Episode 109: This is The Most Important Podcast We’ve Ever Published

0:00:12.0 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.9 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael? We got news.

0:00:16.4 Mike Vacanti: Oh, we have news. As of… So today, the day of the release of this podcast, the day the podcast comes out, Tuesday, February 7th, as of Tuesday, February 7th, the Fitness Business Mentorship went on sale. We do two sales per year, this is one of them, and it won’t be on sale very long. It’s $300 off, by the time you hear another episode from us, we will have ended the sale. We don’t know exactly when we’re gonna end it, sometime in the next few days. So if you go to the website, fitnessbusinessmentorship.com, and you see that it’s still on sale, for $300 off, the lowest price that we’re gonna offer the Mentorship ever again, the price will never go below this amount. Sign up and join us.

0:01:01.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s it, that’s why this is the most important podcast that we ever said, this is literally the lowest price the Mentorship will ever be ever again. $300 off, you wanna join by the time our next podcast is published, you’ve missed out on the lowest price it will ever be. Obviously, the main purpose of this podcast is to help coaches and to help people for free, but also obviously is our main lead to get people into the Mentorship, to help, to give you information to help teach you about coaching, help teach you about business, help teach you about social media, help teach you about psychology, systems, all of that stuff. And when you learn that you can trust us, then ideally you join the Mentorship, right? So this is the last time that it will be this price ever in the history of the world, so if you would like to join the Mentorship, if you want to build an online fitness business, if you want to improve your online fitness business, if you’ve been wondering, “Hey, you know what, maybe I should join, maybe I shouldn’t.” If money is tight or if you want to take advantage of a deal, now is the time, if you don’t care about a deal, fine, you can sign up whenever you want, but this is the lowest price it will ever be. And, and that’s it. We would love to have you in there.

0:02:14.0 Jordan Syatt: So the link to join is in the show notes, but just remember, by the time our next podcast comes out next week, it will already be too late to join.

0:02:22.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and just to clarify, and then we’re gonna dive into things, we’re not big sales guys, we don’t pitch too hard, I don’t even really know how to pitch, to be honest, but I’m really feeling it in this moment, so I’m gonna continue to ride with this flow actually, because I think it’s fun and entertaining, when coaches say like, “I’m accepting two clients,” or when they say… Have a sales tactic like, “It closes at 11:59:59 PM tonight, and then no one can join at this price,” except then the next day and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, they don’t change the price and you can continue to join, that isn’t how this works, if you miss this sale and you email us at info@fitnessbusinessmentorship.com, and you say, “Hey, I’m so sorry I missed the sale. Can I still get in?” Expecting that you will, because that’s what basically everyone does, no, the end of the sale is the end of the sale, we’ve been building anticipation since January, so we gave you an adequate heads up, if you wanna join, join now, and like Jordan said, if you wanna take advantage of a deal, let’s go, if not, keep listening to the pods, we’re gonna keep… Keep BSing around and trying to add some value to you where we can. Weekly uploads, forever.

0:03:28.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, if your business is crushing and you’re rich as fuck and you’re like, “I don’t need a deal.” Then fine. Then you don’t take advantage of the deal. Spend it… Buy it when, when it’s the most expensive. But if you’re like, “Hey, money is a little tight right now, I wanna take advantage of this $300 deal,” then now is the time, so I would put this podcast on pause right now, join the Mentorship, then come back and finish out this podcast ’cause it’s gonna be a good one.

0:03:56.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yep.

0:03:57.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh, and if you do join the Mentorship right now… Sorry, what were you gonna say, Mike?

0:04:02.6 Mike Vacanti: If you sign up two clients, you’ll break even, if you sign up two clients in your first year, you’ll break even, if you sign up… The people who do the best in the Mentorship have been in it for two to three years now at this point, but if you’re in the Mentorship for two years and it helps you add three online coaching clients, you’ve broke even over two years, it’s a tax write-off for your business, it’s kind of a no-brainer.

0:04:24.6 Jordan Syatt: There are a couple of things that I really wanna clarify, right when you join, you’re gonna see there are a lot of courses, and these are long courses, like several hour courses, everything from how to program nutrition for your clients to, there’s a huge like how to grow your Instagram manual, there is a systems and assessments course, there is… Every course, you get client psychology behavior course, all of that. We will recommend you start with… You can start in any order you want, but watch one, maybe two courses per month at most, they’re long, they’re in-depth, you should not be trying to watch them all at once, so watch one, take notes on it, go bit by bit at a time. The other thing you’ll notice is we have live Q&As twice a month in the Mentorship, and someone just asked me the other day, they’re like, “Hey, I’m thinking about joining, but I live on the other side of the world, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to make the live Q&As.” Number one, they’re all recorded, so you don’t have to worry about being there live. Number two is, everyone in the Mentorship submits their questions beforehand, so even if you can’t show up live, your question will be answered and you can always watch the replay, which is what the vast majority of members do.

0:05:32.9 Jordan Syatt: There’s a small close-knit group of people who show up basically every single Q&A, and a lot of them are just absolutely dominating, but wanna make that very clear that regardless of where you are, regardless of whether or not you can make the live Q&As, every question is answered, and all you have to do is just watch the replay. That’s it. So link in the show notes if you wanna join. Great. If you’re rich as fuck, you don’t wanna join, skip the deal, then fine, that’s, no worries whatsoever…

0:06:00.4 Mike Vacanti: You got a reaction from me when you say, “Rich as fuck… “

0:06:01.1 Jordan Syatt: I had to milk it again.

0:06:01.9 Mike Vacanti: And now you’re just… It’s the thing that I never understood about comedy, and now you would do it, but I also see great comedians do it, which is when they, they hit something and they’re like, oh, that worked, then they spend more time there, they go in on the joke, in on the joke, deeper, deeper. It’s fascinating to me.

0:06:20.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s a… Number one, there’s no better feeling than making someone laugh, so it’s just like, “All right, I wanna get that again,” but also it’s like, “Hey, if it worked,” this happens in social media all the time with, we could use this as a transition into making great content on social media.

0:06:37.1 Jordan Syatt: One of the things that I look for in comments is for people to say, I really needed to hear this. If people write that in a comments section, then I will make that same style post over and over and over again, and I know that’s a message people need to hear, if someone laughs at a certain wording or phrasing, then I’ll use that same wording or phrasing and try and go deeper in on it to really get to the core of what I’m hitting there.

0:07:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Alright, tell me what you’re… So every single episode, we either lead this with, I have something in mind that we’re gonna talk about, or it’s just an open conversation, but for the first time in the history of the How to Become a Personal Trainer podcast, Jordan has something in mind to lead the pod…

0:07:18.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I told you before we started recording. I was like…

0:07:19.5 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know what it was, so I guess I was surprised.

0:07:22.8 Jordan Syatt: So you know who Mr. Beast is, the most popular YouTuber ever. Mr. Beast like…

0:07:28.7 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:07:29.3 Jordan Syatt: Millions and millions and millions of subscribers and seems like a really nice sweet dude. He does some crazy shit on YouTube…

0:07:35.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m familiar.

0:07:37.0 Jordan Syatt: But anyway, I just saw… Did you see that he cured 1000 people of their blindness? Did you see this?

