Episode 106: Deadlifts in Running Shoes, Daily Workouts, 3 Months with No Progress, and More…

0:00:11.6 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:13.3 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on on, Michael?

0:00:15.3 Mike Vacanti: How are you?

0:00:16.3 Jordan Syatt: Good, good. How are you doing?

0:00:19.1 Mike Vacanti: I’m dead, bro.

0:00:20.7 Jordan Syatt: I know, I know. You had a long night?

0:00:20.8 Mike Vacanti: Saturday night work session. Did I tell you that we’re going to Florida on Monday?

0:00:24.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. ‘Cause your family is going, right?

0:00:27.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Little family trip. So working ahead. And the Vikings play today in their playoff game, so.

0:00:34.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh wow. It’s the playoffs?

0:00:36.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:00:36.8 Jordan Syatt: Who are they playing?

0:00:39.8 Mike Vacanti: The New York football Giants.

0:00:40.7 Jordan Syatt: Wait, didn’t you say you wanted to be off by noon that you could just hang out and watch football today?

0:00:45.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but then Gary’s workout got pushed a little bit and…

0:00:48.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. Forgot. Okay. Alright, cool.

0:00:51.6 Mike Vacanti: The Vikes aren’t on ’til 03:30.

0:00:53.6 Jordan Syatt: That’s the most important game. Vikings versus the Green Bay Packers, you say? Or New York Jets?

0:00:58.1 Mike Vacanti: The New York Giants.

0:01:00.8 Jordan Syatt: New York Giants. New York Giants, got it.

0:01:02.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, the Packers aren’t in the playoffs.

0:01:02.9 Jordan Syatt: The Jets not in playoffs, or no?

0:01:04.1 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:01:05.6 Jordan Syatt: The Packers aren’t in the playoffs, nor the Jets?

0:01:07.4 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:01:10.3 Jordan Syatt: Didn’t the Packers win the first ever Super Bowl?

0:01:12.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, they did.

0:01:14.4 Jordan Syatt: You like that?

[chuckle]

0:01:17.1 Jordan Syatt: You like that piece of knowledge right there?

0:01:18.7 Mike Vacanti: Piece of trivia.

0:01:19.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah.

0:01:20.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we’ll see what happens. We’re on delay here. I don’t feel amazing about the game, but we’ll see.

0:01:26.1 Jordan Syatt: We’re on delay?

0:01:29.0 Mike Vacanti: Well, we try and make the topics as evergreen as possible because this isn’t gonna get uploaded for nine days, so we’ll be a week and a half ahead in… This game is not relevant, it’s not like a quick turnaround, which is why we’re not talking about current events or things that are timely.

0:01:47.4 Jordan Syatt: We could do that. Nine delay ain’t bad. These are long-form seeable content, it could last forever.

0:01:55.8 Mike Vacanti: Oh absolutely, but that’s… Rather than focus on the hype cycle of the news, and that’s just not something we’re interested in talking about, but…

0:02:03.5 Jordan Syatt: I feel you. We’re not hype cycle news people.

0:02:07.2 Mike Vacanti: No, that’s not us. How you doing?

0:02:07.8 Jordan Syatt: Good, bro. Just chilling, hanging out. Baby is doing well.

0:02:12.7 Mike Vacanti: You fasted?

0:02:13.8 Jordan Syatt: No, I just broke the fast, just broke the fast. Had a big bowl of…

0:02:18.7 Mike Vacanti: “Broke the fast” AKA “I ate breakfast.”

[laughter]

0:02:24.7 Jordan Syatt: Just had a big bowl of, what’s it called? Bran Buds with some Greek yogurt. Got that fiber, got that protein.

0:02:31.4 Mike Vacanti: I love that. What a great start.

0:02:33.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s my breakfast now, is the Bran Buds with Greek yogurt. Every day.

0:02:37.7 Mike Vacanti: What kind of Greek yogurt?

0:02:39.2 Jordan Syatt: Dude, it’s interesting you asked that ’cause we’ve been getting a new kind.

0:02:45.3 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:02:46.1 Jordan Syatt: I see that smirk.

0:02:48.2 Mike Vacanti: “It’s interesting you ask that.”

0:02:49.3 Jordan Syatt: “It’s interesting you asked that, Michael, about my Greek yogurt.” So I’ve always been a fan of Fage, the F-A-G-E, and I still love it. And I was always not a huge fan of Oikos, I just felt like Oikos was not nearly as delicious as Fage.

0:03:04.5 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:03:06.0 Jordan Syatt: Oikos… So wife started buying this new kind, and I didn’t even realize it was Oikos until this guy DM-ed me and said, “Hey, what do you think of these?” And I was like, “Oh, it looks similar to what I have.” And I looked in the fridge and it was the same one that I have, and it’s an Oikos brand, it’s this new Oikos Pro or something like that.

0:03:26.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s like, let me… Let me google this. I feel like Jamie on Rogan. “Oikos Pro” is that what it’s called? Oikos Pro? Yeah, Oikos Pro, 20 grams of protein, or sometimes up to 23 grams of protein in one small little cup serving. It’s like 100 calories or something.

0:03:45.4 Mike Vacanti: What?!

0:03:45.4 Jordan Syatt: But when I tell you this shit is delicious, it’s, dude this is unbelievable. Maybe it’s like 130 calories. So it’s not bad at all. And it’s delicious, the flavor is amazing, and I just mix that with my Bran Buds every day.

0:04:00.1 Mike Vacanti: So what is it? Like 23 protein, like 12 or 14 carb, and two and a half fat? And then a little bit of artificial sweetener probably.

0:04:08.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, something like that. Yeah, some of them are 20 grams of protein, some of them are 23 grams of protein, depending on which one you’re getting, but yeah.

0:04:16.5 Mike Vacanti: Great.

0:04:17.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I’ve been blown away with how tasty this is. ‘Cause Oikos historically was nowhere near where Fage was, but now I’m more of an Oikos boy. You know what I mean?

0:04:30.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Chobani. Chobani’s solid. Although the macros aren’t incredible, it’s only like 11 or 12 protein per single serving.

0:04:37.9 Jordan Syatt: For me it was always like Fage is the top tier, then Oikos, and then Chobani.

0:04:43.2 Mike Vacanti: Oh, no, the top tier is… What’s it called? Nousnous?

0:04:48.2 Jordan Syatt: Nousnous? Hang on. Oh wait, you mean Skyr? S-K-Y-R.

0:04:55.3 Mike Vacanti: Maybe it is Oikos…

0:04:58.7 Jordan Syatt: S-K-Y-R is really good.

0:04:58.9 Mike Vacanti: Oh, we have these in our fridge too, we have Oikos as well.

0:05:02.7 Jordan Syatt: Dude? How cra… You and I have the same yogurts in our fridge, we didn’t even realize it.

0:05:07.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:05:08.1 Jordan Syatt: Hey, you got Skyr? I don’t know how to pronounce it. Skyr yogurt.

0:05:12.0 Mike Vacanti: Probably.

0:05:13.3 Jordan Syatt: Is really good too, actually. I used to get this when I lived in New York. Oh, it’s Siggi’s, Siggi’s. Yeah I used to get Siggi’s in New York all the time. It’s what I would get at the airport.

0:05:20.2 Mike Vacanti: You know what? This might translate super well into one of the few things I have on the docket for today, and then we can go back into P-ing and talking about whatever. How would you respond, and we’re just talking about high protein Greek yogurt, so there may be a tie-in, how would you respond to someone who walked up to you on the street and said… Or anywhere, DM-ed you, whatever. Emailed.

0:05:44.2 Jordan Syatt: Did you say DMV?

0:05:46.5 Mike Vacanti: DM-ed you.

0:05:47.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, DM. [chuckle] Or the DMV.

0:05:49.4 Mike Vacanti: Or the DMV. Either one.

[laughter]

0:05:52.4 Mike Vacanti: And said, “Hi, I’m trying to lose fat. I’ve tried everything. It just doesn’t work. Also, I hate meat. Eww. Just don’t like it. What should I do?”

