Episode 96: Glucose Monitors, Jordan’s Enemy, Kanye’s Anti-Semitic Drivel, and More…

0:00:11.8 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:13.4 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:16.9 Mike Vacanti: Just cooked up some venison and sweet potatoes that I’m gonna eat after this podcast.

0:00:21.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I love that. Maybe I’ll make some venison as well.

0:00:24.5 Mike Vacanti: You got some in your freezer?

0:00:26.5 Jordan Syatt: Tons. Tons.

0:00:28.8 Mike Vacanti: Bro, the lean clean bulk is the play.

0:00:32.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, you’re killing it, huh?

0:00:34.9 Mike Vacanti: It’s really… I’m two and a half plus weeks in at this point, and I haven’t been this dialed on my training, nutrition, and recovery in 10 years.

0:00:45.8 Jordan Syatt: Wow. That’s huge. You feel good?

0:00:49.6 Mike Vacanti: I feel great.

0:00:50.6 Jordan Syatt: Lean mass, stacking on fat minimal?

0:00:54.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah, and just quality workouts and high-energy brain power, feeling good overall.

0:01:01.8 Jordan Syatt: Wow, you’re into the bio-hacking stuff now, huh?

0:01:04.2 Mike Vacanti: No, I’m not into the bio-hacking, but when you replace Lucky Charms with sweet potatoes, when you’re on high carb and have a higher percentage of your carbohydrate coming from nutritious foods… I think I started the last podcast with this exact same rant, but I’m just gonna double down on it. If you’re eating 250 carb a day and it’s like 150 sugar, you should make your sugar percentage of total carb lower.

0:01:29.0 Jordan Syatt: Love that.

0:01:29.8 Mike Vacanti: And you’re gonna feel better.

0:01:31.2 Jordan Syatt: Makes total sense.

0:01:32.8 Mike Vacanti: Speaking of, continuous glucose monitors.

0:01:36.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, CGMs. This freaking nonsense right now that people are going off on. Dude, people are doing the dumbest shit with continuous glucose monitors. They’re taking these glucose monitors, putting them on, having a meal, maybe they’re… Not even a whole meal; they’ll just like, “Oh, I’m gonna have fruit,” or “I’m gonna have this tortilla,” or whatever it is. They see their glucose spike, and then they say, “See?”

[chuckle]

0:02:03.3 Mike Vacanti: Bro, this…

0:02:04.7 Jordan Syatt: That’s what’s fucking normal. Your body is supposed to do that. And then it comes back down to normal levels. Congratulations, you’ve just monitored a healthy glucose response. You’ve done literally nothing productive for anybody here.

0:02:19.2 Mike Vacanti: Well, I don’t… I’ve seen this too. I actually haven’t seen it in a while, but when I was in a real TikTok phase, there was this one dude who was doing that, and everyone in the comments is like, “Do this food, do this food, do this food,” and that was like… Each TikTok was like, “I’m gonna test out X food with my continuous glucose monitor,” and then posted the response. And what I always failed to understand was, you’re making this leap in saying that when you have higher glucose in the bloodstream temporarily, that that’s a bad thing. That never was stated or addressed, and it was inferred by literally 95% of the people in the comments that spike in blood sugar is bad, “Try this food. See if it spikes my blood sugar, because if it does, I don’t wanna eat that food.” It’s like, Okay, then you’re just not going to eat carbohydrate ever.

0:03:08.2 Jordan Syatt: Which… Nothing, yeah.

0:03:09.3 Mike Vacanti: Subpar life strategy for many reasons, but it was never even addressed. It was never even… There was never even a thesis as to why any spike in blood glucose is a bad thing.

0:03:20.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, there are huge accounts that that’s their entire thesis, is that you’d never want to spike your blood glucose, like, any spike in blood glucose is essentially a death sentence, never ever spike your blood glucose ever. And you’re gonna get fat, and it’s terrible for you. That’s just what the fuck they say, and people eat it up. They love it. And I’m just watching them like what you’re seeing here is a normal, healthy response to eating this type of food. Not to mention, if you just have this one food… I’ve seen one guy do it with tortillas. I’m like, “Are you just eating a tortilla by itself?” Number one, even if you are, fine. Number two, are you regularly just eating tortillas? ‘Cause what if you measured your blood glucose response if you have a tortilla with meat and beans and rice and avocado and all this stuff in there, that’s gonna change it. But even… That stuff is even beside the point, because if we look at over the long term, over a month of someone having continuous glucose spikes then going back down to normal and their calories are in check, the fuck do you think is gonna happen? Idiots. Idiots.

0:04:40.2 Mike Vacanti: Well, your pancreas is gonna release insulin, and that insulin is gonna pull that glucose out of the bloodstream, and that’s how things work. I mean, to try and play devil’s advocate or to try and defend an idea that I don’t agree with, some people who are very overweight, like clients of mine I’ve had who are very overweight and have poor insulin sensitivity, I’m going to have… Will generally do better on a little bit lower carb diet. I’m not gonna put them on the macros I’m on right now, with high carb, low fat. But that’s a minority of the population, that’s like a… It’s an intricate detail that falls below the fact that total calorie intake is the most important thing for losing body fat. To focus all of this energy on certain foods that spike blood glucose, I just don’t understand the bottom line.

0:05:35.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Not to mention, just like you were saying, if they just reduced their total calories as a part of that reduction in calories, carbs would be reduced as well. But reduce your calories, reduce your energy intake, and you’re gonna lose weight, and then you’ll become more insulin-sensitive.

0:05:51.7 Mike Vacanti: Yep.

[laughter]

0:05:53.2 Mike Vacanti: Yep. I think we’re preaching right now. I can’t imagine that…

0:05:56.3 Jordan Syatt: What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get clips for our social media platforms.

[laughter]

0:06:00.7 Mike Vacanti: Personal Trainer Podcast.

0:06:01.3 Jordan Syatt: ‘Cause trends are in video pods now. We’re getting clips for our video platforms, so that whole heated discussion, that was preplanned. You just saw content, preplanned content come out.

