Episode 98: Bringing Back Clean Eating, Advice for Beginner Weightlifters, Running for Fat Loss, and More

0:00:11.8 Mike Vacanti: Hello Jordan.

0:00:13.2 Jordan Syatt: What’s up Michael?

0:00:14.4 Mike Vacanti: What are you drinking?

0:00:15.8 Jordan Syatt: Got a Topo Chico mineral water carbonated from Monterrey, Mexico. What are you drinking?

0:00:22.3 Mike Vacanti: Alcoholic?

0:00:23.6 Jordan Syatt: No, no, no, just straight water. There’s no alcohol in there.

0:00:27.8 Mike Vacanti: The Topo Chico’s, the like Truly version of Topo Chico, those are delicious.

0:00:32.5 Jordan Syatt: You like those? You like those? What do you like better, the Truly or the Topo?

0:00:36.1 Mike Vacanti: I think I like the Topo.

0:00:37.8 Jordan Syatt: Really?

0:00:38.6 Mike Vacanti: Flavor dependent.

0:00:40.3 Jordan Syatt: Interesting. Mango, you’re a big mango guy.

0:00:42.8 Mike Vacanti: I like mango. Mango’s a great fruit and flavor.

0:00:46.6 Jordan Syatt: You like pineapple?

0:00:48.1 Mike Vacanti: Pineapple’s solid too.

0:00:49.8 Jordan Syatt: What’s the other one? There’s the Truly, the Topo.

0:00:52.0 Mike Vacanti: Lots of fruits. Watermelon, strawberry, blueberry, blackberry.

0:00:56.7 Jordan Syatt: No, no, no, Truly and Topo and then what’s the other one?

0:01:00.0 Jordan Syatt: White Claw.

0:01:00.0 Mike Vacanti: White Claw.

0:01:01.1 Jordan Syatt: I mean there’s like 30 of them now.

0:01:04.0 Mike Vacanti: What’s your favorite, Topo?

0:01:07.2 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know, I’m not really a drinker.

0:01:07.8 Mike Vacanti: You’re a pretty big drinker.

0:01:09.9 Jordan Syatt: I’m like a 4-6 times a year, like have a few drinker.

0:01:14.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

0:01:17.1 Jordan Syatt: You’re vlogging today.

0:01:18.5 Mike Vacanti: Oh, yeah, got Mitch here, got Mitch in the background.

0:01:21.6 Jordan Syatt: Let’s go.

0:01:22.0 Mike Vacanti: Video pause.

0:01:22.4 Jordan Syatt: How’s it going? I love it.

0:01:23.6 Mike Vacanti: What’s up Mitch?

0:01:25.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, doing a weekly YouTube vlog.

0:01:31.0 Mike Vacanti: Nice. What’s today’s vlog concept for you?

0:01:34.9 Jordan Syatt: So today the major topic is… So on my podcast, I recently did a podcast all about program design and just it was like a two and a half hour podcast. So we’re gonna take bits and pieces from that and discuss them in depth on YouTube. So today it’s gonna be all about how to set your fitness goal, like how to figure out what your goal is and what can you accomplish. So like, you know, the basic stuff, don’t try and run a marathon and compete in bodybuilding at the same time, but just sort of make that as simple as possible for the general population.

0:02:11.5 Mike Vacanti: Cool. I love that.

0:02:13.6 Jordan Syatt: What do you got going on today, bro? How’s your lift?

0:02:16.5 Mike Vacanti: It was good, but it was lower body, so, you know.

0:02:20.7 Jordan Syatt: Squats?

0:02:21.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:02:22.0 Jordan Syatt: You squatted all the way to the gym.

0:02:23.9 Mike Vacanti: No, no, not quite, not quite. Only I did 585 for triples today, which is decent.

0:02:29.0 Jordan Syatt: Wow.

0:02:30.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. Not actually.

0:02:32.2 Jordan Syatt: Was it a deload?

0:02:32.2 Mike Vacanti: Not actually. No, but I actually am concerned with everything happening between basically on my right upper body. As you know, I took a week… I had a deload scheduled for last week for upper and had some like tightness in my right bicep that was feeling kind of weird. I was like, “Okay.” I was traveling. So instead of the deload, I just went straight training break and took two upper body workouts off. And then yesterday, my first upper day back, I came back with fewer exercises, fewer total sets and less weight. And like it felt decent during it. And then this morning, like even more pain before I thought it was my bicep. Now, it’s like my tricep tendon. I’m getting pain down my like, I don’t know if it’s serratus or LAT or pec minor. There’s something going on there, which makes me not happy with this bulk.

0:03:26.7 Jordan Syatt: That sucks. I’m sorry, bro. That’s not fun.

0:03:29.4 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:03:30.5 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I meant to tell you. So yesterday I flew to Austin and then flew back all in one day and I was giving a presentation and it was a presentation to coaches to a bunch of coaches about growing social media and a business and establishing a brand, all that stuff. And there was a super, super nice woman who came over and she was just like, “Just want to let you know, I listen to every podcast from you and Mike and I love it.”

0:03:54.6 Mike Vacanti: That’s amazing.

0:03:56.7 Jordan Syatt: And she was funny. She said, “Most other podcasts I listen to, I fast forward through the banter, but I love your banter as well.” And so I was like, that was really generous and very nice.

0:04:08.7 Mike Vacanti: I like that. That’s awesome. Shoutout to that woman. That’s great. Let’s keep bantering then. Good. We might do a little extra banter this episode.

0:04:17.2 Jordan Syatt: Just all banter.

0:04:19.1 Mike Vacanti: I mean, this is episode 98. We probably have 15 episodes of pure banter.

0:04:24.4 Jordan Syatt: What do you want to banter? Do you want to banter about Batman? Do you want to banter about?

0:04:27.9 Mike Vacanti: Well, apparently not about my training because you just took this subject change that was the most aggressive. Like, “Oh, that sucks.” Anyway, let me tell you about something else. No one wants to hear about your elbow, Mike. No one cares about your stupid elbow, your serratus, whatever. Deal with it.

0:04:45.5 Jordan Syatt: As you were talking about it, I just kept thinking about that story in my head. And so I tried to be as empathetic as possible with the story. And then I was like, but I don’t want to forget.

0:04:53.7 Mike Vacanti: Oh, that sucks. Let me tell you I saw this woman yesterday.

0:04:57.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, that really sucks. By the way, here’s another.

0:05:00.5 Mike Vacanti: In my mind, I’m like, “I’m going to transition this into like what to like training around injuries, like trying to go educational.” That sucks, man. Anyway. I am glad that people like the banter.

0:05:11.1 Jordan Syatt: That sucks. Let’s just toot our own horn for a second.

0:05:16.3 Mike Vacanti: But where do you want to take it?

0:05:17.9 Jordan Syatt: You’re the J, I’m the P.

0:05:20.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we can talk about Batman.

0:05:24.9 Jordan Syatt: You want to tell the story about my mistake with that?

0:05:30.9 Mike Vacanti: So basically, I historically I really like Batman and I love that Mitch is getting this. Let’s go. You were going to watch Batman. This is a while back. Someone asked a question was like, “Jordan, what did you think of Batman?” And you hadn’t watched it yet. You were like, “Okay, I’m going to watch Batman.” And you get, I don’t know, a half hour into Batman Begins, that was during your cardio and we talked on the phone. You’re like, “Yeah, like, you know, so it’s not very realistic.” Like, “Well, yeah, it’s a superhero movie.” You’re like, “Yeah, it’s a superhero movie.” Like, “How does he sharpen his weapons?”