0:06:03.4 Jordan Syatt: First, I’d say don’t yuck my yum. I’m a big fan of meat so don’t say, “Eww.” Wait, what would I say to this person who’s saying, “I’ve tried everything”? Obviously the first thing I’d tell them is to start doing cold baths, ice baths would be the number one recommendation.

0:06:18.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, every day.

[laughter]

0:06:21.1 Jordan Syatt: The number one thing I would tell them to do is, I’d say, start tracking your calories.

0:06:27.5 Mike Vacanti: And I guess with the hyper-focus on, “And I just don’t like meat, eww.” So almost this…

0:06:37.6 Jordan Syatt: I don’t even like that person.

0:06:41.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s like a kind of vegan, but not for any reason other than I don’t like the taste of meat, and there’s not a lot of fruits and vegetables, it’s just a lot of processed low protein items.

0:06:57.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, high carb. High carb, moderate fat, low protein.

0:06:58.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. But then there’s an element of complete unwillingness to just eat the paper on any kind of protein source.

0:07:06.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:07:07.6 Mike Vacanti: How do you approach that?

0:07:09.9 Jordan Syatt: Man, I mean, there’s so many issues here. I can’t get over the “eww”. I hate when people say that about food. It’s just really annoying. Like, “Eww.” What? So that’s number one.

0:07:20.3 Mike Vacanti: You start with that. You’re like, “Hey.”

0:07:22.3 Jordan Syatt: Number one, I’m in a bad mood ’cause I’m in the DMV. I’m already in a bad mood. Number two, this random woman walks up to me for no reason and she says, “I can’t lose weight, and I don’t like meat, eww.” So now I’m in double bad mood.

0:07:33.2 Mike Vacanti: Could have been a man, by the way. I don’t know why that kind of…

0:07:37.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I thought you said a woman.

0:07:38.1 Mike Vacanti: No, just said “person”, Jordan.

0:07:39.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh wow.

[laughter]

0:07:44.9 Mike Vacanti: This type of person is more commonly female, I completely agree. I just…

0:07:48.5 Jordan Syatt: I guess in my mind when you said, :”I don’t like meat, eww,” I input woman there. ‘Cause of the “eww”. I don’t really hear as many men saying “eww”. But they do exist.

0:07:58.7 Mike Vacanti: No, I would agree. I think you’re right.

0:08:00.9 Jordan Syatt: Anyway.

0:08:02.1 Mike Vacanti: And of the number of times I’ve had this conversation, I think they were almost exclusively with women.

0:08:09.2 Jordan Syatt: Anyway, aside from my inner misogynist, which is…

[chuckle]

0:08:14.0 Jordan Syatt: Clearly coming out. Dude, I mean, I would ask, “Why don’t you like meat?” And usually from there comes a story like, I don’t know, “I just don’t know how to cook it,” or whatever it is. If someone doesn’t like meat and they’re not vegan or vegetarian, odds are they’re just not cooking it properly, and they’ve never taken the time.

0:08:35.2 Jordan Syatt: If you’re having dry chicken breast all the time… I remember Martin Berkhan writing an article so long ago, how it’s the most filling, like super dry chicken breast, and I used to eat that just ’cause I thought it’d be easier to stay lean all the time, which it was, but it’s not enjoyable.

0:08:50.2 Jordan Syatt: But learning how to prepare a great chicken breast or a steak. Or if you don’t wanna eat meat, don’t eat meat, I don’t care. I mean eggs, great. Eggs are probably one of the best sources of protein of all time. Super easy to make. Any type of dairy, whether it’s cottage cheese, Greek yogurt like we were talking about.

0:09:11.2 Jordan Syatt: Fish, there’s so many great options with fish. Tofu, seitan, any of that stuff you wanna have with that. But yeah, the number one thing I would say is to track your calories, and then from there if you wanna learn how to cook better meat, then that’d be a really good idea. But you don’t need to eat meat, but you don’t have to. It’s so convenient.

0:09:30.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you don’t have to, but it does make the process so much easier. And when this person doesn’t have a real reason not to be eating, meaning there’s no moral claim around veganism and there’s no like, “I think it’s unhealthy to eat meat,” they’re not even saying that, they’re just saying like, “I don’t really like it.”

0:09:52.1 Mike Vacanti: Even a well-prepared, like a perfectly prepared chicken breast, and Oreo beats that 100 times out of a 100 from a taste perspective. So it’s not even like… It’s like, “Oh, you don’t like meat? Okay, let’s find a way to like it a little bit more and let’s do something that we don’t like sometimes, because you say you want this result and you’ve tried everything and nothing works. Okay, then you’re gonna have to… “

0:10:19.7 Mike Vacanti: Now, like you just said, there are other options. It’s harder, but there are other options. But similar to the clip, Clips Nation, that you had about coaches saying, “Just find a form of fitness that you enjoy and do that,” and how that’s overrated and sometimes you need to do something, whether it’s strength training, whether it’s zone 2 cardio, there are things you need to be doing just because they’re good for you, whether or not you enjoy it.

0:10:44.5 Mike Vacanti: Same thing goes here, like sometimes you do things that you don’t really love, that aren’t your favorite thing because you want the end result.

0:10:53.9 Jordan Syatt: Preaching. Clips Nation.

0:10:56.0 Mike Vacanti: Clips Nation. 106, weekly uploads.

0:11:00.9 Jordan Syatt: Wow.

0:11:01.5 Mike Vacanti: Anyway, that was just a very specific avatar of a person. I can’t think of a better word than “avatar”. I hate that word. ‘Cause it makes me think of a…

[overlapping conversation]

0:11:13.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah.

0:11:14.1 Jordan Syatt: “Make your perfect avatar.”

0:11:16.7 Mike Vacanti: Speaking of sales, when is this episode going live? 17th… 24th. So today is January 24th. When it is uploaded. And when’s our sale? February.

0:11:28.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, in February we’re having a huge sale. What percentage off? Is it 30% off, is that we’re gonna do?

0:11:35.2 Mike Vacanti: $300 off.

0:11:35.4 Jordan Syatt: $300 off? $300 off to join the Online Fitness Business Mentorship starting in February. We’re gonna have a big launch. If you’re not on our email list already, go to the link in the show notes, get on our email list, we will email you out when the sale goes live. Bt man, I don’t even know what to say other than $300 off joining our mentorship if you are not in there yet.

0:12:04.7 Jordan Syatt: If you’re already in there, we love you, thank you so much. It’s been an incredible few years already, and can’t wait for more. If you have been in there previously and you’re thinking about rejoining, here’s a good opportunity, we would love to have you back. And if you’ve never been in there, well, you’re missing out. [chuckle] It’s a big thing to be missing out on. And $300 off the online fitness business mentorship coming in February 2023. Big sale. Sign up for the email list.

0:12:36.8 Mike Vacanti: As soon as one week from now, probably about two weeks. So like Jordan said, email list. We’ll be talking about here on the podcast. But what else you got?

0:12:47.0 Jordan Syatt: I’m trying to think, what else do I have going on? Dude, not much, man.

0:12:52.6 Mike Vacanti: Baby’s good?

0:12:54.9 Jordan Syatt: Thank God, Baruch Hashem.

0:12:57.0 Jordan Syatt: She’s good. Baruch Hashem, she’s doing great.

0:13:00.2 Mike Vacanti: Baruch Hashem.

0:13:01.7 Jordan Syatt: She’s… Yeah, so “Baruch”.

0:13:05.2 Mike Vacanti: Baruch.

0:13:06.9 Jordan Syatt: Nice, that was good. “Baruch Hashem.” “Thank God.”

0:13:10.9 Mike Vacanti: Baruch Hashem.

0:13:11.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah.

0:13:11.7 Mike Vacanti: It means “Thank God”?

0:13:13.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:13:13.8 Mike Vacanti: I like that.

