In this episode, we have an in-depth conversation about boredom eating, post-workout nutrition, Mike’s newfound feelings on political discussions, and more.
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-J & M
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You can download a PDF version of the transcript here
Or you can expand to find the full episode transcription below:
0:00:11.5 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.
0:00:12.9 Jordan Syatt: Michael.
0:00:13.9 Mike Vacanti: Weekly podcasts.
0:00:16.0 Jordan Syatt: And book. Book launch. Book is here.
0:00:20.3 Mike Vacanti: The book is here. I got my physical copies, which are sweet.
0:00:23.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I didn’t get mine yet.
0:00:24.0 Mike Vacanti: Yours are on the way. Yours will be the…
0:00:25.8 Jordan Syatt: Do they feel good?
0:00:26.5 Mike Vacanti: They feel great.
0:00:28.0 Jordan Syatt: They look like a legit book?
0:00:28.9 Mike Vacanti: Yes. They are a legit book. It’s Harper-Collins.
0:00:35.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Harper-Collins, crushing it. Alright. I can’t wait till I… Wait, did they mail me mine? Did they say that? Did they tell us that?
0:00:40.5 Mike Vacanti: Yes. Yeah.
0:00:41.2 Jordan Syatt: Okay.
0:00:42.7 Mike Vacanti: But yeah, we saw the box, and saw it was from Harper and opened ’em up and, man, it actually… I spent an hour yesterday replying to DMs. I told you this. It was exhausting. Reminds me of my glory days, which may be making a come back. Who knows? But when I opened those books, it was the first time in half a decade when I felt a legitimate desire to post something on my story.
0:01:12.1 Jordan Syatt: Really?
0:01:12.3 Mike Vacanti: The first thought I had was, Wow, this is so cool. I want to share this on my Instagram story.
0:01:19.1 Jordan Syatt: Wow. And you did. You did share it.
0:01:21.5 Mike Vacanti: And I did. I did. [laughter] Forgot the link. A lot of people were asking how they could buy it. I realized… I’m a little rusty, but it’ll come back quick. But they are very nice. Yeah. It feels like a lot of hard work and time and effort has come to fruition, so…
0:01:41.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s amazing.
0:01:41.8 Mike Vacanti: They’re available for pre-sale. Our publisher really wants us to sell… Pre-sale is the time period that matters most. So from now until June 7th. So if you want to support…
0:01:52.3 Jordan Syatt: Which I didn’t know that.
0:01:53.3 Mike Vacanti: I didn’t either.
0:01:53.7 Jordan Syatt: And so if you go to… We’ll put the link in the show notes, but it’s eatit-book.com, eatit-book.com. And there’s Amazon links, Apple links, Barnes & Noble, all this stuff. We didn’t know this either, but apparently, in order to be a New York Times best seller, if it’s all on Amazon or the majority of orders are on Amazon, it will count against us. So if you wanted to try and see us on the New York Times best seller list, it would help to order from Barnes & Noble or any of the other options on eatit-book.com. But honestly, it doesn’t really matter. Wherever you can get it from, we appreciate it. And if you’re a coach listening to this, which is that’s who the majority of people are, odds are you know everything in this book. So it’s like it’s not gonna be a huge learning thing for you, but it will probably be good for your clients, and, if nothing else, it might be a good opportunity to learn new ways to phrase things for your clients, new analogies to use with your clients, not necessarily as a teaching tool. You’re not gonna learn about the physiology of the human body in this book, but it is gonna help you be a better communicator with your clients that will help them understand higher-level concepts on an easier-to-understand basis, so… And if you don’t buy the book, that’s fine as well. But it is available, and we would really appreciate it if you did.
0:03:11.4 Mike Vacanti: Yes, sir.
0:03:13.7 Jordan Syatt: What else do we got, Michael?
0:03:16.9 Mike Vacanti: How was your role today? You said it was an especially hard one.
0:03:20.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it was tough. I have a competition this Saturday.
0:03:24.5 Mike Vacanti: What?
0:03:25.8 Jordan Syatt: So… Yeah. Competition this Saturday.
0:03:28.1 Mike Vacanti: In two days?
0:03:28.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, two days. Today is Thursday.
0:03:29.0 Mike Vacanti: I didn’t know this.
0:03:30.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I can keep some things to myself if I want, save ’em for the pod.
0:03:34.3 Mike Vacanti: Apparently. You’re… Man, that’s a trick out of my sleeve.
0:03:39.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
0:03:40.8 Mike Vacanti: Wow.
0:03:41.2 Jordan Syatt: Usually, I… Yeah, I got a little comp on Saturday.
0:03:42.9 Mike Vacanti: What are you weighing right now?
0:03:44.4 Jordan Syatt: Like 150. So I don’t have to cut any weight. I’ve been drinking a lot of wine and eating a lot of carbs and doing a lot of cardio. And, yeah. So I’ve got a… It’s a big one. It’s Jiu Jitsu World League. It’s a big competition. And it’s like the biggest competition in Texas, so… Yeah.
0:04:05.3 Mike Vacanti: Where is it?
0:04:08.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s in Dallas. I think it’s like 45 minutes from where I live, which should be great. So I’m excited, so… Today was a tough training. It was… We were working on these scrambles. And so in wrestling and Jiu Jitsu, any grappling sport, a scramble is where you’re not in a position in which there’s clear control. It’s like you’re both scrambling to try and establish control of the other one. And it’s the most exhausting, because once you’re in an established position of control where there’s one person on top of the other person, you can sort of relax a little bit, you have control, you don’t need to be exerting so much energy, but when it’s a scramble, it’s just think all-out sprint. All-out sprint, trying to get control of the other person before they get control of you. And so that’s all we worked on today. It was exhausting.
0:04:56.3 Mike Vacanti: So you train full-speed, 100% up until two days before? So will tomorrow be a day off or a lighter session?
0:05:07.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Tomorrow’s just light, low-level, just practice technique, get a good sweat in, but there’s no hard training tomorrow. Some people do. Some people will train hard the morning of. There’s just some people who like to just train, train, train, train, train. But tomorrow, I’ll take a very light day, and then, yeah, then will be good to go.
0:05:26.6 Mike Vacanti: Nice, man.
0:05:28.4 Jordan Syatt: How about you? What’s going on with you?
0:05:30.7 Mike Vacanti: Just recovering from my COVID-19 infection.
