0:00:11.4 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.
0:00:12.9 Jordan Syatt: Hello, Michael. It’s like Seinfeld. Hello, Newman. [laughter]
0:00:20.8 Mike Vacanti: This is an unusual podcast day and time for us.
0:00:25.6 Jordan Syatt: I like it, to be honest. This is a great way to start…
0:00:27.3 Mike Vacanti: Really?
0:00:27.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I like this. Maybe we should do this in the future.
0:00:30.9 Mike Vacanti: Not gonna work because… [laughter] There is one reason why this podcast has been so successful in 2022. I’m just gonna break down the behind-the-scenes for everyone. Because Jordan’s just dependable, like a 4X4, like a real truck. I could ask Jordan to do a podcast, he could be laying in bed with his wife at 9 o’clock at night, he wouldn’t want to. He would probably say no initially, but I know that if I pushed hard enough and had a good reason, Jordan would unhappily get up out of bed, walk into his office and do a podcast, whereas I’m the opposite. So the reason why this has been successful is because I have been scheduling these podcasts immediately after my workouts, I’ve been putting them on your calendar immediately after my workouts, so I have pre-workout coursing through my veins, I’m ready to go and then we just rip the podcast and we’re just nailing them, but this one, we’re resetting the pod schedule, so we actually recorded two this week, but basically, this is a Saturday morning, I didn’t just work out, I’m dragging. I’m fasted. [laughter] I have to be fasted because the other day Jordan basically called me fat and…
0:01:42.4 Jordan Syatt: I did not call you… [laughter] “I’ve been fasting for 76 hours because Jordan called me fat.” [laughter]
0:01:50.5 Mike Vacanti: “Jordan fat…” No. But in reality, it’s just early in the morning, I’m drinking my coffee, I haven’t had anything to eat.
0:02:00.0 Jordan Syatt: Then you should get a shirtless pic to prove that you’re not fat.
0:02:02.0 Mike Vacanti: Oh, yeah, that’s how this happened. [laughter] So, no, I was… I got a little bit of the itch, we’re gonna get into this in this episode, but I got a little bit of that content itch, surprisingly and I was telling you about some TikTok strategies that I was thinking of and one of them involved using the shirtless physique for marketing, which is a classic strategy dating back to the 1990s and before and I think your exact words were something along… Like a joke where you were like, “People are gonna be like, what happened to Mike?” [laughter] ‘Cause you were referencing… It’s probably a year ago now at this point when I told that story about how I had to put on a suit for something and the pants didn’t fit.
0:02:44.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. [laughter] You were like, “What is going on?” [laughter]
0:02:47.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And then I got slightly insecure and I was like, “Man, did I?” And then sent you a photo and you were like, “You look fine.” It was a real special bro moment between us.
0:03:00.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. No, you look good, man. You look lean. You look jacked.
0:03:03.9 Mike Vacanti: You look good. You look jacked.
0:03:05.4 Jordan Syatt: No. Alright, Dale. This guy can’t take a compliment.
0:03:09.2 Mike Vacanti: I’m Dave Ramsey, you’re Dale Carnegie. [laughter] So here we are on Saturday morning. We got a nice list of questions, some real exciting stuff. What else is happening on your end though?
0:03:22.9 Jordan Syatt: What else is happening on my end? I’m sore. I’m really sore. Alex Viada put me through some crazy programming, just really insane amounts of training and exercise that I’ve never done before, but, yeah, I feel good.
0:03:39.7 Mike Vacanti: Of lifting volume or just the combination of all of the endurance work and the lifting?
0:03:44.6 Jordan Syatt: Everything.
0:03:46.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:03:47.2 Jordan Syatt: Lifting, like, a lot of lifting, a lot of Jiu Jitsu and a lot of cardio, a lot of everything and it’s funny because I think we hear over-training, that term so much, like, “Am I over-training? Am I over-training?” Like, “You’re doing like four workouts a week, you’re not over-training,” you know what I mean? And it’s cool to see how much you can actually push your body and we’re in such a weird place in the mentality of the world right now where it’s like, “Oh, you don’t wanna overtrain, you don’t wanna overtrain.” And it’s much harder to overtrain than people think. It’s very difficult to actually overtrain. Our bodies are so capable of withstanding a tremendous amount of stress. It’s crazy. Obviously, you don’t wanna push it just to see if you’re over-training and you don’t wanna do this with your clients, but it is very funny to me how much content people make around over-training and just so loosely throw around the term, “You could be over-training,” it’s like, “No, you’re not.” [chuckle] The number of people who are actually over-training is so small.
0:04:51.9 Mike Vacanti: We know this as coaches, because one of the primary mistakes that our clients make on average, outside of maybe someone who isn’t technically competent with certain exercises, the primary mistake we see is a lack of intensity. It’s the fact that someone has gone six months of working out and hasn’t taken a single set within five reps of failure and isn’t trying to increase the weight they’re using and then asking about lack of muscle gain progress, whatever the case may be, but the issue we have is a lack of intensity, not too much intensity.
0:05:29.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, agreed 100%. That’s a good way to put it.
0:05:30.7 Mike Vacanti: The one thing I will say is, you didn’t start this volume of total exercise overnight, you have done a good job of… I mean, you kind of did when you started working with Alex, but you had over the course of a number of years, worked up to this level of total volume.
0:05:49.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, which is cool when you think about it though, ’cause when I stopped coaching Gary, I was relatively fat for me and deconditioned and I went from basically not working out at all to starting out with three times a week and then slowly bumping that up to four times a week and then going to Jiu Jitsu like two times a week and then bringing my strength training down.
0:06:10.4 Mike Vacanti: And you forgot about that because you had…
0:06:13.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I did.
0:06:13.5 Mike Vacanti: You had to be reminded that you started Jiu Jitsu two times a week, so then it was four times a week lifting and then adding two Jiu Jitsu sessions and probably dropping at least one strength session.
0:06:22.5 Jordan Syatt: I reduced two… So I went from four times a week strength training to two Jiu Jitsu and two strength.
0:06:28.4 Mike Vacanti: And then it was three Jiu Jitsu and then over time, you got to the point where it’s five to six.
0:06:34.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it was three and then it went from like three to four within a matter of weeks, so I was just like, “I’m really starting to like this.” Then COVID hit and my wife and I went to Boston for about six weeks, so I stopped Jiu Jitsu completely and then you put me on that arm program. [laughter] Do you remember when I did that with the dumbbells and I got huge?
0:06:52.1 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely. You were huge. I do.
