Episode 145: How to Double Your Testosterone (lol!)

0:00:00.9 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.5 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:15.2 Mike Vacanti: Weekly uploads at the How to Become a Personal Trainer Podcast.

0:00:20.2 Jordan Syatt: Dude, it’s crazy.

0:00:21.5 Mike Vacanti: Let’s jump into Q&A.

0:00:22.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, bro. Before we get into the Q&A, loaded stretching. Loaded stretching, Prrrr, You kidding me? I feel so… My back has never felt better.

0:00:38.0 Mike Vacanti: Give us your top two to three loaded stretches you’ve been doing.

0:00:42.0 Jordan Syatt: So the main ones I’ve just been, so I like stand on a little box, it’s essentially, I’m doing a toe touch, but I’m at a point now where I can go much further than the floor. So I need a X range of motion. So I stand on a box and I hold… I could either do a kettlebell or a sandbag. I like the sandbag better, just based on how it feels. So I get a sandbag and I just do number one, a loaded toe touch. And I’ll like go down for like, lately three to five minutes. I’ll listen to my podcast, just hold that and just like every minute get a little bit deeper, more spinal flexion. And then I do the same exact thing. But instead of going straight down, I actually rotate and go to each side. And for that one I’ll do reps. So like I’ll do 10 reps, super slow, eccentric on the way down, and then come back up like just complete flexion and rotation. I’ve… Dude, oh my gosh. Like feeling it, it feels so good. It’s not heavy. It’s not a heavy bag. It’s like 15, 20 pounds, but it’s just enough where it really helps me get a little bit deeper into that stretch. And my back feels so ridiculously good.

0:01:52.2 Mike Vacanti: Dude, I’m so happy for you. Sounds great.

0:01:55.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Dude.

0:01:57.6 Mike Vacanti: Are you doing these with locked knees?

0:02:00.7 Jordan Syatt: I go back and forth. So sometimes they’ll be locked, sometimes they’ll be slightly bent, they’re not like ostrich locked where they’re not just like completely locked out straight. Sometimes I’ll alternate back and forth there. 95% of the time they’re like straight and locked out, but not hyper extended type. So it’s like, it’s that sort of middle ground.

0:02:25.0 Mike Vacanti: Nice.

0:02:25.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:02:26.0 Mike Vacanti: Are you doing any kind of warmup before you’re doing these long three to five minute set static holds?

0:02:32.4 Jordan Syatt: Not really. I’ll just go in and I’ll start light and I’ll just go as far as I can. And then throughout the duration of the stretch, I’ll warm up and I’ll sink deeper and deeper into it. But I’m not starting off with any type of anything. I literally just start with that.

0:02:48.2 Mike Vacanti: And what does the intensity feel like at the beginning? Does it feel relatively easy? Like you’re not trying to push the range and you’re just letting yourself gradually sink into it? Or is it, does it feel intense from the beginning?

0:03:00.9 Jordan Syatt: No, from the… It’s a great question. I think the beginning is, the first two minutes I feel like a little bit locked up. I feel a little bit locked up and it’s not in my back where it used to be, I used to feel at my back. Now I just feel it more hamstringing because I think it’s… I’m just getting deeper and deeper and my back is getting a greater range of motion. But the first two minutes I feel a little bit locked up. So I sort of like do a little bit of bouncing, like light bouncing. It is like, I don’t even know if bouncing is the right term for it. It’s light, light, light up and down movements just to get comfortable in that range. And then after about two minutes, that’s when I can really start to sink into it, go a little bit deeper, reach further with the weight, with the sandbag. And so no, it’s probably like a five or a six out of 10 for the first two minutes, and then the final two to three minutes or so, that’s when I really start pushing and it starts getting to like an eight to a nine difficulty.

0:03:56.6 Mike Vacanti: Nice. And what’s your breathing like throughout the set?

0:04:01.2 Jordan Syatt: I’m really not paying attention to it to be honest. I’m just, I’m relaxed. I’m listening to Torah podcast. I’m not doing nasal breathing or anything. I do feel my belly up against my thighs and stuff as I’m going, like, I’m clearly belly breathing, but I’m not really focusing on it. I think a lot of the breathing stuff is designed to make you relaxed and ’cause you get often a better response from being relaxed. But I’m already relaxed, so I’m not like, I don’t need to focus on it ’cause I’m probably breathing like I’m relaxed anyway.

0:04:33.9 Mike Vacanti: You’re just a relaxed ESTP and you belly breathe naturally through the course of your life. Your cortisol levels are remarkably low, testosterone remarkably high, and you’re just the pinnacle of excellence.

0:04:46.9 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I sent that to Viada. I sent my testosterone changes to Alex Viada ’cause I wanted his input on it. He was blown away, he couldn’t believe it. He was like, “that’s gotta be the insulin sensitivity.” But he asked me to look at the… I don’t know how to pronounce it, estradiol, estradiol, estradi… I don’t know how to pronounce it. He looked at the other markers as well. He was like, that’s absolutely wild.

0:05:09.4 Mike Vacanti: I mean, we can get into it if you want to. It’s unheard of to the point where, like I told you, I just don’t believe the initial reading to be accurate for whatever reason. [laughter] It’s just impossible. It’s literally, based on everything I’ve ever seen, impossible.

0:05:29.9 Jordan Syatt: Have we spoken about it on the podcast yet or no?

0:05:34.2 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:05:34.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, Got it. You wanna explain what’s going on?

0:05:40.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, Jordan got blood work done before his before his blood sugar spiking month of losing fat and getting healthier while spiking his glucose every single day. And in his initial blood work, he had total test of 545, which isn’t the worst, but isn’t the greatest.

0:06:05.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s healthy. Yeah. It’s not great, but it’s not super low.

0:06:09.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you’re fine, yeah. But you’re… It’s… For a male your age, yeah, it’s fine. For a male your age with your lifestyle and athleticism and amount you sleep and nutrition and where you were at with the amount of lean mass you have and like, it was lower than I would have expected it to be.