0:06:13.2 Mike Vacanti: In the make…

0:06:14.3 Jordan Syatt: So then we could put this on other platforms.

0:06:16.8 Mike Vacanti: And by the way, the Personal Trainer Podcast is making not weekly content, not monthly content, daily content on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, on YouTube, Personal Trainer Podcast. Give us a follow, link’s in the show notes. We’d really appreciate it. We’re working hard to grow those. This is week three of 12 of the trial period. We’ll see, we might be audio only in January. Who knows?

0:06:43.9 Jordan Syatt: Only time will tell. But for right now, we are curating content for these platforms. And who knows? Maybe we’ll be obsolete in the next 90 days.

0:06:53.9 Mike Vacanti: Obsolete.

0:06:54.7 Jordan Syatt: Maybe we’ll take over in 90 days. You never know.

0:06:58.9 Mike Vacanti: It’s gonna be good. I’m excited. Looking lean, bro.

0:07:01.2 Jordan Syatt: What else? What other clips are we trying to get?

0:07:05.0 Mike Vacanti: Oh… we’ll get in there.

0:07:05.2 Jordan Syatt: Should we just…

[laughter]

0:07:07.9 Mike Vacanti: The new purpose of the podcast is solely to make clips for other… Whether you enjoy it or not. Buckle up. No, I wanna hear… About the mini-cut.

0:07:15.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, dude, I’m down like over 8 pounds, like 8 1/2 pounds down.

0:07:20.3 Mike Vacanti: How about when that person said your weight is the same as it was 11… Or like, your all-time-low weight was 11 days ago? I would have quit, even though you were losing more than a pound a week.

0:07:33.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that was yesterday someone said that, and then today, I had a whoosh, and today, I lost over a pound. It’s so funny people quit, and they don’t realize that if they just kept going, they would have made progress. People quit. There’s too fucking obsessed… Actually, you know, a guy made a post yesterday; I got tagged in this a bunch of times. I wanna just see if I can find it. He has a pretty big account; I think his name was Adam Grant or something? Do you know this guy?

0:08:00.1 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:08:00.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, Adam Grant. He made a really good post, and people were like, “Wow, this actually reminds me of everything you’ve been doing;” I’ll show this to you right now. So he wrote, “A common source of disappointment is recency bias: Weighing the last week more heavily than the last year. Zooming in on the immediate past magnify slumps. Zooming out farther reveals upward slopes. Progress is rarely visible at a snapshot in time. It unfolds over a lifetime.” And then he shared these… Because this is a video pod, and you might be able to see it, he shared these little…

0:08:36.3 Mike Vacanti: There you go.

0:08:36.6 Jordan Syatt: Graphs, where you can see if you’re only looking at one short point in time, you might think it’s not working, but when you look at it over a larger snapshot, it actually is working. And I got tagged in this so many times, people be like, wow, that reminds me a lot of your weight loss aspect, where it’s like if you only look at day-to-day, of course you’re gonna get frustrated, but looking at day-to-day is a waste of fucking time. You’re not seeing anything. It’s like… It would be like if you’re trying to understand what someone is telling you, but you only hear four words out of an entire paragraph of things they’re saying. You’re only hearing four words, but you’re missing everything else they’ve just said. Or if you’re trying to read a book and instead of reading every page, you read four words on every page. Well, of course you’re not gonna understand what’s actually going on. Same thing with the scale, so yeah, people constantly message me. The best is when people are like, “Well, clearly, it’s not working. Clearly, it’s not working.” I’m like, “Alright, sit tight, motherfucker.”

0:09:31.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you watch. You watch how.

0:09:33.4 Jordan Syatt: Just wait.

[laughter]

0:09:35.9 Mike Vacanti: Who are those… Like, are they anonymous accounts? Are they like… They can’t be other coaches. Who’s sending that kind of message?

0:09:43.1 Jordan Syatt: No, it’s not other coaches, it’s usually… And I’m just saying the truth, alright? So no one get mad at me. It’s usually women between…

0:09:50.9 Mike Vacanti: Misogynist. Jordan’s a misogynist. It’s a fact.

0:09:53.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s usually women between 35 to 60, so a pretty big range, who, from their previous messages to me and from what I see on their page, have historically struggled with their weight, and they’re just… They’re angry.

0:10:08.5 Mike Vacanti: A little bit of projection, yeah, yeah.

0:10:10.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, they’re just angry and upset. And so, this is… Clearly, this isn’t working.

0:10:14.5 Mike Vacanti: You know what? Your… You continuing to push through and document that journey and show them that actually it does work could pull them into the light.

0:10:23.4 Jordan Syatt: Hopefully. That’s what I’m hoping for, man.

0:10:26.0 Mike Vacanti: Your… Like, when you said people quit way too early? Okay, that’s…

[laughter]

0:10:33.9 Mike Vacanti: That’s enough. People quit way too early, not only on fat loss journeys, but in anything, and everything, and most things.

0:10:43.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, business too.

0:10:44.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:10:45.6 Jordan Syatt: We can make a whole clip about this. Let’s go in on this.

0:10:47.9 Mike Vacanti: This is the new thesis of everything.

[laughter]

0:10:50.3 Mike Vacanti: Let’s make a clip about this. Right now, we’re doing seven per episode, so we don’t need to like… Okay, make a clip about it. Jordan, do you think you…

0:11:00.7 Jordan Syatt: No, no, you make a clip on it. Go in on it. You were the one talking about how people quit in life too early. Clip this.

0:11:05.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but I wasn’t thinking about business, I was thinking about life.

0:11:07.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay, what were you thinking about? Like, relationships, squat?

0:11:12.2 Mike Vacanti: No, I wasn’t thinking about relationships.

0:11:13.8 Jordan Syatt: Squat.