0:06:56.6 Jordan Syatt: I got huge. I do look back at videos from that time, it’s funny, ’cause that’s when I was going hard on TikTok during that time frame and I was… My face was way fatter. It’s crazy, ’cause I’m going back on TikTok recently now and I’m looking at my old videos, I’m like, oh, man, I look like a different person during that like March, April, May 2020.
0:07:14.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah.
0:07:14.8 Jordan Syatt: But I was training like five or six times a week there, just doing a lot of arms stuff and then went back, started Jiu Jitsu then I just went started training with Hafa in New York and I was training six times a week with him and I was doing strength training like once or twice, ’cause I was wrecked from that much Jiu Jitsu so quickly, but then slowly from… I’ve kept the six times a week Jiu Jitsu, but added slowly more strength on top of that and now it’s been like two years.
0:07:45.4 Mike Vacanti: And then November, December 2021, you really started layering cardio on top of that.
0:07:51.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s true.
0:07:52.0 Mike Vacanti: Which, you know, Zone 2 cardio is not like taxing on your muscles or your joints very much at all, especially what you’re doing, but you started layering that on top of what you were doing and then when you started working with Alex, it added even more in different strength training volume.
0:08:09.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s exactly right. So, yeah, it’s been a progression.
0:08:10.9 Mike Vacanti: Lower body especially, it sounds like.
0:08:13.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so much lower body. It was just like, “I’m gonna have to have a talk with them,” like, “Bro, this is way too much lower body for me. I need more upper work, man.”
0:08:21.6 Mike Vacanti: You know what’s interesting? A few podcasts back, we were talking about my training and I moved from like every other day workouts where it was like upper push, rest, upper pull, rest, legs, rest, upper push, rest and so my total volume was pretty low and my lower body volume… Like I was hitting the leg day once every 12 days probably and then I dialed that to once a week, I was hitting legs and I was doing five lower body exercises, three working sets each. So I was getting 15 plus sets of legs a week, which is solid enough.
0:09:00.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s plenty. Yeah.
0:09:02.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but even then, I wasn’t progressing that much on strength. When I added… A couple of weeks back, I started like a true upper lower split, Monday, legs and abs, Tuesday, full upper, meaning upper push and upper pull, Wednesday, rest, Thursday, legs and abs, Friday, upper again and just making that switch and my lower body volume… I mean, total volume did go up, actually, so I’m probably at like nine to 12 sets of workout, so pushing 24 sets a week, but adding more exercises, more volume and that frequency especially has not only increased my lower body strength, but just how I feel and how I move, so like any kind of like low backs, not pain, but stiffness, tightness, anything in like the hips, I feel so much better. I was telling you I was doing these backwards somersaults and moving around my basement, kinda getting mentally stoked for it and it just feels so much better adding that extra day of lower bodywork and I’ve heard of it from so many people, just the increase in how you feel basically from between your knees up to your core.
0:10:13.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Do you have a special warm-up that you do before your lower body days?
0:10:17.5 Mike Vacanti: That’s a great point. No, it’s not specific to lower body, I do a full-body warm-up that’s probably pushing 12 plus minutes on any strength training day, so what I also accomplished by going from 3x a week to 4x a week was an extra mobility session. That’s essentially what it… Like, I’m treadmill walking three minutes at an incline and then I’m going into probably… It’s bang, bang, bang, it’s not that many reps, but it’s 15 plus different mobility drills that I’m squeezing in, so I’m getting that extra work in too, which helps.
0:10:53.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I think for me, that’s where I’ve always felt the strongest and the best, is with that upper lower split, where you have essentially four mobility sessions every single week and then you sort of solidify those mobility sessions with the strength work and it helps, like, you maintain that extra mobility. Yeah, that makes total sense to me. That’s awesome.
0:11:16.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Especially with that plus variety of lower body movements, like hitting all planes, doing everything, the proper technique, of course, but rather than doing four working sets, let’s say, of two movements or three movements in a workout, doing four to five exercises and only doing two working sets on some of them, but just hitting that variety of exercises also has probably improved my mobility slightly, but just improved how I feel.
0:11:50.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s a good point. That’s changed in my program and I think over the last couple of years is when I was powerlifting, I’d have sometimes four, five, six sets of the same exercise and now I have no issue doing sometimes one or two working sets of an exercise just to get different variety movement patterns in, which really does help, whether it’s lateral lunges, whether it’s… A lot of frontal plane lateral work, I think, helps a lot with the hips and the lower back and the ankles and the t-spine. Moving in the frontal plane laterally while trying to keep your t-spine up, your chest up tall and extending there, man, it really works wonders for your overall posture and movement.
0:12:30.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I completely agree. And just hitting both single-leg and double-leg hip hinging movements, hitting what you just mentioned, plus every other movement, right? If you’re doing 10 or 12 exercises in a week, you’re moving in so many different ways. So it feels really good.
0:12:54.6 Jordan Syatt: And it’s been cool to see… ‘Cause I was brought up under the idea that you need a lot more volume in a single movement to get stronger there, that’s what I was brought up with and now it’s cool to see one or two high-intensity sets it’s all you need in order to really get stronger and to get that strength stimulus in that session. And it’s crazy ’cause sometimes, very rarely do you end up tweaking yourself on the first or second set, like tweaking your back or tweaking your hamstring, it’s usually like on the third or fourth or fifth set or something, where you end up getting that tweak and I’ve noticed that the nicks and dings from training have gone down so much because I’ve reduced the total number of working sets, but my strength and muscle have continued to improve and the damage that you take from training has gone down so much because it’s like, “Yeah, I’ll do two working sets here. It’ll be brutally hard working sets, but this way… ” I’d say the two working sets are a nine out of a 10 as opposed to three, four, or five working sets where essentially they’re like an eight out of 10 each.
0:14:07.0 Jordan Syatt: So the intensity is higher for one or two sets than it is for three or four sets and the actual damage my body takes is significantly less, which is… I think it’s a really important thing that I haven’t seen many people write about ’cause all the books that I have read, it’s always three, four, or five sets to get stronger, because social media now is just totally short-form content. I haven’t seen in literature…
0:14:31.6 Mike Vacanti: Good long-form?
0:14:31.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, good long-form content around one to two working sets per exercise.
0:14:36.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it’d be interesting to see, especially when you talk about strength being one of the primary goals, there are situations, obviously, that are coming to my mind right now where programming more sets of a single movement when skill acquisition is one of the primary goals, you just need sets under your belt early on to learn a movement pattern. And when I say early on, I mean even for like one or two years, but, yeah, for strength it’s literally happening right now, two hard sets is leading to strength gains week over week.
