Episode 185: Jordan’s Creative Process for Making Great Content, Program Design for Military Push-Ups, and More…

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

0:00:12.4 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:13.8 Mike Vacanti: I just came to the realization that this energy drink that has been sitting in my hotel refrigerator, is warm because the hotel refrigerator must not be plugged in. So I grabbed it one minute ago and realized it’s warm and here we are.

0:00:29.9 Jordan Syatt: Bro, that’s no good. Do you have any perishables in there?

0:00:33.0 Mike Vacanti: No, just got here last night.

0:00:35.3 Jordan Syatt: Okay, good. I didn’t know if you went to the grocery store, threw some things in there.

0:00:37.9 Mike Vacanti: 36-hour trip. The Outback Steakhouse bread that I didn’t eat last night with my dinner, I put in the fridge, but that doesn’t actually need to be refrigerated.

0:00:47.4 Jordan Syatt: Are you gonna eat that? The bread?

0:00:48.0 Mike Vacanti: Unlikely. But I didn’t wanna throw it out just in case I was feeling it.

0:00:52.5 Jordan Syatt: I feel like 87% of the time people take home food from a restaurant, it’s just, “Hey, I’m gonna take it home and throw it out at home.”

0:01:01.3 Mike Vacanti: Well…

0:01:03.5 Jordan Syatt: Right. It’s like, “No, I don’t want you to throw it out here. I’m just gonna throw it out at my…”

0:01:10.2 Mike Vacanti: Honestly, no. Maybe 87, I’m definitely in the 13%. I had, I did DoorDash. I didn’t even know it came with bread.

0:01:16.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, you didn’t eat at the restaurant?

0:01:18.4 Mike Vacanti: No. No. It was steak and sweet potato.

0:01:19.4 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Well, that’s completely different. I thought you went to the restaurant, got bread, and then asked them to pack it up for you. Yeah. That’s different.

0:01:26.1 Mike Vacanti: No, no.

0:01:27.7 Jordan Syatt: Do you usually, when you go to a restaurant, which I know is like, it’s rare, you’re not constantly going to restaurants, but if you go to a restaurant and you bring home the food that you pack up, are you regularly eating that food?

0:01:40.5 Mike Vacanti: Yes, because I’m only going to pack it up if I want to eat the food at home.

0:01:43.2 Jordan Syatt: Like if it’s the protein or something?

0:01:45.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. If it’s a giant hunk of meat and I don’t eat the whole thing, or even if it’s…

0:01:49.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That makes.

0:01:50.5 Mike Vacanti: Even if it’s just really good and I want to finish it, but I’m not hungry there at the restaurant.

0:01:53.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Got it.

0:01:55.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:01:56.6 Jordan Syatt: How’s the trip?

0:01:58.0 Mike Vacanti: It’s good. Got in last night, Cleveland, Ohio for a couple Gary workouts. Pretty short flight from Minnesota, so that’s nice. And worked out this morning. We’ll work out tomorrow morning and then I’ll fly back.

0:02:08.6 Jordan Syatt: Are you lifting on the trip or just Gary?

0:02:10.0 Mike Vacanti: I was supposed to lift today. I’m on my deload week. We just… Our last podcast was two days ago. And today was a deload workout that I just walked 7000 steps around Cleveland.

0:02:24.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, nice.

0:02:24.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. It would’ve been better to do the deload workout, but it’s a nice day. I’ve never been to Cleveland. I wanted to walk around, soak it in.

0:02:31.2 Jordan Syatt: What’s your thoughts on Cleveland?

0:02:34.0 Mike Vacanti: It’s nice.

0:02:34.1 Jordan Syatt: Did it live up to the hype?

0:02:36.6 Mike Vacanti: Well, Cleveland as a city has a really bad reputation to me. [laughter] I don’t know. Everyone’s like, “Oh, Cleveland, gross.” Like, “that sucks. You gotta go to Cleveland.” And yeah, it seems nice. It’s actually… I was picturing it being more East Coast-ish, but it has more of a Midwest vibe. Like strangers say hi to each other in a downtown setting. That’s very… It’s a nice touch. It’s a little, I wasn’t expecting it.

0:03:02.7 Jordan Syatt: Nice. Did you have your beta-alanine before the walk?

0:03:05.9 Mike Vacanti: I always take at least 8-10 grams of beta-alanine before zone 0.5 cardio, because I just want to feel the tingles all the time. [laughter] No, I didn’t take beta-alanine.

0:03:17.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, okay, okay. Okay.

0:03:20.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. What are you sipping on over there?

0:03:21.1 Jordan Syatt: Nice, man.

0:03:21.6 Mike Vacanti: You’re full of questions today. You’re in interviewer mode.

0:03:25.7 Jordan Syatt: Mint tea. Yeah.

0:03:26.7 Mike Vacanti: Oh, you like mint tea.

0:03:28.0 Jordan Syatt: Mint tea. Got a little mint tea. Yeah. Like, I mean, you’ve got a tea collection like I’ve never seen before. That was unbelievable. I didn’t expect that.

0:03:34.0 Mike Vacanti: I do. I don’t like to brag about it.

0:03:35.0 Jordan Syatt: You’re not a big bragger in general, but that tea collection you’ve got is brag worthy. I didn’t expect it. Like I showed you mine thinking it was impressive and then you were just like, “Oh yeah, here’s my little tea collection.” Meanwhile, it’s like a fucking symphony of tea. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

0:03:51.9 Mike Vacanti: I’m secretly a big tea guy.

0:03:53.9 Jordan Syatt: It’s not a secret anymore.

0:03:56.1 Mike Vacanti: I really like chamomile tea, I like ginger tea. Yeah. I like the uncaffeinated teas more than the caffeinated teas. I get enough caffeine from coffee and pre-workout.