0:06:12.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m like, “Sure, that’s that’s not that’s not what I… ” and then I explained to you, I was like, “I like the the story over the entire trilogy and boiled it down to like the at… An individual level, the arc that Bruce Wayne specifically goes through from the beginning, from his childhood, from like before his parents die, from when he falls into that tavern thing and the bats go and the elements of fear and then his parents die and like what he does over that arc to the very end of the movie of the third movie to the last scene of Dark Knight Rises.”

0:06:48.6 Mike Vacanti: And so you’re like, “Okay, okay I’ll keep watching. I’m not going to give up on it. Like I, you know, he’s got a cape on, which I don’t really like. But I’ll keep watching it.” I’m like, “Okay, keep watching.” And so, you know, you get through movies quick ’cause you do so much cardio. And so it was maybe less than a week later you had wrapped up and you really liked the second one. You were like Heath Ledger was amazing. And then you were loving the third one. Tom Hardy, big Jiu-Jitsu guy, Bane. You were like, “This is sweet.” And you were like, “I finished Batman.” I was like… And we jump on the phone. I was like, “How do you like it?” And you were like, “Dude, I can’t believe Batman died.” And I’m on the other end. By the way Batman spoilers from a long time ago. Batman didn’t die. I’m on the other end. And I’m like thinking I’m like, I don’t want to spoil it for you because clearly you missed something. But I can’t like not say it. So I was. Did you finish the movie? You’re like, “Yeah, he blew up. He blew up and that’s it.”

0:07:47.3 Jordan Syatt: I said, “Yeah, there was a six mile blast radius. He brought the nuke out there and, you know, he died.”

0:07:53.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. I was like, “Did you finish the movie?” And then you looked, I think you looked on your phone or whatever. You’re like, “Oh, I got 12 minutes left.”

0:08:05.8 Jordan Syatt: I thought that I had finished the movie. I vividly remember, “Oh, okay, well, it’s over.” So I closed it out of my phone and finished up, wrapped up cardio and I started watching something else.

0:08:16.9 Mike Vacanti: In my mind, I thought you… I thought there was a real chance you watched the entire thing. And like that last scene where Alfred is in somewhere in Europe having his coffee, reading his newspaper, looks across, sees Bruce with Catwoman. I think there’s a baby and that’s like they’re like happy family end of it. He finally came out of this this redemption arc that he needed. And I thought you just missed it. Like you were watching it. You’re like didn’t recognize that was Bruce Wayne or I was like, “I don’t know how you missed that, but.”

0:08:42.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah just stopped 12 minutes early.

0:08:46.4 Mike Vacanti: So what do you think?

0:08:49.4 Jordan Syatt: Overall, it was a great series. I liked it a lot. I just keep thinking about about Bane being like, “Do you feel in control?” It was like such a bad ass line. Do you know what line I’m talking about? When the guys like…

0:09:04.5 Mike Vacanti: Is that when they’re down in…

0:09:06.5 Mitch: Do you feel in charge.

0:09:06.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Oh, do you feel in charge? That was exactly right. Yes. Mitch is back here. He’s like, “Do you feel… ” He’s like, “Do you feel in charge?”

0:09:12.4 Jordan Syatt: When the guy was like, “I’m in charge here,” the guy was like, “You know, you’re not going to do this.” And then and Bane is like, “Do you feel in charge?” And then he kills him. I was like, “Oh, God, that was just such a sick line.” But I think the movies got better with each successive movie. So I liked two and three almost equally. Well, maybe even three a little bit better. One was actually my least favorite, which is odd ’cause I actually usually like the the beginning story. You know what I wish they spent more time on? I wish they spent more time on his training with Ra’s al Ghul. I would have loved to have seen more of that training more of that. That’s just where my mind goes.

0:09:58.5 Mike Vacanti: Because you want to be like, “Is he going to do a leg lock or a wrist lock? Is he going to like is he going to take the back? Is he going to pass his guard?” Like, “Oh, this isn’t real you can’t actually do that.” Because that’s where you are in life right now. Realistically, like you’re…

0:10:10.9 Jordan Syatt: I just love that stuff. Yeah, I would have loved to have seen more of that. But overall, it was great.

0:10:16.5 Mike Vacanti: I like to know the why people behave the way they do and what drives people to act certain ways and what people’s motivations are. And those almost you almost always need a detailed origin story to understand their motivation. It’s kind of like when I asked you who your first enemy was a couple of podcasts ago and you like thought back to second grade…

0:10:37.4 Jordan Syatt: Ben. Third grade.

0:10:38.7 Mike Vacanti: When this other kid like made the class laugh and you’re like, “He’s not even funny. Like I’m funnier than him.” Like that tells me a lot about you. Whereas like, I understand that you’re interested in in Jiu-Jitsu and you know, more than that. Like you’re relating it you like Last Samurai or Hunger Games more because they’re more I don’t know battle realistically battle focused, I guess we could say.

0:11:03.2 Jordan Syatt: A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hunger Games was so good. I’m a huge Katniss Everdeen fan. I always was.

0:11:15.7 Mike Vacanti: Last Samurai is a great movie, too.

0:11:17.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, The Last Samurai. That’s a phenomenal movie as well. Yeah, I liked them. There’s so much going on as well to be like there’s a lot that happens. For example, Heath Ledger like dies. I think and I’m almost positive that they had to film a couple scenes where someone else like was acting as though they were Heath Ledger pretending to be the Joker. I’m almost positive like he had he had died before the true ending of the film. They changed Katie Holmes’ as character.

0:11:46.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:11:47.7 Jordan Syatt: There was a lot of disruption in there that really got in my head. I liked it a lot. It’s definitely not my favorite. I think Hunger Games is better. I think Hunger Games is better. I do. I like Hunger Games a lot better than Batman movies.

0:12:05.3 Mike Vacanti: You know what’s funny?

0:12:06.8 Jordan Syatt: What?

0:12:09.0 Mike Vacanti: I mean, they’re both not realistic. But you view Hunger Games as like that could be us in 100 years.

0:12:17.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, absolutely.

0:12:19.1 Mike Vacanti: Versus Gotham is like pure fiction in your mind.

0:12:23.1 Jordan Syatt: There was so much reminiscent about the Hunger Games to real life in terms of government propaganda and in terms of like you have this one group of people who are severely oppressed and that the ruling class is able to control them and control what they see and control what they do and you have this rise from the bottom of the depths of despair and these people who like Katniss who volunteers to save her sister and like there’s… Even though it’s unrealistic, it’s not that unrealistic. You know what I mean? Like that could… And I mean thinking about the Coliseum where they would literally take slaves and fight to the death. Like it’s not that unrealistic outside of, “Hey, we’re going to make all this technology and we’re going to have this poison gas that comes out and it burns your skin and then you die from that.”

0:13:21.8 Jordan Syatt: Like and like, “We’re going to have all these like made up animals that can come out of nowhere and kill you.” That stuff is obviously a little bit unrealistic, at least right now where we are in technology. But it seems to be based on a lot of real life scenarios.