[laughter]

0:11:14.4 Mike Vacanti: You have to understand that right now my entire brain… And this brings me back to 2012, when I was obsessed with lifting. And as a result of the attributes and sacrifices made to maximize progress in one realm, it bled over into so many other decisions. It was like… Like, that obsession around lifting, this is months. Within a month, after I quit my accounting job, I was like, “Okay, I need to continue to make money, but online poker is illegal in the US. Like, I’m moving to Canada.” And I just, on a whim, moved to Canada. Like, I was playing poker there for a few months, then I was like, “Alright, I gotta get my website up and running to look like JC Deen’s.” I got that up and running. I fully attribute this behavior to the lessons that I learned through intense strength training.

0:12:07.9 Mike Vacanti: And so, that’s what I’m completely wrapped up in. There was… Where did I hear it? On my buddy Danny Miranda’s podcast, someone… Forget the guy’s name right now, but… And I’m sorry, ’cause I’d like to give him credit. But he said something that… They were talking about obsession, and he was talking about how to identify what you’re obsessed with, and along the lines of what do you… What makes you forget to go to the bathroom, what makes you… Like when you’re staying up late at night and working on something, and it’s past midnight, you’re still working on it; like, what’s that thing? And none of this really resonated, because I don’t have a thing like that right now, and I don’t even know if I ever have. It’s almost like sleep is the thing. But my focus on my own fitness right now is that thing. It reminds me of… Tim Ferriss actually said… Someone’s like, “How do you find your passion?” And he said… I’m pretty sure it was Tim Ferriss, said, “What feels… ” Or actually, it might have been James Clear. “What feels like play to you, that is work to everybody else.” And so…

0:13:17.5 Jordan Syatt: Interesting.

0:13:18.8 Mike Vacanti: I am fully on the lean clean bulk, like, all that’s occupying my mind: Sleeping nine hours a night, eating nutritious, drinking a lot of water, feeling really good… Jord, is there anything better on Earth than linear periodization, than just slapping 10…

0:13:38.3 Jordan Syatt: No, that’s the best thing.

0:13:39.3 Mike Vacanti: 10 more pounds on it week over week over week, and it just feels…

0:13:42.7 Jordan Syatt: That’s why people get obsessed with strength training. Yeah, it’s just best.

0:13:45.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And it feels lighter the next week but it’s 10 pounds heavier, which…

0:13:48.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and that’s why… [chuckle]

0:13:50.2 Mike Vacanti: There’s a very short window that it lasts, and, you know…

0:13:53.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s why people quit strength training.

[laughter]

0:13:58.3 Jordan Syatt: Full circle.

0:14:00.2 Mike Vacanti: Don’t quit.

0:14:00.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Don’t quit.

0:14:01.3 Mike Vacanti: People quit too early in anything, in lifting, so that’s what I was thinking.

0:14:05.1 Jordan Syatt: Soak it up while you get those linear gains, and then once those linear gains stop, keep going.

0:14:10.4 Mike Vacanti: Exactly. And you might be thinking like, “Mike, how are you making linear progress right now at this stage in your training career?” I think that probably speaks to the quality of my training prior to this window, as well as the fact that I wasn’t putting in this attention into recovery. I was eating at maintenance or a slight deficit, I wasn’t in a surplus, all of these factors make it easier to build strength and muscle.

0:14:34.9 Jordan Syatt: I also think you’ve been so much more intense and deliberate with your… Not just your actual training, but your approach to training, like talking about powerlifting periodization models, like trying different repetition methods. You’ve been much more deliberate with your focus on training, which if you just go in, and you go through the motions, that’s sort of like doing maintenance-style nutrition. It’s not bad, but you’re not gonna make tremendous, tremendous progress. But when you’re like, “Hey, I’m gonna go hard on this for the next 12, 16, 20-plus weeks,” of course you’re gonna make linear gains, ’cause you’re actually gonna push yourself.

0:15:14.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s a great point. And it’s fun, it’s like…

0:15:17.7 Jordan Syatt: It’s super fun.

0:15:19.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Would you say that your current obsession in life outside of your daughter is jujitsu?

0:15:26.3 Jordan Syatt: 100%. Jujitsu and cardio. But cardio only because… Cardio because of jujitsu and because of heart health. I’m gonna show you another picture right now. Check this out, I just took this before we got on the pod, video pods, people love this. Blood pressure from today, 109/70.

0:15:47.0 Mike Vacanti: Wow!

0:15:48.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:15:48.3 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go!

0:15:48.5 Jordan Syatt: So between blood pressure and just jujitsu performance, that’s why I’m just… I’m obsessed and super passionate with my cardio. Alex Viada is more obsessed with my cardio than I am, in terms of that guy is putting me through some truly hellish workouts, and he is obsessed with me trying to really get an insane mile time, which frankly I hate. I hate doing mile times. He has me doing these things called pace extensions right now, which is basically where I’ll do like 0.15 miles at… All… Every sprint is at the same speed, so the other day I did 10.3. So 0.15 miles at 10.3 on the treadmill, and then I did a 0.15 mile rest. And the… But the rest was still jogging. And then I was…

0:16:44.4 Mike Vacanti: What? Like 6.5 or something?

0:16:46.3 Jordan Syatt: Fuck, no way! It’d be way too hard. It was like… He had it at five.

0:16:50.6 Mike Vacanti: Got it, got it.

0:16:51.4 Jordan Syatt: But I actually lowered it to three, ’cause I was like, “I’m just gonna walk right now,” ’cause I was… It was a lot. So I did a half mile warm-up, 0.15 miles at 10.3, then 0.15 miles at 3. Then point… Then I did 0.2 miles at 10.3, and then 0.15 miles at 3. And then I did 0.25 miles at 10.3, and then 0.15 at 3. And then I did 0.3 miles at 10.3, and 0.15 at 3. And then 0.35 miles at 10.3, and 0.15 at 3. And then I go all the way back down again. So it’s a total of… I think it worked out to be almost four miles between the warm-ups and those sprints at just insane and sane sprint speeds, which maybe not insane for someone who’s a legit runner, but for me it was like my main thing is jujitsu, and then just running is… Sprinting is what I do to try and improve my performance. I hate those sprints. It’s awful, it’s like…

0:17:53.5 Jordan Syatt: I can’t stand it. It’s absolutely devastating for me, but I know for a fact I wouldn’t do it if I would… If I didn’t have jujitsu. If I didn’t have jujitsu, I wouldn’t have the wherewithal to push through that pain. Because I have another level of performance that I want to achieve, and I know this will help me with that, it’s worth it for the pain. But otherwise, it wouldn’t be worth it for the pain. So I’m very well aware of jujitsu is the passion right now.

