0:00:00.1 Mike Vacanti: Hey, everyone. Mike here. Just a real quick announcement before we get into this episode. For some reason, there was some static on my end during this episode. So listen to it, our audio engineer David did an amazing job at cleaning it up. Jordan and I both think that it’s pretty reasonable, but if it bothers you, no worries, we’ll be back next week. So just wanna give you the heads up on that, and hope you enjoy the episode.
[music]
0:00:35.8 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.
0:00:36.7 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on, Michael?
0:00:38.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s podcast time.
0:00:40.9 Jordan Syatt: Podcast time. We grip it and rip it.
0:00:43.5 Mike Vacanti: Grip it and rip it. P it up. How you doing?
0:00:46.2 Jordan Syatt: I’m feeling good. I’m feeling hydrated, tired. I think my T is low, but… [chuckle]
0:00:52.5 Mike Vacanti: Did you get a poor night’s sleep last night?
0:00:57.4 Jordan Syatt: No, I actually… Last night was one of those sleeps where I slept so well that I didn’t move at all. Like you’re in such a deep sleep that you wake up in the exact same position that you fell asleep in.
0:01:10.6 Mike Vacanti: Wait, do you have some kind of sleep tracker or…
0:01:14.0 Jordan Syatt: No.
0:01:14.5 Mike Vacanti: How do you… You just know that from waking up?
0:01:16.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I just… I know how I go to bed and when I wake up, and I can usually tell. Usually, I’ll wake up in the night, and… Whether it’s to pee, or at least one or two times, I’ll just wake up. I did not wake up at all last night. I just woke up… It was one of those things where you close your eyes, and in the morning, when you wake up, your body feels heavy, but heavy in a good way, like, “Wow. That was deep sleep. So deep that I was sunken into this mattress over the last eight hours.” And then it’s sort of hard to get out of bed, but once you’re out, then you feel really refreshed.
0:01:50.7 Mike Vacanti: I see, I see. I can relate. You’ve really dialed your sleep in over the last 6-9 months.
0:02:00.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I would say even…
0:02:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Or maybe even longer. A year plus?
0:02:01.7 Jordan Syatt: I would say a little bit… Just about a year, ’cause in 2020, when I made a video for my goals in 2020, one of my main goals was no all-nighters, all of 2020, ’cause all the years prior, I had done at least one all-nighter every week. And 2020, I didn’t do any all-nighters, I don’t think. Did we do any all-nighters together in 2020?
0:02:27.2 Mike Vacanti: No, I don’t think so.
0:02:28.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So I didn’t do any all-nighters in 2020. And keeping it strong… Two big health resolutions for me in 2020 were floss every day and no all-nighters, and I did both of those.
0:02:41.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s awesome. Good for you.
0:02:43.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That was great.
0:02:45.0 Mike Vacanti: Sticking to New Year’s resolutions.
0:02:46.8 Jordan Syatt: Big supporter of the resolutions.
0:02:49.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Me too. Big supporter of any kind of optimistic, hopeful outlook on the future.
0:02:56.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, agreed. That’s a good way to put it.
0:03:00.6 Mike Vacanti: Even if it’s a little bit naive, just because the fact that it can happen and leads to something better is so much better than the opposite, which is like a cynicism, nihilistic outlook on… The kinda belief system that just leads to inaction and a worse future life.
0:03:21.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s way better than the alternative, which is just not believing it’s gonna work. It’s one of the reasons why I get really annoyed at the people who are, like, on December 25th…
0:03:32.5 Mike Vacanti: Diets don’t work? Oh, I see.
0:03:34.0 Jordan Syatt: On like December 25th, December 26th, December 27th, the people who are like, “You don’t need the new year to change. Just do it right now.” And I get really upset, I’m like, “I understand what you’re doing, but you come across whiny and complainy and pretentious.”
0:03:50.0 Mike Vacanti: Did you ever, at any point in the last 15 years or 12 years or…
0:03:54.7 Jordan Syatt: Do that?
0:03:56.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:03:56.6 Jordan Syatt: Absolutely. But I wouldn’t go back and delete those posts. I think it’s important to have… ’cause your mind’s gonna change. It’s part of your evolution, and hopefully… If you’re believing the same things that you believed from the very beginning, then you probably haven’t evolved as a coach. If I went back and looked at the first workout programs I wrote any of my clients, whether it was when I was in high school or college, or post-college, or even… Eric Cressey said something to me once when I was a young coach, he was like, “If you’re not looking back at the programs you wrote every six months and thinking you were a complete idiot, then you’re not getting better.” So yeah. I absolutely said that stuff. And I think most of us would go back to our younger self and say, “You are an idiot.” And interestingly enough, I think a lot of our younger selves would look at who we are now and say, “You’re an idiot.” But I think that’s part of the evolution.
0:04:44.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And the cool thing about it is different people and different audiences need different messages based on where they are at. So in 2013, we’re young Jordan and young Mike, just have massive chips on their shoulder, and on December 22nd, we’re screaming, “Start today.” There was definitely an audience of people maybe one or two years behind us on that journey who needed to hear that message and needed to start today, or that resonated. But then five, six years later on their journey, it doesn’t, in the same way that it doesn’t for us.
0:05:22.5 Jordan Syatt: Or like December 31, 2016, December 31, 2017, Mike and Jordan just staying up all night, answering emails. [chuckle]
0:05:34.1 Mike Vacanti: We worked multiple New Years Eves in a row until 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning.
0:05:37.0 Jordan Syatt: In a hotel room.
0:05:41.5 Mike Vacanti: That was chip on shoulder. That was just like, “Oh, everyone’s gonna be at a New Year’s Eve party? I’m gonna get the inbox to zero. Watch this.”
0:05:50.2 Jordan Syatt: And it was a great way to start the New Year, is feeling refreshed, and yeah, it was great. [chuckle]
0:05:53.8 Mike Vacanti: Oh my gosh. I wouldn’t trade that for anything. It was necessary to get to where I am at this point.