0:15:17.0 Jordan Syatt: I also think that’s where the differentiation between working sets and warm-up sets comes into play, where it’s like you have someone brand new, you could give them three or four warm-up sets before they get to their actual working set and so, cool, you have five, six actual total sets, three of those sets are just lightweight easy techniques, so they can ingrain it and then one or two sets are much more difficult and they have to really practice maintaining that technique with a heavier weight.
0:15:43.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s a great point. It’s also a great point that a lot of the tweaks come later, which I wonder if that has something to do with how it’s psychologically difficult to maintain that intensity on the same kind of, call it like boring or repetitive if you’re doing five working sets of a movement, it’s hard to be 100% there mentally, especially when you’re pushing the intensity on all five sets, it’s easy to let something slip.
0:16:12.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s a great point. It’s draining when you know you have a very high intensity for four or five sets of something, like, “Oh, my God.” And then you’ll end up taking such long rest periods because you’re trying to just delay it and then your workout takes much longer than it’s supposed to and I think that’s oftentimes why injuries will happen, ’cause you sort of let yourself cool off a little bit in between a set and then maybe you’re like, “You know what? I’ve rested enough, I’m gonna go up a little bit,” and you increase the intensity too much, you tweak your back, tweak your hamstring, whatever it is. Yeah, man, this is a good conversation that I haven’t had yet. I like this.
0:16:47.2 Mike Vacanti: Dude, I remember a specific program in 2013 where I had to do… I was super setting, I think it was a barbell overhead press with a weighted chin up for… And they were super sets with 90 seconds rest between each, so you’re getting like three to four minutes rest between the time you’re doing that same exercise and it was for eight sets each and they were triples.
0:17:15.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, man.
0:17:18.2 Mike Vacanti: And I was not meeting those rest time requirements, but the workout, because there was procrastination in there, probably procrastination in the warm-up, it was like, just really not looking forward to that difficult task. The workout ended up being three hours long. [laughter] ‘Cause not only is doing eight triples of both a lot and then there was plenty of accessory work, probably four or more exercises, at least, in the workout, but, yeah, you’re delaying between sets because you’re like, “This is just so brutal.”
0:17:50.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Oh man. That sounds awful.
0:17:53.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. [chuckle]
0:17:54.0 Jordan Syatt: That sounds terrible. [laughter] How is your protein intake lately?
0:18:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Strong. Ever since Jordan fat-shamed me I kinda started dialing… [laughter] How is my protein intake? I’m targeting… Training days are really easy for me to get protein just because my post-workout has 40 grams, my breakfast always has 30 plus grams and then I’m having like two protein-rich meals during the day, one a little bit like mid afternoon and then dinner, rest days maybe it’s a little bit harder to get there, but close to 1 gram… I don’t know what I weigh right now. I probably weigh 175 and…
0:18:36.0 Jordan Syatt: 175 kilograms probably.
0:18:39.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I’m 175 kgs, [laughter] I’m pushing four, but I can pull a thou, so. 170-ish, 160-170 is my protein target and I’m hitting that usually, pretty easily, how about you?
0:18:56.6 Jordan Syatt: You know what, wait, you’re gonna compete at in Jiu Jitsu?
0:19:01.3 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna compete at the weight I’m walking down the street when my future family and I get accosted and I need to choke that guy out to save the future of my lineage.
0:19:11.4 Jordan Syatt: I love that. [chuckle]
0:19:14.4 Mike Vacanti: What is it, nine days from now? No, 11 days from now, I have my official first session on the books, I have a little work trip here this week with Gary, but then, when I get back, I’ve found a gym, I’m gonna hit the ground running. And so, yeah, we talked about that before, I’m excited.
0:19:31.3 Jordan Syatt: You have your Iron Neck, you’ve been using that?
0:19:33.0 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna use it…
0:19:33.8 Jordan Syatt: You gotta bring that on the work trip.
0:19:36.7 Mike Vacanti: I’m probably… The Iron Neck is probably not getting packed. Maybe it will, maybe I will bring it. Maybe I’ll make content with it, maybe I’ll make a TikTok with the Iron Neck, who knows?
0:19:42.5 Jordan Syatt: I think it’s a good idea.
0:19:46.5 Mike Vacanti: It feels really good, I have used it twice.
0:19:48.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:19:49.8 Mike Vacanti: It helps a ton, so does just like… I didn’t realize those backward somersaults and even just playing on the ground in general, movements that you do spontaneously as a kid, like wrestling with your buddies or just playing that get completely in this very structured, very rigid lifestyle we live, you’re sitting in, you’re lying in bed, you get up, you’re sitting at the chair, you’re sitting in your car on the way to work, you’re sitting at the office, you’re like move… You have this restrictive clothing on, I’m thinking back to my accounting days. You have this restrictive clothing on, you’re like, you don’t wanna step outside the box. I remember bringing a table to work and I set it on top of my desk, I put my computer on top of that ’cause I was working 12 to 14-hour days, I was like, “This is my makeshift standing desk,” and all my co-workers made fun of me, both behind my back and into my face. But getting out of sitting all day, your hips are just shortened all day, you get back in the car, you’re sitting on the way home, you’re never rotating, you’re never just doing these random movements that you do a great deal of from zero to 14 at least, if not beyond there. And so playing around and moving in different ways, just feels really good.
0:21:01.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude I remember as a kid just for no reason, just spinning as fast as I could for as long as I could, or falling down and being on the ground and using my head to get back up, just all the things that you do as a kid that… For no reason and as an adult, you’re like, “What is wrong with this child?” But those movements that just condition you and all of a sudden…
0:21:22.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s actually good.
0:21:23.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s good for you, yeah and then all of a sudden you’re an adult and you try and do that stuff and you’re like, “Oh my God!” It destroys you, yeah. So I’m excited, man, I’m excited for you to do Jiu Jitsu, I think you’re gonna be really good at it.
0:21:35.0 Mike Vacanti: You know one that I like, a move that I just randomly do? And I think there actually is, there’s something more formal and I actually could probably do it more ideally, but just laying like a log and rolling around my house. [laughter] Feels so good.
0:21:55.0 Jordan Syatt: Just like… You’re like, almost like a vampire where your arms are crossed over your chest and you’re just rolling around.
0:22:00.3 Mike Vacanti: I go arms over head.