0:18:26.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s super interesting, because from a maximizing heart health perspective, you’re getting… And correct me if I’m wrong here, but you’re getting the majority of the benefit just from doing enough zone two work.

0:18:44.0 Jordan Syatt: Correct, 100%.

0:18:44.7 Mike Vacanti: These sprints are a cherry on top, but they’re adding marginal benefit from a heart, health and longevity perspective…

0:18:53.0 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:18:54.0 Mike Vacanti: Whereas they’re adding quite a bit to jujitsu conditioning performance perspective.

0:19:00.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So basically, what we’ve been discussing is, my zone two base, he’s beyond happy with. He’s like, “Man, it’s crazy to see how good your zone two is.” Even how intensely I can run for a long period of time while staying in zone two. And that’s been cool to watch and track my heart rate progress, where I can go for a very long time without getting fatigue, ’cause I’m still in zone two. But that is only gonna help so much. That’s your engine, that’s the base, but you still need to improve your anaerobic capacity and endurance and power in order to really take your overall athletic performance to another level, and especially for jujitsu. So while the zone two work and the aerobic capacity and aerobic power will make it take longer for me to get into the anaerobic aspect, I still need to improve the anaerobic components. So that’s where these sprints really come in, and they’re devastating, they’re really awful. [chuckle] But you know what’s crazy? Is the guy who just broke the marathon record, I think he broke his own marathon record, I forget his name, I think that he ran the entire marathon at the equivalent of a speed of 13 on the treadmill.

[chuckle]

0:20:22.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s wild.

0:20:23.3 Jordan Syatt: He ran the entire marathon at a speed of 13, and I’m sprinting my ass off on 10.3. Unreal!

0:20:35.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. The best of the best.

0:20:37.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:20:37.7 Mike Vacanti: The top. I didn’t know the marathon record was just broken, but one of the greatest of all time, I would assume.

0:20:44.2 Jordan Syatt: Yes, yeah. The… Yeah, the greatest of all time.

0:20:49.7 Jordan Syatt: Let me see, marathon record broken. Let me see. Who was this? Oh yeah, Eliud Kipchoge broke the men’s marathon record by 30 seconds, and I think it was his own record that he broke. He ran a marathon in two hours, one minute and nine seconds, and it was 30 seconds faster than his previous record. How insane is that?

0:21:16.7 Mike Vacanti: Fast.

0:21:17.5 Jordan Syatt: Well, what an absolute savage. That’s so crazy.

0:21:22.0 Mike Vacanti: You know what that reminds me of, is training to optimize health versus all time great achievements.

0:21:34.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:21:35.7 Mike Vacanti: Right? ‘Cause you might know this data better than me, but the mean life expectancy of elite marathon runners is not that good.

0:21:45.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s not that good. Yeah, yeah, I don’t think it’s very high. And I think that has a lot to say for not even necessarily their training as much as their lifestyle. I think if you’re competing at a super high level, your stress has to be pretty high. I don’t think you can be… You’re definitely not living a well-balanced life, you’re definitely… You can’t be a professional athlete and live a well-balanced life, never mind the best in that sport. There are levels to this. You can’t be the best of the best of the best and have a balanced life. And I think we’re all pretty well aware of the negative effects of stress on life expectancy, and I don’t think you can be the best of the best of the best without a pretty tremendous amount of stress, chronically.

0:22:36.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Bro, I have the weirdest twitch going on in my muscle right here in my forehead. And it’s bothering me a lot.

[laughter]

0:22:45.7 Jordan Syatt: I can’t see it for whatever it’s worth.

0:22:48.5 Mike Vacanti: No, no, I don’t care about that. I’m just like, I hope I’m not stroking out here.

[laughter]

0:22:57.0 Jordan Syatt: They got video pods, then Mike had a stroke.

0:23:01.0 Mike Vacanti: Week three of video pods. It was a good run. No, that’s not what’s happening.

0:23:07.0 Jordan Syatt: No, you’re good, you’re good. You’re not having a stroke.

0:23:09.0 Mike Vacanti: No, I get… I sometimes get eye twitches, but very rarely right here. What should we hit on next?

0:23:17.0 Jordan Syatt: You tell me.

0:23:18.8 Mike Vacanti: We have an interesting…

0:23:19.6 Jordan Syatt: Clips.

0:23:19.7 Mike Vacanti: We have an interesting question here. I don’t know if this is gonna produce a clip, but it’ll be an interesting thing just to hypothesize on, from our guy, Ryan, says, “Mike and Jordan, basically, I have a question for you guys I think you could answer on the pod. It’s about big corporations and hiring personal trainers. I have family and friends working for companies like National Grid, MetLife Insurance and Amazon. All three of those companies somewhat know the value of exercise. In some way, they do at least one of these things: Number one, pay their employees to work out; number two, have a gym at the facility; number three, higher athletic trainers for acute injury/range of motion work; number four, spend millions on disability/health care for their employees. So why on earth do none of them hire personal trainers?”

0:24:05.9 Mike Vacanti: He’s asking, why do none of these big companies hire personal trainers? “Is it because personal training is relatively new still? I just think not only would it be extremely beneficial for the companies and the employees involved, but it would also be for the personal training career as a whole. I’m not sure if anyone has tried, but part of me wants to go to Amazon and explain the benefits of hiring a personal trainer for their employees. I know that’s an extreme long shot, but it makes sense to me. Have either of you tried working with a big company or had the opportunity? Sorry the email was long, but the two of you are the ones I wanted to come to about this the most. Ryan.”