0:06:03.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I couldn’t imagine being one of our clients at that point in time, waking up on Jan 1 and seeing a like 2:00 AM email on December 31, or Jan 1, being like, “What are you doing? Why are you applying to my emails on New Year’s Eve?” [chuckle]
0:06:18.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. Or getting a program at 3 o’clock in the morning.
0:06:21.6 Jordan Syatt: ‘Cause that’s how much I care about you, and that’s what I’m here for. I don’t even need to go out and party ’cause I just wanna coach all day, every day, and reply to your emails 24/7. That’s what I’m doing. [chuckle]
0:06:33.5 Mike Vacanti: Do you remember the time, speaking of not needing to go out and party, when you and I were looking for a place to watch, I think it was the first Canelo vs Triple G, and we were walking through Manhattan, Flatiron, I don’t remember exactly where we were… No, maybe like…
0:06:53.3 Jordan Syatt: Walking through Manhattan.
0:06:57.8 Mike Vacanti: It’s like in the 20s on the West side. I don’t even know exactly, but I’m pretty sure…
0:07:01.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it was in the 20s on the West side.
0:07:02.5 Mike Vacanti: Because it was The Ainsworth, and we were… In my mind, I was thinking we could just see a bar that would have it on and we could go in there and comfortably sit down, order some food and watch it. And we walked into the bar, and it was the loudest establishment I’ve ever set foot in in my entire life. And I remember after the… ‘Cause we ended up not… We kinda stood in there and there was a big cover and we looked around and the atmosphere was packed and loud, and we were both like, “Let’s not do this.” But then I remember after the fact, you telling me, you were like, “Man, I didn’t know Mike went to places like this,” or not being pumped about it. And neither was I, I was just like, “This sucks. We gotta… There’s gotta be a better place to watch this fight.”
0:07:51.8 Jordan Syatt: I remember when we walked in there, and there was a 20 or 40 dollar cover, and I remember just being so taken aback at such a thing, I was like, “I would never pay for something like this, to get into this loud, obnoxious bar with like frat dudes in cut-off shirts.” And I was like, “This looks terrible.” But the way you walked in, you were so confident in the decision to go in there, it was like… You’re just tall, JP, you… Head tall, chest up, proud posture. I was like, “Man, he’s ready to go into this place,” and I was like, “I did not expect Mike to like this type of a bar.” [chuckle]
0:08:28.8 Mike Vacanti: Hated it. Hated it. There was a full year in college that one of my friends still gives me a hard time about where I didn’t go to bars.
0:08:38.7 Jordan Syatt: Really?
0:08:39.6 Mike Vacanti: I was like, “I’m done. I’m done with bars.” Yeah. Because in my mind, I was like, okay, all the drinks are marked up, it’s a false atmosphere, it’s loud, it’s uncomfortable. It’s like, couch versus table. Like, high margin expensive food versus I get to pick my own food. It’s like, expensive drink versus not expensive drink. You can invite people over and just… So basically, for a year, I tried to get everyone to just go to houses and apartments and…
0:09:07.8 Jordan Syatt: House parties are great.
0:09:08.3 Mike Vacanti: Sometimes they’re successful.
0:09:08.9 Jordan Syatt: Just little get-togethers. Those are super fun.
0:09:10.8 Mike Vacanti: Oh my gosh. So much better than a loud bar.
0:09:14.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. My favorite… If I am gonna go to a bar, I like bars with everything is wood. Wooden floors, wooden tables, wooden bar. It’s not fancy and it’s not… It’s not like plastic. It’s a bit open-space, like you get a big table for your friends and you all sit down at that big wooden table. They usually have better music. Start to… If anyone listening goes to bars, once all this COVID stuff is over, when you go to a bar, the wooden bars are the best bars by far.
0:09:43.3 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.
0:09:44.6 Jordan Syatt: The one we went to was not a wooden bar. They had some wood in there, but it was… That was like a sports, college…
[vocalization]
0:09:53.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. That’s exactly right. Alright, should we get on? Should we get on topic with some questions.
0:10:01.1 Jordan Syatt: You wanna get on topic that quickly? Are you sure?
0:10:03.9 Mike Vacanti: No, let’s keep riffing. I’m not sure. What else is happening?
[laughter]
0:10:11.8 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know, man. What’s going on with you? Oh, my phone is on… Not on Do Not Disturb. It’s alright. How are you doing?
0:10:17.9 Mike Vacanti: I’m good, dude. Got a good night’s sleep last night. Oh, you know what I did? 4% of those listening might find this interesting, and 96% will be grossed out. After some…
[chuckle]
0:10:32.0 Jordan Syatt: That would make a great subject line on an email. 4% of you will love this, 96% of you will think this is gross. [laughter]
0:10:39.3 Mike Vacanti: You know what? If you’re listening and have an email list, test out something like that and let us know how the open rate is compared to your average email. No, I’ve just been very bloated, and usually, when I’m in a period of not tracking, definitely being over maintenance calories and eating more crap-type food like sweets, ice cream, cookies, just eating more of that than I would on average over the course of a week, when I’m doing that, I usually have great dumps, for whatever reason. There’s a lot of calories and just I’m consistent, I’m regular and…
0:11:21.8 Jordan Syatt: Like high quality too?
0:11:23.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, high quality. Everyone knows the difference between something that’s just smooth, out of you, quick, not a lot of clean-up and you’re good. And that’s actually healthier than other types of whether you’re overly constipated or whether it’s just kind of an explosive-type mess. But for the last several days, the last week maybe, I just haven’t been feeling good, I’ve been… And as a result of eating like crap, and had been very constipated. So I went back and… Do you remember when I was keeping a gut health journal of every single thing I ate and taking poop pictures and tracking it all?
0:12:08.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:12:09.0 Mike Vacanti: I went back and… I went back and dug that up, and I started incorporating… I started eating less just crap and started incorporating more of the foods I was eating then, kinda stuff that would make sense. Traditionally healthy, has some fiber in it, sweet potatoes, almonds…
0:12:31.0 Jordan Syatt: I was wondering why you’ve been eating so many almonds lately. You’ve said that a couple of days now.
