Episode 111: You Don’t Want to Miss This Episode…

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

0:00:12.7 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:15.3 Mike Vacanti: This is gonna be an episode of all episodes. I have a great feeling. We’re going heavy Q&A, heavy rapid fire. Do we have anything interesting before we dive into Q&A?

0:00:25.7 Jordan Syatt: No, ’cause we’re recording back to back podcasts right now. If you’re watching the video, you’re seeing we’re wearing the exact same clothes as the last podcast just because…

0:00:33.1 Mike Vacanti: I wear these even week to week.

0:00:35.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah. Well, we’re just… We’re doing this back-to-back because this is literally less than a minute after we ended the last episode. I still have the little cough sucking on my Ricolas, and that’s it.

0:00:50.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that was a fun episode. It was a fun episode. We had a 10-minute segment about Leonardo DiCaprio and his infatuation with younger women that I cut out, so you can blame me, not Jordan.

0:01:01.4 Jordan Syatt: It was a great one. It was like…

0:01:03.2 Mike Vacanti: Not really.

0:01:04.1 Jordan Syatt: I thought it was great. And there was the end of… You can tell from the last episode, as soon as I asked, “What do you think of the Lumen device?” That was the end of that discussion, and we’re just laughing ’cause Mike was livid [laughter] when I was like, “What do you think of the Lumen device?” [laughter]

0:01:23.0 Mike Vacanti: It was such a good transition. It was hilarious.

0:01:27.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay. So you wanna go right into the Q&A?

0:01:30.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we’ll dive straight in, but just from a scheduling perspective, we’re hitting back-to-back because there’s upcoming travel, there’s things going on, and we’re just locking in that we are going to upload every single week in 2023 and beyond.

0:01:43.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s it.

0:01:45.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, let’s dive in.

0:01:46.8 Jordan Syatt: Alright. Someone asked, “How can I explain to someone that starvation mode isn’t a thing?”

0:01:55.1 Mike Vacanti: I’ll let you lead with this one.

0:01:56.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Well, so there’s… Whenever I talk about this, there’s always the debate over, “Well, what is starvation mode?” Let’s start with that. From what I see on social media, there are two main discussions about what starvation mode is or is not. So what I was brought up with in the fitness industry and what is still a very mainstream belief is that if you don’t eat enough calories, then your body will somehow go into this mysterious thing known as starvation mode because you’re not eating enough, and as a result of being in this “starvation mode”, your body will somehow store more body fat because you are not eating enough, and that is fucking stupid. That makes no sense, because no one in the history of the entire world ever got fat from starving, ever. And a lot of people will be like, “Well, it’s different.” Like, “Well, this person is only eating 1200 calories a day and they’re gaining weight.” I’m like, “Well, then… ” “And they’re in starvation mode.” Like, “What about someone eating 600 calories a day?” Like, “Well, that’s different.” Like, “Well, how is that different?”

0:03:06.1 Mike Vacanti: Not only that, but the 1200 is anecdote based on self-reported data, like look at every metabolic ward study where calories were controlled. And by the way, that’s the only definition of starvation mode that I’m aware of, so I’m very excited to hear this new second one.

0:03:22.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so there’s this new second one, and this has come, by the way, with the rise of reverse dieting. So the second definition has come with the rise of reverse dieting because of people figuring out about metabolic adaptation. I get asked about metabolic adaptation all the time, and people are so worried about it, that their metabolism is adapting. And so basically what has happened is people will say, “Well, then how come when people reverse diet, they continue to lose weight even though they increase their calories?” It’s like, “Okay, that’s actually a good question. When people are reverse dieting and they continue to lose weight… ” Let’s say you have someone legitimately eating 1200 calories a day, like legit, they’re eating 1200 hours a day, and then they increase their calories to 1500 and they continue to lose weight, that doesn’t mean they’re not still in a calorie deficit. They could continue to lose weight because they’re still in a calorie deficit.

0:04:24.0 Jordan Syatt: And oftentimes they’re like, “Well, how come they stopped losing weight at 1200?” Well, sometimes what will happen is when you’re eating way too few calories, your body will be very stressed, cortisol will rise, you’ll hold on to water for a little bit, whether it’s a day, two days, three days a week, two weeks can even happen where the scale weight will not go down. But that doesn’t mean you’re not losing fat, this means the scale weight isn’t changing ’cause you’re holding onto water, eventually it would go away. But when you increase calories to 1500, cortisol went down, you were still in the calorie deficit, so then you start to lose weight and it appears as though, now you’re losing weight more quickly in a higher calories. That’s not the case, it’s just, you just reduce stress or water went away and you’re just showing that you’re actually still losing fat while still being in a calorie deficit.

0:05:03.2 Mike Vacanti: And you’re describing a scenario where adherence is perfect at 1200.

0:05:08.3 Jordan Syatt: Exactly.

