Episode 200: How to Help a Client Who Can’t Get Started, Building an Online Biz Without Social Media, & The Biggest Unlock of The 21st Century…

0:00:12.3 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:13.2 Jordan Syatt: Michael, it is the second week of the sale for The Online Fitness Business Mentorship. If you want to join an online fitness community to help you build your online fitness business, to help you reach and help more people all over the world, to help you become a better coach, to help you learn how to communicate with your clients better, to help you develop organized systems so you can build an online fitness business that improves your life, your family’s life, your community’s life, and allows you to work from wherever you’d like, now is the time to do it because this is the least expensive it will ever be. You have $500 off the joining fee right now. It will never be this cost ever again. It will only go up from here. That’s it. So if you wanna join, link in the show notes.

0:00:53.6 Mike Vacanti: Fitnessbusinessmentorship.com, apply on the homepage. This sale will not last long. That’s all, that’s all we’re gonna say for that. We’re diving straight into Q&A?

0:01:05.9 Jordan Syatt: Coming off a banger the last week. Let’s dive…

0:01:07.7 Mike Vacanti: Big time episode.

0:01:10.7 Jordan Syatt: Big time episode.

0:01:11.2 Mike Vacanti: Last week, I don’t know if you listened, but we talked a lot about how to become a personal trainer. It was…

[laughter]

0:01:18.5 Jordan Syatt: It was just all business. All business.

0:01:18.8 Mike Vacanti: It was all… There was some coaching in there too. We talked about a lot of, you know?

0:01:24.2 Jordan Syatt: None of that. None of that. It was all politics. But this week, probably no politics, probably.

0:01:30.8 Mike Vacanti: Never say never.

[laughter]

0:01:35.7 Mike Vacanti: Let’s fire up that Q&A box.

0:01:37.4 Jordan Syatt: All right. Let’s look it up.

0:01:38.1 Mike Vacanti: We’re diving straight in.

0:01:39.8 Jordan Syatt: All right. This is from Jackie. Jackie is awesome. She’s a long time supporter. She said, how do you guys talk to/help clients who aren’t doing anything? I have a client that we’ve had many conversations about their workouts, why it’s important to them, simplified their workout program and nutrition, follow up on conversations, and they still aren’t going to the gym. I wanna help them get over this hump because their health is very important to them. They admit to me that they know it’s important, but for some reason they can’t follow through. How do you help a client like this?

0:02:16.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s very difficult. I think step one, and it sounds like Jackie’s already doing a good job of this, but I know many other coaches who could use this advice, is, you need to reduce the bar for success. It’s so discouraging not being able to execute on a plan and when that plan is too difficult, when a plan isn’t meeting a client with where they are currently at in their life with their schedule, with their level of self-efficacy, like trying to have someone do a four-day a week, 45 to 60 minute lifting program in a calorie deficit, hitting a certain number of steps, some people aren’t ready for that. And so reducing the bar to, you know, it might be like a low daily step count, it could be a pretty wide calorie range, like a small deficit, a 500-calorie range. Let’s say we assume someone’s maintenance is 2,800 calories. Maybe we have them anywhere between 2,100 and 2,600 calories daily. Reducing the amount of effort and total work so that they can start to feel good about the fact that they are adherent to the plan. And once you start building momentum, weeks turn into months and you can begin adding more difficult components to the program, whether that be increase the number of steps they’re taking, whether that be start strength training 30 minutes twice a week. But, yeah, that’s a good step one for a lot of clients.

0:03:52.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Completely agree. One thing I’ll say here, one thing I’ve had a lot of success with is giving them a challenge. And for some reason there’s something about a challenge that people just naturally gravitate towards. And we even see this with people who, they’re like, hey, you know what? I want to stop drinking alcohol or reduce my alcohol. And instead of taking a slow and steady approach, they’ll be like, I’m gonna do a 30-day challenge. And I’ve seen actually a huge number of people who do like a, I’m not gonna drink alcohol for 30 days, and then they literally never drink alcohol again. I’ve seen that happen a lot where it just starts off with a challenge, let me just see, and then all of a sudden after 30 days, they’re like, I feel way better. I don’t need it anymore. Now, obviously that’s not 100% of people, but if it doesn’t lead to that like cold turkey change of just nothing, often it will lead to just some level of improved habits.