0:04:04.0 Jordan Syatt: How much caffeine is in, even in the uncaffeinated? Like how much is in… Is it like 20, 25 milligrams?

0:04:09.7 Mike Vacanti: There’s probably more than that in green tea. It depends… I think, I assume it depends how long it steeps. It depends on the teabag. It depends where you get it from. I know when I would get green tea from Starbucks for caffeine back in the day, they would use multiple tea bags, so there’s more caffeine in there. I don’t know the exact… I mean, green tea is, caffeinated tea has less caffeine than coffee, generally speaking, but…

0:04:35.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:04:35.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s still just not something I need.

0:04:38.6 Jordan Syatt: I feel you.

0:04:40.2 Mike Vacanti: All right. You got mint tea over there. You got, making content, you made all the content this morning, right?

0:04:47.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I made two pieces of content.

0:04:49.9 Mike Vacanti: Oh, wow.

0:04:50.0 Jordan Syatt: Just fucking bang bang. Yeah. Made a piece of content and then someone, it was, I was sitting at the breakfast table having Turkey bacon and I was thinking about what piece of content I was gonna make, and then I was thinking, “Okay, I’ll go outside.” And I was like, “you know what? Why don’t I just make this piece of content while I eat the bacon?” So I filmed at the table, eating the bacon while I made the content. And then after I posted it, someone commented and said, “wait, can we eat bacon? Is bacon okay to eat?” And then I was like, “All right, now I’m just gonna make another piece of content just about like, when someone says like, it’s not okay to eat bacon,” so just back to back. They’re probably not gonna do that well, relatively, but it is what it is. Got some content out, got it done. Had to make it happen. So I did.

0:05:31.8 Mike Vacanti: Shots on goal and efficient. Right? It didn’t take you a massive amount of time.

0:05:36.8 Jordan Syatt: Two posts in an hour. It was pretty good.

0:05:39.7 Mike Vacanti: Let’s talk about that because I’m sure many of our listeners who are coaches and creators on the internet are wondering what the creative process of the great site Fitness is like. Tell us about it.

0:05:51.3 Jordan Syatt: You just want me to go in on the whole creative? All right. I mean, we’ll start with the…

0:05:54.8 Mike Vacanti: On yours, on your creative process.

0:05:57.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, it’s… It really depends on a number of things, right? I would sort of think about like a piece of content as, the process of creating a piece of content, I would say is similar to when you’re about to begin a workout. If you’re about to begin a workout and you only have 20 minutes, the way you approach that workout is gonna be different than if you have 90 minutes. Right? So the entire mindset and approach changes the intensity, the rest periods, the exercise selection, everything changes based on how much time you have. And that’s just one aspect, never mind the goal of what your, of what the workout is and the goal of the content. So there’s many different things, but today, today’s a really busy day. I had a podcast this morning. I have this podcast with you. I have the, we have the mentorship Q&A immediately after.

0:06:48.1 Mike Vacanti: With the hot seat, hot seat.

0:06:50.8 Jordan Syatt: I like… I try and sit down and have breakfast every day with my wife and daughter. So I was doing that. So the amount of time I had for content today was much less than I would’ve liked to. So I was like, “all right, I’m not gonna do a whiteboard video.” A whiteboard video takes way more time and effort and thought. So I was just doing like a, just like a selfie video just to my face, just talking. And the ultimate goal of every piece of content is that like, it just has to have at least one practical, tangible piece of advice that the viewer can take away from it immediately. Like, what’s one thing that the person can take away immediately? It is called like the immediately practical action, is what I call it. What can I do immediately to improve? So I basically have to outline what is the one thing they’re gonna be able to take away from this piece of content that’s gonna help them improve. At this point in my career, like very rarely is there an IPA practical action that I haven’t already used before, right? So I’m like, a lot of it is just very similar pieces of content recreated in different ways.

0:07:57.5 Jordan Syatt: But, so it’s, I knew I had an hour, I got the first one done in about 35 minutes. And then literally within the first few minutes, the first… One of the first comments was about bacon. And I was just like, screw it. Like, I’m feeling good. I’m just gonna go in and make a relatively easy piece of content talking about what you, if someone says you’re not allowed to eat X, Y, or Z. And so I try and add humor to it. I try and add education to it, but it’s… I just try and keep it as simple and basic as possible in a way that helps people and keeps their attention.

0:08:30.3 Mike Vacanti: Of the 35 minutes, how much of that was thinking about what you were gonna talk about, how much of that was filming and how much of that was editing and uploading?

0:08:42.4 Jordan Syatt: Editing takes up the majority of the time, even in these quick videos. Because the editing is just, the editing is really making the jump cuts. So when I’m filming a selfie video, I’m doing it on the Instagram app and I’m just holding down the circle button, the record button for however long I record that individual segment and I collect all of them together. And then I just chop them down, so there’s no time in between one segment to the next segment. It’s just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, thinking of what I’m gonna say takes up the least amount of time. I would say thinking of what I’m gonna say, and… Yeah, thinking of what I’m gonna say takes up the least amount of time. At this point, it just rolls right off. Like, I know what I’m gonna say, whatever the message is, just… If it takes me a lot of time to think about what I’m gonna say, there are two potential issues in my mind. The first is, I don’t know what I’m talking about, which means I need to study it more. Right? It’s like if I don’t know what I’m gonna say about a given topic, then I better research it more.