0:13:36.1 Mike Vacanti: I think you just don’t I think you don’t like the cape. I don’t think you ever got past the cape.

0:13:39.8 Jordan Syatt: I really don’t. And the little silver thing that he was throwing at the… I was like, “How did that hit all of the lights?”

0:13:46.8 Mike Vacanti: That needs to be realistic. When you say Coliseum, did you like Gladiator or Hunger Games more?

0:13:52.9 Jordan Syatt: Loved gladiator. I think Gladiator was better than Hunger Games. Gladiator is just like one of the greatest movies of all time. I could watch Gladiator every week. If I could watch Gladiator every Saturday and I would be very happy to watch that movie over and over again.

0:14:10.9 Mike Vacanti: Everybody watch Gladiator. Everyone watch Gladiator here and we’ll talk about it in the coming month.

0:14:18.4 Jordan Syatt: I like that. That’s homework. How to become a personal trainer podcast. Go watch Gladiator.

0:14:23.8 Mike Vacanti: Actually, though I think watching Gladiator would be… Would help more people’s businesses than a lot of things that people do to work on their business.

0:14:37.3 Jordan Syatt: Like what? Give one example. You gotta give one. I know worrying about likes, worrying about people liking you.

0:14:46.0 Mike Vacanti: Sure, sure.

0:14:48.0 Jordan Syatt: Watching Gladiator, it will be better off… You’ll be better off watching Gladiator than you will be checking how many likes you got on your most recent post.

0:14:54.9 Mike Vacanti: That’s a great example. That’s absolutely right. Should we talk about very briefly, I guess, this funny dynamic of from… Okay, so Dom, shoutout to Dom. Dom’s a guy who listens to the podcast. He sent me a DM on Twitter after our conversation about…

0:15:14.6 Jordan Syatt: You check your Twitter DMs?

0:15:16.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Well, because they pop up and the numbers like… I almost want David to cut this, but I don’t. But like I go in my Instagram DMs once every six months ’cause it’s just too much. If I’m going to go in, I’m going to reply to them and I can’t reply to everybody just right now. But my Twitter DMs, I only… There’s only a few people there, so it feels manageable. We talked about scheduling the podcast and as soon as it was locked in, I didn’t want to do it. And he was like, “You should check out the book, The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin,” which I had actually listened to previously and forgotten about. And it was in my audio books. I fired it back up and just took this quiz and I was a certain type and then a rebel, rebel obliger, upholder, questioner.

0:16:08.8 Mike Vacanti: And the rebel type essentially only does what they want to do all the time, which just doesn’t sound good, but that was what I’d scored on there. In the rebel section, it was like basically no one gets along with rebels very well except obligers. It’s like obligers and rebels make phenomenal friends, great business partners, da, da, da, da, da. And I texted you, I was like, “Dude, you got to take this quiz.”

0:16:37.2 Jordan Syatt: And I knew as soon as you said all of the names, I was like, “I’m an obliger.” I knew immediately just from the names of the categories. But then when I took the quiz, I was like, “Yeah, you’re an obliger.” I was like, “Yeah, it makes total sense.” And you’re married to an obliger, it makes total sense. Yeah, makes a hundred percent sense. But it’s also helpful because it’s like… It just it makes it easier. If you have two obligers together, that’s not a good scenario. That will end in disaster. Nothing gets done.

0:17:09.6 Mike Vacanti: If you have two rebels, there’s… Like nothing also gets done.

0:17:14.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s not gonna work.

0:17:14.8 Mike Vacanti: You want to podcast at 4:00? Well, I want to podcast at noon. Okay, guess we’re not… Guess we’re shutting down the pod. Nice knowing you.

0:17:20.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, guess we’re not. We’re not doing a pod together, asshole.

0:17:28.5 Mike Vacanti: Jordan.

0:17:29.6 Jordan Syatt: Michael.

0:17:30.5 Mike Vacanti: I want to start an online, I’m a personal trainer, I want to start an online coaching business. I’m going to start making content right now. I’m thinking about the best revenue model. High ticket membership, one-on-one coaching question mark. For a coach who’s starting to build their online business and thinking about how to monetize, let’s assume good intent, let’s assume like I want to help people, let’s assume like it’s not a get rich quick. And they’re getting all these different, you know, they’re getting bombarded with Instagram ads to try this high ticket this, you know, start your own membership, join my course to start a membership. What is the best of those three or something else?

0:18:14.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’ll start by saying… I actually want to ask you, when you hear the term high ticket, does that create rage in you the same way it creates rage in me? Like, I can’t hear that term without, like a fire erupting in my gut. And I’m not saying I’m angry at this person. I don’t like… Like that term just enrages me. And I’m trying to work my way through this anger.

0:18:43.8 Mike Vacanti: So it actually excites me and gives me so much confidence in myself because I know that someone starting out trying to charge thousands of dollars a month for one-on-one fitness coaching isn’t going to win and isn’t going to like… Like a bad net for the industry. But on a personal level, someone who’s short sighted and trying to charge that much money to make as much as soon as possible. Like, I just know that’s not going to pan out. Meaning I know they’re not going to… And there’s no there’s no stealing. There’s too much demand. We’ve talked about this like abundance versus scarcity mindset. There’s too demand for fitness help in the world that it’s not a competition against each other. But when I hear high ticket and I think of someone like trying to do high ticket, I immediately just think this isn’t going to work out like good luck.

0:19:35.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. The only thing that I can sort of compare it to and it’s not the same at all. When I was a younger coach, and I heard people say like, “Oh, I just want to get toned.” I would get mad ’cause like, “Toning, You can’t tone your muscle” like that stupid like thing that younger coaches do when they get really mad. So it doesn’t matter. You know exactly what they’re trying to say. High ticket I get sort of the same anger but worse. And it’s also I think for a better reason ’cause like, yeah, you can do high ticket, but it’s like… I feel like it’s such a buzzword in the business world. Yeah, you want to do high-ticket coaching. This is my high ticket offering. Shut the fuck up. It’s so annoying. Like, this is my high-ticket coaching offer. You’re a piece of shit is really what you are. I don’t know. I hate that term when people use it. And it’s interesting ’cause the way that the…

0:20:30.4 Mike Vacanti: I want to dig in. Why a piece of shit? Like why does a high price point?

0:20:36.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s not the high price point. It’s that that’s what you call the high price point. And it’s like it’s what, you know what I mean?

0:20:42.9 Jordan Syatt: It’s like if you charge a lot of money for your…

0:20:43.5 Mike Vacanti: It feels spammy to you.

0:20:47.0 Jordan Syatt: It almost feels like the person who tells you what car they drive when there’s no reason for them to tell you what car they drive. It’s like the person who’s like, “Oh, yeah, well, I drive a… ” What’s a nice car? I’m not a car… I don’t know.

0:21:00.8 Mike Vacanti: Bugatti.

0:21:02.9 Jordan Syatt: Bugatti. Bugatti. It’s like, “So yeah, you know, I drive a Bugatti.” It’s like, “Okay, well, you’re a fucking asshole.” “Like why the hell do you tell me that?” It’s like, “Yeah, I do high-ticket coaching.” “Okay, you’re a fucking asshole. Like I don’t care.”

0:21:15.8 Mike Vacanti: Feels like they’re bragging.

