Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time : So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want

by John Jaquish

Dr. Jaquish’s research from the UK National Health Service (NHS) showed that people could exert sevenfold greater peak muscular output compared to the kind of weights they would lift in the gym.

You might be surprised to learn your busy schedule isn’t actually the problem, and neither is how long or hard you work at the gym—it’s a gap in knowledge.

He soon discovered his target population: gymnasts. People who participated in gymnastics had higher bone density than non-gymnasts of the same age, even if they quit the sport long ago.

building medical device available. OsteoStrong’s efficacy was recently confirmed through research, most recently involving scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center at the University of Texas Medical School,

Weightlifting has everything backwards. It doesn’t give people the results they’re looking for because it can’t provide the amount of force necessary to trigger muscle growth throughout the entire range of motion. Our weight choice is limited to what our weak range can handle, so we’re not effectively working our medium and strong ranges.

So what is needed to maximize muscular growth and optimize the inefficiencies of weightlifting? A weight that changes as we move, giving us a lighter load in the weaker/joint-compromised ranges of motion, normal heaviness in the middle ranges of motion, and a tremendously high weight in the impact-ready ranges of motion.

By the time you’re finished reading, you will have learned: What variable resistance is and why it’s superior to weightlifting What triggers muscle adaptation How to accelerate muscle growth and fat loss How to trigger the right hormonal responses through exercise How to eat properly for muscle gain and fat loss Why so many people exercise but do not see results

What’s different about the X3 fitness system, why it works, who uses it, and their results

Ever watched a professional mover move furniture and how they use moving straps? They change the length of the strap so they can engage with movements in JUST the optimized range.

His findings also exposed the Achilles’ heel of weightlifting: Because the weight used is determined by the weakest range, there is a vast mismatch between the amount of weight lifted and our actual muscular potential. What’s more, the stronger a lifter gets, the more cumulative damage to joints, since they are at their maximum possible capacities in the weakest range of motion.

Lifting a weight light enough to accommodate the weak range means the mid and strong ranges aren’t being worked to anywhere near their full capacity. Choosing a weight heavier than what your weak range can handle isn’t effective either, because it ensures you can’t complete a single rep. It also increases your risk of injury. As a result, weightlifting ends up fatiguing the least amount of tissue possible based on the limitations of the weakest range of motion.

However, research shows muscle is not built through low forces. In

What does this mean? It means that when you want to grow muscle in the most effective way possible, there is no getting around HEAVY.

As we’ve stated before, the weak range is where joints are at the greatest amount of risk and most prone to injury. For example, the bottom of a deadlift is where people tend to injure their backs, sometimes resulting in permanent damage.

The increased possibility of injury coupled with the fact that the human nervous system makes complete muscle recruitment a physiological impossibility at the weakest range proves the training is not a sound investment of your exercise time. If muscle is not firing/activating, there can be no benefit. You’re just fighting against nature.

“high force” in the context of static weightlifting still means “high for the weak range of motion.” Chronic soreness of the joints along with more serious injuries occur as a result.

Sustaining injuries and underutilizing muscle tissue are symptoms of weightlifting’s biggest weaknesses: it overloads joints and underloads muscles.

For example, what if the weights got heavier as you got to the top of a bench press? What if the weights got lighter at the bottom of a deadlift?

This type of exercise, called variable resistance, already exists. In fact, it’s been around for quite a while. So why wasn’t everyone doing it?

We started by taking a deep dive (as researchers, we call this a literature review) into the ways in which variable resistance had been applied in the world of exercise.

After seven weeks, the group using variable resistance recorded twice the amount of improvement on bench press single rep max than the control group and triple that on squats, as well as posting a three times greater average power increase. Even though the student-athletes were all performing the same exercises, participating in the same protocol, and lifting the same relative amount of weight, the variable-resistance group experienced significantly more strength gains than the weightlifting-only group.14

After seven weeks, the groups training with elastic bands and weighted chains—the athletes exercising with variable resistance—showed greater improvements than the ones working out on conventional weightlifting equipment.15

the end of six weeks, the group using variable resistance showed bigger increases in their velocity, power, and one rep max on bench press than the free weight-only group.17

“Squatting with elastic bands facilitates more weight used and time under muscle tension.”27

The benefits of exercise enjoyed by athletes are available to non-athletes as well. In fact, deconditioned individuals may respond even more quickly to a new exercise protocol because there is greater room for improvement.