0:24:40.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay, so this is a great question, but I’m gonna answer it differently than how Ryan expects. So Ryan just said that he’s gonna go to one of these companies and explain the benefits of personal training. It’s a terrible, fucking idea. They know the benefits of personal training. It would be like if I… Let’s say, I had a dirty rug and a rug salesman or a vacuum salesman came up to me and was like, “Hey, you know the benefits of having a clean… ” “I know the fucking benefits, but I’m grinding my ass off working and I don’t wanna take the time to vacuum the rug. It’s just not as important at me, I don’t really care about it.” That’s more of the situation that’s going on. When you have these big, big companies, they have so many things that’s going on at any point in time. They have fires to put out all day, every day, tons of employees, tons of problems, tons of legal issues, tons of manufacturing issues. They have so much to focus on and they don’t want another thing on their plate. So your sales pitch is not, “Hey, do you know the benefits of having a personal trainer?” Your sales pitch is, “Let me make this as easy for you as possible. I’m gonna take this entire thing off your plate and I’m gonna help your employees get in better shape, and you don’t have to think about a fucking thing.” That’s what your sales pitch is. Your sales pitch is not, “Let me tell you the benefits.”

0:26:03.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s like someone who’s smoking cigarettes, they know that it’s bad for them, they know. They’re just, there’s a skull and crossbone on the box. You don’t go up to someone smoking cigarettes and say, “Well, do you know the benefits of not smoking cigarettes?” You explain to them, you figure out a way to make it easy for them. You make it as easy for them as possible. So from like… And I don’t know the answer to this question, I don’t know what exactly you’re gonna do to make it as easy for them as possible, but you want to make sure… You should go in there with like, “Hey, here’s the deal. I’m, number one, I’m gonna do this for free, you’re not gonna have to pay me a dime for the first month. Number two is I’m gonna run classes and I’m gonna… This is the whole plan and this is what’s gonna happen.” And just, again, make it as easy for them as possible. So the reason I got excited to answer this question is because so many people are… They’re selling the wrong… They’re doing the wrong pitch. People know the benefits of exercise, they know the benefits of having a personal trainer, they’re very well aware, they just don’t wanna add another thing in their life that’s stressing them out and making it more difficult, they have to put it in their calendar, they have to have more meetings. They don’t wanna do that shit. So how can you make this as easy for them as possible? That’s the question.

0:27:13.4 Mike Vacanti: I love it. I… I don’t have a good answer, Ryan. The…

0:27:21.4 Jordan Syatt: Clip that. [laughter]

0:27:24.6 Mike Vacanti: Fire content in the short-form all over the place. I mean, I haven’t run the numbers here, but I would imagine that to have adequate personal training for an entire company is way more expensive than what’s going on here, like what they’re already providing.

0:27:47.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, way more.

0:27:48.1 Mike Vacanti: What was that? Was that your keyboard?

0:27:50.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh no, sorry, I was spinning this bottle cap randomly. [laughter]

0:27:54.6 Mike Vacanti: Pay your employees to work out is… [gritting his teeth] Hey, popcorn… I love popcorn… I could use some popcorn…

0:28:01.9 Jordan Syatt: “Your keyboard making noise over there?” [laughter]

0:28:03.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m like what’s going on? David will take care of that in the post… It’s like $20 bucks a month or something, this like insurance kickback that most… I mean, maybe it’s bigger at a company like Amazon, but it’s not a significant amount of money per employee, right? I assume that the reason no companies, like non fitness companies, hire personal trainers, is because the cost of having adequate personal training for the company, for all the employees of the company, exceeds the benefit of all of their employees working with a personal trainer. Like, period, end of story. I would imagine that’s it.

0:28:48.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, right.

0:28:48.3 Mike Vacanti: Unless we’re just at a point where no one’s tested it, it’s too obscure, it seems like a large… Because think about it, if… What would each employee get? One session a week with the coach, like one one-on-one session a week? Call that a $100 bucks. So, $400 bucks per employee, per month, that’s getting added to the bottom line… Or sorry, not getting added to the bottom line, getting taken away from the bottom line, that’s getting added as an expense for Amazon to have personal trainers on salary to cover every employee. I would imagine that they just are making a guess that to pay $400 per employee per month isn’t going to generate that much more revenue by means of like employee productivity or whatever other mechanisms, personal training leads to better quality of life for employee, which leads to better top line for the company? I’m guessing it’s a math problem that they don’t think, plays out.

0:29:44.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. And I know Google does it, I actually have a very good friend who is a personal trainer at Google, Google headquarters in California. And I believe how they structure is, it’s sort of like they have a gym and the personal trainers are just there. And employees can schedule a time with that personal trainer. Now, I don’t know who’s paying the trainer, I don’t know if it’s Google employees, I don’t know if it’s the company, I don’t know if that person is just on salary and and they just say, “Hey, these are my hours that I’m open, book anytime within these hours and it’s good to go.” I don’t know how that works. But that might be a good framework to begin with, being like, “Hey, listen up, for the first month, you don’t pay me a dime. After that, if you like this, I’ll go on salary, I’ll be working from this time to this time. And I will just work with anybody who wants to from this time to this time.” That being said, that’s going to be brutal for you, like that’s a very brutal, brutal, brutal schedule.

0:30:46.9 Jordan Syatt: Like, “Hey, I’ll be open from 8:00 to 5:00, whatever, and just… ” Those hours will fill up. And like, they absolutely… And it’s not going to make very much sense to be like, “Yeah, I’ll be on retainer from like 8:00 to 5:00, but I’ll work every other hour.” And it’s like, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s the best bet for you. Generally speaking, I don’t think that it’s a great option. Now, on the other hand, for a very short period of time, I mean, if you’re working at some of these big companies, you might meet some really great people, make some really great connections and work your way into a really incredible opportunity. But, yeah, I think it’s a very difficult battle to fight. And I think you should just be making content online, probably going to be better off.

