Episode 147: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Chin-Up Technique, Holding the Treadmill, and More…

0:00:11.7 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

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

0:00:13.5 Mike Vacanti: Is your mic in? Am I getting like your best audio?

0:00:16.4 Jordan Syatt: Dude, this is my mic. Is it your best… Is it your best earphones?

[laughter]

0:00:24.6 Jordan Syatt: Let’s just keep all this in. This is staying in the pod.

0:00:27.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s staying in, one-take show.

0:00:29.1 Jordan Syatt: Does it sound weird?

0:00:30.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it sounds below average. Sounds like you’re a little underwater to me.

0:00:33.1 Jordan Syatt: I hope I’m not underwater. I mean, it looks… It’s my microphone.

0:00:37.3 Mike Vacanti: Cool. Happy Halloween, bro.

0:00:39.7 Jordan Syatt: Shit. Okay. Happy… Oh, Happy Halloween.

0:00:42.7 Mike Vacanti: Are you guys passing out candy? Or apples? …or money?

0:00:47.2 Jordan Syatt: Is that a Jewish joke?

[laughter]

0:00:48.9 Mike Vacanti: No, it was not a Jewish joke. People…

[laughter]

0:00:55.1 Mike Vacanti: No. People in my neighborhood…

[overlapping conversation]

0:00:57.5 Jordan Syatt: I guess the Jewish joke would be like, “You’re probably taking money, you’re not… ” [laughter]

0:01:01.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. [laughter] No, people used to give out like quarters or…

0:01:07.0 Jordan Syatt: Really?

0:01:07.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:01:08.5 Jordan Syatt: People would give you quarters?

0:01:10.9 Mike Vacanti: Not many, but…

0:01:11.4 Jordan Syatt: What a terrible gift on Halloween. [laughter]

0:01:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Well, dude, those were quarters…

0:01:15.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s definitely someone who like forgot that it was Halloween, and they’re like, “We got a change jar, let’s just give ’em change.” [laughter]

0:01:23.5 Mike Vacanti: We’re talking 1995 though. 1995, a quarter was probably… Like a fun-sized candy bar was definitely worth less than a quarter. Quarter was a decent value.

0:01:33.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, but then you gotta go to the store and… Yeah, I don’t know.

0:01:37.1 Mike Vacanti: Was that a Jewish joke?

0:01:38.4 Jordan Syatt: No, we’re… It’s actually… So growing up, we like… We never… My house was on like a main road, and our house was tucked back pretty far, so we never got people coming to our door. ‘Cause like, no one was gonna walk on the main busy road, and it was tucked, so like no one ever came to our house. And I was always jealous. Like I always wanted to have people come to my house for… And like be able to give them candy. And so now we’re at the end of a cul-de-sac and I’m imagining we’re gonna see like all the cutest kids out. So I’m very excited about it.

0:02:15.2 Mike Vacanti: Very nice.

0:02:16.0 Jordan Syatt: Are you handing out treats or money or… Or financial advice or anything?

0:02:20.3 Mike Vacanti: No. No money.

0:02:21.9 Jordan Syatt: Barbells? [laughter] “Here you go, kids.” [laughter]

0:02:24.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we’re passing out candy. We went to Costco and loaded up on some solid candy options. Mostly chocolates.

0:02:33.4 Jordan Syatt: What are you dressing up as?

0:02:34.9 Mike Vacanti: I’m not dressing up. I’m in my thirties.

[laughter]

0:02:42.9 Mike Vacanti: Are you guys taking your daughter trick or treating?

0:02:45.0 Jordan Syatt: We’re not gonna take her trick or treating, ’cause she’s 1 and she’s not gonna have the candy anyway. But we are gonna dress her up and like take pictures and stuff. It’s also… Dude, it’s freezing here. Like it’s in the 30s. So she’s gonna be a duck. Her favorite animals right now are either… You’re Googling, you don’t believe me? [laughter]

0:03:07.8 Mike Vacanti: No. I don’t believe 30s. 55 in Dallas right now. That’s…

0:03:12.3 Jordan Syatt: Hold on. Look at the last couple days in Dallas and look at what it was this morning. Look at the low, look at the high.

0:03:17.9 Mike Vacanti: No. No, no, no, that’s fine. But I just heard 30s right now and…

0:03:21.8 Jordan Syatt: In this exact moment?

0:03:23.4 Mike Vacanti: A slight exaggeration.

0:03:25.0 Jordan Syatt: No. Hold on. Dallas weather this week… I need to make sure that we’re clear.

0:03:31.0 Mike Vacanti: 55 and sunny right now.

0:03:32.9 Jordan Syatt: The low is…

0:03:33.4 Mike Vacanti: Feels like 30s.

0:03:35.1 Jordan Syatt: Okay. That’s important. But…

0:03:36.8 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no, feels like 30 if you’re mentally weak.

0:03:39.4 Jordan Syatt: No, no… Don’t even… No. All right. Yeah, today the low is 31, high is 58. Tomorrow, low is 33, high is 54. Yesterday, dude, I’m telling you, 30s.

0:03:51.5 Mike Vacanti: Sure, the low… The low hits at like 3:00, 4:00 AM though.

0:03:54.5 Jordan Syatt: Not here in Dallas, it’s different.

[laughter]

0:04:01.4 Jordan Syatt: But yeah, her favorite animal is a duck. And it’s super cute because she has a picture of a duck on the wall and every time she sees it, she goes, “Duh. Duh.” And so we’re gonna dress her up as a cute little yellow duck.

0:04:14.9 Mike Vacanti: I like that.

0:04:15.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:04:15.8 Mike Vacanti: That’ll be very fun.

0:04:16.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I’m super soft now. I’m really soft. Just… [laughter]

0:04:20.3 Mike Vacanti: No. Those are great…

0:04:21.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:04:22.1 Mike Vacanti: Great memories. That’ll be really…

0:04:23.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. [laughter]

0:04:25.2 Mike Vacanti: Really fun.

[laughter]

0:04:28.0 Jordan Syatt: “That’ll be fun, you loser.”

[laughter]

0:04:30.8 Mike Vacanti: Dude, I don’t think that at all.

0:04:33.7 Jordan Syatt: Are you doing anything with your nephew? Is he dressing up?

0:04:36.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I don’t think we’re gonna get over there though. I think they’re gonna be at my parents and… Yeah.

0:04:42.5 Jordan Syatt: Are they going trick or treating? You don’t go trick or treating with a like an eight-month, 10-month, 1-year-old. I think you’d probably start doing it at 2, right? Is that probably about the age you’d start actually going out with them?

0:04:53.2 Mike Vacanti: I’m not sure. You would have to ask my sister…

0:04:57.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:04:58.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. About all the details…

0:04:58.6 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know. I mean, I spoke to my wife and we were like, “She’s not gonna eat the candy. I’m not gonna give her candy at 1 years old. She doesn’t even have… She has two teeth. I’m not gonna give her a Snickers bar.” You know what I mean?

0:05:10.0 Mike Vacanti: Right. Right. I think that makes sense.

0:05:12.5 Jordan Syatt: I saw a great idea, it was on… I didn’t, my wife saw it, and then she showed it to me. She’s like, “What do you think about this?” ‘Cause the comments were all over the place. These parents came up with this idea… Or someone, somewhere came up with this idea and these parents made an Instagram video about it, where after Halloween, they go to their children, and… I forget the name they had, but it’s something called like the Halloween Switch or something, but they had a better name for it, where they get to pick their five favorite pieces of candy from the bag, and they then take the bag, the rest of the candy, and they put it outside at night. And then while they’re sleeping, the parents switch the huge bag of candy with some type of a present, like a toy or something they can play with. So like they get their five favorites and then the rest, they end up like… I don’t know, probably throwing out.

