Top 10 Fitness Tools Recommended on the Joe Rogan Experience
The Joe Rogan Experience has become a treasure trove of information for athletes over the past ten years of its rising popularity. With its rotating panel of guests ranging from world-class scientists to elite athletes in nearly every sports discipline, Joe Rogan’s podcast brings unique insights you can’t find anywhere else.
Joe has always been an open and curious-minded person, often referring to himself as a “guinea pig for human optimization.” Through that lens, the conversations with a wide variety of experts on the Joe Rogan Experience unearth protocols and tools to help athletes take their performance to the next level.
This article covers some of the top fitness tools and equipment discussed on the JRE podcast, their uses and benefits for athletes, and where you can find them to add to your own home gym.
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Top 10 Fitness Tools and Devices Discussed on The Joe Rogan Experience
Iron Neck
The Iron Neck is discussed frequently on the Joe Rogan podcast. And for a good reason. Its ability to prevent injury and concussions as well as strengthen a challenging muscle group makes it a dynamic tool for people in all walks of life.
To give you an idea of the diversity of the Iron Neck’s applications (and the broad range of guests making their way onto the JRE podcast.) The Iron Neck has been discussed with former Navy SEAL Commander Jocko Willink to develop neck strength in Jiu-Jitsu athletes in episode #1492. And it was also discussed with skateboarding legend Tony Hawk as a training tool to prevent whiplash in skateboarding’s sometimes violent crashes in episode #1477.
The Iron Neck works by training the hard-to-reach muscles of the neck through both linear and rotational resistance. For any contact sport, a strong neck prevents injuries like concussions and whiplash by allowing you to slow down the head during acceleration.
Not only is the Iron Neck an injury prevention tool, but head motion and neck strength are also crucial for tracking and stabilization in sports performance. Making it a tool that every athlete could use in enhancing their athletic development and training.
MonkeyFeet
During the JRE MMA Show #104 with professional fighter Cory Sandhagen, Joe talks about how he develops his hip flexor muscles using Animalhouse Fitness’ MonkeyFeet.
The hip flexors are challenging to target with conventional weight training equipment. MonkeyFeet gives you maximum versatility in leg development by allowing you to attach dumbells directly to your feet, opening up an entirely new horizon of resistance training.
Although they are fantastic for hip flexor development, there are countless ways you can use MonkeyFeet to transform your leg days. From hamstring curls to donkey kicks, leg extensions, and high knees, you can broaden the tools in your arsenal for lower body and core training.
Assault AirRunner
During MMA Show #68 with award-winning filmmaker Will Harris, Joe Rogan talks about how he prefers the manual propulsion of the Assault AirRunner over running on a traditional motorized treadmill.
“It’s really good because it’s self-propelled. With a treadmill, all you’re doing is lifting your leg up and putting it down. You’re not really propelling yourself forward because the belt is moving. But this, you have to make the belt move. So when you’re making the belt move, you’re actually pushing with your legs, which strengthens your legs up. I prefer it.”
Joe Rogan | JRE #68
The benefits of curved manual treadmills are fantastic for athletes. They engage more muscle groups, burn up to 30% more calories, lower impact to joints, and maximize V02 max and HIIT training efforts.
VersaClimber
There isn’t much Joe Rogan loves more than high-intensity training. When it comes to brutal workouts, he brings up the VersaClimber frequently on his show. And it’s also a staple part of his home gym setup.
“The VersaClimber is the latest addition to the gym, and it is an awesome tool for conditioning. It’s amazing how tired you get from this thing and it’s a fantastic tool for cardio. You can get an absolutely BRUTAL workout with this thing in a short amount of time.”
The VersaClimber is a unique combination of a lower-body stepper and an upper body climber, making it a training tool that produces an intense full-body workout in a very short period of time.
Teeter Inversion Tables
During Joe Rogan Experience #1202 with culinary adventurists Fred Morin and David McMillan, Joe talks about his history with back pain and disk issues he’s developed over the years and how he’s used inversion tables to help decompress his spine.
“I tried a bunch of different forms of decompression, and I figured out the best ones … Relaxing in a Teeter, you clamp your ankles in and let that back just stretch out again.”
Joe Rogan | JRE #1202
Although they’re incredibly relaxing to use, Teeter Inversion Tables are the only registered FDA medical devices indicated for back pain, muscle tension, herniated disks, sciatica, degenerative disk and spinal disease, and spinal stenosis.
Pioneering the market since 1981, Teeter is an industry leader in inversion table and decompression technology. And their products reflect their dedication to researched-backed relief with over four decades of innovation.