For example, forty-five middle-aged, sedentary women were tested on knee push-ups, sixty-second squats, and body composition.

A study involving people with an injured anterior cruciate ligament found that “anterior cruciate ligament strain values obtained during squatting were unaffected by the application of elastic resistance intended to increase muscle activity.”30 This is consistent with our hypothesis that variable resistance permits exercisers to load their muscles with greater forces while reducing stress on joints.

Whatever the reason, we were excited to explore the connection between hormones, fat, and musculature.

And when we say “hormones,” we don’t mean Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs).

In truth, body composition is most effectively changed when the right hormones are released to facilitate muscle building and lipolysis. The hormones designed to retain fat become suppressed.

By contrast, regular exercisers tend to craft their exercise routines with little regard for hormonal impact.

prolonged cardio can keep you fatter, for longer. That’s because cardio stimulates cortisol, the body’s natural stress hormone.

Cortisol can promote two effects to undermine your fitness goals. First, it has the potential to inhibit lipolysis, thereby protecting body fat. Second, it can promote proteolysis, including the breakdown of lean muscle tissue. Why might cardio-type exercise promote those effects? Doing hours of cardio tells the body that it needs to go long distances with a limited amount of fuel. It responds by protecting that fuel, holding onto fat as long as possible. Think of your central nervous system as an engineering team working to ensure you are optimized for your environment. Optimization for cardio requires carrying excess body fat to power your efforts. It means minimizing muscle because muscle has significant caloric requirements. It is very stressful to run for hours on end, and that effort takes quite a toll on the body. This is why marathon runners, although thin, have very little muscle and a surprising percentage of body fat. They’re the epitome of what is referred to as “skinny fat,” or as we like to call it, “cardio fat.”

There is a plethora of existing research that indicates cardio is not a particularly effective way to lose weight, despite what most of us were taught to believe. Certainly there are other health benefits to cardiovascular exercise, but weight loss isn’t one of them.

Like traditional weightlifting, it seems cardio gets everything backwards. It increases cortisol, which holds onto fat for fuel and decreases growth hormone production and promotes the reduction of muscle mass.35

Again, think of the central nervous system as an engineering team that is always trying to optimize you for the environment you are in by triggering the endocrine system (hormones) to make adjustments based on environmental sensory perception. This means that if you regularly put yourself in a position where you are running great distances, your nervous system is going to make adjustments to your hormone levels to help you get better at that activity/environment.

Lighten the chassis. Low weight means traveling greater distances. From a human physiology perspective, this means sacrificing bone density.

Shrink the engine. A smaller engine burns less fuel going the same distance.

That’s why with endurance athletes, cortisol becomes upregulated so muscle mass can be reduced, and the growth hormone is downregulated (growth hormone is protective of muscle loss, as you will read more about later in this chapter).

Add fuel storage. If you want to go long distances, you need a big fuel tank, right? Well, the fuel tank of the human body is body fat. This is another reason why cortisol is upregulated. Higher cortisol levels are associated with more and longer-lasting body fat storage.40

Your nervous system makes the adjustments needed to optimize you for the environments you put yourself in. That’s why cardiovascular/endurance exercise can make you weaker, with less muscle mass and more body

Building muscle is one of the best things you can do to enhance your health because lean tissue has a synergistic relationship with every organ in the body. The more musculature you have, the more efficient the delivery of nutrients to the organs.

Along with muscle growth, testosterone is one of the largest drivers of cardiac health.

Some endocrinologists have surmised the heart may have far more testosterone receptors than first thought, which can explain how low testosterone is a strong indication of a shorter life.

Without enough testosterone, people are not only at risk for cardiac issues but chronic depression, obesity, and a loss of both hair and libido.43

The major hormones responsible for weight loss and muscle gain—growth hormone and testosterone—are optimally stimulated through strength training.

We’ve already mentioned it, but it bears repeating: if you want muscle to grow, there is no getting around HEAVY. You have to use a weight where you are unable to continue repetitions after thirty to sixty seconds.

These findings led to another realization about variable resistance: individuals are able to train with more force than they would ever be able to with regular weight training—and at the same time continue the set for longer because they’re dealing with less weight in the weaker ranges of motion and thereby eliminating the sticking point/hardest point of the movement.

As we learned in the previous chapter, variable resistance provides a more effective method of delivering the appropriate amount of force throughout all ranges of motion.

Growth Hormone When you’re young, growth hormone helps you do just that—grow. As adults, it assists in the regeneration of the body and cells.