0:04:50.3 Jordan Syatt: So what I do, especially with a client who’s really struggling, a 30-day challenge can seem like a lot, like a 30-day is… Here’s a sobering fact, most people never stick to a program for 30 days. 30 days is a lot for some people. Especially I’d say 30 days is a lot for anybody if it’s doing something that you don’t like. Right? Like, so not everyone is gonna like fitness. So often I would start with a 24-hour challenge. If I have someone who is like, literally never hitting their calories or for example, I’ve been like, hey, can you do me a favor and send me pictures of what you eat for three days or seven days? And they don’t send me anything, even for a whole day. I’m just like, hey, let’s do a 24-hour challenge, and nothing else changes.

0:05:36.9 Jordan Syatt: I’m like, for 24 hours, send me a picture of everything you eat. That’s it. And now all of a sudden, because there’s an end date and there’s a timeline, they can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it’s very brief, they do it. And all of a sudden now I have more information than I got over the last six fucking months. And so, or I could do like, all right, we’re gonna do a 72-hour steps challenge, for the next three days you get 5,000 steps a day, that’s it, just for three days. And then all of a sudden they start being like, okay, you know what? It’s only three days. And instead of sitting here on the couch for the next two hours, I’m gonna just get up. I’m gonna get some steps in, ’cause it’s only three days.

0:06:11.9 Jordan Syatt: And now all of a sudden they say, oh, that’s all I have to do? I just have to get the fuck up and move a little bit for the, like, now they can start implementing that into their day-to-day life. The key here is, is not overwhelming them with, all right, it’s not gonna be a 30-day challenge. And it’s also not going to be a, let’s count your calories and your protein and your carbs and your fats and get your strength workouts in and get your cardio in and get your sleep and get your… It’s not everything, it’s just one or two things at most for a brief period of time. The lowest hanging fruit that has the biggest impact on them, so they can start implementing those habits in their day-to-day life. These challenges I’ve found have been wonderful for the people who really, really, really struggle just to do anything. I would give that a shot.

0:06:57.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. That’s a great point. Challenges create excitement, which can really work.

0:07:03.1 Jordan Syatt: Which, for whatever it’s worth, that’s why we have challenges in the mentorship. That’s literally how we structure our monthly programming. In which every month we have a new challenge. And in the same way in every month you send your clients a new workout program, give or take every month, every month you have a new challenge. Sometimes it’s a social media challenge. Sometimes it’s a long form or short form challenge. Sometimes it’s an email list challenge. Sometimes it’s a, creating videos for your client exercise database challenge. There are many different challenges we have, but that’s one of the main reasons we do it. Because a lot of coaches, they know what to do, but they’re just not spending the time or they don’t have the accountability to do what they need to do to actually build their online business in an effective way. So, if you wanna have that accountability, and if you wanna have our challenges for you to help your business, link is in the show notes. And it’s a sale week. It’s a sale, not gonna happen again for a long time. And this will be the least expensive it ever is. So, if you want us to give you challenges, sign up right now.

0:08:04.0 Jordan Syatt: Okay, @shazz.pt said, I want to start online personal training, but I hate social media and haters. How do I navigate this?

0:08:14.8 Mike Vacanti: It’s very difficult to build an online brand and generate attention completely avoiding social media in this day and age. That’s the reality. It’s easy for people to connect with an individual much easier than it is for them to connect with a brand. And so I would view your hatred of social media and not wanting haters as a cost of having an online fitness business. Similar to the cost of working at a corporation is you gotta commute 45 minutes each way in rush hour traffic. You gotta fake laugh at your boss’s jokes. You gotta participate in pizza Wednesdays, you gotta…

[laughter]

0:09:03.9 Mike Vacanti: You know, you gotta do all this stuff that stinks. That just stinks. Well, for some of us, one of the things that is unenjoyable about having an online fitness business is being on the internet and making content on the internet. What I will say is you may end up finding a niche or a platform or a segment of content creation that you do enjoy. Maybe it’s not making reels. Maybe a year or two down the road you have a few thousand people on your email list. You realize I have a real knack for writing emails. And you enjoy writing emails, which isn’t public facing. You’re not getting immediate feedback. There’s way less of the, quote unquote, hater stuff or the pushback. There’s also an argument to be made that, like what you fear the most or what scares you the most you should move towards. And that there’s opportunities to grow in that. And so maybe you don’t like the idea of having haters, well, maybe moving towards that is gonna make you more resilient.