0:06:31.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:06:32.6 Mike Vacanti: And then 30 days later, after losing a lot of body fat in a short period of time and being very deprived of nutrients, a time when testosterone levels plummet for dudes and aggressive calorie deficits, your test went from 545 to 925, nearly doubling. And somehow Spencer Nadolsky, he’s just like, who’s been brought up on like three straight episodes by the way, but was like, “oh, we see this because like insulin, improved insulin sensitivity like this happens.” And apparently Viada says the insulin sensitivity can do it too. And these guys are both much smarter than me. But guess what, I’ve never seen anyone ever go double their total test as a 31-year-old natural who literally…

0:07:17.6 Jordan Syatt: 32.

0:07:17.6 Mike Vacanti: 32. Okay. Yeah. Even more to my point [laughter] who just aggressively dieted for 30 days.

0:07:26.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Crazy.

0:07:28.1 Mike Vacanti: Doesn’t happen…

0:07:28.9 Jordan Syatt: 12 pounds.

0:07:29.8 Mike Vacanti: The last nine pound… The last nine days of your fat loss phase, you’re in this like, don’t even wanna move level of energy deprivation, and your total testosterone doubled. And it’s not like you were… Like your body fat was in a reasonable place at the beginning. So yes, if you go from a certain body fat and you lose a lot of body fat and then get your calorie intake up to baseline and have several weeks of eating at maintenance and training and sleeping great, sure, I can maybe see not to that level, but something like that. But you were in a restricted state after losing 12 pounds in 30 days and your total test doubled to 925. Doesn’t happen. [laughter] And guess, you know why, if it did, then every single dude, I’d be like, oh, how do I get higher test levels? You wouldn’t have books like TOT and people like Jay Campbell advocating for these different strategies or I got my buddy Dean texting me about Huberman said, “this compound can get me an extra 30 points on total test.” I don’t even remember the name of it.

0:08:34.0 Mike Vacanti: I don’t care, because 30 points on total test isn’t gonna do anything. You wouldn’t have all of that if all you had to do was go in aggressive deficit for 30 days and eat spoonfuls of sugar and really be deprived and you double your total test. Doesn’t happen. So my working thesis is that knowingly… Not knowing, unknowingly before you got that, maybe it was a bottle of wine the night before, maybe you were stressed, maybe it was a poor night of sleep, I think you had said you were traveling.

0:09:09.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I was super stressed.

0:09:10.5 Mike Vacanti: And like traveling with the family and the baby right before you got that blood work done. But like 545 or 5… Whatever. Yeah, 545 wasn’t your actual total test at that time.

0:09:21.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think, I actually think that’s right. And I think just all my behavior, my like personality, I don’t feel like I… I’ve had my test taken before and it’s never been anywhere near that low. So I think the traveling and the stress, ’cause we were traveling, we went to Atlanta to see my wife’s family. It was the most difficult plane travel that we’d had with my daughter up to that point. We were drinking with them. Like there’s a real chance that… We were getting bad sleep in the hotel, there’s a real chance that it was an artificially bad testosterone blood test that just gave me a reading that wasn’t indicative of my norm. So it looks like it doubled, but it actually like probably stayed the same or maybe even slightly went down.

0:10:07.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. It actually was higher than 545 originally. Like who knows where…

0:10:11.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:10:12.9 Mike Vacanti: But yes, that’s a great explanation. Much more, much less emotional, much less passion behind it, but very astute to the point and accurate, unlike what I’m bringing to this podcast today.

0:10:21.8 Jordan Syatt: I posted about it and I immediately started getting both men and women being… Men being like, how the fuck do I do that, [laughter] how do I do?

0:10:31.7 Mike Vacanti: And women being like, “How do I get my husband to do that?”

0:10:35.5 Jordan Syatt: Yes. I got so many women being like, “oh my God, my husband has super low test. How do I help him increase it [laughter] like that?” I have to be like, “guys, like this isn’t… I didn’t… Don’t…”

0:10:44.4 Mike Vacanti: “Join the Inner Circle.”

0:10:46.7 Jordan Syatt: “Start spiking your blood sugar.” Like, I had one guy be like, “wait, so you’re saying I just need to spike my blood sugar? [laughter] That’ll double my double my test?” I was like, “no man, it’s not how it works.”

0:10:58.8 Mike Vacanti: No, no.

0:11:00.2 Jordan Syatt: But it is interesting.

0:11:01.9 Mike Vacanti: Do you want to give the actual answer though if you know. Hey, I have extremely low testosterone levels or my husband has extremely low testosterone levels.

0:11:11.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. We can talk about how people can actually increase it. For sure. How about you start? I mean, I think this is like definitely your, more your wheelhouse.

0:11:16.0 Mike Vacanti: Dude, you just doubled your test in 30 days while… This is your house of wheel.

0:11:21.4 Jordan Syatt: I just… I’m gatekeeping bro. I gotta keep the secrets. [laughter]

0:11:25.6 Mike Vacanti: You are gatekeeping, keeping it behind that $24.99 a month thing you’re running over there, that membership site. In my non-expert, but interested opinion, sleep is the one of the top few more sleep and better sleep quality, not boozing, or severely limiting alcohol, getting yourself to a healthy body fat percentage, strength training and having at least some of that strength training being heavy compound weights where you’re trying to get stronger week over week, month over month consistently. Those are gonna be the biggest levers… You’ll see little one-offs like eat this food, more dietary cholesterol or more saturated fat, yeah, eat less sugar. I’m sure all of these move the needle a little bit, but none as much as sleep, lifting heavy, alcohol and getting to a reasonable body fat percentage.

0:12:37.0 Mike Vacanti: Those are the four biggest, which it’s kind of… And then I’ll let you go, but it’s kind of sad. I don’t know if sad is the right word, but there’s a part of me that’s disappointed when I see a guy who has low levels and he’s not doing anything right, and doesn’t make any effort to do anything right. And then just hops on TRT injecting…

0:12:58.8 Jordan Syatt: TRT. Yeah.