0:07:44.1 Mike Vacanti: I saw the title of that video somewhere on the internet, but I didn’t actually click it because I didn’t…

0:07:49.6 Jordan Syatt: So I didn’t know this, but not all blindness, but a lot of different types of blindness are actually curable. It’s just a lot of people don’t have the money to be able to afford that cure, which… And it’s a 10-minute surgery. It’s insane, it’s like… It’s really crazy.

0:08:08.9 Mike Vacanti: I didn’t know that.

0:08:09.0 Jordan Syatt: But you can literally take the cataract or whatever it is out of people’s eye and they can see again, and it’s just… The only reason people aren’t getting is ’cause it’s expensive and they can’t afford it. Mr. Beast paid for 1000 people to get their blindness cured, a thousand people, and I just saw that there are a fair number of people who are upset at him for doing this…

0:08:35.1 Mike Vacanti: Oh.

0:08:35.3 Jordan Syatt: And I’m like… I’m like, oh my God. Apparently, he made these reply tweets and it was funny ’cause he was like, people on Twitter, the rich should use their money for good and to give to people, and then Mr. Beast is like, okay, I’ll cure 1000 people of their blindness and pay for it and all this stuff, and then people on Twitter were like Mr. Beast is bad, and it just goes to show that no matter what you do, even if you literally cure 1000 people of their blindness, there will still be people who have bad things to say about what you’ve done, which to me it’s just like… You might as well do what feels right in your heart and in your soul and in your gut and in your head, you know is right, because you could literally cure people of blindness and they would still be mad at you, like what the fuck.

0:09:30.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Wild.

0:09:32.1 Jordan Syatt: How crazy is that.

0:09:32.7 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely. It’s insane. Yeah, and do you know what their argument is?

0:09:41.1 Jordan Syatt: I’ve heard a couple of different ones. Some people are being like, “you’re playing God, da, da, da.” It’s like, no, he’s not playing God. It’s not like he’s walking around saying, “I have godly power,” he’s like, “no, I will fund your surgery.”

0:09:54.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s a bad argument.

0:09:55.1 Jordan Syatt: So he’s not playing God. There are some people who are mad that they’re saying they cured them, ’cause there are some people like blind people don’t need to be cured, type of a thing, it’s like, alright, Jesus Christ…

0:10:10.7 Mike Vacanti: These people have nothing to do except sit on their phone and be angry.

0:10:15.6 Jordan Syatt: Yes, yeah.

0:10:17.1 Mike Vacanti: And it has to be an astoundingly low percentage of the population who would partake in this kind of behavior. The one criticism I saw, which I also find invalid, like the other two you just mentioned, was an anti-capitalist, you’re using these people to make content, which makes you money argument, which I think is also silly because even if that’s the case, it’s a win-win.

0:10:45.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:10:48.1 Mike Vacanti: His business is benefiting, it’s a business that does a lot of philanthropy, and the people are benefiting from the good work he’s doing and the money he’s spending on their surgery, insane.

0:11:00.4 Jordan Syatt: And he’s educating, I had no idea that there were so many blindnesses that you could cure, that was cured… I had no idea, and it’s only because of this video that I’m learning about it.

0:11:08.1 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna reserve… I don’t know about that either, and I’m actually skeptical of that. I don’t know what constitutes blindness. When I hear blind, I think you can’t see anything, maybe you can see some light and dark, but you can’t see anything, but I don’t know if there’s a legal blindness where it’s like, okay, if you have bad cataracts and you can see like you have your peripheral vision, but you can’t see certain things in front of you, maybe you can’t get a driver’s license ’cause you can’t pass the test, but if I’m looking at you, but you’re standing or if I’m looking here, but you’re looking over here, then I can see, I don’t know what qualifies as blindness, I had…

0:11:46.0 Mike Vacanti: My dad’s oldest brother was blind for the entire time that I knew him, he had an accident when he was younger and was like, he couldn’t see anything, like kind of shadows, but nothing, and there was no certain… No amount of money could have cured that.

0:12:03.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. It’s not curing all types of blindness, but from what I saw, for example, there is a guy, he was a mechanic his whole life, and then he started to get something that was clouding his vision, and they put on the screen, I don’t know how they know this, but they put on the screen an example of what it would be like, and I remember when I was a kid, when I heard about blindness, I just thought all you saw was pitch black, that’s just all you saw but apparently that’s not what all blindness is, some blindness is just like, it’s just insane blurry or clouded vision, and that’s what this guy was saying, he’s like, I’m a mechanic and I can’t work anymore because I literally… It’s a dangerous job and I can’t see what I’m doing. I can’t see what’s right in front of me.

0:12:44.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and literally, the way the surgeon explained it is you literally just vacuum out whatever is clouding that part of the eye, which sounds like a cataract, but obviously it’s not curing all blindness, but I mean, holy shit. It’s pretty amazing.

0:13:01.1 Mike Vacanti: You know, the other lesson I’ll take from this, and you made a really good one, which is you can never please everyone as a content creator, like you could cure 1000 people of their blindness and people are gonna talk shit about you on Twitter, having the quickest block thumb of all time, which is something that we’ve talked about, which is something you’ve done, which is something I’ve seen other big names and not in the fitness space do for their own sanity and mental health, I would imagine, and just for the enjoyment of being able to continue creating content, but you don’t owe anyone anything, and if someone is talking shit in a situation like that, being so quick, and so I know the Gary, “have empathy for this person,” and there are multiple schools of thought on this, and I think if you’re that mature and can deploy that level of compassion, sure, feel bad and interact with your haters, etcetera, but in my mind, in a world where I start making content super consistently, which might be a fictional world or a real world, who knows my block finger is gonna be so quick and I cannot wait.

0:14:12.1 Jordan Syatt: I’m curious to see if that plays out…

0:14:15.9 Mike Vacanti: No, let’s just leave it at that. Let’s just leave it.

0:14:18.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, well, alright, we’ll leave it at that. We’ll leave it at that. But man, it’s funny, the idea of saying you could cure a thousand people of their blindness, and people would still talk shit, it sounds like that’s made up. It sounds like… That sounds like an outrageous example of something that would literally never happen. And people laugh, ha ha, yeah, you’re right. It’s like, no, that literally is happening right now, this guy cured a 1000 people of their blindness with his own money and people are throwing hissy fit… It’s unbelievable, which is like, honestly, I’m so glad that it’s happening because it just makes me so much more adamant to post what I know is right, because I could literally cure a thousand people of their blindness and there would still be people talking shit, so… It is what it is.

0:15:00.8 Mike Vacanti: Let alone the more basic levels of telling people to eat a reasonable number of calories, focus on mostly whole foods, you can have some…

0:15:09.6 Jordan Syatt: How dare you.

0:15:11.0 Mike Vacanti: Meat, cheese, fruits, and vegetables, like if you wanna work in some ice cream and Snickers, go for it, like Satan, you’re killing people.

0:15:17.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you’re literally killing people and giving them eating disorders.

0:15:24.6 Mike Vacanti: Good, great topic.

0:15:26.0 Jordan Syatt: There you go.

0:15:28.3 Mike Vacanti: You should… You know what we should do?