0:21:16.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s basically your way of saying I charge a lot of money, right? It’s like it’s a lot as opposed to just being like, “I do one-on-one coaching.” “Oh, cool. How much do you charge?” Well, that’s a different discussion. It’s different to say I do high-ticket coaching versus I just do one on one, even though you might be charging the same thing. And I feel like when people say I’m doing high ticket, they’re explicitly letting you know, by the way, this is going to be very expensive. And I charge a lot of money. I’m like, “Okay, asshole. Like why is that part of the discussion?”

0:21:47.3 Mike Vacanti: You think it’s douchey.

0:21:48.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s douchey.

0:21:50.1 Mike Vacanti: Got it.

0:21:50.5 Jordan Syatt: You’re a douche. You are a giant bag of douche.

0:21:54.8 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Okay. That’s a reasonable reaction to it. How about practically and strategically?

0:22:01.7 Jordan Syatt: Well, stupid. People make stupid business decisions all the time that I don’t get angry about. I feel I have more empathy for that. It’s more just like the person who goes out of their way to let you know how much money they make or how much they charge or to make it seem… Like people use their price point as a form of bragging, which I don’t like. It’s just shut up, right? Or the person that you meet is like, “You know how many followers I have?” “I don’t give a shit.” Yeah, that type of thing.

0:22:32.7 Mike Vacanti: Yep, I see.

0:22:35.8 Jordan Syatt: And I feel like in the business mastermind guru world, a lot of the people ‘teaching’ like teaching others how to sell, they use high ticket in the same way that fitness people use like use rapid fat loss or fat burners or something like that. They use that term because they think it’s going to catch on and people are going to get hooked by it. “Oh, high ticket. Oh, so I don’t need that many clients. I just need a couple who pay me a lot of money. It’s like and I’m worth an incredible amount of money because… ” I had someone a very nice woman at the seminar yesterday that I gave in Austin.

0:23:14.4 Jordan Syatt: Very nice. And I like her a lot. She basically was saying, “I don’t want to give away all of my secrets for free because then why are they going to hire me?” And I was like, “What secrets do you have?” And she was like, “What do you mean?” I was like, “What secrets do you have that they’re not going to be able to find for free on Google or from somewhere else?” And she was like, “Oh, that’s a good point.” I was like, “Give away everything for free because they’re going to hire you because they trust you, not because of the secrets that you’re hiding. There are no secrets in this industry. You’ve learned everything from someone else probably because they were kind enough to teach you.” So I think a lot of these guru marketers try and use this as a term to hook people in to sign up for their high-ticket business coaching. When this person asks originally high-ticket membership or one-on-one, I think one-on-one is ‘high ticket’. One-on-one is your high price point. It’s just how high are you going to make it? And that is entirely dependent on what you’re comfortable with and what you feel, what makes sense for your business.

0:24:22.7 Jordan Syatt: For me, going over $400 a month never felt good in terms of what I was offering, in terms of no matter how much training I had, how much money I spent in school, how much money I spent on certifications, how much time I spent doing this, it never felt right for me to charge more than 4. And I’m not saying that’s the number everyone should follow, but for me, that was the cap. So that for me was my ‘high ticket’, but that was the offer.

0:24:46.5 Mike Vacanti: I’m going to dig in there. Was that 100% because you didn’t feel good about charging it? Or was there any part of you that from a branding perspective felt like it was bad for your reputation for people to be like, “Oh, Syatt fitness charges $850?”

0:25:04.3 Jordan Syatt: The zero part. The zero part of me.

0:25:05.1 Mike Vacanti: Zero?

0:25:07.2 Jordan Syatt: Zero. It was zero reputation. It was after years and years and years of doing one-on-one coaching and realizing and also making money and realizing the value of money and realizing how much 200 is versus 300 versus 400 versus 800 versus a 1000 and realizing my goal of, “Well, I want my goal is I want to try and help as many people as I can.” It seemed incongruent and disingenuous to say I want to help as many people as I can, but also I charge a $1000 a month for coaching. That seemed to me disingenuous and didn’t feel congruent with what I was actually saying. Between 300-400 a month felt congruent in terms of, “Well, this is definitely… I’m absolutely worth… I know I’m worth even more than this, but this is definitely like I’m worth this and it’s actually doable for people that I want to help.” So it was zero about what people thought and it was a hundred percent about what’s my actual goal here.

0:26:10.1 Mike Vacanti: I got you. That was based on your offering. I also don’t like the term or the business model. I don’t like the business model because I think it makes sense to have… To minimize variance as a risk management tool. And what I mean by that is like maximal risk means you’re in a binary situation where you either have a salary or you don’t have a salary. So you’re working for the man, your money’s all coming from one person. If that one person, AKA your employer, fires you, recession, 20%, whatever, fires you, then you have zero dollars. High ticket, maybe you’re charging five grand a month to five different clients. Okay? So you’re making 25K a month. You’re crushing it. But if two people stop working with you, that’s a 40% drop in your income. It’s a 40% drop in your revenue. It’s probably an even bigger drop in your income percentage-wise.

0:27:10.2 Mike Vacanti: If you’re working with 30 or 40 or 50 clients at a more reasonable $200, $300, $400 a month and two people or three people or four people cancel, you’re minimizing variance by having a larger sample size. You can weather that storm much easier than you have three high-ticket clients, two cancel now you only have one client. Now, you’re worried about paying your bills. And so strategically, that’s another reason why charging less and working with more clients, even if it means less time per client, makes sense.

0:27:43.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’m with you a hundred percent. And the stress involved in it. Let’s say you’re charging 5 grand a client or even 1 grand a month per client, whatever it is, whatever your high-ticket offer is, you have to be going above and beyond. You are starting from an over-promising perspective. You have to go out of your way and you better be ready to reply to the text at any time of day. You better be ready to take a call anytime. What are you charging that much money for? Access, it’s access to you. You better be available when that person… ‘Cause if you’re paying 5 a month for something, you want immediate access, period, end of story.

0:28:25.9 Mike Vacanti: Of course. Yeah.

0:28:27.0 Jordan Syatt: So the amount of stress on you in order to deliver, just to meet the basic deliverables of what you’ve promised is gonna be unbelievably stressful compared to having 40, 50 clients, even 30, 40, 50 clients paying 200, 300, 400 a month. It’s like way less stressful. You lose five of those people, seven, ten of those people, percentage-wise, it’s a much more reasonable hit and it’s easier in order to get more people back at that lower cost than it is to try and convince someone for this huge amount of money on a monthly basis. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

0:29:07.8 Mike Vacanti: You make a great point about the offering has to be different if you’re going to charge more both from a business perspective and from a right and wrong perspective. And I’m not gonna name her, but we have a good example of someone in the mentorship who charges $800 a month, has a lot of clients and does a really good job. She’s jumping on FaceTime with them multiple times a month.

0:29:29.9 Jordan Syatt: She’s killing it.

0:29:32.0 Mike Vacanti: She’s replying to text messages. She is delivering more. It’s a higher touch service, which justifies a higher dollar mark. And so there are situations where it makes sense, but it’s like, oh, and just 15X your price but have the same offering, call it high… That is what we’re against.

0:29:50.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and she does amazing. She’s on FaceTime all the time. She’s interacting with people. Her client retention’s insane. You just have to ask, “Is that what you want? Do you want to be doing that?” And if you are cool with that, amazing. If you’d rather have a little bit more relaxed, maybe just all everything via email, don’t charge that much.

