interview with Milos Sarcev, the bodybuilder?

John:  No, but I know who that is.

Ben:  We talked a lot about intra-workout nutrition. And, he had some pretty cool protocols for, when you have really enhanced blood flow to a muscle, which actually is the case, using the protocol that we just talked about.

John:  Really?

Ben:  He had certain compounds, many of which we've already discussed, like creatine, and post-workout, like a dextrose or really high-glycemic-index carb that rapidly replenishes the muscle glycogen levels. But, he also talks a lot about amino acids and in high blood levels of amino acids during the actual workout itself. So, he'll consume during 10 to 20 grams of essential aminos but do them in between his sets.

And so, another one you could throw in there would be like, do your first set, and then, as you're recovering, after your first X3 Bar set, suck down a few sips of aminos, and then, do your next set. Then, suck down a few sips of aminos. But, the overall idea being you actually maintain extremely high blood levels of amino acids, which I know you kind of touch on in the book a little bit yourself. And, that would also probably be something that would combine well.

But, I'll link to that podcast in the shownotes, the one with Milos Sarcev. So, it was super interesting. And, probably, if you're still listening at this point in the podcast with John, what Milos and I talked about would be right up your alley. So, I'll put a link to that one as well. Anything else you want to touch on, John, while I have you on?

John:  No, I love the questions you asked. It's great because, when you decide how you're going to interview somebody, you don't listen to another interview that they've had and then just ask the same questions. So many podcasters do that. And, you came up with all original stuff, and I appreciate it.

Ben:  Well, you know the reason why. I can tell you this because I get books shipped to me all the time. They all come with an eight and a half by eleven piece of paper that says, “Here's what to ask the author.” And, the first thing I do is I throw that out or I use it as a bookmark for the book, because I do not want to ask what the publisher thinks I should ask. I read the entire book, cover-to-cover. And, literally, I've got books on my bedside, books by my electrical muscle stimulation unit downstairs, books on my desk. Pretty much, if there's downtime at the house, I've got a book under my nose, and I read the actual book. And then, I ask the questions that I want to ask, not that the publisher wants the podcaster to ask themselves.

John:  Of course, I don't need to send those, by the way. You didn't get a piece of paper and say, “Ask me this,” because I knew you would. I don't actually do that for anybody. But, the problem is they'll go watch another podcast I did, and then, ask the same questions. But, this is great.

Ben:  I get it. Well, cool.

John:  I did think of something I want to say.

When I wrote this, a lot of people got offended by the title and, of course, didn't read the book. I think, judging a book by its cover defines a fool. But, I also have to say, before rushing to the defense of the fitness industry, you have to ask yourself, who's really fit? Now, I have some statistics in the book that talk about how the leanest 1%, and I like tracking lean because that includes muscularity in that calculation. The more muscular you are, the leaner you are, by proportion. When you look at, really, how the fitness industry has done over the last, let's say, 50, 75 years, the leanest 1% of males are 11% of body fat. That's not impressive. That's the top 1%.

Also, one in six males over the age of 18 in the United States have used anabolic steroids. So, that means, almost everybody who's used anabolic steroids has also failed to become what anybody would refer to as fit. So, what the fitness industry has done is basically nothing. You and I are outliers, compared to the average person at the average fitness facility. We walk into a–I'm not talking about Gold's Gym in Venice Beach. I'm talking about Planet Fitness in the middle of America. You go in there and then you go to the pizza place next door. Does the people look any different? Probably not.

Ben:  Well, that's the whole problem with the fitness industry, as a whole, is we have relegated ourselves to feelings that we need to walk into a gym or a health club to get fit. That's why so many people ridiculously said that they got in the worst shape of their lives during the COVID pandemic, when, in fact, all it takes is, literally, walking, having a kettlebell or an X3 Bar or some kind of a setup in your garage–

John:  [01:02:08] _____ anywhere.

Ben:  –which is dirt cheap to do.

John:  You don't need to be in the gym.

Ben:  Trust me, Google will allow you to do any number of bodyweight exercises to failure with nothing. But, the problem is people want to walk into a gym with the TVs, the magazines, the Jamba juice, the shiny stuff, being able to sit down and hunched over your cell phone while you're sitting on the pec deck. That's gym culture. It doesn't get results. It doesn't produce athleticism, and, I think, just about everybody listening into this show, is probably sick of me getting on the soapbox about this, but, yeah, you have to take your health and your fitness into your own hands and defy the status quo of what the typical American or gym junkie considers to be fitness and, actually, figure out a way to creatively and proactively design an environment that allows you to be active anytime, anyplace, just like our ancestors did for thousands of years before gyms even existed. That's the way that you should live your life.