0:15:29.7 Jordan Syatt: Tell me.

0:15:30.7 Mike Vacanti: Have a notepad in your phone where when you think of something like that, jot it down, and then when we come here, what… It might be fitness-related, it might be non-fitness related, business-related, but then we have lists of things, ’cause this one I feel like we struck gold on because it just hit you sometime in the last few hours and you thought to bring it up, but if it was like four days ago, we might not have discussed it.

0:15:54.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Alright, I’ll do that. Or I’ll try and to remember to do that.

0:15:58.1 Mike Vacanti: I’ll try and remember to do that too. I’ll remind you too.

0:16:00.5 Jordan Syatt: My notepad is I always just text myself content ideas.

0:16:04.8 Mike Vacanti: Perfect.

0:16:06.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:16:06.5 Mike Vacanti: “PT pod idea.”

0:16:11.0 Jordan Syatt: Let’s see what else we got for today.

0:16:11.1 Mike Vacanti: Oh man. We’re dialed in. We’ve talked about this before, but I find it continually fascinating, which is the concept of structuring a life in which you have either hyper-focus and spend the overwhelming majority of your time on a single thing or a more balanced life, and we’ve also talked about at length and in-depth in probably a handful of episodes about how it probably makes the most sense to be very imbalanced for certain periods of your life, if you want high achievement in business, for example, for a certain number of years, but that doesn’t mean that you need to behave like that forever. That doesn’t mean that you need to work 90 hours a week and sacrifice your health and your body and your sleep and whatever else. I don’t really have a question here other than… I just find the subject very fascinating, why some people go hyper-focus narrow on one thing for 60-70 years, and why some people go with a more… Maybe like you spend time with your family, spend time with friends, you spend time with a hobby, you spend time on your health, you spend time with work, and… I don’t know if there’s a right or wrong answer, it’s probably… It is different for everybody, but it’s endlessly fascinating to me how people make that decision, if they even do consciously, and what produces better life experience or richness or fullness for people.

0:17:54.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m gonna sort of riff off the top of my head, and maybe I’ll eat these words later.

0:18:00.6 Mike Vacanti: Riff.

0:18:03.1 Jordan Syatt: I feel like the people who go, who go for the hardcore spending 16 hours a day on one thing, it starts off because they’ve found passion in it… Not all of them, but I don’t think most of them are doing it from the beginning thinking like, I’m deliberately gonna spend all my time on this just to build something huge. I think it’s usually in their mind like it’s usually… I just love doing this, I love doing this, this is my favorite thing to do, I love it. And if it ends up building something else, great, but I remember when I first started really becoming a coach and getting into the industry, my mom would say, why don’t you read more fiction books, or why don’t you watch a movie or… And I would literally be like, I just don’t want to… I find so much enjoyment studying, reading these books, reading these websites, reading these research papers, making my… I love it, and there was literally nothing I would rather be doing than that, and the idea of going out and partying or going on dates, or it wasn’t that I…

0:19:17.0 Jordan Syatt: That I felt like I was holding myself back, it was like, “This is literally the only thing I want to do right now.” And that’s what brought me so much happiness. Whereas the idea of balance, it was… It made me unhappy. So I was actually happier because I was passionate about that one thing, and that’s what I was doing. That’s what I really wanted to focus on. I think a lot of the people who are… They’re just better being… They’re better at being more balanced and having more balance in life and giving more of themselves in so many different situations, I think often they either don’t have one thing they’re super passionate about, or the one thing they’re super passionate about is balance, right? The idea of balance is their passion. They love being able… A little bit here, a little bit there, having some downtime here, being with this… They… That balance is their passion, or they haven’t found a passion yet. And so as a result, they end up being in so many places at once, never really going all in on one thing.

0:20:27.6 Jordan Syatt: So that’s what I would imagine is going on, where it’s like, when you focus on one thing, it starts off as something that you just love and you’re super passionate about, whereas the other people, they either haven’t found it yet, or their passion is being balanced.

0:20:42.5 Mike Vacanti: I think you make a great point about the initial obsession being coming from passion rather than forcing yourself to do something you’re not into. Would you say that right now your passion is balance then?

0:21:01.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s a great question.

0:21:03.4 Mike Vacanti: Because you’re now very balanced, I wonder if balance comes from having multiple passions. That are…

0:21:10.6 Jordan Syatt: I was literally just about to… Yeah.

0:21:14.4 Mike Vacanti: That are somewhat equal… I don’t even know if we need to call them equal. But rather than a single 22-year-old male whose number one focus is picking up a weight off the ground that’s as heavy as possible.

0:21:25.2 Jordan Syatt: Mm-hmm Yeah.

0:21:26.7 Mike Vacanti: Now having someone else whose passion is like being a good husband, raising his daughter, competing in a martial art, training himself, helping people through his business. All of these things are passions, and with many important passions, then you can’t spend 100 hours a week on one of them, because these other things that you really care about would then suffer.

0:21:49.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think you’re 100% right. I think I have more passions now, and I’ve also gotten better at in my head understanding, “This might be a passion, but I know I’m not gonna be the best at it, and that’s okay.” So for example, like…

0:22:08.2 Mike Vacanti: That’s so important.

0:22:10.6 Jordan Syatt: Jiu-jitsu is a passion of mine, but I know for a fact I’m never gonna be the best in jiu-jitsu so I’m okay missing jiu-jitsu in order to spend more time with my daughter. Or I’m okay not giving jiu-jitsu 100% of my everything in order to focus on a passion that I actually could be the best at. Something that I care more about. I love jiu-jitsu and I talk about it all the time. But because I am very aware now that it’s not ever going to be something that I’m the best at or that I’m gonna be that… People are gonna be looking up to me for, it’s like, “Cool, where else can I focus on the passions that are more important to me that I actually could really excel at, like fatherhood, being a husband?” Something like that.

0:22:55.4 Mike Vacanti: What’s interesting is when that shift happens, not just for you, when it happened, but for anyone when it happens, and why it happens. And if there’s any common factors that can lead us to predict when that happens. Meaning… When you were 26 and you were going hard on Instagram, in your mind, you could have been the best. In some specific way, right? Most followers. Most helpful? Biggest… Like whatever. Now, the amount of effort that you put into growing your audience, let’s say, is much less… There’s no intention on being the biggest and being the best, but it still is a passion occupied… You’re still doing it consistently, you’re doing a really good job at it, but you’re not putting as much time and effort into it as you were when it was the singular focus and when you were trying to be at the top.

0:24:04.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there are so many things about that. So many reasons that that’s happening, but it’s the perfect example of… Now, I don’t put as much effort in… In the same way that being in a calorie deficit to lose weight sucks way more than maintaining your weight loss, right? Being in a calorie deficit sucks. It’s not fun. It’s…

0:24:33.7 Mike Vacanti: Love the analogy.