0:06:03.5 Jordan Syatt: And I thought that was super smart because you don’t need a giant bag of candy. And the comments were all over the place. Some people were like, “This is genius. It’s super smart. You get to reward them for many different things. They then get something to play with and it’s not like you’re punishing them or anything like that.” Other people were like, “Just let them eat the candy, da da da da.” They got really mad about it. And I was like, I feel like this is a great middle ground road where it’s like, yeah, you get to enjoy your five favorite pieces and you’re not gonna have candy until January. Like, that’s ridiculous. What do you think?

0:06:41.9 Mike Vacanti: I actually was just… So it’s a cool idea. I understand where the parents are coming from…

0:06:50.7 Jordan Syatt: You’re not a fan? Wow. I didn’t expect that. I thought you’d love this.

0:06:53.7 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know… No, you see, I have… In my experience, and this is pure observation, myself, others. You know how in cultures where you let under… You let kids have a glass of wine here and there… I don’t know, some European cultures.

0:07:16.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:07:17.0 Mike Vacanti: And supposedly then because it wasn’t this forbidden fruit that when they are of age, they have more responsibility around it, there’s less binging…

0:07:26.5 Jordan Syatt: Which is a 100% accurate.

0:07:28.5 Mike Vacanti: I wonder if there’s some translation around food…

0:07:32.8 Jordan Syatt: Absolutely.

0:07:34.2 Mike Vacanti: And the hyper restrictive clean eating, like authoritarian parenting style around desserts and food, leading to, “Oh, I’m out of the house, I’m 18, I’m on my own, and now I get to enjoy all these things.” Or even like, you get to go to your friend’s house when you’re younger and they have all this stuff and your parents won’t know, so you binge out on whatever. But if you have access to it at a younger age, if you… I don’t know, you don’t have that opposite effect when you do have access to it. And when you do have… When you have full autonomy to make your own decisions when you are older. I remember…

0:08:16.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:08:17.1 Mike Vacanti: I remember pigging out on Halloween candy and then feeling like crap. And then knowing that I didn’t wanna pig out on Halloween candy. And there was some kind of learning there through the process of having a pillowcase full of candy and eating 30 pieces in one night, and then being like, “Oh, this is terrible. I don’t like this at all.” And then adjusting my behavior as a result of that.

0:08:43.2 Jordan Syatt: You’re so different than like most people with that though. You’re so good about being like, “Okay, so I ate this in an excess and this made me feel like this, so I just won’t do that again,” where I think most people are like, “Oh, I really like how this tastes, I feel like shit, but how it tastes is better than me feeling like shit, so I’m just gonna keep tasting and feeling, and enjoying the taste of this and not worrying about it.” It’s also why I liked the, yeah, you get to pick five, or… I don’t know, 10, or however many pieces of candy it is, but you have a limit and it’s not like, yeah, you get like 400 pieces of candy and then here we’re just gonna keep it in the house for the next three months and you can eat it whenever you want. I thought it was a good middle ground.

0:09:26.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I like that. And I like maybe even… And asking, like, “Okay, you can only have two pieces today but you have to ask your parents,” or something along those lines…

0:09:37.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:09:38.2 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know. The overnight swap really hits like this trust center in me where I went and earned all this candy and went door to door for hours. And then I wake up and I got like this crummy toy, but like all my candy’s gone except five pieces. Like I feel like that would create a divide between my parents and I that may be…

0:09:57.5 Jordan Syatt: You love candy.

0:09:58.7 Mike Vacanti: Irreparable.

0:09:58.9 Jordan Syatt: You really love candy. “You gave me this crummy toy and I earned all this candy… ” [laughter]

0:10:04.9 Mike Vacanti: It doesn’t make… It’s not about that, it’s about the overnight switch. It’s about the lack of transparency. Yeah.

0:10:14.2 Jordan Syatt: Man…

0:10:15.3 Mike Vacanti: By the way, you give me way too much credit on that, ’cause I know that my phone makes me feel terrible and I still use that way too much.

0:10:23.4 Jordan Syatt: No, I just mean specifically with food. Like specific to food, you are very good about being like, “No, I’m not hungry, so I’m just not gonna eat.” Or it’s like, when you ask me, you’re like, “Hey, are you hungry?” And I say, “I could eat.” And you’re like, “No, are you hungry?” You’re very in tune with how food makes you feel. And I think you are… You are just so dialed with nutrition and you’re so aware of how it makes you feel. Your relationship with food is very good.

0:10:54.7 Mike Vacanti: I’ll accept the compliment.

0:10:56.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s not even a compliment, it’s just the truth.

0:10:58.5 Mike Vacanti: I’ll accept the compliment to avoid continuing on this conversation right now for the sixteenth time.

[laughter]

0:11:06.8 Mike Vacanti: What else we got? Middle East?

0:11:10.2 Jordan Syatt: I wasn’t even gonna bring it up, but like we can. That was the other aspect of Halloween I was gonna talk about, like anti-Semitism is going crazy. And to be fair, ’cause people get mad, Islamophobia is going pretty nuts too. It’s not a competition. It’s not like a… It’s not the Olympics of oppression here. But like, there’s a lot of anti-Semitism going on and my wife is worried because we have the mezuzah on our door. And so unfortunately, we don’t want people coming to the door because we don’t know who’s coming to the door and we don’t know what their beliefs are. And we’ve seen insane amounts of anti-Semitism all over the world and the country. And so what we’re gonna…

0:11:47.0 Mike Vacanti: Where are you… Sorry. Go ahead.

0:11:48.4 Jordan Syatt: I was gonna say, we’re gonna park the car in front of the walkway, so people can’t get to the walkway. And then in front of the car, we’re gonna have a sign with a bowl of candy, which sucks. ‘Cause I’ll try and be out there, we’ll be out there with my daughter and she’ll be in her costume, just like saying hello to everyone. But it is like… It does suck. ‘Cause you never know who’s coming to the door, what they believe and any of that, so… And I was like, we’re not taking the mezuzah down. That’s out of the question.

0:12:16.0 Mike Vacanti: It’s so cold in Texas, people…

0:12:19.2 Jordan Syatt: Dude, it’s freezing.

0:12:20.3 Mike Vacanti: That the Syatts are gonna be standing outside, passing out candy this year because it’s so cold.

0:12:27.9 Jordan Syatt: Dude, rather that than have an armed mutiny outside my door. “A Jew. A Jew lives there!”

[laughter]

0:12:35.4 Mike Vacanti: Where are you seeing the… And maybe we shouldn’t even go down this route publicly because I’m so autistic about what is and isn’t okay to say…

0:12:44.5 Jordan Syatt: No, you’re not.

0:12:45.0 Mike Vacanti: On the internet these days. No, I am. I am. I don’t know what people are offended by and what they’re not. And I live in echo chambers.

0:12:51.9 Jordan Syatt: Well, they might get offended that you just called yourself “autistic”. [laughter]

0:12:55.0 Mike Vacanti: Okay, but I am. I am a little.

[laughter]

0:13:00.7 Jordan Syatt: You do like to have like that weighted blanket on you… [laughter]

0:13:02.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yes.

[laughter]

0:13:06.2 Mike Vacanti: Yes. Well, I actually don’t under understand some things socially, and so maybe I’ll just let… But if I let loose, we never edit out on the backend…

0:13:17.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, just let loose.

0:13:17.7 Mike Vacanti: So that’s… No… But…

0:13:19.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:13:19.6 Mike Vacanti: What I was gonna ask is… I was setting you up to let loose, is where are you seeing the majority of the anti-Semitism from?

0:13:27.2 Jordan Syatt: Like, from what people?