0:10:17.3 Mike Vacanti: Maybe it’s gonna make you stronger. Maybe it’s gonna make you more articulate. Maybe it’s gonna make you better able to have dialogue with these individuals. Maybe it’s gonna open your eyes to the fact that maybe they weren’t haters. Maybe you guys just had a misunderstanding. Or maybe you realize, yeah, there are some haters out there and I’m gonna use that as fuel to push me to the next level. Bottom line, those are things that, you know, you could say, all right, focus on blog, focus on email list, focus on non-traditional social media platforms. In this day and age, it’s so hard to grow in that way that it isn’t something that we would recommend, I don’t think almost in any circumstance.

0:10:58.3 Jordan Syatt: Not solely, definitely not solely. Yeah.

0:11:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Of course not solely. And I would understand that your time on social media could be temporary, right? Something that isn’t discussed enough in this space is client retention is a way easier way to maintain business than consistent new client acquisition. So when you have these coaches not serving their clients while taking a week to reply to an email, like doing cookie cutter programs, like doing all this BS stuff because they’re spending their time hyper-focused on getting as many followers as they can, making addictive reels, like making the best content possible, but they’re not serving their clients, their clients are canceling every 2, 3, 4 months. They don’t have people staying on for years at a time.

0:11:45.0 Mike Vacanti: And so then they’re trapped in the cycle of needing to make content for new clients. If you put in the two to three to four year pain period, and maybe it’s longer, but potentially that pain period of doing something you don’t wanna do to grow your base, to have a full roster or a near full roster of online fitness clients, then you can be in a position where you can peel back on spending time on social media. Maybe not to zero, maybe to zero. And maybe your focus becomes email list for example. But maybe you can also just reduce the amount of time you spend on social media at that point in time. But bottom line, doing things you don’t wanna do is a cost of doing business, there are gonna be costs in any line of business. And as someone who doesn’t like social media also, I wouldn’t trade anything for what I did or for what the downsides associated with building an online fitness business were.

0:12:39.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, I don’t even know if I have anything to add on that. You just, you lambasted that one. I don’t even know if that’s the right word.

0:12:46.8 Mike Vacanti: Good word.

0:12:47.0 Jordan Syatt: You just… You went…

0:12:49.5 Mike Vacanti: Sounded good.

0:12:50.9 Jordan Syatt: Sounded good. Yeah, I think there’s nothing I can say that you didn’t already say. It’s the cost of doing business. That’s it. It’s the cost of doing business. Like, I don’t like it either.

0:13:02.7 Mike Vacanti: You’ve grown to not like it more recently.

0:13:05.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, listen, I’ve never liked haters. I’ve never been like, yeah, fucking… Like there are some people who really, like, enjoy it ’cause I think they just like to troll. As soon as they get a hater, they’re like, ha ha ha, I got someone mad. Like, I don’t enjoy that.

0:13:21.6 Mike Vacanti: You gotta be very disagreeable.

0:13:22.3 Jordan Syatt: Well, you have to be very disagreeable. And I think if you get someone mad, you goal is to get people mad. My goal isn’t to get people mad. My goal is to tell the truth and help people. And then when people get mad, then I get pissed because it’s like, I’m just trying to tell the truth and help people. And now you’re fucking mad. Like, get a grip motherfucker. Like, it’s annoying, it’s obnoxious. I would rather not deal with it, but I also know I’m helping a lot of people. So it’s worth it at this point. And so you really have to, and you have to ask, okay, if I’m not doing it, if I’m not helping people and if I’m not dealing with the haters, then someone else is, and someone else might not be doing as good of a job as I could, they might be telling stuff that’s not true.

0:14:03.2 Jordan Syatt: They might be selling things that are not actually good. You wanna know something crazy? I sent Mike a screenshot of a conversation that I had with someone who is a very well respected coach in this indu… This is one of the most disappointing things that’s happened to me in a very long time. I’m not gonna give away much information ’cause I don’t even want, if this person listens, I don’t want them to know that I’m talking about them. There’s a coach in the industry who’s one of the most well-respected coaches in this industry, who’s had to this point an incredible moral compass. And this person sends me a message saying that they are now promoting a supplement that they don’t even like because they said, obviously it’s not like going to be, like, it’s not gonna do anything, but also I need to make money. Literally said that to me in a text message today, this morning.