0:09:36.0 Jordan Syatt: The other reason it might take a while is because I’m overthinking it, right? Is where like, alright, maybe I’m trying to sound too smart. Maybe I’m trying to, I’m making it sound, I’m not actually breaking it down as simply as it needs to be broken down for the person watching it. And so for me, my audience isn’t high level coaches, even though many high level coaches do follow me. That’s not the people who I care about educating or the people who I’m or I’m concerned are gonna be joining the inner circle. I’m talking to the average everyday person. And so in that sense it’s, I’m gonna make this as simple as I can. So the actual filming of it, or what I’m gonna say, excuse me, is takes the least amount of time. The second most amount of time is actual filming, ’cause there are times where I’m trying to say something, I stumble over my words, maybe I had notice myself getting a little bit ranty and I’ve gotta start all over again that one clip, that one segment. So, very rarely will I ever film a clip completely on the first try. I film a video, excuse me, an entire video on the first try. Very rarely. Usually I’ll have… Sometimes what I’ll do is I will record the exact same segment twice.

0:10:47.8 Jordan Syatt: And a segment is like one or two sentences. I’ll record it twice in a row and then I’ll see which one I think sounds better. And by sounds better, I really means like which one might be more welcoming. Oftentimes the second one will be better than the first, because the first one is sort of like how I consider a rough draft when you’re writing an article. And the second one is, you’re a… It’s almost like when you first meet somebody, it can be a little bit awkward. You might sound a little bit weird. The tone of your voice is a little bit higher or different. And then once you get more comfortable, you can smile, you can relax, let your shoulders down, and all of a sudden it becomes more natural. So sometimes I’ll literally, especially this is like the first intro of the video. I’ll record it and then without deleting it, I record it again. And then that way I can compare the two and look in the second time, I have a little smile, my tone is more relaxed and more comfortable and confident. So that is… So, and I’ve never really even thought about that. It’s just something I’ve done naturally where it makes sense for me to at least do it two times just to see which one… Sometimes the first one’s better, but usually the second one is better.

0:11:52.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And you’re just doing those back to back. So it’s really…

0:11:55.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Immediate.

0:11:56.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s taking very little additional time. And then after you’ve filmed…

0:12:00.1 Jordan Syatt: Less than a minute.

0:12:00.6 Mike Vacanti: You film the intro twice, then you’re filming the next segment. Maybe you film that one twice. Next segment. Next segment. And then when you go back to the editing process, any that you filmed multiple times, you listen to both and you pick the one that sounds better/more welcoming?

0:12:13.7 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Correct. That’s exactly right.

0:12:16.0 Mike Vacanti: I feel like people are gonna like this.

0:12:20.4 Jordan Syatt: Hopefully.

0:12:20.6 Mike Vacanti: I think they are. I think they are.

0:12:23.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That’s pretty much it. I mean, it… And then it changes. Like if I’m doing a whiteboard video, those take a long time. Those take a long time. They’re way more thought process. Like if I’m doing a selfie video, I don’t have to think about what I’m gonna talk about. I just know what the question that I’m answering is. And then it will just come out. For a whiteboard video with like multiple points, I’ll outline it beforehand. Even if it’s only a 92nd video, I outline what I want to hit and I don’t have a script, but I know the points that I want to discuss. And yeah, so that, because I usually will outline what will go on the whiteboard beforehand and I have that in a note to myself. And then I’ll know when I need to change or erase or whatever it is. But the whiteboard videos are more in depth.

0:13:06.5 Mike Vacanti: How about a solo podcast?

0:13:08.9 Jordan Syatt: A solo podcast, I outline beforehand.

0:13:11.5 Mike Vacanti: Similar to a YouTube video?

0:13:14.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly. Similar to a YouTube video. Similar to an outline of a written article, where like, alright, here’s the overall topic, here’s like the different sections that I’m gonna hit on. So like, if I’m doing a fat loss article, I’ll be like, okay, so I’m gonna have one section on calories, one section on protein, one section, like one section on just macros. And then we can break that down into proteins, carbs, fats. I’ll have one section just on alcohol. I’ll have one section just on cardio, one section just on strength training, one section just on social events, whatever it is. And I just have these sections, and if there’s anything in particular, so for example, if I’m thinking about social events in a very specific situation, I might say in this section I’ll want to talk about, what if someone is being pushy and trying to get you to eat something you don’t want to eat? I’ll just make a note of that and then I’ll go much more in depth in the article, in the podcast, in the video, whatever. But I’ll make a note of very specific things I want to bring up just so I can go off on it. But yeah, the podcasts probably take, probably have the most outline ready for me. Podcast and YouTube video.

0:14:20.2 Mike Vacanti: The longer the content, the more preparation required.

0:14:23.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I would say the more… The… Here’s the thing, the longer the content, the more nuance should be required. The shorter the content, the less nuance is required. And so it should, it can inherently be shorter. I hesitate, ’cause longer content isn’t always better content. It’s only better as long as it’s actually better. Right? So taking the whole economy of words into consideration, it’s not just for written, it’s also for spoken, whether it’s audio or, YouTube, visual as well. So, I would say in general, longer form content will do better from a conversion perspective to actually getting people to be your clients. But that doesn’t mean just make it longer for the sake of it being longer. It means make it longer with more nuance that is actually better and more informative.

0:15:13.3 Mike Vacanti: Should we fire up some questions?

0:15:15.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, bro, I would love to.

0:15:16.0 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go.

0:15:16.4 Jordan Syatt: You know what I’m really excited about in the mentorship. We’ve been doing these hot seats. We’ve got another hot seat today that we’re doing. It’s, we’re always trying to improve all of our businesses. Everything we do. It’s funny, like sometimes people in the mentorship, sometimes our coaches will be like, “hey, I’m thinking about changing this or I’m changing that.” And we’re always like, “it’s your business, [laughter] you decide, it’s what you wanna do.” But I think one of the biggest mistakes that every business owner, but especially coaches will make is they will not improve what they’re currently offering. And this is what I offer and this is all I ever will offer. And they end up falling off because they’re not improving. Now it doesn’t mean you have to, it doesn’t mean you have to make radical changes. And it doesn’t mean you have to make changes for the sake of making changes, but it does mean you should always be striving to improve it. So in the mentorship, we’ve changed a lot over the years. What? Is this our fifth year, or sixth year doing it?

