0:00:11.5 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.
0:00:12.6 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on, Michael?
0:00:15.5 Mike Vacanti: Weekly podcast, you know?
0:00:16.7 Jordan Syatt: Unrelenting.
0:00:17.9 Mike Vacanti: Every week.
0:00:19.2 Jordan Syatt: There’s no changing that, this is it for probably what? The next 50 years?
0:00:24.4 Mike Vacanti: Wow, 50? Let me think about that. 35… 85… Yeah, yeah. God willing, yes. 50 years.
0:00:32.5 Jordan Syatt: I think that’s on the low end, realistically.
0:00:34.9 Mike Vacanti: I mean bro, we’re basically 1/200th of the way there in this Q1-2022 stretch. We’re getting tons of positive feedback, people are pumped about the weekly uploads. We’re just gonna keep trying giving straight value, so.
0:00:52.6 Jordan Syatt: What’s up brother? [chuckle]
0:00:55.4 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know, I didn’t know have much, I’m very sore. I had my first… In the last two years, COVID, etcetera, I did zero traveling with Gary, 100% FaceTime workouts, and this past week I was down in Florida with him and very, very sore from all of the working out and beach football.
0:01:15.7 Jordan Syatt: You worked out with him once, but then you just did a lot of beach football?
0:01:20.0 Mike Vacanti: Myself? I trained Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.
0:01:24.6 Jordan Syatt: But you did one workout with him?
0:01:25.3 Mike Vacanti: I did one workout with him because we were so dialed in on our beach football schedule and the morning got weird, so it was between cancel on beach football and people would have been furious, and skip my own workout, which I’m not in a place in my life where I’m doing that right now. And so I just told him… ‘Cause we both had legs and abs, I was like, “Hey man, I’m gonna work out with you. What do you think of that?” And he was like, “Cool. Okay.”
0:01:51.2 Jordan Syatt: And you guys played beach football on the sand, so your feet and everything are just wrecked.
0:01:58.0 Mike Vacanti: I mean, not just beach football, hyper-competitive… It’s touch but very… like, we’re blocking or someone… We’re not really calling any… I don’t think there were any penalties called so it was very physical.
0:02:15.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and if anyone knows Gary, Gary Vaynerchuk and sees what he’s like online, he’s like that times 10 when it comes to sports.
0:02:24.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Ultra, ultra-competitive.
0:02:27.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:02:29.1 Mike Vacanti: It was fun though. It’s an amazing workout. Just doing all that sprinting on the sand.
0:02:34.2 Jordan Syatt: Are you working out today or are you taking a rest day today?
0:02:36.9 Mike Vacanti: No. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.
0:02:41.1 Jordan Syatt: Okay, okay.
0:02:42.1 Mike Vacanti: So I was gonna caffeinate up for this pod, but I kept it at just a little half a cup of coffee, I’m trying to keep caffeine low on the weekends.
0:02:48.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, nice.
0:02:49.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, man. What’s up with you?
0:02:51.6 Jordan Syatt: Chilling. Just you know, gotta… What’s going on? I don’t even know what’s going on, man. Everything is good. My wife and I had… We had to go to the hospital yesterday ’cause she had some spotting and cramping yesterday, which like… She really freaked out about. Which makes sense. It’s worrisome. You don’t know what it is. So we went to the… She called her OB, went to the hospital, everything was okay, but we were there for like six hours yesterday just trying to make sure everything is alright.
0:03:22.8 Mike Vacanti: Geez and everything is?
0:03:24.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, yeah, everything is good. Everything is totally fine. It’s like apparently… Listen, I don’t know anything about pregnancy at all, so this is all new to me as well, but apparently that is somewhat common. But basically I Googled it as soon as she was having it and everything from “You’re baby’s dead,” to like, “It’s totally normal, shows up,” so we’re like we’ll just go and see what happens. Rather it’d be safe and than sorry and we were there, and everyone was super nice. Then it was totally fine. So yeah, everything’s good.
0:03:56.7 Mike Vacanti: And what did the doctors do?
0:04:00.4 Jordan Syatt: So, well they asked a bunch of questions. They were just trying to figure… They did a… They did a… What’s the thing called? An ultrasound, so they can see the baby. The baby was moving like crazy. I’ve seen the baby a few times now, which is really, really cool to see, but you can see it literally rolling around and moving all over the place and it… And it’s funny because she’s like almost 20 weeks now, but based on how much it’s moving, you would assume that she’d be able to feel it, but she still can’t really… There… She said she can feel flutter sometimes, but I would imagine it would feel like a bowling ball in there, but just looking at how much this baby was rolling around and moving and everything, I was like, “You’ve gotta feel that,” and she’s like, “I don’t,” which is just crazy to me.
0:04:42.2 Mike Vacanti: Wow.
0:04:43.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And so they did the ultrasound and they gave her the shot. It’s called a RhoGAM shot. Basically, my wife’s blood type is something… It’s a very rare blood type, and so I didn’t know how this works, but it’s actually pretty crazy. So if the baby’s blood mixes with my wife’s blood, it’s not bad for this baby, but based on my wife’s blood type, and if the baby is a different blood type, then if the baby’s blood mixes with my wife’s blood, then my wife can could develop antibodies to the baby. Now, obviously, that would be bad, not… You would think it would reject this baby, because this baby is already growing, it would be fine they said, but it would prevent future pregnancies because any time the body detected a pregnancy with that blood type or whatever, it would reject it, immediately. It would think that something is bad.
0:05:44.7 Jordan Syatt: So they gave this shot called a RhoGAM shot that basically tells my wife’s body, “It’s okay. You don’t need to develop antibodies for this.” So that’s why they’re actually glad that we came in because if there is that type of spotting or whatever, then it could have potentially mixed in with her blood. And when I heard about this, I thought that it was just one RhoGAM shot and you’re good, but they were saying, “Any time that this happens, you’d actually have to come in and get a RhoGAM shot within 72 hours,” because at any point that then it could develop… Her body could develop those antibodies, which is crazy to me. And I was thinking like, “Man, how does this happen? How did… How did… How did we survive as a species before modern medicine?” Not only is child life… The life… The likelihood of a child surviving so small, but if her body could develop antibodies for all future kids, then basically you’re limited to that one child, and it’s just crazy to me that we’ve made it thus far without modern medicine.
0:06:46.9 Mike Vacanti: Dude, that’s funny ’cause my brain went to that exact place. First, I’m so happy that everything’s okay, obviously.
0:06:53.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:06:54.6 Mike Vacanti: But pre… Two things, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, wherever we wanna draw the line, and all the way before that when the shot didn’t exist, we don’t think about how… I don’t think about how grateful I should be for everything we have at this point in human civilization. And two, like you just said, how does that I guess blood type still exist, how do we not evolve out of… If… I guess I don’t know what the genetics of blood types, where that comes from in terms of your parents, etcetera, but it’s crazy that that’s still a thing.
0:07:44.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it blows my… I literally said that to her last night. I was like, “It’s crazy that your blood type is still around, considering like if it mixed with the mother’s blood, then the mother would create antibodies to that.” It’s crazy to me. And also just the fact that science is at a point where it can say, “Hey, we’re gonna give you the shot while you’re pregnant that will prevent you from creating antibodies against his that will… It’s… For this pregnancy it wouldn’t matter but for future… ” The fact that they have all of this stuff is just so crazy to me that it’s just… And it was so normal for them, it was like the doctor, “Yeah, this is normal, we’ll give you this shot, it does this and this and this,” and I’m like, “This is so mind-blowing to me and you’re just… [chuckle] it’s just like nonchalant discussion for you.
0:08:24.7 Mike Vacanti: So casual.
0:08:25.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:08:27.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, wow.
0:08:28.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so there’s that and everything else is good, man. Everything else… Jiu-jitsu is going great. It’s a slow time in the fitness industry, I think, so business is a little bit slow but also I’ve been not really posting that much on social media. So it could be a little bit of both. [chuckle]
0:08:48.1 Mike Vacanti: How does that feel?
0:08:49.7 Jordan Syatt: It feels good in some ways and also guilt-provoking in other ways, like relaxing, trying to get as much sleep and just relax and spend as much time with my wife now before the baby comes as I can, but there’s always the… When I open social media and see other people posting, I always get the like, “Oh shit, I should be doing that, I should be doing that,” but, you know.
0:09:12.8 Mike Vacanti: Guilt coming in the form of seeing what peers are doing?