0:15:09.0 Jordan Syatt: And I think that was something I just needed to cathartically get off my chest ’cause it doesn’t even relate that much to what we’re talking about other than people, there will be coaches out there who are doing things not for the truth, but to make money. And there’s nothing wrong with making money, but when you’re making money on the back of not telling the truth or on the back of literally lying, that’s a big problem. And so you have to ask yourself, would you rather, and there’s no right or wrong answer to this, it’s only what’s right for you, would you rather build whatever business you can build offline and not deal with the online haters, and also not help however many people you could help online? Or would you rather build a business that helps people all over the world and also deal with the haters knowing that you’re combating a lot of the negative stuff online? That’s essentially the question you need to ask yourself.

0:15:57.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. 100%.

0:16:02.2 Jordan Syatt: What does proprietary blend mean in supplements?

0:16:04.4 Mike Vacanti: Proprietary blend, my understanding is that it’s a list of ingredients that is either not published or is published, but the quantities of how much of each of those ingredients is not published, that supplement companies used to do a lot more of, but now I would say for the last 10 years have started to be more transparent as companies, supplement companies popped up that were more transparent and then that kind of forced the hand of other supplement companies to match them. But yeah, it’s good marketing for the supplement company, but it hurts the consumer because they can have a list that says there’s six grams of this proprietary blend and then it might list 10 ingredients, but you don’t know if you’re getting clinically effective doses of each of the ingredients because you’re not seeing how much of each of those individual ingredients is in the supplement.

0:17:14.4 Jordan Syatt: Yep. It’s a big problem. It’s a very big problem ’cause they can just… Oftentimes, and I would say most times, actually, you know who did a great post on this recently? I actually don’t know his first name. Let me check. His Instagram account is @trainbloom. I really like this guy a lot. I’m a big, big fan of @trainbloom. Tony, Tony from @trainbloom did a whole video explaining this and there’s a research study that came out that showed that a huge percentage of supplements that have the proprietary blend on it don’t even have the ingredients they claim to have in it. A huge percentage don’t even have the ingredients they claim. And then the majority of supplements don’t have the actual clinically effective dose per serving. So that’s why a proprietary blend is like, as soon as it says that, I just don’t buy it, it’s just not worth it. And that’s one of the reasons I respect Legion so much is they tell you exactly what and how much is in their supplements. And some people are like, but it’s more expensive. I’m like, yeah, that’s what you’re paying for. You’re paying for knowing exactly what you’re getting and they’re also using higher quality supplements and they’re actually using the clinically effective doses. So, you’re gonna pay more because these other companies will charge you less, but you’re not gonna get the effective doses. So what the fuck do you want?

0:18:36.1 Mike Vacanti: That’s exactly right. Yeah, they… Mike was the first person I know of in the industry to start being more transparent with ingredient lists, quantity per serving, all that information, which then led to others popping up in the coming years needing to compete with that. There’s also, do you remember in like 2014 that article where someone independently tested a whole bunch of different protein powders?

0:19:01.3 Jordan Syatt: Mm-hmm.

0:19:02.6 Mike Vacanti: And then a couple of the big ones were like, you know, it said there were 25 or 30 grams of protein per serving and there were nine, and they found sawdust in these products, just complete filler garbage. Which is another reason why knowing the character of the CEO of a supplement company is, has been, at least for me, a factor in where I choose to source my supplements. And that’s not true of Optimum Nutrition because I don’t know who runs that business, which has been my number two option behind Legion over the last decade, but I do remember them scoring really well on these third party tests.

0:19:55.8 Jordan Syatt: You see the video of me doing the… I’m actually really pumped. I can do a pistol squat again for the first time in a while.

0:20:02.7 Mike Vacanti: Nice.

0:20:02.9 Jordan Syatt: You see this? Check this out.

0:20:06.9 Mike Vacanti: I did see that because I watched your story last night because I was watching stories. Yeah, you look great.

0:20:07.0 Jordan Syatt: Dude, look at that ankle mobility. Are you kidding me? I’ve been working hard on my, I didn’t realize I lost a bunch of ankle mobility because I didn’t work on it, and I just took my ankle mobility for granted when I was younger and then I had done a bunch of training and dah, dah, dah, with all the jiujitsu. I just hadn’t directly worked on ankle mobility. And my ankle mobility was fine, but to be able to do a pistol squat that’s like, I would call it like elite high level ankle mobility, and I’d lost that. And so I was literally getting jammed up in my ankle in the last few inches of the pistol squat for several months.

0:20:44.8 Mike Vacanti: On both legs? On both legs?