I'm not saying, don't go to the gym. Gym is actually my happy place. I like to go to the gym and walk around, try new exercises and stuff. But, don't fool yourself into thinking that that's how fit people actually get super fit. They basically integrate fitness into their entire lifestyle.

John:  That's right.

Ben:  I'm on the same page as you, man. Well, let's wrap this thing up, because I actually got to go. So, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/wasteoftime is where the shownotes are at. If you guys have questions, comments, feedback, if you want to grab your own X3 Bar, you can use code, BEN, and I'll put a link on in the shownotes as well. And, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with John Jaquish. Did I get it?

John:  Jaquish.

Ben:  Jaquish, I was close, man.

Ben:  Jaquish, like “Jake” and “wish.”

Ben:  That helps me out. That kind of mnemonic is very helpful.

John:  It's like, call me [01:04:04] _____.

Ben:  John Jaquish, the doctor, Jaquish, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

John:  Thanks, Ben.

Ben:  Have an amazing week, everybody. Thanks, John.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the shownotes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful, “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So, when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the shownotes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

 

 

Perhaps you've been lifting weights for a few years. But do you even look like you work out? Are you spending disproportionate amounts of hours exercising wasting your time? Many fitness “experts” defend weights and cardio like they are infallible, but where are the results? Why does almost nobody look even marginally athletic?

Dr. John Jaquish, who joined me on the episode “The Best 10 Minute A Day Workout – How To Massively Increase Bone Density And Muscle In Just 10 Minutes (& Biohack Extreme Fitness Levels),” just published a brand new book entitled Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time (So Is Cardio & There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want). In it, he and his co-author, Henry Alkire, tackle the questions above as they explore the science supporting the argument that traditional weight lifting is a “waste of time” and lay out a superior strength training approach that has been shown to put 20 pounds of muscle on drug-free, experienced lifters (i.e., not beginners) in six months.

Fitness may be the most failed human endeavor, and you are about to see how exercise science has missed some obvious principles that, when enacted, will turn you into the superhuman you always wanted to be. Dr. Jaquish has spent years researching and developing improved approaches to health. He is the inventor of the most effective bone density building medical technology—that is now partnered with Tony Robbins and OsteoStrong for rapid clinic deployment. Inventor of the X3 Bar (use code BEN to save $50), a technology that is proven to develop muscle much faster than conventional weight lifting (all with the lowest risk of joint injury), 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.

During this discussion, you'll discover:

-Why lifting weights is the wrong way to build muscle…6:21

• “We overload joints and underload muscle.” -Peter Attia
• If your goal is to grow muscle and develop your body, weight lifting is a waste of time
• A vanity metric vs. properly developing the body
• Load the body in accordance with its capacity
• Combination of leverage and positioning of bones and joints
• The Best 10 Minute A Day Workout – How To Massively Increase Bone Density And Muscle In Just 10 Minutes (& Biohack Extreme Fitness Levels) with Dr. Jaquish.
• High amount of tension on a muscle for a sustained period of time = variable resistance training

-A workout using the variable resistance training protocol…15:05

• Push/pull split
• 36 hours for muscle to recover completely
• 4 sets: 10 minutes
• Anything over 1 set would be overstimulus
• Between 15-40 reps

-Ways to maximize hyperplasia in the muscles during variable resistance training…17:30

• Create as much internal pressure in the cell and relaxation in the cell while resting
• Biggest constraint to hyperplasia has to do with external pressure of the fascia surrounding the muscle
• Superhydration of cells, stretching muscle while it's superhydrated
• Extra space encourages cells to split, cause hyperplasia
• Hard stretch for 30 seconds after the workout
• Hyperhydration:
  • Vasodilator before workout
  • Carbs after the workout
  • Glycerol assists with hyperhydration
  • Creatine monohydrate
• 1 Cheap & Easy Underground Training Method For Growth Hormone Release, 5 Biohacks to Increase Strength in 60 Seconds, 7 Exercises for the Eyes to Radically Enhance Stamina & Speed with Kusha Karvandi.
• Is Metformin Really Dangerous, Little-Known Peptides For Muscle Gain & Fat Loss, Testosterone Replacement Therapy & Much More! with Jay Campbell.