0:12:35.8 Mike Vacanti: And like that, it’s just like day over day, the bowel passing gets progressively better and better.
0:12:43.5 Jordan Syatt: Interesting. It’s funny, I think starting in 2019, I became acutely aware of your… Of your… I wouldn’t call it an obsession, but of your interest in bowel movements, and I’ll never forget when we came across a sales page for someone’s membership, and one of the benefits listed in the sales page was poop checks or something or like better bowel movements, and I was like, “They got Mike on this. They got the poop… ” [laughter]
0:13:12.0 Mike Vacanti: We had such a good laugh at that. We had such a good laugh, and I remember having a client four years ago who was very fixated on the quality of his poops, and it really… At the time, shout out if you’re listening, but it weirded me out until I read a little bit more on the relationship between gut health and mood, between gut health and brain health, and between gut health and the quality of your poops. And it just makes complete sense. I think in the next five to eight years, more science will catch up to all of the anecdotal evidence that is out there. And it will become even an area of more focus. And I would argue that part of the reason that you arguably have never once thought about this in your entire life, is because the Jordan Syatt instinctive, intuitive food choices for health aesthetics and feeling good are loaded with prebiotic and probiotic food choices.
0:14:22.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:14:23.5 Mike Vacanti: I’ll never forget once I started reading deeper on this, and then half of the foods on this list are just like, “Oh,” it’s like, “Do you eat miso soup for this reason?” You’re like, “No, I just really like it.” Like, “Oh okay,” it’s like, “What about kimchi? Do you eat kimchi for your gut?” You’re like, “I just love kimchi.” [laughter] There are a handful of other foods, but I found it pretty interesting.
0:14:47.9 Jordan Syatt: Sour dough pretzels.
0:14:49.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
0:14:51.9 Jordan Syatt: Kombucha. I’d always feel guilty bringing kimchi over your apartment, ’cause kimchi is like it’s a stench-y food to eat, but there is that Korean place right around the corner. So then I would just bring the kimchi over and yeah, kimchi and miso, all the time.
0:15:08.1 Mike Vacanti: So that’s what’s going on. Added some almonds, sour dough bread, more fruit, more oatmeal.
0:15:14.8 Jordan Syatt: Rogen had that doctor on his podcast, the gut health doctor, right? Is that one of your first exposures to it? I forget her name.
0:15:24.6 Mike Vacanti: Are you thinking of Rhonda Patrick?
0:15:27.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think that’s exactly how I’m thinking of.
0:15:29.9 Mike Vacanti: I think she did talk about gut health a little bit on there. I remember she was talking quite a bit about fasting. But I think maybe she was talking about gut health to an extent. But honestly, it was like, not even any deep digging, it was literally healthline, WebMD, whatever Google serves up on page one, like those seven to 10 articles were the extent of the reading that I did before just testing it on myself. Who knew that when you swap out a bunch of traditionally unhealthy foods and then eat healthier foods, that you’d feel better have more energy and have better poops…
0:16:12.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s crazy.
0:16:13.6 Jordan Syatt: Wild. [laughter] Alright, we’re gonna get to these questions.
0:16:21.7 Mike Vacanti: Now you’re ready to get… You just needed hear me talk about dumps first?
0:16:25.7 Jordan Syatt: I’m a big fan of listening to you talk about your poops. I just am thinking this whole time about… I couldn’t imagine having a membership program that was based around gut health, and you have a like group Facebook page, and in the inner circle, they’ll post pictures like progress pictures. And in the mentorship, they’ll post like client success stories and they got a new client and their system’s growing, and all the stuff. And the gut health Facebook page, I could imagine just a lot of pictures of like, “Hey guys, what do you think of my poop this morning?” [laughter] Like the moderators of that page must just be in a terrible mood all the time.
0:17:05.2 Mike Vacanti: Or fascinated by…
0:17:07.7 Jordan Syatt: You wouldn’t believe the fecal matter I saw this morning. [laughter] I gotta keep their name out. They’re like posting… You know how people post pictures of their clients and their stories?
0:17:16.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s blurry. [laughter]
0:17:16.8 Jordan Syatt: It’s like, “Here’s like Jan 1, 2020, Jan 1 2021. Look at this poop difference in one year in my gut… [laughter]
0:17:28.0 Mike Vacanti: Okay, we’ll get into it. The first question: “If you’re at your calorie limit for the day and still hungry, what should you do and what would be your go-to food?” So let’s assume this person is in a reasonable deficit…
0:17:49.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s an important word, reasonable. Not an extreme ridiculous deficit. Yeah.
0:17:54.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, because if your coach diet is set up to lose three and a half pounds a week, by the end of night two, you’re gonna be starving.
0:18:03.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:18:03.3 Mike Vacanti: So a reasonable half pound, a pound, maybe pound and a half, depending on your initial body weight, and you’re hungry at the end of the night, what should you do?
0:18:16.1 Jordan Syatt: I would say if this is just like a… By and large, I would say, “Listen, if you go over your calories one night, it’s not a big deal.” I think that has to be said first and foremost. If you happen to go over your calories, it’s not a big deal. The other thing that I think that’s important to say about this is, I remember I posted this on Instagram once and people were taken aback by it. I’ve done this with my clients for years, but when I posted about this on Instagram, people lost their shit. I was surprised to see how people were so surprised and how much better it made them feel. But one of the things I would do is I would say, “Give yourself another 500 calories.”
0:18:56.5 Jordan Syatt: And the reason I say this is because it’s not just a free-for-all. It’s not saying like, “Okay, well, just eat more, eat until you’re full.” So give yourself another 500 salaries. Yes, you’ll probably be out of your deficit. You might even be in the surplus that day, but by giving yourself an extra 500 calories, you can eat more, you can fill up on whatever you want or whatever is gonna fill you up the most for that amount of calories and you do damage control. And “damage control”, where it’s like, a lot of people say, “Well, just eat until you’re full,” and then they’ll get the peanut M & M’s and the ice cream and the pretzels and all this stuff, and they’ll eat another 1500-2000 calories, where it’s like, you would have been fine if you just had another 500 calories. So give yourself a limit, give a 500-calorie limit or so then you’ll be good to go.