0:24:35.6 Jordan Syatt: No matter how sustainable you make it, I’d still fucking hate being in a calorie deficit. Whereas being in maintenance is significantly more enjoyable and I don’t have to put that much effort into it or as much effort into it. Same thing with social media. Basically, I was in a calorie deficit… Quote unquote, its not real. My business… Posting three times a day, going super hard. It sucked. It was really hard. And even though I was passionate about it, it still sucked. But I did it, and now that I did that for so many years, now I can sort of be in maintenance mode with it and being… And same thing with strength training, right? In order to… The muscle gets…

0:25:09.6 Mike Vacanti: Let me…

0:25:10.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:25:10.7 Mike Vacanti: Let me jump in ’cause that’s maybe my favorite analogy you’ve ever done. So it’s clear when to go from calorie deficit to maintenance, right? There’s a healthy range, you don’t wanna take it too far because it’s unsustainable. We could pin point a body fat percentage range in the 8 to 15% range when it’s kinda… For a male. For you and the… Where you… It makes sense to switch to maintenance here. The range in business or other passions, but what we’re talking about business, social media growth. There’s no health parameters around it. You could have stopped multiple years shorter or you could have gone multiple years longer.

0:25:50.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s definitely more subjective, but there are also… There are subjective measures with the calorie deficit and maintenance as well, like, “Hunger is up.” Right? It’s like, “Okay, well how much?” Well, that’s subjective. I know through doing it many, many times when hunger’s too much. Or libido is down, or energy is down, or strength is down, “Well, how much? What percentage?” It’s like there is… Through trial and error, I know, “Okay, my energy is down too much, my hunger is up too much, my libido is down too much, my strength is down too much.” So I think as I built my business and built my social media and I realized how much time it would take away from other things, I was able to be like, “Okay.” So for example, I have my daughter now and my wife, and I can say, “Wow.” I can just have this gut intuitive feeling knowing, “I’ve spent too many hours down in my office today. I gotta get upstairs.”

0:26:52.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s not like, “Hey, it has to be four to six hours.” It’s like, “No, I just feel it.” And it’s purely based on what feels good to me, right? It’s like if I’ve gone too many hours without holding my daughter, it’s… Immediately, I’m like, “I feel regret and I’m not happy about it.” And that might change as I have more kids, God-willing, and all these other things, right? But it’s very much a subjective feeling that you sort of have to go by to decide, “Is this worth it to keep putting more time in or not?” But it’s all subjective.

0:27:27.6 Mike Vacanti: Makes sense.

0:27:27.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:27:28.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s also… And we can move on from this then, but it’s similar to being in a calorie deficit and maintenance… You might have actually already made this point and it just didn’t register while you were saying it, but it’s so much harder to be in a calorie deficit than it is at maintenance, meaning when you do hyper-focus on business for a number of years, it’s way harder to grow than it is to maintain, which is the point we’ve made many times, but it’s way easier to go from zero business, zero online coaching clients to a full roster. Very hard. Much, much, much, much, much easier and much less of a time demand to then maintain that level or even continue to make slow and steady growth from that level.

0:28:14.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I think… I remember hearing when I first started out that the first zero to 10,000 dollars is the hardest. And then it’s actually easier to go from the first 10,000 to 100,000 than it is to go from zero to 10,000. And it’s easier to go from that first 100,000 to a million than it is to go from zero to 10,000. It’s… That initial first block is by far the hardest. ‘Cause when you’re starting from zero, you have zero. You have no systems. You have very little if any idea of what to expect or how to work with obstacles along the way. I think one of the biggest parts about going from that zero to 10,000, just for this example, it doesn’t have to be 10,000, but you learn so much. You have bad clients that you’ve gotta deal with, you learn about, “What posts do well? What posts don’t do well?” You learn about like, “Okay well, I suck at this, but I’m better at this.” You learn so much during that initial zero to 10,000.

0:29:19.6 Jordan Syatt: Then when you go from that 10,000 to 100,000. It seems like it will be more difficult, but you have so many systems in place now, you’ve learned so much, so many tools under your belt now, that it’s like, “Okay, now you can actually maintain in a lot of areas that you’re not even really thinking about.” For example, at this point, for me, thinking of content is like maintenance, It’s not hard for me to come up with content anymore because I’ve done so many thousands and thousands of posts that I know what my wheel house is, I know where my expertise lies, I know what people need to hear. I know what mediums they want… They’re going to hear it on. So all of these things that… Before making a piece of content might have taken days in order to make one really good piece of content now can take 30 to 45 minutes depending on how I’m going to do it, just because it’s more like a maintenance strategy. So it’s very interesting how the… The hardest part is that zero to 10,000. Once you get there, it’s actually easier to go from 10,000 to 100,000, easier to go to 100,000 to a million. It’s just because you have everything in place. It just… It still takes a lot of time and effort and energy but the hardest part is the beginning.

0:30:34.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, are you talking per month or are you talking total revenue?

0:30:39.6 Jordan Syatt: Just in general. If it’s for you it’s per day.

0:30:46.6 Mike Vacanti: Get outta… [laughter] That… This is what we call gaslighting, and I actually mean it. Not like, “Oh, I’m being gaslit.” Overused word in culture. I mean that was actual gaslighting, what we all just saw there. That was great. That was fantastic. Should we jump into Q and A?

0:31:06.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Let’s do it. Alright, someone said, “I’m trying to get started as a coach coming from being a nurse… Do you have any advice?”

0:31:17.3 Mike Vacanti: I mean, there’s so many things. The first… There are. There’s so many ways to do it. I’ll try and go real high level. [laughter] This is just a distraction. This is not good timing for the De Niro. Real high level. I’m just gonna list ’em off and then we can dive deep on anything. Getting in-person coaching experience, whether that is paid or free, whether that’s an internship or taking your pal, Suzie to the gym and helping her through her routine, but getting in-person coaching experience in some way is gonna make you a better coach, and it’s gonna help you with online coaching. Making content. It can be educational, it can be documenting what you’re doing right now. Probably a combination of both, but getting in the habit of consistently making content is gonna help you build your online business, probably focusing on one to two platforms at most to start like an Instagram-website combo is probably the best one to… Maybe Facebook-website, maybe Facebook-Instagram-website, but…

0:32:25.7 Mike Vacanti: Right there. Self-education. It depends where you’re at, right? If… I hesitate to over-recommend this because there are certain personalities who will spend way too much time and think they need to read every single book in existence and delay nine years before they even start their business, and so I don’t wanna encourage that obviously. Start now, throw the spaghetti at the wall, see what sticks, and adjust on the fly. But then there are other people who would really benefit from spending 50 to 100 hours reading everything, Will McDonald, Martin Berkhan, Allen Aragon. We recommended a few books in the last episode. There are a lot of people who would really benefit from spending a solid amount of time per week self-educating while also continuing to get in-person coaching experience and starting making content. And I realize this sounds like a lot of things and probably sounds really overwhelming. Yeah, that’s what I got in this time frame.

0:33:34.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. We’ve spoken about this so much. Someone else asked, I’m scrolling through the questions as you’re talking and someone else said, “Hi, I’m a new trainer. Do you have any tips?” I just think if you’re a new trainer, even if you’re not a new trainer, but especially if you are a new trainer, the best thing you can do is become a great coach. Educate yourself and coach people, that’s literally it. And then… And I think a lot of people ask me a subsequent question being like, “Well, how do I get over imposter syndrome.” In terms of whether it’s coaching people in person or usually now more related to posting content online. Imposter syndrome, I’ve noticed happens when people try to take on the role of an expert, right? They try, “Hey, I’m an expert in this.” But if you’re a new coach, you’re not an expert. And great, if you have a certification, you’re still not an expert. Great, you got your level one cert, you’re still… You’re uneducated still. You’re not an expert.