0:09:16.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, even people in the mentorship who I just see crushing it, I’m like, “Man, I should be… I should be practicing what I preach, I should be posting on there more often, da da da da da.” But, I guess…
0:09:26.7 Mike Vacanti: Bill Belichick could not play in the NFL right now.
0:09:30.7 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Yeah.
0:09:32.7 Mike Vacanti: That’s it. That’s the…
0:09:33.7 Jordan Syatt: Did he ever play in the NFL?
0:09:36.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I think he played corner… Maybe he didn’t play in the NFL, maybe he played in college. I think he was a defensive back.
0:09:43.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, okay.
0:09:44.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:09:45.2 Jordan Syatt: I always wondered about that.
0:09:49.7 Mike Vacanti: But… I also have that same slight feeling barely at this point…
0:09:56.0 Jordan Syatt: I wish people could see the face that you just made…
0:09:57.1 Mike Vacanti: But I did. [laughter] They will on video…
0:10:00.9 Jordan Syatt: I can’t wait for these to go…
0:10:00.8 Mike Vacanti: Video podcast coming soon.
0:10:00.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, video podcast coming soon.
0:10:03.2 Mike Vacanti: But… I just think I did that. When I was at that stage in my career, I was posting at that frequency, I was working that many hours a day, I was going that hard and… It depends on what your goals are. Depends what outcome you want.
0:10:22.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, the other thing is it’s okay for… I’m at a point where so much of… Any time I would feel guilty about it, I’d say, “Ah, don’t feel guilty,” but that makes the guilt even worse because then I’m focusing on the guilt, telling myself I shouldn’t feel guilty, but I do feel guilty, so I feel guilty about feeling guilty when the reality is, it’s okay.
0:10:45.2 Mike Vacanti: Really?
0:10:46.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s… For me it’s, cool, so I feel guilty about it because I’m not posting as much as I once was, but then I can look at everything else that I am doing now that I wasn’t doing before, I’m focusing so much on my health and fitness, I’m focusing so much on my wife, I’m focusing so much on X, Y, and Z. So now I can be like, cool, it’s okay to feel a little bit guilty about this because of everything else I’m doing instead. So rather than just saying, “Don’t feel guilty,” it’s like, it’s okay to feel a little bit guilty, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s a normal human emotion, but focus on all the things that you are able to do now that you weren’t doing before.
0:11:18.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, focus on what you’re doing instead and all of the good things happening there.
0:11:23.7 Jordan Syatt: Rather than just saying, “Well, don’t feel guilty.” It’s sort of like when you talk to your partner and you’re like, “Hey, relax,” or, “Don’t be mad,” or it’s like, “Really? That’s what you’re… ” [laughter] Good luck.
0:11:34.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I definitely… What you’re saying makes sense to me. When I felt guilty I just told myself, “Don’t feel guilty,” until I didn’t feel guilty anymore.
0:11:45.0 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Yeah, yeah.
0:11:46.4 Mike Vacanti: And there’s also like… My guilt stemmed from a place of my audience telling me that… Asking where I am, an expectation that I should be posting… Where are… That it’s not weird to not be on the internet, the expectation is that you should be on the internet at all times, and I guess you set that precedent yourself by posting continuously for many years, but when I felt guilt around that, it’s, okay, well, who is this person telling me that I need to be posting so they can enjoy my content for free, let’s think about this. Okay, I’ve been posting for how… Whatever, we’ll call it six years of real solid consistency across the board. Over that period of time, those six years, this person, based on everything I can see and absorb, didn’t really take all that information and apply it all… And the information is still there. You wanna dig back, hundreds of videos, however many articles, loads of content out there. It’s like, “Are you just curious what I’m up to or do you want the value that I was adding, because if you want the help, it’s all sitting out there and you can go take it and apply it and benefit from it, but if you’re just curious what I’m up to, I’m not gonna feel guilty about that because I don’t owe anyone life updates.”
0:13:16.5 Jordan Syatt: I think that’s what a lot of people are… They wanted… ‘Cause they develop a relationship with you, whether you realize it or not. For you, the relationship is like… And by you, I’m saying for us, the content creator…
0:13:27.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, creator to audience, yeah.
0:13:29.0 Jordan Syatt: The relationship is often the camera, and then with yourself coming up with the content and then posting it, and then the broad generality of…
0:13:39.0 Mike Vacanti: Reaction.
0:13:39.5 Jordan Syatt: Of reaction, exactly. But they’re alone by themselves watching your video and actually developing a relationship with you, which is… It’s odd.
0:13:50.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it really is odd. And there’s so much good about it, we don’t need to go down that whole road. Someone tweeted last night, and I’m not active there, but I go on Twitter and I’m poking around and seeing what’s going on in different places for killing time, etcetera, and I still get notifications here and there, like random follows or people liking, whatever. And someone tweeted at me, they actually replied to something Gary said, and it seemed kind of angry, they were not happy with Gary, and they were like, “You’re the one who stole Mike Vacanti away from the world.” [laughter] I was like, “What’s going on?”
0:14:32.7 Jordan Syatt: They said that on Twitter?
0:14:34.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:14:35.3 Jordan Syatt: And they tagged you in it?
0:14:36.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:14:37.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s funny.
0:14:38.7 Mike Vacanti: But yeah, there’s a… It is… And who knows, you lose context, you can’t get tone with everything, might have just been… He might have been joking around, or he saw that when I fired back up with Gary, I started making less content, who knows? But yeah, it doesn’t really matter ’cause I’m gonna be back real soon. Eat It.
0:15:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Eat It.
0:15:00.5 Mike Vacanti: Eat It.
0:15:01.8 Jordan Syatt: ‘Eat It’ is the name of our book for everyone who doesn’t know, it’s the name of our book coming June, June 6 or June 7th? I always forget.
0:15:07.6 Mike Vacanti: June 6th.
0:15:08.7 Jordan Syatt: June 6th.
0:15:09.5 Mike Vacanti: We’ll tell you when to buy it. It’s… There’s a real science to this process of getting everyone to buy at the same time apparently, I heard it’s a… Let’s dive into questions.
0:15:20.5 Jordan Syatt: Let’s dive right in.
0:15:22.1 Mike Vacanti: Oh no, you know what? I have one more thing that I wanted to talk about that’s interesting.
0:15:25.6 Jordan Syatt: Okay.
0:15:27.7 Mike Vacanti: And I think you can really relate to this because you’re very focused and dominating your own health right now, and because you’ve had periods of time where you weren’t. And… So this week down in Florida, living out of a hotel after really settling in here in Minnesota the last three, four, five months and developing a routine, bedroom with black out curtains and the perfect temperature, gym close by that I really enjoy going to, cupboards and fridge and freezer stocked with the foods that I like, like, basically optimized environment and something that I’m used to, and then you develop habits within that environment and your own health and training and nutrition all reflect that, so room in the basement to get steps in, lacrosse balls and foam rollers laying all over the place, just optimized. And then a week living out of a hotel, weird bed, no healthy food options right there unless I would have planned it better and done a grocery run, but even then you have a tiny mini-fridge…
0:16:39.3 Jordan Syatt: That doesn’t even get that cold, yeah.
0:16:39.5 Mike Vacanti: Different schedule, different… Yeah, yeah. The hotel thermostat has a limit on it…
0:16:47.4 Jordan Syatt: I hate when they do that, yeah.
0:16:47.5 Mike Vacanti: And it doesn’t even really go to that limit. Yeah, I saw a good TikTok that showed how to override the limit, which is… You can probably YouTube it, but that’s a thing, so you…
0:16:55.2 Jordan Syatt: Wow.
0:16:55.6 Mike Vacanti: That exists.
0:16:56.1 Jordan Syatt: Okay.
0:16:58.1 Mike Vacanti: And it’s just very interesting, it made me re-appreciate how difficult fitness is for people who are traveling 100, 150 days a year, or even just very extroverted, have a lot going on, very un-routinized compared to how much easier it is and how much more methodical you can be when you’re in your environment that you have set up for success.
0:17:27.9 Jordan Syatt: Man, un-routinized, that’s a hell of a word, that was nice.
0:17:31.6 Mike Vacanti: Thank you.
0:17:31.9 Jordan Syatt: Also, man, TikTok is really serving whatever is best for you, huh? ‘For You,’ you get served that, “How to override this hotel room,” they are really… They know exactly what you want.
0:17:42.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, China and my ‘For You’ page knows me so much better than I know myself, it’s actually unbelievable.
0:17:48.3 Jordan Syatt: That’s incredible that they gave you that video. That’s so funny. [laughter]
0:17:52.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I get so much stuff on there that I didn’t know that I needed.