0:13:28.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:13:30.3 Jordan Syatt: I mean, mainly the people at the pro-Palestinian marches, which by the way, it’s great to be pro-Palestinian. It’s not great to be pro-Hamas and like the Nazi era propaganda that we’re seeing. Like people holding signs saying like, “Hey, clean the world,” and then they put a Jewish star or a Jewish person in a trash can. Like these signs are being held all over the place. But generally, it’s either at pro-Palestinian marches or people who are… And it’s not people who are just pro-Palestinian, there are many peaceful pro-Palestinian people. It’s the people who are pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic, leading it to become anti-Semitic and some type of violent crime.

0:14:17.2 Mike Vacanti: And these are people who are partaking in these protests in Western countries, like in Europe and in America?

0:14:24.5 Jordan Syatt: Dude, there was one in Chicago two days ago. Yeah, there was one in Chicago two days ago. There was…

0:14:31.5 Mike Vacanti: As opposed to these protests happening in other places in the world?

0:14:37.0 Jordan Syatt: They’re all over the place. There was a big protest in Australia where the whole crowd was chanting, “Gas the Jews.” There was…

0:14:43.4 Mike Vacanti: In Chicago?

0:14:44.9 Jordan Syatt: No, that was in Australia. In Australia, they were chanting, “Gas the Jews.” In Turkey, people have put up signs in their doors, like Nazi era, where they say like, “No Jews allowed in the store.” All over Europe, people have been drawing Stars of David, Jewish stars on Jewish homes and businesses, just like we see from the… From the 1930s. There was a woman in LA who her home was broken into. There was a, like just… And like bad stuff happened. There was a woman in, I believe it was… I forget if it was Chicago or somewhere in Illinois, who was killed. And again, like there was a six-year-old Palestinian boy who was stabbed to death and murdered. So it’s going on both sides. Like both sides are getting it. I wanna make that clear. I’m talking about it from my perspective as a Jew. I’m not a Muslim, I’m not Palestinian, so like I can’t speak from that perspective. But as a Jew, like that’s where the worry and fear comes in, for me and my family.

0:15:42.0 Mike Vacanti: I don’t even know… Maybe we just edit this out, but I’m gonna press a little harder. So, are these Muslim extremists that are committing or like spouting anti-Semitism, or are these like… Because oftentimes, you will hear that the far right and far right White nationalists are anti-Semitic in the West or in the US. Is this part of this like woke Left crowd who doesn’t fit into either of those buckets, but is maybe like your typical like… I don’t know, 50-year-old, like New York female Democrat? Who are the people who are saying these anti-Semitic things?

0:16:31.0 Jordan Syatt: Well, so the spectrum of anti-Semitism is very interesting because usually, when we think… We’ll talk about it in terms of politics. When we look at politics, we usually think of a spectrum and just like one line, and you go from left to right, right to left, whatever it is you have, like far, far, far left, and you have far, far, far right. And you would imagine that their beliefs are completely different on each end of that spectrum. But what we see with anti-Semitism is that… And I would imagine also the same… Actually, no, not all the same. So with the anti-Semitism, it’s more of a U, from the perspective of… It’s not just a straight line, so if you’re watching on YouTube, you can see what I’m talking about here. But with that U, even though the far left and the far right have very different views in terms of so many different things, they both hate Jews.

0:17:16.9 Jordan Syatt: So, like the far, far, far left, the woke, woke, woke, very progressive liberal, they don’t like Israel. And they’ll be like, it’s… They’ll say things like, “You are allowed to not like Israel and still be okay with Jews.” And it’s like, yes, I agree. But when you start justifying attacks on Jews and innocent Israeli Jewish civilians who might not even support the government, when you’re justifying that and supporting it, that’s anti-Semitic, that’s anti-Jewish. So the far left is very anti-Jewish, and the far right is also very… That’s like KKK. A lot of people think just like conservatives equal far right. No. Actually, the majority of conservatives have been overwhelmingly positive and encouraging. It’s really when you get to the far right extremists, the KKK type people.

0:17:58.4 Jordan Syatt: So they actually have much more close beliefs, the far left and the far right, when it comes to Judaism and Israel, than it does to like anywhere in the middle. So the middle is where we’re safest, whereas the far left tends to align itself. Generally speaking, they tend to align themselves with who they view or deem as the victim or as the oppressed. And in this case, they are deeming the Palestinians as oppressed by the Israelis, which as soon as I hear that, I know that they’re not actually fully aware of the situation. 99% of the people have never actually been there. I’m actually… I’m trying to get… There is the son, it’s actually pretty crazy, I’ve been trying to speak with him via email and DM, but the son of Hamas’s co-founder. I’m trying to get him on my podcast…

0:18:49.6 Mike Vacanti: I saw him on Piers Morgan.

0:18:52.4 Jordan Syatt: Yes, yeah. He’s been on Piers Morgan, he’s spoken at the United Nations, he’s the son of Hamas’s co-founder, he was born in Palestine, he was part of Hamas, he actually served time in Israeli prison, and somehow, he was able to see, he was like, this is terrible what they’re indoctrinating us with, what they’re teaching us, and he’s able to get out of it, and now he’s, all these people who are super, super, super unaware of how bad Hamas is and just think that Israel is the oppressor, they’ve never actually been there, and they don’t actually understand who’s truly oppressing them. And so I want to bring him on, because he’s very clear, he’s like, Israel’s not oppressing us, Israel is providing us with everything that we have, Israel is doing its best for us, and yes, Israel has made mistakes, but our oppressor is Hamas, the leadership that we voted in in 2007, and has just been a dictatorship ever since, they haven’t held another election, they have no freedom of speech.

0:19:47.8 Jordan Syatt: They behead and kill people who are gay or the LGBTQ+ community, which I always find ironic that they’re… The LGBT community is very pro-Palestine, they have signs like, “Queers for Palestine,” which there have been memes, it’s like, “Queers for Palestine is like, chickens for KFC or cows for McDonald’s, it just doesn’t make sense, because if they went there, they would be killed immediately,” so I want to get this guy on my podcast because he has the most unique perspective of anyone that I’ve ever met or that I’ve ever seen, because he was born there, actually served in Hamas. He actually ended up putting his own father in prison for war crimes, like he helped facilitate something that got his father in prison, and so a lot of these people who are just very, very, very, very unaware of the depths of the evil of Hamas are quick to look over that and just look at whatever they’ve been told about Israel, and so it’s, yeah, that’s where a lot of this… It’s coming from both sides, but I would say right now, the majority is coming from the far left.

0:20:55.9 Mike Vacanti: I am gonna take a shot here and you can correct this, but through your lens, it seems like the reason for the anti-Semitism from those two opposites, the far left and the far right, aren’t necessarily for the same reasons, it feels like the anti-Semitism from the far left is driven out of this cultural Marxism where they view everything through the lens of oppressor and victim, and in this specific instance they see Israel oppressor, Palestine victim. We side with victim which is almost more of simplistic lens to look through many things, but this one’s no different here, whereas the far right hate, that I’ve seen, not just like now but over the years for Jews, seems to come through a more conspiratorial like Illuminati, Jews run the… Like Rothschilds, they run the banking, they run the world…

0:21:58.1 Jordan Syatt: Yes, correct.

0:22:00.8 Mike Vacanti: They are controlling us secretly.

0:22:01.8 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:22:06.2 Mike Vacanti: That seems to be the reason for anti-Semitism from the far right. And like you said you feel like you felt more of it from the far left than the far right. I’ve seen way more of it from the far left than the far right, but the difference, does that make sense in terms of the reason for it?