0:05:09.8 Mike Vacanti: When this is the outlier. That’s not the norm. The norm is you’re eating 1200, but you’re really not adhering to 1200, you’re eating 1200 a few days in a row, and then you have a high calorie day, and then there’s some wilful blindness then you eat 1200 for a few more days, then the weekend comes along, there’s a couple of high calorie days. You’re only focusing on the days you’re actually in 1200. You’re actually netting much higher than that, so then when you reverse or just when you increase your calories, you’re better able to adhere to the higher calorie intake, which actually leads to your total weekly intake being lower on 1500 than it was on 1200. That’s how the majority of people who lose more weight, when they increase their calories, that’s how they’re doing it.

0:05:52.8 Jordan Syatt: That’s right. And some people say that, so because when you reduce your calories, your metabolism goes down, that when you then increase your calories, your body is more likely to store fat because your metabolism is down now, and this can happen in people who severely, severely, severely, severely restrict calories for a significant period of time where… And I’m talking about Prisoner of War status, I’m talking about legitimate, like legitimate anorexia where they actually legitimately damage their metabolism. And then once they start eating more, they will put a little bit more body fat. This is a super, super small percentage of the population, and it’s also, for the vast majority of people, a relatively quick fix for their metabolism, and metabolism recovers very soon thereafter. So it’s really not that big of a deal. So these are the two different definitions of starvation mode. One is the one that you and I have both heard our whole lives, the other is that starvation mode being it’s easier to add body fat once you then reduce your calories enough and your metabolism is lower. Either way, the first one is just entirely, completely false, blatantly false. The second one has glimmers of truth in it, but it’s way over-played and there’s more fear-mongering around it that you don’t really have to worry about.

0:07:22.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. There’s also a weird element of convincing someone of something that they don’t want to believe. Like the person who’s asking this question to you, obviously, I’m guessing is looking for a way to explain this to somebody else. But if that other person like… I have no interest in changing someone else’s opinion because I think that they’re wrong and I’m right. If they’re maybe in the middle and trying to understand, then having these conversations is full and productive, but there’s very… How often can you change someone’s opinion about something when they don’t want their opinion to be changed, especially on a hot button issue, like fitness and nutrition is these days?

0:08:16.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s why whenever people say that and say like I can’t change their mind, I’ll offer to pay them $10,000 to come live with me for two weeks. And I’ll say, “Alright, fine, come live with me for two weeks. I’ll pay you $10,000, I’ll cover your expenses, all this stuff, but I get to see every single thing you put in your mouth, and if you don’t lose weight in these two weeks, then you owe me $10,000 and all of that, and no one’s taken me up on that. So if you want, you could try that and run a little experiment. You could document it. That would make some great content. No one’s taken me up on that yet though.

0:08:50.2 Mike Vacanti: I had a client… You and I have talked about this a lot, this strategy in general, but I had a client who… Guy, measurements were coming down, was recomping a little bit, but wasn’t losing as much body fat as he should have been on that intake, and then had him start sending daily food logs for a little more accountability around it, and after two, three weeks of that, not incredible consistency on the daily food logs, but scale still wasn’t really moving, and so then I went with, “Okay, we’re gonna do a three-day challenge. I want you to send me a photo of every single thing you eat. Like if it’s a couple of water, I want a picture, if it’s two cashews, I want a picture, like everything just for three days that you’re putting in your mouth,” and in a number of days, like scale starts moving, which is…

0:09:34.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:09:35.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:09:36.6 Jordan Syatt: Shocker.

0:09:37.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. [laughter] And it’s a win-win, right? Like clients pump because client wants to see progress, and even if it means like, “Okay, there might have been something here or there that I maybe wasn’t tracking with 100% accuracy,” amazing. Oh, and I used another one of our classics that we haven’t talked about in years, which is, “Hey, what brand or what company makes your food scale?”

0:10:03.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh my God, I completely forgot about that one. That was genius. That was such a genius question. Oh my God, I completely forgot about that. [laughter]

0:10:13.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. ‘Cause then it’s not like, “Hey, are you using a food scale?” It’s like, “Yeah, yeah, of course.” Yeah.

0:10:20.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, which…

0:10:22.1 Mike Vacanti: “Who makes your food scale?” Oh yeah. [laughter] It’s a good one.

0:10:26.4 Jordan Syatt: “Oh, I didn’t get one yet.” “Oh, okay, okay.” [laughter]

0:10:30.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And this guy actually did have one, so it was cool ’cause he was like, “Oh, this company.”

0:10:34.6 Jordan Syatt: And sends a picture of it.

0:10:36.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:10:37.9 Jordan Syatt: Does it matter if you drink water consistently throughout the day or just do big gulps?

[laughter]

0:10:42.8 Mike Vacanti: I love questions like this. Who asked, shout out?

0:10:46.7 Jordan Syatt: @willsavefortravel.

0:10:48.8 Mike Vacanti: Shoutout to @willsavefortravel. Let’s go.

0:10:50.8 Jordan Syatt: I never know which questions you’re gonna like and not like. I’m actually very surprised that you really like this.

[chuckle]

0:10:55.8 Mike Vacanti: It’s kind of funny. [chuckle] By big gulps, do you think like just a big sip or like 7-Eleven, like Big Gulps?