0:13:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Whatever. Yeah, like probably not optimal and I don’t know, just missing a step. But yeah, those are the the four big ones for me.

0:13:14.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, sleep without question for sure. I echo everything you said. I’m gonna like add a couple that maybe they won’t have as big of an impact or maybe they will. Sleep for sure, lifting for sure. I really wanna emphasize like getting to a healthy body fat percentage. And I see a lot of dudes just packing on the pounds and like, oh my testosterone’s so low. It’s like, whatever, well, you gotta lose some fat. You have to, you’re carrying all this extra fat, it’s not good for your testosterone at all and it’s not good for a lot of things, but especially if you’re trying to improve your testosterone. Carrying a lot of extra excess body fat is not gonna be good for that. I think just overall movement and ideally movement in the sun I think could have a lot of benefits for it. I think getting direct sunlight could be just unbelievably helpful for it. I think now more than ever with like, ever since COVID, people are just shacked up inside their house, face in front of the screen.

0:14:23.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s like, of course your test is low. You’re not having any social interaction. Like watching porn, like just… You’re not getting outside, you’re not moving, you’re not lifting, you’re eating junk all the time, of course I think getting up, getting outside, getting sunlight, moving, interacting with real people, lifting weights, getting sleep, eating high quality foods. That’s just, it’s that. And I think so much of the lifestyle around drinking a lot for sure is killing it. And then the lack of… People feel like they sleep well when they drink, but they don’t. When you drink, you actually, your sleep quality goes down dramatically. So it’s you’re drinking a lot, you’re sleeping like shit, you’re not exercising, you’re not moving. Yeah, your test is gonna be super low. Nix the alcohol or severely reduce it, get better sleep, stop watching porn, go outside. These are… That’s how it’s gonna increase.

0:15:22.9 Mike Vacanti: Cigarettes too. Smoking, in addition to drinking if…

0:15:25.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:15:26.3 Mike Vacanti: If you’re doing that consistently.

0:15:28.4 Jordan Syatt: Probably weed too.

0:15:31.3 Mike Vacanti: Probably, I don’t know, physiologically definitely from like a archetypal stoner.

0:15:37.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:15:38.5 Mike Vacanti: Anecdotal perspective.

0:15:40.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:15:44.8 Mike Vacanti: You make a great point about feeling like you sleep better when you drink, but your sleep quality’s actually much lower. Same with nicotine, I have a friend…

0:15:51.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, interesting.

0:15:52.8 Mike Vacanti: I have a friend who bought a Garmin, probably six months ago, maybe a year ago.

0:15:58.9 Jordan Syatt: Not me. He’s not talking about me. I bought a Garmin several years ago.

0:16:02.1 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no, no, not you at all.

0:16:04.0 Jordan Syatt: Just…

0:16:08.0 Mike Vacanti: And on my recommendation he bought a Garmin and he’s like, “dude, I don’t get any REM sleep or any deep sleep. This thing’s broken, I’m getting a Whoop. Like this was a bad purchase, like come on, I’ll give it another month. But this is awful.” I was like, “man, what the… Send me a screenshot.” He sends me a screenshot of the backend of his sleep data. It’s like deep sleep, four minutes, REM sleep, eight minutes.

0:16:33.6 Jordan Syatt: Geez.

0:16:34.2 Mike Vacanti: In a six or six and a half hour period of time. I was like, “man, that’s atrocious.” And started talking to him about what’s going on, “is there any reason why this could be happening?” My first thought was put the watch on tighter. I’m trying to figure out what could be wrong here. [laughter] The guy is vaping from the moment he wakes up until the moment he goes to sleep at night.

0:17:00.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh my gosh.

0:17:00.7 Mike Vacanti: Ripping vape, nicotine, constant, all day, every day.

0:17:05.8 Jordan Syatt: Geez.

0:17:07.2 Mike Vacanti: Probably a month ago. Did I bring… I can’t remember if I told this story.

0:17:11.9 Jordan Syatt: You haven’t told me this.

0:17:12.0 Mike Vacanti: Probably a month ago. He goes, “dude, I took a day off of vaping,” a day… “I took a day off of vaping, got an hour and a half of deep sleep [laughter] and like 2:45 REM.” [laughter]

0:17:28.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s like, yep. That makes all the sense in the world.

0:17:29.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy. He was just super hyper-stimulated from it.

0:17:33.2 Mike Vacanti: Hyper-stimulated.

0:17:35.3 Jordan Syatt: Does he still do it? Does he still vape in now?

0:17:37.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

[laughter]

0:17:43.0 Jordan Syatt: Wow.

0:17:44.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:17:47.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy. I wouldn’t have expected that.

0:17:50.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Smoking, drinking, sleep quality. I love that you… I mean, obviously lifestyle around like watching other people have sex and jerking off to like…

0:18:02.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:18:02.5 Mike Vacanti: We could go deep. Maybe we’ll do an episode on that at some point. I don’t know if there’s demand for it. I don’t know if there is. [laughter] And the sun too, and being outside and moving.

0:18:18.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:18:19.6 Mike Vacanti: Good little list of recommendations. I like that. We might have to title this one around increasing testosterone.

0:18:24.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, 100% that’s gonna be the title.

0:18:25.6 Mike Vacanti: You’re always…

0:18:28.5 Jordan Syatt: “How to Double Your Testosterone.”

[laughter]

0:18:31.4 Mike Vacanti: Eat a Spoonful of Sugar or a Quarter Cup.

0:18:36.1 Jordan Syatt: What else?

0:18:39.3 Mike Vacanti: If you’re… Back to Jordan and being in a deficit for 30 days, being in a calorie deficit inherently relative to being in a slight surplus inherently reduces your test levels temporarily. So, getting to a healthy body fat percentage is a good idea, but once you’re in a healthy place, trying to get leaner and leaner, and being that guy who’s always fighting to lose a couple more pounds, a couple more percent, seeing a little bit more abs and consistently trying to be restricting, plummets your testosterone levels. And if you can only imagine the difference between that versus being in a 200 to 300 calorie surplus per day, lifting heavy, sleeping good, life is the same otherwise, but the only difference is deficit versus slight surplus, your test is gonna be much higher and you’re gonna feel it too.