0:30:11.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yep.

0:30:12.8 Jordan Syatt: And just don’t call your coaching high ticket for… Please.

0:30:15.5 Mike Vacanti: ‘Cause it bothers Jordan, so you shouldn’t do it.

0:30:17.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s just annoying.

0:30:20.6 Mike Vacanti: How about the other part of the question? Starting out, very little online presence, no online revenue. Should they start a membership? Should they start a $25 a month?

0:30:29.8 Jordan Syatt: No, and we’ve spoken about this a lot before. If you scroll through all the different podcasts we’ve done, you’ll see some in the title about starting a membership, membership 101. You’ll see those. We’ve spoken about this a lot, so we’re not going to go in on this again. But having a membership is something that you should really only do if your one-on-one is maxed out and/or if you have a very large, very active, engaged social media audience or very large, active, engaged email list. You don’t need it to be on social media, but you have a very large, active, engaged audience, period.

0:31:03.8 Mike Vacanti: Cool. Business, fitness, where do you want to go? Where do you want to go, Mr. Obliger?

0:31:13.3 Jordan Syatt: I’m such an obliger that you just you pick it and I’ll go with it. All right, you’re a rebel. In fact, ’cause if I tell you what I want to do, I think you’ll go the other way. How about you just…

0:31:22.0 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no ’cause I want you to.

0:31:27.9 Jordan Syatt: When Mike and I were trying to plan this podcast and I… We had…

0:31:31.5 Mike Vacanti: Today’s?

0:31:31.9 Jordan Syatt: Planned it for today. And then I realized I had Mitch coming, and so I asked Mike, I was like, “Hey, could we do this podcast tomorrow?”

0:31:42.2 Mike Vacanti: Let me give some more background on this. I’m in Jordan’s calendar, okay? I schedule the pods. I look at what he’s got going on. I ask you, I’m like, “What do you think of that?” So we have a normal time that we do. Thursdays, 1:00 PM Central, we’re recording. We’re banging them out weekly. By the way, Personal Trainer Podcast, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, @personaltrainerpodcast. We’re making daily content across the board. If you want to just hit pause, give a quick follow, hit play again. We would very, very, very much appreciate that. We’re making real organic reach, organic gains, clean, lean gains on the socials.

0:32:18.7 Mike Vacanti: I have access to Jordan’s calendar, and you had to fly to Austin on Thursday, and I saw that over the podcast, you were going to be in the middle of breakout room one, whatever that means. And I said, “Hey, bro, looks like breakout room one’s happening at 1 o’clock on Thursday. Probably not a good time to pod. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I’m like, “All right, I’ll find a different time.” Find a time, Friday, ’cause I like things the way I like them. We basically podcast right after my workouts because I’m in a good mood and we’re going to grip it and rip it. You could podcast any time, 7:00 PM on a Friday night, I don’t want to podcast. It’s just not going to happen. I’m going to cancel it. So schedule it in Friday, 2:00 PM. On the thing, it usually says if Mitch is there. Mitch wasn’t on there. I called you. I was like, “What do you think, Friday, 2 o’clock? That work for you?”

0:33:08.9 Mike Vacanti: “Amazing. Amazing. Can’t wait. Great. Great.” All right. This morning, 10:33 in the morning, I got this guy fixing my oven over here. Haven’t even had my pre-workout meal yet. I’m emailing with clients. Jord calls. “What’s up? Hey, what do you think about podcast tomorrow?” I said, “I can’t do it, Jord. I don’t have a workout tomorrow. No one’s going to want to hear that podcast.”

0:33:34.2 Jordan Syatt: No, I said, “What do you… Can we do it tomorrow?” And there was a long pause.

0:33:40.4 Mike Vacanti: ‘Cause I’m thinking if I can adjust my training schedule. I’m trying to make it work.

0:33:44.9 Jordan Syatt: Silent. And at first I was like, “I wonder if he cut out.” And then all of a sudden you’re like, “no”. The way that you said, “Could we do tomorrow?” “No”. “Oh, okay.” I was like, “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll do it today.” And I was like…

0:34:05.1 Mike Vacanti: No, no. Hang on, hang on.

0:34:05.4 Jordan Syatt: And then you said…

0:34:06.8 Mike Vacanti: Hang on, first. And I Saturdays, Monday through Friday, Gary works out either first thing in the morning or at 6:00 PM. It’s in the calendar. It’s locked and loaded. Saturday, Sunday, Gary’s workout Saturday it could be anywhere from 7:00 AM To 3:00 PM. So I don’t really know. And Sundays are, unless the Jets are playing like Sundays are the same thing. Could be mid-morning, later in the morning, early afternoon. And so there’s a lot of moving pieces. I can’t just throw a workout on a Saturday. I might be training and then he hits me up. He’s like, “We got to go right now.” It’s like, “All right”. And so there are reasons why… And I actually said, you know what, I could do Monday. So we could pod Monday. You got a cardiology appointment. You’d have to move that.

0:34:46.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And then this is the best part. Then you were like, “But you know what? You know what? We could change the time. We could do a little bit earlier. Want to move it earlier? Pod’s scheduled for 2 o’clock.” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, actually, you know, could we do 1 o’clock?” And you were like, “no”.

0:35:09.4 Mike Vacanti: I said, “I could probably swing a 1:30.”

0:35:12.8 Jordan Syatt: Maybe 1:30. You’re like, “I could try for a 1:30.” I was like, “So what do you mean by do you want to do it earlier?” You’re like, “I don’t know, man.” But you made 1:30 happen.

0:35:23.8 Mike Vacanti: 10:33. I still got a program to design that I need to send to someone. I’m a…

0:35:29.9 Jordan Syatt: High-ticket coaching client.

0:35:31.1 Mike Vacanti: No, no just a normal. And meanwhile, I haven’t had my pre-workout meal yet. I’m squatting, so I don’t want to rush through that and do something to my back. Like I’m thinking through all these factors. I don’t want to overpromise underdeliver. We move it to 1 o’clock. It’s 10:33. He’s still working on the oven. I got no calories in me yet. A lot of moving pieces, but 1:30 we gripped and ripped on the dot. And so here we are.

0:35:56.0 Jordan Syatt: We’re killing it. I love it.

0:35:58.0 Mike Vacanti: There. How’s that for banter? That’s some real banter.

0:36:01.3 Jordan Syatt: You want to… Let’s do earlier. Let’s do earlier than 2:00. Okay. How about 1:00?

0:36:05.3 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:36:05.6 Jordan Syatt: No. We could maybe do a 1:30.

0:36:10.2 Mike Vacanti: I think what I said was maybe a little earlier or a little later, but I don’t know. Yeah, there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room in there.

0:36:18.8 Jordan Syatt: Anyway, so going back to the rebellious, to the rebel here, what are we choosing for fitness, business, banter? What do we got next?

0:36:31.2 Mike Vacanti: Would you rather talk about…

0:36:34.9 Jordan Syatt: Video pods.

0:36:36.0 Mike Vacanti: Would you rather talk about a method for fat loss that some people do or a top tried and true nutrition strategy?

0:36:48.9 Jordan Syatt: Tried and true nutrition strategy.