[laughter]

0:11:10.4 Jordan Syatt: I’m assuming she doesn’t mean that. Go on to 7-Eleven, filling up a big gulp with water, or just to have Big Gulps…

[laughter]

0:11:24.8 Mike Vacanti: You know, I actually… The standard answer that I think most would expect is what matters most, is your total water intake throughout the day, and that’s what counts. I disagree. I think there’s a lot of merit for a lot of people to kinda consistently sipping water throughout the day, because I’ve heard so many people who don’t like drinking water, “I don’t like drinking water,” were people who when they drink water, they would drink like 10, 12, 14, 16 ounces at a time, they just chug their water and they always felt really full and felt really uncomfortable as a result of drinking water. It’s like, “Well, how are you drinking water?” “Well, I slam a 16-ounce cup.” It’s like, “Well, yeah, then you’re gonna feel a little bit full and you’re gonna feel that liquid rumbling in your belly.” I think for people who struggle with getting enough water, having it nearby and drinking it consistently and sipping it consistently is beneficial. There’s also something to be said for that population to getting enough electrolytes and getting enough carbohydrates, which are also going to technically allow you to store more water in your body, which is going to allow you to drink more water, and which is anecdotally gonna increase hunger, or not increase hunger, increase thirst.

0:12:41.0 Jordan Syatt: Love that.

0:12:42.3 Mike Vacanti: Do you have a strong opinion on that question?

0:12:46.1 Jordan Syatt: Water is one of the things where I would say it’s probably very important to have consistency as opposed to just trying to get it all in with some big gulps every now and then. I mean, hydration status, it varies so consistently throughout the day.

0:13:04.2 Mike Vacanti: Great point.

0:13:04.8 Jordan Syatt: It’s like… And with even a small, small amount of dehydration, you get real negative health effects. Now, on any given day, it’s not a major issue, but I do wonder about if you’re consistently having this buildup of negative health effects or negative side effects from being dehydrated more consistently than you are hydrated, I would imagine that could add up over time and could affect you negatively in many, many ways. So I think consistently staying hydrated is probably super important for so many things; performance, digestion, health, all of that. Absolutely.

0:13:46.0 Mike Vacanti: It also reminds me of the question about, can you bank your steps, and you talked about that from the psychological perspective of knowing a percentage of the population would not take steps for four or five days, and then in one or two days try to get all their steps in for the week, and I’m applying that logic to spreading water out throughout the day versus having big gulps, like not drinking any water and knowing you wanted to have 80 ounces, let’s say, and it’s 8 o’clock at night, and then you’re trying to get your 80 ounces in before bed, like not gonna go as well, it’s gonna be hard to maintain that, sleep quality is gonna suffer, you’re gonna have to get up during the night, maybe multiple times use the restroom, like there’s a lot of benefits to kind of sipping throughout the day.

0:14:31.0 Jordan Syatt: There’s also something where it’s like, if you look at food and meal frequency, you can legitimately train your body to get hungry at certain times and certain frequencies throughout the day. So if you normally eat three or four meals a day at certain times, then you might start to get a little bit of a headache if you haven’t eaten yet, but after a couple of weeks of eating differently, you can completely change that or you can train your body to be hungry at certain times based on the schedule you follow. If you’re dehydrated… Excuse me. If you’re dehydrated, you can’t train your body to not have these negative side effects from not drinking sufficient water over any period of time. It’s not like you can say like, “Okay, well, I usually don’t drink water for this period of time, so I’m not gonna get a headache or I’ll… ” It’s not how it works, it’s like you need a certain amount of water in order to be hydrated on a consistent basis, and if you are not, then there will be immediate negative effects as a result of it, regardless of whether or not you then get hydrated later in the day. So yeah, I think it’s very important to do your best to do it consistently.

0:15:50.8 Jordan Syatt: Alright, @georgiaoverbeck. “My lower body is very hamstring dominant. How can I switch focus to quads/glutes?”

0:16:00.4 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

0:16:01.2 Jordan Syatt: I knew it. I knew you’d like this one.

0:16:05.2 Mike Vacanti: I was expecting you to say, How can I switch my focus to quads, not quads/glutes?

0:16:09.4 Jordan Syatt: Quads and glutes.

0:16:11.4 Mike Vacanti: I mean, it really depends on what the goal is here. If the goal is to have as much muscle as possible and you also want more balance, continue to train your hamstrings at more of a maintenance volume and add more training volume to your quads and glutes. In addition to upping the volume, having body parts that you care about more earlier in the workout and prioritizing them that way within each session is gonna help you grow them more, so having more quad-dominant exercises and even like glute isolation exercises earlier in the workout is gonna be beneficial. Yeah. Train the muscles more that you want to grow and don’t train the muscles as much that you would rather not grow.

