Episode 87: OnlyFans, Metabolic Slowdown, Breaking a Fat Loss Plateau, and More

0:00:11.5 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.6 Jordan Syatt: I’m pissed, Michael. And you know it.

[laughter]

0:00:19.5 Mike Vacanti: I let up, I was like, “Are you in a bad mood, Jordan?” You go like, “Yeah, I am.”

0:00:24.6 Jordan Syatt: I’m in a really bad mood, and I feel like you get joy seeing me in a bad mood. You know like when…

0:00:31.5 Mike Vacanti: 0%. The opposite. I’m an empath, I take on the emotions of those around me…

0:00:34.6 Jordan Syatt: You are not an empath.

[laughter]

0:00:42.3 Mike Vacanti: Tell the people what’s happening.

0:00:42.4 Jordan Syatt: Just published a YouTube video for the first time in a year. So I’m like, “Alright, I’ll send it out to my text list,” da, da, da, da, da, and I sent it and I’m awake ’cause I’m subscribed to my own text list so I can check the text and everything, and it’s not coming through, not coming through, not coming through, and I’m realizing it’s like it didn’t send… It sent to like five people on my text list. I’m like, “What the fuck is this?” So I’m trying to communicate with the people, and it’s a lot of money for this platform to have a text list… It’s like… It’s like a thousand a month to have this service, it’s a lot of money. So I was like, “What’s going on? Why is this not sending it?” And so they’re like, “Oh, we’re looking into it.” I’m like, “Yeah, look faster.”

[laughter]

0:01:27.0 Mike Vacanti: Did you email the video to your email list?

0:01:29.8 Jordan Syatt: That’s why I was a couple minutes late to this pod, ’cause I was emailing it as well. I was like, “You know what? If it’s not gonna go to my text list, I’ll just send a quick email there.”

0:01:38.8 Mike Vacanti: I like the delayed bump though, usually it’s like a hard push in the first hour, I like if it’s like three-hour, you’re gonna get a bump and then you’re gonna get another bump three hours after.

0:01:49.4 Jordan Syatt: No, no, I don’t like that. I don’t like that delayed… It’s like I don’t like the delayed-onset muscle soreness, and I don’t like the delayed bump, and I…

0:01:56.9 Mike Vacanti: You don’t like a little DOMS?

0:02:00.8 Jordan Syatt: No. I would rather… No, I don’t like it two days later, I would rather just get it one day later. I don’t like that it’s delayed, you know what I mean? Like you’ll do a workout and then the next day you’re fine but the day after that, it’s like, “Oh, where did that… ” I hate that. I would much rather do a workout and then the next day I’m sore. But that’s not usually how it works. I don’t like it delayed, I’m not a delayed guy, Michael.

0:02:20.0 Mike Vacanti: You like it now.

0:02:23.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. Now. I want it now.

0:02:25.2 Mike Vacanti: You don’t wanna wait. You don’t wanna wait.

0:02:27.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s my money, I want it now, like that commercial, remember? You remember that commercial?

0:02:30.7 Jordan Syatt: McDonald’s? I want it now.

0:02:32.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s my money, and I want it now. No.

0:02:33.5 Mike Vacanti: No, I don’t…

0:02:33.6 Jordan Syatt: There was a finance commercial years ago like, “It’s my money and I want it now,” I don’t even remember what it was for, but yeah, I want it now.

0:02:42.2 Mike Vacanti: Well, I hope people are gonna love the YouTube video either way.

0:02:45.3 Jordan Syatt: I hope so, man.

0:02:47.3 Mike Vacanti: Look, speaking from personal experience as an expert in the field of not uploading for a full year and then uploading, people love it when you upload.

[laughter]

0:02:58.2 Mike Vacanti: And so your YouTube subscribers in and of themselves will be thrilled.

0:03:03.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s not even about the video as much, it’s more the, “I’m paying for this service that’s ridiculously expensive, and I don’t use it that much, so when I do use it, it should work.”

[laughter]

0:03:18.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s where the anger is coming from. I’m like, “Come on, guys.”

0:03:20.5 Mike Vacanti: Understandable. I completely empathize with the emotion because right now, do you know what I have going on? Having a house is just a laundry list of problems, but the most recent is…

0:03:37.1 Jordan Syatt: The sump pump?