0:05:35.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, man. Yeah, you said it really hurt your throat. It was like knives in your throat.
0:05:41.3 Mike Vacanti: It was definitely worse than I expected it to be, that’s for sure. You know what’s really interesting? We’ve talked so much about resting heart rate and our Garmin watches and paying attention to different data markers that we historically hadn’t paid attention to. My resting heart rate sits between 49, I guess, and 52 is kind of the range it’s been over the last couple of months. And on… So I guess this was last week, a week and a half ago, monday, my resting heart rate was 57 out of nowhere. And then Tuesday, it was 58. And I felt a little weird and I felt like something was off. I thought it was allergies, perhaps, had a little tickle on the back of my throat. Didn’t think a whole lot of it. And then Tuesday night, in the middle of the night, I went to bed at 10:00, I woke up at 1:00 AM, my bed was soaked, I had, I think, broke a fever, I guess, I’m not really sure, but I was literally soaking wet and I couldn’t get back to sleep. From 1:00 to 4:00 AM, I was up, kinda moving around to the couch, bopping around.
0:06:51.6 Mike Vacanti: And then Wednesday morning, took a test, tested positive. And yeah, sore throat was the worst thing that I had. But the two things I found most interesting were that uptick in resting heart rate as my body was beginning to fight off the infection, and two is, I then took a full seven days of zero caffeine. I just had no desire for it. Still was able to work most of those days and do things, but didn’t have a drop of caffeine, and when I checked my resting heart rate, probably five… After five days of no caffeine, it was down to a… I sent it to you. I think I was 45, right?
0:07:34.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. That’s crazy. Caffeine really does have an impact on it, which is… It’s really cool to see.
0:07:42.4 Mike Vacanti: But you had reminded me that it doesn’t have an impact on heart rate above approximately 120. So if you’re using heart rate to gauge what zone your cardio is in and you’re ingesting a reasonable amount of caffeine, it’s not gonna impact your heart rate at that level, but it does bump resting heart rate a little bit.
0:08:01.9 Jordan Syatt: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I thought was really interesting ’cause I didn’t know that until Alex Viada explained it. But it does make sense, but I was worried about having too much caffeine specifically because of that. But it is really interesting. Have you started drinking caffeine again now, now that you’re… Or no, have you not had much caffeine?
0:08:21.7 Mike Vacanti: Today. And I find myself agitated and ready to go in a lot of ways. Yeah.
0:08:32.8 Jordan Syatt: Was your workout good?
0:08:36.1 Mike Vacanti: I was coming off of, I think, nine days off of training, and so I wasn’t trying to do a lot. But yeah, I felt good in there. It wasn’t a super intense session.
0:08:49.8 Jordan Syatt: Would you ever give up caffeine completely?
0:08:53.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I mean, I have for periods of time, and I would. I forget who said it, but someone said that basically all men… All men have a vice. And I use… It was a person from the 17 or 1800s, so they were using man to describe human. And caffeine… I don’t have many vices. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. A lot of the other commonly-used vices by people in this day and age, some who don’t even consider them vices, I don’t partake in. But caffeine is one, ’cause caffeine’s a drug, and it’s one that I really enjoy. And so I don’t know if I would eliminate caffeine, but I’d be open to it.
0:09:43.7 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Cool. I like that.
0:09:46.5 Mike Vacanti: I don’t get the negative impact of the anxiousness, the… Any of the negative repercussions, the sleep inhibition, just because I’m smart with my timing and everything. But I’d consider it.
0:10:06.4 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Cool. Good stuff, brother.
0:10:11.1 Mike Vacanti: What else do we have here?
0:10:11.6 Jordan Syatt: Should we just end the episode here? [laughter] Good pod.
0:10:15.6 Mike Vacanti: And buy Eat It. Link in description. I have… I mean, I don’t know if I was just like… If it was the lack of caffeine and then going into a solid amount of caffeine, but I wrote down, during my lift this morning, something that I think you’ll find interesting.
0:10:35.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay.
0:10:37.5 Mike Vacanti: So I’m walking by the TV in the gym. There’s a line of TVs that are turned on, which pisses me off to no end, depending on how I’m feeling that day. But there was a quote on… ‘Cause you know half of it it’s the news. And I walked by and it said, on the TV, “Men can get pregnant. Men can have abortions.”
[laughter]
0:11:00.6 Mike Vacanti: And literally, I felt this flip inside of me, ’cause in my most recent YouTube video, I talked a lot about creation versus consumption and how I have been consuming more content to various… Like going in Twitter holes, COVID lead to more consuming Twitter info, and then COVID got blended in with politics and spending more time consuming political information than I ever have in my life. And when I saw that headline, I was just like, I am so done with consuming… Literally, my initial instinct was, I want to build an awesome home gym so that I don’t have to have this information put in front of me.
0:11:41.1 Mike Vacanti: ‘Cause I remember… Before Trump was saying, Fake news, before fake news was even a thing, I remember in 2014 being like, I had a “40 rules for life” blog post on On The Regimen, and one of them was, “Never watch the news.” And something to the effect of, You’re either… You don’t wanna be uninformed, so you feel like you want to watch the news, but by watching the news, you’re simply gonna be misinformed because their incentive structures aren’t aligned with giving you the truth. They’re aligned with giving them maximal eyeballs to make maximal dollars. And so before anyone was saying, “Don’t watch the news,” I was… I knew for myself that I was a worse version of myself if I was consuming news content. And when I walked by and I saw that men can get pregnant, men can have abortions, [laughter] I was like, I don’t even need to go deeper on this. This is a sign from God that is like, “Shift your focus and attention away from consuming nonsense and shift it into creating. Shift it into… “
0:12:42.4 Mike Vacanti: You know what? I got another parallel here. As you know, as I’ve told you, the crypto and NFT market is getting slaughtered right now. And I’ve lost more money there than I feel good about. [laughter] And it really makes me just like… When I’ve heard you talk about invest in yourself and invest in things you can control, it really gives me this perspective shift of like, “Was I lazy in letting my foot off the gas, just maintaining income for a number of years, rather than trying to grow it, seeing these, at the time, lucrative investment opportunities, and thinking that that was just real life?” It was a shift towards, Alright, I’m back, I’m serious about focusing more on business. I want more of my time and attention to be spent on creating rather than consuming. And put my blinders on like a horse racing that was about to come out the gate, ready to go, not thinking about what other people are saying, not thinking about what other people are doing, not thinking about all this bullshit that’s getting fed down our throats, but literally just zeroed in on the regimen, mentorship, content, like, Let’s go.