0:19:40.0 Jordan Syatt: The other thing that I would say is, if this is something that is happening continuously over and over and over, day after day, where it’s just like… You have to understand part of being in a deficit is hunger, and I think it’s something that a lot of people… They don’t like to hear, it’s not fun. That’s one of the reasons why being in a deficit sucks. It’s not fun. It’s not fun. Being hungry, getting a little bit more tired. That’s part of being in a calorie deficit. Ideally, if you’re in a reasonable deficit, it will be slower to come on and it will be less drastic, but it’s still a part of it. It’s normal. So hunger is normal. I would say try and fill up more on protein, try and make sure that you’re getting a lot of fruits and vegetables in. It’s funny, any time I find myself, even if I’m in a deficit, if I find myself hungrier than usual, I’ll sort of do an audit on what my food looks like, and I’m always surprised that I’m usually always eating less fruit than I feel like I should be, I’m always eating less, fewer vegetables, and I think I should be…
0:20:37.8 Jordan Syatt: Even earlier today, I was asking what you had for breakfast and you said casein and I was like, “Oh, that’s just like… It’s a great idea,” you just have casein to start off a day, casein protein, if like you know you’re gonna be hungry in a bit, just fills you up right off the bat, sort of sits in your stomach. Doing an audit on what you’re eating and making sure the quality is… Again, shocker, high quality food is gonna help. But I think that’s super, super important. And you just have to remember, hunger isn’t an emergency. Just ’cause you’re hungry doesn’t mean like, “Oh my god, I need to eat.” It’s like sometimes, especially the further and further you get into a fat loss phase, you’re gonna go to bed a little bit hungry, it’s… You’re not starving, and it’s a big difference. A little bit hungry is okay.
0:21:16.9 Mike Vacanti: Yep. I completely agree. We almost need to differentiate between two people, person A, who has been pretty on point for the last couple of weeks, near… Not perfect, but near their calories almost every single day, haven’t had any blow-up days, and they’re really hungry one night, go over your calories by whether it’s 200, 300, 500, do what you need to do in that one out of 14, one out of 30 days, whatever it is, versus someone who night after night, after night after night, is quote unquote… And by the way, in that situation, it could be that their deficit is too big, but when that’s happening every single night, there needs to be… Well, one, the food quality fiber, are you eating a lot of calorically dense foods throughout the day or not? But losing body fat is extremely annoying and difficult, and there’s a lot of downside, one of them is some hunger and it’s something that some nights you just need to grit and bear and go to bed.
0:22:33.1 Mike Vacanti: Floss, brush your teeth, go to bed, or what should you have in a situation like that? I completely agree that something like… What works best for me is something that is reasonably filling that has protein, which is gonna have less of a negative impact than going over on other macro-nutrients and you’re much less likely to overeat. Like you mentioned, oh, you’re gonna eat peanut M&Ms right before bed? You can eat a 1,000 calories of peanut M&Ms like that compared to Greek yogurt with fruit or casein protein or something, cottage cheese, cottage cheese with grapes, something like that, where it’s gonna be harder to really end up in some kind of like… You know, it’s not a binge, eating a lot of calories. And I picked this question for a specific reason, because most of the rest of these are more related to coaching, but in the last week or two, it’s become… I already knew this, but it’s become even more clear that so many coaches really struggle with their own fitness.
0:23:45.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yep.
0:23:47.5 Mike Vacanti: And I think in year one of the mentorship in 2019, that shed a little bit of light on that for me, having more personal conversations with coaches, getting to know just more coaches from all around the world on a deeper level, and following other coaches’ content and almost being able to see this social media version compared to what they’re really struggling with. And so I… Let us know in reviews or emails or DMs, but I think that the actual nutrition and training stuff that we talk about on here is just as valuable as the coaching and business stuff.
0:24:38.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, absolutely. Not to mention, I couldn’t agree more. Not to mention, I think a lot of coaches, they might know this stuff, but maybe they’re newer coaches or they aren’t sure if the answer they’re giving is correct… Or if it’s the right way to phrase it. So I would imagine that a lot of them like to hear how we would answer that question, so when their clients ask, they can feel confident in knowing their answer is correct, and the way they’re phrasing it is okay.
0:25:03.3 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely.
0:25:05.0 Jordan Syatt: I also think in terms of calorie stuff, I feel like I’m not a money guy or a number guy, but I feel like a budget is always like a financial budget, it’s always sort of a good parallel to draw with calories, and I was just thinking, as you were talking, I was thinking, what would be like a good financial budget analogy to go along side this? Like, well, what if you go over your calories one night or what if you’re hungry one night, and I was thinking, this is just off the top of my head, I’m not sure, I haven’t narrowed it down yet, I don’t know how sticky this is gonna be, but I was thinking like, let’s say it’s you’re out in the city and it’s really cold and you go out to party several nights a week, right? And you go out to bars, clubs, whatever, and you don’t wanna walk home because it’s really cold, so you take an Uber or a cab and you know it’s not really in your budget to do that, but one night you do it just because you need to get home, it’s freezing and yes you gotta do it. That’s fine, you went over your budget that night, but it was just that one time, but if three, four, or five nights a week, you’re going out and it’s cold out and you’re still taking that Uber, you’re still taking that cab, well, you gotta make some changes.
0:26:13.7 Jordan Syatt: Either you’ve gotta make more money so it’s in your budget, or you’ve gotta go out less, or you’ve gotta take the train, or you’ve gotta stick it… Like dress up with warmer clothes and gloves and everything so that you can deal with that cold. It’s like going over your budget that one night taking the cab, it’s not gonna ruin… You’re not gonna be on the streets just because you went that one night in the cab or the Uber, but if you’re doing it four or five nights a week, well, yeah, then you’ve got a problem.