0:16:12.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I think we originally launched in very late 2018/early 2019.

0:16:21.2 Jordan Syatt: Okay. So like fifth year right now or so, going into our sixth year.

0:16:24.7 Mike Vacanti: So we’re on year sixth. Yeah.

0:16:27.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, wow. So one thing that we started doing very recently is adding a hot seat. So we’ll take one person who’s in the mentorship, one of our members, and we will review, some of their content. Today, we’re gonna review someone’s Instagram, we’re gonna go through their Instagram content and basically as a whole group we’ll sit down and review it. Now we won’t just pick someone randomly, we don’t wanna bully anyone. They have to essentially…

0:16:55.8 Mike Vacanti: Sign up.

0:16:55.9 Jordan Syatt: Submit themselves and sign up. And then they’re giving us permission. But they know that we’re not gonna hold back. Like we’re not gonna just like coddle them and say, “oh, you’re doing great. Keep up the amazing…” For example, Leo was the first one that we did for his website. And we went through everything, whether it was articles, the formatting, what was on his website, his email sign up, like everything. And so I think that’s been one of the coolest things that we’ve added very recently. And it seems like everyone in the mentorship has really enjoyed it and is gonna have a lot of direct carry over to obviously to the person that we’re using as the person in the hot seat, but also to everyone watching ’cause then they can learn from everything we’re saying and all the mistakes and the good things that that person did as well. Like Leo did some really amazing things with his website that I know many people in the mentorship were like, “oh shit, I need to make these changes.”

0:17:42.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. People were loving the hot seat with Leo and I think they’re really gonna like today’s hot seat as well.

0:17:48.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:17:49.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And you’re a 100% right in anything. Right? Always trying to be iterating and improving is just the right thing to do, grow or die baby. And so this has been a fun edition, I think that’s both new and beneficial in a different way. And like you said, it’s not just for the person whose content is being reviewed, it’s for everyone.

0:18:13.9 Jordan Syatt: Have you ever used any meal prep services?

0:18:16.3 Mike Vacanti: Is this a question?

0:18:16.6 Jordan Syatt: Well, someone is asking me. I was planning on doing a meal prep comparison, a meal prep service months ago. And we ordered from one company and it was the most recommended company. It was the most recommended. And I was like, “Okay, great. We’ll do these and then I’ll get some more, get some more, and I’ll make content out of it.” Like which is the best one? This was by far the most recommended, not like hundreds and thousands of people recommending it, “It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing.”

0:18:50.1 Mike Vacanti: It was terrible?

0:18:51.4 Jordan Syatt: I’m not gonna say it was terrible, but it definitely wasn’t amazing in any sense of the word.

0:18:56.4 Mike Vacanti: How many companies did you do?

0:18:58.4 Jordan Syatt: We only got one company. We just got this one company.

0:19:00.6 Mike Vacanti: Oh.

0:19:00.7 Jordan Syatt: And we ordered a bunch of meals from this one company at first.

0:19:05.0 Mike Vacanti: I thought you were comparing them.

0:19:05.1 Jordan Syatt: Well, I was… Well, that’s the thing, I was going to, but then I didn’t even want to finish the fucking meals. I was just like I don’t wanna waste my meals.

0:19:12.2 Mike Vacanti: Well, maybe the other companies… [laughter]

0:19:14.3 Jordan Syatt: Well, that’s the thing. Like I wanna order from them, but then I’m like if this was the best one, and everyone was like, “I’ve tried all of them, but this is the best.”

0:19:23.9 Mike Vacanti: What were the macros like?

0:19:26.4 Jordan Syatt: They were good. They were good, but like the servings were not as big as I would’ve liked them to be, even though they were decent. They were high protein.

0:19:34.4 Mike Vacanti: Do you remember numbers?

0:19:34.5 Jordan Syatt: I have some here if you want me to go get one, but.

0:19:36.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Go get one. Go get one.

0:19:38.1 Jordan Syatt: You want me to go get one? All right. I’ll be right back.

0:19:40.8 Mike Vacanti: Or two. Grab a… Give us some variety.

0:19:43.9 Jordan Syatt: Okay. All right. We’re gonna leave this nameless. All right. We’re gonna leave it nameless. So we’ve got… The first meal is roasted garlic chicken. So this should be a relatively low calorie, like if it’s roasted garlic chicken, it’s not like the creamy Parmesan, fucking…

0:20:03.2 Mike Vacanti: What all’s in it?

0:20:04.0 Jordan Syatt: What do you mean, what all’s in it?

0:20:06.1 Mike Vacanti: Is it just chicken? Is there a rice? Is there a vegetable? Like what foods are in it?

0:20:08.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s green beans, sour cream, onion, mashed potato.

0:20:12.5 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Can I guess?

0:20:14.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, please, guess.

0:20:15.4 Mike Vacanti: 32 protein, nah, 28 Protein, 32 carb, 25 fat.

0:20:29.4 Jordan Syatt: You said 28 protein?

0:20:30.5 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.

0:20:30.8 Jordan Syatt: And what did you say carbon fat?

0:20:30.8 Mike Vacanti: 32 carb. And they probably are smarter and made the mashed potatoes a little leaner. Let’s say 20 fat.

0:20:38.6 Jordan Syatt: Okay. So 420 calories. 17 fat. 26 carb. And 40 protein.