0:22:02.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, arms over head. [chuckle] You just roll around? [laughter]
0:22:04.3 Mike Vacanti: I just roll and you get really dizzy, it’s kind of fun, but it feels good.
0:22:09.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:22:10.2 Mike Vacanti: Sometimes I’ll feel a random vertebrae crack back into place in my back, I’m like, “Oh, that felt kind of nice.” Just movements that you get stuck in these rigid, consistent handful of movement patterns and you need to break out of it.
0:22:22.0 Jordan Syatt: You should make content around that, you should just do “four movements you need in your daily life right now.” And the log roll, [laughter] somersaults.
0:22:35.1 Mike Vacanti: “Four bro-scientific movements for more longevity and feeling better.” The restrictive clothing man was a huge one though for me because, when you… You never had to go through this, but having to tuck a dress shirt into dress pants, basically prevents you from stretching up, from reaching up for anything, because it becomes un-tucked and then it becomes baggy, you’re like… You restrict, you can’t lumbar extend, you can’t lean back, you can’t even really stand up that tall, so you’re in this kind of forward small crouch, shoulders forward, neck a little forward, t-spine roll a little forward, even like lumbar, like a tiny bit forward, because if you stretch back your shirt gets out of place and it’s a terrible, terrible way to live.
0:23:19.8 Jordan Syatt: I know, I would get in suits for Jewish holidays and stuff on my Bar Mitzvah, but I never had to do it every day, over and over and over. Yeah, that would be awful, I’d hate that. I’d like… No, I couldn’t do that.
0:23:31.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s the worst. Alright, let’s dive into questions, even though this is a very fun and stimulating conversation for me personally, at least. Jordan, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
0:23:45.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh man, the best advice…
0:23:49.5 Mike Vacanti: We don’t need… Let’s make the question less… What is one piece of great advice you’ve received? So you can kinda… ‘Cause there are so many avenues in life, you could take this any direction.
0:24:00.8 Jordan Syatt: There’s a lot. A lot of pieces of advice I’ve been given, ’cause it’s… For different points in my life or different seasons, different pieces of advice have really rang true, right? So for example, one thing my mom said to me as a kid that I literally got tattooed on me, is, “He who hesitates, is lost,” and she said that to me, after a wrestling tournament that I should have gotten gold at, I got silver. And in the final match, I easily should have taken this kid down, but I just kept hesitating, kept hesitating on my shot, not going in, not going in and then I lost the match and she just looked at me in the rear view mirror on the way home and she was like, “He who hesitates, is lost.” And that’s rang true for me in many ways, especially in business, in terms of where it’s just like, “What are you waiting for? Just do it.” But you and I were talking about this before we got on the call, I’m just not in a place where I’m, “I don’t wanna grind as much as I used to,” and so I used to use that as a mantra when I didn’t wanna work, but I did wanna work when that was really, really important to me, so now that’s not really as important to me.
0:25:07.1 Jordan Syatt: Now, I think some of the best advice that I’ve… I don’t even know if one person has said this to me, or if this is just cliche advice, just you never know when you’re gonna die and just trying to spend as much time as I possibly can with the people that I care about the most and treating them as well as I can and making sure they know how much I love them. I think that is what’s ringing true to me now, in this season of my life more than, hey, let me spend this time making Instagram or TikTok content and so instead I’m gonna go out to dinner with my wife and… Or just listen to her story, whatever it is and focus on that as opposed to just constantly being in my head about what I need to make for people who I don’t know and I’ve never met and will never meet. You know what I mean?
0:25:53.9 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely, that’s great advice. And it’s like being present in every moment, even you can trick yourself into imagining that an interaction with a person is the last interaction you’ll ever have with them.
0:26:08.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:26:09.6 Mike Vacanti: Or like if I’m saying goodbye to… It’ll kinda apply more and really feel it more with a grandparent. But really for anyone, like, how do I want to show up in this conversation? How do I want to pay attention to this person, how do I want to interact, how do I want to… If I feel myself getting frustrated, I kind of set that emotion aside because who knows what’s gonna happen, tomorrow is not promised for anyone, for that person or for me, so, yeah, being the best to other people is great advice.
0:26:42.3 Jordan Syatt: Mm-hmm.
0:26:44.6 Mike Vacanti: My mind goes to… It wasn’t even a piece of advice, but more just a realization I had and I haven’t thought about it in a while, so I don’t know how well I’m going to be able to articulate it, or the examples I’ll be able to give. I don’t remember what book it was. It wasn’t in this one I have Becoming Supernatural, it was in a different Joe Dispenza book, but he talks about placebo, nocebo and tells a story about a guy… I’m gonna summarize it very briefly, in part ’cause I don’t remember all the details, but basically this person was falsely diagnosed with cancer.
0:27:24.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh my God.
0:27:25.7 Mike Vacanti: And his health began to rapidly deteriorate and…
0:27:29.4 Jordan Syatt: I remember you telling me about this. Yeah.
0:27:31.1 Mike Vacanti: This person, there were some details that I know I’m missing, but the punch line was, this person was given news that he had a form of cancer and he ended up dying and in the autopsy, they realized or they came to the conclusion that it was a false diagnosis, he actually did not have cancer, but his belief that he did led to his own health getting worse and worse and worse to the point where he was so frail, he actually passed away.
0:28:06.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy.
0:28:07.6 Mike Vacanti: And so, it’s very, very sad, but also highlights such an important concept, which is our belief, either that we can or cannot, has to proceed all progress, has to proceed all progress.
0:28:26.8 Jordan Syatt: Mm-hmm.
0:28:27.3 Mike Vacanti: So I think about this, when you talk about self-efficacy and we talk about self-efficacy in some of the mentorship courses in terms of how it relates to… I think it was in the client psychology module…
0:28:39.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:28:40.1 Mike Vacanti: Which is so fundamentally important to a client making progress, you’re not going to make progress over time unless you believe that you can do that and you know the literature on that far better than I do, but just the concept of needing to believe in something in order for it to happen and the opposite also being true is incredibly important for life, basically.
0:29:10.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And that’s a terribly sad, but a great story to share, you know like that sort of puts that into perspective of whatever you believe… Now in social media terms it would be like manifest, whatever you manifest. But it’s like that’s what it really boils down to, it’s like whatever you believe in, it’s what you’re gonna bring to life.