0:31:29.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And I don’t know if Ryan was specifically… If it was more hypothetical, or if it was really focused on himself and getting a position at one of these companies, but I agree. It would be a cool way to cut your teeth. If there was a little bit of mentorship built in, if there was a little bit of an existing structure, if there were other coaches there, maybe more experienced overlooking you, and you could go in there and drink from the firehose and get 40 sessions a week, that’d be pretty sweet, and do that for 6 months or a year, if you’ve never coached anyone before. Because the amount of experience you would gain through that opportunity would be incredible. But also, like you said, a brutal schedule, and I don’t think it’d be 8:00 to 5:00, I think it’d be…

0:32:13.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:32:13.6 Mike Vacanti: Maybe like 6:00 to 7:00.

0:32:15.6 Jordan Syatt: 6:00 to 6:00. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

0:32:17.8 Mike Vacanti: And yeah, that would be rough.

0:32:22.0 Jordan Syatt: Man, you’ve got the best idioms. Cut your teeth, drink from the firehose.

0:32:27.7 Mike Vacanti: I didn’t even know what an idiom was until you said that, so I don’t think I can take credit.

0:32:33.5 Jordan Syatt: I want to just make sure I used it properly. Yeah, it’s an expression, turn of phrase.

0:32:37.4 Mike Vacanti: Thank you.

0:32:38.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you’re welcome, brother.

0:32:39.9 Mike Vacanti: What do you think about… So there’s a lot of, and I’ve been the biggest proponent of this of all time, this you verses you mindset.

0:32:48.6 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:32:50.1 Mike Vacanti: And I actually really, really like it for fitness progress. And the reason I like it for fitness progress is because everyone’s genetics are different. Everyone’s limb length is different. Everyone’s aesthetics are different. You don’t know who’s on steroids, you don’t know what people are taking, there’s SARMs, there’s da, da, da, there’s da, da, da. So like comparing yourself to other people from a physique perspective, or in even strength is like there’s too many unknowns, you shouldn’t do it. I’ve applied that logic to other aspects of life, better to compare yourself against who you were yesterday than who someone else is today, Jordan Peterson, that kind of thinking. When it comes to business growth, have you ever had an enemy? And do you find…

0:33:29.5 Jordan Syatt: You know the answer to this! [laughter]

0:33:30.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m setting you up! And do you find that sort of mindset, that competitive mindset, beneficial? And by the way, I’ll go full disclosure, the reason I ask this is because I saw someone’s content that made me literally want to post ten… To go from zero posts in four years, or whatever it is, to posting like 57 times a day just to like, just as like an elbow to the mouth of this human being, because that’s how my gut reaction was in reading what I read. And then I was like, “Oh, I remember Jordan mentioning like… ” And knowing how competitive he’s been with certain people, and I thought I’d throw it out there on the pod.

0:34:09.2 Jordan Syatt: Dude, that’s how I’ve structured my life is competing with other people without them knowing about it.

[laughter]

0:34:14.9 Mike Vacanti: Without them knowing.

0:34:18.5 Jordan Syatt: That is how I run every aspect of my life, my fitness, my business, my jujitsu, even being a father. I’m like, “I’m gonna be a better father than that father.” [laughter] And it’s not deliberate. It is… I don’t even know if I would have noticed it if you hadn’t pointed that out to me in so many different scenarios. But that’s 100% how my brain functions, where it’s like I see someone and I’m like, “I’m gonna do it better than you.” But the thing is, it’s usually someone who’s really good. Someone who is already better than me. And so then I take that as competition. And maybe I won’t beat them, but competing will make me better than I would have been otherwise. Whereas I think if it was just me versus me, I would have been like, “Whatever. I’m fine.” Or, “Yeah, I’m better today than I was yesterday.” But then fall back off track and just go back into old habits. But when I have someone who’s actually better than me to look at and be like, “Oh, fuck you or like whatever. I gotta do better than you.” That forces me to continue to try and be better everyday. So yeah, I use that in every aspect of my life.

0:35:37.2 Mike Vacanti: Do you remember your first enemy?

0:35:41.0 Jordan Syatt: The first enemy I ever had.

0:35:44.3 Mike Vacanti: Maybe wrestling.

0:35:45.0 Jordan Syatt: I know… I almost don’t wanna say his name in case this gets back to him.

0:35:51.9 Mike Vacanti: You don’t have to. I’m not going for that, but just like the scenario.

0:35:55.9 Jordan Syatt: I’m gonna say was name is Ben W. His name is Ben, Ben W. I remember in third grade, I wanted to be the funniest kid in class. And I’ll never forget, Ben W said the dumbest joke ever, it was so stupid, and everybody laughed. And I remember being like, “Why are… ” Literally being like, “Why are you all laughing? That was such a bad joke.” Just getting so mad that everyone thought that it was funny. And this is third grade, I’m like what? Seven, eight years old. And I was infuriated. And I was like, told my mom about it and da, da, da, da, da. And my goal was to make sure to get other people to laugh and more frequently than Ben W did and…

0:36:49.2 Mike Vacanti: Good.

0:36:49.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think… And my mom laughs nowadays because any time his name is mentioned, she can see my demeanor change, and I get mad about it. Always. I will always get mad about any mention of him. And I’m sure he’s a wonderful person, but I think he was my first enemy.

0:37:09.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s been ingrained in your blood from a very early age.

0:37:13.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, my mom loves that. She’ll bring his name up just to see me get pissed and it’s like… It’s not like I would be mean to him, but yeah, he was my first enemy in third grade that I remember.

0:37:23.3 Mike Vacanti: That’s funny. The feeling of… Do you ever… Not that exact feeling, but do you ever have that sense of confusion with just seeing… And I guess this kinda goes back to the blood glucose monitors. It’s like when I see a post with millions of views on it, like, How is this doing well? Kinda like, “Why are you laughing at this joke? That was a terrible joke.” How are so many people interested in this thesis?