0:03:38.4 Mike Vacanti: No, not the… The sump pump we figured out, we don’t need to go down that rabbit hole. I don’t think we ever talked about that on the podcast and we don’t need to because I don’t think it’s that entertaining for people, but real quick, we got glass in our garbage disposal, garbage disposal stopped working, so bought a new garbage disposal, I have no idea how to install a garbage disposal. You can buy installation along with the purchase. It was less than 70% of the cost of the garbage disposal to also have it installed by a professional. No-brainer. Check the box like… Dude comes, installs the garbage disposal. Amazing. The next time we run our dishwasher, which apparently is supposed to be connected through the garbage disposal, I don’t know, run the dishwasher, and there’s soapy water coming out of every orifice of every pipe imaginable, getting on the counter, on the floor, on the stools, coming out under the sink, filling up under the sink, so we stop the dishwasher right away, try and get them to come back and reinstall the garbage disposal properly this time. And they were supposed to come yesterday at 4:00 PM, which was probably a week delayed. An hour before the guy is supposed to show up, I get a text, “Your appointment has been canceled, it’s rescheduled for… “

0:04:45.9 Jordan Syatt: Shut up.

0:04:47.3 Mike Vacanti: Like another five days in advance, when that day and time don’t even work, it’s just… So when you pay for something, you expect them to execute, and when they don’t, it can be frustrating.

0:04:58.4 Jordan Syatt: Man, I didn’t even know… I only remember… I know the sump pump issue, I didn’t even hear about this issue.

0:05:04.9 Mike Vacanti: Issues galore, irrigation issues like… We talked about… Everyone should have a property manager for the… It’s a new…

0:05:15.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah. Property management now or whatever.

[laughter]

0:05:20.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s your property. We’re gonna manage it now.

0:05:23.9 Mike Vacanti: I love that. That’s a great slogan.

0:05:25.0 Jordan Syatt: Just came up with it right there.

0:05:27.3 Mike Vacanti: Marketing guru.

0:05:28.4 Jordan Syatt: No more headaches, no more worrying about canceled appointments.

0:05:34.3 Mike Vacanti: Take out all the guesswork.

0:05:34.4 Jordan Syatt: Sump pump issue? We’ll manage it. You got a food processor issue… What’s it called? The…

0:05:42.1 Mike Vacanti: Garbage disposal. Which aren’t…

0:05:44.6 Jordan Syatt: Garbage disposal issue?

0:05:45.7 Mike Vacanti: They’re not… I don’t know if it’s a Midwest thing, but they’re definitely not a thing in New York, but we always grew up with one.

0:05:51.4 Jordan Syatt: I never had it growing up. Yeah, I didn’t have one growing up, but I remember the first time I saw one, I was like, “That’s awesome, that’s super.” So you just want me to put everything in here? I was like…

[laughter]

0:06:01.0 Mike Vacanti: Left over food, crap, hit the button, blades down there spin really fast, break it all up, goes down the chute.

0:06:07.4 Jordan Syatt: Man, that sucks. Yeah, all this conversation about… I’m like, “Man, I just wanna rent forever.”

0:06:13.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, me too. Too late for that.

[laughter]

0:06:19.1 Mike Vacanti: What are you gonna do?

0:06:23.9 Jordan Syatt: So what’s the deal? What’s the dealio?

0:06:28.6 Mike Vacanti: In our most recent mentorship Q and A, the subject of OnlyFans came up, and we addressed it as it pertained to Stanley’s specific question. However, I was about to go on a diatribe/discussion about OnlyFans and then thought, “This is probably a waste of our hour-and-a-half Q and A, and would like to provide more value, however…

0:06:51.8 Jordan Syatt: It’s not what they’re paying for, right?

0:06:53.5 Mike Vacanti: Exactly. Exactly.

0:06:54.0 Jordan Syatt: They’re not paying for our thoughts on that, so we’re gonna give ’em what they want now in the Q and A.

0:06:56.6 Mike Vacanti: Exactly. However I said, “It might be a good thing to rant and rave about on the podcast.”

0:07:03.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay. I did not expect you to go down that route. Let’s talk about it.

0:07:07.7 Mike Vacanti: Yes, you did. I told you this is exactly what we’re discussing.

0:07:10.4 Jordan Syatt: I don’t remember that at all, but I’m an ESTP, so… [chuckle]

0:07:16.7 Mike Vacanti: We don’t have to go down this route.

0:07:19.5 Jordan Syatt: We can go down this route. Let’s talk OnlyFans.

0:07:19.5 Mike Vacanti: I just don’t… I don’t understand OnlyFans. I don’t get it.

0:07:22.1 Jordan Syatt: Me either. Me either.

0:07:26.8 Mike Vacanti: I think you get it better than me because you understand consumer behavior and you understand culture and you understand what people on social media are doing and what actions they’re taking and how people are behaving. Whereas when I hear OnlyFans, I literally only think of incel dudes in their mom’s basement who can’t get a girl, paying money for a girl to get naked for him and send him pictures on the internet.