0:20:46.9 Mike Vacanti: Oh, okay. Yeah. So that’s not gonna…

0:20:50.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s pretty…

0:20:51.9 Mike Vacanti: Those are solid macros for a…

0:20:52.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s solid macros. It’s pretty good. Portion size was okay. It’s not like great… My thing… It’s just I would’ve liked… Like their servings of vegetables are tiny. Like they’re serving of vegetables is like half of my palm. It’s really small.

0:21:10.6 Mike Vacanti: They’re trying to make money.

0:21:11.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So there’s that. And then here’s the other one is shredded chicken taco bowl with roasted corn salsa and cilantro lime sour cream. You wanna guess again?

0:21:26.1 Mike Vacanti: So is there tortilla in there? Is there rice in there?

0:21:26.7 Jordan Syatt: Roasted corn, salsa and cilantro lime sour cream. I don’t think there’s rice. No.

0:21:34.3 Mike Vacanti: So it’s chicken, corn and condiments?

0:21:37.4 Jordan Syatt: I think so, yeah.

0:21:38.2 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Apparently, they’re going higher protein with these, so I’ll go 36 protein, 20 carb, 18 fat.

0:21:52.6 Jordan Syatt: All right. 19 fat. Super good. 41 carb and 46 protein.

0:22:00.7 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:22:01.3 Jordan Syatt: So like 530 calories. Like their meals are high protein, respect, like they do a very good job with the protein.

0:22:08.6 Mike Vacanti: What’s the price per meal on these?

0:22:11.2 Jordan Syatt: Bro, I have no clue. I have no clue. But I mean, you’re buying in bulk and it’s good. It’s better than going out to eat, that is for sure. The issue that I had… Here’s what I’ll say. I’ll say the positive first. Obviously, the macros are pretty freaking good, especially from a protein perspective. And if I was either single and if I was either single or in a relationship in which my wife didn’t cook amazing meals, these would be wonderful.

0:22:48.1 Mike Vacanti: It’s a humble brag right there.

0:22:50.7 Jordan Syatt: It’s just true. It’s just the truth. [laughter] If I was single or in that type of relationship. And if I really cared about being like super strict with my nutrition, these would make things so easy, ’cause I know exactly how much, and it would just be much easier. But I’m not single. My wife cooks amazing meals, and I really don’t care about being super meticulous with my calories. And the downside is, they just don’t taste anywhere close to as good as a home cooked meal. Like nowhere close. It’s really disappointing when you compare a home cooked meal to that. So it’s the upside and the downside. So I was wondering if you’d had any and what your thoughts were.

0:23:38.5 Mike Vacanti: Back in my younger days, my single days in New York, I ordered meal delivery service from a place called like Big Muscle Meal Prep or something. It was some obnoxious Jersey based company that was for bodybuilders. And I thought they were really good. They averaged out to like $13 per meal in 2017.

0:24:10.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, wow.

0:24:11.6 Mike Vacanti: Which is on the high end, for sure.

0:24:14.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That’s on the high end. Yeah.

0:24:17.9 Mike Vacanti: Really tasty food. Good portions. I would say like 80% as tasty as a home cooked meal. Outside of that, I don’t have experience with them. I think they make sense for people who are extremely limited on time. And money isn’t a factor or an issue. They want to eat slightly healthier than eating out, or maybe more variety than eating out. When you get outside of big cities, it’s hard to find a wide variety of healthy foods when eating out. Right. If you’re in a big city, you can go get Dig or these restaurants that do all vegetables cooked. Like you can get basically a home meal from a restaurant.

0:25:03.8 Jordan Syatt: Grilled chicken.

0:25:03.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Well, the proteins you can get pretty much anywhere, right? You can go to like Chick-fil-A and get grilled chicken, but you can’t get a sweet potato that’s ready to go. You can’t get Asparagus ready to go at the lunch hour at very many places. So getting slightly higher food quality when you’re very limited on time. You don’t wanna spend 45 minutes cooking, or you don’t wanna spend three to four hours on a Sunday meal prepping. I can see this making sense for that population, but I’m with you on taste in my limited experience. And from talking to people can’t compare to either a restaurant or a home cooked meal.

0:25:39.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did decide we’re gonna… ‘Cause we still have some leftover, obviously, we ordered a lot from this first company thinking that they were just gonna be great based on how many people recommended it. And again, they’re not bad, but I was just… My expectations were too high. This was a real like over promise, under deliver situation. And so we’re gonna finish these, but once everything… God willing, everything goes okay with the next birth. We’re gonna try another company when my wife is postpartum, because I don’t want her cooking, even though she’ll be like “I can, I can,” let’s just… “How about you take like a couple of weeks and just rest?” So we’ll order more and see how those are from other companies. I wanna order from a company that isn’t well known in the fitness space, ’cause I feel like a lot of these fitness people, how do the fitness people do? They’ll be like oh, it tastes exactly like ice cream. And it’s like this. No, this is gross. That’s not fucking ice cream. That’s not what it… I wanna order from a company that is like a legit chef company and see how they do.

0:26:44.0 Mike Vacanti: My sister-in-law has done a decent amount of that from the legit chef type companies.

0:26:50.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

0:26:51.7 Mike Vacanti: And they’re like 18 protein, 46 fat, [laughter] 42 carb meals. And I’m like “I can’t even eat this. What is this?”

0:27:02.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:27:04.3 Mike Vacanti: And they’re delicious, delicious. [laughter] But it’s…

0:27:10.4 Jordan Syatt: Macro-wise, they’re not good.