0:17:12.0 Jordan Syatt: Do you know what’s interesting is, I’ve had this question crop up more frequently recently, and I even had a conversation about it with a guy who works out in the same gym as me, and he definitely grew up in the same era as you and I did, of strength and conditioning in which everything, when we were younger, was about the posterior chain, like everything. The number of articles written on the posterior chain and how everyone is quad dominant and knee dominant. And so they went… When I talk about fitness industry being on a pendulum of extremes, the fitness industry just so long to it the other side that was like, “We’re only gonna train the back.” And you can find so many articles of people being like, “You should train the posterior chain to the anterior chain at like a 2:1 ratio, like you should be training your back two times as much as your front,” and they completely swung the other direction. And it was funny because at that time there were real issues with people only majorly training interior chain, like the front of their body, whether it was the packs and their shoulders or the quads and all that, and not doing anything for the back, there were some real postural issues, injury issues, all of that.

0:18:33.0 Jordan Syatt: Now, I’m seeing a lot of issues with the backside being way overdeveloped and the front side, way underdeveloped. And I was talking about this with a guy in the gym because he saw me doing front squats and he was like, “What the fuck?” He was like, “Dude, your technique is so good.” He’s like, “I can’t do that. Da da da da da.” And he’s like, “I think what really screwed me up is, I’ve only been training my posterior chain.” He’s like, my adductor are great, my gracilis are great, all this stuff.” But he’s, but I can’t squat for the life of me. And I was, “well, do you squat?” And he’s like, “no, I’ve only done this just because I’ve been told that I need to do my posterior chain.” It’s man, it really did swing. And I think it’s starting to come back a little bit now and, it will be interesting.

0:19:13.5 Jordan Syatt: That was very much when postural and corrective exercise was the kingpin in the fitness industry…, that was when all that stuff was really making a name. Now I feel body building has really come back in full force and muscle hypertrophy and getting bigger is the big thing right now. I do think that the next one will probably go back to power lifting or maybe Olympic lifting. I think we’ll see a shift towards there within the next few years. But, yeah, to answer the question, it’s just if you wanna work on your quads and glutes then, I don’t know, Lunges would be a good idea. Bulgarian split squats would be a good idea. I will say, you said, go to a maintenance volume. I think it’s good to have some numbers. You could do one third of as much volume as you’re currently doing.

0:20:01.9 Mike Vacanti: Hamstrings.

0:20:03.4 Jordan Syatt: And maintain very easily… So, just drop your… Drop your volume for your posterior chip, for your hamstrings by two thirds… And then increase the volume from the other exercises and you’re good.

0:20:15.2 Mike Vacanti: Do you see a lot of… Because when you were… Like I said, I wasn’t imagining this person to say glutes were suffering as well. Do you see a lot of people with overdeveloped hamstrings and underdeveloped glutes?

0:20:29.6 Jordan Syatt: No. I just think that’s probably coming from people, like people and specifically more women than anything really wanting to grow their glutes. And it’s almost like not enough.

0:20:39.3 Mike Vacanti: She’s probably decently balanced but sees, 50 BBLs a day in her feed.

0:20:44.7 Jordan Syatt: Yes.

0:20:45.5 Mike Vacanti: And might have a slightly unrealistic expectation of hamstring to glute visual ratios.

0:20:51.0 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Seeing all these, highly edited and twist.

0:20:56.1 Mike Vacanti: Twisted sideways.

0:20:57.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. All the stuff where it’s like, that’s just not what a normal butt looks like. There’s a little… There’s usually a… There’s a little bit of droop in the bottom of it, like there’s… Unless your genetics are insane, or you’ve got a BBL or whatever it is, or you’ve gotten a great editor on Photoshop, there’s usually a little bit of a little jiggle.

0:21:16.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Well, jiggle and this butts don’t look that big relative to waste and hamstrings. And I, a lot of it just has to do with positioning that hip move that… I don’t know, when, who started that or how, but that makes it look completely different. That might be, the like.

0:21:36.7 Jordan Syatt: It’s so uncomfortable. I tried doing it.

0:21:37.8 Mike Vacanti: What Instagram versus reality things over the years?

0:21:40.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:41.3 Mike Vacanti: That might be the one that I like the most. That actually, highlights something more meaningful. Just like standing there, side angle, butt shot compared to hip turn, influencer pose butt shot and the difference.

0:21:57.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Where their hip is just jutting out, they’re doing a kettlebell windmill or something. It’s just ridiculous.

0:22:03.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Add that moves second to Turkish get up in my books. But yeah, we can still use it… Use it to make a point.,

0:22:11.2 Jordan Syatt: Let’s see.

0:22:15.3 Mike Vacanti: What’s up with fake teeth. Did we talk about that on the podcast?

0:22:19.9 Jordan Syatt: Like veneers?

0:22:20.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Did we… I might have brought this up on the podcast. If so, we can just skip this.

0:22:24.0 Jordan Syatt: I’m the wrong person to ask if we’ve spoken about this before. I have… I don’t know, but I’m more than happy to talk about it again. Or talk about it. Period’s.

0:22:33.9 Mike Vacanti: What’s up with them?

0:22:35.9 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I think it’s just another step in the or not. Yeah. Another step in the people are seeing all these crazy white straight teeth and they’re like “What? Fuck it.” I’ll just get… I’ll rather than putting braces on or all that, I just get this done and my teeth will look perfect. But from my experience seeing them, very few people’s actually look real. I can almost always tell when someone has veneers because they look so perfect… And they’re so white and they’re so straight and it’s just… And they, there’s… I don’t know, you can tell immediately. And some of them are thick. Some of them look they’ve got, what’s it called? They’ve got those fake teeth in their mouth, chompers looks, it looks they’ve got chompers in their mouth.