0:17:58.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you’re like the biggest fan of TikTok that I know, you’re always sending me TikTok clips, “Check this out.” [laughter]
0:18:07.4 Mike Vacanti: Here’s the thing about the ‘For You’ page, it gives you ideas and concepts, it’s not curating… Their algorithm, whatever it is, you don’t have… I guess you can go to the people you follow, but most social media, the algorithm is based on, for consumption, is based on people, and I’m just like, I don’t… I never got into celebrity gossip magazines, I never got into like… I’m not interested in what certain people are doing, and that’s not good or bad, it’s just I am not. But the ‘For You’ page, I’m never seeing the same… If I scrolled for an hour, I wouldn’t see the same creator twice, but I would see the ideas that are most dialed into what I’m… A lot of it’s curious about learning about, or most of it is probably humor, so they have my sense of humor dialed in.
0:19:01.0 Jordan Syatt: I bet if you were the person who is interested in people, that’s what your ‘For You’ page would show. It would show certain people… Like, let’s say you were obsessed with Drake. I bet if you are obsessed with Drake, it would show you all of this Drake stuff, but because you like learning these new skills and things, I bet that’s why it’s showing you that because it sees that you watch those types of videos the whole way through, and maybe you’ll like, whatever, rewind or I don’t know… You watch those videos over and over again, so it knows like, “Hey, we’re gonna serve him this type of stuff,” which that’s what’s crazy about the algorithm because it knows what… It’s not even necessarily a certain topic per se as much as it is a certain type of content, which is learning conceptual, as opposed to, “Hey, this is only fitness”. ‘Cause on Instagram, it’s like, I’m given mixed martial arts and jujitsu and fitness. That’s really the main things that they throw on my feed, but I don’t get these random learning videos like I would on TikTok, for example, that even on the rare occasion, I do go on there, I get similar…
0:20:06.5 Jordan Syatt: I get things oftentimes about space or nature. I like seeing stuff about space and nature, about… That Nature is Metal account or whatever it is, but you can see… I see stuff about like what’s going on in different galaxies or all this stuff, ’cause I’ll watch those videos the whole way through. So it’ll show me those learning type videos. It’s so interesting how it’s not necessarily about what your profile is about or what… ‘Cause oftentimes on Instagram if… I think if you hashtag certain things, like if you hashtag fitness in your post, you’ll probably get more fitness type content in your feed, but just because I hashtag that stuff on my feed in TikTok doesn’t mean I’m getting that stuff on my For You page.
0:20:46.7 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.
0:20:48.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. Their algorithm, I think, is next level. I think they’re definitely beating Instagram, for sure.
0:20:54.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and even the fitness stuff that I get served up is, I’m not getting “Five Ways to Stay Full in a Calorie Deficit” because even though that might be something relevant to me teaching, it’s not information that I need at this point, but I will get something funny related to fitness or something, or like the…
0:21:16.6 Jordan Syatt: Like a Dom Mazzetti video or something?
0:21:18.3 Mike Vacanti: Something… Or even… Yeah, I don’t know that he’s on there, but yeah, the 2022 version of that.
0:21:26.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
0:21:28.8 Mike Vacanti: Anyway, do you have any comments before we dive in on how dialed your current health and fitness… And isn’t your resting heart rate like 26 beats per minute these days?
0:21:38.4 Jordan Syatt: No, it’s not 26, that’s dangerous, Michael. [laughter]
0:21:42.5 Mike Vacanti: Dangerously impressive. [chuckle]
0:21:44.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s dangerous… That is dangerously cheesy. Those commercials growing up. No, no, resting heart rate is like when I wake up it’s around like 42, 43, 44 which is more than…
0:21:56.0 Mike Vacanti: What about when you’re sleeping?
0:21:58.1 Jordan Syatt: I haven’t checked that in a while. I actually haven’t looked at my Garmin Connect for when I’m sleeping, but when I wake up, it’s about like 42, 44. What’s your resting heart rate?
0:22:08.7 Mike Vacanti: It actually has gone up since I have done less cardio… I mean, since I’ve done less zone 2 cardio.
0:22:16.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:22:18.1 Mike Vacanti: 55, I got it down. I never had it into the 40s, but 51 was my weekly average one week, that was the lowest, probably three weeks ago.
0:22:29.3 Jordan Syatt: That’s great.
0:22:30.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, I’m happy about it.
0:22:32.6 Jordan Syatt: And you’ve got naturally good cardio.
0:22:35.0 Mike Vacanti: Do I?
0:22:36.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you do. You’ve got great cardio.
0:22:38.5 Mike Vacanti: Remember when we rolled with Jessen and I was exhausted in eight seconds?
0:22:44.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s because you hadn’t done Jiu-jitsu before and so you didn’t know when to go crazy and when to… It;s like, grappling is just… It’s the most tiring of all of them, it’s the most exhausting by far, more than boxing, more than kick boxing… More… By far, wrestling and grappling is the most exhausting.
0:23:03.7 Mike Vacanti: I saw a video, we’re really just all over the place on this podcast, which I’m kind of enjoying, Sunday Morning Edition. These drunk guys were at Taco Bell. Did you see this?
0:23:15.2 Jordan Syatt: No, is this on TikTok?
[chuckle]
0:23:17.3 Mike Vacanti: I think it probably was, it might have been Twitter.
[laughter]
0:23:21.8 Mike Vacanti: But it seemed like it was kind of cut at the beginning, but they were being obnoxious, yelling at the employees kind of, and I think demanding free food, it seemed like. I don’t have the full context, but it seemed like the drunk guy was demanding free food and his buddy was slightly less drunk, but kind of backing him up. And the Taco Bell employee was kinda out on the edge where you walk out to cross out from behind the counter towards the rest of the people, saying no. And the drunk guy kinda squares up and starts moving towards him and throws a haymaker, and the Taco Bell employee ducks. So he ducks the punch, goes in for a takedown, picks him up and slams him, and the guy landed on his head.
0:24:06.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh no.
0:24:08.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and it was just out. And then his buddy… And the Taco Bell guy immediately backed up after he took him down, it was very much self-defense. And his buddy rolled him over and like blood all over coming from his face.
0:24:22.9 Jordan Syatt: Wow.
0:24:23.8 Mike Vacanti: And…
0:24:24.8 Jordan Syatt: That’s the end of the story? Do we know what happened to the guy?
0:24:28.6 Mike Vacanti: No, we don’t.
0:24:29.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, man, that’s a real bummer of an ending to that story.
0:24:31.0 Mike Vacanti: I know.
0:24:33.7 Jordan Syatt: But good self-defense, man.
0:24:35.3 Mike Vacanti: It is. And its… But then it was very… ‘Cause then there was debate in the comments. People were…
0:24:40.0 Jordan Syatt: Of course, people are debating about that stupid shit like, “Oh, shouldn’t have slammed him.” So, it’s like when people see videos of a cop and they’re like, “Oh, the cops should have shot him in the leg.” It’s like, you’ve never shot a gun in your life, if you think the cop should look at someone who’s in a crowd of people, and saying, shoot them in the leg? Like, good luck, but if you’ve never shot… You can’t say that. If you’re in the middle of that situation and someone goes after you and you slip, you’re not thinking, “I’m gonna try and slam them on their head,” you’re thinking, “I’m trying to stay safe, and this is what I practice.”
0:25:10.0 Mike Vacanti: In the cop example too you’re talking about someone who has a weapon, and not like…
0:25:12.7 Jordan Syatt: Yes, don’t… Correct.
0:25:14.9 Mike Vacanti: It’s not shoot that random guy in the leg.
0:25:16.4 Jordan Syatt: No. You have someone who has a weapon in a group of people, and then people are mad because the cop shot and killed the guy with a weapon, and it’s like you shoot for the biggest part of the body, which is not the head, it’s not the leg, you shoot the bigger, which is the torso, and in a crowd of people, it’s lucky… That the person’s moving around, it’s lucky it didn’t hit anybody. “Oh, shoot them in the leg.” It’s like, the leg can move, not to mention that’s a ridiculously accurate shot from a 20, 30, 40 feet away. Are you kidding me?
0:25:46.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, to hit the leg.
0:25:46.3 Jordan Syatt: And then, I could imagine these comments are probably like, “Oh, he shouldn’t have slammed him on his head. Da da da da da.” Get out of here.
0:25:54.7 Mike Vacanti: In fairness, it was probably 90-10 the balance of the comments, but still people… When someone is the aggressor, and then they throw a haymaker, you’re in self-defense mode.