0:22:20.1 Jordan Syatt: It makes total sense. Ironically, I’ve seen a lot of the far right’s talking points bleeding in to the far left, so a lot of the people on the far left are now saying, you control the media, you control the banks, it’s like now they are adopting what the far right says about the Jewish people because they agree on like, well, we hate the Jews and so now they are actually, they are almost joining each other on that front, and the far left is adopting the far right’s talking points and saying, “You do control this, you do control that.” It’s ironic to me when a lot of the, especially the far left, they are like, Israel’s oppressing the Palestinians. I’m always like, when did you start caring about this? Because you didn’t say anything when Palestinians were being slaughtered by the thousands when Syria was doing it. You didn’t say anything when Jordan was revoking Palestinian citizenship and slaughtering them. You didn’t say anything when Lebanon was slaughtering them and having a genocide against them. It’s only when there’s a war with Israel, which, by the way, Hamas started. So it’s just very ironic what they pick and choose.

0:23:22.5 Jordan Syatt: And this is why so many Jews are like, this is anti-Semitism. And a lot of people will say it’s not anti-Semitism. It’s like, well, you’re only upset about it when it’s against the Jews. You’re not upset about it when anyone else does it. So that’s why it’s looking like it’s anti-Semitism because you’re picking and choosing, and you’re only picking it when it’s the Jews.

0:23:42.8 Mike Vacanti: That’s a great point. We could talk about this for as long as we want. One more thought that since we’re just like this deep in, I feel like it makes sense to bring up, which is a slight acknowledgement of part of the far right’s argument that there seem to be a disproportionate number of specifically Ashkenazi Jewish people in positions of power, I guess, but really, it’s just high up in various industries, which seems to be driven by IQ. Have you thought about this much? Or is this like, is there validity to that argument?

0:24:30.2 Jordan Syatt: I was listening to someone talk about this. And so, there are a lot of Ashkenazi Jews who are in those positions of power. But what’s interesting is…

0:24:38.1 Mike Vacanti: That might have been like who are very successful or…

0:24:42.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, who are successful. But so, here’s an interesting point. And we’ve spoken about how like… Like we could use the example, like the patriarchy. Right? And how like men have have the power. And it’s like, well, it’s actually a very small percentage of men that actually reach any high level of success. Right? It’s not the vast majority of men. It’s a very small percentage of men who are very, very, very, very successful. And those men tend to get all the benefits, whether it’s they get the majority… They get their general choice of women. They get their choice of options in life. Right. And so this is where a lot of people say, well, it’s the patriarchy. It’s like, well, that dude over there who lives down the street doesn’t get any of those benefits. Like the guy, the truck driver or whatever it is, they’re not getting any of those benefits. So like it’s a small percentage of them. And this is where it’s the Ashkenazi Jews, where if you look in that profession, like if you look at CEOs, yes, most of them are men, but not all men are anywhere near being a CEO.

0:25:39.7 Jordan Syatt: If you look at these positions of power or are very successful people, a lot of them are Ashkenazi Jews, but not even close to all Ashkenazi Jews are very, very successful. So I think it’s a similar discussion on that front. But generally, yeah, I mean, I think it’s it’s very clear that we see a lot of Ashkenazi Jews in these positions. Also, a lot of it has to do with heritage in terms of banks. Like people don’t realize this, but especially in Nazi Germany, Jews, number one, were not considered citizens. They were not allowed to have certain jobs, like what jobs they were allowed to have or not have was dictated by the government. And so early on, banking was not looked at as a prestigious job, like it wasn’t something that people were proud of.

0:26:24.7 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

0:26:25.7 Jordan Syatt: So being a banker was one of the only jobs they were actually allowed to have by the government, by law. So then when after World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, and Germany fell into the worst financial crisis ever, then they were like, well, look who’s controlling the banks. It’s the Jews. It’s like, you fucking put the Jews there…

0:26:46.7 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

0:26:47.4 Jordan Syatt: And you lost World War I, which you instigated and the Treaty of Versailles, which many historians would argue is like that is probably what led to World War II, if nothing else, because that put Germany in such a terrible, terrible national national crisis. That was an easy way for them to blame Jews on the banks.

0:27:03.7 Mike Vacanti: I did not know that. That’s fascinating, actually. And makes sense as like another reason why certain people would be in a profession is because parents and grandparents and great-grandparents worked in that profession.

0:27:16.6 Jordan Syatt: Exactly.

0:27:20.0 Mike Vacanti: Cool. Should we dive into some questions?

0:27:25.2 Jordan Syatt: Personal trainer podcast… Personal trainers.

0:27:25.7 Mike Vacanti: For personal trainers every week, Tuesday. [laughter] Here’s a recent YouTube comment we got, a question from Emily Barry. Shoutout, Emily. Watching on YouTube…

0:27:37.4 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Emily?

0:27:38.4 Mike Vacanti: Leaving comments. Emily says, “Can you guys discuss holding on to the treadmill while doing an inclined treadmill walk versus a lower incline/speed, not holding on for zone two specifically?”

0:27:51.9 Jordan Syatt: You want to start?

0:27:54.9 Mike Vacanti: My interpretation has always been holding on to the treadmill makes it easier and therefore, never hold on to the treadmill. If you have to hold on to the treadmill, otherwise you can’t maintain that pace, then you’re going too fast. And, you know, lower the incline slightly. Lower the speed slightly. You said for zone two specifically, targeting 60 to 75% of max heart rate/the talking test. If you can maintain a conversation, but it’s a little bit uncomfortable to do so, but you could still maintain a conversation through your cardio, you’re probably in zone two. And, yeah, I would just never hold on to the treadmill during cardio.

0:28:44.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, most people, they like putting the treadmill on a super high incline. They like seeing the numbers on the screen go up, whether it’s like total calories burned or total distance, or they’re looking for a number to tell them how good their workout was. And when you hold on, especially when you hold on for dear life, you’re taking… You’re essentially reducing your weight is what you’re doing, right? When you put on a weighted vest, you increase your weight and you have to do more work in order to accomplish that task, you have to work harder. Your muscles have to work harder in order to propel you forward, which is why you end up burning more calories when you weigh more. So if you have a weighted vest on, you will burn more calories because your muscles have to work harder. When you hold on to something, you are synthetically in some capacity, reducing your weight by holding on. And so you’re actually not working as hard. So the numbers you’re seeing on the screen, which are already off are now even more off because you’re not actually working as hard as you think you’re working… As the machine thinks you’re working.

0:29:51.4 Jordan Syatt: So I will say, there’s nothing wrong with holding on like if you’re going for a stroll or if you’re about to fall and you need to grab on, or if I was working with someone who had really a shoddy balance and I was worried that they were going to fall off, I’m like, yeah, hold on. It’s fine. But I also wouldn’t have them on a 10 incline and really trying to challenge them at a decent clip. I would just say, let’s just go on a stroll. And if you want to hold on, that’s great. But if you’re trying to go for a higher intensity, zone two, and by higher, I mean, just relative to strolling, a higher intensity walk, you should not be going so high incline that you need to hold on. Reduce it to a point where you can go without having to hold on, and only hold on if you need to, if you’re going to fall or something.

0:30:35.6 Mike Vacanti: Boom.

0:30:38.2 Jordan Syatt: Great question.

0:30:41.5 Mike Vacanti: I had written these notes weeks ago and I forgot that I was clearly in a different headspace when I wrote some of these notes for the podcast. One of them is just a sentence that says, “no one has ever gone past RPE 8.”

0:31:04.3 Jordan Syatt: Do you want to go off on that one or do you know what you meant?

0:31:04.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, well, it’s not true because obviously people have gone past RPE 8, but the majority of lifters, from an intensity perspective, relative intensity, meaning how close they are to technical failure on a given set, have never actually hit failure or even gotten within one rep of failure. And I don’t remember what made me think of this or what story, or who I saw or who said what that made me think of this. But…

0:31:40.4 Jordan Syatt: You were angry when you wrote that. You’re like, most people have never gone above an RPE 8. You losers.