0:29:34.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it’s… Man, we can talk about this more in detail in the future. We could have a full podcast on it, but there’s something unbelievably profound about true belief and then you can talk about that belief means like, does saying I believe in God mean that you believe in God, or do you have to look at someone’s actions and does the way that you behave in your day-to-day life actually signify what your beliefs are, there’s a lot to it, but I find it very interesting and just knowing that you’re never going to accomplish something or get somewhere unless you truly believe that you can.
0:30:12.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah.
0:30:13.9 Mike Vacanti: And I also think that believing that you can is a choice, right? So I think you can convince yourself that you can do something and I say this from a position of being unable to do that about things in the past.
0:30:27.8 Jordan Syatt: You know, that’s an interesting concept. I believe it is a choice. I very much believe it’s a choice. The caveat, I’m not even sure if it’s a caveat, the other side of that, yes, it’s a choice. I think… So, correct, it’s a choice, it’s just, for some people, it’s a more difficult choice based on their own personal history and like and… For example, I think my brother is a really good example of this, he struggled with his weight his whole life and he was made fun of his weight for his whole life and he was bullied for his weight his whole life and so for his whole life, he probably thought he wasn’t ever gonna be able to lose weight and like that, he just assumed that as his identity, he made his stand-up comedy skits about his weight. And we see this with a lot of heavy comedians, where they make their entire stand-up comedy routine about how fat they are and about… And that’s probably their way of dealing with it and it becomes their identity and also maybe they don’t wanna lose weight partly because they don’t think they can and also because, well, what are they gonna make jokes about, if they can’t make jokes about their weight, right? [chuckle]
0:31:32.7 Jordan Syatt: So, but only recently he lost 150 pounds and I think it’s because he finally got to a point where he was like, No, I can do this, I definitely can. So on the one hand, it’s definitely a choice, on the other hand, it’s a harder choice for some people, but on the third hand, just because it’s a harder choice doesn’t mean that it’s still not a choice, it is.
0:31:55.9 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.
0:31:56.8 Jordan Syatt: So I think that’s the continuum that has to be understood, ’cause some people hear it’s a choice and they get mad about it, it’s like, well, it’s easier for you than for me, it’s like, no, yeah, it might be easier for me but it’s still a choice and you can still arrive there if you decide to.
0:32:13.5 Mike Vacanti: First, 150 pounds is insane.
0:32:16.5 Jordan Syatt: Crazy. He’s dominating.
0:32:17.8 Mike Vacanti: Good for him. Yeah.
0:32:20.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:32:20.5 Mike Vacanti: You sent me an Instagram clip maybe a couple of weeks ago and he looks insane.
0:32:25.6 Jordan Syatt: Mm-hmm.
0:32:25.9 Mike Vacanti: Second, I completely agree, depends on your history, depends on… If you have a parent who is encouraging and tells you that you can do anything, you can… If you do this, this will happen. If you shoot 500 pucks a day and stick-handle for 20 minutes a day and do your plyometrics, you’re going to go far in this sport, who literally instill that within you, or you can have… I’m watching… Who asked this? I think it was Max in the mentorship asked us if we were watching…
0:33:00.4 Jordan Syatt: He’s so funny.
0:33:00.9 Mike Vacanti: Love Is Blind.
0:33:01.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah.
0:33:01.6 Mike Vacanti: On Netflix.
0:33:02.3 Jordan Syatt: My wife loves that show. Oh my gosh, she loves that show.
0:33:06.9 Mike Vacanti: So I’ve watched a handful of episodes and it’s like…
0:33:12.9 Jordan Syatt: Have you really?
0:33:14.3 Mike Vacanti: At the end of the day… Not by myself, [laughter] I’m up there, but like… We’re up there chilling and eating dinner, winding down, whatever the case may be and they’re doing a meet the parents thing and it’s funny to see the different parents and how they talk to and talk about and treat… The concept of the show real quick is just these people meet in pods, they can’t see each other, if they’re gonna link up, the guy proposes to the girl blind. So they don’t know what they look like and then they have to make it work based on their non-physical connection and they’re meeting the parents and some of these parents you see in the way they talk to and treat their kid, it’s just like… It hurts me, it’s like…
0:34:00.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:34:00.4 Mike Vacanti: This person would be different if they were not beaten over the head constantly by their parent and if they’re doing this to a 35-year-old, what have they been doing to that kid his whole life? So, of course, it’s easier for some and harder for others for a multitude of factors in addition to the one I just mentioned, to have that self-belief, but I still do think at the end of the day, it’s a choice. And I love Gary’s, if anyone else who looks like you, who comes from where you came from, who you can identify with, if anyone like that made it to a place, you can make it to that place too.
0:34:37.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Bro when I was in Colorado on that snowboard trip, I was talking to my wife on the phone one night and she was like binge-watching Love Is Blind and she told me one of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard, because it’s just so politically incorrect and I love that. She told me that one of the guys on the show… She was explaining the show to me and I didn’t really understand it until she explained it. She said, you know everything how people on the show and they don’t know each other. They don’t see each other. They just have these conversations with people. It’s like The Bachelor, but without actually being able to see anybody and this guy, [chuckle] this guy was apparently trying to figure out…
0:35:12.5 Mike Vacanti: I know what you’re gonna say.
0:35:12.7 Jordan Syatt: How much [chuckle] the women weighed and so he would ask things like, “If we went to a concert, could I put you on my shoulders or something.” I thought that was so funny. [laughter]
0:35:28.7 Mike Vacanti: He actually had a real moment after that too, because they… Look [chuckle] I like the concept of the show, but physical attraction, in my opinion, as a non-relationship expert needs… It’s a component.
0:35:44.5 Jordan Syatt: It matters. It matters yeah.
0:35:46.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s a component of the relationship, of course.
0:35:47.6 Jordan Syatt: It has to.
0:35:50.4 Mike Vacanti: But he… And you never know how much this stuff is scripted, like a lot of fictional media is just trying to integrate ideas into society, call it like a loose form of entertaining propaganda or whatever. Fine, brainwash me, I’m cool with that. But he had a moment where I’m sure the producers talked to him, I’m sure he got some feedback from other girls.
0:36:14.2 Jordan Syatt: Absolutely.
0:36:14.3 Mike Vacanti: And then they were probably like, you should apologize, but he was like, I realized how fucked up I am, like… It really like… [chuckle] I’m kind of a bad guy. I’m like… I’m trying to figure out what these girls look like and their body shape, but that’s not the point of the show and I really shouldn’t be doing that. So it really woke me up and… So there might have been a little bit of a lesson there or it’s… Who knows but…
0:36:36.6 Jordan Syatt: No. That was all planned. That was all planned.