0:23:34.4 Mike Vacanti: I see.

0:23:35.5 Jordan Syatt: Do you know what I mean?

0:23:35.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a fake mouth, like a Halloween costume type of thing.

0:23:40.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:23:42.9 Mike Vacanti: So it’s just a cosmetic procedure that people, similar to like a boob job or like a BBL or like a… I don’t know, what guys…

0:23:52.8 Jordan Syatt: A hair transplant, do implanter.

0:23:53.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Like a hair transplant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

0:23:57.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I don’t think there’s health benefits to it. I might be wrong. I actually would imagine there’s health risks. So I’m pretty… Don’t they shave their teeth down like to in… Like crazy shit… That looks like vampire stuff. Right.

0:24:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. I believe so. I believe they… Yeah, they get shaved down to pegs and then they put them on, but they’re, they must be high margin because I see advertisements like cosmetic surgery at dental offices. Dental offices must make their money on cosmetics compared to cleanings because I… I don’t know, at least the dentist I am going to.

0:24:35.8 Jordan Syatt: I would ima… I mean what other cosmetic stuff do they do?

0:24:38.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I guess that’s the main one. I don’t know any kind of elective.

0:24:43.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, like braces? Oh no, but that’s an orthodontist.

0:24:46.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I guess it’s just veneers.

0:24:48.7 Jordan Syatt: Those are expensive, but now, man, did you have braces growing up?

0:24:52.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:24:52.7 Jordan Syatt: Dude. Have you seen, the technology for braces now is so much better than it was when we were kids.

0:25:00.7 Mike Vacanti: Everyone just does invisalign.

0:25:01.8 Jordan Syatt: I think they do invisalign. I don’t… I don’t even fully know, but yet they don’t have like a frack.

0:25:08.8 Mike Vacanti: They don’t have like frack, stuck to each tooth.

0:25:09.8 Jordan Syatt: Dude don’t put it like…

0:25:11.8 Mike Vacanti: Band and then they tighten them. What color bands are you on? I’m on brown and blue alternating. My mom’s like… And I’m like…

[laughter]

0:25:19.6 Jordan Syatt: You got brown and blue.

0:25:21.3 Mike Vacanti: I was getting all kinds of colors. Yeah, there’s like a… I think it was actually a silver and blue because that was my high school’s colors. But then the… I don’t know, too much chocolate milk. I’m saying.

[laughter]

0:25:34.6 Jordan Syatt: I wanted yellow and my mom would never let me get yellow. She’s like, “It’s gonna look you have yellow teeth.”

0:25:40.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:43.3 Jordan Syatt: So yeah, I just got blue. But dude, that was the worst.

0:25:45.5 Mike Vacanti: It seems like it’s part of a hyperfocus on perceived physical beauty. I can’t tell if it’s anti-age or if it’s beauty even, facial surgery and hair transplants, a good one that you bring up, but some combination of like wanting to appear youthful and also more attractive, I guess.

0:26:12.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah., yeah, I mean I think, man, I feel like almost everything could be in some way seen as a way to appear more attractive.

0:26:24.0 Mike Vacanti: But surgeries and none of these things have… Like you could say that, oh, well someone who loses 50 pounds just wants to be more attractive. It’s, but that also comes with.

0:26:34.2 Jordan Syatt: Here’s real health benefits. Yeah.

0:26:35.0 Mike Vacanti: Real health benefits. You wanna build more muscle, you wanna get stronger, so you’ll be better looking, Real health benefits, this is like mimicking that, the vanity aspect without any health benefits and potentially minor health risks. And by the way, I’m asking this ’cause I’m genuinely curious in your position. I don’t fully understand it. I lack social awareness in that way.

0:26:58.6 Jordan Syatt: My thing is… My opinion on any of that stuff, whether it’s boob jobs or hair transplants or veneers, is like, I’m not gonna judge anyone for doing it. If that’s what you wanna do, go for it. I support you and if that makes you happy, great. I do encourage really asking why? Why do I wanna do this? And do you think that the reason why you wanna do this is going to make you happy that you’ve done it but throughout your life? That’s like… That’s what I would ask. So for example, if my daughter ever asks, “Hey, I wanna get a boob job or a nose job or whatever it is.” If she inherits my nose and she wants to get a nose job, I’m definitely not going to fund it.

0:27:47.4 Jordan Syatt: I’m not… I’m not gonna be like, “Yeah, daddy will pay for that.” Nope, absolutely the fuck not. I’ll be like, “When you are an adult and you make your own money and if you want to do this, then absolutely. I support you and I will always love you. I would like to talk about why you think that you wanna get this and why. Do you think it’ll make you happier and all of that.” But I’m definitely not one to think less of someone because they have that stuff.

0:28:13.9 Mike Vacanti: Of course.