0:37:53.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude, it blows my mind. I mean, it blows my mind and it doesn’t, because I can understand where people who have zero knowledge on anything, they’re just being bombarded with so much information. And it’s funny, I’ll get DMs from people be like, “Hey, your post here says fructose doesn’t make you fat. And literally, I scroll one post down and someone is telling me that the fructose is gonna make me fat.” There’s so much different information. And I think there’s a tremendous lack of critical thinking. Even just the thought process that you outlined earlier of, “Okay, cool, so this is happening. But what does that actually mean and why does this… Why is it bad? Or why are you saying it’s bad?” I think a lot of people just don’t question it. So yeah, it blows my mind for sure. But I can understand why people with very minimal, little to no knowledge on it would be impressed by it and easily swayed by something like that.

0:38:55.1 Jordan Syatt: But yeah, it does still blows my mind. I really think critical thinking is such a lost… I wish that was being taught in schools as opposed to so many other bullshit things they’re learning right now in schools. I wish they taught critical thinking. I think that would be a really fucking good thing to learn.

0:39:15.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, absolutely. I wonder how much of the… ‘Cause you would think that it wouldn’t even need to be taught. You would think that certain aspects of reasoning, deductive reasoning would come naturally to someone living their life. But I wonder how much this massive surplus of information that we’re all constantly consuming is reducing our ability to do that.

0:39:45.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s a great point. I think part of me thinks it’s human nature and I guess it depends on the human. It depends on the person. I know… I think it’s human nature to believe what you’re told, especially when you’re young. Like, when you’re a kid and your parents say, “This is what we do. This is what we believe,” it’s human nature to believe that. I think it’s more human nature just to be… Allow your emotions to drive your decisions often, and especially impulsive decisions. So I think that’s why we see as people get older and their brain fully develops and all of that, them being a little bit more patient and going more based on logic as opposed to emotion. But especially… I was about to say especially for younger people. But I talk to some adults, full grown adults who really drive everything based on emotion and there is no deductive reasoning. There’s no critical thinking whatsoever.

0:40:50.5 Jordan Syatt: I get in debates with people all the time, especially this recent Kanye stuff, I’ve been getting in debates with people. And I’ve been getting in debates with people about hate speech a lot, and I know you probably don’t wanna go into this on the pod but like…

0:41:04.1 Mike Vacanti: Let’s do it. My T is so high I’ll talk about anything.

0:41:07.2 Jordan Syatt: Okay. I’m gonna give you a debate that I got in yesterday.

0:41:11.7 Mike Vacanti: Let’s hear it.

0:41:13.2 Jordan Syatt: And the woman got really, really mad at me. So, basically, here’s the argument. So she said what he was saying was hate speech and it shouldn’t be allowed, right? Now, I have an issue with this term “hate speech”, mainly because no one can give me an actual definition of what hate speech is. And I asked her for the definition, and she used the term hate speech in the definition. And I was like, “Well, you can’t use the word. I need a real definition of what it is so that we can actually understand it.” And I’m… The reason it’s so important is because, usually, when someone says something was hate speech, it’s because it offends them, whereas someone else could say something that doesn’t offend them, but they wouldn’t qualify that as hate speech.

0:42:04.8 Mike Vacanti: I’ve…

0:42:05.1 Jordan Syatt: And so she…

0:42:06.6 Mike Vacanti: Sorry, real quick. I’ve seen definitions of hate speech that include the feelings of the person offended in the definition.

0:42:18.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:42:19.0 Mike Vacanti: When that’s such a subjective answer that applying that especially in law is wild to me.

0:42:26.0 Jordan Syatt: So I asked her, this is where she got very emotional and upset, and I was like, “Okay. Let me ask you this. “

0:42:33.7 Mike Vacanti: Should we give a real quick background? What exactly did Kanye say?

0:42:38.7 Jordan Syatt: No.

0:42:38.6 Mike Vacanti: Okay, alright.

0:42:38.7 Jordan Syatt: No. Kanye was doing a lot of anti-Semitic shit. And what he said was completely inappropriate but… And as a Jew, I hated what he said, but I think he should be allowed to say it. I also think that Instagram and Twitter and Balenciaga and his talent agency and all that have the complete right to let go of him because they don’t wanna be associated with him anymore. Freedom of speech does not equal freedom of consequences. And I’m very glad that all of those companies have restricted him and dropped him. I love that. I also love that he’s allowed to say that stuff because if he didn’t say that stuff, we wouldn’t know that he was so anti-Semitic, and he would still have tons and tons of support. The free speech that gave him the opportunity to say these things has shown his true colors, which I love. So this is where I got her, right, where I got her in her own emotion as opposed to logic. And I said, “Okay. Let me ask you this, if Kanye had said Jews are deplorable, do you consider that hate speech?” And she said, “Yes. Absolutely.” And I said, “Okay. So was it hate speech when Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters deplorable?” And she was like, “Well, no.”

0:43:47.7 Jordan Syatt: And I was like, “Why not? You’re talking about a group of people and you’re calling them deplorable. One of these people… ” She was Jewish. I was like, “One of these people, you have a real emotional connection to; the other ones, you don’t like. So it’s hate speech to you on one end, but the exact same thing is not hate speech anymore. This is why we need a definition because this right here is the problem.” And she got really upset about it, and she didn’t have… She wasn’t able to have a logical discussion. I was like, “You don’t like this one group, so it’s okay for you to hear that they’re deplorable, but you are this other group, so you don’t like that.”

0:44:23.0 Mike Vacanti: And that was her reasoning? Was based on…

0:44:26.8 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:44:27.7 Mike Vacanti: Her emotions and being part of that group.

0:44:28.5 Jordan Syatt: A 100%.