0:26:06.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it’s… If you’ve never been in that situation, saying like, “Well, they should have done this,” is so fucking stupid. That stuff pisses me off a lot. It’s sort of… It’s one of actually the biggest things they’ve… And this isn’t political, this is just a factual discussion around they’ve banned chokeholds for some states. For police officers in some states, they’ve banned chokeholds. And this is not based off of a knowledge of martial arts or a knowledge of self-defense, this is just based off of more media propaganda and what people think of when they think of a chokehold. A properly applied chokehold does not kill the person at all, it just… It doesn’t even necessarily choke them, it just… If you wanna control someone, you control their head. You control their spine, you control the person, period, end of story. If you can control their head from moving, if you can control the direction of their head, then you control the entire person.
0:27:09.0 Jordan Syatt: And the best way to do that is to get what is referred to as a chokehold, but you don’t even have to be choking them, you’re just controlling the top of their spine, the top of that lever arm. And so by banning these holds and by… If a cop is seen doing that in some states, for example, New York City, then that cop could go to prison and… Just by having that one hold. Not even by necessarily doing anything with it, just by using it to help… Even if someone’s a danger to themselves or a danger to others, you wanna get them in that position so you can control them and help them be safe and other people be safe. So there’s just a lot of misinformation about this stuff that is… I’m super passionate about discussing ’cause it can actually… It can save lives. And by banning that type of a hold, you actually make it more dangerous ’cause you can’t control that person as well and they could end up hurting someone else, hurting themselves, hurting you as the cop, whatever it is. It’s very dangerous.
0:28:01.1 Mike Vacanti: Let me try and play devil’s advocate. So I think it’s very clear that the ability to use a chokehold is good if the person using the chokehold has a level of training.
0:28:15.8 Jordan Syatt: Yes, absolutely.
0:28:17.8 Mike Vacanti: And from the police officers who I have spoken to, there is very, very little training and zero Jiu-jitsu, except for the officers who…
0:28:28.9 Jordan Syatt: Actually, in Minnesota, they’re required to be blue belts. They require all cops to be blue belts in Minnesota, which I am a huge fan of.
0:28:34.2 Mike Vacanti: Really?
0:28:35.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, all cops have to get training until…
0:28:37.2 Mike Vacanti: Since when?
0:28:38.8 Jordan Syatt: Within the last year or two.
0:28:40.0 Mike Vacanti: Okay.
0:28:41.5 Jordan Syatt: Which is… I’m a huge fan of.
0:28:42.9 Mike Vacanti: That’s where my mind goes, is it seems like a reaction, a strong reaction, to George Floyd.
0:28:50.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
0:28:50.3 Mike Vacanti: And then, no chokes to avoid a situation like this. Do you think that there… Do you think that that law banning chokes has any validity for untrained individuals?
0:29:04.6 Jordan Syatt: Well, that’s the… I don’t think it’s a fair question because I think it should be a requirement that all cops be trained.
0:29:12.5 Mike Vacanti: Yep. Yep.
0:29:13.1 Jordan Syatt: I don’t think you should have a police officer on the street who is untrained. I don’t… I think that’s… And for example, when you and I took that…
0:29:21.9 Mike Vacanti: We’re on the same page.
0:29:22.1 Jordan Syatt: Two and a half day…
0:29:22.2 Mike Vacanti: Sheepdog. Yeah.
0:29:24.1 Jordan Syatt: Sheepdog Response, home-defense, self-defense course, they said you and I did more shooting in those two and a half days than most cops do in an entire year, right? ‘Cause there were federal agents in the area near us, and they were saying they’re doing all their training. They said the amount of shooting that you and I did in those two and a half days is more than most cops are required to do in a whole year, which is a massive problem. So it’s… I mean, it’s… The chokehold isn’t the issue, it’s the… These cops need to be trained in how to do them properly, that’s the issue. And you could see videos online of terrible cops, not just terrible in their skill, but there are some bad cops. There’s bad teachers, there’s bad doctors, there’s bad lawyers. There’s bad personal trainers. There’s some bad cops like the awful guy who killed George Floyd. That wasn’t a chokehold, by the way, what he did to George Floyd, that was…
0:30:16.3 Mike Vacanti: That wasn’t a chokehold, it was a…
0:30:18.0 Jordan Syatt: That was a knee in the neck.
0:30:18.9 Mike Vacanti: He choked him.
0:30:19.8 Jordan Syatt: That was not a… That’s not even a Jiu-jitsu move, that’s literally…
0:30:24.6 Mike Vacanti: Correct.
0:30:25.2 Jordan Syatt: Just, “I’m gonna hurt this guy as much as I possibly can in an unnecessary fashion.” And it was just trying to make a statement. That was disgusting and gross and filthy in every way imaginable, and I don’t think he’s a fair representation of police at all. And I think just based on the response of police after that saying like, “This was terrible. This should never have happened.” I think… Yeah, almost speechless with how bad that was, but that’s not an example of what a trained police officer does at all. A trained police officer doesn’t do that, that’s what an untrained psychotic individual does with ill intent and malicious, malicious intent. That’s not what a well-trained officer will do.
0:31:07.1 Mike Vacanti: It certainly seemed that way. I do wonder if proper training may have made that situation go differently.
0:31:14.4 Jordan Syatt: Absolutely. It absolutely would have made it go differently, there’s no question. Which is why the whole… The answer isn’t to defund police, the answer is to get them…
0:31:25.0 Mike Vacanti: Better funding.
0:31:26.7 Jordan Syatt: And better standards. Better funding and hold them to standards of you are required to be trained in Jiu-jitsu. You’re required to be practicing with your firearm. You’re required to be passing these tests. There has to be not just better funding, but also a higher standard in order to reach this certain level in which you’re actually out patrolling the streets.
0:31:50.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, higher standard, and then higher standard probably means that either a higher percentage of current funding towards training and testing or more total funding.
0:32:02.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly, yeah. In order to actually have those standards and pass them and keep them regimented like, yeah, you’re gonna have to have more funding in order to make that a possibility. Didn’t expect to go down that route in this… [laughter]
0:32:17.3 Mike Vacanti: Good, that’s what, that’s what makes the organic conversation component of the podcast, as well as podcasts that are unplanned and free-flowing, especially… There’s so much bullshit out there, there’s so much masquerading and trying to perceive audience reaction and fitting that to sell and do whatever. That’s why so many of the best podcasts are just two individuals or multiple people, whatever, seeking… Or even a single individual, seeking truth, right?
0:32:49.7 Jordan Syatt: That’s a good way to put it, yeah.
0:32:50.0 Mike Vacanti: Letting the conversation go where it’s going to go, but you don’t have an agenda, you’re just working towards figuring out what’s true and what’s right.
0:32:58.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right.
0:33:00.8 Mike Vacanti: But now we shall go into the planned fitness/business portion of the podcast. “Should you not eat during the day if you’re going to have a big meal at night?”
0:33:13.0 Jordan Syatt: You wanna answer that one?
0:33:15.6 Mike Vacanti: Indifferent. I’m curious what you think.
0:33:17.0 Jordan Syatt: I think there’s a chance we might have different opinions on this, but… So should you not eat during the day if you’re gonna have a big meal on night? I’ll start by saying, I think it depends on your current relationship with food. I think if you struggle with binge eating or anorexia, or bulimia, or any of that, or you have a disordered relationship with food, then absolutely do not not eat all day…
0:33:40.7 Mike Vacanti: Fast all day.
0:33:41.1 Jordan Syatt: Don’t fast all day. Exactly. Don’t fast all day and wait for that, ’cause that’s gonna perpetuate a more disordered relationship with food. If you have a good relationship with food, that’s totally fine. If this was me 10 years ago, it would have been a terrible idea. But me now is actually, if I wanna do that, I can do that, no problem, that’s not an issue. But you have to be very objective and self-aware with your relationship with food. If you have a great relationship with food, I think it’s a very good strategy, but even then, I’ve found that, even if you have a great relationship with food, sometimes completely fasting the whole day will cause you to end up eating more than you would have otherwise, so rather than completely fasting, I prefer to have a lot of protein, a lot of veggies and a little bit of fruit leading up to that meal just to fill yourself up so that way when you do go eat, you can still enjoy yourself, you have more leeway with your calories, but if you just fast the whole day… This happens to me every year on Yom Kippur.