0:28:14.3 Jordan Syatt: But I do think it’s screamed. It says more about an insecurity that I would generally like to see them overcome as opposed to mask, if that makes sense… But I have no negative thoughts towards anyone who does any of that stuff. It’s more just like, “let’s talk about it.”

0:28:34.9 Mike Vacanti: Upstream from the insecurity. I wanna take it even a a step further. It seems like, and I’m not, “oh, social media’s the devil, da da da.” But beauty standards have changed over time and it seems a lot of the elective surgeries are currently to look like a filter. A lot of these filters. That whether, whether it’s waist shrinking, hips bigger, face contortion.

0:29:08.6 Jordan Syatt: Teeth whitening.

0:29:10.1 Mike Vacanti: Symmetry. Yeah. Teeth whitening, cheekbone, nose size like a lot. And I don’t really know what the exact surgeries are, but it just seems like there’s some, I don’t know, golden ratios, whatever. Like I remember the golden ratio of biceps calves, shoulders to waist, that kind of stuff. But I would imagine that kind of stuff exists with facial and even like different kinds of body symmetry. And then basically I’m saying that the insecure, like using that your daughter, if she gets your nose example, the fact that.

0:29:47.1 Jordan Syatt: So you think I have a big nose? Okay. [laughter]

0:29:50.3 Mike Vacanti: Listen, the fact… The fact that that would be perceived as less attractive and that a small nose would be perceived as more attractive. I don’t understand. And I actually think like there are certain things that are biologically ingrained in us, right? Like that stem from fertility and yada yada. But the nose thing I don’t understand because when did having a tiny nose become an atri? Like that doesn’t seem an evolutionary thing from 6,000 years ago that was purposeful that, that we now think a smaller nose is more attractive. That seems like a thrust upon us through filters and et cetera. Or maybe I just don’t understand or have weird taste.

0:30:36.6 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know. Who knows? I mean, yeah. I don’t even know where to go with that. I definitely feel in term… You’re right, in terms of social media filters, I think online dating in terms of like, with the swiping and all of that, seeing, seeing some of the people on there with clearly outrageously filtered pictures, I’m like, goddamn. When they meet you in person they’re not gonna recognize you at all… And I would imagine that some people are getting these surgeries to try and look the way the filter has them look… They’re literally on their Instagram changing filters and like, “Oh my god, I like how I look here way better. How can I smooth my skin out to look like it’s like this in this filter?”

0:31:20.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s like, “Holy shit.” And for years I think it’s been a progression over time… Makeup for example, makeup is done to make you look different than how you actually look. To make it, and your skin is more clear and smooth and there aren’t blemishes and all of that. And then well cool. So now you don’t even need makeup. Now you could do whatever and you could just, we could have a filter that goes on and it’s, “Oh, well what if we had a surgery to make that happen”? , it’s just the natural progression of making things easier to look how you want to look. So yeah. I mean it just seems like it’s a natural progression. But it is, I think it, there is something that, I think it in some ways it can be, it’s unique at the very least and it’s reminiscent of how far technology has come. There are many, many positives, but.

0:32:15.4 Mike Vacanti: Like what?

0:32:16.6 Jordan Syatt: Just showing how far technology has come.

0:32:19.8 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:32:19.9 Jordan Syatt: I dunno. ‘Cause the thing, I’m trying not to be… I.

0:32:24.8 Mike Vacanti: You’re trying not to be judgmental.

0:32:25.3 Jordan Syatt: Like I would have had a plastic surgery.

0:32:27.9 Mike Vacanti: Sorry, I didn’t… When you said many benefits, I thought you meant of filter culture, not of surgeries. We’re on the same page that we’re not judging the people who elected to get surgeries. We’re all, cohesive, friendly.

0:32:37.6 Jordan Syatt: I know I have friends and colleagues who’ve had surgeries and.

0:32:38.4 Mike Vacanti: Cool.

0:32:40.8 Jordan Syatt: And I’ve spoken to them about it ’cause I wanted their opinion on it. And we’re friendly enough to have that discussion and they’re like, “I’m so glad I did it.” And who knows, maybe that’s whatever bias where they already, or the sunk costs where they already put in the money and they change it and they can’t reverse it. Or maybe they can reverse it, but, they just… Who knows? Maybe that’s part of it. But the conversations, and I’ve had both conversations. Some people love it and some people severely regret it. But yeah, it’s hard for me to not say, I really wish we could dive into the insecurity aspect and work on the insecurity opposed to masking it.

0:33:26.9 Jordan Syatt: But I need to make it clear. It’s, that’s not me judging anyone for doing it. It’s, that’s just where my heart is. It’s like, I want to talk about the insecurity and how do we overcome it as opposed to fixing it type of a thing… For example, if there… Like my… I spoke about it in YouTube video recently. My biggest insecurities, is my height for sure. If someone could tap me with a wand and say, “all right, you’re gonna grow six inches all of a sudden and there will be no negative Bennett, no negative effects, no nothing.” I don’t think I would do it. If I could go back and change my entire life, like if I could… Everything would be the same. But the only thing that was different was changing my height. I don’t think I would.

0:34:10.6 Mike Vacanti: You wouldn’t be you.

0:34:12.7 Jordan Syatt: I wouldn’t be me.