0:31:47.3 Mike Vacanti: 100%.

0:31:48.8 Jordan Syatt: Go harder.

0:31:49.8 Mike Vacanti: No, no. It’s not about losers. It’s an aha moment for people, especially people who might be struggling to build muscle, who want to build muscle just aren’t pushing themselves hard enough in the gym. And they think RPE 8 or 9, where they have one or two reps left in the tank max, if you put a gun to their head, they could do 10 more reps at that weight, or they could do 15 more reps at that weight. And it’s a good thing to know for people who are trying to… Pretty much for people who are trying to build muscle. Alright. This one’s from Joost, J-O-O-S-T, in the Netherlands. Why is that funny?

0:32:37.0 Jordan Syatt: I thought it was like their handle was like “Juiced” as in they were juiced…

0:32:40.1 Mike Vacanti: Oh, I see…

0:32:41.2 Jordan Syatt: And then I realized that they were actually, that’s probably like their name.

0:32:44.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, Joost.

0:32:46.1 Jordan Syatt: Like when you spelled it that way, I was like, oh, that’s actually his person’s name. I think it’s probably Joost, soft J.

0:32:51.1 Mike Vacanti: You’re so cultured, Jordan.

[laughter]

0:32:58.7 Mike Vacanti: By the way, I love that I like, I basically can’t pronounce names or words in general. And I’m the one who reads all of the questions during the mentorship Q&As, which is a fun challenge for me, but just, yeah.

0:33:17.1 Jordan Syatt: What’s Joost’s question?

0:33:17.2 Mike Vacanti: Hang on. I want to see… I want to see if in a lifetime of OTR mispronounced names, I want to see if I’m thinking of a name that I mispronounced. Okay. You got it?

0:33:33.3 Jordan Syatt: You mispronounced someone’s name?

0:33:35.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s not… It’s a name… It’s a name that I mispronounced.

0:33:40.8 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I have no idea.

0:33:43.2 Mike Vacanti: I’ll give you a second.

0:33:46.8 Jordan Syatt: Is it a mutual friend of ours?

0:33:48.2 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:33:51.1 Jordan Syatt: Is it a, someone that we watch? Someone that like on YouTube or something?

0:33:54.3 Mike Vacanti: Not on YouTube. You watched her. I didn’t watch her.

0:34:02.0 Jordan Syatt: I watched her. On YouTube?

0:34:06.1 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:34:06.8 Jordan Syatt: TV?

0:34:09.5 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:34:09.6 Jordan Syatt: Movies?

0:34:11.7 Mike Vacanti: Yep.

0:34:12.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh man. Oh, I know exactly who it is. I know exactly who you’re talking about.

0:34:14.6 Mike Vacanti: Three, two, one. Hermione.

0:34:18.0 Jordan Syatt: Hermione Granger.

0:34:18.7 Mike Vacanti: Ah, that’s how you say it. Hermione.

0:34:22.2 Jordan Syatt: Hermione. You always say, “Hermoyony”. [laughter]

0:34:24.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s because… No, I say, “Hermoyny”.

0:34:24.4 Jordan Syatt: “Hermoyny… ” [laughter]

0:34:28.1 Mike Vacanti: Because that’s how it’s spelled.

0:34:34.3 Jordan Syatt: “Hermoyny.”

0:34:35.0 Mike Vacanti: Everyone listening who reads things instead of listens to things understands.

0:34:37.8 Jordan Syatt: No, that’s how I always said it when I was… Even when I was a kid reading the books.

0:34:41.7 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely… First of all, you were in first grade when the first book came out.

0:34:47.0 Jordan Syatt: My mom read it to me and that’s how she pronounced it. Swear to God. You could ask my mom.

0:34:52.7 Mike Vacanti: A hundred percent. That’s precisely my point. I’m with you. You made my point for me. Joost. “Hey guys, I’m just starting out as a personal trainer next to a full-time job… I’m just starting out as a personal trainer next to a full-time job. I like giving one-on-one personal training, but I enjoy giving group lessons, 45 minutes full body HIIT, more because it challenges me to perform in front of a group and I love the community vibe it creates among the participants. I also feel like training multiple people at once is a time-efficient way to create awareness for my business. However, eventually, I want the main chunk of my business to be online, not online group lessons, but for example, one-on-one calls and selling workout plans. Number one, what are your thoughts on giving group lessons? And number two, do you have any tips on how to transition into online coaching with a couple of my clients who currently enjoy group lessons? I sometimes feel like this may be for a completely different target audience. The pod always makes my Tuesday. Keep it up. Greetings from the Netherlands. Joost.”

0:36:06.4 Jordan Syatt: Love that.

0:36:07.2 Mike Vacanti: So what are your thoughts on group lessons? We’ll start with.

0:36:09.1 Jordan Syatt: Group lessons are great. I think I did a fair amount of group lessons. Specifically, I remember one, like probably the longest standing one that I had early on was a group of between like three to five women. I think it was like every Tuesday and Thursday. I would go to my buddy’s gym and I would coach them there. And it was great. And basically, the way that we structured it was, I said, if we’re going to do… Actually, thinking back, this was really smart of me. I was like… ‘Cause this is at a point where my online business was growing. I was doing decently well. This is 2015. So, it’s 2015, I’m in Boston. Online business is growing. I’m starting to see this as viable and I’m doing a lot of mix of in-person and online. And I was like, if this hour is going to be worth it for me, I need to make X amount of money per time I do this class. And so, basically, I told the group of women, I said, “I need to get like essentially this much per month. So if we’re going to do it two times a week, I’ll be making this much per month, which boiled down to probably like 150 per session.”

0:37:20.0 Jordan Syatt: And so I was like, “You all can split it between yourselves. It doesn’t matter if you show up to the session or not, you’re still paying. And when you split it amongst yourselves, it will cost significantly less for each of you.” So it was like five women in total, but they wouldn’t always come, not all of them would be there, but they were still paying for the service, and I still gave them their program. Even if they weren’t there, they all got the program and it wasn’t a group… It wasn’t like everyone got the same program. I did individual programs for them, but they all got their own individual programs, and I would be there and I would all help them out. But basically, it allowed me to coach all of those people at the same time in one hour, as opposed to having three to five individual hours.

0:38:06.5 Jordan Syatt: And so that actually worked out really well. A lot of them ended up becoming online clients after I finished and after I was no longer doing in-person. But, and it also lend itself well to online coaching because if they didn’t make it, they still had their program. And if they had questions, they would email me and I would be able to answer and do online coaching with them when they weren’t there. So that was a really good hybrid option and a really great option for group coaching in-person, that essentially leads into your online coaching program. What are you laughing about the whole time there?

[chuckle]

0:38:41.7 Mike Vacanti: Well, you’re the king of “that’s what she said” jokes and I usually don’t do them, but you really set me up for a good one there. I’m not gonna say anything, but if anyone wants to rewind over the last one to two minutes, it’s a classic.

0:38:51.1 Jordan Syatt: I don’t… Wow. I can’t even believe that. I would’ve thought that I would’ve caught myself with that. [laughter] That’s usually not your type of humor.

0:39:15.2 Mike Vacanti: I also really like small group training or semi-private training. Early in my in-person coaching days, this was the main type of sessions that we offered at the gym I was working at. And I love it from a financial perspective for the reason that you just threw out, which is, as a coach, you can charge more in total and each client is paying less, so it’s more affordable than one-on-one coaching. I also really like it from a learning perspective and from an exposure to new population perspective, which is something… One of the main benefits of in-person coaching is you’re gonna learn things in-person that you can’t learn online and you’re gonna work with different demos. A lot of us are good at coaching ourselves, but most people aren’t like us. And so in-person coaching with a wide variety of people gets us all different age groups, different injuries, different goals.