0:34:38.0 Jordan Syatt: So it’s one of the biggest Jewish holidays of the year, and there are several fasting days throughout the year in Judaism but Yom Kippur is one of the more well-known ones. And every single year… Every Jewish holiday, it starts at sundown and ends at sundown, so it’s not like the holidays, they start when the day starts, it’s the holiday actually starts at sundown the night before. So when you start fasting on Yom Kippur, you have a big dinner, and then you start fasting once sundown happens. And then you fast all night and then all the next day until sundown the following day. So literally, the whole day, I’m just thinking about food, and it’s funny because I’m thinking about food, not because I’m necessarily hungry, but because I know I can’t eat food until the end of the day, and so… And then by the time the break fast happens, I end up eating way more than I would have otherwise, just because I’ve been… I’m so hungry and I’ve been thinking about food all day. But if I just had the ability to eat a bit, one or two meals of mostly protein and vegetables, a little bit of fruit, I would have still been able to enjoy myself without over doing it, but that’s religion and… It’s fasting for a separate reason.
0:35:48.8 Jordan Syatt: Actually, my rabbi had… When my wife and I were getting ready for our wedding, I was asking my rabbi all these questions, and we had this whole discussion around what’s the purpose of fasting in this religious fasting, and he had a really interesting thought around it that I had never heard before. Basically, there are many different… Especially in Judaism, I can’t speak for other religions, but there’s always these jokes about Judaism, about how you have three different rabbis, they’ll give you four different opinions type of a thing, and so much of Judaism is about arguing and debating and what’s right, and so it’s not just like, “Hey, this is what God meant, period,” it’s like, “Hey, let’s try and figure out and debate and argue about it, and so we can come up with as many different possibilities.”
0:36:32.0 Jordan Syatt: And what I liked about what he said about fasting is the way that he’s always interpreted it as, it reminds you… ‘Cause Yom Kippur is the day of repentance, it’s where your repent for your sins and you sort of ask for forgiveness going into this new year. And so growing up, I was always taught and thought that this fasting was your way of sort of apologizing for everything bad you’ve done, it’s your punishment. But my rabbi was like, “No, I don’t like thinking of it as a punishment, I like thinking of it as a moment to recognize that when you feel hunger during that day while you’re fasting, some people feel that every day, and some people are very rarely, ever, ever to satiate themselves, food is always scarce for them. And so by thinking about that, maybe going forward into the new year, you can be more gracious and more giving with what you’re doing. So it’s sort of a reminder for you to think about, ‘Okay, I’m so lucky that every other day of the year, if I’m hungry, I can just go get a bite of food,'” which I thought… I liked that a lot.
0:37:36.9 Mike Vacanti: I love that, your answer was actually exactly what I would say. Basically to the T. I know this isn’t part of the question, but the other interpretation of religious fasting that I’ve always liked is that of sacrifice, right? Like, it’s a sacrifice to God to do something that’s difficult, forgoing food for a day or longer…
0:38:06.3 Jordan Syatt: More.
0:38:06.5 Mike Vacanti: And fast.
0:38:06.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:38:08.8 Mike Vacanti: I love everything you’ve said. I think the only thing I’ll highlight is what I would really emphasize, and that is that I don’t even love the strategy of not eating all day leading up to a meal at night. I like whatever modified protein sparing fast or basically think of it as just eating less than you normally would during the day. Maybe that means skipping a meal. It probably just means modifying your meal, two meals, meal and snack, two meals and snack, whatever, leading up to dinner to be lower calorie, so you have more calories to play with at dinner. So if you have 2000 calories for the day and you’re normally dividing it up like, I don’t know, 700, 700, 700, gets you close, instead of that, what I would do is what Jordan mentioned with protein emphasis. Volume, so vegetables that’ll fill you up for pretty low calories, some fruit in there, micronutrient-dense fiber, fills you up on a lower amount of calories. But keeping calories lower than normal during the day, keeping protein high, so where it would normally be, or even higher. And then going into dinner with more calories to play with. So maybe you only eat 800 calories during the day, so you have 1200 at dinner, rather than only having 700 at dinner. But modifying your meals during the day to give yourself more room to play with at dinner. But I completely agree that it can…
0:39:41.3 Mike Vacanti: There’s two things. What you mentioned, which is you completely fast all day, you’re not used to it, that’s not your normal meal timing pattern, then you end up overeating at night. And two, you just go into dinner feeling like shit. If you’re not used to going all day, then when you get to dinner time, you’re going to the restaurant, you’re dragging, you’re low energy, you’re low mental energy, you’re low physical energy. So…
[overlapping conversation]
0:40:07.3 Jordan Syatt: You’re hungry. You’re snapping on your spouse. It’s not worth it.
0:40:12.0 Mike Vacanti: You hit your wife in the parking lot. That’s just not good. [chuckle]
0:40:15.5 Jordan Syatt: Or your wife hits you. The only time my wife gets mad is when she’s hungry. That’s literally the only time I ever see her get upset, is when she’s really hungry.
0:40:25.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And we were kidding about the hitting, by the way, just in case this gets clipped and posted to…
0:40:29.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh, they’re all about beating your spouse. This is a terrible podcast.
[laughter]
0:40:36.3 Mike Vacanti: One star. By the way, if you have a second right now, I think you can keep listening and leave us a five-star review, Spotify, Apple, Google, but wherever…
0:40:45.1 Jordan Syatt: Can you leave reviews on Spotify?
0:40:47.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:40:47.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I didn’t know that.
0:40:49.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I’ve noticed recently that we’ve had quite a few of Spotify reviews recently. So one, thank you so much for listening. Two, thank you so much for leaving us the five star reviews. Yeah, you’re all amazing. We really appreciate that feedback.
0:41:04.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, thank you everyone. It’s been super fun doing this. And really getting back into it weekly has been great as well. ‘Cause we had… The reason we took such a while off is ’cause of the book. That’s really why we took such a… Because we were just getting the book done. But now that that’s basically ready to go, we’re just cruising.
0:41:21.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s true. Because we spent so much time together on video calls, just sitting there, pounding the keys.
0:41:32.1 Jordan Syatt: I think I have a good question. I think you might like this one. But I never know with Michael. He’s always hard to read, even as long as I’ve known him. I try and pick questions that I think are gonna resonate with what Michael’s interested in. So I’ve got one. Someone asked how to not get back tightness with deadlifts and Romanian deadlifts. And the reason I picked this one is ’cause I know Michael is big on back tightness. [chuckle] And also enjoys…
0:42:00.2 Mike Vacanti: I am.
0:42:00.3 Jordan Syatt: Deadlifts and RDLs. So what do you think? I think it’s a good question. And I think probably a lot of people struggle with it.
0:42:07.0 Mike Vacanti: I think it’s a great question. Man, there are so many… It depends on the person. There are so many ways to answer this. I’m gonna say, here are some ways to avoid overuse of the lumbar spine during these movements when… And overuse of the low back, overuse of low back activation and under use of glute and hamstring on these exercises that lead to your back being tighter, because you end up working your lower back. And some of those are, one being proper breathing. And it’s probably not the highest in the hierarchy, but making sure…
0:42:54.4 Jordan Syatt: I think it’s pretty high, to be honest. I think it is pretty high. ‘Cause if people aren’t bracing properly, breathing and bracing, you’re gonna feel it. Even if your technique looks good, if you’re not breathing and bracing properly, then you’re not getting enough intra-abdominal pressure to actually protect your spine. I think that’s super high up on the list.
0:43:11.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, so let’s talk about these. We’ll say two, bracing and breathing. Because those were gonna be separate in the three. So bracing and breathing is one. And tempo is the other one. These are two common mistakes. And so we’ll start with the one that I think will take less time to explain. On an RDL, I’ll often see uncontrolled eccentric tempo, meaning when you’re lowering the weights, you’re lowering them super fast, have like a rubber band effect at the bottom of the rep, where you’re almost in a free fall with the weight. And then you immediately transition into the lifting phase from the bottom of the movement. And at that transition where you catch, ’cause it’s a free fall of the weight, and then you catch and you start on the lifting phase, your lower back is going to be taking the majority of that load. So by focusing on having a controlled lowering phase, and it doesn’t… You don’t have to count out five seconds on the lowering. But just making sure that it’s a nice, smooth lowering phase. And probably at least two seconds on the lowering phase, is going to lead to less lower back activation and more… You’re gonna feel your hamstring stretch more on the way down. And you’re gonna recruit more glute and hamstring on the exercise by controlling that tempo.
0:44:31.3 Jordan Syatt: Yep, agree, completely. Do you wanna go into breathing and bracing?