0:34:13.3 Mike Vacanti: Everything would’ve been different.

0:34:16.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Everything changes everything.

0:34:19.7 Mike Vacanti: Yep. Sports selection, everything.

0:34:22.4 Jordan Syatt: How people treat you and how then you react.

0:34:23.6 Mike Vacanti: Responded.

0:34:24.3 Jordan Syatt: To that. Everything… And the ability to articulate yourself and how you’re feeling and the interactions you have with people, how people view you, how you view them. Everything changes and, yeah. So that’s, I, yeah. I don’t know.

0:34:42.4 Mike Vacanti: Interesting. We’ll dig into the well of the Q&A.

0:34:45.8 Jordan Syatt: Braces though. Dude, I remember, I remember, we had this thing in my town called Teen Center for seventh and eighth graders… And it was really only for seventh graders ’cause by the time kids were in eighth grade, they didn’t wanna be there with all the seventh graders anymore. So really only seventh graders would go and, it was this thing like every two Fridays outta the month you could go and they’d have a dance room where all the kids would grind.

0:35:14.7 Mike Vacanti: Classic.

0:35:14.8 Jordan Syatt: And then they had like, an arcade room. I remember, oh my god, I remember before. So this is two separate stories. I remember before going to Teen Center, the first time, I heard everyone being, all the guys were, are you gonna grind? Are you gonna grind to so-and-so? Are you gonna grind? And I didn’t know what grinding was and I remember being so embarrassed and I was at my buddy Adam Quinn’s house and there were a bunch of us there. And I was like “Guys, what’s grinding?” And, they all laughed, but then they had one of those poles in the basement that was a support beam for the house… And so they took turns showing me.

0:35:51.0 Mike Vacanti: How to grind?

0:35:54.4 Jordan Syatt: What grinding was on the pole. But I remember vividly, I always had my orthodontist appointments on Fridays.

0:36:00.8 Mike Vacanti: Hey. Hang on, hang on. Before we come into that, how ridiculous was it that that was allowed?

0:36:05.0 Jordan Syatt: Dude. For a 12 year old.

0:36:08.5 Mike Vacanti: Oh. You were grinding to mid… We were grinding to middle school. It was our high school dances.

0:36:12.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:36:13.1 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Yeah. It’s 14, 15, 16, 17. But yes, like we were packed.

0:36:18.2 Jordan Syatt: It was 13, 14.

0:36:21.1 Mike Vacanti: Packed in on the dance floor.

0:36:23.1 Jordan Syatt: And there were… There were were adult chaperones in the room watching us. And there was more than just grinding going on. I’d saw it.

0:36:27.8 Mike Vacanti: A lot of stories. There’s a lot of stories from those dance floors.

0:36:30.3 Jordan Syatt: And I’m thinking like, “Oh my God.” yeah. Crazy. But I remember ’cause ever, I would only have my orthodontist appointments on Fridays and that always led to… I would go get my braces tightened and then I would go to Teen Center… And it was the worst. I was, “oh, hey guys.”

[laughter]

0:36:53.9 Mike Vacanti: Hurts so bad. Yeah…

0:36:57.4 Jordan Syatt: It hurts so bad. Oh my God. It was, I was in so much pain and I would get the metal bars rubbing against my cheek.

0:37:04.1 Mike Vacanti: Oh yeah.

0:37:04.9 Jordan Syatt: And I would get, ugh, God… It was terrible.

0:37:07.6 Mike Vacanti: I had to wear headgear for six months.

0:37:10.1 Jordan Syatt: You had headgear?

0:37:11.4 Mike Vacanti: I had headgear.

0:37:12.2 Jordan Syatt: That you wore at school?

0:37:14.1 Mike Vacanti: No, no. Just at night.

0:37:16.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, just when you slept.

0:37:16.1 Mike Vacanti: No, that would’ve been, that would’ve been character building. I wish I would’ve wore headgear to school. I might be… I’d be really something today.

0:37:22.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh man.

0:37:23.9 Mike Vacanti: Let’s hit another one. Last one.

0:37:26.1 Jordan Syatt: Okay, here’s, so someone asked, @lorena2, she said workout videos overrated or underrated. And we could talk… We could talk about this from, the perspective of making content on social media.

0:37:37.1 Mike Vacanti: Something’s better than nothing, that’s for sure., yeah, I, There’s a lot here, right? I think there’s benefit to walking the talk, talking the walk, whatever that saying is that I think I’ve been butchering my whole life, but showing what you teach and what you preach and doing it, that’s probably the baseline layer, Which is document your own workouts. It’s pretty easy to do. It doesn’t take a lot of thought, set up. Film a set, upload it wherever you’re gonna upload it., I think a step above that is, making educational videos around specific exercises, technique videos, don’t make these three mistakes. Two things to think about when doing this move. We’ve seen a lot of people in the mentorships see a lot of success growing Instagram falling specifically, and TikTok with that type of content, that style of content.

