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Summary
On episode 454 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Dr. John Jaquish, a scientist and inventor who approaches health and fitness problems as engineering problems, having created OsteoStrong to fight osteoporosis and the X3 Bar to optimize strength training.
John argues that most of what we call weightlifting and cardio is inefficient, and sometimes counterproductive, once you understand how the body actually adapts to the stress you put on it.
The conversation covers the strength curve, why bands alone can hurt your wrists and ankles, and how he stays lean and muscular while eating a ketogenic, intermittent fasting style diet.
Links
- https://doctorj.com
Key Takeaways
- Training for distance and training for strength push your body in opposite directions. Long, steady cardio signals your nervous system to find an efficient homeostasis: it sheds bone density and muscle and upregulates cortisol, which protects body fat instead of burning it. Unless you actually want to be a distance runner, that adaptation works against the goals most people have.
- Muscle functions as a metabolic engine that keeps running even when you are not exercising. Building muscle raises your resting calorie burn, and lifting upregulates growth hormone and testosterone, which is anti-catabolic, so even in a caloric deficit you are not losing the muscle you built.
- Your strength changes dramatically across a joint’s range of motion, so lifting the same weight the whole way through a rep is inefficient. You might be able to hold seven times more weight at full extension than at the weakest point, which is why people instinctively do half push-ups or half squats: the weight is too heavy for the weak range and too light for the strong range.
- Resistance bands by themselves create their own injury risk. As a band stretches to deliver meaningful load, it twists the wrists and ankles, so John designed a rotating, solid-steel-core bar and a foot plate specifically to keep joints neutral while still varying resistance through the strength curve.
- Whey protein is a lower-quality protein source than most people assume. Only about 18 percent of it has the proper amino acid ratios your body can use, and it started out as a waste byproduct of pasteurizing milk before it became a popular, cheap supplement.
- Getting into ketosis is about cutting carbohydrates, not about eating more fat. Your body will pull fat for fuel from wherever it is stored, including old fat reserves, once carbohydrate intake drops, so the two ideas get conflated more than they should.
- John grounds his claims in published research rather than personal opinion, because the positions he takes are controversial enough that he wants people to be able to check the studies themselves rather than just take his word for it.
- Dr. John Jaquish’s three strategies to get and stay well: protect your sleep by cutting down or out on alcohol, since deep sleep is when cells repair and muscle protein synthesis happens; build high levels of strength, because strength training (not cardio) is one of the two biggest drivers of a long life; and keep body fat low through approaches like ketosis and animal protein, the other biggest driver of longevity.
“The health of the heart and the distance you’re able to run are two totally different subjects.”
Dr. John Jaquish