0:07:57.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That’s why… And they do it because…

0:08:04.8 Mike Vacanti: But hang on. Is that all of it or are there other consumers of OnlyFans other than virgin men? And by the way, I say this with deep, deep empathy, and like if… No, I’m serious. If someone was sitting right next to me right now, a 25-year-old dude who lived in his mom’s basement, couldn’t get a job and subscribed to four different OnlyFans, and he was hoping to marry one of these girls because he was paying her 10 bucks a month and paying extra for pictures and thought he could get her attention that way, if he was sitting right next to me, I’d be like, “Bro, we’re going to the gym right now, we’re gonna go get you your first lift in seven years, and we’re gonna get you on a good program and we’re gonna cancel your OnlyFans subscriptions and we’re gonna get you dialed, we’re gonna get some sunlight on your skin, we’re gonna get you doing some cardio, we’re gonna get you working on something, we’re gonna get you on the up and up, on the path forward because this OnlyFans thing is not going to get you what you want in life. It’s not. It’s short-term dopamine” I mean, I don’t even know what it is, but it’s not right. And I wanna hear more in-depth… I’m gonna push you hard for your opinions on this, by the way.

0:09:09.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Well, I mean, listen. So obviously, I think there are people on Only… Like subscribers ’cause it’s different, subscriber versus creator, right?

0:09:19.4 Mike Vacanti: Sure.

0:09:19.9 Jordan Syatt: So you’re talking more about the subscriber side of it, like, who are the subscribers?

0:09:24.0 Mike Vacanti: Yes, everyone should have the right to… I don’t think sex work should be illegal. I don’t think that… Whatever. If you wanna make content there and you wanna sell your body, it’s a free country, do you. Awesome. I’m talking about, the only reason the business model exists is because there are people paying for this.

0:09:41.4 Jordan Syatt: Correct. There’s a market for it.

0:09:42.0 Mike Vacanti: And I can’t… I cannot wrap my head around $1 being spent on this service.

0:09:47.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It’s important to have the distinction between creator and consumer because there would be no creators if there were no consumers. If people weren’t making millions of dollars a month doing this, and even if people weren’t making a couple hundred or $1,000 a month, even smaller creators, it can be very lucrative. I imagine that most of it is… ‘Cause I actually have friends who are creators on there, and from what they’ve told me, and they’re not huge creators, they don’t have massive audiences, they have relatively small audiences, but from what they’ve…

0:10:26.4 Mike Vacanti: All girls, or are there dudes too?

0:10:29.3 Jordan Syatt: Yes, correct. Yes. They’re girls, they’re girls.

0:10:29.4 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Okay.

0:10:29.9 Jordan Syatt: And from what they told… Literally, they’re doing it because… Not because they’re passionate about it. Because it’s supplementing their income. And it’s like they’re like, “Hey, this is great.” It’s not because they really enjoy it, it’s because it’s like, “I can do this and I can make money from it.” That’s literally why they’re doing it, which I can understand that. From what I’ve heard, a lot of them are getting guys from their past or past guys who really wanted to be with them to subscribe to their OnlyFans, who are like…

0:11:03.7 Mike Vacanti: Beta orbiters, to use a term, to use an internet term.

0:11:06.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s like people who were around and followed them for a while. And I would imagine that it’s… They’re hoping that through paying for and interacting with them more, they’re going to have more chance of being with this woman. It’s like they’ve been friend-zoned, they’ve been friend-zoned and they’re like… And oftentimes, when they feel like they’re friend-zoned, like, “Well, let me just interact more, do more, do more. I’ll do more for you,” which is not… It’s just not a good life strategy.

0:11:37.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s the opposite of the correct strategy.

0:11:42.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And I think they’re just doing anything they can to be in their orbit, to use that term, to try and be in their world, which is paying for it and giving them as much like feedback as they possibly can to try and be closer in their life. And I doubt there’s any woman on OnlyFans who’s being very attracted to their subscribers, which is an ironic part of it. I doubt anyone’s gonna fall in love with one of their subscribers. But I would doubt people are on there for many other reasons other than that.

0:12:19.2 Mike Vacanti: And what do you think about that reason?

0:12:20.2 Jordan Syatt: There could be addictive aspects, there could be sex addicts on there as well, I’m sure, but…

0:12:24.3 Mike Vacanti: Free porn everywhere on the internet.

0:12:27.1 Jordan Syatt: But there’s also the reliability component, where it’s like… There’s free workouts on the internet, but people hire a coach, which I understand is different, but people will hire a coach because they like that person, they like what they see them doing online, so they’ll be like, “Oh, I feel more connected to you, so I’m gonna hire you.” So I think there is the aspect of porn, even though it’s free, there’s very little connection with the person, whereas if you see this person online and you see them on Instagram, their stories, all this stuff, they interact with you, there is a little bit more of a relatability component there. So I could see that being part of it too.