0:13:14.8 Jordan Syatt: It literally translates to, “Bless the Name,” but yeah, it essentially means “Thank God”. So yeah, man, baby’s doing great, she’s really good. Wife is doing well. We’re still… We’re looking for property for houses right now, trying to figure that whole thing out, which is intense to say the least.

0:13:40.8 Mike Vacanti: Do you wanna talk about that? Or not so much?

0:13:44.4 Jordan Syatt: Dude, if you’re interested in talking about it, I’ll absolutely talk about it.

0:13:47.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m actually more interested in where the line is from a privacy perspective, and where people draw that line with online content.

0:14:00.9 Jordan Syatt: You can ask anything, and if I’m not cool with it, then I’ll just say like, “Hey, let’s not talk about it.”

0:14:04.6 Mike Vacanti: You’re building?

0:14:05.9 Jordan Syatt: Yes. We’re gonna build a house. Yeah, yeah, that’s exciting. It’s exciting. It’s gonna be stressful. I know for sure. So there’s an architect that I met at jiu-jitsu, he’s a black belt. He has his own architectural company for 30 years with his twin brother. And so he’s gonna build our house.

0:14:28.7 Jordan Syatt: We just put a deposit down on a lot, to hold the lot, so we have the lot held for one month. So apparently this is called “under option”, which means for one month no one else can buy it, and we have the ability to say either, “Alright, cool, we’re gonna actually buy this lot.” Or, “Never mind,” and then they’ll…

0:14:51.7 Jordan Syatt: We put down X amount and Y of that is non-refundable, so basically at the end of the month or within the next month, we’ll decide do we want this lot or not, which candidly, we very much want this lot. Absolutely. So we’re going through…

0:15:08.8 Mike Vacanti: How much is… Not in dollar terms, but what percent of what you put down would you lose if you didn’t go through with it?

0:15:16.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s a very small amount. Very small.

0:15:19.0 Mike Vacanti: So it’s a mostly refundable deposit?

0:15:22.6 Jordan Syatt: You know I’m not good at math, so I don’t even know percentages, but a super small percentage. And the amount that we put down was not a lot either. The total amount of money that we put down was… So the total amount that we put down was 5% of the lot, so it was 5% of the lot and then even a minuscule percentage of that was non-refundable.

0:15:44.1 Mike Vacanti: I see, cool. And you’re probably gonna buy it?

0:15:48.2 Jordan Syatt: So basically, we’re going through the loan process now, and we actually just filled out the loan application this morning, so figuring that whole thing out. They’re gonna have to go through credit scores and financials and all of that stuff. But getting all that taken care of, hopefully that will be done within the next week or so.

0:16:08.7 Jordan Syatt: I don’t really know timelines for this stuff, but hopefully that’ll be done within the next week or so, and then we can finalize the sale of the lot. And then based… This is in a subdivision, there’s 11 other lots in the subdivision, and it’s in an HOA, which is like there’s some good. There’s some bad to it.

0:16:32.2 Jordan Syatt: One thing the HOA said is, they have these rules like, “Hey, so from a year from when you buy the lot, you have to have a shovel in the ground.” Building has to start within one year from when the sale is finalized, and it has to be finished within two years from the finalized sale. So they want it to be done within two years.

0:16:58.5 Jordan Syatt: And they said there is wiggle room, da, da, da, da, da, but there is a clause in there, they’re like, if it’s not happening and you’re not communicating with them, they can buy the lot back from you within however much time. So there’s a lot… We’re trying to move this pretty quickly.

0:17:16.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you’re not buying a lot and then you’re not gonna build on it.

0:17:19.3 Jordan Syatt: No. No, no, no. This is a residental, like we wanna build a house. But the actual building of a house is like, you and I have spoken about before, every single detail has to be chosen. And it’s funny, I’m talking with my wife, she’s like, “I want this and I want that,” and I was like, “Okay. Well, would you like this or that?”

0:17:40.2 Jordan Syatt: Like for example, “do you want really nice door knobs or would you prefer to have, I don’t know, an extra bathroom?” type of thing. And it’s like, okay, so we’re trying to come up with concessions like, “Hey, maybe the door knobs aren’t really that important, and we don’t need really high quality doorknobs.” [chuckle] I would rather have a nice bathroom or whatever it is. So it’s, all these things are gonna be pretty intense.

0:18:07.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, a lot of decisions. A lot of micro-decisions.

0:18:11.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, which I’m not good with. I’m not good with micro-decisions. And the budget is a hard budget. A lot of people are like, “Yeah, you’re gonna go… ” No, no, no. We made our budget. That is the budget. There is no like, “Oh, well maybe we could… ” No. This is the budget.

0:18:30.6 Jordan Syatt: I’ve been very clear that with the architect, and my wife and I are on the same page. There is no like, “Oh, well maybe we can just go over… ” I know Maxx Chewning did a whole YouTube series on his YouTube about with his house and their renovations and how he went hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget, which I know is super common. I’m like, “No. Absolutely not… ” And who knows, maybe I’ll eat my words, but this is a hard like…

0:18:52.8 Jordan Syatt: I’m not giving myself that opportunity. It’s like this is a hard, “Absolutely the fuck not. This is the budget. Get it done in this budget. That’s it.” So pretty serious about that.

0:19:05.8 Mike Vacanti: Nice. Did you… You just came with that number?

0:19:07.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:19:09.7 Mike Vacanti: Rather than like a, “Hey, we’re leaving at 05:30,” but I’m gonna say we’re leaving at 10 after 05:00, just so we can definitely be out the door about 05:30?

0:19:16.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. My wife and I sat down, it came up like, “Okay, this is the number that’s the absolute most that we are willing to spend.” And I told the architect, I was like, “This is it. You cannot go over this. This is all we’re asking for from the loan. This is it, there’s not a penny more that you can spend.” So very, very, just made it really abundantly clear.

0:19:39.9 Mike Vacanti: And probably two years before you’re living in there?

0:19:42.0 Jordan Syatt: At least, I think. Yeah at least two years.

0:19:45.4 Mike Vacanti: We’ll still have some more good memories in the Dallas gym.

0:19:48.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah. Would you ever build a house?

0:19:53.5 Mike Vacanti: Not any time soon. That does not sound enjoyable to me.

[chuckle]

0:20:01.0 Jordan Syatt: Well, just ’cause all the responsibilities that you already have as a homeowner?

0:20:06.5 Mike Vacanti: Well, yeah, I don’t… We have no interest in selling this house any time soon, and so…

0:20:12.1 Jordan Syatt: What about within 10 years?

0:20:16.3 S9: Maybe. We’ll see.

0:20:16.9 Jordan Syatt: Is this house the one you wanna stay in forever?

0:20:21.1 Mike Vacanti: Any time I’ve tried to make extended plans in life, something has changed, so I can’t really lock in that far in advance.

0:20:29.6 Jordan Syatt: You’re such an ISTJ, you can’t even play this imaginary game. It’s just… [chuckle]

0:20:33.2 Mike Vacanti: Well, probably not. Probably not forever. Probably not forever. But we’ll see, we’ll see.

0:20:42.2 Jordan Syatt: We’ll play it by ear.

0:20:42.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. The thought of building is really cool because you have exactly what you want, but a lot of work and… Yeah, we’ll see.

0:20:53.0 Jordan Syatt: I’m just excited for this gym. I’m gonna build a whole separate gym that… And that whole thing is a tax write-off.

0:21:00.7 Mike Vacanti: Bro, I already know what your housewarming gift is gonna be.

0:21:06.2 Jordan Syatt: You already got me an Iron Neck.

0:21:08.0 Mike Vacanti: No, no, this is two years away. It’s gonna be sick.

0:21:12.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh, okay.

0:21:13.1 Mike Vacanti: It’s actually not gonna be that sick, but it’s gonna be funny. [chuckle]

0:21:14.1 Jordan Syatt: Is it a piece of gym equipment?

0:21:16.1 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.