0:36:41.1 Mike Vacanti: That’s what I said watching it and I was like this is them trying to make good TV but…
0:36:45.9 Jordan Syatt: I remember watching The Real World when I was a kid and… Do you remember that show, The Real World?
0:36:50.1 Mike Vacanti: Of course.
0:36:51.2 Jordan Syatt: Dude I remember watching that and my mom just walking in, she’s like, “This is such trash” and I was like, “No, mom, it’s not” and… I was a young middle school kid, I just… I always wanted to be on The Real World growing up and my mom was like, “This is all scripted trash” and I would fight tooth and nail and I’d be like, “No, it’s not scripted. This is the real world. That’s why they put it in the name.” It’s the… [laughter] Wow. I was just like, This is the real… And now I look at reality TV and I’m like, God, this is such scripted trash.
[laughter]
0:37:21.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Do you remember what season you watched?
0:37:25.2 Jordan Syatt: Dude I watched all of the seasons. I was obsessed with it. I remember, yeah, I watched… And then I would watch the challenges that they would do. You remember those?
0:37:32.8 Mike Vacanti: Dude, those were… That was really good TV. CT from Boston.
0:37:39.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh my God. What a beast.
0:37:40.3 Mike Vacanti: Wes, Abe. [chuckle] There were like… And the best thing about these things, people don’t realize this, so they were competing for 50k or maybe 100k, but these guys would train like crazy in the off-season. Kenny is in the fitness industry, he got his start from The Real World…
0:37:57.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Kenny Santucci. Yeah. Johnny Bananas.
0:38:02.2 Mike Vacanti: And I’m not calling out anyone specifically, but a lot of these guys very obviously got on a lot of steroids and really trained for these challenges in the off season and it’s not like a sport where they’re testing or whatever, but then they’d come on there and I remember some of them just making these… Adding 40 pounds of muscle in what seemed like a very small amount of time, jacked out of their mind and then doing these physical competitions like… It was really good TV.
0:38:26.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah CT was crazy. That guy was out of his mind, just like a freak of nature.
0:38:32.4 Mike Vacanti: Animal.
0:38:33.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Everyone was scared of CT. [chuckle]
0:38:35.4 Mike Vacanti: Oh yeah. Yeah. He’s huge, like, there was a… We don’t need to go too deep on this. There was a challenge where basically you’re sitting back to back with one other person. It was a gauntlet or like a loser goes home kind of competition and they have you in this contraption where you’re back to back with the person. You’re both sitting down. You’re in like a pike position, but you got your feet extended and they’re literally tied together somehow.
0:39:05.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:39:06.1 Mike Vacanti: Alright, so shoulders are pressed together, their entire spine is pressed together down to like their tailbone and there’s a trash can like 20 yards in front of one of them and a trash can 20 yards in front of the other and they try and get to the other person’s trash can and it’s usually like this real… You know, they’re laying down, they’re crawling, they’re like… They’re on dirt, so they’re dragging each other very slowly. It takes 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes to end up getting there and tapping the trash can. And you can type in “CT gauntlet trash can challenge” and this will definitely come up on YouTube. CT basically just stands up [laughter] in like just these monstrous legs and quads, just carries the other guy and the other guy’s feet are kicking up in the air, he’s squirming, he’s trying to get out of it and then just… Literally, when he gets to the trash can, he turns into it and drops, so the other guy lands straight on the trash can for the win. [laughter] It was a crazy show.
0:40:03.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, so much nostalgia right now remembering that show.
0:40:06.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, right? How many years did you go not watching shows?
0:40:12.7 Jordan Syatt: Let’s see. So I did not watch TV when I lived in Boston, so that was in like 2000… Starting college, I didn’t… The last time I remember really watching TV during college was there was a presidential debate between Obama and was it Mitt Romney? Who was it? Who was the debate between?
0:40:38.0 Mike Vacanti: What year was that for you? ’08?
0:40:39.8 Jordan Syatt: No, no, no, it was the next one. It was 2012.
0:40:44.2 Mike Vacanti: McCain?
0:40:45.1 Jordan Syatt: I don’t remember. There’s…
0:40:46.6 Mike Vacanti: McCain or Mitt Romney.
0:40:51.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think it was between Obama and Romney. I remember in my college dorm room watching that debate. That was the last time I really remember watching… And it was my roommate’s TV, so I would never really watch TV, ’cause I was just waking up at 4:00 in the morning doing work and then I… Are you looking up who that was? Who the debate was between?
0:41:08.3 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.
0:41:09.4 Jordan Syatt: Who was that between? Do you know?
0:41:10.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, Romney in 2012.
0:41:12.2 Jordan Syatt: Got it, okay. Yeah, it was… I remember watching Obama versus Romney. But I wasn’t regularly watching TV in college just because I was waking up at 4:00 in the morning and writing articles and working and going to class then doing more work, so I think I probably spent from about 2000… I don’t know. Maybe like… Oh, again, I didn’t watch TV when I was in Israel after high school as well, ’cause we didn’t have a TV, so really, I probably spent from like… I graduated high school in 2009. I didn’t watch TV regularly from 2009 until like 2019. Yeah, probably about the better part of 10 years, I didn’t really watch TV at all. I didn’t own a TV in any of those years, from 2009 to 2019 and then I think I got my first TV in 2019, or… Oh, no, it was actually in 2020. I remember during COVID, we got our first TV, ’cause before, we did watch TV, but it was on my tiny Mac. We watched The Office on that, so probably in 2019, started watching TV again.
0:42:16.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I got a TV in 2018, I believe it was, to see the Vikings-Eagles in the NFC Championship.
0:42:22.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I remember that. [chuckle]
0:42:23.9 Mike Vacanti: And, yeah, lost 41 to 7. So that was great. But it just goes to show the imbalance in periods of your life, you know?
0:42:34.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:42:35.6 Mike Vacanti: Growing a business takes substantially more time, more effort, more focus than maintaining that growth and you’re gonna have to… You know, you don’t have to go 10 years without watching a show, but it’s gonna take a real sacrifice for a number of years. Someone recently asked in an email to info@fitnessbusinessmentorship.com, they asked and were… Someone who’s on the mailing list asked, “How long will it take to start making real money, basically? If I sign up, how many months until I’m making real money?” And I think I said we’ll answer it on the podcast and I don’t know if we’ll go in depth right now or not, but basically, one, I don’t know. Two, assume it’s gonna be a really long time. Three, you need to go in with a mindset of, help as many people as possible, don’t expect anything in return and it might be eight months until you have your first client and by… You know, we’ve seen cases where someone is making a full-time salary, like zero to full-time salary within one year, but that is not…
0:43:37.6 Jordan Syatt: That’s not the norm.