0:34:37.5 Jordan Syatt: I think an expert takes probably like 10 years of coaching a significant number. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of people over 10 years. I don’t think you can be an expert because you got three certifications in a span of a year. It’s just you’re not a fucking expert yet. It’s like… I forget what I was watching, there was a podcast that I was watching or listening to somewhat recently about how even people who get their degrees in a variety of subjects, they’re still woefully, uneducated yet. They don’t know anything.

0:35:12.1 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely.

0:35:14.7 Jordan Syatt: For so many reasons. So if you want to avoid impostor syndrome, then be open about how you’re not an expert yet. And don’t try to take the role of expert. Take the role of someone who’s educating themselves and doing their best to learn, and you’re relaying the things that you’re learning through social media, and you’re gonna try and help people, but you’ve been wrong before in your life, you’ll be wrong again in your life, and you’re just here to try and relay the things that you’re currently being made aware of. But that doesn’t mean you’re not wrong. As soon as you approach it from that perspective, number one, people are gonna fucking love you, and number two is you’ll reduce, if not, eliminate impostor syndrome because you’re not trying to be someone you’re not. If you are not an expert yet, if you’re not fully confident in your abilities yet, then don’t try and pretend that you are. Pretending is literally being an imposter, and that’s why you have impostor syndrome because you’re fucking pretending to be someone you’re not. Clips nation.

0:36:10.1 Mike Vacanti: Clips nation.

0:36:13.5 Jordan Syatt: Someone said, “Will machines at the gym have the same impact/results as free weights?” I was thinking about answering this one on my Q and A on Instagram but I was like, “Okay, this is a good one for us.” Do you wanna talk about that?

0:36:25.6 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely, let’s do it.

0:36:27.3 Jordan Syatt: Alright, you dive in first.

0:36:29.0 Mike Vacanti: Sounds like you have a good idea of what you wanna say, I’ll make…

0:36:31.0 Jordan Syatt: I don’t… You go first bro.

0:36:35.2 Mike Vacanti: You were gonna make one?

0:36:35.5 Jordan Syatt: I was like, It’s a good question. I just didn’t know if it was a question for this pod, but based on that little kick under the table, this is a great question for the pod.

0:36:42.3 Mike Vacanti: That wasn’t a kick under the table, someone just called my phone, which went through my computer, it might have cut out, but I don’t think so. Riverside’s is pretty solid.

0:36:48.6 Jordan Syatt: No, it didn’t cut out. I just could tell that you weren’t fully paying attention ’cause I…

0:36:54.4 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Alright, alright, Mr. “I was just reading all the other questions while you were talking for the last three minutes and giving no non-verbal cues back” and… Good. You go on Rogan and he’s talking you’re just gonna be looking at your phone for three minutes. Yeah, buddy.

0:37:12.2 Jordan Syatt: Alright, machines, free weights.

0:37:15.0 Mike Vacanti: Machines versus free weights.

0:37:18.8 Jordan Syatt: Same impact? Results?

0:37:20.8 Mike Vacanti: No, not the exact same, right? Like if you do a barbell back squat, which is a free weight compared to a preacher curl machine, and if your goal is to get really good at barbell back squatting, and you go in the gym every day for a year in preacher curl.

0:37:33.6 Jordan Syatt: Well, maybe a better one would be barbell back squat versus hack squat.

0:37:37.5 Mike Vacanti: I’m making… I’m making a general point.

0:37:40.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, okay. Okay.

0:37:41.5 Mike Vacanti: You are going to improve at the skill of that which you focus on. So when it comes to exercise technique and when it comes to the skill of various movement patterns you like, you’re going to get better at what you do more of. If we’re talking about like, can you build muscle on machines versus free weights equally? Yeah. Pretty equally you can. Can you retain muscle while losing fat on machines versus free weights? Yeah, you absolutely can. I don’t know. I’ll let you dive into whatever you think are the biggest differences between the two.

0:38:19.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s funny, my opinion on this has changed a lot over the years. I used to very much be in the camp of, like, I never thought machines were bad, but I was like, machines are for bodybuilders and free weights are for athletes. That’s like where my brain was. And the idea was that the reason free weights would be more for athletic and like, “functional training purposes” is because you need to learn how to stabilize it. And it’s not on a fixed track. And so there are, it’s more relevant to overall life skills, which I still believe it is more relevant to overall life skills. But I also just think strength in general is really good. Right. Like the strength you build from doing we’ll call it a seated machine chest press or a seated machine overhead press will serve you, if not exactly as well.

0:39:19.4 Jordan Syatt: Like basically Exactly as well as like a seated dumbbell overhead press in a real world situation in which you need to press something heavy over your head. I just, I do, I think it’s like strength, strength and it’s better to be strong than not strong. So, I think the strength that you gain from a seated machine overhead press is gonna be very similar and will help you more or less exactly the same. And in a real world situation, there are distinct and unique benefits to each one. I think that machines are generally better for, if you want to isolate an individual muscle group, which lend itself really well to body building or bringing up weaknesses, even in like, more of an athletic performance circumstance where you maybe, like, it’s very difficult for you to isolate a certain muscle, to bring up a muscle that you need to, and machines can be very helpful.

0:40:13.5 Jordan Syatt: I think machines can be a great option for a brand new beginner to the gym who isn’t sure proper technique and maybe is a little bit nervous and would rather just, Hey, this is on one track. It’s hard to fuck this up. Like, cool, still get a great workout in and without worrying about, you know, doing something dangerous or it’s definitely less dangerous. I do think free weights tend to be the better choice for everyday people who want to improve their health and fitness and function in life. I think they offer a significant amount more variety. They allow you to move through different patterns and ranges of motion and challenge yourself in different ways. Like, it’s very hard to find a machine that’s gonna allow you to do like a lateral lunge. Like, you’re not gonna be able to find that very easily.

0:41:00.5 Jordan Syatt: I think there are so many great benefits to barbells and kettlebells and dumbbells and free weights and all of that. But I really do think that for most things it’s, the results will be more or less comparable. I really do. And so, and you know, it’s been funny because as I’ve gotten more and more into Jiu-jitsu and strength training for Jiu-jitsu, which is a very dynamic sport, like super dynamic, you need a lot of flexibility and there’s tons of movement. I think most people would say, you shouldn’t use machines, you should just use free weights and kettlebells and all that. And I’ve actually found a tremendous amount of benefit in machines for certain aspects of Jiu-jitsu. For example, I’ll give one example. So a glute ham raise. I wouldn’t call that a machine, I’d call that an apparatus.

0:42:03.5 Jordan Syatt: That like your, it’s more of like a free weight type of training. Whereas a seated leg curl is a machine, right? Like the leg curl is a machine, the glute ham raise is more free weight ’cause your body is moving through motion. You have to control it throughout and you’re just sort of like, it’s more like a freeway as opposed to a machine. ‘Cause the machine is not, it’s not on a fixed track like the glute ham raise, you’re not on a fixed track. You’re actually controlling your body throughout that movement. Anyway, most athletic coaches would say the glute ham raise would be better for an athlete than the seated leg curl. But I’ve actually found that the seated leg curl tends to be better for jiu-jitsu specifically because, so much of jiu-jitsu requires long duration isometric holds in various positions.