0:26:39.9 Mike Vacanti: I like that analogy. It’s absolutely right. Took me back to 2013.
0:26:46.9 Jordan Syatt: New York City.
0:26:48.1 Mike Vacanti: Taking the subway everywhere at all hours.
[laughter]
0:26:53.1 Jordan Syatt: You used to take the subway just to do work, just like get on the subway and ride it to the end, answering emails.
0:26:58.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Well, I’m a weird dude. “Could you guys talk about impostor syndrome as a PT? That would be amazing.”
0:27:09.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:27:10.9 Mike Vacanti: And this kind of segues nicely to some of what we’ve already been talking about here. You wanna start on this one?
0:27:17.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. I was just about to say, do you wanna start? [chuckle] Impostor syndrome. There are many ways to take this, right? I think, on one hand, we could talk about impostor syndrome, like while you’re working with your clients, like if you’re in a one-on-one situation, whether it’s in person or online, you feel you have impostor syndrome, like, “Why are they asking me? I’m a relatively new coach. What do I know? Do they think that I know what I’m talking about?” That you could have imposter syndrome in that sense. You could have impostor syndrome posting content online, right? Like…
0:27:51.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I would imagine that’s one of the biggest ones.
0:27:54.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think that’s a really big one, and I think… I know I felt it a lot early on in my career, ’cause I was so young, I was… When I started posting content online, I was 20, 21, 22, and I was sort of going up against people who had been in the industry for 15, 20, 30 years already, and some of them as my page grew, some of them were like, “What are you doing? You’re a 21, 22-year-old kid. Why do you think you have the right to be talking about this?” So I did sort of face that as well, not even just worrying about what people, what everyday gen pop people would think, but about what other fitness professionals think. I feel like that’s arguably the biggest source of impostor syndrome and fear among coaches is posting online out of a fear of what other coaches will think of you, out of a fear of other coaches calling you out, over the fear of possibly saying something wrong. I think, number one, it is normal, right? Just like hunger while dieting is normal, having impostor syndrome is normal.
0:28:56.0 Jordan Syatt: I think one of the reasons, impostor syndrome, everyone knows that phrase, is ’cause we all deal with it. I think the first time you ever hear that phrase, impostor syndrome, you’re like, “Oh, what does that mean?” And then when you understand what it actually means and sort of where it comes from, you can relate to it immediately, everybody can relate to it immediately. And I remember, I think the first time I ever heard of impostor syndrome I was a kid, and my mom was telling me, the analogy that she used, I think we were in a car ride, and she was saying, “Could you imagine becoming the President of the United States and walking into the Oval Office for the first time?” Like every president, the first time they walk into the Oval Office, their first day as president, they are like, “I cannot believe that I’m here. I’m in the Oval Office.” Thinking like, “I’ve duped everybody into thinking that I should be the leader of this country.”
0:29:49.1 Jordan Syatt: And I think we all feel that in some level, in some way, in everything we’re doing. You have to understand that it’s normal. And if you didn’t feel it, it probably would be a sign that you’re sort of a psychopath. Like if you just go into this brand new thing, or this relatively new thing, and you’re just fully so overly confident in your ability, and there’s no fear, no nerves, that’s a sign of a real narcissist, a real psychopathic tendency. So the fact that you have it is probably a good sign, and it just means that you’re gonna be very careful with what you say, hopefully, not so careful that it prevents you from saying anything, but you’re gonna be careful, you’re gonna be cautious, you’re gonna do your job to research. I think you can use it to your advantage to make sure you’re doing things right as opposed to a disadvantage to prevent you from posting or doing anything at all.
0:30:41.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. There’s a formal term for what you just described. It might be Dunning-Kruger, but I…
0:30:48.9 Jordan Syatt: Yes, that’s exactly right.
0:30:50.6 Mike Vacanti: Where when you have basically no knowledge or minimal knowledge of a topic, your confidence is actually reasonably high, and then the more you learn about it, the graph starts to go down, meaning, you learn a little bit more about it and realize, “Oh, I don’t really know anything about this.” And then the more and more and more you learn then it starts gradually climbing back up to becoming more confident in what you know.
0:31:22.8 Jordan Syatt: This is one of the reasons why I think there’s so much misinformation is ’cause someone here is like one review of a study or like one person’s opinion on keto, and all of a sudden that person is like, “Okay, keto’s the way. Listen, I know, I know insulin stores fat, keto prevents duh, duh. It’s it. That’s it.” And then they just get super confident in their knowledge based on knowing essentially nothing. And whereas, the more you learn, you’re like, “Oh my god, I’ve spent this much time learning and I still feel like I know nothing,” so it becomes overwhelming, that thought like, “Wow, how little do I actually know if I’m so overwhelmed right now?”
0:32:04.4 Mike Vacanti: I think you hit the nail on the head. I think the biggest tragedy would be to let impostor syndrome, which is something that 99% of people face in various aspects of life, to let that prevent you from moving forward into a space you’re passionate about, into a job, into a career that can help hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people. I think a good way of thinking about it is that that is a fear, that is a resistance that you need to battle against to have an outcome that is extremely beneficial for not only you, but everyone that you will come in contact with over the years, and decades to come. So know that everyone has experienced it, or is experiencing it to some degree, and mentally position yourself against it in a battle to accomplish something great.
0:33:08.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I also think, one thing… I don’t wanna say any names, I know she listens to the podcast, she’s an amazing friend of mine and colleague but it’s a great example to use. I was on the phone with this amazing coach, amazing woman and early on in her career and she was… I was like, “Hey, you should do some Instagram lives,” and her audience had started to grow and pick up. And she was like, “You know what, Jordan, I would, but what if someone asks me a question that I don’t know the answer to?” And I remember just being like “Well, you look in the camera and you say, ‘I don’t know but I’m gonna do my best to find out.’ And that’s it.” And she felt so relieved that she laughed, like a big pressure was like let go of her chest and she just, “Okay, I can just say I don’t know.” I think one of the things that a lot of newer coaches will do is they feel the need to portray themselves as an expert and they feel the need to live up to this expert role, I think.