0:21:18.2 Jordan Syatt: Like a big piece of gym equipment?

0:21:19.4 Mike Vacanti: You’ll see in two years.

0:21:20.6 Mike Vacanti: Give me some hints.

0:21:22.9 Mike Vacanti: You wanna ruin the surprise right now, two years early?

0:21:25.1 Jordan Syatt: I mean, I’m okay with it.

0:21:27.3 Mike Vacanti: We had a hilarious moment around this piece of gym equipment in June of 2016 out east.

0:21:37.4 Jordan Syatt: A leg press?

0:21:38.6 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:21:40.5 Jordan Syatt: Shit…

0:21:43.1 Mike Vacanti: You’ll have to wait and see.

0:21:45.2 Jordan Syatt: Was it a glute-ham raise?

0:21:46.5 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:21:48.1 Jordan Syatt: Alright, we’ll figure it out. Thank you in advance.

[laughter]

0:21:54.5 Jordan Syatt: I don’t want it to be that adductor good girl/bad girl machine.

0:21:54.5 Mike Vacanti: No, no, you’re thinking too… It’s a piece of… It goes in the gym, it’s not necessarily like a machine.

0:22:00.1 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:22:00.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s very uncommon.

0:22:03.5 Jordan Syatt: A sauna?

0:22:03.8 Mike Vacanti: No. No, it’s… [chuckle] You’re like, “I’m getting something sweet.” It’s not that cool.

0:22:07.6 Jordan Syatt: I’m getting a sauna. Oh man. [chuckle]

0:22:11.0 Mike Vacanti: “Am I getting a cold plunge?” No.

[laughter]

0:22:16.4 Jordan Syatt: Okay, alright. What else we got for today, Michael?

0:22:22.3 Mike Vacanti: Let’s take a look and see. By the way, my official Vikings prediction is that we either lose today and that’s it.

0:22:30.9 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:22:31.2 Mike Vacanti: And we’re favored in this game, we should be this team. But I think we either lose today and it’s very, very disappointing and disheartening. Or we win today and we win the Super Bowl. And we go upset San Francisco on the road, we go beat the Eagles in Philadelphia, and then we go to Arizona and beat up on Josh Allen and the Bills and win 45-10 and just like first ever Vikings Super Bowl. And everyone goes nuts. That’s my official prediction. Or we lose today.

0:23:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Got it. What is it more leaning towards losing today or more leaning towards winning the Super Bowl?

0:23:06.2 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know. The Minnesota Vikings are… Bill Simmons wrote at an article for ESPN back in… It’s probably been about 10 years. But it was a very comprehensive analysis of all of the major league sports teams, like all franchises of all sports, and he ranked the most tortured franchises of all time. I don’t remember if the Vikings were number one or number two as the most tortured of that time.

0:23:32.9 Jordan Syatt: Really?

0:23:33.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And his criteria were like, it has to be in a cold weather state, ’cause that just sucks. You have to have many times where you had massive amounts of hope and like you thought you were about to win a championship, and then the rug gets pulled out from under you.

0:23:49.3 Jordan Syatt: Ugh.

0:23:49.8 Mike Vacanti: You can’t have ever won a championship.

0:23:53.2 Jordan Syatt: Got it, got it.

0:23:54.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s a good article, actually. It’s pretty entertaining. So Vikings fans stay pretty guarded, so I’m not letting myself get too excited.

0:24:02.6 Jordan Syatt: That makes sense.

0:24:04.5 Mike Vacanti: Even though it’s been an insane season.

0:24:07.3 Jordan Syatt: I forget who it was, do you remember the guy in politics, he was like, “And we’re going to Ohio and we’re going to Minnesota, and we’re going… ” [chuckle]

0:24:15.8 Mike Vacanti: Libertarian dude, right? And that ended his campaign right then.

0:24:19.8 Jordan Syatt: That ended his own campaign. [chuckle] That’s what I was thinking as you’re like, “And we’re gonna go to Arizona and we’re gonna beat them. And we’re gonna get Philadelphia and we’re gonna beat them.” I was just like, “Oh my God, this is like the flash back from that guy.” That was so fun.

0:24:32.0 Mike Vacanti: I just remember seeing it… I remember seeing it in hindsight. I didn’t… I wasn’t following while it was happening.

0:24:39.5 Jordan Syatt: I didn’t understand why that ended his career?

0:24:42.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I don’t either.

0:24:43.3 Mike Vacanti: I think it was… I don’t get… People were like, “God, he looked crazy.”

0:24:46.9 Jordan Syatt: I was like, I don’t know, he just looked really fired up about it.

0:24:50.7 Mike Vacanti: Politics were different back then. It was more buttoned up. Now it’s the wild, wild, West.

[laughter]

0:24:54.3 Mike Vacanti: Speaking of which, I haven’t been going on Twitter for a solid number of days, potentially weeks.

0:25:04.3 Jordan Syatt: Okay, that’s good.

0:25:06.0 Mike Vacanti: And went on this morning for the first time, and within nine seconds I was somehow in a thread about how on 9/11 a plane never hit the Pentagon.

0:25:18.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh my God.

0:25:19.8 Mike Vacanti: And there were people showing videos and gifs and trying to… Literally, it was in my recommended hashtag, and then I clicked one more click and I was like, “What am I… ” And immediately I was like, “Alright, get me off of this.” I just wanted to see if Harrison Smith was on the injury report for today, or if he was playing. The the next thing I know… this.

[chuckle]

0:25:38.7 Jordan Syatt: Dude, what about that amazing, miraculous recovery from Damar Hamlin?

0:25:42.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:25:43.9 Jordan Syatt: How incredible is that?

0:25:46.2 Mike Vacanti: Unbelievable.

0:25:46.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh my God, that was… I was in the gym, I was doing cardio, and I watched that hit happen and I couldn’t believe it. I was convinced that he was gone, based on how long it was taking them to give out information on him and everything.

0:26:01.3 Mike Vacanti: And how long they were doing CPR for.

0:26:03.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, eight minutes of CPR. Oh man, those athletic trainers, God bless them. Wow. Eight minutes of CPR is no joke. That is exhausting. And I’m speaking as though I’ve done it, I’ve never done that before. But eight minutes of that continuous. And it’s not easy, it’s not like an easy push, it’s a pretty hard push to do that.

0:26:26.5 Jordan Syatt: And you’re essentially acting as that person’s heart, to continue to shuttle blood throughout their entire body for eight minutes straight. That’s unbelievable.

0:26:35.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Really, really, scary. And thank God that he’s doing well now. I was refreshing constantly in the 48 hours after that.

0:26:47.9 Jordan Syatt: And he raised over $7 million.

[overlapping conversation]

0:26:54.5 Jordan Syatt: Dude, that was insane. That was like, man, that shows the goodness of the world and social media and all this stuff. That’s incredible.

0:27:04.4 Mike Vacanti: When you were training clients in person, at the end of a workout, would you manually stretch them?

0:27:11.3 Jordan Syatt: Never. I shouldn’t say never. There was literally, there was one time, I’m trying to remember how old I was. There’s a chance I was in high school when I did this. ‘Cause I was at… I think I might have been in high school when an adult in my town asked me to train them at their country club.

0:27:32.3 Jordan Syatt: So I would go to their country club and train them, and they would have me… They would really ask me, “Hey, could you stretch me out?” And I was like, “If you want. Sure.” But I was a teenager and I just, I wasn’t gonna say no to an adult. But otherwise no, I never manually stretch them out. I let them stretch themselves out.

0:27:57.1 Mike Vacanti: Either that or like if you have a flexibility goal, great, but we don’t need to do… I feel like we wrote something funny in the book about cool downs, something along the lines of like, “Neither Jordan nor Mike have ever done a cool down in their life, nor have they ever prescribed them for a client, not even once.” [chuckle]

0:28:17.4 Jordan Syatt: Ever. Ever.