0:40:15.7 Mike Vacanti: And so I like it from that perspective. You’re essentially drinking from a fire hose. If you’re working with someone one-on-one compared to as low as two or as many as five people in a one-on-one or in a single hour session, you’re gonna learn that much more. From a stagnation and like boredom perspective, if you’re doing six to eight-hour sessions in a day and they’re all one-on-one, depending on the programming style, that can get boring and there’s gonna be a lot of conversation, there’s gonna be a lot of downtime, which is great. But also if you’re working with three, four, five people, time flies. You’re cueing here, you’re setting someone else up here, you’re demoing a movement here, you’re back here, you’re cueing here. Literally, the hours fly by in small group training. So that’s another thing I like about it.

0:41:11.6 Mike Vacanti: I also really like it over classes where you have 15, 20, 30 people because the programming can… Like programming for a class, maybe you have people with their dumbbells here and their mat here, semi-private training, small group training, you can do real program design and have people doing real strength-based workouts with heavy weight. You can take a rack, you can have a bench, you can have some dumbbells, and you have your area and you have people doing different movements in that area. Yeah, I love it. You learn a lot. It’s great for the coach, it’s great for the client. It’s great financially for both parties. I would say, it’s still underrated. It’s hard to make work in a commercial gym setting, but if you have the right space for it, yeah.

0:42:01.4 Jordan Syatt: Well said. Completely agree.

0:42:05.6 Mike Vacanti: And then tips on how to transition someone from a we’ll just say from in-person to online. I know we’ve talked about this in the mentorship a solid amount. I don’t know how much we have on the podcast. And this is something that you’ve done a decent amount historically.

0:42:20.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, in that same timeframe, in like 2014, 2015, as my online was really getting going, I realized I was spending so much time in-person that I was impacting my ability to grow my online. And so I started doing hybrid options where I was like, okay, so we’ll meet one time a week in-person and then the rest, we’ll do online. And that one time a week in-person, depending on what the client wanted, either we would do the full workout or I would just walk them through like that whole… The first week of that month, we would walk them through the entire program. And then every week thereafter, then we would do one of the actual workouts. But the first workout was just me walking through the whole program, seeing if they had any questions.

0:43:03.2 Jordan Syatt: Then from once a week, it was once every two weeks, then from once every two weeks, it became once a month, and then from once a month, it was like, yeah, I just, I think I’m good. I know what I’m doing. I don’t think we need it anymore. And then it we would go fully online. Some people had a slower progression, some people had a very fast progression. Some people were like, let’s just go full online. Like they felt really comfortable with it. It was very different per individual, but the main thing is I was very worried that when I started discussing it to people that they would be upset and that they wouldn’t wanna do it, and they would stop working with me. And it couldn’t have been more opposite.

0:43:39.4 Jordan Syatt: When I said like, “Hey, listen, I’m transitioning more to online coaching. I’d still wanna work with you, but we’re gonna do a little bit of a hybrid approach. If you’d prefer not to do this, I’m happy to refer you to someone else. Obviously, I would still love to work with you, but it’s just taking so much time and it’s taking away from my goals of building an online business that I need to do more of a hybrid approach for the time being.” And they all were for it. They supported it, they encouraged it, they were happy for me. And many of them are Inner Circle members to this day. So I think people get really worried, but as long as you’ve been a great coach and a great friend to them, they’re gonna support you.

0:44:11.6 Mike Vacanti: Awesome. This doesn’t really answer the question, but one additional benefit to hybrid coaching and this, I’m really speaking to someone who might feel a little burnt out in-person coaching, and maybe you’ve done a lot of in-person coaching, and you can’t wait to have full control over your schedule. You can’t wait to be fully online. You can’t wait to live the entrepreneurial dream of working from your laptop from anywhere in the world and going to the work on the beach, which you can’t actually do because of the sun and the sand, like the laptop on the beach doesn’t actually work despite what the advertisements say. There’s real benefit to maintaining that hybrid schedule or maintaining some semblance of in-person work. Consistent income, human interaction, content ideas, and the big one really is, depending on how you have your life laid out and your schedule laid out, and how much human interaction you get, going from many sessions a day, most days per week to fully online is a drastic change in exposure to other people.

0:45:22.2 Mike Vacanti: And so maintaining a handful of sessions per week is something that, well, that I really enjoyed with Gary when I was, he was my only one-on-one in-person, and the rest was online. And that I’ve also seen others benefit from, too. So that’s something to consider as a benefit to that in-person online hybrid option. It also just breaks up the day. Nobody wants to be sitting at a computer for 10 or 12 hours straight. Nobody. And now we know enough that like staring at something this close to your face, getting this much unnatural light, being in this position, no matter how good your posture is, you can have perfect posture, but if you’re in a computer chair for 10, 12 hours a day, not moving and not taking your body through various ranges of motion, we know that’s not good for you from a like a pain perspective. And so yeah finding ways to do different things, and one of them is hybrid in-person online coaching.

0:46:28.3 Jordan Syatt: Bro, have you been using your Indian clubs?

0:46:30.0 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:46:31.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, man.

0:46:32.6 Mike Vacanti: Well yeah, I use them as mini golf clubs.

0:46:35.0 Jordan Syatt: What do you mean?

0:46:37.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I just, I got a lacrosse ball…

0:46:38.0 Jordan Syatt: You smack the…

0:46:39.9 Mike Vacanti: And I get my Indian club and I… Well, I don’t smack it, but I putt it.

0:46:43.9 Jordan Syatt: Got it, got it. Okay. Good. All right. At least you’re putting them to use.

[laughter]

0:46:49.2 Mike Vacanti: I swing them around a little bit. I think I need some new moves. I think I need some new moves.

0:46:56.9 Jordan Syatt: I gave you a couple of moves and you haven’t even done them.

0:47:00.4 Jordan Syatt: I didn’t. I haven’t even, I’ve done the first one. I haven’t looked at the second one yet. I will. I forgot it was there. I don’t use WhatsApp.

0:47:04.6 Jordan Syatt: Did you like the first one?

0:47:06.3 Mike Vacanti: I liked it on my right side. My left side just felt so uncoordinated and I don’t know. I felt like I was gonna rip my shoulder out.

0:47:14.4 Jordan Syatt: All right. Well you got to send me a technique video so I can analyze it and help you out there.

0:47:18.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll send it. I’ll definitely do that. All right?

[laughter]

0:47:25.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:47:25.7 Mike Vacanti: Listen, you’re an adult. I don’t chase my clients down. You’ve been loving the Indian clubs though.

0:47:33.3 Jordan Syatt: Bro, big Indian club guy. Yeah.

0:47:35.4 Mike Vacanti: Are they Native American clubs or are they like Indian?

[laughter]

0:47:42.0 Jordan Syatt: I would imagine Native American. I’ve never seen, I mean, I’ve never seen either one use them, but just based on the images in my head, I would imagine that it’s a Native American. I don’t… I mean, there’s nothing in my head that has me seeing like someone from India using those, but I mean, who knows? That’s just, maybe that’s my own White fragility. I don’t know. [laughter] I have no idea.

0:48:14.9 Mike Vacanti: Cool. Just curious. You’ve been enjoying them though.

0:48:18.4 Jordan Syatt: Dude, big fan. Yeah. Big fan of those. The Bulgarian bag, yeah. Just doing a lot of mobility work, a lot of spinal movement, rotation, flexion, extension, lateral bending, big fan.