0:34:19.1 Jordan Syatt: I went through that, I know if you go back and look at my earlier work in 2011-2012 on my website you’ll read a very different author and it’s ’cause I was trying to copy Eric Cressey and I was trying to be Eric Cressey and I was trying to live up to that expert role. And I think it was ’cause I admired him so much and his work so much I wanted other people to admire me in the same way and so I tried to take on that role. So if you’re trying to take on that expert role, you have to realize you’re putting the pressure on yourself. That is completely 100% self-imposed pressure. Stop trying to portray yourself as an expert, you don’t have to be a “expert” you can just be, “Hey, you know I’m a coach, I’m learning, I’m going through this as well, I’m gonna teach you what I’ve been learning. If I find out that I’ve been wrong about something then I’ll tell you I was wrong and hopefully what I teach and discuss here will help you. But I’m a human too, I’m not immune to being incorrect and saying something wrong and I give you my word that when I find out that I did say something wrong, I’ll tell you about it.” And when you take the pressure off yourself to be an all-knowing expert now you can just be a human being and impostor syndrome can be diminished.
0:35:24.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, not only that but also and your audience will respect you more because then when they get answers they know that it’s just not you BS-ing your way through it. The more you say I don’t know the more confident they can be when you’re answering questions.
0:35:45.2 Jordan Syatt: Correct, yeah.
0:35:47.7 Mike Vacanti: “What is the most important thing to know as a beginner coach?”
0:35:53.2 Jordan Syatt: What do you think, Michael, Michael J. Vacanti?
0:35:56.3 Mike Vacanti: The most important, Jordan R. Syatt, the most important…
0:36:05.8 Jordan Syatt: I feel like this is like a question like, what’s the best exercise for building strength? It’s like, it’s tough to just say one thing but we’ll give like a…
0:36:18.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we’ll work our way towards one. I think it has to be something in the realm of that helping people for free continuously. And part of what gets rolled up into helping people is doing the work on your own, reading internship courses like doing the learning work so that you can help them and then consistently help them for free for years and years is going to lead to the greatest number of people impacted, it’s going to lead to the most amount of career success, business success, number of people helped success for you as a coach, avoiding the mentality of… I always just think back to 2015, when a coach said to me, “What do you do when people ask you questions on Snapchat, do you charge them?” No, I don’t charge them to answer questions, I answer their questions. Yeah, just fully immersing yourself in that mindset and then being patient, it has to be somewhere in the top couple of things that are important for a beginner coach.
0:37:45.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I love that. I would say… Again, this is a really hard question ’cause there’s a lot I’d like to say but for whatever reason the top of mind thing for me right now is, no matter how much studying you do, no matter how much you learn, no matter how good of a coach you become you are never gonna be able to help everybody. It’s just, you’re not. Not everybody is going to be at a point in which they’re ready or willing or able to be helped. It’s just a very unfortunate truth about coaching and I would liken this to one of the things I would imagine doctors learn early on in their career, in their professional career is that no matter how much medicine they know, no matter how good they are understanding diagnosis and understanding medications and everything and all of these illnesses, no matter how good they are, there are gonna be patients that die under their watch.
0:38:48.9 Jordan Syatt: And it’s one of the things that doctors they, I would imagine they would probably all remember their first patient that died under their watch, but over the years they become more and more distant to it, they become more and more desensitized to it, not that it doesn’t bother them but if they let every single time a patient dies under their watch, they let that affect them so radically, it’ll prevent them from being able to help other people that need them. If they need to take a week, a month off, every time that happens then other people won’t be getting the help they need. So you’ll have clients, you’ll have people that maybe it’s a family member, maybe it’s a colleague, maybe it’s someone who follows you on Instagram or YouTube or whatever it is, someone who comes to you for coaching and you’re gonna have clients that it’s just it’s not a good fit and it’s not working and you won’t be able to help them and I know for me early on in my career it was devastating. I always felt like I was a failure, like I was a terrible coach, and there were definitely things that I could improve on, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re just not gonna be able to help everybody. And the sooner you understand that, the less of a hit it will be on you, and the sooner you can get back to actually doing your job and helping other people who are at a place in which they’re ready and willing and able to work and make progress with you.
0:40:09.8 Mike Vacanti: That’s a great one. That’s something we hit on often actually in the mentorship and funny enough, that’s a trait or a situation that it’s often the coaches who care the most, who are genuinely in it for the right reasons, who desperately want to help everyone who they have the opportunity to help, get struck by the most, and so yeah, the sooner that lesson can be learned and ingrained, the better because you’ll be able to move on from those situations and continue to do more good with the people who are open and ready at that time in their life to take action on what you’re doing for them.
0:40:58.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, absolutely.
0:41:00.9 Mike Vacanti: Good, good, I like that. What do you think, this was actually a question that you thought of for me in the last episode that we just did. Yeah, that we just didn’t get to, so we’ll jam on this one. “What do you think is the most overrated and most underrated exercise?”
0:41:21.8 Jordan Syatt: Just speaking about the last episode really quick. If you didn’t listen to it, definitely go listen to the previous episode. I basically did a whole Q&A interview with Mike where we discussed like personal finance, discussed things like are there any foods that you’d say are off-limits to a client? It was a really cool discussion, got some great feedback on it, so if you did not listen to that…
0:41:41.8 Mike Vacanti: Talked about selling without actually selling.
0:41:45.8 Jordan Syatt: Yup. Yup. So what was his question? I completely forgot.
0:41:49.8 Mike Vacanti: Most overrated and most underrated exercises.
0:41:54.2 Jordan Syatt: Okay so I’ll go most overrated as burpees.
0:41:57.7 Mike Vacanti: Can’t argue with that.