Sensory Deprivation Isolation Tank
Sensory deprivation tanks are phenomenal tools that provide a unique experience, unlike any other training or recovery technique. There are not only physical benefits to removing the constant pressure of gravity during your float session, but there are profound cognitive and meditative benefits that are a powerful ally for athletes.
“It’s like a very extreme form of meditation in a lot of ways because of the fact you’re not feeling your body at all. It’s like your brain detached from all of the input of the body … I find for me, it helps me think way clearer, and I feel like I have more brain available to access.” – Joe Rogan JRE #1178 with Dr. Rhonda Patrick
Meditation’s benefit for athletes is honing your ability to clear out distractions, focus your mind, and open up your cognitive capacity when it counts. But meditation is a skill that takes enormous amounts of time and practice to master.
Isolation tanks “hack” the meditation process by removing the bulk of sensory input that causes frequent distractions keeping you from reaching meditative states. And the brainwave research supports the idea that untrained people can achieve similar brainwave states as master meditators through extended sessions in a sensory deprivation tank.
The isolation tank that Joe Rogan uses is Float Lab. You can check out their product with the link below.
Reverse Hyper
In JRE episode #854, Joe Rogan spoke with former American powerlifter and original inventor of the reverse hyperextension, Louie Simmons. The reverse hyper has been a staple topic in many conversations with athletes and scientists on his show ever since.
The reverse hyperextension is a fantastic tool for developing the lower back, hip flexors, glutes, and hamstring. Unlike standard hyperextensions that activate the glutes and lower body chain quite well, the reverse hyper is shown to have superior lower back activation.
It’s challenging to develop strength in the lower back without also contending with additional spinal pressure and potential for injury. The reverse hyper addresses this issue and allows for proper development in the lower back and even potentially helping to decompress the vertebrae in the spine.
Pso-Rite
The psoas muscle is a recurring topic on the Joe Rogan Experience. It’s a little-talked-about muscle in the lumbar region of the spine with significant impacts on your athletic performance. A tight psoas is common in modern athletes from our environment from being seated for long periods during the day and often slips by entirely unidentified.
Ultra-endurance athlete and retired Navy SEAL David Goggins talked at length about how releasing his tight psoas fundamentally transformed his running form in JRE episode #1080.
During an episode with professional mixed martial artist Michael Chandler, Michael brought up his overwhelmingly positive experience with the Pso-Rite psoas massage tool. Since then, Joe Rogan has incorporated the Pso-Rite into his own recovery protocol and recommends it to guests whenever the topic of the psoas pops up on the podcast.
Later, in David Goggins’ second interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, Goggins brought up his newfound experience with the Pso-Rite release tool in helping him with his ongoing psoas stretching practice.
The Pso-Rite works by applying sustained pressure on the psoas, increasing circulation and releasing adhesions between muscle fibers. This process improves mobility by alleviating muscle tension.
While various stretches can help reduce tension in a tight psoas, the most effective method typically meant making a trip to a massage therapist. The Pso-Rite enables you to release the psoas by yourself with a straightforward tool.
Kettlebells
If there are two things Joe Rogan may love most in life, it very well could be primates and kettlebell training, which is precisely the combination of elements in his Primal lineup of kettlebells from Onnit Labs.
In episode #1399, Joe Rogan brought on the godfather of kettlebell training, Pavel Tsatsouline, to discuss strength training and the effectiveness of kettlebells workouts for athletes across various disciplines.
Credited to be the person who introduced the kettlebell to the United States, Pavel is a pioneer in strength training and has trained athletes from special forces units to Olympic athletes.
Joe Rogan has always been an advocate of training with kettlebells, which he discusses throughout numerous podcasts, and his kettlebell training sessions frequently find their way onto his Instagram feed.
Sauna
It would be hard to count how many times Joe Rogan has mentioned the benefits of sauna use and heat shock proteins on the JRE podcast. But when the benefits of sauna use get brought up most often is when Ph.D. biomedical scientist Dr. Rhonda Patrick comes on the show.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick has consolidated massive amounts of research regarding heat therapy’s benefits to the body over her career. And when she comes onto the podcast, the most recent developments and findings eventually find their way into the conversation.
Sauna use has a long list of benefits for athletes. It helps jumpstart recovery after training, produces heat shock proteins, improves cognitive function, improves cardiovascular health, and can even make you live longer.
Joe Rogan is known to get in at least four 15-20 minute sauna sessions each week on average. And he’s mentioned that he never feels entirely on top of his game if he can’t fit in his regular sauna sessions.