0:48:32.1 Mike Vacanti: Oh wow. Indian clubs were so named because the soldiers of the British army in India had adopted…

0:48:39.3 Jordan Syatt: No way!

0:48:39.8 Mike Vacanti: Had adopted and…

0:48:44.6 Jordan Syatt: You serious?

0:48:44.7 Mike Vacanti: Had adopted and adapted a native exercise, and brought it back to England in the middle of the 19th century.

0:48:48.3 Jordan Syatt: Wow!

0:48:51.5 Mike Vacanti: And then in the United States, baseball teams soon practiced with the clubs, as did the crew teams from Harvard and Yale. Wow.

0:49:00.2 Jordan Syatt: So it is from India.

0:49:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Technically British soldiers who were in India or near India.

0:49:05.4 Jordan Syatt: They learned it from Native Indians.

0:49:07.7 Mike Vacanti: It sounds like they invented it. But again…

0:49:10.2 Jordan Syatt: No, the British soldiers didn’t invent it, the Indians did. Sounds like the…

0:49:13.0 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna read this to you again.

0:49:15.6 Jordan Syatt: The British soldiers appropriated the Indian culture’s clubs.

[laughter]

0:49:23.9 Mike Vacanti: People are either gonna like it or I guess you’re polarizing. You’re polarizing our audience, Jordan.

[laughter]

0:49:29.9 Mike Vacanti: The soldiers of the British army in India had adopted and adapted… Oh, a native exercise and brought it back to England. Yeah. So it is from India.

0:49:43.8 Jordan Syatt: It’s, wow. That is…

0:49:48.2 Mike Vacanti: Cool.

0:49:48.3 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy. I just assumed, I think it was ’cause I had the image of a Native American with a tomahawk. I was just like, oh, that’s probably like where they got the club as well, like, but…

0:49:58.6 Mike Vacanti: A sharp one and a dull one?

0:50:02.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Like one for chopping and one for clunking. But…

0:50:05.5 Mike Vacanti: As per their name, Indian clubs originated on the Indian subcontinent. Some of the earliest references to clubs can be found in Hindu epics prepared between 400 BC and 400 AD. These texts referred to a style of club called the gada, G-A-D-A. Dope.

0:50:24.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s amazing. I had no idea.

0:50:27.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Cool.

0:50:27.5 Jordan Syatt: Glad you Googled that.

0:50:29.4 Mike Vacanti: Okay, this one’s from Madison. “Hey, Jordan and Mike, I’m a huge fan. As my subject line states, I have a particular question that I have not been able to find out from the regular internet, but probably because it’s a question with a caveat. Oh. And in case it matters, I’m a 25-year-old female, 5-foot and 120 to 130 pounds. My question is, how do I stop from swinging on my chin-ups? But the caveat is that I’m doing a negative chin-up where I jump to the top and slowly lower myself down. I do this because that’s how I understood from Jordan as a way to work myself up to a regular chin-up. I can tell it’s getting easier too, but I’m not there yet. However, I think the jumping to the top part is what’s causing the swinging. I cross my ankles at… I am crossing my ankles and knees behind my body. I’m jumping very little from a 24-inch box, so there’s not a lot of room for my legs to go if I want to fully extend at the bottom. I’m wondering if I bent my legs forward instead of back, if that would help. And also, if I jump from a shorter box, my legs had more room. I haven’t tested that quite yet. Hope that gives context to answer question. Any tips are appreciated. I’m hoping to get my first unassisted chin-up before the end of the year. Madison.” Let’s go, Madison. Love that goal.

0:51:47.5 Jordan Syatt: Let’s go, Madison. Thank you for the kind words. I love it. Did you say Madison said that she’s crossing her feet and her knees are bent behind her?

0:51:54.1 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:51:57.2 Jordan Syatt: Okay. So there are a couple issues. Number one is the jumping is causing that, for sure.

0:52:05.8 Mike Vacanti: Is causing the swinging.

0:52:05.9 Jordan Syatt: Is causing the initial swing ’cause when you jump up, you have a momentum and you’re going back and forth. So I would, if you can get a little bit of a higher box, so you don’t have to jump. If you don’t have that option, that’s okay. You can still do it. But when you jump up, try and be like… Do like a, jump like a cat, like be soft with it. When you get to the top, try and try and… Don’t immediately go into the negative. Hold it, don’t be moving and then you start lowering yourself. Now, it’s gonna be very difficult to stop swinging with your knees bent and feet behind you. What I actually want you to do is hold yourself in more of a hollow body position. So you can cross your feet, but your knee should be complete…

0:52:48.5 Jordan Syatt: Your leg should be completely straight, and your hips should be, try to be as completely straight as you can make them. Not like fully, fully extended, but almost like you look like a banana a little bit. So if you go on YouTube and you search hollow body hold, then you’ll find this position. It’s a gymnastic position where you’re on your back, you go… You press your lower back hard into the ground, and as you press your lower back hard into the ground, you actually, your hands come up off the ground and your legs come up off the ground. So you’re sort of like, look like a banana, and you hold that position. Holding that position is essentially the position you should be in when you’re doing the chin-up. And so, it’s way more… It will engage your core more, which I realize is like the most cliche phrase ever, “Engage your core.”

0:53:37.8 Jordan Syatt: But actually it requires you to use your abs much more, and which will help reduce the swinging, ’cause when your knees are bent and feet are behind you, unless you know what you’re doing, you’re not gonna be using your abs. You can use your abs from that position. You can mimic what you’d be doing with the hollow body hold, but start with the hollow body hold, because you’re forced to recruit your abs. You’re forced to engage them. And then from there, then you can have your legs in whatever arrangement you want, as long as you’re bracing your abs properly. But get to the hollow body position. Hold that. Lock your knees out hard, flex your quads, flex your abs, slowly lower down. And that’s gonna get you that to stop swinging.

0:54:15.7 Mike Vacanti: Beautiful. Madison, it sounds like part of the reason that you’re wanting to bend your knees and have your feet behind you is because the box is potentially in the way at the bottom of each rep. One thing, in addition to everything Jordan just said, just a couple additional things, is have the box back a little bit further away from the bar. So you’re gonna have to be standing on the box and lean forward to reach the bar, but then the box won’t be underneath you. And when you’re done with your final rep or really on these negatives, if you can’t reach your… I forgot you’re doing negatives. You want the box to be back a little bit, but not so far that at the bottom of each rep, you can’t reach your feet back to touch it and reset.

0:55:04.4 Mike Vacanti: So you don’t want the box directly under the bar, but you want it, I don’t know, six or eight or 10 inches back behind the bar, so you have room to be in that hollow body position. Second, take a second or two… Well, so three things. Second, higher box is good. If there isn’t a high enough box, incline a bench in that position and walk up the inclined bench because in a perfect world, you don’t even wanna jump. Like you wanna be able to reach for the bar and be in a position where you’re already at the very top of the rep. So that, plus the hollow body position, is gonna prevent swinging. And then additionally, once you are… Once your feet are off of the box or the bench, and ideally your chin is above the bar, you’re at the top of each rep, spend a second or two, pause there before you start lowering, which that, plus the hollow body position, is gonna completely eliminate any swinging on the lowering… And then you can start the lowering portion of that move.

0:56:06.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. I like that idea.

0:56:08.3 Mike Vacanti: Any other? We can just hit general thoughts for like getting your first chin-up, getting your first pull-up. If you have any, anything else that you like here?