0:27:13.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Not at all. Not at all. And the pricing is somewhat unreasonable too. And so, because protein’s the most expensive macronutrient, they’re shorting you on the protein, but they’re making ’em high calorie via carbs and fats, and a lot of it’s via oil and butter and inexpensive ways to beef up the calories. They can list that calorie number. It’s just, I’m not a fan.

0:27:34.2 Jordan Syatt: I need to try and find a middle ground, somewhere that’s like a legit chef place, but that’s also health and macro conscious.

0:27:40.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I wonder if there’s something to be said for a lot of the benefit in taste that comes from home cooked meals is the fact that it’s fresh and inherently in a meal delivery service, it’s not fresh.

0:27:56.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah, yeah. Of course. Of course. Yeah. I mean, everything that has to go into it… Everything to keep it from spoiling. Yeah. Absolutely. And then the way to make it taste better would be piling it with fucking cheese and [laughter] it’s been frozen for a while, but this is a lot of cheese on it, so it’ll taste really good. [laughter]

0:28:17.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Dude, how long have we been doing weekly episodes for?

0:28:23.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude, that’s a really good point. People who’ve been listening from the beginning. Or people who like…

0:28:28.7 Mike Vacanti: Do you remember us…

0:28:32.3 Jordan Syatt: People who started the podcast late, but they actually went back to the beginning and listened from the beginning. They would hear a lot of, we took a break, but we’re back. [laughter] We were missing a lot of pause. And then what happened? Were you like dude, we’ve gotta get serious. I think that must… I think you were like hey man, we can’t be missing pause anymore. We gotta get serious with this.

0:28:49.6 Mike Vacanti: I know what actually happened.

0:28:51.6 Jordan Syatt: Tell me, what happened? What’s the story? I forget.

0:28:58.2 Mike Vacanti: [laughter] All right. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it. I definitely haven’t talked… All right. I’m just gonna say it.

0:29:05.6 Jordan Syatt: Just say it. Say it.

0:29:08.4 Mike Vacanti: The pricing structure with David changed and I was like, [laughter] “we ain’t wasting money. We’re recording every single week.”

0:29:11.3 Jordan Syatt: David’s our producer and editor of the podcast. So he’s listening to us right now. [laughter]

0:29:15.4 Mike Vacanti: And he’s the best ever and he’s a beast and he does an incredible job. But when that happened, I was just like okay, ’cause I’m the J, I’m scheduling, Jordan’s going with the flow. I could be like “Hey Jordan, we gotta do one later this afternoon. Can you make it work?” And he’ll be like “ah, yeah, well, I’ll make it work.” I got serious about scheduling them out and not ever missing. And you don’t ever miss.

0:29:38.1 Jordan Syatt: We never miss. “I do really well all day with protein, etcetera, but 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM is a nightmare with cravings. Do you have any tips?”

0:29:50.6 Mike Vacanti: All right, here’s what I think is happening. I think this individual is over restricting during the day. I think they’re not eating enough calories during the day and leaving them hungry later on in the day. They may also be in this hyper clean eating mentality, like crush it with protein, etcetera. They’re doing really good during the day, meaning “I’m not eating any bad foods at all.” And then they want a sweet, they want something that they’re tempted for later on.

0:30:24.2 Mike Vacanti: Like protein is very satiating, but in the short term, right? If you only eat protein all the time, that doesn’t mean that you’re never going to get hungry. Your total calorie intake is gonna be more indicative of hunger than just your protein intake. So I would make sure you’re eating at least 50% of your daily calories before 4:00 o’clock, if not more, ’cause that’s what a lot of people do. They’ll have a very small breakfast or no breakfast, a very small lunch, and then eat a lot later on in the day. Eating more food earlier on in the day is gonna have a lot of benefits in terms of managing hunger, benefits for your energy levels, benefits if you’re someone who cares about building or maintaining lean body mass. Yeah.

0:31:12.8 Jordan Syatt: I like that. That’s a real possibility. I’m gonna offer another possibility. Cravings at night is a very real thing.

0:31:22.7 Mike Vacanti: I thought they were from 4:00 to 6:00 PM.

0:31:25.2 Jordan Syatt: I’m just, I’m saying in general, at nighttime, who knows, maybe this person goes to bed at 8:00. So 4:00 to 6:00 is like hour, like 9:00 to 10:00 or whatever. Anyway, cravings in the nighttime. Super common. I think that many people look at cravings as this like weird or abnormal thing that they shouldn’t be having. And so that creates this idea of like “oh my God, I can’t be having it.” But then you give into it every night too. And so it creates this whole big complex in your head where, “oh, my God, I can’t be having it. Why am I having this craving?” “Oh, I want that, but I can’t have it.” “Oh, my God, I want that, but I can’t have it.” There’s actually some really interesting research on willpower and how much energy is used.

0:32:08.4 Jordan Syatt: ‘Cause your brain actually uses energy. Your brain uses glucose in order to make decisions. And so they looked at the energy cost of someone who… They have people who are sitting next to a bowl of M&Ms. And either they said “I can’t have it.” Like I’m sorry, “I can’t have this” or “I can have it, but I’ll just have it later.” And the people who said like “I can’t have it, I can’t have it,” used more energy and used more willpower than the people who were like “I can have it, I’ll just have it later.” Which I thought was very interesting. And very much goes into my idea for binge eating around like listen, you’re allowed to have it, but just wait 20 minutes and see if you still want it then to get past that impulse period. And I think what you need to do is you need to establish a very bright line and say like so if you know 4:00 to 6:00 is this crazy craving time, then say you’re allowed to have it, but you have to wait until 6:30.