0:42:00.3 Jordan Syatt: Most underrated exercise I would say, I’m trying not to say something that is actually…
0:42:08.1 Mike Vacanti: Pretty highly rated.
0:42:09.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, ’cause my mind…
0:42:10.7 Mike Vacanti: Dead lifts.
0:42:12.2 Jordan Syatt: Dead lifts, but also my mind goes to Bulgarian split squats, but I’m like, those are a very popular exercise. I don’t think those are underrated. I think those are… I don’t think they’re properly rated, but they’re not the most underrated. I think there’s another exercise, if you have anything on the top of your mind, go ahead and say it. I’m gonna need to think for a second.
0:42:32.3 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely, most overrated exercise of all time are standing dumbbell weighted side bends. [laughter] I’ve been seeing them since the first time I ever walked in the gym. I do not understand them to save my life. They are always performed by generally men who seem to look like they desire aesthetics, and what they’re doing is just extreme oblique hypertrophy, which is really for the shape, for the narrow waist, like broad upper back shoulders, chest arms that they’re after. It’s not doing it.
0:43:21.0 Jordan Syatt: Louie loves those.
0:43:22.7 Mike Vacanti: Really?
0:43:23.1 Jordan Syatt: Louie from Westside. He’s not in it for the aesthetics. He’s in it for much…
0:43:27.0 Mike Vacanti: Why?
0:43:29.1 Jordan Syatt: I have no… He just wants strong abs.
0:43:29.8 Mike Vacanti: Oh as much muscle everywhere on the body?
0:43:32.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah and…
0:43:32.6 Mike Vacanti: There’s so many other ways to hit the abs.
0:43:34.6 Jordan Syatt: Of course. Yeah, Louie, one other thing, he just is always doing something exercise-related, so at any point in time, you walk into the gym, it could be 8:00 AM, like he’s doing neck exercises with a band…
0:43:48.0 Mike Vacanti: Oh, I love that.
0:43:48.9 Jordan Syatt: And then you go in there at 12:00 PM and then he’s doing like crunches on the physio ball, and then you go in there at 4:00 PM and he’s doing like side crunches or standing side oblique with the dumbbell, and then you’ll go there at 7:00 PM, he’s doing walking with the sled behind… Like always. Constantly, and no wonder. I mean, the guy is like a ball of muscle. He’s definitely not trying to step on a body building stage any time soon. But yeah, he loves those.
0:44:14.3 Mike Vacanti: Man, I don’t know if I wanna go head to head with Louie Simmons on this one.
0:44:18.3 Jordan Syatt: He’s not listening to our podcast, I guarantee it. So it’s alright. [laughter]
0:44:21.9 Mike Vacanti: Got some real impostor syndrome going right now.
0:44:27.4 Jordan Syatt: Let’s see. No, there’s a lot of stuff that Louie does that isn’t what I would consider the smart… I mean he does, you know how people do battle ropes? I love battle ropes. He does battle ropes with thick metal chains, heavy metal, and I’m like, “Louie, why are you doing that?” He’s like, “Toughness,” and his hands are bleeding and he’s out in the 95 degree heat, just like clink, clink, clink, clink for 30 minutes at a time, just doing what is essentially battle ropes with heavy weighted chains. His hands are like blistered and bleeding from it. I’m like, “Louie, you’re out of your mind.” It’s like so not everything he does is like the smartest I would say for most people.
0:45:05.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah I would also, if you wanna train the obliques directly because maybe it’s a look you want, pick an exercise where you can get a full range of motion. Like maybe a hanging knee raise with a twist.
0:45:23.1 Jordan Syatt: I was just about to say, I think that’d be a better one. Yeah.
0:45:26.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:45:26.8 Jordan Syatt: Those are brutal.
0:45:27.9 Mike Vacanti: Brutal and great. And yes, it’s good to be strong all over, but this half-ROM, overloaded standing in front of the rack blocking people from getting to it.
0:45:45.2 Jordan Syatt: People using way too much weight like torquing and twisting their spine on the way down. [laughter]
0:45:50.8 Mike Vacanti: Exactly. But even when performed properly, a full contraction of the oblique, you’re not fully contracting your oblique when you’re at the “top of that movement.”
0:46:05.2 Jordan Syatt: There’s no tension on it anymore.
0:46:06.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. Yep.
0:46:08.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I think the hanging leg raise. Maybe, you know what? Maybe that’s the most underrated right now.
0:46:14.2 Mike Vacanti: Underrated?
0:46:14.9 Jordan Syatt: I don’t see anybody doing those right now. Nobody does.
0:46:17.1 Mike Vacanti: Except you and me when we had gym access.
0:46:19.6 Jordan Syatt: Beginning of lock down. Yeah, we were doing those two times a week. Nobody does hanging leg raises anymore. I think it’s ’cause they’re hard, and I think that’s just where, you know, that’s where society is right now. We’re just not doing anything hard right now. I think hanging leg raises… Like, we were doing them with our arms in the stirrups, but hanging leg raises hanging by your hands from the pull-up bar. I’m gonna say that’s the most underrated ’cause it’s full body, grip strength, forearm strength, shoulder mobility, core strength. That’s a great… And you look at the best gymnasts in the world. You look at young athletes doing that stuff, it’s just… I think that we’re gonna go with that being the most underrated exercise. Which I also like because I think it’s also trendy not to directly train your abs right now. It’s like, everyone’s like, “You don’t need to directly train your abs.” I’m like,” Why?” They’re like, “Well, you get enough activation from dead lifts and squats.” It’s like, “What? What? Who told you that?” You did not read that you get enough from a study. You just read that on Instagram or something or heard that on a YouTube video. Like, what is enough? What defines enough core activation strength?
0:47:27.5 Mike Vacanti: Depends on the goal. Depends on how much time someone has to be training in a week. You know who I think used to say that who we both liked?
0:47:38.6 Jordan Syatt: I used to say that. I mean, I used to when I was younger.