0:13:02.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s a cheap, fake substitute for the actual relatability that comes from an in-person mutual relationship. A coach and a client have a mutual relationship because they both care about each other and they’re trying to help each other. This is not a mutual relationship. This is exploitative. This is…

0:13:17.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I agree. I just think it’s… Even though it’s not a mutual… Even though it’s not, it feels like it is. It feels to the consumer.

0:13:28.4 Mike Vacanti: To the subscriber?

0:13:30.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I think it feels like it is. Yeah.

0:13:31.8 Mike Vacanti: And is it all… So would you say that it’s all or majority, 90-plus percent hot female getting naked type of content, and dude who is into that porn, wants to connect, wants to eventually be with that girl, subscriber, consumer? Are there other OnlyFans avenues that are making real money?

0:14:00.4 Jordan Syatt: I think there are. I’m speaking out of my ass here but I think there are… You know in the way that Patreon works, where there is like Patreons where you can have your own website and all the stuff. I believe some people use OnlyFans in a similar way, where it’s like you have an OnlyFans for your music account, or an OnlyFans for whatever. I believe there is that, but it’s a very small percentage. I think the vast majority is explicit-type content that is mainly meant for nudity, sex, all that stuff. Yeah. I think that’s the vast majority of it. But there are… I’ve seen some guys make them, and they actually start making it as a joke, but then they start creating music on there or whatever it is. And they could use it as like a Patreon or even like an Etsy, something like that. There is that availability. So whatever you wanna put on there, you can put on there.

0:14:56.4 Mike Vacanti: If you had a younger brother, 24-year-old male who had no workout regimen, was unemployed, collecting paychecks, wasn’t actively trying to do anything and just played a lot of video games and subscribed to his five favorite OnlyFans girls, and came to you one day and was like, “Jordan, I don’t know what to do with my life. I’m lost. I don’t know about this OnlyFans thing I’m subscribed to. Give me advice. What should I do? What should I do, big brother? Give it to me straight?”

0:15:38.0 Jordan Syatt: Man. I mean I would say, unsubscribe from every OnlyFans that you’re subscribed to immediately, ’cause it doesn’t do anything good for you. There’s nothing about that that is positively contributing to your life. All of the time spent on there is actually taking away from positive things you could be doing, whether it’s… Could be working out, it could be starting a business, it could be meeting someone in-person. And that’s one of the major issues with this stuff is it takes time away from opportunities with which you could develop better skills. Or even just… I think a lot of these guys who are subscribed, they would probably consider themselves socially anxious. They would probably consider…

0:16:26.0 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:16:27.5 Jordan Syatt: I highly doubt there are many super confident men who do not have social anxiety who are subscribed to a bunch of OnlyFans and sitting at home watching that during the day. I doubt it. So I think a lot of these guys, it’s a much lower barrier to entry in order to see the stuff that they want to see that they’re not seeing. So it would be like, Listen, I get you’re socially anxious, but let’s push you outside your comfort zone and let’s get you outta the house so that you can start developing new skills. And we all hear about like the… We all have 24 hours in a day, and if six of those hours are spent at home in your basement, looking at OnlyFans material, well, you’re wasting so much time that could be spent improving your mentality, improving your confidence, improving other skills. So it would really… It would probably just start with one thing, and it’s gonna build up his confidence. And whether it’s working out or something, just do something. And ideally, maybe something they’re really good at. Maybe not something that they suck at right off the bat, but starting out like, “Listen, you’re great at chess. Let’s get you in chess tournaments. Let’s get you doing that. Let’s make you the best fucking chess player in the state.” You know what I mean? So it would probably be…

0:17:36.8 Mike Vacanti: And that bleeds into other areas of life.

0:17:39.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. ‘Cause, listen, if you’re the best chess player or, I don’t know, top 50 chess players, you’re dominating, and you’re gonna meet some really cool people. You’re gonna go to chess events, you’re gonna meet some great people, you’re gonna hang out. Guaranteed, you’re gonna meet a really great woman through that, whether she’s a chess player or not, but you’re gonna meet someone through there that’s gonna positively contribute to your life but you’re not gonna meet someone through OnlyFans. That’s just not how it’s gonna work.