0:42:57.4 Jordan Syatt: And it’s easier to do that properly on a seated leg curl machine than it is on a glute ham raise. It’s very difficult to get that long duration isometric hold on a glute ham raise because at the top of the movement, that’s when you had the least amount of stress on your hamstrings and that’s where you need to hold it. Seated leg curl gives you that best positioning for longer duration isometric holds. So it very much depends on the individual, on their strengths, on their weaknesses, on the demands of their sport or their life. But I think that they can both be used relatively comparably.

0:43:34.4 Mike Vacanti: I love it.

0:43:36.1 Jordan Syatt: Comparably, maybe is the right way to say it.

0:43:36.4 Mike Vacanti: A lot of good stuff. I think comparably, I think that was right. Yeah. I guess, and then real quick ’cause we can rapid fire a few more questions. When are situations, like, you listed a good example right there, but when do you program machines if you were programming for a client?

0:43:52.6 Jordan Syatt: You know, it’s funny, I usually don’t program machines, especially in like the Inner Circle.

0:43:58.4 Mike Vacanti: ‘Cause you assume that not everyone has access, you don’t know what they have access to?

0:44:01.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s a major reason. Yeah. If I’m programming for a big group, like in the Inner Circle, a membership, I’m trying to do what most people have access to and also also what I think people will enjoy more.

0:44:18.4 Jordan Syatt: And I’ve built the Inner Circle and my brand, not around machine-based training. I’ve built it around free weights, which it was what I love and what I personally prefer. Like, I actually prefer the glute ham raise over the seated leg curl. I enjoy the glute ham raise more, but for my specific sport, I think the seated hamstring curl is actually a better option. So I do that, but I prefer the glute ham raise. So for me, I like… I know most people don’t have access to every single piece of gym equipment and there would be so many more questions like, well, my leg press does this, not like this. All right, fuck it, I’m just gonna, all right. Back squat. I don’t care. It’s a back squat, right? So, yeah. So yeah, if I was having a one-on-one client who said, Hey, I have this specific machine in my gym and I’d really like to use it. Awesome. Or like, if at the beginning when I was working with one-on-one clients, I would say like, I had a whole like a menu of different pieces of equipment and I was like, check off which pieces of equipment you have in your gym. So every time I wrote them their program, I could say, okay, cool. Like, they do have a dual cable machine, or they don’t have a glute hammers, whatever it is. So I would know what to program or what not to program.

0:45:26.4 Mike Vacanti: By the way, if you’re an online fitness coach, you should have this question in your assessment. So that you know exactly what equipment your client has and so that you can utilize everything or everything you want to be utilizing, but continue.

0:45:41.5 Jordan Syatt: Yep. It’s funny, I would have that menu and there would be some clients who’d be like, “you know what, I’m just gonna send you a video of my gym.”

0:45:47.5 Mike Vacanti: I get it all the time.

0:45:47.6 Jordan Syatt: And they would like send me like a 12-minute video walking around their whole gym. And I’d be like, “Hey, just do me a favor, still fill this out,” because I don’t wanna have to watch a 12-minute video every single time I do their program. It’s like, “I still need you to fill this out. So I appreciate you walking me through the gym, but like, fill this out as well.”

0:46:07.4 Mike Vacanti: Usually I only get those videos if someone has like a stacked home gym or if it’s like a 30-second video that just shows me everything in there, which is much more manageable and reasonable.

0:46:17.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I vividly remember this one video, this guy sent me like a 30-minute video walking through his entire gym. It was just, it was ridiculous. But anyway, definitely have that. And I would also ask, do you have any favorite and/or least favorite exercises that you like to do? I would ask that as well because if someone’s like, “Hey, I love to do Bulgarian split squats,” then I would program that more frequently. If they’re like, “oh my God. Like the one exercise I absolutely hate above all else is like front squats.” Cool. Then I won’t program front squats for you ’cause they’re not necessary. So those were also helpful in my client Q&A…

0:46:53.2 Mike Vacanti: Intake forms.

0:46:53.4 Jordan Syatt: Intake forms. Yeah.

0:46:54.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I like machines for additional… Like if someone has access, obviously I like machines for additional variety of movement patterns and targeting muscle groups. Right. It just, they add more exercises and there’s both psychological benefit there, meaning more psychological stimulation and enjoyment from the variety, for a lot of people, not for everyone. And a little bit of physiological benefit, right. Like one of the main reasons why, it doesn’t make sense to just have your like, you know, to barbell bench press to start every upper body day for three years straight. But to work in some variety is for reduced risk of injury on that movement. And so you can hit muscles with different movement patterns and different exercises using machines. I also, you mentioned this briefly, but I like a lot of machines for complete beginners who might not be super comfortable with a lot of free weight movements.

0:48:02.6 Mike Vacanti: Might not be comfortable with, you know, might not have great balance, might not have the ability to do a lot of like, single leg stuff, for example. And might be either more comfortable with machines or there are just machines that it’s hard to mess the move up on a particular machine. And so I’m gonna program that machine early on, get technique videos, get them comfortable in the gym, get them progressing on weight with that machine before I switch them over to learning a slightly more difficult variation of a certain move.

0:48:36.5 Jordan Syatt: Do you have any exercises that you either really like or really dislike that people might be surprised at, that people like, oh, I’m surprised he likes that, or I’m surprised he doesn’t like that exercise. Do you have any of those?

0:48:51.4 Mike Vacanti: Just not necessarily for myself, but just kind of in general, overall?

0:48:55.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. In general.

0:48:58.5 Mike Vacanti: Surprised that I… I don’t think people will be surprised by this because it’s become a trend in the last few years, but it’s become a trend in the last few years to be like, “you don’t need the big three to build muscle.” And maybe even the last five years, I don’t know, but not that long ago. You know, people would say, “oh, you know, you wanna grow your legs but you’re not squatting? Like, good luck. Those twigs are never gonna grow.”

0:49:23.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s what we grew up on. Yeah, exactly. That’s like the content that you and I grew up on.

0:49:28.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, for a client who doesn’t care about big three strength, I wouldn’t even say it’s, they’re not moves I dislike obviously, but I’m not married to like, this has to be, you have to conventional deadlift every phase of your program. Like, you don’t want to get better at the other two. You don’t really care. Like, you prefer single leg work. It feels better. Cool. I’m good with that. Surprised that I like or dislike, I don’t think anyone would be surprised that I like training arms directly and programming it for those who also enjoy it.

0:50:10.5 Jordan Syatt: And your neck. You love neck training.

0:50:11.5 Mike Vacanti: Oh, neck. Well, I mean, the thing is, I don’t think anyone’s gonna be surprised by anything. ‘Cause we’re 109 episodes in here. I actually have some neck DOMs going. I’m feeling kind of…

0:50:20.4 Jordan Syatt: You’ve been enjoying your lower body training more, which people might be surprised about?