0:19:37.9 Jordan Syatt: Good call. This person goes, “What are your thoughts on the new trend of functional coaches?” And I don’t know if she’s talking about like functional medicine or not, but I read it as like functional training, which is, it’s funny ’cause she’s like, what are your thoughts on the new trend of functional training? And it’s just this industry, it’s cyclical. I remember when I first started getting into it, that’s what I got into. That was the world that I was born into in terms of strength and conditioning, is like that functional side of things. I think that’s what was really huge at the time when I really got into strength world. And it’s just, anytime someone gets into the fitness industry, it’s almost like they’re stepping on a merry-go-round. And everything they see is brand new and dah, dah, dah.

0:20:25.5 Jordan Syatt: And the more they go around the merry-go-round, they’re seeing these new sites, they’re seeing these new things. But if you’re on the merry-go-round for long enough, you’re gonna see the same exact shit packaged differently over and over and over and over again. And so, I have seen a re-emergence of “functional training” coming back out of the woodwork and only doing things that are functional and all that. That was such a huge topic when I was younger. 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. And so I just thought it was funny ’cause I think it’s important for especially newer coaches coming into the industry to be aware of that. Just like if you’re seeing something now, it’s been around for a long time, it might just be packaged slightly differently.

0:21:17.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Interesting to watch that over the years, continue to see the same trends over and over repackaged differently.

0:21:24.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And it makes me think about, we talk about this in the mentorship all the time, which by the way, you have less than a week to get in the mentorship before the price goes up by like over five times. So less than a week link is in the description, but we talk about this in mentorship a lot about how the seasons are cyclical for sales, right? So when you are, for an example, generally speaking, the summer is a very low point for getting new coaching clients. The June, July, August time is very low sales. Like oftentimes you’ll often have a lot of clients canceling during that timeframe, not as many new client coaching requests. And I remember that probably the first three years that that happened for me, I would freak out every summer. I would get so worried because I’m like, and I didn’t notice that it was the same time every year.

0:22:26.9 Jordan Syatt: I just… It was much more short term. I didn’t have enough data, I didn’t have that long view perspective yet. So I was just like, what’s going on? I’m getting all these cancellations. And then in September, October, all of a sudden I got a lot more signups. Okay, good. Thank God. And I didn’t notice the pattern. And it wasn’t until probably my fourth or fifth year of doing it where I was like, oh, this happens every year at this time. And it became less about what I was doing wrong and more about, okay, this is always going to happen this time of year. What can I do preemptively to have a little bit more padding during that time of year, so I don’t necessarily get as much of a freak out, which by the way, is something that we go over in the mentorship. We talk about, we set up the entire year for you in terms of your structure, what to focus on, at what times, what challenges. Like we have all these challenges that set you up for when you’re gonna have a sale, when you’re gonna get emails, when you’re gonna do this, what you’re gonna… What type of content you’re gonna post. So, if you wanna get in, this is probably the last episode you’re gonna hear before the sale goes, the sale’s over.

0:23:28.9 Mike Vacanti: Yep.

0:23:29.6 Jordan Syatt: So, sign up link is in the description. But so much of all aspects of life are cyclical, but especially whether it’s what’s going on in the fitness industry or when clients are leaving, when they’re coming, like the patterns are very cyclical.

0:23:43.1 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely right bro, remember in the spirit of testosterone, remember a couple episodes ago we were talking about Sam Sulek’s YouTube?

0:23:52.7 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I’ve been thinking about him this whole podcast, Yeah. I was like… In my head I was like, did we talk about him last time?

0:23:58.7 Mike Vacanti: Two episodes ago.

0:23:58.8 Jordan Syatt: Did we talk about him on the podcast? Okay. Yeah, yeah.

0:24:01.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and we talked about how nice his comments were, and we said we hadn’t really dug in to much of his stuff, but on initial we’re blown away that that style of content has been as successful as it has for him and that authenticity and low production value and just consistency is paying off. And we talked about how positive his comments were.

0:24:25.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:24:30.2 Mike Vacanti: I stumbled across him on YouTube shorts recently.

0:24:32.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, oh.

0:24:33.1 Mike Vacanti: Probably ’cause I watched a few of his, posted not by him, but posted by someone else.

0:24:39.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh. Okay.

0:24:40.0 Mike Vacanti: And like night and day, the people… Like thousands of up votes, top comments of “this is so insanely unhealthy, this guy’s heart is gonna explode.” Like…

0:24:50.6 Jordan Syatt: Geez.

0:24:53.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Not positive comments. And then you’d see a few in there like, “No, if you actually follow him, he’s really chill guy. He’s really cool”. Like so clearly massive fan base, but we were both somewhat surprised that you could be so overwhelmingly positive taking whatever he’s taking to be where he is and it’s not completely like that on second observation.

0:25:20.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it is… It’s interesting though, like that’s the least surprising thing to hear that the short form content from people who just see that like the shock value of his physique, who don’t know who he is, they just give their immediate judgment in their short form content. But for the people who take the time to watch his hour, hour and a half long videos, they all love him. And so it really goes to show if you’re tired of the obnoxious comments and dah dah dah dah, it’s like maybe spend less time on that quick hit short form content that gives you a dopamine spike ’cause you wanna see how many likes and views you can get and maybe spend some time grinding on that long form content that takes more time, more effort. You’re not gonna get that immediate hit from so many likes and so many followers and, but you build up an audience of people over 3, 5, 7, 10 years that really, really, really love you and are invested in that longer form content.