0:36:51.1 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:36:56.6 Mike Vacanti: I think I don’t know how to preface this. I’m just going to dive right in. I think that of all of the fad diets, right? Keto, carnivore, I mean, we could call like vegan for health purposes. I’d throw that in there like moral purposes, I think is in a separate bucket, but like strict vegan for health, like all of the fad diets, I think the pendulum went too far against clean eating.

0:37:27.8 Jordan Syatt: Agreed.

0:37:28.5 Mike Vacanti: I think we bring back clean eating. I think clean eating is actually. Look, I understand that when you’re over restrictive with food choice and you think that if you have one little tiny Twix bar, you ruined everything and then you binge on it, like I have experienced that to lower degrees. I know people have really struggled with that. That’s what makes flexible dieting so great. That’s what makes the majority of what you eat nutritious, micronutrient dense, fiber dense, classically nutritious foods, and then a small percentage of what you eat. What alcohol, pizza, candy bars like you can work those things into your calories. It’s balanced. It’s sustainable in the long term. That is the pinnacle.

0:38:11.3 Mike Vacanti: That’s what our book was about, that’s what we both preach, that’s what we both use with clients. The eating shit and making it fit in your macros or calories for the day and calling it like optimal, compared to clean eating has gotten too far out of hand. I actually think that trying to eat clean and I’m intentionally using the word clean because it also gets this criticism of like, “Huh, what do you wash your food before you eat it? Do you put Windex on it? Hahaha. What does clean even mean?” And I get that it’s funny, I like it, I like it. And I like a lot of people who have said that over the years, and I think that was a great joke in 2011 or 2009 on the bodybuilding.com forums. But we know what clean is. We know that a sweet potato is clean, and we know that a Snickers Bar isn’t. Unprocessed micronutrient dense food versus processed shit. I just think that there are massive, massive benefits, especially in a surplus, but and at maintenance to eating clean.

0:39:11.6 Jordan Syatt: Dude, and in a deficit, especially.

0:39:14.1 Mike Vacanti: And in a deficit I know, but there are… But yes, yes, in all three for volume and satiety, like there are especially benefits there.

0:39:23.9 Jordan Syatt: Flexible dieting… It’s gone too far, bro.

0:39:26.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. You summed it up so much better than me in that one sentence, yeah, flexible dieting it’s gone too far.

0:39:34.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s gone too far. It’s all these fucking people who are like, “I can eat this and I can eat that, and I’m gonna eat this and I’m gonna eat that.” It’s like, “Yeah, but like for what? Do you care about your health? Do you care about getting more nutrients in or are you just like… ” The fitness industry it really… It’s people are so dichotomous in their thinking and it’s like, it’s either it either matters or it doesn’t matter, it either works or it doesn’t work. And the flexible dieting crowd has gotten so into like just calories, like, “Well, calories are all that matters,” like, “Well, no, they’re not, they matter, they’re very important, but they’re not all that matter.” And it’s interesting, I think flexible dieting mixed with body positivity has created a monster.

[chuckle]

0:40:32.0 Jordan Syatt: You know what I mean? I think the flexible dieting crowd… I think the extreme flexible dieting crowd fused with the extreme body positivity crowd and created a mutant that it just says, “Eat whatever you want in whatever quantity you want,” and as long as you’re happy it’s healthy. And anyone who says that’s wrong is objectively a bigot, and I think…

[laughter]

0:41:07.4 Mike Vacanti: A mutant.

[laughter]

0:41:10.8 Mike Vacanti: That’s a very interesting take. I hadn’t thought of that.

0:41:13.2 Jordan Syatt: So now you’re gonna distance yourself from my opinion on this one?

0:41:16.2 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no, no. I’ve never seen… First of all…

0:41:18.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, very interesting Jord, I hadn’t thought about that. I completely denounce everything.

0:41:23.5 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no, no. Look, I believe you that there are mutants running around out there, that when I see the far end of the flexible dieting crowd, I see like this guy on like a gram of test a week, like eating these like protein pancakes and these like, I don’t know high protein whatever fake food. Lots of just fake food, lots of supplements, lots of.

0:41:43.0 Jordan Syatt: Zero sugar syrup and like all that’s, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:41:45.9 Mike Vacanti: Yes. All of that all… And they’re fancy and they look cool on Instagram, I see that loaded with anabolics. And then on the flexible, or sorry on the body positivity, I see a very different body type and mentality of someone who is like that person that zero sugar syrup guy also is hitting protein carb fat every single day of his life. His calories are… He knows where he wants them and he puts them there or she… I’m the worst.

0:42:17.2 Jordan Syatt: You misogynist asshole.

[laughter]

0:42:20.9 Mike Vacanti: You get where I’m going with this, but then.

0:42:22.6 Jordan Syatt: But that’s your image when you see… When that is funny.

0:42:24.0 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:42:24.2 Jordan Syatt: ‘Cause I had a different image of a flexible diet in my head. I had a different image, but yeah.

0:42:27.3 Mike Vacanti: But no, no, not a flexible dieter but the extreme.

0:42:30.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, IIFYM. Yeah, yeah.

0:42:33.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. The IIFYM bodybuilding.com forum bro who amazing and then the far end of the body positivity, I see someone who’s extremely obese and extremely unhealthy just.

0:42:47.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:42:48.4 Mike Vacanti: And when you say they converge to make a mutant, I didn’t even know they could converge ’cause I thought they were like on like the North and South pole of the world. So that’s why I said interesting, I was trying to figure out like.

0:43:01.1 Jordan Syatt: It’s funny. So when I was thinking of like the extreme flexible dieting crowd, I… Your image makes sense, it is one side, I was thinking of the extreme from the perspective of the person who constantly struggles to lose weight because they say they’re flexible dieting.

0:43:21.0 Mike Vacanti: Oh.

0:43:21.6 Jordan Syatt: When in reality they’re not, right? The person is just “Well, I’m flexible dieting. So I’m gonna eat this, well, I’m flexible dieting I’m gonna eat this.” And they’re always trying to lose weight, but they’re never actually getting their calories in check, they’re never actually doing what they need to do. Like, “Well, it’s okay, I can eat all of this and I can eat all of that and I’ll go have the chips and guac and then I’ll have the pizza and all this. Well, it’s all okay ’cause you know I’m a flexible dieter, but I’m also really unhappy that I’m not losing weight.” And then that fused with the body positivity movement to create this person who’s like, “Well, it doesn’t even matter anymore because I’m just gonna eat what I want so I can be happy.” And then also be really upset that they’re not losing weight on the inside, but then fall into this community that’s coddling them and not actually actually saying things that are gonna help them.

0:44:06.9 Jordan Syatt: They’re just trying to… They’re essentially just enabling them to just keep going further snowballing down this very unhealthy route. So that was my where my flexible dieter met body positivity, it wasn’t where it was like bro science super jacked shredded dude, like zero calorie maple syrup with the rice cakes and all that. Or like in the pop tarts and like all the Walden Farms like syrups that have nothing in it.

0:44:34.8 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:44:35.3 Jordan Syatt: And all that stuff. Like, yeah that’s another end of that for sure. Yeah.

0:44:39.6 Mike Vacanti: I see. Yeah, your mutant makes sense in that case.

0:44:42.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I have to clarify ’cause someone is fuckin gonna be an asshole, when I say mutant it has nothing to do with how they look, it’s a mutant of of ideology.