0:13:57.3 Mike Vacanti: And we have done that, you and I, reasonably well, given that we haven’t missed a single week of podcasting. But I mean like, Turn it up, turn it up, make a content schedule, stick to it, use that anger as fuel, let’s go. And any time I feel the desire to open Twitter and look at who knows what, because I don’t even go for it, it literally just finds me, it’s like, No. I might even get a screenshot, I might get a, Men can get pregnant, men can get abortions, can have abortions sticker, [laughter] put it on the anger wall, you wake up, see these five quotes next to my bed, it’s like, Alright, I’m ready to start the day.
0:14:35.0 Jordan Syatt: Make it your screensaver on your phone. [laughter]
0:14:36.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah.
0:14:39.5 Jordan Syatt: Did you see that today?
0:14:40.8 Mike Vacanti: I saw that this morning. Yeah.
0:14:44.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Was that why you were in a bad mood this morning? [laughter]
0:14:46.4 Mike Vacanti: I don’t think it was in a bad mood. I think I was just fired up.
0:14:48.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:14:50.1 Mike Vacanti: And I still am.
0:14:51.8 Jordan Syatt: I’ve seen that everywhere lately. It’s been showing up all over social media, there’s been… Yeah, it’s… I didn’t expect you to go down that route for the podcast, to be honest. [laughter]
0:15:03.7 Mike Vacanti: Well, I don’t think we need to go in depth, I don’t think we need to talk about… I think it doesn’t pass the common sense test. I get it…
0:15:13.0 Jordan Syatt: Can I just say something? This is something that I have to say, and this is gonna go down a rabbit hole I’m sure some people are gonna be mad. But can I just say something that doesn’t make sense, aside from literally everything that you just said, obviously? But can we just… I’m not talking about beliefs around abortion or any of that. I’m not talking about that. Okay? So this is separate from the discussion. But one of the things that people will say, who are very pro-choice. Okay? So we have pro-choice, pro-life, which I think there’s gotta be sort of a middle ground that we… It’s not just definitively one or the other. If we’re really gonna get nuanced with the discussion, we have to look at more in the middle. But let me just say this. This is, I think, something that’s sort of odd for the crowd that’s saying, “Men can get pregnant and have abortions.” Because that same crowd also says, “Men shouldn’t have a say on whether or not women can have abortions.” They always say, If you… That’s one of their main slogans, like, Men shouldn’t have an opinion on what women do with their bodies.
0:16:13.0 Jordan Syatt: But now they’re saying that men can get pregnant and have abortions. So shouldn’t men also be able to have a say, just based on that logic? Now, I disagree with the logic of, Men shouldn’t have an opinion on it, period. I disagree with that, just for many reasons, like for… We could go down that whole rabbit hole if we really wanted to. But just because someone doesn’t have the body parts to allow them to get pregnant doesn’t mean they can’t have an opinion on it. But either way, just based on their logic, saying men shouldn’t have an opinion on it, but now they’re saying men can get pregnant and men can have babies, well, shouldn’t now men be able to have an opinion on it, just based on their logic, or am I just completely out of my fucking mind? I feel like I’m in a clown world.
0:16:54.0 Mike Vacanti: I think we are living in a bit of a clown world. I know that hearing this… The nuance of this discussion lights such a fire under my ass to be like, [chuckle] You know what? I’m gonna take it back to the ’90s when you just didn’t really talk about politics, and I’m gonna try and help people with their fitness, and I’m gonna grow my business and I’m gonna zero in on what I wanna do. And if I happen to go on a podcast when the person comes cold with a first question like this on me, I’m just gonna be like, you know, I don’t really know, but if you wanna talk about something fitness-related, I’m happy to. There’s…
0:17:28.1 Jordan Syatt: You know what though? I don’t… I think…
0:17:32.6 Mike Vacanti: And you don’t have to. If you wanna start a political podcast, I think you should, and I think people should tune into that. And that’ll be amazing.
0:17:38.6 Jordan Syatt: I think that should be this podcast. [laughter]
0:17:41.8 Mike Vacanti: No. I can’t tell you how disinterested I am, I’m literally going full Michael Jordan, “Democrats and Republicans both buy sneakers.” “I don’t talk politics.” And there are… Another part of me is like, There has to be a massive crowd of people who are sick of hearing about politics. So I would be happy to be the breath of fresh air where they can come to wherever I am and not talk about politics. Yes, I’ll spend a minute here with you on this because I think you’re 100% right. There’s a massive degree of hypocritical thinking on…
0:18:17.5 Jordan Syatt: Logical inconsistency. Yeah.
0:18:19.2 Mike Vacanti: Yes. Absolutely.
0:18:20.4 Jordan Syatt: Well, but here’s the thing, though. I think there are people who are sick of hearing about politics, but I think it’s because people are sick of hearing the nonsense. They’re sick of being like… Have this stuff shoved down their throat. I think it’s been interesting ’cause I avoided politics for many years. And I still do to an extent, but I don’t… I’m not afraid to express my opinion on freedom of speech or the Second Amendment or any of that. I’ve become more and more comfortable sharing that. And what I’ve found is that I don’t go in-depth on it, I’m not spending too much time, but I have found that when I do talk about it, people are happy to hear simple, basic, logical reasoning, as opposed to the standard outrageous stuff that’s specifically designed to get an emotion out of you, that’s… A lot of the nonsensical stuff. So even… And if you’re not interested in talking about politics, that’s one thing. But I… For me, I think it’s like… I’ve…
0:19:14.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s been interesting and fun for me, but also it’s just been… The feedback has been very… A lot of gratitude from people being like, “I usually don’t like talking about politics, but I like hearing about it because it’s just a very grounded, simple, straight-forward approach, just like your fitness stuff.” And also, it’s been hard for me in the last two and a half plus years now to ignore it, right? There’s just been so much going on that it’s been hard for me to just pretend like stuff isn’t happening. You know what I mean? It’s hard for me to only talk about fitness when there’s some huge things going on in the world, you know what I mean?
0:19:49.4 Mike Vacanti: But there’s always been huge things going on in the world.