0:44:35.5 Mike Vacanti: Breathing and bracing. I actually really like the way you explain it with the cylinder.
0:44:40.7 Jordan Syatt: You explain it.
0:44:42.5 Mike Vacanti: I think we actually both stole that from Peter Attia, right?
0:44:45.0 Jordan Syatt: No, I didn’t steal that from Peter Attia. I have probably…
0:44:47.9 Mike Vacanti: The cylinder in… For creating intra-abdominal pressure.
0:44:54.0 Jordan Syatt: I knew that years ago, but I probably stole it from…
0:44:55.3 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no.
0:44:55.8 Jordan Syatt: Cressey or something.
0:44:56.8 Mike Vacanti: Thinking about it as a cylinder though?
0:45:00.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:45:00.7 Mike Vacanti: And you’re filling the cylinder up with air.
0:45:01.5 Jordan Syatt: I’ve always said water bottle.
0:45:03.9 Mike Vacanti: Oh, okay, okay. Here’s what you wanna do. You wanna take a giant… Oh, oh, no, no, no, there’s one more thing on tempo, sorry. So here’s a mistake I see a lot of people make on… So that was RDL. On a deadlift, a mistake that a lot of people make is, on the eccentric phase of a dead lift, there’s many ways to do it, and there’s some argument about it. I think the best option is an explosive concentric movement, and then dropping the weight, right? You can keep your hand on the weight, you’re not actually dropping it, but you’re not gonna maintain any lower back, glute, hamstring, trap etcetera recruitment on the way down because the weight is free falling rather than one, a tap and go, or two, this like four-second controlled eccentric on a heavy deadlift that is just… That’s gonna lead to something that leads to low back tightness.
0:46:09.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:46:09.9 Mike Vacanti: So, lift the weight, drop it while keeping your hands on the bar, but you’re not expending any energy on the lowering phase, and then there’s like a probably a very minor reset at the bottom of each rep before you start your next concentric phase.
0:46:28.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I like that.
0:46:30.1 Mike Vacanti: Right ’cause you know what I’m talking about when you see people who try to really control the eccentric phase of a heavy deadlift, and I’m just looking at their lower back like that, you’re not gonna last long doing that.
0:46:43.0 Jordan Syatt: No, it’s a bad idea. I see more injuries there than anywhere else with a deadlift. And I think a max effort, and by max effort, I mean, somewhere between 1-5 reps. A max effort deadlift, like heavy, heavy deadlift, that’s not meant to be a controlled eccentric, that’s meant for a power-based concentric, trying to develop more speed, power, explosive power, rate of force development on the concentric like you would in a jump, or in a sprint, or in a broad jump, a high jump, dunking a basketball, whatever it is, it’s an explosive concentric. And then you just come back down really fast on the eccentric, that’s what you’re developing that for. If you want to load up weight and then strengthen the eccentric, which is important, I would do that with a Romanian deadlift, not from the floor or regular deadlift.
0:47:38.4 Mike Vacanti: Not to mention if you are… If you’re doing heavy triples, you’re going to be able to… I think this is true, you’re going to be able to concentrically lift more weight than you can safely eccentrically control.
0:48:00.6 Jordan Syatt: That’s the key word being, “safely.” You said yes, safely. Yeah, that’s for sure.
0:48:03.4 Mike Vacanti: ‘Cause you can eccentrically. But not without leading to…
0:48:07.7 Jordan Syatt: You are stronger eccentrically than you are concentrically, that’s just… We know that, but safely bringing it back down, that’s the keyword ’cause I think if you have a super heavy weight that you’re trying to control down eccentrically, you’re asking for something to hurt. You’re asking for… And that’s really when most soreness happens as well. So if we’re talking about preventing tightness, which really is what the question was, How do you prevent tightness? You reduce the eccentric phase. Doesn’t mean you have to eliminate it completely, but you reduce it. If you want to accentuate your back tightness and soreness and make it worse, do a longer eccentric. Like that’s… Yeah, absolutely.
0:48:45.6 Mike Vacanti: Plus, no one wants to be controlling the eccentric on a heavy deadlift. I mostly see it from people who feel bad about making a lot of noise deadlifting. And that’s just… One, you’ll get over it over time. Two, if you’re in a gym where the culture is that you need to be completely quiet and not make a single peep with all lifting then…
0:49:10.5 Jordan Syatt: Go to a new gym.
0:49:11.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:49:13.2 Jordan Syatt: Sometimes people look at me. There was a guy the other day, I was deadlifting and he was on the treadmill, and I just drop it, I’m like, “boof, boof.” Just ’cause like that’s… I’m not wrecking my back or whatever, or changing my training just to… ‘Cause some guy doesn’t like the loud weights. That’s what the weights are there for. They’re not there to be quite weights alright.
0:49:31.5 Mike Vacanti: They’re lifting weights.
0:49:31.6 Jordan Syatt: They’re fucking heavy weights. And they always have… If you put them down too heavy… “If they put them down too loud, then it’s too heavy for you to lift.” It’s like, no, that’s not fucking true idiot. That’s not how it works. But he kept looking at me and he kept trying to give me this look. And at first I was ignoring it and finally just got to the point where I was like, next time he looks at me, I’m just gonna stare right back at him. And just turn and look at my shoulder and look him right in the eyes, and the next time he did it, he looked at me and I stared at them for five seconds. It was like in my head being like, “Say something, please say something.” Which… You know when you’re deadlifting heavy, you get that as well, like you know…
0:50:06.5 Mike Vacanti: Oh, yeah.
0:50:08.7 Jordan Syatt: Like adrenaline’s up and you’re just like say something motherfucker.
0:50:09.9 Mike Vacanti: Testosterone is flowing. Yeah, yeah.
[laughter]
0:50:10.4 Jordan Syatt: And then he looked at me and then he had turned back around, he didn’t look at me again after that. So if someone’s looking at you, they’re doing that like, “ugh,” you have to just look them right in the eye and just in your head dare ’em to say something. So yeah.
0:50:26.1 Mike Vacanti: I love it. It’s also any time someone catches that on social media, meaning they’re filming a technique video, doing a nice deadlift, and then you see some Karen come over, someone went and got the gym manager and the gym manager is coming over to tell them they have to stop. The comments are just like, you’re doing nothing wrong and just going after the gym.
0:50:48.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So going back to the question…
0:50:53.6 Mike Vacanti: Oh, bracing and breathing.
0:51:00.1 Jordan Syatt: Well, I also wanna say, I’ll discuss bracing and breathing actually… I do wanna talk about that bottle, the one I do with the bottle, ’cause I think I’m gonna make content about that, but also I think it’s a good visual for anyone who… If you wanna explain it to your clients or make content out of this as well, it’s a super good visual, but I also wanna say it’s… A lot of people, they’re like, “Oh, like how do I prevent my back ever feeling sore?” And there’s been this whole big movement in the fitness industry that makes it seem like back soreness is bad and that you should never feel your lower back muscles. I’m like, your erector spinae are fucking muscles.
0:51:29.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:51:30.4 Jordan Syatt: Just like your biceps, just like your calves, just like your pecs, just like your… They’re muscles. And if you use them, they’re gonna be sore, and there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s been this whole movement that’s saying back soreness is bad and you shouldn’t use your back muscles when you deadlift. Are you stupid? What the fuck muscles do you think you’re gonna use like if you’re picking something up off the ground?
0:51:51.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, of course, your hamstrings and glutes, but good luck picking something up without using your back muscles. If you can do that, like you’re a physical anomaly, that’s not how this works, you’re supposed to use your back. And if you look at the best lifters in the world, look at them shirtless, look at their back muscles, they’re fucking huge, they didn’t get that from not using those muscles. So you’re supposed to use your back muscles, it’s normal. And especially when you just start out, you’re probably gonna feel them a lot, they’re going to be sore because you haven’t used them like that before. And so a little bit of back tightness, a little bit of soreness there, it’s not an illness, it’s not a disease, it’s not a catastrophe, it’s normal because you’re using those muscles to stabilize throughout that range of motion.
0:52:39.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. You’re using them… They’re protecting your spine. Really, they’re holding your spine in a mostly neutral position, and so you’re “using them in intense isometric way”, right? Like on a deadlift or an RDL, we’re not taking them through a full range of motion, but it is an intense isometric, and without bracing and breathing, that’s where it might not be an isometric hold because without the proper bracing and breathing, you might have movement in the range of your lumbar spine throughout a rep.