0:44:50.6 Mike Vacanti: Yes. I wasn’t picturing like an actual mutant.

0:44:53.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:44:54.2 Mike Vacanti: But good clarification, never know these things.

0:44:57.9 Jordan Syatt: You never know.

0:45:01.1 Mike Vacanti: I have a thought on related to this, because we know that objectively one of the best things that you can do for your health, there are many good things you can do for your health, but we know that objectively, one of the best things you can do for your health is to have a reasonable body fat percentage. I wonder, and it’s the answer is both, I already know, but in like this fictitious world where you can only pick one which is Jordan’s least favorite kind of question, would it be better to be in like for a dude, say like between twelve and twenty… Let’s say we got four cohorts, we got like 12-18 percent body fat dudes and like 19-26 percent body fat women and they’re eating a lot more crap calories, macros on point, but maintaining and eating a lot more crap. Then we have 38-48 percent body fat dudes and 45-52 percent body fat women, but they’re eating more nutritious foods, but they’re also eating some unclean and they’re in a surplus. And let’s say training protocols are actually pretty similar between the two groups.

0:46:26.6 Jordan Syatt: The lower body fat group is gonna be healthier, I would put a lot of money on for sure, because even though we can say yeah training protocols are similar, it’s very difficult to have a similar training protocol at that high level of a body fat percent. Like what can they actually accomplish in training? And this is one of the issues that I have with that movement, with like the health at every size movement or whatever, it’s like can you be healthy at that body fat? Like maybe assuming you would be comfortable enough to move on a regular basis, but that’s how I always know someone hasn’t actually worked with someone who’s severely overweight. It’s like if you’ve worked with even a handful of people who are severely overweight between like 40-55 percent body fat, it hurts to move, things hurt, it is super difficult. And once they actually start moving, they start losing weight, right? It’s like so it’s very difficult to actually have a great training protocol and maintain that body fat, ’cause like it’s super challenging. So I would imagine that the shittier diet, healthier body fat in that group would be healthier that would be my my two cents.

0:47:45.0 Mike Vacanti: And in a perfect world, get yourself in a place where you have a healthy body fat percentage and eat mostly nutritious foods, but.

0:47:53.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and to be… I’m just, and I know this is a fictitious world, but to be that high body fat and eating a mostly very clean diet, like you’ve got to have some issue with food. To eat that much like that’s… There’s other shit going on in this fictitious world.

0:48:13.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:48:14.2 Jordan Syatt: You know what I mean?

0:48:14.9 Mike Vacanti: I know what you mean.

0:48:16.8 Jordan Syatt: And I think they’re underreporting.

[laughter]

0:48:21.9 Mike Vacanti: As most do, as most do. That study where people people who tracked their food in real time compared to people who logged their entire day of eating at the end of the day, and the people who logged their entire day of eating at the end of the day were more underreported by like somewhere between 50 and 60 percent.

0:48:46.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s crazy.

0:48:46.6 Mike Vacanti: So if they actually ate 2700 calories for the day, they logged it as 1800 calories for the day, that is wild.

0:48:53.7 Jordan Syatt: It’s insane. Even when I do like these cuts, like and I actually start being more aware of my calories. I’m always like, “Damn, dude, I was eating a lot.” [chuckle] Like every time my man, I really was like giving myself a lot of weight right there.

0:49:12.0 Mike Vacanti: And how many times have we done this in our lives? Dozens and dozens and it’s still is the reminder.

0:49:16.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Almost 20 years. It’s crazy, it’s crazy. Yeah. [laughter]

0:49:22.6 Mike Vacanti: That’s why tracking is not only such a good way to learn about what you’re putting in your body initially when you’re getting started, but also periodically as a refresher.

0:49:32.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Man, it’s so funny, it really is. It’s an important thing just to do even just like once a year, twice a year, just have like a 7, 14, 21, 30 day window, just track and just like self audit and just be aware.

0:49:51.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Completely agree. I already got another one here. Is running good for fat loss?

0:50:02.0 Jordan Syatt: Who asked this question? You don’t have to say their name. Is running good for fat loss?

0:50:07.0 Mike Vacanti: This is actually a question that I just made up to get to something that I want to say.

0:50:11.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

[laughter]

0:50:13.8 Jordan Syatt: I was like, is this a real question? What do you wanna say? [laughter]

0:50:20.0 Mike Vacanti: I say this with such deep love because I know there are people who really understand or who really, really enjoy running and really get mental health benefits from running. And might’ve been like cross country runners in high school and it’s their sport and it’s their thing and they have like a deep connection and passion for running. But when I see people who are, let’s say, either untrained or beginners, even if they’ve done a decent amount of weightlifting over the years, their technique, their exercise selection, like the types of stuff they’ve done, maybe it’s a lot of classes, they’re basically for all intents and purposes, beginners in the strength training world. Who are overweight but really enjoy running, I have just seen it be so unsuccessful for fat loss, and it makes sense if you increase calorie expenditure and hold everything else constant, you should see slightly faster fat loss progress. Not you should, you do see slightly faster fat loss progress. So you would think that running is beneficial, and I’m separating running from cardio because incline walking, riding the bicycle, going on the elliptical all of.

0:51:40.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s an important distinction.

0:51:42.0 Mike Vacanti: All of these are also forms of cardio that also increase calorie expenditure that have a marked decrease in injury risk compared to running, especially for someone who is overweight. And so more impact on the joints and especially for someone who isn’t like in a leader advanced runner, so the running technique probably isn’t perfect. Plus carrying a little bit of extra weight adds the injury risk, which is not good, so that’s point one. Point two is for whatever reason and I’ve seen this with many, many people over the years, this type of person because they enjoy running, ends up prioritizing running over their strength training. And so strength training workouts are getting missed in favor of runs, and then there’s, this is purely anecdotal, but I think it’s right, there’s an element of running where either it’s A, it increases appetite more than the other forms of cardio leading to higher calorie intake, leading to a net in they’re not making additional fat loss progress because of it, or an overestimate of calorie expenditure from running.

0:52:54.0 Mike Vacanti: So it’s either an increase in hunger leading to overeating or it’s this justification that “Because I ran, I feel like I burnt a 1000 calories on that run. So I’m gonna to add 500 calories on top of my intake. These are all things I see when running gets, in distance running, you can work a little bit in here and there, but for people who want to lose body fat where running ends up being more detrimental than helpful. And again, it sucks because the majority of these people aren’t actually doing it because they feel like they have to, they’re doing it because they really like running, but it ends up making it harder for them to make fat loss progress.

0:53:29.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, dude. And I see this with sprints as well, it’s not even just long distance people like, “Oh yeah, I did a Tabata. So let’s go eat and drink a lot.” I’m like, “That was like four minutes of work, what in the… How many fucking calories do you think you burn from doing a Tabata?” It’s not a lot at all. It’s brutal, it’s super difficult, it’s a great high intensity protocol in order to improve your performance in certain events, but you’re not burning a lot of calories. And I know like many people run because they enjoy it, many people do, but I also know many people run because they think it’s what they need to do to lose fat. Many people only run because they think I need to run in order to lose fat, no you don’t. And when they do that and they don’t know how many calories they’re eating and they’re not strength training, then they will radically overestimate how many they’re burning, and they will underestimate how many they’re eating. And so they eat back way more and they end up gaining weight, and this is why we see actually a lot of runners struggling with their weight. Because they eat way more than they should.