0:18:06.3 Mike Vacanti: Something that’s important to keep in mind, when you said a lot of these people have social anxiety, or the majority of them, I think we tend to think like, “Oh, some people struggle with these problems and other people just don’t. Other people just aren’t anxious. Other people are just amazing socially.” It reminds me of a Nietzsche quote, which I’m gonna paraphrase ’cause I don’t remember it exactly, that, “Every great man is an actor of his own ideal.” And what that means in this situation is, I know a lot of dudes who have had social anxiety, and then usually it happens in that college age, in that 18 to 22-year-old range, and they force themselves to go talk to girls at bars, go talk to girls at coffee shops, go break out of that… Exposure therapy, something you’re afraid of, expose yourself to it in small doses to improve. But it’s not this binary like, “Oh, these people just don’t have social anxiety, and I do.” It’s like, “Well, I’m socially anxious right now, probably… For whatever reason, but I don’t always have to be this way.”

0:19:17.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That’s 100%. I do think it’s not binary. There is a continuum though. For example, I remember when I was younger, my buddy David, the Russian guy who I wrestle with, one of my best friends, we used to do things all the time to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone. And one of the things is we used to, after high school, we would go into Boston, and we would just try and talk to random women ’cause we just wanted… And what we would do is we’d put a bet on it. We’d make a bet. So we’d be like, “You don’t have to… ” The goal was ideally try and get their number and all of that, but you don’t have to do that, but just go talk to them. Just go. ‘Cause I think a lot of women don’t understand, it’s super intimidating to go talk to a random woman. It’s scary as shit. And it’s funny because especially if you’ve never done it before, you get really nervous, you don’t know what to say, and the more you do it, the more you realize, worse comes to worse, they just say, “I’d rather not talk to you,” and then you just leave, and that’s fine. But it can be really, really, really intimidating. And so what we would do is we’d say…

0:20:17.4 Jordan Syatt: We would give each other… David would say, “Alright, go talk to that woman.” And I’d be like, “Okay, cool.” And I would give him 20 bucks. And if I didn’t go talk to her, if I just didn’t… All I had to do is just go say “hello.” If I didn’t do that, he would keep my 20 bucks. If I did do that, then he would give it back. And back then, 20 bucks, it’s a significant amount of money anyway, but back then, that was a really big deal, so we would force ourself to do it. But I remember we brought one of our other friends with us, and he would gladly keep giving away $20 instead of doing it ’cause he was so, so nervous about it. And I think it just shows there’s a continuum of social anxiety. Even something like gym anxiety, we see people in the gym… Some people get… They have anxiety attacks in the gym, where it’s like… I’ve never had to deal with that, ever. I’ve never been like, “Oh my God, people are looking at me, I’m so worried.”

0:21:14.2 Jordan Syatt: Even going up and talking to random women, yeah, I get nervous, but even from the very beginning, I had a mindset which was like, “Whatever.” I’ve been very lucky to have that mindset and more confident, where I know other guys are not like that. And there definitely is a continuum, in the same way, introvert, extrovert continuum. But for them to understand that you can push yourself further along that continuum and improve, that’s what needs to happen. They need to understand that you might never be naturally further along the continuum, but we can push you there, you can get to a point where…

0:21:48.4 Mike Vacanti: You can push yourself there.

0:21:51.1 Jordan Syatt: Exactly.

0:21:51.9 Mike Vacanti: There’s a continuum, but everyone can climb higher up the continuum. And just because that third friend would give away 20 bucks, maybe that was too big a leap up the continuum. Maybe instead of go try and get that girl’s number or talk to that girl, maybe he should have started with like, go ask that dude what time it is. Like, something simpler, something… And then you get comfortable with that and then… I don’t know what the exact steps are, rather than taking a giant leap, but step, step, step.

0:22:18.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, then you go to… You see a group of guys playing a game and ask, “Hey, can I join in on the game?” It’s like… Which also can be scary, but things like that. See a couple of guys playing catch, “Hey, can I play catch with you guys?” But something like that. Yeah, there’s definitely steps you could take for sure.

0:22:33.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Q and A?

0:22:35.9 Jordan Syatt: Man, Q and A, OnlyFans, OnlyFans.

0:22:41.7 Mike Vacanti: I just… And I saw a clip on YouTube from Maxx Chewning’s podcast of this girl who’s like… I don’t know, she was talking about selling her used underwear to her premium OnlyFans subscribers, and it’s just… I don’t understand it.

[laughter]

0:23:04.6 Mike Vacanti: It creates a visceral reaction in me.

0:23:07.1 Jordan Syatt: And it also… Unfortunately, what it does is it creates a larger divide between what I would call desirable men and undesirable men. And what I mean by that is, I don’t think there are many women who would be like, “I wanna date a guy who’s subscribed to a bunch of OnlyFans.” I don’t think that would be something that many women would be like, “That’s one of the characteristics of my dream guy.” And I think what happens is the more things like this become easy to access, the more they’re gonna be fewer and fewer and fewer men who are putting in the work to push themselves further along the continuum, so it’ll be a smaller, smaller, smaller percentage of men who are doing that, which is, it’s not good for society, it’s not good for so many things, because it’s just a smaller and smaller and smaller percentage of people who are spending more time doing good things and improving themselves for the betterment of society. Sitting down in your basement for six hours watching OnlyFans is not good for you or society. It’s not. It’s not helping anything at all.