0:53:19.8 Jordan Syatt: But that brings up a good point as well, because there’s the range of motion of the muscles and there’s the range of motion of the movement. There’s two different range of motion, so your erectors, your erector spinae and this are… They’re not going through a big range of motion, ideally, if you’re doing a deadlift, your erectors are going to stay basically about the same length the entire time. But your hamstrings are gonna change, your glutes are gonna change, and the range of motion of the exercise is still a full range of motion, this is what’s really important. But just because that you’re doing a full range of motion with the exercise does not mean the range of motion with your erectors are changing.
0:53:56.6 Jordan Syatt: And that’s why it’s like, for example, people talk about squats and hamstrings, your hamstrings stay about the same length, the entire range of motion of a full squat, ’cause as your knee bends… Your hip and knee bends so the hamstrings stay the same length. That’s why you don’t get much hamstring work with a squat, you get way more hamstring work with a dead lift and hip hinge because the hamstrings are actually lengthening and shortening, but I think that’s an important point to discuss where people hear range of motion and they think like, “Well, why would I do that if I’m not getting a full range of motion?” No, you are getting a full range of motion with the exercise, but the role of the erectors in that exercise are to stabilize isometrically?
0:54:32.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we’re not… When I say range of motion when I said it, I meant range of motion for the muscles.
0:54:38.6 Jordan Syatt: Erectors. Yeah.
0:54:39.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And by the way, you and I have talked about this, sometimes we do want to take the erectors through a full range of motion, just not on a deadlift. We’re gonna go through the full range of the deadlift, but your erectors are staying in position, if I wanted to take my erectors through a full eccentric and concentric and body weight and start to load up over time and try to build those muscles and build strength there, I love back extensions and performed the way you’re not supposed to, right, because we’ve gotten so glute obsessed over the last decade that… And I actually like it. I like hitting the back extension machine in a way that keeps the erectors in the same position and takes the glutes through a range of motion and is great at building glute strength and hypertrophy, but I also like training the lower back and taking your low back through a range and strengthening your low back on the back extension machine.
0:55:39.0 Jordan Syatt: What is the name of the deadlift… There’s a specific deadlift variation, usually done with dumbbells that your back actually purposefully rounds. Do you remember what that’s called?
0:55:53.6 Mike Vacanti: No. I don’t.
0:55:55.2 Jordan Syatt: I’m literally Googling it right now, I forget what it’s called. It’s an old, old, old school Russian exercise. Man, I was actually doing it a month or two ago.
0:56:08.5 Mike Vacanti: Wait, and you do it with… You do the movement with a slightly rounded lumbar or you take your lumbar through a range during the deadlift.
0:56:16.5 Jordan Syatt: You take… The movement is more with your lumbar than it is with your hips. It’s a very… It’s an old school, old Russian exercise. Can’t believe I’ve forgotten the name right now.
0:56:27.2 Mike Vacanti: Don’t program it for your beginner client.
0:56:29.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, this is not for… And I… ’cause I’ve posted about it on my Instagram before, and I’ve said it’s not for beginners, it’s not even really for intermediates, it’s for more advanced lifters. And it’s not a heavy deadlift variation, it’s a light weight, higher repetition, more of like a pump-focused exercise for more of the aerobic qualities of the muscles, and also if you wanna grow those muscles a little bit more, you can as well, but it’s not a heavy one. ‘Cause it’s specifically for the muscle, and if you go too heavy, you might end up using too much of the actual bone or tendons or ligaments, you end up relying too much on the passive structures as opposed to the muscles. But there’s been such a huge movement of people against rounding your back ever or against any… It’s like, what do you think you do when you sit on the toilet, you’re rounding your back, and it’s…
0:57:18.7 Jordan Syatt: You know what’s funny is the body is designed to move, we’re designed to take it through all these ranges of motion. When you don’t take it through those ranges of motion and when you just stay stiff and you immobilize it, that’s when you get hurt, when you then decide to go through a bigger range of motion again. But if you keep moving it through these ranges of motions with your body weight, with light weight, you actually are much more resilient to injury and you are much more stronger and you have a much better capacity to tolerate certain forces on your joints and muscles. So it’s this idea of, Don’t ever move through this range of motion, it’s terrible idea, you actually do want to move to that range of motion, you wanna do it regularly, but you just wanna do it safely.
0:58:00.6 Mike Vacanti: Where do you think that came from? I know we got… When power… I just asked you a question, now I’m gonna give you my thought. When powerlifting bled into more mainstream fitness, a hyper-focus on… And even, I think, Rippetoe had a lot to do with this, and this is a very, very… This is a very, very good thing. But I think with hyper-focus on squat, deadlift, overhead press, bent over row, these movements where you really want to isometrically contract and really take a big breath and brace and really keep stability in the lumbar spine, that became the hyper-focus for not getting hurt on those movements. And it almost became such a focus that we stopped thinking about any benefits to taking the lumbar spine through a range…
0:59:00.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think… I think you’re…
0:59:02.5 Mike Vacanti: On other exercises.
0:59:03.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think you’re 100% right with that. I think a big focus on the big heavy squats, heavy deadlifts, and seeing people getting hurt when they’re back would round was enough to get them be like, “Hey, we can’t let the back round.”
0:59:15.2 Mike Vacanti: Ever.
0:59:17.2 Jordan Syatt: Ever. I also think that happened around the same time that coaches really started to hate on crunches as well. Crunches, and then they would be like, “The purpose of the abs isn’t to flex and extend, it’s actually to resist movement.” Now it’s such a big discussion, which that is a major purpose of the abs is to resist movement, but then they were like, “So we shouldn’t be actually taking you through flexion-extension cycles, we should be putting you in a plank position and there’s no reason for you to ever do any flexion-extension style ab training,” which is also fucking incorrect. There is a major, major time and a place for reflection extension-based core training. And so I think those two things came about about the same time, and so they’re between don’t flex and extend for your abs and don’t round your back when you deadlift or squat led to people being like, “Just your back… You shouldn’t feel your back, you shouldn’t move your back, it should just all just be straight and neutral and perfect… “
1:00:07.1 Mike Vacanti: All the time.
1:00:08.4 Jordan Syatt: All the time. And missing all of the other opportunities by which it’s actually really important to do that.
1:00:13.9 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm. Hit on bracing and breathing real quick.
1:00:18.9 Jordan Syatt: I’m not gonna make it real quick. Let’s do a two-hour podcast today.
1:00:22.3 Mike Vacanti: No. No. And I have Gary at some point here.
[laughter]
1:00:27.9 Jordan Syatt: Alright, so…
1:00:28.2 Mike Vacanti: Should we lead with bracing and breathing next week?
1:00:31.1 Jordan Syatt: No. No. No.
1:00:32.5 Mike Vacanti: A teaser?
1:00:33.2 Jordan Syatt: No.
1:00:33.5 Mike Vacanti: A part two on deadlifts?
1:00:35.0 Jordan Syatt: No, let’s not do that.
1:00:35.5 Mike Vacanti: A two-part deadlift podcast extravaganza?
1:00:39.5 Jordan Syatt: No. No. No. No, let’s just do it right now. We’ll fit… ’cause… Yeah, we’ll finish with this, and then we’ll hit something great for next week.
1:00:47.1 Mike Vacanti: Go ahead.
1:00:47.8 Jordan Syatt: Is Gary texting you?
1:00:49.4 Mike Vacanti: Nope, we’re good.
1:00:51.0 Jordan Syatt: Alright. So when it comes to breathing and bracing, there’s a lot to consider. I’ve literally done an entire seminar just on this, so I’m not gonna go on for an hour. But I wanna explain why… And I’ll give you a visual. And it’ll be great when we actually have video podcast so I could actually show the camera this, but…
1:01:05.8 Mike Vacanti: We might next week. We might…
1:01:07.8 Jordan Syatt: No, we’re not gonna next week.
1:01:07.9 Mike Vacanti: And we might be able to put this on… I think we probably will.
1:01:11.3 Jordan Syatt: No. Alright, let’s see.
1:01:12.3 Mike Vacanti: Such a cliffhanger.
1:01:13.5 Jordan Syatt: So here’s what we’re gonna do. What I want you to do is if you don’t have a bottle of water with you but you have one near you, go get a bottle of water. If you don’t, just imagine ’cause you can think about this. So Mike’s got a bottle of water, but you can’t see it. That’s a hard plastic one, I mean more of a plastic bottle like Aquafina, Dasani, that type of bottle of water.