0:26:12.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And I would argue that the further you are in your career, the more wiggle room you have to shift the majority of your attention to creating long form relative to short form, like there’s probably a bigger opportunity for growth from zero with short form as well as long form rather than long form exclusively. But you’re absolutely right, once you’re at a certain point, you don’t need the vanity metrics. What matters is how your business is doing and depth on current audience matters way more than vanity metrics on short form stuff.

0:26:52.2 Jordan Syatt: This woman tagged me in her story the other day. I spoke at a conference, I don’t know if it was six months ago, eight months ago, 10 months ago, I’m not sure, but it was within the last year and at least six months ago if not more. And she made a story to her followers basically being like, “I saw Jordan Syatt speak and he kept saying that we need to start making like web… Writing website articles and it’s just been playing in my head and I haven’t done anything about it.” And she put up a poll, “do you read any articles on websites anymore?” And I saw the poll and like 80% of them said, no, they don’t. And I was like, that was so stupid of her to do that. Because what she’s going to do, she’s asking a population of people on her short form platform, how many of those people read website articles? And 80% of them are saying no, they don’t. When in reality is guarantee you they do, when they go… When they need to find out… When they have a real question, you don’t go on Instagram and search your question out. You go to Google and then you find either a YouTube video or a website article, whatever it is. But what this shows and I didn’t even say anything just ’cause I was like, if you’re not gonna take my advice, I’m not gonna go outta my way to like, keep explaining myself, but…

0:28:06.9 Mike Vacanti: Do not cast pearls before swine.

0:28:11.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Exactly. Yes. It was like, I already gave you my opinion and you’re gonna ask your audience for it and that’s fine, but what that person doesn’t realize is the new audience that you would get from these articles and from ranking on Google, that’s what you’re after. You’re not after the people who currently follow you on Instagram, you’re after people who would never have found you anyway. And then even if they did find you, they’re only getting the short form content. What about the people who do read that? And it’s actually perfect, ’cause 80% said no, 20% said yes.

0:28:44.9 Mike Vacanti: It’s a lot.

0:28:47.3 Jordan Syatt: 20%, and the vast majority of my business is driven from my podcast. The entirety of our business is driven from this podcast. It’s long form content is where you get the best clients, the people who are the most invested. It’s the people who are the quickest to leave, and often cause the most issues are people who join from a quick short form piece of content, not the ones who actually know you and what you’re about, know what to expect. So I saw that and I was like, that was a big mistake to try and use that to justify not taking the time and effort to make long form website articles or YouTube videos, whatever it is.

0:29:29.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s also just wrong. Like maybe it was set up the way she framed it in a way that the her audience loves her, seemed like she wanted them to say no, so they said no. But like you said, when you have a question, you’re typing it into a search engine and you’re either getting a video or an article and whether it’s YouTube or website article, which are almost interchangeable in their function. But yeah, I don’t even believe that 80% of people don’t consume long form.

0:30:02.0 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Yeah. I don’t agree with that at all. And that’s something else is, this is one of the lessons I learned early on in my days when I was working with Pat Flynn and really trying to learn copywriting is oftentimes you’ll ask your audience something and they will give you an answer and they’re not lying, but they often don’t actually know what it is. It’s sort of like if you ask your client, “Hey, do you know what you ate yesterday or how much you ate?” It’s like one of the first things you learn when you look at research around nutritionist, people will underestimate or overestimate or just not actually be aware of what the hell they ate. They have no idea. It’s even for yourself, it’s oftentimes easy to be like, oh shit, I forgot that I ate that until you write it down or you’re really going through, oh, what did I have for breakfast? I don’t know. It’s, people often aren’t aware of their own behaviors. We think we are, but we actually are not nearly as aware of our own behaviors as we think we are. And so when you ask your potential clients or audience something, you really have to take it with a grain of salt because even though they think they’re answering honestly just like they do with their food logs, oftentimes it’s not as honest as, it’s not as truthful as they think it is.

0:31:14.3 Mike Vacanti: Yep, 100%. That’s a great point. Great analogy. King of analogies, which is why if you are trying to make fitness progress right now and you track everything you ate at the end of the day or perhaps the next morning, not an optimal strategy, track that meal as soon as you eat it, if not before, which some people like, but eat it, track it.

0:31:42.4 Jordan Syatt: When I was really tracking calories like super intense, I would…

0:31:44.7 Mike Vacanti: What year?

0:31:45.4 Jordan Syatt: Plan my day ahead of time. 2009, 2010, 2011. Yeah, those like three years. It was I would plan my whole day ahead of time so I knew exactly what I was gonna eat to the calorie, and that was it.

0:32:00.9 Mike Vacanti: Partly because you were wanting to be dialed, but I would imagine also partly because you were too new to it that you didn’t have the skill to just go through your day, make kind of ad hoc decisions, meal by meal and then end up on point at the end of the day.

0:32:21.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s learning to improvise on the fly is a big skill, whereas when you just can plan ahead, I know exactly what I’m gonna eat, it removes the stress of like, I don’t know what I’m gonna have. I don’t like dah dah. It was far less stressful then, that would be much more stressful for me now, but at that point in my learning process, it was actually super helpful.

0:32:45.1 Mike Vacanti: I like having that outline, even if I’m not going to follow it. Like a rough idea in my head, and I’m not pre-logging these things, but knowing your frequency, knowing, okay, at this meal, here are the three to five things I like to have at this snack at this time of the day. Here are the three to five things I like to have, dinners up in the air, but I can sub in, I can have lean ground beef or I can have ground Turkey or I can have a grilled chicken breast. Right? Like all of these things that are relatively close in protein/fat ratios, a starch side, a green. Yeah, having the outline, even if you don’t follow it exactly, is beneficial.

0:33:25.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, 100%.

0:33:27.3 Mike Vacanti: Wanna grab a question?

0:33:29.5 Jordan Syatt: “Are all proteins equal? Protein found in bread the same as in beef, for example?”