0:24:21.2 Jordan Syatt: And so I think that’s actually from a larger-scale picture, one of the major issues with it is like as it becomes easier and easier and easier to access this stuff… And I’m not saying make it illegal, ’cause like you said, free country, do what you want, but from a personal development and growth perspective and understanding how your actions as the individual do impact not only yourself but society as a whole, it’s your responsibility to not do that stuff so that you can improve yourself, your family and your society. Right?

0:24:57.0 Mike Vacanti: And it’s not easy, like we live in an era of cheap pleasure, cheap dopamine, whether we’re talking porn and OnlyFans or processed foods or all of these very enjoyable… Scrolling through TikToks and reels and YouTube, all of these cheap, short, easy, desirable, dopaminergic behaviors that don’t produce any valuable outcome for you or for society, rather than doing the harder things, read a hard book, go through a hard lift, spend 20 hours writing a comprehensive article on a subject and get it up on your website. These are difficult things that feel good after, but are difficult, versus these things that also feel good, but are very, very easy, but produce no positive outcome.

0:25:47.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, agreed.

0:25:51.8 Mike Vacanti: What do we got in that Q and A? What do we got?

0:25:57.1 Jordan Syatt: Okay, here’s a question that is a business question…

0:26:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Bro, happy anniversary.

0:26:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, thank you, man. Today is our one year anniversary.

0:26:01.4 Mike Vacanti: I saw it on your story right before…

0:26:04.2 Jordan Syatt: Thank you, man. Thank you.

0:26:07.3 Mike Vacanti: Congrats.

0:26:08.4 Jordan Syatt: Thank you, brother. They still haven’t responded to my fucking text about those texts.

[laughter]

0:26:13.0 Mike Vacanti: So I’m pissed.

0:26:13.6 Jordan Syatt: I was so angry. Alright, so here’s a question that we could really dive into. I’m actually interested to hear how many of the coaches listening know what the Postural Restoration Institute is, because it used to be huge in the industry. Now, I don’t think it’s as big. So someone asked, “What are your thoughts on the Postural Restoration Institute?” PRI for short, and it used to be huge.

0:26:38.2 Mike Vacanti: You’re saying… I’ve never heard of this.

0:26:40.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, you’ve never heard of PRI?

0:26:42.2 Mike Vacanti: Never.

0:26:42.8 Jordan Syatt: You used to be a huge Cressey guy, so I thought you’d have heard of it.

0:26:46.1 Mike Vacanti: I’m a huge Cressey guy. Never heard of PRI or it didn’t ring any bells.

0:26:50.6 Jordan Syatt: Alright. So Cressey used to talk about it all the time and he still does, but PRI… And I’m gonna botch it, but he used to talk about this all the time in tons of his articles, probably around between 2011 and 2015, 2016, big time, and you were grinding those years, so maybe not as much content consumption from him in those years, but it’s PRI, it’s called the Postural Restoration Institute, and they do a lot of diaphragmatic breathing, and they do other things as well, but a lot of it is based on diaphragmatic breathing to improve your posture, to put you in a better position. And Eric Cressey would use it a lot with his baseball players to improve range of motion in their shoulders, to improve thoracic mobility, all of this stuff.

0:27:32.6 Jordan Syatt: And it was cool to see him use it and to see these professional baseball players use it. How about instead of just talking about Postural Restoration Institute, let’s talk about the role of something like breathing, diaphragmatic breathing in a training program? I don’t see it as a big of an issue as it used to be. Maybe I’m just not in that end of the industry anymore. But I remember when diaphragmatic breathing and stuff came out to strength coaches. And this could… Actually, it doesn’t only have to be diaphragmatic breathing. We could talk about really anything physical therapy-related, where it’s like you’re focused on improving posture and you’re really focused on these very small changes. I remember when all this stuff really started to come out for strength coaches in about 2009, 2010, 2011. They got so obsessed with it and so, so invested in it, ’cause it’s learning something completely new, that they were spending 30 minutes with their clients on diaphragmatic breathing during a workout. And I was like, “What the fuck are you doing?” I’ve seen coaches spend…

0:28:40.3 Mike Vacanti: Didn’t you see age… Your age is the number of minutes you should spend on your warm-up, and so there were 50-year-olds doing 50-minute warm-ups with a 10-minute lift?