0:28:19.4 Mike Vacanti: I think it’s this like, having an in-person personal trainer is a luxury for most people, and I think it’s like this… Almost like a massage is like this indulgent kind of thing, like being there and having them stretch you at the end of the workout is something that people enjoy, they enjoy the feeling of that.

0:28:40.3 Mike Vacanti: But in my mind, and I was coaching Gary in person a few days ago, and one of the coaches after, there were probably four of us in the gym, all working with our clients, and at the end of one of their workouts, he was stretching them out and put the towel on his ankle and was doing the lying down single leg hamstring stretch, and just like all the normal stuff.

0:29:00.2 Mike Vacanti: And in my mind I was thinking… ‘Cause I saw Gary glance over at him, I was just like, “No,” and in my mind, I was like… It’s like a Game theory problem, it’s like all coaches need to band together and just not do that, and then no one’s gonna ask for it.

0:29:13.6 Jordan Syatt: Did Gary look at you like, “Hey, can you do that to me?”

0:29:16.1 Mike Vacanti: No, he didn’t, but I was afraid that that was about to go in that direction.

[laughter]

0:29:23.9 Mike Vacanti: And I probably… When we first started out, soft tissue work and static stretching are different, right? If he can’t get the softball or something to a spot in his back or he’s got a knot and he wants some myofascial release, cool. In the warm-up, great. But to spend 10 minutes at the end of a lift, for no real purpose, just stretching the person out for them, I feel like all coaches need to band together and just not do that, and then there won’t be as much demand for it from the client side.

0:29:53.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I remember when I interned at Cressey’s they had such a great way about it. They were not manually stretching people like that, they did manual, like self-myofascial release, and there were some manual things that they did, the physical therapists would do, not like the coaches.

0:30:09.6 Jordan Syatt: But they just had a sheet on the wall like, “Hey, here are the post-workout stretches that you can do,” and it was like a hamstring stretch and the hip flexor stretch, and it was just like, “After your workout, feel free to do these on your own, but we’re not doing this shit for you.” I think that’s the best thing to do.

0:30:28.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s what we have, that’s what I did as a coach, whether it was online or the membership in the Inner Circle, whatever, “Hey, here’s the shit that you can do on your own, but there’s no need to have someone put their hands on you and do this for you.” It’s ridiculous.

0:30:44.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah.

0:30:45.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:30:45.8 Mike Vacanti: Should we Q&A it?

0:30:49.0 Jordan Syatt: We can Q&A it. I’m trying to think, was it… Oh, someone DM-ed me yesterday… Or no, she didn’t DM me, she put my Q&A yesterday. She said… She started off her question with, “I know you hate intermittent fasting, but,” da, da, da, da, da. And I forget. But basically she was saying, “But I really like it.”

0:31:05.0 Jordan Syatt: And so I messaged her and I said, “What makes you think I hate intermittent fasting?” And she was like, “Well, maybe not hate, but you think calorie deficit is better.” And then we had this whole conversation, da, da, da, da, da, and I was like, “But what have I said that makes you think I hate intermittent fasting?”

0:31:23.5 Jordan Syatt: And she was like, “Well, I don’t know.” And I sent her a picture of our book where we have an entire section on there, and she was like, “Oh my God,” and she was like, “I don’t know why that was in my head.” I was like, “I’d really love to know why that was in your head?” She was like, “Maybe I was confusing you with someone else, or I don’t know.”

0:31:41.1 Mike Vacanti: I can tell you why it was in her head.

0:31:42.0 Jordan Syatt: Tell me.

0:31:43.8 Mike Vacanti: You’ve done overrated-underrated posts where you list intermittent fasting as overrated, which for many people would signal that you don’t quite…

0:31:54.1 Jordan Syatt: Which leads to…

0:31:56.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:31:56.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. But that’s not true.

0:31:58.0 Mike Vacanti: No, I agree.

0:32:01.0 Jordan Syatt: “Overrated” doesn’t mean…

0:32:00.9 Mike Vacanti: Dude, it wasn’t even a section…

0:32:01.0 Jordan Syatt: I’m usually pretty good about advising about having nuance as well, like not saying that it’s bad or you shouldn’t do it, but from a perspective of it is overrated in terms of how most people view it.

0:32:11.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, right now, absolutely.

0:32:14.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. 100%

0:32:15.0 Mike Vacanti: In 2004, when everyone thought the thermic effective of food was driven by meal frequency, intermittent fasting was underrated, because we didn’t need to be eating six small meals a day. Now, where people think it’s like this magic potion, increases growth hormone, does whatever it does, improved calorie partitioning, more fat loss with calories being equal.

0:32:40.5 Mike Vacanti: But we have it in a chapter called… I don’t remember the name of the chapter, but it was your toolbox, so there are different tools in the toolbox. And yeah, the majority of the chapter was about intermittent fasting and the styles of intermittent fasting that exist, the ones we like the most, the reasons that we like them and when they make sense.

0:33:01.4 Mike Vacanti: But yeah, that is interesting. Though, no matter how much nuance you bring to a subject, people are going to misinterpret you. That’s just… There are people who followed you for five years who probably couldn’t define a calorie deficit.

0:33:16.7 Jordan Syatt: I never wanna say that phrase again.

[chuckle]

0:33:23.2 Jordan Syatt: Alright, I don’t know if you’re gonna like this one or not, but I’ll give it a shot. Your pec minor okay?

0:33:29.0 Mike Vacanti: Dude, my pec minor. Well, it’s probably pretty tight ’cause I haven’t touched it in a while, or stretched it or sat with proper posture. Yesterday I figured out, ’cause I trained neck for the first time when we were… When I was on a video chat with your daughter and I was training neck. And you were there, wasn’t just me and your five-month-old in the chat together.

[laughter]

0:33:56.7 Mike Vacanti: It was the first time I trained neck directly in, I don’t know, probably two months. And did a decent amount of volume on both flexion and extension, and my neck was so sore… So this was two days ago. Yesterday my neck was so sore. And then I was trying to figure out what exactly it was that was sore.

0:34:14.6 Mike Vacanti: Because I was massaging in here and getting this massive amount of relief and realized that it was my posterior scalene down at the second rib that was really fired up.

0:34:30.4 Jordan Syatt: Wow. Did you do some Google image searching for the muscles there?

0:34:33.8 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely, I did, yeah.

0:34:33.9 Jordan Syatt: I love that.

0:34:34.7 Mike Vacanti: I was like, “What connects at the second rib here?”

0:34:36.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh man, you’re speaking Eric Cressey’s language right now. He loves talking about that stuff. Okay, so here’s a question from Tunk_. She said, “Are scales that show fat percent and muscle weight BS?”

0:34:51.9 Mike Vacanti: So I assume what Tunk_ is asking is, are they accurate? Like is the body percentage and muscle mass amount accurate on those scales? No, it’s not accurate. There’s many ways of estimating body fat, none of them are perfectly accurate, other than autopsy is like the… That’s the only way you can know for sure. And you wouldn’t wanna die to find out, so we’ll just have to go with an estimate.

0:35:22.8 Mike Vacanti: Ether DEXA or someone who’s super competent with calipers are probably the two best methods. What scales use is called the bioelectrical impedance method, and that is not accurate in absolute terms for measuring body fat and lean mass as a byproduct of measuring body fat. Does it mean that the scale is BS? No, absolutely not. Some people like to see that data.

0:35:56.5 Mike Vacanti: I’m sure directionally it’s correct, right? If you’re 220 and 30% body fat and you get down to 190 and 20% body fat, standing on the scale you’re gonna see that, “Oh, my weight went down and the body fat percentage is lower.” So you can use it to track data over time. The relative changes are probably decent.

0:36:22.4 Mike Vacanti: But no, standing on there and the scale says, “Oh, you’re 24% body fat,” does that mean you’re 24% body fat? No. You might be 20% body fat. You might be 28% body fat.

0:36:29.5 Jordan Syatt: Do you recommend or do you like having clients check their body fat percentage?