0:44:30.3 Mike Vacanti: But the argument… I don’t agree with this, I staunchly don’t agree with this. But what I know many would say who agree with her and could probably articulate it better, is that people who supported Donald Trump were not an oppressed class, whereas historically, Jewish people are an oppressed class. And so you have a right to punch, right? In 2017 through 2020, there’s a lot of punch up, punch up. It’s not cool to punch down, but you can punch up. You can say things about the cisgender and straight white male that you can’t say about the Black bisexual single mother. That line of thinking.

0:45:13.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, yeah, very much disagree with because it doesn’t matter who you are. If you’re gonna have a definition, you gotta have a definition regardless.

0:45:25.0 Mike Vacanti: Right.

0:45:25.8 Jordan Syatt: So, yeah, I’m with you on that, but yeah, that’s what she was not happy about. And that’s actually the main discussion point that I go to because it’s the perfect example of like, “Okay. So what is hate speech? Is it… ” It was funny, she said… She was like, “Calling people names doesn’t count as hate speech.” And I was like, “Okay. Well, is it calling the names…

0:45:49.2 Mike Vacanti: She didn’t… And you’re thinking of a few names that…

0:45:51.9 Jordan Syatt: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So that’s why I have a major issue with the term hate speech. There needs to be a better definition of it if people are actually gonna use it appropriately, so yeah, so yeah. I don’t even know how we got on that but…

0:46:05.5 Mike Vacanti: We got on that because we were talking about emotion and the lack of critical thinking and reasoning.

0:46:16.1 Jordan Syatt: Critical thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So… And I think it’s honestly one of the best things ever that he was allowed to say all this stuff, because seeing how the worldwide support for Jews that have come as a result of it has been unprecedented. It’s been unbelievable. And yes, I’ve seen some really anti-Semitic comments and really terrible things happen and in support of what he said and against Jews, but that’s the minority. Like, looking at all of these companies dropping, that’s all you need to know. Adidas, Balenciaga, his talent agency. He was escorted out of Skechers. He just walked in to Skechers unannounced and he was escorted out. They’re like, “No, we don’t wanna work with you.”

0:46:55.6 Mike Vacanti: I don’t even think that’s the mic drop, because we’ve seen companies… I’m not saying they should or should not have dropped him, but we’ve seen companies drop people, whether it’s athletes or other people for… And they have the right to, but for offenses that they probably… That arguably, they shouldn’t have. I think the punchline here is you allow people to tell you what they think and say who they are in a long-form discussion, and Lex Fridman did this perfectly. And then by having a however many hour conversation and having back and forth and letting that person talk, good ideas beat bad ideas in long form, in the long run.

0:47:40.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, agreed.

0:47:41.9 Mike Vacanti: And I haven’t followed it as closely, but that was the moment for me where it’s like, oh. Like, letting him talk and having a worthy adversary when it comes to someone who can not only contend emotionally, argumentatively can hold his own in a conversation, but who’s also very intelligent, very articulate, which Lex is, allows that debate to be on center stage for people to then make their own judgment.

0:48:09.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly right. He’s dug his own grave with all of this stuff. It’s actually been really crazy to see. Really crazy to see.

0:48:18.5 Mike Vacanti: This is the Politics Pop Culture Podcast here with personal trainers Jordan and Mike. If you want more of this kind of content, thumbs up that YouTube, wherever you’re watching, I hope you’re enjoying. What else we got here? We got Patrick in five minutes. We have a call with Patrick, who’s a member of the mentorship and we’re gonna…

0:48:34.7 Jordan Syatt: He won a challenge, which challenge did Patrick win?

0:48:38.0 Mike Vacanti: Short-form content.

0:48:39.4 Jordan Syatt: Short-form content?

0:48:40.6 Mike Vacanti: Patrick doubled his TikTok. No, no, no, 50% increase on his TikTok in a one-month time period and… Super good. Super… You can tell when someone puts three seconds into putting together a clip or reel and you can tell when someone puts a lot of effort in, and Patrick put a lot of effort in. And so we’re gonna jump on Zoom with him for an hour and do a deep dive on his business, which will be fun.

0:49:04.5 Jordan Syatt: I’m gonna say this will be a good little practical piece of information. I was actually speaking with Casey in the mentorship about this the other day, ’cause I try and follow as many people in the mentorship as I can and I look at their content. And Casey overall, she has amazing content. She made one post where she basically she asked a question in written form, she’s like, “What do you think about this?” And she was like, I’m gonna give you the answer in the description, and it was in a reel format. And I messaged her and I was like, “I love all of your content, you’re doing amazing. Don’t do this type of content anymore. Don’t do a reel where you then just say, ‘I’m going to explain in the caption.’ Don’t do that. Because with reels, number one, the platform doesn’t support captions very well in a reel format, it’s much better for the actual video. And this is what’s really important, whether we’re talking about Instagram reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or really any video whatsoever, the platform cares more about total time spent watching the video than anything else.

0:50:15.5 Jordan Syatt: So you could have a short reel that’s seven seconds and they watch the whole thing. ‘Cause then they took a while to read the actual question and then they go to the caption. Or you could have a reel that’s, we’ll call it, 28 seconds, and they watch 25 seconds of that whole video, that 25 seconds is more important on the platform than the seven seconds of the whole video that they watched on the shorter one, they want total watch time, it’s far more important than watching your entire video. So I would rather you, if you’re gonna make a reel, let’s not… And everyone knows we’re big proponents of longer captions, but from a reel specifically, the focus should be on getting people to watch your entire reel and making it actually a longer form reel, making it 30, 60, 90 seconds and getting people to watch the whole way through, that’s what’s gonna allow people to see your reel more, is making sure that they’re watching the whole reel the whole way through and you want it to be a longer form. The total watch time is much more important than just watching an entire video that’s very short.

0:51:20.2 Mike Vacanti: Great practical piece of advice here to wrap up the podcast. 96 in the books, we’re closing in on our 100 video podcast. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Have a great day, a great week, a great weekend. Get after it, get after your training. And we’ll see you next week.

0:51:37.2 Jordan Syatt: See ya.