0:38:43.3 Mike Vacanti: Overall, I’m a fan of workout videos for content. It vlogs as element of vlogs. I remember voiceovers for technique was something, if you had a videographer and had, I remember edits were a thing for a number of years and that people enjoyed watching was like a cinematic style workout., all of these things have merit., I think the more you can lean towards educating in a way that benefits your audience, the better that content is gonna perform in the long run and you attract the right type of person and the more likely it is to help you build your coaching business.

0:39:21.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think, and so there’s so many different ways to do it. I remember the first workout videos I ever watched, I was in probably freshman year of high school or eighth grade, one of those. And I had found this guy on YouTube, his name is Arnel Ricafranca. And I think he was from sixpackabs.com or something that. And I just wanted to have a six pack and I would find his YouTube videos and he wouldn’t talk. He would just show a couple reps of every exercise and it was like a shitty transition from here’s one exercise and would swipe across the screen and then here’s the next exercise, swipe across the screen. And I would just watch those and I would write it down and then I would do it on my own. Now, the newer version of that is having the swipe workout on Instagram where you show one exercise and then it’s just like a brief clip and then they can swipe and they can go to the next one and they can be great. I would say it’s a good form of content to include. I would not make that your only form of content. Number one.

0:40:33.8 Jordan Syatt: I think you cannot… I’m not gonna say you can’t, but if you’re gonna do that type of content, you have to remember, because now so many more people are doing that. You have to find ways to stand out. This is important. You have to find ways to stand out. And at this point in the game, you can’t just put up six to eight different, 12 second clips of you with no music in the background. And just like you doing it with like… I don’t know, hearing your spouse talking in the background and with you just doing six reps of something and then it’s… No one’s gonna watch that.

0:41:13.6 Mike Vacanti: Unless the way you stand out is you’re outrageously strong or you have an outrageous physique.

0:41:18.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Correct. I think, and what you just said is you really encourage people to educate. I think that should be the way that you stand out as the coach. I don’t think you should try and use your strength or your physique as your main metrics of standing out because eventually no one’s going to care about that stuff. And either they won’t care and or you’re gonna burn yourself out, of just trying to… I don’t think.

0:41:46.0 Mike Vacanti: Look good all the time.

0:41:47.8 Jordan Syatt: Making your… Yeah. It’s, you’re gonna burn yourself out and or you’re gonna injure yourself. I see that happening with a lot of the young power lifters. Now every video they post is them posting an insane amount of weight. It’s like you’re doing this every day, you’re lifting an insane amount of weight every day. You’re gonna wreck yourself eventually just, and you’re doing this because you want the engagement.

0:42:05.2 Jordan Syatt: You want the likes, you want the clients because it all brings, but long term, you can’t keep doing this for 10, 15, 20 years. If you could take those workout videos and like Michael was saying, educate through these videos, whether it’s doing a voiceover or explaining the right technique or what in some way, in some capacity, properly educating them through these workout videos, that’s probably the best way to stand out. And that it doesn’t take much to do that. But again, I wouldn’t make all of your content workout videos. I wouldn’t make most of your content workout videos. I wouldn’t even make a substantial percentage of your content workout videos. I would say less than 10% at most should be… Should be workout videos and the rest should be other types of content. But if you want to include that as a supplement to otherwise very helpful educational content, then great.

0:42:58.3 Jordan Syatt: But you don’t want to be the workout dude or the workout woman. You don’t just wanna be like, “Hey, I just give these workouts all the time.” You don’t wanna do that because for a number of reasons, not least, which I’m seeing a, a woman go through this right now. She built a huge audience. I’m very friendly with her. We speak on Instagram, every now and then. She built a huge audience on Instagram and YouTube and for a while did really well. And all she did was workout videos. That’s all she did. No voice, no talking, it was just videos. And they did really well. Now her engagement is trash. It’s really, really bad. Years later, she still actually, she looks phenomenal. Her physique is insane. But people just got tired of these workouts over and over and over.

0:43:36.4 Jordan Syatt: And she just made a YouTube video recently talking about how she wants to start making content, giving more insight into who she is and her beliefs and what she thinks. And now her engagement’s starting to pick up again. I’m like, “oh.” And I wrote her a message. I was like, “I’m really glad you’re doing this. This is gonna be very helpful for you and for your audience.” When you only do workout stuff or even a majority of workout stuff and they don’t know who you are, what you believe, how many fucking workout videos can they see before they’ve had enough before? And by that point they have no reason to stay around because they have all these workouts. They’ve saved them all. They’ve done them all. They’ll go to someone else. They don’t have a connection to you. They don’t know who you are, what you believe, what you like, what you don’t like, any of that. It’s, and I think a lot of your content that can be educational can also include stuff about you. Even just hearing your voice, hearing you talk, giving your thoughts. You’re establishing a connection with people. That is, you can’t get through just simply a swipe workout. So I think for that reason, in and of itself, it should be a small, small, small percentage. If anything at all.

0:44:37.2 Mike Vacanti: Boom. Mic drop. I gotta catch a flight. Great episode. If you enjoyed, please leave a five star review. It helps us a ton. Helps the podcast a ton. We appreciate you listening. Next week we’ll be back next week.

0:44:55.0 Jordan Syatt: See ya.