0:36:33.8 Mike Vacanti: I don’t anymore. Just doesn’t matter. It’s just, it’s so arbitrary. If you love how you look at 13% and you’re thrilled, amazing. Why strive for single-digit when you’re there. Or if you’re… I have seen it lead to more problems than anything beneficial, and in terms of tracking quantitative data, I like waist measurements way more than body fat percentage.

0:37:07.2 Mike Vacanti: There’s a little bit of user error with waste measurements, obviously you’re not hitting the exact same spot every time, you can have some blow, you can pull the tape measure a little too tight, but that’s why over an increased sample size variance goes down. So if you’re only doing it three times, yeah, they might not be that accurate, but if you’re doing it every single week for 26 weeks for half a year, you’re gonna get a good trend line on that data.

0:37:32.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Completely agree with that. It’s been interesting to watch… I’ll start saying, if someone’s body fat is at a dangerous level, then just watching the scale is plenty. They don’t need to also see their body fat, the scale will go down. And if their body fat’s at a dangerous level in terms of it’s too high or too low, the scale is gonna go down if it needs to go down, and it’s gonna go up if it needs to go up, if they’re doing things properly.

0:37:56.9 Jordan Syatt: What’s been interesting about the scale and about body fat watching from my own birds-eye view as a coach, watching clients, it’s difficult enough to get clients to disassociate their self-worth from the scale, but you can do it. Getting them to disassociate their self-worth from their body fat percentage explicitly is far more difficult than that is.

0:38:24.2 Jordan Syatt: Because with the scale you could say, “Listen, there’s so many more things than just your fat. There’s muscle, there’s tendons, there’s ligaments, there’s bones, there’s water, there’s carbs. There’s so many things going on here.” But when they see the body fat percent, that is supposed to be measuring only your body fat percent, and if that randomly goes up one day because of there’s an error on the machine or maybe hydration played a role in the…

0:38:50.2 Jordan Syatt: There are so many things that are potentially cause errors with these machines, it really fucks with them. Because they see that their body fat went up after a week or two of being perfect with their nutrition, and they’re like, “What?” Or it didn’t go down at all. They’re like, “What the hell is going on?” It’s harder to walk that person back from the ledge at that point, because they’re looking at what they deem to believe is truly their body fat percentage.

0:39:13.7 Jordan Syatt: With the weight, because it’s a little bit more ambiguous, you can follow the trend line without them associating that as much to who they are as a person or to every aspect of their progress. With a body fat percentage, you got yourself in a whole different world and it becomes far more difficult, they get way more obsessed with it and more meticulous, and they get more emotional about it. So yeah, fuck tracking the body fat percentage. It’s just not worth it.

0:39:39.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Completely agree. “Neurotic” is another word I would associate with. And that might be correlation, like people who want to be tracking more data might just be a little bit more neurotic. I have a lot of guys who just are like, “Hey, what do you think my body fat percentage is?” because they’re curious.

0:39:57.7 Mike Vacanti: When I was in their position, I was thinking the exact same thing. I didn’t necessarily want to be like X% body fat, but I would be curious like, oh yeah, when I went up to Borge Fagerli at the thing in 2000 whatever because Andy Morgan was sitting at my table and was like, “You’re not single digit body fat.”

0:40:12.5 Mike Vacanti: I was like, “I’m 9% body fat.” I was lean. That might have been the leanest I ever was. I was like, “I’m definitely 9% at the max.” He’s like, “You’re 11, you’re 12.” I’m like, “No.” I was like, “Go ask Borge.”

[laughter]

0:40:25.1 Mike Vacanti: He was like, “Fine.” Guy is eating his meal, he’s sitting with all these OGs in the industry, I’m like, “Borge, what’s my body fat percentage?” He’s like got a chicken sandwich or something in his hand, he just motions for me to lift my shirt up. I lift my shirt up, grabs my lower abs, grabs my obliques.

[laughter]

0:40:40.7 Mike Vacanti: He’s like, “Nine.” I was like, “Yes!”

[laughter]

0:40:47.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh man.

0:40:47.9 Mike Vacanti: But curiosity around it is fine and perfectly normal, but when you’re tracking… When you’re tracking it very consistently, and like you said, have your self-worth tied up in that number, especially when in the short term the measurement of that number is not accurate, that’s a recipe for not good mental health.

0:41:10.8 Mike Vacanti: Not to mention, you go get a DEXA, it says you’re 160, you have 120 pounds of lean mass. You’re 25% body fat. And then you get off, you get out of there and you drink 16 ounces of water and you do another one. It says that instead of 120 pounds of lean mass, you now have 121 pounds of lean mass.

0:41:35.0 Mike Vacanti: Did you just gain a pound of muscle? You’re in advanced training, you can only gain two to three pounds of muscle per year naturally, but somehow you just gained a full pound of muscle in a half hour because you drink 16 ounces of water? No, there are other variables that go into that equation that are more short-term in nature. And so, yeah, I much prefer waist measurements for tracking purposes.

0:42:00.1 Jordan Syatt: I like that. I have a question. Someone asked a similar question in the Q&A, so I’ll just go on and ask a different but similar question. What shoes do you like to wear or your clients to wear when you lift? Or when you work out? And different types of workouts? What are the shoes that you recommend people wear?

0:42:23.9 Mike Vacanti: For upper body days… First of all, I recommend finding a shoe where your feet feel good, your ankles feel good, your knees feel good, for life. For walking around. And I have no sense of fashion, and so I understand that people are willing to take some negative health effect, joint effect for the upside, the fashion of a certain shoe that sub-optimal brings, but I’ve been using the same shoe for the last seven years, the same tennis shoe.

0:42:58.0 Jordan Syatt: Not the same exact, you buy new ones, right?

0:43:00.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I buy the same one, once they…

0:43:03.7 Jordan Syatt: Which one do you buy?

0:43:07.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s a Nike cross-trainer. I believe it’s the Air Pegasus 37.

0:43:12.6 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:43:13.7 Mike Vacanti: 36 or 37 or 38, one of those. But yeah, just the right amount of heel support, it feels really good. And so for upper body strength training, I just wear those. I’m not putting on any special kind of weight lifting shoe. If I’m training core directly, if I’m training upper body, I’m just wearing my normal shoes.

0:43:34.5 Mike Vacanti: If I’m training lower body, I’m usually working out in my socks. Something flat and hard, so something that doesn’t have a soft cushy sole, like my Nikes do, like running shoes do, like most athletic trainers do. Converse, Chuck Taylor. I guess those finger toe shoes are, there’s not a lot underneath them, so if you wanna rock those, that’s better than rocking something with three-quarter inch soft sole.

0:44:11.5 Mike Vacanti: But yeah, the increase in performance and reduction in injury risk that comes from wearing something thin and hard compared to bigger and squishy when you’re training relatively heavy, lower body, makes it a no-brainer. Yeah. I definitely bought squat shoes at one point. Probably my…

0:44:39.2 Jordan Syatt: No way. No way. How did I not know this? Did you buy the Adidas Adipowers?

0:44:49.7 Mike Vacanti: I don’t remember. All I know is…

0:44:52.6 Jordan Syatt: Were they red?

0:44:52.6 Mike Vacanti: All I know is… No, they weren’t red. They were black and white.

0:44:56.9 Jordan Syatt: Were they white? Black and white, okay.

0:44:58.3 Mike Vacanti: All I know is that I…

0:45:00.8 Jordan Syatt: You bought Olympic lifting shoes?

0:45:05.6 Mike Vacanti: Here’s what happened.

0:45:07.4 Jordan Syatt: Stop it. [laughter]

0:45:09.1 Mike Vacanti: I was squatting. Maybe it was even earlier. Maybe it was 2011, I don’t remember. All I know is the first time I ever saw someone elevate their heels on a squat, I was like, “Oh, I’ll try that.” And I did it and I was like, “Oh, this is nice.” And then I realized there were shoes that had that built in, and I was like, “Oh, I’m gonna get those.” And then I had… What does Cressey say? I had a dollar squat and…

0:45:32.7 Jordan Syatt: No, it’s Louie Simmons.

