What’s the research behind X3 Bar?Updated a month ago
The following research, conducted on elite athletes and regular people, shows that variable resistance training (VRT) is superior to weight training.
Full Transcript
The science behind X3: there are actually 16 studies. Those are all in the book. There are new studies on variable resistance all the time. And I think it’s really important to point to studies we didn’t do. These were all third parties, people, some of the researchers I’ve met at conferences, and most of them I haven’t.
All 16 studies came to the same conclusion. Now, some of them use different combinations or different weight apparatuses, plus banding. It doesn’t really matter if you’re holding X weight here or 1.5X weight here; that is better than holding one static weight.
Now we have X here and just about 5X here. So that’s a more aggressive level of the book. You’ll read in some of those studies that as the degree of variance becomes higher, the growth rate becomes higher. That’s why that decision was made.
The book contains 16 studies, and the website has about six, but we wanted to keep it very readable.
I also want to discuss one study that found that variable resistance doesn’t work and went against the 16 other studies. Let me explain that one. This had a weight training group as the control, and then it had a variable resistance group that was training with just bands – no bar, no nothing, just bands. We were puzzled by this study because how could a study on variable resistance go against the 16 other studies?
It turns out they used a TheraBand, a rehab-type product. We found a specific model of TheraBand in the method section of this study. It showed that the highest possible resistance they could have gotten to at peak force was 14.1 pounds.
So this was a study that was written, so the variable resistance failed.
It was very misleading, but the rest of them have very powerful results. As I mentioned, the more aggressive the variance, the more aggressive the growth, and that is why X3 is the highest degree of variance that anyone’s ever really used.
There are hardly any variable resistance products out there. The ones that are out there will have something like X here and 1.2X here, and they are kind of meaningless.
Variable Resistance Studies
Below are ten studies showing how variable resistance (VR) is superior to weight training with regular weight, with pro athletes or regular people. The factor that makes the difference in each of these studies is the addition of VARIANCE in resistance. X3 provides the strongest level of variance ever seen in a fitness product hence more growth over other programs:
- (Ghigiarelli, et al, 2009): 7-week heavy elastic band upper-body power in a sample of D1 football players.
- (Joy, et al, 2016): Performance is increased when variable resistance is added to a standard strength program with University basketball players.
- (Rivière, et al, 2017): VR training promotes greater strength and power adaptations than traditional resistance training with elite youth rugby players.
- (Anderson, et al, 2008): Nearly three times greater for average power in some movements was observed comparing control group to test group for VR versus standard weight training, RTC with University athletes.
- (McCurdy, et al, 2009): VR banded bench press produces similar short-term strength improvement conventional free weight bench press while minimizing shoulder stress with D2 baseball players.
- (Goodwin, et al, 2018): Pushing power increased over standard weight protocols using VR exercise with pro rugby players.
- (Cronin, et al, 2003): 10 weeks analysis showed VR resulted in a 21.5% performance increase compared with control group, both groups trained athletes.
- (Anderson, et al, 2016) & (Anderson, et al, 2019): Groups of elite athletes using differing degrees of VR showed that the higher the VR level, the greater muscular engagement.
- (Komiyama, et al, 2016): VR shows better strength over standard training with older adults.