0:19:51.5 Jordan Syatt: Correct, correct. There always is, but now they’re more in our face because of social media, right. We’re more aware of them.
0:20:00.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yes, but… And what I’m saying is, I’m making myself unaware of them because I’m so uninterested and I’m interested in other things, like I know that you’ve stayed up until 2 o’clock in the morning arguing with a stranger for five hours in the DMs over something related to politics. I don’t want that… That sounds miserable.
0:20:20.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, me either. I don’t want that either. [laughter]
0:20:23.4 Mike Vacanti: Well, it sounds like you do, if it’s a good…
0:20:25.3 Jordan Syatt: No, I don’t want that. That’s…
0:20:26.0 Mike Vacanti: If it’s a good centered logical decision.
0:20:26.9 Jordan Syatt: That was a one-time thing in the last couple of years.
[laughter]
0:20:29.8 Mike Vacanti: No, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There’s been…
0:20:33.8 Jordan Syatt: The most… No, the most recent one was a one-time thing, and that was a couple of months ago.
0:20:38.2 Mike Vacanti: No, it wasn’t a one-time thing. There are a couple of subjects that I know that really like…
0:20:41.1 Jordan Syatt: You could say the subjects, like Israel obviously is a big one.
0:20:44.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, Israel and…
0:20:45.6 Jordan Syatt: The Middle East.
0:20:48.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
[laughter]
0:20:49.3 Mike Vacanti: Is one. But then there was one with Russia, Ukraine, Trump’s fault, like, I don’t remember, but I know it wasn’t Middle East, it was something along those…
0:21:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Eastern Europe.
0:21:03.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. [chuckle] Geography, with Mike and Jordan here at the How To Become A Personal Trainer Podcast.
[laughter]
0:21:14.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m saying…
0:21:14.7 Jordan Syatt: I know, it’s sort of like Mind Pump. I love how those guys just talk about whatever, and they could talk about fitness and they can also talk about politics, I don’t know, ’cause when you and I talk, we talk about… That’s what I love about this podcast is like you and I just talk. It’s not like we’re just making content.
0:21:33.2 Mike Vacanti: 100%, we talk about what we’re both interested in, which is no longer politics.
[laughter]
0:21:42.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m not…
0:21:43.6 Jordan Syatt: What we’re both interested in is no longer politics [laughter]
0:21:46.0 Mike Vacanti: I’m not… What I’m saying is that it’s not about what I want to talk about or not talk about. It’s what I want to actually consume for myself versus not consume.
0:21:57.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. I get that.
0:21:57.5 Mike Vacanti: Like I’m gonna go back to turning TVs off at gyms like I did back in the day.
0:22:01.3 Jordan Syatt: And walking around with your shoes off.
0:22:03.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and my shirt off too… I’m gonna…
0:22:07.2 Jordan Syatt: Do it.
0:22:09.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I am. I remember Greg Plitt on the show Work Out on Bravo back in the day.
0:22:14.2 Jordan Syatt: Rest in peace Greg Plitt, man.
0:22:16.2 Mike Vacanti: He was a G. He was so far ahead of his time. He was working out in a gym shirtless, and some employee of the gym came over and was like, “Sir, you have to wear your shirt when you’re working out.” And he just looked like peeled out of his mind like just fitness, he was like the OG fitness model, and he gave this speech about, “Don’t you want other people in the gym to be inspired by what they could achieve if they…?” I was just like this guy is awesome. Like… Oh man.
[laughter]
0:22:42.1 Jordan Syatt: So if we’re not interested in politics, what are we interested in?
0:22:50.1 Mike Vacanti: I told you getting jacked.
0:22:53.1 Jordan Syatt: Just fitness.
0:22:54.4 Mike Vacanti: Getting jacked, getting healthy, help other people get jacked, help other people get healthy, grow my business, help other people grow their business.
0:23:00.2 Jordan Syatt: And Jiu-Jitsu.
0:23:02.3 Mike Vacanti: And golf and family time, and I can’t wait to go shooting with you when I come and visit Texas.
0:23:03.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, nice.
0:23:10.8 Mike Vacanti: Getting really good at golf, I’m hoping to… Now that I’m back in Minnesota, I’m hoping to play in Men’s League hockey, although all my buddies are like, have kids, and it’s hard to get them to rally to do something like that, so I don’t know if we’ll be able to make that happen or not, but I would like to. Yeah, and focused on those things that I mentioned plus those leisurely activities.
0:23:35.3 Jordan Syatt: Alright, so you pick the topics that we’ll discuss and I’ll P it up.
0:23:37.5 Mike Vacanti: We can talk about anything. We’ve never talked about politics on here.
0:23:40.9 Jordan Syatt: We always talk about politics.
0:23:45.7 Mike Vacanti: Jordan, come on. David, back me up.
[laughter]
0:23:49.7 Mike Vacanti: This is a great episode. Unfortunately, that is my list of…
0:23:56.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s all we have for today?
0:24:00.5 Mike Vacanti: Oh, I got something interesting actually. You’ll never believe this in a million years.
0:24:02.1 Jordan Syatt: Tell me.
0:24:04.3 Mike Vacanti: If I gave you infinite guesses, you wouldn’t get it.
0:24:08.7 Jordan Syatt: Okay, so I can’t guess.
0:24:14.5 Mike Vacanti: I am no longer… I’m gonna try a schedule where I no longer consume any protein or calories post-workout.
0:24:20.3 Jordan Syatt: What? There’s… No way… What… How… What?
0:24:23.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:24:24.4 Jordan Syatt: This does not sound like Mike Vacanti, who has…
0:24:27.2 Mike Vacanti: Infiltrated my brain?
0:24:28.4 Jordan Syatt: You’re not mike. Yeah. What’s going on? No protein or calories after your workout?
0:24:33.2 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.
0:24:33.6 Jordan Syatt: You work out at like 10:00 AM.
0:24:36.2 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.
0:24:36.5 Jordan Syatt: So you’re gonna get all your food in pre-workout?
0:24:40.5 Mike Vacanti: So I’m not gonna have anything immediately post, and here’s why. Basically, I want to have more calories later in the day just for satiety enjoyment, not having to worry.
0:24:57.1 Jordan Syatt: I see, yeah.