0:50:24.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I mean, look, I like to joke around a solid amount about, you know, “oh, who wants to train legs when you can do curls, right? Traps, neck…” I remember Matt McLeod, shout out to Matt McLeod. I posted a picture many years ago, I don’t even remember the exact details, but he was like, “holy crap. Like, you actually have legs. I’d never seen your legs before.” It’s like, I’ve never in the last decade trained upper body consistently, but not trained legs consistently over that timeframe. Like, just feel better.

0:51:02.5 Jordan Syatt: Are there any exercises that you’ve changed your mind about for better or worse over the years? Recently?

0:51:09.4 Mike Vacanti: Kind of goes in cycles, right? Maybe something that I don’t know if this is recent, but something that I have done is programmed more moves that have a reduced risk of injury that target muscle groups effectively, for certain people, for example…

0:51:39.4 Jordan Syatt: That was the most vague…

0:51:40.5 Mike Vacanti: I know, I know.

[laughter]

0:51:41.5 Mike Vacanti: All right. I also don’t wanna, I don’t think that, I’m almost positive this guy doesn’t listen to the podcast, but I have a client who I’m never programming bent over rows for, and I’m always programming chest supported rows because, and I actually in gen… Is back. Yeah. I have a low back. And even like, I tried to sneak in a bent over row on him, even though he told me never to do it, because I was like, it’s the concept of, you know, we don’t avoid it because it’s weak. We strengthen it because it’s weak and that’s gonna lead to less injury risk in future. And there’s other ways to strengthen low back, obviously. In general, yeah. Overhead, pulling a little bit less of, for certain people overhead pressing, a little bit less of. I guess the answer to your original question is no, there are no exercises that people would be surprised that I like or dislike.

0:52:34.4 Jordan Syatt: This is so disappointing. I was really hoping that you were both gonna love that question and give a great answer.

0:52:39.5 Mike Vacanti: Zero clips from Mike, this episode. No, let’s keep going. Throw, give me, throw some out.

0:52:47.5 Jordan Syatt: That I personally, I’ll give you one. There’s been a lot of hate towards cable pull throughs recently on social media, and I love cable pull throughs. I think they’re an amazing exercise.

0:53:00.5 Mike Vacanti: Remember when we did ’em to like failure down at that LA fitness in Florida?

0:53:03.5 Jordan Syatt: Dude, it’s one of my favorite things to do.

0:53:06.5 Mike Vacanti: Like sets of 20 and 30. Yeah.

0:53:08.5 Jordan Syatt: I love cable pull throughs and that hypertrophy crowd, like the, every exercise needs to be 100% optimized for the most amount of growth possible is like, they’re taking it to the extreme of being like, well, this exercise is bad because like, there are, it’s just, it’s not optimal for like, glute growth. It’s like, I think these people are gonna have real fucking pro… And I like, I know they are already like, with mobility issues and back issues and like hip issues and it’s like everything they’re doing, their, their whole thesis is you should be able to mechanically load every muscle as much as humanly possible in every single movement in order to get the best growth response. And that might be true from that localized muscular perspective, but what about like joint health? What about like, there’s so many other things going on here, and if your sole goal is to mechanically load the muscle as much as humanly possible on every single exercise, you’re gonna be struggling.

0:54:08.5 Jordan Syatt: Like power lifters struggle with their joints and with their, like, with pain and all of that. I’m a huge fan of cable pull throughs. The only reason I don’t program them very much in a group setting is because most people royally fuck the technique up. Like, they, it’s a very, it’s a very, you have to be very technically proficient in order to do it properly. And when you’re working with general population, it’s like, it can be difficult to set it up. And so I would do it with in-person clients, but I rarely program it for online.

0:54:42.5 Mike Vacanti: We’ll hit this right here. What are the most common technique mistakes on the cable pull through?

0:54:47.5 Jordan Syatt: Well, there’s a lot, number… The first one I would say is, I’ll start off with one that is like understanding the right technique. When you’re doing a cable pull through, you’re not supposed to be at the top of it. You’re not supposed to be standing straight up. You’re actually supposed to be like leaning forward. It’s like you should be look like you’re blowing in the wind leaning straight forward. If you try and stand straight up, you’re gonna get pulled right back into the cable machine. You actually wanna be leaning forward at like a 30, 35 degree angle so that you can get full hip extension.

0:55:21.4 Mike Vacanti: When your hips are fully extended at the top of the move. So you’re literally, your body is straight at the top of it. But instead of being like this with the pole here, you’re like here…

0:55:31.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Leaning forward. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Maybe even a 40, 45 degree angle. Exactly. But you’re using the cable to pull against you so that you’re not falling face forward, which can be, that’s, I think the hard part for people to learn. The other major, or one of the other major technique issues is people pulling with their shoulders and bending their elbows. Your arms are supposed to be long, your elbows are supposed to be completely straight and like your shoulders rounded forward and your arms should be pulling in between your legs. If your elbows are bent, you’re doing it wrong. If your shoulders are, if your hands are moving forward during the movement, you’re doing it wrong. You should not feel it in your shoulder at all. It should be all glute. Like, that’s it. Everything is glute. So like lightly holding onto the cable rope, let it pull your hands through your legs the whole time. And, yeah. I’m a huge fan.

0:56:30.4 Mike Vacanti: Those were literally the two that I wanted to say. But you hit the nail in the head. What do you say when people are like, it hurts my hands. You ever get that?

0:56:42.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s so funny because I haven’t programmed it online in a long, long time. I bet I would get someone saying that now because it’s more general pop. But like, I programmed it more for like higher level lifters, whether they were power lifters or people who just loved lifting heavy and they were clients who just would never complain. They were just like, whatever he tells me to do, I’m doing it. And so yeah. It’s uncomfortable in the hands. It’s not like a fun, comfortable thing to do.

0:57:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Life’s not comfortable. “Hey. Send me a technique video. It’s supposed to be uncomfortable.” Is that the reply?

0:57:22.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, if I had someone say that to me, if I programmed it now for someone and it was a gen pop person, then I would change the exercise. Like, cool, we’ll just do a different exercise. Who knows? Maybe they’re a hand model and they don’t want their hands to get all torn up. I don’t know. But back when I was programming it for a lot of people online, no one complained about it because I was working with whether, I mean, and listen. Like a lot of them were moms who were like 52-years-old and had three kids and they just loved lifting though. And so it was never an issue. So, but some people are just like, they don’t wanna deal with that uncomfortable, which is fine. I’ll change the exercise.

0:58:00.4 Mike Vacanti: Sweet.

0:58:02.5 Jordan Syatt: You know, an another exercise. Oh, I know we’re over an hour, but should we call it or keep going?

0:58:07.4 Mike Vacanti: This is the most important podcast ever. Keep rolling.