0:20:44.9 Jordan Syatt: On both legs. Yeah, on both legs. Hip mobility is fine. Lumbar mobility fine. T-spine mobility is fine, but my ankle was jamming me up.

0:20:54.3 Mike Vacanti: Do you think it was just a lack of focus on it for many years, or did you ever have injuries to your ankles?

0:21:00.7 Jordan Syatt: I did have injuries to my ankles, but those didn’t do it because I was still able to do the pistol squat post those injuries. Those injuries were when I was like 16, 17, 18 in wrestling. I broke both my ankles.

0:21:09.8 Mike Vacanti: Really?

0:21:10.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it was really bad. It was bad. I broke one ankle and…

0:21:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Is that when you… Was that at wrestling or was that when you fought those guys outside of Dunkin’ Donuts?

0:21:21.7 Jordan Syatt: No, I didn’t get injured during that fight. I got injured at wrestling.

0:21:21.8 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:21:22.1 Jordan Syatt: And it was at KFC.

[laughter]

0:21:26.4 Jordan Syatt: But, I injured my ankle wrestling and then I had to take like two months off while I did PT. And on my last day of PT, I decided to go into wrestling practice, broke my other ankle.

0:21:41.2 Mike Vacanti: Ugh.

0:21:42.2 Jordan Syatt: It was awful.

0:21:47.5 Mike Vacanti: What a bad beat.

0:21:50.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it was really, really bad. But either way I was still able to do pistol squats for years after that. I think it was just like, again, I still did ankle mobility work, but it wasn’t pushing it to the end ranges extremes, really trying to get that high level ankle mobility. And as soon as I realized, I was like, oh my God, I can’t do a pistol squat anymore? I was like, I gotta be able to do this. So I’ve been dedicating a fair amount of time to my ankle mobility, and then I was like, you know what, let me try it yesterday. I showed my wife, I was in the garage. I was doing the foot elevated pistol because it gives your leg a little bit more room. You get a little bit extra mobility, you’re like, not… You essentially, if your legs are elevated and you don’t have to worry about elevating your straight leg off the ground, you have just more room to do this pistol squat without as much mobility, and she was like, I think you could do it on the ground. And I was like, I don’t know. She’s like, give it a shot. And I did it and I was like, oh shit, I can do it again. Which I was stoked about.

0:22:42.2 Mike Vacanti: Attaboy. Oh, just a quick anti PSA, Chipotle’s been absolutely brutal lately. I think I’m unfortunately gonna have to go on strike for like six months and hope that they improve the quality of their ingredients.

0:22:50.8 Jordan Syatt: I’m so glad you’re finally on my team with being anti Chipotle.

0:22:53.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m not anti, but I think…

0:22:56.3 Jordan Syatt: You just said you’re anti… [laughter]

0:23:00.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s franchise by franchise. I’m just taking a little break. It’s franchise by franchise I believe because the quality of the ingredients seems to differ wildly from location to location. But the one or two locations close to me have been quite brutal a little bit in service, but mostly just in terms of the quality of the food, the freshness of the meat, the flavor in the meat. And so, yeah, unfortunately I used to really like Chipotle, I have it less now that I’m a suburban guy, but now I’m gonna have it almost zero for the next three to six months.

0:23:35.9 Jordan Syatt: Would you have Chick-fil-A instead?

0:23:38.7 Mike Vacanti: I have this… So we bought a, half a cow, my family went in on, and so I’m actually just, I’ve got this nice like ground beef and sweet potato or ground beef and white rice. Got a few different meals that I’m just gonna make instead of eating out.

0:23:50.3 Jordan Syatt: Do you notice a difference in the taste?

0:23:53.3 Mike Vacanti: It’s the best ground beef I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.

0:23:55.1 Jordan Syatt: Really?

0:23:55.9 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.

0:23:57.5 Jordan Syatt: What is the… Is it like 80:20…

0:23:58.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s gotta be pretty fatty. I don’t even know.

0:24:01.3 Jordan Syatt: So how do you account for that? You just assume it’s 80:20?

0:24:04.3 Mike Vacanti: Err on the side of pretty fatty beef.