0:33:16.6 Jordan Syatt: Like if at 6:30 you still want it, go for it. But if you no longer want it, then great. And I bet probably at least 50% of the time, if not more, 6:30 is gonna come around and you’re gonna be like “yeah, the craving’s gone. I don’t really want it anymore.” If you make a habit out of giving into your craving, as soon as you have your craving, it’s a bad habit because then like you’re essentially teaching yourself that the craving owns you, you don’t own the craving. And so you should be able to say, “I’m having this craving and it’s very intense in this moment, but I’m not gonna give into it.” You should be able to say that. Now, there’s a difference between saying that and saying, “I’m not allowed to have this. I can never have this, this food is bad.” That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying the craving shouldn’t own you. And you should be able to say, “I understand I’m having this craving, but in this moment I’m gonna choose to wait until 6:30 or 7:00 PM” and then if you still decide you want it, great. But I think that will probably give you more control over your craving and teach you that you have more control than you might think you have.

0:34:18.5 Mike Vacanti: I like it.

0:34:20.3 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Here’s an interesting one. “Push up help. I want to max my military test.” So let’s talk about, let’s say like… We could start from all the way from someone can’t do a single push-up, all the way to, someone can already do a handful, but they wanna get as many as they can. Talk about programming for that, if you want, like what you would do for something like that.

0:34:44.2 Mike Vacanti: The military test is as many as you can do in two minutes, or just as many as you can do consecutively.

0:34:48.1 Jordan Syatt: It is, “the US Army includes a hand release push-up as possible within a two-minute timeline.” Yep. Two minutes.

0:34:56.3 Mike Vacanti: And do we want to establish a timeframe for this goal?

0:35:01.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. We’ll say 12 weeks.

0:35:03.7 Mike Vacanti: All right. You wanna lead us off?

0:35:07.3 Jordan Syatt: Sure. Okay. Here’s what I’ll say. Should we start off with let’s say someone can’t do any and they just wanna get there first or like what do you think the starting point should be?

0:35:17.8 Mike Vacanti: I think we should assume they can at least, ’cause that’s kind of a different question. Let’s assume they can do some if they have a military test 12 weeks out.

0:35:26.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Okay. I’m gonna assume at this point then you can at least do 10, we’ll call it. Well, you can at least do 10 and that’s unweighted. So that means like maybe weighted. You could do, I don’t know, with like 10 pounds on your back, you could probably do two or three. So I would, from a frequency perspective, I’m not gonna do grease the groove. All right. I’m not gonna do grease the groove.

0:36:00.4 Mike Vacanti: Meaning multiple times per day?

0:36:00.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s not something I’m gonna do every day. This is gonna be something where I’m really trying to maximize performance. And I think grease the groove is really good for someone who’s trying to be overall fit and in shape and get generally stronger, but not for when you’re trying to maximize and optimize performance in a given task. I think that in order to maximize and optimize performance, you have to have periods of very high, high intensity, followed by periods of significant rest so that you can stress the muscular system, the nervous system, recover, and then adapt to get better. And I found better results from maximal… From an optimization perspective, at least from an athletic performance when we’re talking about a couple of sessions each week done with very high intensity rather than many sessions done throughout the week with a relatively low intensity.

0:36:51.8 Jordan Syatt: From this optimization perspective, if we were talking about someone who can’t do any push-up, I think grease the groove would actually be really good, but for like this optimization, we’re going the other way. So I would say probably two sessions per week, maybe three. But each session starting off with a couple sets of speed work, right? Just like a couple sets of just explosive speed push-ups, probably like two to three sets of… Two to three reps of just like speed push-ups. When people hear speed push-up, oftentimes they’ll think a clap. I actually don’t like clap push-ups for the vast majority of people, because what they’ll do is it’ll go really fast for the first half and then they’ll come off the ground and bring their hands in really quick and they don’t actually complete the rep.

0:37:47.2 Jordan Syatt: So rather than a clap push-up, I just like doing an explosive push-up where you try and push yourself as far off the ground as you can while keeping your arms fully extended. So think about like jumping as high as you can in the air while keeping your legs fully extended, but this time you’re doing it with your arms. You push as hard and as far away as you can, but your elbows have to fully extend. So just a couple sets with a couple reps of that. Just from an explosive perspective. I wanna get you improving some explosive strength plyometrics, improving your stretch reflex, ’cause when you can get better and better and better at sort of like bouncing through it, it’s actually gonna help throughout your push-ups, especially for that type of a push-up exam. This is a… You’re trying… Essentially keeping constant tension on it.

0:38:28.1 Jordan Syatt: So you wanna get better at being able to rebound and use some plyometric ability there. Then you go into your heavy strength work. So you don’t necessarily have to keep this set and rep scheme throughout, but the like a three to five sets of five heavy. So like a… We’ll call it like a five-by-five type thing. Starting off very, very heavy. So if you could put 10 pounds on your back and do five reps, three to five sets of that, it should be like the first main move of the day. Heavy overload, slow and controlled. Good technique, good movement and really getting stronger. And your goal throughout the course of these 12 weeks should be able to increase the weight while maintaining those number of reps. So starting off with 10 pounds in your back, then 15, then 25, whatever it is.

0:39:19.0 Jordan Syatt: If you can get up to like 35, 40 pounds in your back and do five reps, when you strip that weight off and it’s your current body weight, you’re gonna feel so freaking light, right. This is why like getting more strong maximally can also both directly and indirectly improve your endurance. So getting maximally stronger with, if you can do push-ups with 45 pounds in your back, well now all of a sudden you take that 45 pounds off, you’re just going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Your body weight feels like nothing. So that’s like the number one. Then from there, I’m going into accessory work and it’s gonna be a little bit more endurance-based work at this point. So after your max effort work, now I’m not really focused on more heavy strength stuff. Now I’m more focused on let’s just get your muscles and your body accustomed to the lactic acid buildup, that accumulation, get your body accustomed to higher repetition.