0:43:40.5 Mike Vacanti: No, it’s not, it’s not the norm. And going in with an expectation for, “I’m gonna be making this much in this amount of time,” if you’re not there, it’s gonna lead to frustration and you always wanna manage expectations properly, so it’s… Yeah.
0:43:57.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s like when someone thinks, “Alright, well, I’m gonna lose 30 pounds in the next month,” and then maybe they lose six pounds in the first like two weeks, but they’re nowhere near those 30 pounds, so then they just give up and quit even though you already lost six pounds in two weeks, like, that’s great. But it’s all based on their expectations, so if they think that they’re supposed to lose 30 in a month and they only lose six in the first two weeks and they give up, it’s like, “Well, you actually could have been doing great. You were doing great. You could have seen great results if your expectations were more in line.”
0:44:23.4 Jordan Syatt: The other thing about this question is, people ask this, like, “How much until I make real money?” Like, what the fuck is real money? Like, what’s real? Is it an extra a thousand a month? ‘Cause that’s real money, that’s great. Is it are you looking just to supplement your current income? Are you looking forward to make your own income? I mean, [chuckle] we’ve had some people who are like, “10k is like the ultimate. 10k a month is like what… That’s what is like… That’s what constitutes success,” which I’m like, I don’t think that’s the definitive marker of success in life, I think if you make 10k a month and you’re super unhappy, you’re not very successful. Are you? It’s like success is far more than simply how much money you make, but is it 1k a month? Is it 5k a month? Is it 10k a month? Is it 30k a month? It’s like, what’s real money? And it took me several years before I was able to actually cover all of my expenses with purely my online income and the reason they have the mentorship is because it… Our goal with the mentorship is it’s not to give you certain tactics or tricks, it’s mainly to number one, give you the confidence and accountability to actually see it through, sort of like with your clients.
0:45:38.0 Jordan Syatt: You know if all of your clients did what you said, they would succeed. You know that. If your clients did what you said, they would succeed, but, for some reason, some clients just aren’t gonna do what you say and maybe they’re not ready for it. But we think one of the reasons most people they don’t do it, is because they don’t have good accountability and they don’t have a good community, so we wanna give you that. We have all the information there, but we wanna give you that community and the accountability for you to just stay consistent with it, ’cause if you are consistent with what we tell you to do, you will build a successful business and the other thing about the mentorship is it’s… We made so many mistakes along our way that… While it took me several years to get to a point where it could cover all of my expenses, I don’t think it needs to take that long for most people.
0:46:25.8 Jordan Syatt: For some people, well, but I don’t think it needs to and so ideally, with all of the courses and all the Q&As, it’s designed to help you get to a point where you can reach that level of success more quickly. It’s not gonna be rapid, it’s not gonna be in a month, or oftentimes even a year, but within a couple of years, being able to cover all your expenses and more is a very realistic possibility as long as you do what we say. And that doesn’t mean… You don’t have to give up TV for a decade. You don’t have to do that, you don’t. But there is gonna be a lot of work and sacrifice involved and anyone who says otherwise is just, they’re lying, or they’ve never done it themselves, which is also very real in this industry, other people who’ve never actually done it selling courses on how to do it.
0:47:07.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s so true. Yeah, very well said. I know I mentioned this last week, we are raising the price for the mentorship here in the next probably one to two weeks, so, there isn’t much more time if you’ve been on the fence about jumping in, signing up, we’d love to have you, prices going up soon and you know, I mentioned cost of living and I mentioned inflation, which are all real things and prices across the board, gas prices all prices are going up right now.
0:47:35.8 Jordan Syatt: Dear Lord, crazy, yeah.
0:47:37.0 Mike Vacanti: But even if that wasn’t the case, we would be raising the price right now because the thing… And this is like a business lesson, I guess we’ll call it, but a B2B transaction inherently is priced higher than… A business-to-business transaction is inherently priced higher than a business-to-consumer transaction, for many reasons. One being that signing up for the mentorship is a tax write-off. The second one and whereas signing up for fitness coaching for someone who’s an accountant is not a tax write-off, or works any profession, the second reason is, it’s just cheap… It’s not cheap, but when you put it in context, if you sign up for the mentorship and you get one new client and that client stays with you for a year, you literally just paid for your entire year in the mentorship. If you get two clients and they stay with you for six to eight months, you literally just made more than you did by joining, not to mention, we have 100% money back guarantee. If you do what we say, if you watch the modules, do the challenges and you don’t make your money back during your first year through online fitness coaching, we’ll give you a full refund. So that exists too, but price is going up, if you’re on the fence, we would love to have you and yeah.
0:48:55.5 Jordan Syatt: And just the last thing on that and we’ll move on to another topic is, so often, ’cause we’ve raised the price numerous times and then every single time, within a couple of days after the price went up, someone’s like, “Oh, I just missed it, da da da,” and it’s like… Nope, it’s going up. We’re telling you right now, we don’t know the exact day off top of our heads, it’s going up soon. So if you want to get in, do it now. If you’re a current active paying member, the price will not go up for you, right. So if you’re currently an active member, the price isn’t going up for you. But if you’re not a member and then the price goes up and now you’re like, “Oh, I missed it. I missed it. Could I get back in on… ” No, no, you cannot. And we encourage you to do the same for your business, if you publicly announce, “Hey, this is where prices are going,” stick to it. We would love to have you. If you’re a current member, the price will not go up, but if you wanna get in at the current price, do it, the link is in the show notes, you can join right now, we’d love to have you, but the price is going up very soon.
0:49:52.4 Mike Vacanti: Well said. Next question. “Jordan, when is the next YouTube video? It’s been nine months. And Mike, it’s been even longer.” [laughter]
0:50:08.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh man. It’s so funny ’cause in my head, I’m always like, “Oh yeah, I wanna make a YouTube video, I wanna make a YouTube video,” but then when it boils down to the amount of work that it takes to make one, I’m like, I really don’t. And I was actually talking about this last night with a friend of mine, she was asking me. She’s like, “Why haven’t you been in YouTube?” I’ve been doing between two to four podcasts a day everyday, so that’s at least about at least two to four hours, usually more of just podcasting and talking, which is more than I have ever done in my career when I was doing YouTube every single week. I like podcasts so much more than I like YouTube. And here’s what I’ll say, I actually think this, I think YouTube is better from a sales perspective than a podcast, I do and from a relationship and branding perspective, because they can see you, it’s like they can watch what you’re doing throughout your day. I think it builds a much stronger connection in YouTube than it does a podcast. But, I like podcast better because usually it’s longer, it’s usually an hour-long conversation or discussion as opposed to YouTube video, which is, I’d say somewhere between 10 to 30 minutes at most. And YouTube is almost always significantly more edited. So for my podcast, I don’t edit anything and even for our podcast, the only editing we have done is just chopping off dead time or something like that.