0:24:58.0 Mike Vacanti: And because I’m having 30, 35 grams of protein pre-workout and it’s a very small pre-workout meal, and so I have it pretty close before my workout, when I then have a post-workout protein, it’s only been like two and a half hours since my pre-workout sometimes two hours since my pre-workout, which is an unnecessary dosing of protein. And so I’m gonna wait one, two, sometimes three hours, I’m not gonna go longer than five hours without protein from pre-workout to my next meal, but what that is gonna allow me to do is save some calories, push that meal a little further back and be able to have more calories later on in the day.
0:25:39.5 Jordan Syatt: I thought when you first said it that you are only gonna eat in the morning and then not for the rest of the day at all, but you’re just saying, nothing immediately post work out.
0:25:48.4 Mike Vacanti: Correct.
0:25:50.2 Jordan Syatt: ‘Cause historically, you’ve been a big anabolic window guy.
0:25:53.5 Mike Vacanti: I still am. A massive anabolic window guy. [laughter] But I had never… One, I always trained fasted, historically.
0:26:01.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh, okay, okay.
0:26:02.2 Mike Vacanti: And two, when I had a pre-workout meal, I had a pre-workout meal like two hours pre-workout, and then between warm-up, get to the gym, get home, that’s another two plus hours. So by then it had been 4 to 5 hours since my last, which is what the research for muscle gain shows is, five hours is kind of the upper limit of the window between protein dosing to maximize muscle growth.
0:26:28.9 Jordan Syatt: That makes sense. And you warm up at home, right?
0:26:30.8 Mike Vacanti: I mix it up. But with these TVs and this whole, Men are having their own abortions going on at the gym I go to…
0:26:37.7 Jordan Syatt: Hey, no politics, Mike. We’re not talking about that.
0:26:40.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s not politics. It’s headline reading. It’s literally about the gym.
[laughter]
0:26:43.7 Mike Vacanti: I’m hyper-focused on making an elite home gym set up. Also, I was in Florida recently, and the hotel gym I was at was incredible. It was newly remodeled and there was no one in the gym, and it reminded me of how much I enjoy training by myself.
0:27:01.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:27:01.3 Mike Vacanti: Just like the spontaneous movements, the mobility that you can do between sets without bumping into people, just the freedom. And as someone who’s introverted, the enjoyment of movement alone, without other people around, is orgasmic.
0:27:23.1 Jordan Syatt: Can I tell you my favorite part of training in my home gym?
0:27:26.0 Mike Vacanti: Yes.
0:27:27.5 Jordan Syatt: I can do it in my underwear. I train in my underwear.
0:27:29.9 Mike Vacanti: You and Gary both. [chuckle]
0:27:31.6 Jordan Syatt: I was thinking about that. I was doing overhead squats in my underwear, and Alex Viada asked me to send videos of me doing my overhead squats, and I was like, This might be completely… So I didn’t send… I didn’t send them. But I was just like, I love just training in my underwear and being able to make noise. Just like being like… Just whatever. And sweat on everything, and I don’t have to worry about wiping the sweat up and all that. I can get chalk on the ground, I don’t have to worry about it. I don’t want a clean home gym. I just want a grungy home gym that I can work out in my underwear. And yeah, just hang out, whatever. So yeah. I like that.
0:28:14.0 Mike Vacanti: You got it right.
0:28:14.6 Jordan Syatt: I’m excited for you to come train in the SyattFitness HQ Gym.
0:28:18.7 Mike Vacanti: I can’t wait. We’ll train in our underwear. We’ll make some content. I’ve been making content.
0:28:21.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah. In our underwear. Underwear workout.
0:28:23.5 Mike Vacanti: I cannot wait. That could be a program.
0:28:26.0 Jordan Syatt: People do that already. People do that on social media. A lot of people…
0:28:28.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but not us. And we’re gonna ramp it up.
0:28:31.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. You’re gonna be doing a bicep curl, and I’m gonna just have the camera on your butt, and be like, Yeah, look at this bicep curl technique. [laughter]
0:28:39.6 Mike Vacanti: Perfect. Perfect. Let’s get into Q&A.
0:28:45.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, wow. Someone asked, “Does it matter how quickly you consume protein post-workout?”
0:28:51.7 Mike Vacanti: Well, they just got their answer. If it has been greater than 4 to 5 hours since your last serving of protein, then it matters, is the short answer.
0:29:03.2 Jordan Syatt: Okay. “Advice on trying to lose weight without thinking about food all day.”
0:29:09.1 Mike Vacanti: That’s a cool question. It’s hard, right. If you’ve been in a deficit for a long period of time, or if you are maybe either intentionally or mistakenly in a very large deficit, when hunger is really high, it becomes all you can think about. So either giving yourself a diet break, if it’s been a long amount of time, or making the deficit you’re in smaller, rather than trying to lose 2-3 pounds a week, being happy with losing a half a pound a week are a couple things that work. I think just filling your day and your schedule and your life with meaningful, enjoyable, productive things to do that aren’t related to fitness is extraordinarily beneficial. If you’re just sitting around twiddling your thumbs waiting for your next meal, of course all you can think about is food.
0:30:12.8 Mike Vacanti: The other thing I actually like doing, which is a bit counter-intuitive, is if you’re not moving very much, if you’re not doing any cardio, adding low-intensity cardio is 30, 45, 60 minutes of time where you’re not eating. And this is assuming that you’re not in a massive deficit and then adding more activity, making you even hungrier. But being out and walking is just like… You can’t… I mean, you could simultaneously eat, but you… You’re not gonna be simultaneously eating, and that’s just an extra 30 to 60 minutes a day that eating is not an option.
0:30:51.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Boredom is the enemy of hunger, right. It’s like if you’re bored… If you’re bored sitting at home, it’s so easy just to think about food and just walk into your pantry. It’s like… It’s so funny. When I’ve had periods of time in my life where I allowed myself to get bored, ’cause it really is you allow yourself to get bored. There are many things you could do. But when you allow yourself to get bored, it’s like, Of course, you’re gonna wander into the pantry and go get something to eat. But when there have been times in my life, like right now, I’m very rarely bored. I just always have stuff to do, I always have stuff going on, and I don’t really think about food. And so if there’s… I think the best thing you could do, like you said, is fill your schedule with things to do, get out of the house. Even going on a walk, put that on your schedule. Boom, you have something to do. Stop just sitting down and watching TV and, I don’t… Playing video games or… Even, honestly, video games would be better, it’d be like… Frankly, I think video games would be better than TV, ’cause at least with video games, you have to be mindful of what’s going on.