0:54:33.2 Jordan Syatt: Not to mention they do need to fuel for these longer runs, especially if you’re doing a longer run, you need more fuel for that, but if you’re not tracking and if you’re not aware, then you are likely overdoing it very, very easily. It’s not difficult to overdo it at all. So yeah, I think you’re a hundred percent spot on, I would say though, like if someone loves running and they really enjoy it, don’t stop, just be aware of how much you’re eating, stop adding all those calories back in and don’t neglect your strength training. That I think might be the number one most important thing is, ’cause I’ve seen some amazing, amazing runners who are super lean and the one common denominator among all of them is they also lift. Like the best runners that I know who are also very lean lift and they’re strong. And you know who’s a great example of this is Kenny Santucci, I just saw he ran the Boston Marathon, he’s done… I think he’s done and not he did the New York Marathon the other day. I think he said he’s done like seven marathons, maybe an Ironman as well, and like the dude is ripped.

0:55:47.8 Jordan Syatt: He’s avid and he lifts a lot, he’s a great Olympic lifter, he’s super, super strong, and he’s a great example of you can absolutely stay lean as a runner, but if you’re neglecting your strength training, you’re gonna make it infinitely harder to stay lean while you do that. Otherwise, then you get that like traditional skinny fat, right? Where it’s like, “Well yeah, I run a lot, but I’m not nearly as muscular as I’d like to be.” It’s like, “Well yeah, you gotta do both for shocker. Both is better than either alone.” And a lot of people who only lift would do well to do some fucking cardio, but that’s a story for a different day.

0:56:22.2 Mike Vacanti: Correct, correct. But for that heart health we can… That’s a story for a different day, I wouldn’t have that person running I’d have them do something that’s technically less challenging, that’s a lower injury risk. That’s someone who doesn’t run if you have them start running, they’re not gonna be in zone two anyway.

0:56:38.3 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:56:38.8 Mike Vacanti: Right? Like they’re not efficient enough at it until they’ve learned the skill better and improved at it. The other thing that’s cool is when you take someone who’s running a lot and not lifting and you put them on a good strength training program and you reduce their miles per week. So they’re actually running less, they start lifting, their running performance increases.

0:57:01.0 Jordan Syatt: Yes, absolutely.

0:57:02.3 Mike Vacanti: Almost always, which is really cool. They feel better, they’re faster. Their times get better even though they’re running less because they’ve added strength training.

0:57:10.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

0:57:14.0 Mike Vacanti: If you could give one piece of generic advice to every weightlifter, every beginner, what would it be?

0:57:25.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, man, there’s so much. So the way that I think about this goes to… There’s different groups of beginners, right? There are beginners who will become intermediates, who will become advanced, there are beginners who will become intermediate and not advanced, there are beginners who will never become intermediate because they quit. So, and I think that my mind goes towards the beginners who start and quit and start and quit and start and quit, and that’s where my advice goes to. It’s not the person who’s in there who’s just smashing it and loving it, I’m talking more towards the people who might not even in like it at all, they probably don’t even really enjoy it, they don’t know what to do and they don’t see the point if they’re never gonna be able to progress. If there was one thing that I could say is that… And I’m gonna have two things. Number one is this, you don’t need to lift a tremendously heavy amount of weight in order to make progress, you just… Just even starting off with your body weight is plenty. Doing 2-3 exercises a day is going to be great several times a week, just as the starting point.

0:58:37.4 Jordan Syatt: So you don’t need to be lifting hundreds of pounds on a barbell in order to make progress, and even if you’re just doing body weight squats or hands elevated pushups or planks. Just things to start out with, you can make really, really amazing progress and you are doing something even if you can’t see it within the first week, two weeks, three weeks, one month. And the other thing that I would say is, it honestly doesn’t matter that you don’t like it, because you still have to do it, like that’s… It doesn’t matter. And I think a lot of coaches go towards, well, find what you love, find what you love, find type of exercise you love, I think that that is a very overrated and overused phrase in this. And it also shows me that you haven’t worked with that many people, ’cause some people will never like any form of exercise no matter what, and it doesn’t change the fact that they still need to exercise. No matter what, and this is a very overused phrase as well, but you’re gonna suffer no matter what, you’re either going to suffer through your workouts several times a week and hate every minute of it, but be healthier because of it, or you’re not going to get those workouts in and you’re gonna suffer on the back end.

0:59:53.9 Jordan Syatt: You’re gonna have a terrible quality of life, you’re not gonna be able to live as long as you want, you’re not gonna be able to do the things that you want. You’re not gonna be able to participate in things because you didn’t put the… That you didn’t suffer through those workouts. So I would say both of those things are equally important to understand.

1:00:09.8 Mike Vacanti: Man, clip that YouTube clip, if we can get that in a reel, let’s go. Crushed. Great advice.

1:00:17.4 Jordan Syatt: What’s your.

1:00:18.2 Mike Vacanti: My answer stinks, my answer stinks. [chuckle] I didn’t actually have a question, I just had something, I just had a thought and I tried to make a question around it. One of the many things that I would tell people, and this is actually, you talked about the different groups of people, this is more towards someone who has been lifting for a little while, probably does enjoy it, is going consistently, but isn’t getting the most out of their workouts for a specific reason, which is they care so much about what other people are thinking of their lift, and this is more of a dude thing, but some women as well, and specifically how much weight they are lifting.

1:01:07.1 Mike Vacanti: I see, and maybe it’s small sample size, smaller gym that I’ve been going to recently, but the number of people using too much weight and doing like partial range of motion, half rep, literally third rep, like quarter rep work is astounding to me. And the realization that no one cares how much you’re lifting and the best way to make progress over time and to not get hurt, to optimize muscle and strength gain for better mobility and performance, and function over the long run is to decrease the weight to the point where you can actually perform a full range of motion. Be okay with that, be okay with the fact that you just dropped the weight 40%, get comfortable there, know that no one else cares, and then slowly build from there is gonna pay such massive dividends for you in the long run.

1:02:05.0 Jordan Syatt: Dude, that’s great advice. That’s fucking… I love that, clip that.

1:02:09.8 Mike Vacanti: Clip that. We’re pumping out daily social content, we’re trying to make it happen here on the podcast. We’re keeping the banter weekly uploads 98 in the bag, we’re going to a 1000 perhaps maybe 2000. We’ll see.

1:02:22.7 Jordan Syatt: 5,000.

1:02:24.1 Mike Vacanti: Wow. 5,000, that’s 10 that’s… I can’t even do it right now. That’s like 50 years, 48 more years of pods.

1:02:34.5 Jordan Syatt: Really? All right. Maybe not 5,000.

1:02:36.4 Mike Vacanti: No, let’s do it. Let’s do it.

[laughter]

1:02:40.0 Jordan Syatt: Thanks for listening, and we appreciate it. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a five star review, nothing less than five stars would be wonderful. If you do want to leave less than five stars, just don’t leave one at all, but otherwise just say five stars that would be super helpful.

1:02:56.0 Mike Vacanti: It helps alot.

1:02:57.5 Jordan Syatt: And yeah, it helps a ton. So we appreciate you and we’ll talk to you soon.

1:03:03.0 Mike Vacanti: See you next week.