0:45:36.2 Mike Vacanti: Louie Simmons. Yeah. Although I didn’t have a dollar squat at the time. I had…

0:45:40.9 Jordan Syatt: $100 shoes and a 10 cent squat.

0:45:42.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. It was $100 shoes and I don’t know, maybe like a $28 squat.

0:45:47.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s not bad.

0:45:50.4 Mike Vacanti: $18 squat. I don’t know.

0:45:51.8 Jordan Syatt: I just had no idea you bought squat shoes. It’s so funny. I never ever would have guessed that.

0:45:57.7 Mike Vacanti: What kind of shoes do you like for training?

0:46:00.9 Jordan Syatt: Very similar. I will say I recently tried deadlifting in running shoes just to see. Dude, it’s awful.

0:46:07.9 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

0:46:10.0 Jordan Syatt: Deadlifting in running shoes is so bad.

0:46:15.5 Mike Vacanti: The force transfer is not everything you dreamed of.

0:46:15.5 Jordan Syatt: Never mind the… Dude, the balance. My weight is shifting forward and backwards the whole fucking time. I feel like I’m on a see-saw. It’s absolutely terrible.

0:46:28.4 Mike Vacanti: Is that because there’s more cushion on the heel than the toe? Or is that just because of the cushion?

0:46:34.3 Jordan Syatt: I think both. I think there’s more cushion on the heel than toe, and so then as it pitches me forward, I try and fix it, I try and auto-correct and then come back, which then it will pitch me forward ’cause I’m going too far back and it’s a back and forth see-saw.

0:46:50.6 Jordan Syatt: I feel so unstable in my feet. And if I’m going Sumo, it feels like my feet are gonna roll over, I’m gonna roll my ankles, ’cause I’m sort of pressing outwards. If I go conventional, I don’t feel like that, but I do feel like I’m pitching back and forth like crazy. And I felt my feet and my ankle stabilizers burning.

0:47:12.2 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

0:47:13.2 Jordan Syatt: Because I was trying so hard to stabilize in the shoe, it was… I felt it more in the intrinsic muscles of my foot and my ankles than I did anywhere else. And it was only like 225, not heavy for me at all. So I was like, “Man, this shit is awful.” And then I see people trying to do a single-leg RDLs in running shoes and just like lunges in running shoes, and I’m like, “No wonder it’s so difficult, no wonder your knees hurt, no wonder you can’t do this properly.”

0:47:43.9 Jordan Syatt: I know I’ve said it for the years, and a lot of coaches parrot this stuff, but I’m so glad that I actually tried it. Because holy shit, it is terrible to wear running shoes when you’re lifting heavy weights lower body. Never mind heavy weights, it’s just like even light weights lower body is not good.

0:48:01.7 Jordan Syatt: When I train lower body I prefer barefoot just like you, I just, barefoot feels better for me, and I also don’t really like wearing shoes. If I have to for whatever reason, I’ll wear the New Balance Minimus. I think they’re great, they’re hard, flat soles, which are great for lower body strength training.

0:48:22.4 Jordan Syatt: I also often were those on the elliptical. I will not wear those… I will not wear running shoes on the elliptical, and I learned that because running shoes on the elliptical make my feet fall asleep. Because when I’m on the elliptical and I had the big, big, big cushion, my feet will get pins and needles and fall asleep on the elliptical, which I know is a very common issue people have. But when I wear the hard flat soles, I don’t get that issue on the elliptical, so that is super helpful.

0:48:54.6 Jordan Syatt: So for lower body or for upper body, I like to train barefoot. For running, I’ll wear running shoes. And for elliptical or something else, I’ll just were hard flat soles. But if you don’t like going barefoot, then a hard, flat sole is great. I know a lot of people don’t like the Converse All Stars, there’s a huge talk about the toe box and they need a wider toe box for your toes.

0:49:16.0 Jordan Syatt: Which listen, I pulled four times my body weight in Converse All Stars. It doesn’t have a wide toe box and it was fine. I think what’s more important than having a wide toe box when you lift, it’s more important to have a wide toe box in everyday life. Because you’re lifting a couple of times a week for an hour. It’s not a big deal. Find what is comfortable for you.

0:49:35.9 Jordan Syatt: Where the issue is, if you’re shoving your feet into a tiny toe box every single day for 10 hours a day, that’s really what’s causing your shoes to eat your feet, not that a couple of times a week when you’re lifting lower body and you wanna wear Converse All Stars. So I prefer… Yeah, I prefer going barefoot, but I know there’s been a lot of talk about not wearing Converse All Stars when you lift, I’m like, how about we get people out of these tiny toe box shoes when they work and just wear what they want when they lift?

0:50:01.0 Mike Vacanti: Is there a lot of talk of it? Or is it just the people who say that if you don’t have the optimal line of pull then you’re gonna lose muscle during your lift?

0:50:09.1 Jordan Syatt: No, no, there’s a lot of people talking about it. Maybe just like a lot of people in my world that just see it popping up a lot. And I don’t disagree, it’s not like I get mad when I see it, I’m just like, yeah, I think you’re fear-mongering about this. I think it’s more fear-mongering and it’s trying to make content.

0:50:22.4 Jordan Syatt: Like you’re, “I don’t know what to make content about, so I’m gonna make content about this type of thing.” It’s like, yeah, it’s really not that big of a deal. If you wanna talk about toe boxes and the importance of that, let’s talk about what people are wearing every day for work, as opposed to the hour in the gym.

0:50:37.5 Jordan Syatt: And you’re really gonna fear monger about the toe box when they’re doing their deadlifts in their Converse All Stars? Come on. It’s not that big a deal.

0:50:45.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Cool.

0:50:47.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay, so here’s one I’ve changed my stance on over the years. I wanna get your thoughts on it. Brooke Robinson asked, “Is it okay to work out every day, no rest days?” And she added, “When you’re trying to lose weight,” but I just wanna like, is it okay to work out every day, no rest days?

0:51:06.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. But you need to properly regulate intensity and you need a well-designed program, and then yes, you can. And it depends what you mean by “work out”. I assume like if you do low intensity cardio on a day, that’s a workout. If it’s a strength training day, obviously that’s a workout.

0:51:27.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you can work out every day. What you shouldn’t do is do full body workouts, taking sets to failure every single day. No, you shouldn’t do that. You’re gonna see sub-optimal progress by following a program like that. But you can do something every day, absolutely. As long as it’s not maximum intensity all the time.

0:51:50.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s funny, when someone asks, “Can I work out every day?” and they add “to lose weight” that’s the person who shouldn’t be working out every day. But when someone is like, “Hey, you know,” whether it’s improving my health, my blood pressure cholesterol, who knows. Basically anything other than trying to lose weight and they just wanna work out on a very consistent basis and move every day. Amazing, I love that.

0:52:18.1 Jordan Syatt: It’s also, it’s also one of the things that… This will come full circle, I promise. In politics, for people in the head of politics, you want people who are the leaders who actually don’t want to be leaders. You want people who are your president, who are Congressmen, Congresswomen, whatever, who don’t actually want that. They don’t want that responsibility, they don’t crave the power, but they’re there because they need to be there. That’s what you want.

0:52:49.9 Jordan Syatt: The people who I’m okay with working out every day are the people who don’t wanna work out at all, are the people who are like, “Ugh, I… ” You put it in their schedule, it’s something they do every single day, just like brushing their teeth, like showering. That’s the person who I’m actually more okay with working every day.

0:53:04.5 Jordan Syatt: The person who wants to and craves it and has this unhealthy obsession with it, that’s the person needs to temper it a bit and take more rest days. So for the person who’s like, “Can I do this so that I can lose weight more quickly?” No, absolutely not. Like if you wanna walk, go for it. That’s great. But you’re not…

0:53:22.7 Jordan Syatt: Like you said, you’re not having a crazy intense workout, you’re not doing high intensity interval training, you’re not lifting a failure. You can do very low intensity movement every day, but you’re not working out every day. For the person who does not want to work out at all, I’m actually much more okay with programming something every single day.