0:31:52.1 Jordan Syatt: But if you’re bored, you are so much more likely just to be thinking about, Well, what’s next, what’s… And especially if you’re already counting calories and you’re already in a deficit, you will be thinking about food more often. It’s part of it. And that’s why, one of the reasons why I think hunger can creep up, because you’re thinking about food more ’cause you’re being more conscious about what you’re eating. It’s a normal, natural consequence. But if you’re just sitting around all day, lying in bed, lying on the couch, not doing anything, then you’re gonna be super hungry. It’s so funny, yesterday I didn’t have my first meal until 4:00 PM, which was just… It was by happenstance. I don’t do that normally. It was not a common thing at all. Usually I’ll eat by 10:00 AM, I’ll have breakfast, and then go to Jiu Jitsu and whatever. But yesterday was just crazy. Susan was here.
0:32:37.1 Jordan Syatt: Working on the Inner Circle, and then I had a doctor’s… Then I had Jiu Jitsu, then I had a doctor’s appointment, then I had to come back with Susan. So literally didn’t get my first meal until 4:00. But I was busy non-stop the whole day, and it wasn’t until I actually sat down that I got hungry. It wasn’t till I sat down and was ready for my first meal that I noticed hunger. It’s sort of like this. It’s sort of like… Have you ever had to use the bathroom, but then as soon as you pull into your garage or your parking lot, whatever it is, as soon as you know that the toilet is nearby, it’s like, Oh, now I’ve really gotta use the bathroom, and then you race inside and you’re trying to go super, super fast? But you went on for 45 minutes, and it was just… It was bad, but not too bad. But as soon as the toilet’s in sight, all of a sudden you’re like, Oh my God, I’ve gotta get in there immediately. As soon as you know it’s about to happen, then it starts to come out. So that’s the same thing with hunger or with food, where if you’re thinking about food all the time, then your hunger is gonna be… If you’re… If it’s available all the time, then you’re gonna be way more likely to be overly-hungry. But if you’re bored and your mind isn’t on it, then you’re not gonna be noticing it nearly as much.
0:33:43.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Great.
0:33:45.4 Jordan Syatt: That didn’t get nearly as much of a laugh out of you that I was hoping it would, about the bathroom story, but…
0:33:50.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s true. It’s actually…
0:33:51.7 Jordan Syatt: Such is life, it is true.
0:33:52.2 Mike Vacanti: I didn’t think it was a funny analogy. I thought it was just an apt analogy. I though it was very accurate.
0:33:57.5 Jordan Syatt: Well, alright. Thanks, brother.
0:34:00.7 Mike Vacanti: Thank you, my brother. We also have a very, very detailed section in the book about how to stay full in a calorie deficit.
0:34:09.2 Jordan Syatt: You know what also… So Spencer Nadolsky was quoted in the book. He had a really interesting section that when he handed it in, I loved it, and I know you did to, Mike. When we were talking about the benefits of building muscle. And we were talking about a lot of the myths about building muscle and how people think that building muscle builds so much extra calories, right, that it burns so many extra calories, when it’s not. One pound of muscle burns what, like four to six extra calories. It’s not that much, right. But what he did talk about was he’s like, “Even though muscle doesn’t necessarily burn as many calories as we think, in order for someone to build muscle, they have to have a certain lifestyle.” And so it’s often these lifestyle factors that lead to greater energy output, as opposed to the necessarily the just muscle in general.
0:34:52.5 Jordan Syatt: So it’s not the fact that you’ve built an extra 10 pounds of muscle, it’s, Well, what’s the lifestyle of someone who does build an extra 10 pounds of muscle? And that is what leads to the higher energy out, higher metabolic rate and all that stuff. And that was such a simple point, but it was very, very profound when you think about it, the lifestyle factors of someone who’s likely to put on 10 pounds of muscle, which goes back to all of our recommendations, the things that we talk about, getting more steps in, just walking, eating more fiber, emphasizing protein, staying hydrated. It’s all of these lifestyle factors that really do make the biggest difference, not the small, small, small aspects that take up the least amount of time.
0:35:30.7 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely true. Who are you gonna ask to help you move, if you were to help ask someone to help you move? Is it the person who spent the last three years adding 40 pounds of muscle, or is it the person who doesn’t lift? It’s like then… I know. There’s a joke in here about not asking your friends to help you move, but…
0:35:49.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I… You knew I was just about to tell you that… [laughter] I have to say this joke. I have to say it now.
0:35:54.5 Mike Vacanti: Go ahead.
[laughter]
0:35:58.4 Mike Vacanti: Go ahead.
0:36:00.4 Jordan Syatt: I have to tell this story now.
0:36:00.4 Mike Vacanti: Go, go.
0:36:01.6 Jordan Syatt: Go. Get it out of the way, asshole.
0:36:03.4 Mike Vacanti: Well, hey. Let me finish, let me finish.
0:36:04.0 Jordan Syatt: Alright, alright. You finish.
0:36:05.9 Mike Vacanti: Because the four hours they spend carrying heavy stuff around is gonna burn a lot of calories, but they’re only doing that because they spent the last three years building all that muscle. The habits and lifestyle, the behaviors, the way that someone lives and what having all that muscle allows them to be able to do is a higher calorie expenditure lifestyle than someone who doesn’t possess that same muscle.
0:36:30.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. That’s exactly right.
0:36:32.5 Mike Vacanti: Now hit us with it.
0:36:34.6 Jordan Syatt: So one time I was moving, and I think Mike asked, he was like, “Are you gonna… Are you gonna… ” I think you said like, “Do you need help moving,” or something, and I said, “No. I’m gonna get movers. Da da da da da” And I said, “But you always know who your friends are by the ones… If they’re the ones who help you move.” And you said, “No. You know who your friends are because your friends won’t ask you to help them move, because it’s so time-consuming and annoying.” And then a few months later you were moving and you were like, “Hey, I need you to… ” [laughter]
0:37:05.5 Mike Vacanti: I don’t think that’s how that played out. I’m almost certain I didn’t say that.
0:37:09.7 Jordan Syatt: How did it play… Yes, you did.
0:37:11.0 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know. Not like that though. Not like that.
[laughter]
0:37:15.1 Jordan Syatt: And then we moved your apartment, remember?
0:37:19.3 Mike Vacanti: Vaguely.