0:33:36.4 Mike Vacanti: No, they’re not equal. Look, we could do three back to back episodes on this and dig up old Lyle articles and talk about…

0:33:48.0 Jordan Syatt: The protein handbook, The Protein Book. Lyle’s book. Oh man. That book was so good.

0:33:50.7 Mike Vacanti: We could talk about the Protein Book. We could talk about different metrics for evaluating protein quality based on a number of factors. If you’re getting enough protein in total grams in your diet and you’re eating a variety of protein sources, so that means you’re not completely eliminating multiple food groups following a completely vegan diet, for example. You don’t need to focus on protein quality for 99.9% of people. Right? You’re not trying to step on stage at the Olympia, you’re not trying to maximize every like, ounce of muscle that you can put on in a year. It’s not important is the punchline.

0:34:41.4 Jordan Syatt: In other words, I think the common question is do I count the protein from bread, for example?

0:34:47.9 Mike Vacanti: Oh.

0:34:48.4 Jordan Syatt: Is like, should I, right? That’s the question I get. It’s like, okay, well bread has this many grams, like do I count those or should I see… I only count the protein? Yeah, of course. Count those proteins for sure.

0:35:00.0 Mike Vacanti: Yep.

0:35:01.4 Jordan Syatt: If you are literally only eating bread, which would be a really terrible idea for so many reasons, which, and I know there’s gonna be someone in the world who hears that and be like, he’s saying you shouldn’t eat bread for fuck’s sake. Like, I’m not… I’m saying if you’re only eating bread, which is a terrible idea, then you’re gonna be missing out on protein quality. You’re gonna be missing out on a lot of shit, quite frankly. But if you have, I don’t know, two slices of bread at lunch in a sandwich and it has, I don’t… Eight grams of protein or 12 grams of protein, then absolutely count those tag along proteins. If you have like a Turkey sandwich, yeah, those count towards your protein for the day. For sure.

0:35:45.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s… I understand the question now. It was less about like, do lower quality protein sources count as much as an egg or beef, et cetera, something with an amino acid structure more beneficial for gaining muscle, something higher in the amino acid leucine, to simplify things a little bit. But yes, tag along proteins absolutely count. And people often make the… Wwhen they’re learning about macronutrients, like, oh, this is primarily a carb, this is primarily a protein, this is primarily a fat, does that mean that I only count the fat in insert food, avocado? No, you count the fat in avocado and the carbs in avocado and the one gram of protein in avocado. I’m not positive on the amount avocado has.

0:36:38.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s true.

0:36:40.9 Mike Vacanti: But yes, you count all three macronutrients, four really in every food that you eat.

0:36:46.9 Jordan Syatt: And to be fair to the person asking, I actually think they do mean exactly what you just said. What’s the protein quality? Does it actually count, dah dah dah? But I don’t think that they… Based on the way they phrased it, I don’t think that they know enough to ask that level of scientific jargon or of like, okay, well there are different types. I think, and in this person’s mind, the types of protein is like you have meat and you have bread, and it’s not like the amino acid profile, it’s, I don’t think the level of knowledge is there yet, which is why it’s just like, does it count? Does, do the proteins from bread count, like the protein from beef counts? Which yes, it does, but the majority of your protein should not be coming from bread.

0:37:32.7 Mike Vacanti: Correct.

0:37:33.9 Jordan Syatt: And just like you said at the beginning, a multiple sources is best, a variety of sources of protein is a better option just like an overall healthy diet as a multitude of sources of nutrition… Of nutrients and coming from a multitude different places and colors and all of that stuff.

0:37:52.0 Mike Vacanti: Bingo.

0:37:54.3 Jordan Syatt: All right. Someone said, “I have a choice of getting one of those bikes behind you,” I had a picture of myself with my Rogue Echo Airdyne bike in the back or a rower. “Which would you go for?” So what would you go for, Mike? Would you go for a bike? Would you go for a rower? Would you go for a StairMaster? Would you go for an elliptical? Would you go for a treadmill? What is your go-to cardio machine?

0:38:27.5 Mike Vacanti: I love that we can even rank them. Treadmill is my number one.

0:38:33.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:38:33.8 Mike Vacanti: The incline walk is my favorite form of low intensity cardio by a long shot. And while I’m…

0:38:36.4 Jordan Syatt: What Incline?

0:38:41.6 Mike Vacanti: A lot, 10 plus?

0:38:43.4 Jordan Syatt: Got you. Cool.

0:38:49.3 Mike Vacanti: I like the mental upside of walking in cold climate, but there’s actually a lot of times of the year where it’s very icy, a lot of times of the year. A lot of times during the winter when it’s not the weather that would stop me from doing outdoor cardio, it’s like slipping and falling, which I have done outside, and that’s not fun. And so treadmill is number one.

[laughter]

0:39:17.8 Jordan Syatt: I just had an image of that. Like, remember the last episode? See, I remember the last episode. We spoke about cottage cheese with the grapes. And I like had the image of you like cutting the grapes, I just had like that image of you falling and just losing your shit, getting really pissed if you hit your elbow or something.

[laughter]

0:39:32.5 Mike Vacanti: You don’t have a good read on me, bro.

[laughter]

0:39:38.1 Mike Vacanti: That might be how you read…

0:39:38.6 Jordan Syatt: Why? You don’t get mad?

0:39:40.8 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:39:41.3 Jordan Syatt: You don’t get mad if you fall?

0:39:44.0 Mike Vacanti: I literally remember walking outta my house, walking down the driveway ’cause I was down in Florida for two weeks and we came back and so I hadn’t been properly maintaining things and slipped on ice [chuckle] on my driveway. Like one of those where you take a step and my foot just went right out from under me and I landed smack on my right hip.

[laughter]

0:40:08.1 Mike Vacanti: Like I didn’t hit my head or anything, thank goodness. And I just laid there for probably three seconds. I was like, “Man, my hip really hurts.” And then I stood up and I did my cardio. I think you have a misrepresentation. Maybe when we hang out, I do things that are funny to get a reaction out of you, but I think you have a bad read on my day-to-day life.