0:28:48.1 Jordan Syatt: There was a guy, a very well-known coach who said that the best way to know how long your warm-up should be is, however old you are, your age is the number of minutes you should warm up for. So I was like, “Then you are not coaching 60-year-olds.” Right? That would mean Susan’s warm-ups would have to be over an hour. It’s like, “Get the fuck out. Are you outta your mind? That’s so stupid.” And so I remember seeing coaches spending an entire session just on big-toe mobility. I remember seeing a coach doing an entire… Not just a session, but an entire training program based around solely improving the FMS exercises, the Functional Movement Screen exercises. And these are just screening tests. These are not a same-side bird dog, doing an entire training program just to get perfect scores on those tests.

0:29:48.3 Jordan Syatt: And the point that I wanna bring up here is, if you’re not a physical therapist, don’t try and be a physical therapist. The easy way to think about this is, let’s say you had a client who went to a physical therapist for a strength and conditioning program, and the physical therapist was programming this person’s strength training program, you’d be like, “Well, that’s stupid. They’re a physical therapist. They’re not a strength coach. They’re not a personal trainer. They should stick to physical therapy.” But I see so many coaches going down this rabbit hole. And again, not as much lately, but maybe I’m just not in the industry anymore, where they’re trying to be physical therapists. It’s like, let physical therapists be physical therapists. If your client needs an hour to warm up, then you shouldn’t be coaching that client. If your client has such bad big-toe mobility that it’s ruining all of their workout, and you can’t figure out a way to get around it, you should not be coaching that client. You should only be… You should be a strength coach, personal trainer, stick… Stay in your scope of practice. I don’t see any reason for a regular strength and conditioning coach, a regular personal trainer to be going to PRI, Postural Restoration Institute, and becoming super advanced knowledge in this. You’re not a physical therapist.

0:31:07.6 Mike Vacanti: I see. So PRI is somewhere where coaches go to obtain additional certifications and learn more about…

0:31:14.1 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Yeah.

0:31:15.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, man. I think part of it was largely that when… Where you were seeing a lot of that, I was consuming very little of that, and was consuming more bodybuilding type of… Whether it be content or education. And so I didn’t see the pendulum swing hard to all these coaches doing that. And maybe it was just that when I saw it, I scrolled over it so quickly out of boredom or out of confusion or out of, “This doesn’t apply.” But I definitely agree with your conclusion, which is, practice within your scope of practice, don’t try to be something you’re not.

0:32:02.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And you’re a coach. Your clients are coming to you for… I think one of the main differences between physical therapy and personal training is, physical therapy is to bring people back to where they were. It’s like getting people from a deficit to healthy and strong and stable, whereas personal training and strength coaching is taking them from where they are to improving their performance to a higher level, if that makes sense, to achieving a new peak. If someone’s coming to you and you think, “Hey, this person is so injured,” or so limited and restricted that it’s out of your scope, send them to a physical therapist. It’s super important that you don’t try… And this works for online and in-person coaching. There’s no reason why you should be going outta your way to really try and work outside of your scope ’cause you’re putting them in danger and you’re not giving them what they need.

0:32:54.7 Jordan Syatt: Let’s see. Alright, here’s one. I’m gonna leave this to you, Mike. “What approach would you use for a client that has a slow metabolism? The RMR is 600 calories a day.”

0:33:11.4 Mike Vacanti: The RMR is not 600 calories a day.

0:33:14.2 Jordan Syatt: Thank God.

[laughter]

0:33:17.6 Mike Vacanti: (sarcastically) “Well, here’s what I’d do. I’d put ’em on 550 calories. Alright? And I’d have ’em send me food pictures…” Yeah. I don’t know what test was used, but that’s incorrect. And I’d… So if someone applied for coaching and said that, I probably wouldn’t take them on as a client, to be honest, partly psychologically, because I think you have to be a certain type of person to believe that your resting metabolic rate is 600 calories a day, or just had a bad test and was super, super uneducated. I don’t know, I’m trying to think of disease, disorders, like thyroid issues. Is there a world where someone’s TDEE is under 1,000? Basically trying to think if that can be remotely correct.

0:34:17.9 Jordan Syatt: Maybe if they’re like four years old? I don’t know.

0:34:21.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. How do you know? And then if you say, “How do you know?” Then they’re gonna say, “Well, I got it tested.” Which test did you get?

0:34:30.5 Jordan Syatt: My functional medicine doctor told me.

0:34:34.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but if I spend $1,995 a month and get their supplements that fix your metabolism, then I’m… I don’t think we need to go too deep in this. No one’s RMR is 600 calories a day, unless there’s something super wrong. And if there’s something super wrong, I shouldn’t be coaching that person.