1:01:34.2 Mike Vacanti: Those xenoestrogens. I’m trying to keep my T above 3000 so I don’t…
1:01:37.7 Jordan Syatt: Smart. Smart. [chuckle] But for the sake of this, I want you to imagine… Let’s say you’ve got a completely empty xenoestrogens full bottle of water. So completely empty. There’s no water in it, nothing, it’s just an empty bottle of water. If you wanted to twist that bottle and the cap is not on, okay? It’s empty, right? If you want… Even if the cap is on, it doesn’t really matter unless it’s full of air. But let’s just say you wanna twist the bottle as tight as you can or bend the bottle, you can do it no problem. It’s empty. It’s not a big deal. Now, let’s say you take that bottle and you fill it halfway with water, it is not all the way but halfway full, you could still twist and bend it. It’s a little bit more difficult now. It’s harder. You can’t get as big of a range of motion with it, but you can still twist and bend it. Now, let’s say you fill it all the way up with water, and then you seal it off, you put the cap on, you twist it, and now you try and twist and bend it. Good luck.
1:02:38.5 Jordan Syatt: The amount that you can actually twist and bend it is minimal if anything at all. It’s completely full to capacity, there’s just… There’s not much you can… There’s not much to deform there. That is why… That is a perfect example of what’s going on in your body if you breathe and brace properly with that full canister, that full bottle of water. If you’re not breathing properly and you’re not bracing properly, it’s as though you have an empty bottle of water, right? And so what I want you to imagine is your spine is that bottle of water, okay? Your spine, the ability of bending it… And this is, again, under a heavy load… There’s nothing wrong with your spine bending. But under a very heavy load, you want to keep it as static and isometric as possible. You don’t want it bending under a heavy load, you want to keep it nice and braced and firm.
1:03:30.8 Jordan Syatt: So when you have… When you don’t breathe properly. When you have, let’s say, no breath in your lungs and you’re not bracing properly, your spine is gonna bend very easily in the same way that the empty water bottle is gonna bend and twist very easily. If you breathe… Let’s say, you take a big breath, but all the breath goes into your chest and not your abs, right? So you just take a big breath in, which a lot of people are chest breathers and they don’t actually breathe into their diaphragm. Well, if you just breathe into your chest, you’ve got half of a bottle full of water, right? So again, it’s better than nothing, but you can still bend and break and twist a halfway full water bottle. Same thing if you breathe halfway, if you only fill your diaphragm but not your chest. You wanna fill both.
1:04:14.1 Jordan Syatt: So if you fill first your diaphragm, and then you fill your chest with air, and then you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth and you seal it off just like you would if you were closing the cap on top of a full water bottle so that the air can’t escape, and you can now breathe and you can brace with that breath inside of you, now you’ve got a full canister, a full water bottle, that’s gonna protect your spine from breaking. This is a super good visual that you can use on social media if you want. You could literally take a bottle of water, show them what it’s like empty, what it’s like half full, and what it’s like all the way full. And you use that same example to explain why it’s important to breathe and brace properly for a safe deadlift.
1:04:50.5 Mike Vacanti: Man, you killed that explanation. And I never realized that I stuck the tongue to the roof of my mouth.
1:04:58.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh really?
1:05:00.0 Mike Vacanti: I do, but I never… But it was never conscious. So now I can add that for a cue, so thank you.
1:05:06.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s a good point though. Arnold was famous for sort of making fun of people for… Who spent so much time teaching people how to breathe because he’s like, “The more you think about it, the harder it gets.” He’s like, “You do it naturally.” Which it’s very true. If you watch someone… If you told someone, “Hey, go pick up that heavy bag of luggage, they would go walk up to it, they’d take a big breath, and they’d squeeze, and they’d stand up with it without you having to teach them. Maybe their technique would be a little bit off, but naturally people breathe properly. But when people start making a big deal out of it, that’s when they end up breathing incorrectly and doing their own things. But when they just do it naturally, it comes naturally.
1:05:44.3 Mike Vacanti: Alright, we’re very quickly gonna hit an email question, and I’m gonna shorten it here. Basically, a woman interested in joining the mentorship, she has limited time. So we have… Chris Gates is someone who comes to mind. We have people in the mentorship who their online fitness businesses is their side hustle. They don’t have a full schedule to dedicate towards it, and have been successful in building their online fitness coaching business. But where is that line where, “If I have X hours a week to dedicate toward… ” [chuckle] I can see you don’t like the question. “If I have X hours a week to dedicate towards building my business, does it make sense to join the mentorship or not?” And this individual, this woman, said that she has 10 to 12 hours per week that she could dedicate toward making content, coaching, etcetera.
1:06:42.3 Jordan Syatt: I think it’s a good question. I’m not averse to this question. I think… What do you think? I wanna hear your thoughts first.
1:06:50.7 Mike Vacanti: Hey, there’s a reason I didn’t just reply to the email straight out because I’m always balancing… Look, I think you… One is better than zero. You have to temper expectations, right? You can’t expect to see the same results working 12 hours a week as someone who’s working 50 hours a week. But if you temper expectations, then doing something is better than nothing and is going to get you ahead and start you on the path. But the other side of me is very much don’t wanna be salesy and don’t wanna be pushy, so I’m not gonna hard, be like, “Oh, you should absolutely join the mentorship. 12 hours a week is plenty to see progress because you’re not going to see the same progress that all else equal the same person working for X that amount of time is going to see.”
1:07:39.6 Mike Vacanti: But you can get things started. You can start an online business, you can get clients, you can help people, you can build an audience, you can build a following, on 12 hours a week. In fact, there’s a principle, the name of it which is escaping my mind right now, but basically the time that a task takes rises and shrinks to the amount of time. If I have to design five training programs and I have three-hour gap in the afternoon, I’ll just lollygag it over the course of that three hours and get all five done. But if I have 40 minutes to get those five done and those clients are about to work out at 8:00 AM and it’s 7:15, I’m gonna get them done and get them sent over.
1:08:20.7 Jordan Syatt: The other thing I’ll say about this is… Mike, you’re saying that maybe they won’t be able to do as much or make as much progress as someone with more time. I don’t even think that’s necessarily the issue unless your expectations are off. If your expectations are you’re gonna make the same progress as someone who’s dedicating 50 hours a week to this and you’re only dedicating 12, well that’s your fault. But I think a lot of people are pretty realistic and understand that they’re not gonna make as fast as progress to someone who is, and that’s fine. I think most people’s issue is they just don’t know what to prioritize. They don’t know, “Alright, do I need a website? If I do, how do I make my website? What type of content should I be making? Where should I be posting?” They don’t know how to make an email list. They don’t know what order of events need… What to do first, second, third, fourth, fifth. They don’t know what to do or when to do it or how to do it, and that is what’s stopping them, not necessarily the time commitment, it’s just they need more direction.
1:09:20.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s sort of like a lot of clients in fitness, they know they need to work out, they have the time, they can make the time, but they don’t know which exercises are best. They don’t know how to write a program, they’re not keeping themselves accountable. And so that’s sort of my message here is if you have an extra 12 hours a week that you wanna dedicate to this and you know that you’re gonna use those 12 hours you just don’t really know where to begin yet, then the mentorship is the best place to begin because we lay it all out for you. We take out all the guesswork. We tell you, “Hey, here’s step one, here’s step two, here’s step three. Do this, do this, do this. You need accountability? We’ve got it for you in the group.” We’ve got a whole group there. We’ve got Susan and Kim in there. You and I do live Q&As two times a month, and we give you the explicit instructions just like you give your clients.
1:10:09.5 Jordan Syatt: So if that’s what you need, then there’s no question. But if you know what to do already, if you know, “Alright, here step one, here’s step two, here’s step three. I know how to do SEO for my website. I know how to do this, I know how to do that. I know how to make an email address. I know what I should be sending them.” If you know all that stuff and you’re just not doing it, then you probably don’t need the mentorship and it’s probably not for you because you’ve already got all the answers. But if you’re looking for more guidance, regardless of whether you can dedicate 4 hours a week or 100 hours a week, it’s sort of irrelevant as long as you just want the guidance.
1:10:42.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and just a quick reminder, cost of the mentorship is going up very soon. We’re not exactly sure on the price increase, a number of you have asked that. It’s gonna be at least a 25% increase in price here in the next one to two weeks. So if you’re on the fence and thinking about joining, now is a good time and we would love to see you on the inside. Thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Great stuff. Deadlifting weekly episodes.
1:11:10.8 Jordan Syatt: Have a good one.
1:11:12.0 Mike Vacanti: See you.