0:37:19.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, that was super funny with Rico driving the truck. That was hilarious. And then Rico is super nervous in the truck and the cops were like, “You gotta move.” And he’s like, “guys… “
[laughter]
0:37:27.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do remember that. The New York Days.
0:37:38.5 Jordan Syatt: Alright. “Short, stocky woman with too much muscle mass. How should I train to reduce mass?”
0:37:47.2 Mike Vacanti: I’m just gonna answer the question as it was asked, which is, assume that this person actually has too much muscle mass and assume that she wants to lose muscle. And the best way to lose muscle is to, one being be in a calorie deficit so that you lose weight. And two, do not resistance-train at all.
0:38:08.6 Jordan Syatt: And keep your protein very low.
0:38:11.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Good addition. And keep protein low. The combination of those three is going to help you lose both body fat, but also lose muscle mass.
0:38:21.3 Jordan Syatt: Alright, I’m gonna ask… So someone’s asked me this question every time I’ve done a Q&A recently, I don’t see it right now, just… But I’m gonna reiterate their question. Someone asked every single time, she said, “If lifting weights doesn’t make women bulky, then how come Crossfit girls are so bulky.” What do you think?
0:38:39.1 Mike Vacanti: There’s a few things going on here. One, I just think that if you actually took a true sample of every woman who does or has done Crossfit and line them up, it would look different than what like a “Crossfit girl” looks like who are probably elite cross-fitters. And elite cross-fitters have one, been doing it for a very long amount of time. Two, are completely dialed with nutrition and training. Three, probably have some genetic elite to them. Four, a solid percentage of them are on steroids, that is going to help you maximize muscle growth.
0:39:24.9 Mike Vacanti: There’s also like… It’s not that you can’t gain too much muscle, it’s just that it’s very, very hard to do so. And so those women didn’t end up looking like that overnight right? They gained muscle month-over-month and year-over-year. And they like that look, they continue to… Or they like what that look does for them, or they like the… They enjoy the process of training and in the way that gives them that look. And so it’s not that you can’t gain too much muscle, it’s that it’s very, very difficult to.
0:40:00.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Well it’s also interesting. This is an interesting discussion. There’s the whole idea, you’re not gonna get too bulky. And I’ve been guilty of saying that in the years past. But I also think it’s… In the fitness industry, especially in the last, I don’t know five, 10 years. Women have gotten really excited about building more muscle, which I think is amazing. But the fitness industry is a very small subset of people relative to the entire world. Right? The fitness industry is a very, very small subset of people. And we often think that our goals are what everyone else’s goals should be, and that’s not always the case. And so while a lot of women in the fitness industry have been excited about building more muscle, many women who are not in the fitness industry still don’t want to build very much muscle. And even for women in the fitness industry who they aren’t bulky relative to a bodybuilder, they have more muscle mass than many women still maybe would be like.
0:40:57.0 Jordan Syatt: And so it’s not to say that you can’t get bulky, ’cause lifting weights yeah it can make you bulky. For example, if you’ve ever… If you’ve ever wanted to grow your glutes, you’re getting bulkier. Essentially if you’re doing heavy lifting to grow your glutes, it’s just… You don’t wanna get bulky in the “wrong places”, you don’t want to get bulky in a place that would make… Many women they want to look softer, they want to… They don’t want to have big bulging muscles. Maybe they wanna grow their glutes a little bit, but they don’t want big arms, for example right? . So the reality is, it’s incorrect to say that they can’t do that because they can. If they train the right way, and if they train very intensely and they eat properly and they sleep well. They can. And they could probably grow enough to where they didn’t want to get that big. Is it gonna be difficult? Yes. Is it likely that they’ll do it? No. But it is possible.
0:41:47.2 Jordan Syatt: And I think it’s important for coaches to understand that just because it might be your goal… It’s sort of like when I was powerlifting. When I was an elite powerlifter a lot of… I trained many of my clients like powerlifters even though I shouldn’t have. I should not have trained them like powerlifters ’cause they didn’t wanna be a powerlifter. But because that was my goal, I sort of pushed that onto them. And so now I’m seeing many coaches pushing women into building more muscle. “Well you just should. You should.” Take up more space, do this, it’s like, well, that might be what you want. But maybe they don’t want that. And that’s okay as well. If they do want a little bit of a softer look, they do… Like the whole strong is the new skinny, that shit pisses me off. ‘Cause it’s basically you’re shaming people for being skinny now. It’s like, if you wanna be strong, great but don’t shame someone else because they’re skinny or what… You know what I mean?
0:42:34.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s like it’s going against their whole ethos or what they say is their ethos in the beginning. So if someone wants to be skinnier or not have as much muscle mass, it’s funny when we hear that often times you have an immediate gut negative response like, “Oh, you don’t want muscle mass. What’s wrong with you?” It’s like, maybe they just don’t wanna be… To have more muscle and that’s fine. Yeah there would be many metabolic advantages to it. There are many health benefits to it, but if they don’t want that then it’s not your responsibility to force it onto them. And so like you said, the Crossfit women who are… Who are very, very bulky, they’re super small percentage of the population. They’re elite athletes, they’re elite genetics, they’ve been training for a super long period of time. They’ve been training unbelievably intensely. Odds are, they’re probably on some performance-enhancing drugs or have been in the past.
0:43:20.5 Jordan Syatt: So most women don’t have to worry about that. But I do know there are many women who are not in the fitness industry, and even some who are in the fitness industry, but different ends of the fitness industry, for example. We’re in the strength training world, but you go to the Pilates world, and there are women who are… They’re strong, but they don’t want to lift super heavy, they don’t want to add too much muscle mass. It’s like even… It’s funny in the Jiu-jitsu community, we see this with people who don’t wanna build too much muscle ’cause it could get in the way of different movements that they could do. Like too much muscle mass in a certain part of their body can be difficult to accomplish a certain move. So the idea that just building more muscle especially for women isn’t going to happen it’s false, and it’s also wrong to assume that just because you don’t think they could get too bulky. And by you I’m using the proverbial you, not you Michael but you in general. Does not mean that it wouldn’t be too bulky for them. It’s all subjective.
0:44:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Great answer. It’s so true, it’s such like… I hadn’t thought about that in a number of years. That strong is the new skinny, it’s like “well no.”
0:44:24.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I hate that shit.