0:34:52.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, but I think it’s an important discussion to have in terms of… Let’s say someone comes to you and says, “Hey, my RMR is 600 or 500 or 800,” whatever, don’t take that client on. That’s gonna be a pain-in-the-ass client, and they’ve got other issues. ‘Cause your first job would have to be to convince them that it’s not actually that low, and it’s like, if you’ve really gotta take client… You have no clients and you’ve gotta start somewhere, fine. But if you don’t want a massive headache, don’t take that client on ’cause that’s gonna be a battle, that’s gonna be a real battle with a client.

0:35:35.2 Jordan Syatt: Someone said, “Is it possible to plateau at the start of trying to lose weight or am I just not cutting enough?”

0:35:39.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you can… If you set your calories too high, you can plateau. If I was trying to lose weight and I set my calories at 3,500 and saw that the scale wasn’t moving, or maybe 3,200 and saw that the scale wasn’t moving for three weeks of perfect consistency, I would be in a plateau and I would have to reduce my calories. But most of the time, in general, when someone thinks they’re in a plateau, their adherence just isn’t as good as they think and they’re eating more calories a day on average than they think.

0:36:15.7 Jordan Syatt: The key thing that you said there was “three weeks,” ’cause I have a feeling that person has been on it for two days. And it’s not uncommon for right when you start to have… I don’t know, two, three, four, five days where your weight stays around the same, and then, boom, it’ll drop. That’s a normal-weight loss pattern, but that’s not a plateau. Three weeks, now, yeah, that’s a legitimate plateau.

0:36:37.8 Mike Vacanti: Especially if they’ve been in a deficit for a period of time, maybe they’ve lost 20, 30 lbs and then things start to slow down, and then they reach out to you and get started, because if they’ve been eating at maintenance or overeating for an extended period of time, and they just start a fat-loss phase, they probably will lose weight during the first one to two weeks if they’re adherent because they’re gonna be consuming less calories, they’re gonna have less food in the gut, they’re gonna be at lower carb, they’re gonna have less glycogen storage, less water storage, and they’ll lose a little bit of fat, but temporary scale weight will also go down. But you always wanna err on the side of waiting longer before making an adjustment. You just don’t wanna overreact and have someone on an… If they could be losing weight on 1,800 calories but you jump the gun and drop them to 1,650, that’s not something you wanna do, you’re gonna run out of runway faster, they’re gonna have a tougher time adhering to a lower calorie amount. And you’re right, you need to wait a substantial amount of time, pay attention to not only scale weight, but measurements, all things most of us know.

0:37:56.1 Jordan Syatt: Okay, here’s a good one from Michael. Just finished a weight-loss phase, how long would you recommend before second bulk?

0:38:03.0 Mike Vacanti: So it sounds like they bulked and then they had a weight loss phase and now they wanna bulk again?

0:38:11.7 Jordan Syatt: That’s what it sounds like, yeah.

0:38:13.8 Mike Vacanti: Two weeks at maintenance is normally my standard practice. Sometimes what I’ll do is one week at maintenance, and if the timing makes sense, let that be a de-load week, and then could have them in a surplus that second week so they really only spend one week at maintenance calories before bulking again, but one to two weeks.

0:38:39.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Cool. Makes sense to me.

0:38:42.9 Mike Vacanti: With a minute left, we’re not gonna get into all of the psychological and physiological factors that accompany that decision, but that’s standard practice.

0:38:52.6 Jordan Syatt: Should we hit on that at the start of the next podcast or now?

0:38:56.2 Mike Vacanti: We could do that if we remember.

0:38:58.3 Jordan Syatt: Okay, cool.

0:38:58.9 Mike Vacanti: Or we could have more OnlyFans discussion. Who knows?

0:39:02.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, just a big OnlyFans talk.

0:39:04.4 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know that our podcast audience here at the How To Become A Personal Trainer podcast is a lot of 23-year-old dudes just scraping at the bottom, trying to make it, and so I don’t know how much that content hits, even though I was relatively passionate about it.

0:39:20.8 Jordan Syatt: Hey, we had a good discussion about it. I thought it was enjoyable.

0:39:24.1 Mike Vacanti: I did too.

0:39:25.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you never know what you’re gonna get here at the How To Become A Personal Trainer podcast, sometimes it’s all fitness and business, other times, it’s OnlyFans. You never know what you’re gonna get. But we appreciate you listening. Thank you so much, have a wonderful week. And we’re back on those weekly uploads, so we’ll see you next week.

0:39:44.5 Mike Vacanti: See you next week, maybe even on video.

[laughter]

0:39:48.8 Mike Vacanti: See ya.

0:39:48.9 Jordan Syatt: See ya.