0:51:38.2 Jordan Syatt: So it’s not really edited, whereas a YouTube, it’s like, you’re putting all these different graphics in, you’re editing it, maybe you’ll do a take and you don’t like it and you re-do the take to try and get it the exact way that you want it, podcast is so much more real. It’s so much more real and you get, I think, a much stronger connection to people that way. So, I’m sure I’ll eventually go back to YouTube at some point, but for right now, I really enjoy the podcast and I think it’s paying off massively.
0:52:08.1 Mike Vacanti: Good answer. Yeah, we talk about it all the time, make content in the places you enjoy making content. You don’t need to be everywhere as a one-man, one-woman operation. You basically can’t be everywhere on all platforms successfully. So if you’re gonna pick and choose one of the primary factors, in addition to how it’s going, is how much you enjoy making content there. And the more you enjoy it, over the long run, the better it’s going to go for you. I think I’m probably… I’m gonna be making a YouTube video soon, for a number of reasons and that’s actually probably what the YouTube video has to be about, since I haven’t made one in a year and a half and generally content has been few and far between for a number of years, outside of this dominant how to become a personal trainer podcast 2022 streak that we’re on. But by the time this episode goes up, within a few days… within a week or two, [laughter] I’ll have a YouTube video.
0:53:03.6 Jordan Syatt: Within a few days, within a week or two. [laughter]
0:53:11.3 Mike Vacanti: Soon. So keep an eye on that, feel free to subscribe to both Jordan and my YouTube if you’re not already and for a number of reasons, the most obvious… I’ve got a little itch for content, I’ve said that a few times, TikTok and YouTube are particularly interesting and fun to me, probably because those are the two platforms where I consume the most. But, yeah, I’m gonna be making content soon. And I’ll talk about a number of reasons and various things, but one of them is, we got a book coming out and I’d just be a bad friend to… I’d be a bad friend to make Jordan pull all the weight on the sales, [chuckle] and I would be a bad author and salesman to literally wait until the sale date and then just blast this cold sea of social media with like, “Buy this now,” I at least want a few months of runway where I can hopefully provide enough value, education, entertainment in a number of places before I nicely ask if anyone’s interested in buying a book, so, that among other reasons is why I’ll be making a YouTube video soon.
0:54:21.0 Jordan Syatt: I just think you should go straight, right hook. Just… [laughter] Two years of social right hook, buy this. You’ve been wondering where I’ve been these past two years, writing this book [laughter] that’s where I’ve been, buy it. [laughter]
0:54:34.8 Mike Vacanti: All day, every day, link in description, buy ten. [laughter] That would be funny. It feels icky from a good will perspective and people would definitely buy it, but I don’t feel good about that transaction in terms of what I would be providing and what I’d be asking for. Although it would be humorous.
0:54:58.2 Jordan Syatt: It would be hilarious. [laughter]
0:55:07.3 Mike Vacanti: I mean, this has been a good episode.
0:55:08.8 Jordan Syatt: Is that where we’re gonna end it?
0:55:10.5 Mike Vacanti: We don’t necessarily have to, but it’s been a good episode.
0:55:13.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s been a good episode.
0:55:15.6 Mike Vacanti: Baked chicken or fried?
0:55:17.4 Jordan Syatt: You like this question, you tell me, baked chicken or fried?
0:55:21.6 Mike Vacanti: What do you think I’m gonna say?
0:55:22.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I think you’re gonna say, baked.
0:55:25.0 Mike Vacanti: Fried chicken.
0:55:27.8 Jordan Syatt: No, absolutely not. [laughter]
0:55:30.2 Mike Vacanti: Let me… Hear me out.
0:55:31.6 Jordan Syatt: No, you can’t take off the fried part either. [chuckle]
0:55:35.8 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no. I’ve done that. If you’re dialed and you need a lot of protein and you’re at some event where it’s the only option, there’s a buffet and you can take the breading off some to get your protein up and keep fats down in the process. That’s not where I’m going with this. It’s actually surprising how decent… And this happened the other night, basically, we were gonna cook, but then realized that something was frozen that we thought was already thawed out and so last minute and I’m like, “get Seamless” and KFC was one… By the way, that’s one of the downsides of being in Minnesota compared to in the Mecca, which is that stuff isn’t open late, so you’re kind of in trouble in terms of things being open. Ordered KFC, shockingly…
0:56:22.1 Jordan Syatt: KFC is so good.
0:56:22.2 Mike Vacanti: Shockingly decent macros and not the extra crispy, but just the regular fried chicken and breast, has a lot of… So you have a little bit of fat and carbs, decent amount of fat on the outside, but inside, it’s a big chicken breast, it’s like a lot of protein in there, so the two-piece chicken meal, I think I went… I think it’s a breast and a drum stick, it’s a breast plus something else, breast plus thigh I don’t remember exactly. But then you get mashed potatoes and gravy, which somehow only have four and a half grams of fat, which is outrageous for the taste you get from that and then a biscuit, don’t use a butter, use a little honey. It’s a solid… Not too high fat. And the reason I’m “demonizing” fat right now is because for 95% of people, dietary fat is a macronutrient that just adds up way too quickly and is hardest to control for fat loss or muscle gain goals. But, fried chicken obviously tastes better than baked chicken and so if you can make it work and make it fit into a decently balanced meal, it has a lot of upside.
0:57:30.7 Jordan Syatt: Bro you know I’m all about fried chicken. That’s my… [laughter] Anytime we go work together at that grocery store I would always get fried chicken. I love fried chicken. That is my favorite food. If I could only have one fast food ever, it would probably be KFC. I love fried chicken.
0:57:45.3 Mike Vacanti: Good. That’s a good place to end it. We’ll be back next week, we’re hammering weekly updates, weekly episodes and thank you for listening and have a great day.
0:57:56.9 Jordan Syatt: Have a good one. We’ll talk to you soon.