0:40:15.3 Jordan Syatt: So really it’ll be some strengthening… Some explosive work followed by maximal effort strength. And then I’m going into probably like all right, how many can I do in 30 seconds? How many can I do in 45 seconds? How many can I do in 60 seconds? And working my way up to a minute. And work my way up to two minutes, excuse me. So over the course of those 12 weeks, I’ll probably have a couple of testing days where I’m doing the full two minutes, but most of those endurance sessions are probably over the course of a minute, max, maybe a minute and 15 seconds. I will say, especially from a military test perspective, you do wanna come up with a strategy and a cadence. So it’s important, like if you know, okay, so I should be hitting this number of push-ups, every 10 seconds can be helpful for you. So if you can work out that cadence from a tactical perspective can be really helpful for maintaining your endurance throughout. But just from a strength… From a physical perspective, plyometrics first, max strength second, endurance third, in the workout, you do that two times a week and you’re good.

0:41:13.9 Mike Vacanti: The same workout twice per week. Is it changing over the 12 weeks? Other than the obvious, which is you’re adding weight to your back on the maximal strength work, you’re adding reps on the timed endurance work later on. Are you doing… Because of specificity, are you keeping them all flat? Are you inclining the feet at all? And I guess part two, what are you doing with the rest of strength training?

0:41:40.2 Jordan Syatt: So because I am… Because this person can already do it, I would do some variations that are more difficult. Like for example, I would do some deficit push-ups for example, I wouldn’t do handstand push-ups though, for example. Like even though they’re more difficult, it’s not the same muscles, Like handstand push-ups are far more shoulder tricep. You’re not using your chest, so you wanna do very similar movements. So deficit push-ups would be great.

0:42:06.2 Mike Vacanti: There’s less carryover.

0:42:07.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Deficit push-ups have huge carryover because you have a greater range of motion. And so it’s actually gonna make it much easier when you go just to a regular floor push-up. But in terms of programming, it’s probably gonna stay about the same for the duration, just slight changes in time and duration for the accessory work, for like the endurance work, whether we’re gonna do everything we can in 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 60 seconds. I’m not doing two minutes very often, like I said, but really like that’s staying the same for 12 weeks, basically.

0:42:43.2 Mike Vacanti: Cool.

0:42:43.9 Jordan Syatt: I don’t need too much variation in terms of sets and reps or anything. I would say if there’s a variation, it’s probably gonna be in terms of the exercise that we’re actually doing, whether it’s deficit push-up or like a pause push-up or something like that.

0:42:58.5 Mike Vacanti: And then for the rest of their body parts/movement patterns, are you just dropping to a maintenance volume for the 12 weeks?

0:43:05.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s funny, I would probably do something really similar for your upper body pull, right. So I wouldn’t really be doing shoulders, like you don’t really need to be doing lateral raises and extra triceps, and you don’t need doing that, but you could literally do the exact same thing in reverse for your back. So for example, like you could do explosive either chin-ups, because I know chin-ups are part of the military tests as well. Or you could do explosive inverted rows. Like a few sets of a couple of reps for explosive inverted rows. And then you go to heavy weighted inverted rows for like five by five, and then you go to endurance based inverted rows and for 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute. Now you’re doing front and back, the exact same thing, getting stronger. And you’re not just working the muscles for your push-up, but you’re working the exact opposite the opposing muscles for a little bit more balance as well. Like that’s how I would probably approach the upper body training. And lower body training, you can do whatever you want.

0:44:00.1 Mike Vacanti: Within reason, like when you’re doing that…

0:44:02.7 Jordan Syatt: Within… Yeah, of course.

0:44:03.7 Mike Vacanti: You’re not then gonna do whatever 30…

0:44:06.6 Jordan Syatt: German Volume Training squats.

0:44:11.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, exactly.

0:44:11.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s not what I’m saying. Just like intelligent training.

0:44:12.3 Mike Vacanti: I like it. I don’t even know how much I have to add to that. I mean, obviously you’re gonna be starting workouts with what you care about the most. So you’re starting workouts with your push-ups here. It depends how many days a week you want to be training overall, how I would design the split, right? So you’re two days where you’re doing push-ups, you’re gonna want at least two rest days in between. You’re not gonna do your push-up days Monday and Tuesday, and then have five days where you’re not doing any push-ups. And then the next week you’re doing Monday, Tuesday again, you’re gonna want Monday, Thursday or Monday, Friday, Tuesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Saturday. And then depending on if you wanna be training three days versus four days a week, you can split up the rest of your volume for the rest of your body over the course of that other workout or those other workouts or after all of your push-ups on day one and day two.

0:45:07.5 Jordan Syatt: I like that.

0:45:09.1 Mike Vacanti: We should send this to whoever asked that and get an update on push-up numbers.

0:45:15.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, just remind me when this goes live and I’ll send it to ’em.

0:45:18.2 Mike Vacanti: All right. We got…

0:45:18.3 Jordan Syatt: Is that it? Is that what we’ve got for today?

0:45:18.4 Mike Vacanti: We got a mentorship Q&A in a few minutes here, so we’re gonna wrap. Great episode. Thank you very much for listening. You got anything for the people, Jordan?

0:45:30.7 Jordan Syatt: Listen. Thank you so much for listening. Please leave a five-star review. Should have said that at the beginning. Huge thank you to everyone who has already left a written five-star review. It means the world to us. It really, it helps the podcast get discovered by new people. It really does help a lot. The reviews are like the life’s blood of the podcast. So huge thank you to everyone who’s done that. If you haven’t done it, please go do it, whenever you have a moment, like right now would be great. Have a wonderful, wonderful week. We’ll talk to you soon.