0:24:06.9 Jordan Syatt: And it just tastes like… Do you think there’s any part of it that it’s just like psychologically…

0:24:17.5 Mike Vacanti: For sure. It comes from one animal. It’s not like… As non hippie dippy as I try to be, there’s something weird about a whole bunch of different cows getting ground up together and if you’re saying thank you for this animal, you’re not really saying that. You’re saying like, thank you for these 40 different animals that I have little bits of each of them and…

0:24:36.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:24:37.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Not knowing where the farm is, which is pretty close to my house, it’s… Yeah, it’s cool. But the…

0:24:45.6 Jordan Syatt: Dude, that’s amazing.

0:24:47.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:24:48.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s incredible.

0:24:50.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:24:54.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s like much more sustainable. It’s much more, I think that’s much more, what’s the right word? Ethical. I think that’s… I love that, that makes me really excited. And who stores it? Do you store it at your parents’ house?

0:25:04.9 Mike Vacanti: We divvy it up, and then I bought a freezer, a second freezer that goes out in our garage.

0:25:10.6 Jordan Syatt: Smart.

0:25:10.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And they do a great job. You get all different cuts of meat. Are there like a hundred pounds of ground beef in half the cow? Maybe more than that. Maybe 120. But then all these different steaks and roasts and everything.

0:25:26.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, wow. They cut you steaks?

0:25:28.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And the price per is unbelievable.

0:25:31.5 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Wow. You save so much money.

0:25:32.0 Mike Vacanti: What I actually like more is the fact that I like vegetables with red meat as a meal so much that it’s increased my vegetable intake.

0:25:44.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh, that’s awesome. What vegetables do you have with red meat?

0:25:46.7 Mike Vacanti: Usually they’re potatoes or sweet potatoes. I like crockpot stew. If you put some of that chunk roast in with a bunch of cut up white potatoes and a whole bunch of carrots, that’s outstanding.

0:25:56.8 Jordan Syatt: You’re just having classic All American meals over there.

0:26:02.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:26:02.9 Jordan Syatt: Do you pay for it in one lump sum or do you have a payment plan or how’s that work?

0:26:05.8 Mike Vacanti: One lump sum. It’s pretty reasonable. I think we went four ways on it this year and my share was 350 bucks. So you’re paying…

0:26:13.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s it?

0:26:14.2 Mike Vacanti: 1400 bucks for half a cow. Yeah.

0:26:19.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s incredible.

0:26:23.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. It ends up… The per… Obviously it differs, right? If it’s like a nice cut of steak versus ground beef, it’s hard to have a price per pound allocated, but it’s significantly cheaper than any store.

0:26:36.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s also really nice, like God forbid any black swan event, grocery store meat’s gone.

0:26:37.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Water’s the big one there.

0:26:46.3 Jordan Syatt: Well, yeah, I’m just saying ’cause I remember during COVID meat shelves were just bare.

0:26:51.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:26:52.4 Jordan Syatt: You’re good, right?

0:27:00.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. You’re like, we’re not going back to the question box. We’re just gonna talk about prepper stuff. I feel like you put your phone down and you’re like…

[chuckle]

0:27:00.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, let’s talk about the cow.

0:27:02.1 Mike Vacanti: I know where we’re going with this episode.

[chuckle]

0:27:02.2 Jordan Syatt: Is that it? Why? Are we done?

0:27:03.9 Mike Vacanti: No, no, let’s keep the questions going.

0:27:05.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:27:05.9 Mike Vacanti: I felt like we were getting in a real groove.

0:27:08.9 Jordan Syatt: At the gym I saw someone doing battle ropes while standing on the flat side of a BOSU ball. What do you think?

0:27:15.9 Mike Vacanti: Not something that I program personally.

0:27:19.1 Jordan Syatt: Why not? Seems super functional.

[laughter]

0:27:28.3 Jordan Syatt: We’re always on a wobbly ball.

0:27:29.1 Mike Vacanti: A wobbly ball with a couple of ropes, just having ’em go up and down as fast as you can. Yeah, not aligned with any of my clients’ goals that I can remember in my career.

0:27:39.8 Jordan Syatt: But doesn’t it help you better with fat loss?

0:27:43.3 Mike Vacanti: That is… Yes, you do burn calories by doing that. And there are many other ways to burn calories as well. Not to mention that calorie expenditure is very low on my list of things to focus on with fat loss clients relative to building good habits around nutrition, sleep, stress management, et cetera. And further, if I was going to focus on creating a bit of additional calorie expenditure, I would do something, one, more enjoyable, two, less risky, three, more productive. Yeah.

0:28:22.5 Jordan Syatt: Dude, not working out to burn calories is the biggest unlock of the 21st century.