0:40:29.7 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Yeah, that makes sense.

0:40:31.7 Mike Vacanti: I don’t cut grapes so that I don’t choke on them.

[laughter]

0:40:34.4 Mike Vacanti: I don’t throw tantrums when I slip on the Minnesota ice.

[laughter]

0:40:41.9 Mike Vacanti: Treadmill, number one. I’m not a big Rower, only because I have done very little of it historically. So between the two options that she proposed, I’d go with your bike.

0:40:57.4 Jordan Syatt: What about if we throw an Elliptical in there and a StairMaster in there?

0:41:00.8 Mike Vacanti: I don’t love either. Some kind of bike would probably still be my second, even though I don’t love biking either. It’s lower resistance than a StairMaster, which I like. Lower resistance than walking. And I don’t love the Elliptical, it’s in the middle of the pack for me. One of the two bikes is gonna be my second spin.

0:41:29.2 Jordan Syatt: Spin versus Airdyne type thing?

0:41:32.1 Mike Vacanti: Oh no. Sorry. I was thinking of, what do you call it? Recumbent? The lower seated bike?

0:41:38.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, oh. Yeah, yeah.

0:41:40.7 Mike Vacanti: Versus the higher bike. The higher bike is so uncomfortable for me.

0:41:43.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It doesn’t feel good.

0:41:46.6 Mike Vacanti: No, I’m not a huge fan. I just got a treadmill. I’m gonna get a treadmill actually by the time you film my next episode…

0:41:52.3 Jordan Syatt: Are you?

0:41:52.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:41:53.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, nice. What kind?

0:41:54.8 Mike Vacanti: Winter is coming…

0:41:56.0 Jordan Syatt: Winter is coming.

[chuckle]

0:41:57.2 Mike Vacanti: One that inclines.

0:42:00.6 Jordan Syatt: I hope so.

0:42:01.6 Mike Vacanti: You were born in the long summer, Jordan.

[laughter]

0:42:07.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. How about you? Rank your favorite cardio machines, please?

0:42:13.1 Jordan Syatt: I think treadmill’s number one. There’s just so much versatility to it. There’s so much you can do on a treadmill. So treadmill’s number one. Elliptical is number two. Air bike is number three. I’ll say this, I like different pieces of equipment for different things. So the majority of my cardio is zone 2. And the treadmill and the elliptical I use for zone 2, a very small portion of my cardio is higher intensity. And for that, I either use the treadmill or the Air bike. I don’t use the elliptical for my high intensity ’cause that would just look fucking stupid. Just like… On the elliptical would look like I have done it once when I was traveling and I had a HIIT workout to get done in the gym that only had an elliptical and I just felt like such an asshole, just like on the… I don’t know, it doesn’t look good doing high intensity. You can’t… It doesn’t look good. It’s not a good look to have. So I like the treadmill, the elliptical and the Air bike are my top three. I hate spin bikes. I don’t like the recumbent bike at all, actually. I’m just not a fan.

0:43:28.0 Jordan Syatt: I feel like… On the recumbent, like I feel like I should be relaxing, but I’m not. It’s sort of like a lot of… It’s just like cognitive dissonance. Like I should be just relaxing. But also my glutes are really burning more than I feel like they should be.

0:43:43.4 Mike Vacanti: Sam Sulek likes the Recumbent bike.

0:43:46.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, is that why you like the Recumbent bike?

[chuckle]

0:43:47.7 Mike Vacanti: I don’t like the Recumbent bike, and no.

[laughter]

0:43:52.4 Mike Vacanti: Double no to your question.

[laughter]

0:43:54.7 Mike Vacanti: I just got a short of him saying, “Hey, you can sit on your phone, but you’re doing your cardio. It’s a win-win.”

0:44:01.1 Jordan Syatt: I actually like the StairMaster a lot from the effect and the benefit, the very low impact and how difficult it can be with it being like pretty slow. I just hate how difficult it is. And I also hate, like I’ll trip on it a fair amount too. It’ll catch the front of my shoe and then like just… I don’t really like that. So I do like the StairMaster. I just don’t really use it very much. I hate the rower. I absolutely hate the rower. Number one, it’s not comfortable at all, I don’t like, it’s… They’re just not comfortable. Number two is it doesn’t feel good on my back at all. And I know the people who are super technique, “Oh, you’re doing the technique wrong.” No, I’m not. It just doesn’t feel good on my back to be sitting down like that. And leaning forward and going back, no, it’s not. So I don’t like that one at all. There’s another one cardio machine. I don’t know what it’s called, but it has got these two handles on it and you just pull them down and you pull them down. You know what I’m talking about?

0:45:06.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I do.

0:45:09.1 Jordan Syatt: I like that one a lot as well. So I like that. I love jumping rope. Jumping rope is a really good one too. Anytime I travel, I have a jump rope in my backpack. If I like all else fails, I can just go outside or whatever and jump rope. But yeah, the Rower is my least favorite cardio of literally everything.

0:45:28.5 Mike Vacanti: We’re on the same page. I didn’t even know we were on the same page there. I always had a negative bias against the rowing machine for cardio because I thought if I’m gonna do rows, I’m gonna do some heavy rows and make some gains with some weights. I’m not gonna row on the rowing machine.

0:45:48.9 Jordan Syatt: No.

0:45:50.2 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know why I am adverse to upper body cardio in general. I remember being introduced to a hand bike back in the day and just thinking like, I’m not doing that ever.

[laughter]

0:46:02.1 Mike Vacanti: I love walking. I really like walking. Real quick before we wrap. You mentioned high intensity being a little bit of your cardio and zone 2 being the majority of your cardio when you were… I don’t know if you’re at peak cardio right now or if it was at a certain time in the last year, but what was the most zone 5 or high intensity cardio you were doing in a week?

0:46:28.9 Jordan Syatt: Two times a week.

0:46:30.5 Mike Vacanti: And those sessions were how long of actual work in the sessions?