0:53:37.9 Mike Vacanti: And “can I” and “should I” are slightly different questions too. “Should I work out every day? I really wanna lose weight.” No, you probably shouldn’t. “Can I?” Well, yes, we could design you a program where you can safely and effectively work out every day.

0:53:51.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And really defining what is a workout. Is 10,000 steps a workout? Is zone 2 a workout? Is stretching and mobility a workout?

0:54:03.3 Mike Vacanti: In my mind, yes, definitely a stretching and mobility session and definitely zone 2 cardio. I don’t know if you count like daily step count that just accumulates throughout your day, I probably wouldn’t call that a workout. But setting aside X amount of time to do something fitness-related, I would consider a workout.

0:54:24.3 Jordan Syatt: What about setting aside time to go get 10,000 steps?

0:54:26.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s called cardio. [chuckle] But I wouldn’t if it’s like, “Oh, I parked in the furthest parking spot away and picked up 500 there, and then I later on in the afternoon, while I was on a phone call, I walked around the basement and picked up 2800 there.” No, I don’t consider those workouts.

0:54:44.4 Jordan Syatt: Alright. So someone asked, “What do you do when your coach has had you at a cut for three months with no results?”

0:54:52.9 Mike Vacanti: That’s a great question. We’ll end on this one. I’m running out of steam, we’re an hour in.

[laughter]

0:55:00.1 Mike Vacanti: But I love this question, I like how… I like how it flips the script. So if I’m a client, if I’ve been cutting for three months and I’ve seen no results, and I’m gonna take this person’s word, I’m gonna assume that they’re… ‘Cause the type of person who asks this question is like…

0:55:18.6 Jordan Syatt: They’re not doing it properly, it’s not the coach’s fault.

0:55:20.8 Mike Vacanti: Not only are they not doing it properly, but also they’re, bless his or her heart, there’s a level of social unawareness. So I assume what this… I would ask, I would ask to coach some kind of question before the three-month mark. And when you say “not seen any results” I assume you mean your waist measurements have not changed even a quarter of an inch in three months.

0:55:48.1 Mike Vacanti: The scale has fluctuated in the same range and has not gone down at all in three months. I don’t even know how you get to that point. Really. Without some kind of… Yeah, I’m slightly baffled actually. I think I’m legitimately speechless.

0:56:08.3 Jordan Syatt: I was thinking about it, ’cause it’s not my Q&A, I was thinking about answering it and being like, “Well, first, I would not blame your coach, I would look at your consistency, number one.” But I think the way you framed it first is, “Hey, let’s look at your actual progress, have your measurements gone down at all? Has your weight gone down at all? Has your strength gone up at all? Has your relationship with food improved at all?”

0:56:27.3 Jordan Syatt: Let’s take a look at all markers and let’s see if there’s anything there. If there’s literally nothing, you haven’t made any improvement whatsoever, I say that’s gotta be your fault, not the coach’s fault. Because even a shitty program done consistently is gonna produce some level of result, like something.

0:56:46.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s true. Whether it’s strength or a slight amount of recomp or something. I agree. But if they’re specifically trying to lose fat, the one area where it could be the coach’s fault, is if the coach just has them at maintenance for three months and never adjusts their calories and they are actually nailing it.

0:57:01.1 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:57:01.8 Mike Vacanti: But what’s far more likely 99% of the time is what you said, a consistency issue on the client end.

0:57:12.1 Jordan Syatt: I’ve just never seen… And I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, especially with the rise of more, which I don’t even understand, the coaches who are coaches who are against fat loss, what are you hiring them for then? But I haven’t seen any coach really over-prescribe calories. If anything, I’ve seen coaches going way too low early on, and then that becomes unsustainable.

0:57:37.2 Jordan Syatt: But for someone to be like, “Hey, we have you at maintenance,” that’s gotta be really slow and that’s… I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but that’s pretty rare. Usually it’s the opposite. I’m gonna stand by it, like you know what? Even if your coach does have you in maintenance, unless you’re like…

0:57:58.7 Jordan Syatt: Unless you’re like you Mike, “Alright, cool. I’m gonna literally follow this to the T and do it,” most people, if they change their nutrition and they start eating more fruits and vegetables, they start having more protein, they start getting their steps in, all this stuff, they’re gonna make progress.

0:58:11.1 Jordan Syatt: They’ll probably end up eating fewer calories than they should, or even just fewer calories than they were before and end up losing some weight, I’m saying this is the client’s fault.

0:58:22.4 Mike Vacanti: Well, it’s definitely the client’s fault. I’m just trying to think of what to ask at that three-month mark.

0:58:26.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:58:28.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s… look in the mirror. What it probably is is just lack of skill at tracking/willful blindness, like four or five days a week are in range, and then you don’t think that those two 4000 calorie days are hurting you, but they are.

0:58:48.5 Jordan Syatt: How’s your nutrition been?

0:58:52.7 Mike Vacanti: Not great, not great.

[laughter]

0:58:57.5 Mike Vacanti: Not great. It’s January 15th. The holidays were the holidays, and I haven’t really pulled myself together here in the new year. Something I realized is, this is a really busy time for, even for someone not trying to grow their business, I onboarded more clients for the beginning of January than I had for all of 2022. And in December…

0:59:24.9 Jordan Syatt: You onboarded more clients in January?

0:59:25.3 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no. During any week? During any like…

0:59:28.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I got it. Yeah, yeah. I was like, “holy shit. Been a big couple weeks.” [chuckle]

0:59:36.2 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no. And then, adherence on updates in December is minimal, and then in January it’s through the roof. And so things have been busier, I’m planning on dialing in my nutrition from a food quality point of view here, yeah, like this week.

0:59:55.3 Jordan Syatt: Nice, nice.

0:59:56.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Your nutrition is always dialed.

1:00:00.9 Jordan Syatt: Nutrition’s been good. Alcohol has been too high, so I’m gonna dial that back a little bit.

1:00:05.8 Mike Vacanti: Everyone needs a little something.

1:00:07.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Last night I didn’t drink, which was is good. It’s just been a fun way to sort of wind down at night, but I was like, “I think I need to chill out with the alcohol a little bit,” so I think I’m gonna take a few weeks away.

1:00:21.7 Mike Vacanti: Cool. I like it.

1:00:22.3 Jordan Syatt: Just to rein it in. See how I feel.

1:00:25.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I love that. And compare your computer sleep data too.

1:00:28.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that I need to look at my sleep data. I don’t think it’s been negatively affecting my sleep, to be honest, but we’ll have a look.

1:00:34.6 Mike Vacanti: Go a few weeks without it, and then you have that data and then look back. ‘Cause I remember we did this probably about a year ago at this time. We were looking at that.

1:00:44.7 Jordan Syatt: Maybe make a YouTube about it. Compare that data. “This is when I was drinking. This is when I wasn’t drinking.” That’d be good.

1:00:48.4 Mike Vacanti: That’d be a great YouTube video.

1:00:50.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Everyone listening, take that idea. Make it into Instagram content, YouTube content, podcast content. If you have one of these watches, I have a Garmin, Mike has a Garmin, if you have an Apple Watch, Whoop strap…

1:01:02.8 Mike Vacanti: Whatever.

1:01:03.3 Jordan Syatt: You’ve got so much data you can make content with.

1:01:04.7 Mike Vacanti: Yup. Absolutely.

1:01:07.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s it.

1:01:08.5 Mike Vacanti: Good pod.

1:01:08.5 Jordan Syatt: Thanks for listening.

1:01:10.2 Mike Vacanti: We’ll be back next week. Weekly uploads 2023. Have a great day. We’ll see you soon.

1:01:14.5 Jordan Syatt: See ya.