-Why you shouldn't worry about your muscle fiber type…29:15

• Slow vs. fast twitch has to do with the speed at which the cell turns on
• Slow-twitch become better marathon runners; fast-twitch are better sprinters
• Working all fiber types with John's methods of training
• Total muscle fiber mass increases while ratio of fiber types remains constant

-The questions an ideal exercise program should cover…31:45

• Myostatin downregulation with hypoxia in muscles
  • Evident during studies involving blood-flow restriction (BFR)
  • Keeping blood from returning to the heart will downregulate myostatin
  • Tourniquets and such create neural inhibitory processes
  • Constant tension with variable resistance training achieves hypoxic effect while using more muscle cells
• Get stability firing to get a good growth hormone effect
  • When muscles are shaking, induce instability to amplify the growth hormone effect
• Make the weights you work with heavier
  • Won't get a significant testosterone response with light weights
  • Use BFR if you can't lift heavy loads
• Vasodilation
• Push muscles through failure in an unstable environment
• All achieved in a single set

-Why doing cardio for weight loss is a lie…41:35

• Does Weight Training Count As Cardio? with Doug McGuff
• Cardio is the wrong way to approach a lean appearance
• Much longer cortisol effect
• Decreased hormone and testosterone response
• 20 minutes of cardio is the threshold
• Chronic cortisol diminishes body mass
• Cardio can be useful for metabolic and fat burning efficiency
• Andrew Huberman
• Two ways to define cardio:
  • Ancestral approach – moving throughout the day
  • Chronic – will inhibit lean muscle gain

-Selecting the best variable resistance training bands…47:30

• Certain bands have much power but will injure you if used improperly
• Lateral force through joints where there should not be lateral force
• How to prevent bands from snapping under heavy loads:
  • Non-petroleum based
  • Layered band
  • Attached to an Olympic bar
  • Ground plate
• Band training by itself is ineffective

-Whether or not drugs are necessary to enhance training…53:45

-How the fitness industry has failed to make people truly fit…1:00:05

-And much more!

Resources from this episode:

– Dr. John Jaquish:

• Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time (So Is Cardio & There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want).
• Jaquish Biomedical
• OsteoStrong
• X3 Bar(use code BEN to save $50)

– Podcasts:

• The Best 10 Minute A Day Workout – How To Massively Increase Bone Density And Muscle In Just 10 Minutes (& Biohack Extreme Fitness Levels) with Dr. Jaquish.
• 1 Cheap & Easy Underground Training Method For Growth Hormone Release, 5 Biohacks to Increase Strength in 60 Seconds, 7 Exercises for the Eyes to Radically Enhance Stamina & Speed with Kusha Karvandi.
• Is Metformin Really Dangerous, Little-Known Peptides For Muscle Gain & Fat Loss, Testosterone Replacement Therapy & Much More! with Jay Campbell
• Does Weight Training Count As Cardio? with Doug McGuff.
• Biohacking Muscle Growth: How To Maximize Anabolism & Muscle Hypertrophy Using Targeted Delivery Of Nutrients To Muscle Tissue During Exercise, With Professional Bodybuilder Milos Sarcev.

– Other resources:

• BFR Bands(use code BEN10 to save 10%)
• Growth hormone responses to acute resistance exercise with vascular restriction in young and old men
• Hormone Responses to an Acute Bout of Low Intensity Blood Flow Restricted Resistance Exercise in College-Aged Females

Episode sponsors:

–Kion: My personal playground for new supplement formulations, Kion blends ancestral wisdom with modern science. Ben Greenfield Fitness listeners, save 10% off your first order with code BEN10.

–Beekeeper's Naturals: A wellness company specializing in innovative nutraceuticals made from healing hive compounds and plant-based ingredients. Get 15% off your order when you use discount code BEN.

–ButcherBox: Delivers healthy 100% grass-fed and finished beef, free-range organic chicken, and heritage breed pork directly to your door on a monthly basis. All their products are humanely raised and NEVER given antibiotics or hormones.

–Thrive Market: Organic brands you love, for less. Your favorite organic food and products. Fast and free shipping to your doorstep. Receive a gift card worth up to $20 when you begin a new membership.