0:56:17.7 Jordan Syatt: You know what’s interesting, so much of it is mental from the perspective of, I’ve consistently found, over and over and over and over again, many hundreds, if not over a thousand times, and that’s not an exaggeration, where as soon as someone gets their first ever chin-up, they get their second one very quickly, like almost immediately. And I think it’s because almost going back to your thoughts around no one ever going to an RPE 8, that, that first chin-up is really fucking hard. And in order to get it, especially if you’re coming from… Some people are just naturally strong enough where they just get their first chin-up and it’s not a big deal. But other people, it’s like, they have to really, really work at it. And I don’t think most people have gotten to a mental gear in which they’re like, oh, I need to try this hard to pull myself up, where they try and they let go. They try for a second and they let go, and they try really hard for like half a second, but they don’t realize that in order to produce that much force and recruit that many motor units and that much muscle fiber, it takes time.

0:57:27.1 Jordan Syatt: It just doesn’t happen instantly. And you have to try for 3, 4, 5 seconds hard, like pull hard for 3 to 4, 5 seconds straight. And so obviously not everyone can do a chin-up. You have to find ways to build up strength, whether it’s through negatives or through banded or through inverted rows, all these different progressions. But the mental side of you’ve just got to pull and don’t stop pulling and pull really freaking hard. Because every time I’ve seen someone, once they reach that gear and they understand that mentally, and then they get their first chin-up and they’re like, oh, that’s how hard I have to pull.

0:58:06.9 Jordan Syatt: Well, then all of a sudden, they get their second one and then their third one, and then their fourth one, because they’re like, oh, okay. So that’s just how hard I have to pull which before, they didn’t understand. And then after five chin-ups in a row, that’s like the next plateau, when they start getting like between six to 10 in a row. Like usually, once they get the first one, they’ll end up being able to get three to five in a relatively short timeframe. After five, then it gets substantially more difficult. But it’s just the mental side that I think is most often overlooked.

0:58:36.9 Mike Vacanti: I wasn’t even… That wasn’t even on my radar. So I love that you brought that up. It’s great. The progressions are a big one, right. Negatives are awesome. Iso hold at the top of each rep using the grip that you’re going to use on the actual chin-up. And then something like a lat pulldown if you have access to it is great. Very similar movement pattern, but obviously, you can go higher rep with less than your body weight. Assisted chin-up, also solid for the same reason like the assisted machine or band-assisted or partner-assisted, and then one other thing I like, especially if you’re relatively new to strength training or your client is, is a single arm lat pulldown or a half-kneeling single arm lat pulldown, because I’ve found that’s a good way to teach the, like how to contract the lat and how to feel your lat, and really get that mind muscle on your lat that you might not be able to get when it’s with both sides firing at the same time, as well as just a heavier set. Like if you’re doing 12 to 15 reps a little bit lighter and really squeezing on that single arm lat pull, it’s much easier to feel your lat than it is on a heavy, in the three to five rep range lat pulldown or assisted chin-up.

1:00:04.5 Jordan Syatt: You bring up such a good point because especially when your arms are completely overhead and your shoulders are shrugged up to your ears, you can’t flex your lats when your shoulders are shrugged up, which is why you have to teach them to depress the shoulder. And that’s when you can actually flex your lat. But it’s very difficult to teach someone when they’re hanging, arms overhead. Okay, now depress your shoulders. Whereas when you do the half-kneeling lat pulldown or a single arm lat pulldown, it’s much easier… Alright, cool. Sometimes they’ll just naturally depress their shoulder. So I’ll say, “Hey, shrug up. Now I want you to bring your shoulder back down,” just to get them to understand how to feel that. Then, hey, when they’re actually hanging, “Hey, remember when we depressed your shoulders? Do that again.” And they’re like, “Oh, got it!”

1:00:52.4 Mike Vacanti: Yep. And jump on the assisted pull-up machine, load it up, and have them do higher rep sets of scap pulls, where they’re literally just going through that small range of motion, 10 reps, 12 reps, start to understand what that feels like.

1:01:10.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. 100 reps.

1:01:13.0 Mike Vacanti: At least. At least.

[laughter]

1:01:16.5 Mike Vacanti: I can’t believe I’m about to do this. I’m about to play a little defense on the end of this podcast. Even though the people who this would matter for actually aren’t listening to this point of it. One of my favorite quotes and one of Jordan’s is “The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” And I think that’s relevant. There are good and bad people. We’re obsessed as a culture with group identity. We’re obsessed with sex, we’re obsessed with race, we’re obsessed with gender, we’re obsessed with where we like putting our penises and vaginas. Like we’re obsessed with this, which is completely unproductive and probably like orchestrated by someone or some group, but we’ll leave that aside. Group identity doesn’t matter. Who you are as an individual matters. And within every group identity, there are good people and there are bad people, and people make good decisions and people make bad decisions. And like people are part good and part bad, and we all wrestle with that.

1:02:17.3 Mike Vacanti: When we talk about these big, like heavy topics, know that we’re not pinning one group against another and that we both do think that like there are good and bad White people, there are good and bad Black people, there are good and bad straights and gays, and like, on an individual level, the line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. So when we talk about anti-Semitism, we’re not like, we don’t like people who are Muslim. That’s obviously not true at all.

1:02:46.4 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

1:02:47.2 Mike Vacanti: And maybe no one misinterprets the conversation that way, I just wanna make that abundantly clear, which I hate when other people do this, it just feels so flaccid, but I’m doing it anyway.

[laughter]

1:03:00.0 Jordan Syatt: Wow. I did not expect you to do that. You’re playing real D on that one. Was that in your head head the whole podcast? Like, “Hey, I’ve got to, I’ve got to clarify this”?

1:03:10.3 Mike Vacanti: No, it just popped… It just popped in late. It popped in late because I felt like… It just popped in late.

1:03:16.9 Jordan Syatt: Got it, got it.

1:03:17.7 Mike Vacanti: I don’t want someone who is I think, specifically like I’m thinking of like a handful of Afghani, like just like Muslim friends of mine who… And then like who obviously wouldn’t think that about me, but then someone like them who doesn’t know us as well to hear this conversation and like think that we were shitting on them when we weren’t, and that’s not our intention.

1:03:45.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, spoke about how Islamophobia is not okay. How that innocent six-year-old Palestinian boy was killed. How that’s not okay. Like it’s going to both sides. It’s just like, I can’t speak from a Palestinian perspective or Muslim perspective because I am neither. Right. So it’s like I’m just talking about what I’m going through while also understanding that many innocent Palestinians and Muslims are also going through it on the other end. Which is also ironic because so many of us are fighting against each other when so much of the hate is like, we’re actually so much more alike than we are different, like we’re cousins. That’s the irony of it all. It’s like we’re far more similar than we are different. So yeah.

1:04:24.1 Mike Vacanti: Good pod.

1:04:25.5 Jordan Syatt: Defense. De-fense.

1:04:27.5 Mike Vacanti: We’ll be back next Tuesday. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed, please leave a five-star review. It takes like a minute, minute and a half. It really helps us. Like on YouTube, subscribe. Thank you.

1:04:39.0 Jordan Syatt: If you could share it on your Instagram and tag us, tag us in your stories, mainly Jordan, mainly me, because Mike doesn’t really open Instagram. He opens it like once every…

1:04:48.7 Mike Vacanti: Let me…

1:04:49.5 Jordan Syatt: What? You want me to let you know?

1:04:49.6 Mike Vacanti: Let me know if someone tags us and I’ll get in there.

1:04:51.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, I don’t see everything, but if I do, I’ll let you know. But tag us. If you could like tell people, “Hey listen to this podcast. These guys are super politically incorrect and like really very… They really polarize and it’s about personal trainers, but they don’t really talk about personal trainer stuff that much… “

[laughter]

1:05:10.3 Jordan Syatt: Just tell people, “Go listen to it.” We would appreciate it. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful week and we’ll talk to you soon.

1:05:16.9 Mike Vacanti: Goodbye.