0:47:41.4 Mike Vacanti: I used to say it too but I think where I got it from in 2008.
0:47:46.2 Jordan Syatt: Martin Berkhan?
0:47:47.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:47:48.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, he was big on that. Which is crazy. I mean, that guy is huge, like massive. Crazy amounts of muscle mass, and for the amount that he says he trains, it’s pretty insane. Like what, three times a week, RPT style training with no direct arm work, no direct ab work. Like, how in the hell? What the hell? Dude, you’re huge.
0:48:07.9 Mike Vacanti: Heavy chin-ups. Yeah, yeah, I wonder. I don’t know where his training philosophy has shifted if it has since then, but that might be interesting to dig back up.
0:48:17.8 Jordan Syatt: His Instagram posts come up sometimes, and that guy is one of the strongest people I’ve ever seen in my life. He does seal rows and bent over rows with such an unbelievable amount of weight. And then there are annoying people in the Comments being like, “You’re using a little bit too much momentum.” I’m like, “Bro, do you know how much weight is on that bar? Like, get outta here.” That guy, he is freakishly strong. It’s pretty crazy to see. Especially at how lean he is year-round.
0:48:44.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, most over… Sorry, most underrated exercise. You went with the… I completely agree on direct ab training in general. It doesn’t get enough love for aesthetics, for injury prevention, for performance on other non-abdominal moves. I’m just a huge fan of training the abs. I’m trying to think of what the most underrated exercise is.
0:49:22.0 Jordan Syatt: Hammer curls.
0:49:24.3 Mike Vacanti: Yes. Hey, actually, earlier we were talking and I was like, “21s.” Remember, the…
0:49:30.1 Jordan Syatt: Those are great. Those are great…
0:49:30.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and I never see them anywhere anymore.
0:49:35.6 Jordan Syatt: Paul Carter has a great variation on 21s that he had me do that I think absolutely blew my arms up. I’ve lost all that muscle mass since I started doing Jiu Jitsu. But it’s a great variation where… You know, standard 21s that you do like halfway up and then you do, like you do half rep on the bottom portion, and then half… Yeah.
0:49:52.1 Mike Vacanti: Bottom half, top half and then full. Yep, yep.
0:49:55.5 Jordan Syatt: Paul, he keeps the full range of motion the whole time. He just does different variations of curls. So instead of doing top half, bottom half full, he’ll go hammer curl, regular curl, and then reverse curl. And the entire time you’re using full range of motion, you’re just hitting it like different points of the strength curve. And it was brutal. I love those.
0:50:17.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s a cool variation. I like that. I’ll superset… I haven’t done three like that, but I’ll superset biceps with no rest. You know, no rest between one and two, and then rest after two with an overhand underhand.
0:50:31.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:50:32.0 Mike Vacanti: Or something along those lines. Yeah, I’m going with 21s.
0:50:37.1 Jordan Syatt: 21s. Alright, I like that.
0:50:38.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Takes me back to 2003. Working out the back corner of Jefferson High School with Jeff Sibesta during gym class. Close grip, EZ bar.
0:50:49.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah. Let’s go.
0:50:49.9 Mike Vacanti: Bottom half, top half, full range.
0:50:53.3 Jordan Syatt: Did you use one of those arm blaster things that like you… It’s like a black bar that’s curved like an S-curve and has a strap that you put over your neck, and then it goes underneath your arms, in between your arms and your chest to isolate your arms. If anybody listening wants to know what I’m talking about, just Google arm blaster and you’ll see a picture of this thing. I used that in high school all the time. [laughter]
0:51:18.1 Mike Vacanti: I think maybe once. I’ve definitely seen it. I don’t remember if I’ve ever tried it.
0:51:23.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s great. It’s great ’cause it keeps your elbows from going too far behind your back, and it just keeps them locked in. It’s basically like you have your own built-in creature curl all the time against your chest. It’s just like great technique. Yeah, I liked it a lot. I actually might get one for the cave, for the Syatt gym for when you… ‘Cause you’re gonna be a member here soon. Figure we gotta have some arm specialization stuff for you.
0:51:48.5 Mike Vacanti: I would love that. I would love that.
0:51:50.7 Jordan Syatt: I’m gonna get you an arm blaster. I’m getting you an arm blaster for the Syatt… I’m trying to cater to my clientele. [laughter] So I’m getting you an arm blaster.
0:52:00.2 Mike Vacanti: Just a great gym owner.
[laughter]
0:52:03.2 Mike Vacanti: Nice, man. Well, this was fun. That’s all we got for questions.
0:52:07.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s what Mike does. He ends the podcast when Mike wants to end the podcast. [laughter]
0:52:14.6 Mike Vacanti: I mean, we had a great chat.
0:52:16.4 Jordan Syatt: Is that it? Are those all the questions?
0:52:17.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. Four questions. We usually do four questions.
0:52:18.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh okay. I was having such a good time. I’m such an E. I’m just like, “Alright, let’s just keep talking, bro.”
0:52:23.3 Mike Vacanti: Extremely extroverted, you continue to build your energy through interaction with other humans, whereas I start with a full tank and it gradually empties.
[laughter]
0:52:37.5 Mike Vacanti: I think we’re at that point where we’re gonna wrap things up until next week. 2 for 2 in 2021.
0:52:45.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, there we go. I like it.
0:52:47.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it’s a strong start. We appreciate you listening very, very much. We also… The reviews have really helped a ton, so massive thank you to everyone who has left a review. They really help other people within the podcast app find us organically, which is incredible. So thank you very much to everyone who has left a five-star review. We really appreciate it.
0:53:09.6 Jordan Syatt: Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. And we’ll see you next week?
0:53:13.8 Mike Vacanti: See you next week.
0:53:15.3 Jordan Syatt: I said that sort of with a question. We’ll see… It was like Ron Burgundy, like, “See you next week?” [laughter] Exclamation point.
0:53:23.9 Jordan Syatt: We’ll see you next week.
0:53:26.2 Mike Vacanti: Bye everyone.