0:46:36.1 Jordan Syatt: Well, so the total session would be between 30 to 45 minutes. But actual work…

0:46:41.9 Mike Vacanti: Sorry, I didn’t mean that. Rest time is included, but if you took out any kind of warmup or cool down?

0:46:47.6 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Rest time is included between 15 to 25 minutes.

0:46:56.2 Mike Vacanti: Okay, cool. Twice a week?

0:46:57.8 Jordan Syatt: Twice a week. And that was awful and I hated it.

[chuckle]

0:47:00.8 Mike Vacanti: And you’re doing how much zone 2 during that time?

0:47:02.2 Jordan Syatt: If I had two times a week of zone 5, then I had five times a week of zone 2.

0:47:09.1 Mike Vacanti: And those were…

0:47:10.7 Jordan Syatt: Or potentially four times a week. Zone 2, and then one time a week zone 3 more of like a tempo style, but it was either four to five zone 2s and two zone 5s or four zone 2s, one zone 3 and two zone 5s.

0:47:27.8 Mike Vacanti: Cool. And how long was each zone 2?

0:47:31.3 Jordan Syatt: Minimum? Bare minimum, it was 45 minutes. That was the absolute lowest.

0:47:33.7 Mike Vacanti: And how about these days? What does your cardio schedule look like.

0:47:39.3 Jordan Syatt: These days, I haven’t been doing any high intensity at all for a while. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy it at all. And…

0:47:52.2 Mike Vacanti: Well, and like you said two episodes ago that over some period of time, your primary training goal has shifted from Jiu-Jitsu 1 Health 2 to Health 1 Jiu-Jitsu 2.

0:48:01.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly. I’m not planning on competing in Jiu-Jitsu anytime soon. And honestly, I just keep noticing my Jiu-Jitsu is getting better and better and better with more zone 2. I think if I was wrestling, which is, they’re similar, but wrestling, you need more anaerobic power, you need more anaerobic endurance. It’s much more like… It’s funny, I was talking about this with my Jiu-Jitsu coach today, wrestling is way more physically demanding, way harder than Jiu-Jitsu is from the physicality, from the endurance perspective, it’s nonstop snapping down, go, go, go. Power, power, power. The energy systems are very different. Whereas Jiu-Jitsu, it’s like they often call it like the lazy man’s wrestling. And anyone who has tried Jiu-Jitsu knows it’s… The cardio is really difficult. But wrestling, cardio is on another level. Wrestling cardio is just absolutely wild. So if I was doing… If wrestling or even if Jiu-Jitsu was my main, main, main goal, I would do HIIT once a week. But for right now, I just hate it so much that it’s like I don’t even… I don’t bother doing it ’cause it’s just like I don’t have patience for doing a form of exercise that I hate right now.

0:49:15.6 Mike Vacanti: That makes all the sense in the world. One more random thought that popped in my head. I don’t remember who I heard this from, but it was around brain health and the ability to focus and the benefits of higher intensity cardio probably driven by more blood flow to the brain. Not thinking during your cardio, but thinking post or that day as a result. Have you noticed any difference in your ability to focus or anything cognitive related, comparing times when you were doing zone 5 or high intensity cardio compared to times when you are not doing high intensity cardio?

0:49:53.8 Jordan Syatt: I am way more focused and way more attentive when I am not doing zone 5.

0:50:01.4 Mike Vacanti: ‘Cause you’re exhausted?

0:50:02.6 Jordan Syatt: When I do zone 5, it completely burns me out. I’m exhausted, I’m drained. It’s mentally and emotionally and physically draining. ‘Cause if you’re doing it right, it is devastating, it’s brutal. It’s funny when people say they’re doing Tabatas and then they’re doing 20 seconds of planks and they’re not really doing Tabata, they don’t actually know what a Tabata… It’s not just 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off. It’s not… You can’t pick any exercise 20 on 10 off and say they’re doing a Tabata. If you actually read the studies and know what a Tabata is. It’s a brutal… You should be absolutely fucking gone by the end of that.

0:50:46.2 Jordan Syatt: And that’s why when people say they feel better after doing high intensity, I’m like, “So you’re not really doing high intensity. You’re doing moderately high intensity, I don’t know, whether it’s Orangetheory or whatever it is, but you’re not really going 100% intensity as is required of this super high intensity protocol. You’re going hard, but it’s not like your absolute max, which is a very big difference.” And when I do something, I wanna do it right. So if I’m gonna do a zone 5, I’m gonna do it zone 5 and really take it to my max.

0:51:22.7 Mike Vacanti: I love that. Give them one more big right hook. This is the last they’re gonna hear this…

0:51:29.6 Jordan Syatt: This is it. This is it. This is the last episode.

0:51:32.6 Mike Vacanti: Give them a right hook. But instead of if you’re on video, not using your knuckles, because I don’t want you to break anything, use this part of your hand. I was told to do that in street fights.

0:51:43.6 Jordan Syatt: The Stockton slap, the Nate Diaz Stockton slap?

0:51:46.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:51:47.0 Jordan Syatt: Listen, I’m gonna slap you in the face with this reality, alright? That we’ve been saying for probably two months now that you’ve been listening, that our price is going up for the online fitness business mentorship. And it is officially, this is the last chance that you have to get in before the price goes up 5x. The mentorship, thank God, has been doing really well. People have been making incredible progress and we’ve decided it’s time for us to increase our prices, inflation and demand. So we’re fucking doing it. And if you wanna build your online business, if you wanna help more people around the world, if you wanna get better at making content, if you wanna get better at becoming a coach, if you wanna get better at learning how to program design, understand client psychology, understand how you can help your clients get better results. If you wanna do all of these, then join. If you don’t wanna do all of that, or if you’d rather join someone else’s, go for it. But you’re gonna come to ours eventually. So if you wanna join in now for the lowest price it will ever be, the link is in the description. We’d love to have you.

0:52:54.9 Mike Vacanti: Boom. We’ll be back next week. Have a great week and weekend. See you soon.