0:44:26.3 Mike Vacanti: You can have a lot of lean mass, you can have a medium amount of lean mass, you can have less lean mass. But it’s not our job to tell you what your goal should be.
0:44:34.1 Jordan Syatt: Correct.
0:44:34.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s our job to help you achieve what you want your goal to be. And you’re allowed to choose any goal, you’re allowed to want to change your body, the way it looks or the way it performs in any way that you want.
0:44:47.3 Jordan Syatt: You know who is great with this is Ben Bruno. ‘Cause Ben Bruno trains a lot of… Not only just famous people but a lot of models, like Victoria’s Secret Models, very, very, high high-end models. And he’s like, their job depends on them not getting too big. That’s like they… And they do not want and so he’s like, “You better believe that I cap them at certain weights on things, because if they start lifting more and more and more then they will add more lean mass and they don’t want that, it’s not… They don’t want it, their jobs don’t want it. So he’s like, “Of course, I’m not gonna have them lift as heavy as possible. I’ll stop them at an RPE of 6 or 7 and like…
0:45:23.6 Jordan Syatt: We’ll still train to get the health benefits of the exercise, but if I keep adding more weight, then of course, they’re gonna get bigger, then that’s not what they… So it’s like, he’s spoken about that and it’s made a lot of sense, and I’ve enjoyed it because it goes against a lot of the common dogma that we hear nowadays in the strength world, which is so funny, ’cause I think so many people in the strength community, we just… That’s all we see, that’s all we hear, that’s all we read ’cause it’s what we’re really interested in, and we think that this is just… This is right, but this is just a teeny tiny portion of the fitness industry. There are so many other aspects of it that… If you’re mad that someone wouldn’t want to build muscle or you think that they couldn’t build more muscle, you’re sort of out of your fucking mind. And that’s massive ignorance on your part.
0:46:08.0 Mike Vacanti: And just like, you need to take a look internal, right? Because then you have a world view of everyone is supposed to look my way, like the way that I think everyone…
0:46:19.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly.
0:46:19.6 Mike Vacanti: Or the way I think is the best.
0:46:21.7 Jordan Syatt: Correct, yeah.
0:46:23.7 Mike Vacanti: And as much as I joke around about things like ABR-Always Be Recomping, more lean mass, less fat, like dadada… To each their own.
0:46:33.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and it’s just important as a coach to know, it’s like… If a woman told me, “Hey, I’m nervous about building too much muscle.” Of course, Mike, listen… “Trust me, you’re not. You’re not.” Like, the average woman is not gonna build too much muscle, but you do have to be aware that if you have someone who says, “I don’t want to build too much muscle,” and they start to say, “I feel like I’m building too much, I’m building too much,” don’t just laugh it off and say, “No, you’re not.” Because maybe…
0:47:00.9 Mike Vacanti: ‘Cause they might be…
0:47:01.0 Jordan Syatt: Maybe they’re getting bigger than they want. Yeah, they might. Maybe their quads are getting bigger than they want.
0:47:04.4 Mike Vacanti: Lats, delts, upper traps, biceps, triceps.
0:47:08.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yes, yes, I feel like my quads are getting bigger and they are like, “I’m glad my glutes are but my quads are getting too big.” So, cool, so what you can do is you can lay off quad-dominant exercises, and doing things like hip-thrusting glute bridges are great, you would probably wanna lay off something like a Bulgarian split squad even though it’s a great exercise, but maybe it’s hitting too much quads, maybe have them do more deadlifting and have more hip hinging instead of knee-dominant movements so that they can get more stuff for their glutes than their quads, but also reducing the weight is okay. And that’s another thing that people need to talk about is we’re so focused on lifting more, lift more, lift more, lift more. It’s like for what?
0:47:47.2 Jordan Syatt: Like yeah, getting stronger is really important, but after a certain point, there’s diminishing returns, whether it’s the risk of injury, which for me, I love it. I love lifting heavy, and it’s important for me to do that, but when I have a client who’s, I don’t know, a 45-year-old mom of two, I’m not gonna keep pushing her to lift heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy. I’m not gonna push her anywhere near the risk of injury, and I’m totally fine keeping her at an RPE seven or an eight for a while, for a long time, and if she’s like, “I don’t wanna risk it, maybe I’m getting super nervous lifting this weight.” It’s like, why would I risk that injury when I know she’s got two kids, she’s got all the… What’s the point of risking that?
0:48:26.2 Mike Vacanti: And her life doesn’t change if she pulls 165 compared to 275. Like that doesn’t…
0:48:31.7 Jordan Syatt: No, no. There’s no change.
0:48:34.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Cool discussion.
0:48:37.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, no politics.
0:48:39.1 Mike Vacanti: The last thing… The last thing I’ll add is, you also just because you read in a book or a magazine or saw in an Instagram post that you’re supposed to program at least 10 sets per body part per week, like if someone says they don’t want to grow their upper body, you don’t need to give them 15 sets of chest per week. That’s where the… There’s an art and science to programming, and that’s where you as the sculptor, as the creator, as the coach, get to design the program specifically to your clients’ goals.
0:49:10.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Someone asked, “Does monitoring heart rate during strength workouts matter?” It’s a good question. No, it doesn’t. A lot of people have been asking me lately, “Can you be in zone two from lifting weights?” And no, zone two is not something you do when you’re lifting weights, if anything, when you’re really lifting weights, especially heavy, you’re using the anaerobic energy system, you’re actually anaerobic, often alactic. Especially if you’re lifting very, very, very, very heavy, you shouldn’t be monitoring your heart rate. There’s no reason to monitor your heart rate during strength workouts. Heart rate is for more of the cardio-based stuff. Actually, Alex Viada and I did a whole podcast on this recently, and he explained it probably more eloquently than I could, but during your strength workouts, there’s no reason to, whatsoever. Focus on your strength, focus on your power output, focus on your technique, and then monitor your heart rate during cardio.
0:50:06.0 Mike Vacanti: A hundred percent. This was awesome.
0:50:10.4 Jordan Syatt: Is that it? Are we done?
0:50:11.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. We’re pushing an hour. This was great.
0:50:13.9 Jordan Syatt: Alright, eatit-book.com, if you’d like to support we would love that, if not, totally fine as well, but thank you so much. We’ll be back next week ’cause we’re doing weekly podcasts.
0:50:24.5 Mike Vacanti: That’s what we do. See you next week.