0:58:10.5 Jordan Syatt: So I think people are gonna be surprised to hear this. ‘Cause I’m openly pretty, anti BOSU ball for is, but what I…

0:58:19.5 Mike Vacanti: Let me jump in. Why is it called the BOSU ball? This was on my list a long time ago. I don’t think we ever hit it. I’ve been confused my whole life because apparently the half moon, which isn’t a ball because a ball is a sphere, right? Ball, sphere. The half moon thing, half moon is a BOSU ball. What? Like what is that? That’s not a ball. It’s a crescent. It’s a waxy, waning…

0:58:50.5 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know. That’s sort of why is it called…

0:58:51.4 Mike Vacanti: There’s not gonna be an answer. Like I see a Swiss ball, I see a ball in there. Maybe we have hit on this before. ‘Cause I feel like this conversation that led to me…

0:59:02.5 Jordan Syatt: No, we’ve not hit on this.

0:59:03.3 Mike Vacanti: It led to me talking about the guy who is squatting on the Swiss ball.

0:59:07.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, interesting. Okay. So originally, all right, well here’s the answer. This is it. Originally the name BOSU was an acronym for both sides up. It meant that the BOSU balance trainer could be used on either side, the dome or the platform.

0:59:22.5 Mike Vacanti: That’s fine. Then it’s a BOSU half moon. It’s a BOSU semicircle.

0:59:27.3 Jordan Syatt: BOSU Crescent.

0:59:27.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s a BOSU like geometry… Geometry’s not up for debate, okay?

0:59:34.4 Jordan Syatt: Agreed. It should be called the BOSU Crescent. I think that’d be a more accurate name for it.

0:59:40.0 Mike Vacanti: Thank you.

0:59:42.2 Jordan Syatt: I’m not a big fan of it for lower body exercises specifically. Especially where you’re standing on the flat side of it. Even the fucking company, BOSU Crescent says, do not stand on the flat side of the BOSU Crescent because, it’s dangerous. And like I’ve said, I’ve told the story before, how I was an expert witness in a court case where this trainer had his client on, or actually her client, it was a female trainer, had her client on the flat side of the BOSU Crescent, and she fell off and she like tore ACL, MCL, PCL, meniscus, everything like gone. Boom. And it was a multimillion dollar lawsuit. You should not be standing on the flat side of the BOSU ball.

1:00:27.5 Jordan Syatt: But what a lot of people don’t know is actually, I really like the, the BOSU ball for upper body exercises. For example, doing pushups whole, like on the… Actually on the, the flat side of the BOSU ball. Now, this is not something that I would give a beginner at all, but I actually used to do this a lot when I was working at Cressey Sports Performance when I was interning there and like doing a lot of shoulder stability work. And Eric did, Eric Cressey, one of the greatest strength coaches of all time did an entire, a large part of his research around unstable surface training and understanding the benefits or the drawbacks depending on what you’re training for. And it’s pretty clear that unstable surface training for the lower body, it can have benefits for some joint stability, especially for the ankles.

1:01:20.5 Jordan Syatt: But you have to weigh it against the danger of what you’re doing it. So if you’re standing on the BOSU ball, whether you’re on the flat side or the crescent side, it’s too dangerous to be doing that. And I know a lot of physical therapists actually do put their clients on the Crescent side, but why don’t you just have them stand on one foot on the ground or like get an Airex pad, which is an inch and a half or two inches off the ground. You get the exact same benefits without the dangers. Whereas with pushups on the BOSU ball, actually I’m a big fan of it for a higher level, more advanced trainee who wants to improve shoulder stability, it actually can be a very useful idea, very useful training tool. Again, I wouldn’t give it to a gen pop client who was relatively new or was not really strong, but for a higher level gen pop client or for an advanced athlete, absolutely. I will do some upper body work on the BOSU Crescent.

1:02:15.5 Mike Vacanti: Speaking of, what should a new coach do or someone who wants to get into coaching? And we’re talking about, good free resources for education, Eric Cressey’s website from the ’08 to 2012 range, all of those articles hold up. So going through those archives.

1:02:31.5 Jordan Syatt: I think it’s from like ’02.

1:02:32.5 Mike Vacanti: Or even before. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

1:02:34.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh, it’s crazy. When he started making long form website articles, him and Tony Gentilcore. Yeah.

1:02:39.5 Mike Vacanti: “Feel Better for Five Bucks” or “Feel Better for 10 Bucks,” which was an article about foam rollers, I think from 2001 on T-Nation.

1:02:46.4 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Yeah. It’s crazy.

1:02:48.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I think it was 2010. Someone on a poker forum recommended that article to me…

1:02:56.4 Jordan Syatt: No way.

1:02:57.9 Mike Vacanti: Because I was having upper back pain and he was like, basically like, “do t-spine and extensions over a, like, read this article and do this.”

1:03:04.4 Jordan Syatt: Wow. And that’s how you and I got connected because I interned there. I wrote a guest article for his website and you found me from his website. Right? That’s how we got connected.

1:03:16.4 Mike Vacanti: I think so. I don’t actually know. I found you online somewhere.

1:03:23.5 Jordan Syatt: It must have been.

1:03:24.4 Mike Vacanti: But was it a guest post or ’cause yeah, maybe that was it. ‘Cause I think I knew you interned there and then I saw the article about strategies posture. Yeah. Yeah, strategies for like low back pain or hip pain when you’re sitting all day long. And it was like kneeling, half kneeling, like there were various… Was that, I thought that was on your website, but maybe I’m wrong.

1:03:50.5 Jordan Syatt: That was on my website that you commented on. But I was like, well, how did you find my website? And I think it must have been because I posted a guest article on his website and back then…

1:04:00.5 Mike Vacanti: Maybe you were SEOing hard.

1:04:02.5 Jordan Syatt: No, that article did terrible. That article did not do well.

1:04:05.5 Mike Vacanti: Maybe not for strategies for low back pain when sitting at a desk for too long.

1:04:11.5 Jordan Syatt: But remember back then when people would write guest articles and then they would say, this article was written by so and so and they’d like…

1:04:16.4 Mike Vacanti: Hyperlink it.

1:04:16.8 Jordan Syatt: Hyperlink their website. Yep. That was a major way to grow your audience back then.

1:04:22.4 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely.

1:04:23.3 Jordan Syatt: Now it’s like, no, it doesn’t do anything.

1:04:26.5 Mike Vacanti: No, because everyone’s attention span is, there’s just so many fewer eyeballs there.

1:04:31.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s true.

1:04:32.4 Mike Vacanti: Which is interesting. There’s also less creation there. There’s probably something there to like being really consistent with article writing. Not only for the SEO upside, but like, if that’s what you’re consistently doing and having people who read you.

1:04:46.4 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I remember one of the things I wanted to talk about, but we’ll save it for the next podcast.

1:04:52.5 Mike Vacanti: Or not.

1:04:52.5 Jordan Syatt: Well, yeah, we’ll save it ’cause I gotta get going. But ChatGPT, we’ll start the next Pod… We’ll talk about it. Let’s just talk about it on the next podcast. We’ll start with that. But remember, by the time the next podcast comes out, it will be too late to get in on this sale. Which if you’re rich as fuck, that’s fine. If you don’t want to get on this sale, it’s great. But if you want to get in for the lowest cost of the Mentorship, the Online Fitness Business Mentorship, now’s the time. So Link is in the show notes. Please do not email us once the sale’s over. Oh my God. I’m sorry. I forgot I was… Nope, this is it. This is it. This is the only chance, $300 off. Join us in the Mentorship right now. Link is in the show notes. We would love to have you.