0:28:29.6 Mike Vacanti: I like that.

0:28:32.7 Jordan Syatt: Bro, the biggest unlock, and I say that because the first part of my youth in training is so much of it was to burn calories and like, man, they’re so, it’s so funny ’cause you just said it so nonchalantly, burning calories is literally 0% of the reason why I work out and how I program my clients to work out. It’s zero.

0:29:01.7 Mike Vacanti: 100%. Yep.

0:29:04.2 Jordan Syatt: It is literally zero. I might have to make a video on this. It is such a stupid thing.

0:29:10.9 Mike Vacanti: Bro, tag me. Make that video and tag me.

0:29:11.4 Jordan Syatt: Wanna collab with me, do a col collaboration?

0:29:12.0 Mike Vacanti: Nah, I just want a tag, but I’d do a collab if you’re gonna… But I’d take a tag.

0:29:20.5 Jordan Syatt: All right. We’ll see.

0:29:22.5 Mike Vacanti: I’ll do either.

[laughter]

0:29:32.1 Jordan Syatt: Listen, there’s so many other things to work out for, and never mind like how little of an impact it actually has on fat loss. But that isn’t even the biggest part for me. The major thing is there are so many other things to work out for. And if you spend so much time working out just to burn calories, then you are not going, you’ll not do things that actually will improve your life, that will improve your performance, because those things don’t burn as many calories in the moment. Like, you wanna burn more calories, yeah, you run, you whatever. You just try and do as hard cardio as you possibly can.

0:30:04.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:30:04.9 Jordan Syatt: You do burpees.

0:30:06.4 Mike Vacanti: Or go do a nonsense class that has no progressive overload, no direction, no strategy, high injury risk, like no rest time and you just exert yourself as hard as you can for 60 minutes. Great. Super unproductive. Doesn’t even burn that many calories.

0:30:29.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I like training for skill. I think that for me is where I get the most fun, like getting the pistol squat or the splits or a max deadlift or a chin up, training for a skill. And I think, like that to me is, and that’s my bias, but that’s like the best kind of training.

0:30:48.3 Mike Vacanti: But I would also say that you’re still training for a skill if you’re training to build muscle.

0:30:56.2 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Agreed. Yes.

0:31:07.2 Mike Vacanti: If you’re doing it properly, like improving your incline bench press technique by 1%, which has, it’s not gonna pay a dividend in terms of how much muscle you build, but it’s gonna pay a dividend in terms of injury reduction and it’s like the upward spiral of getting better at something.

0:31:16.2 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:31:16.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah… Skills are important.

0:31:26.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And I think realistically that… I don’t generally like the term functional training because it’s just whatever is functional is related to what you do on a daily basis. But whatever is fun is more related to your goal than what you do on a daily life. And people are like, oh yeah, like standing on a BOSU ball is functional. It’s like, you’re never on a wobbly surface in real life anyway. So it’s not actually functional. I like it. I think more, like, instead of functional training, I’d probably prefer the term like capability training. You do something to make you more capable, and capable in any circumstance. And building muscle, that’s capability training. Building strength, that’s capability training. Improving your mobility, that’s capability training. I think we need to make capability training great again is what we need to do. We need to not just bring it back. We need to bring it, we need to arrive it. We need to introduce it to the world, capability training.

0:32:31.4 Mike Vacanti: There’s something else that’s interesting here on top of this, which is your relationship with exercise is so much better when your focus is not on calorie expenditure, ’cause when your focus is on calorie expenditure, the enjoyment factor goes down, which is gonna reduce adherence. You start like convoluting how much you ate with how hard you should work out. I’ve never related those two in my entire life. Because I don’t use exercise as a form of punishment. If I eat a whole pizza one night, I’m still gonna train the next day because I have a workout schedule for the next day.

0:33:00.5 Jordan Syatt: Yep.

0:33:03.5 Mike Vacanti: But I’m not gonna go extra hard and do extra cardio to make up for the night before. I’m gonna get back on the wagon the next day. Nutrition and exercise are separate in terms of what they do for fat loss.

0:33:12.4 Jordan Syatt: Separate but equal.

[laughter]

0:33:12.5 Mike Vacanti: This is gonna be quite the four years. We got a Q&A right now. We have a sale that is gonna end very soon for the Fitness Business Mentorship. If you have not applied, you can save $500 on the initiation fee Black Friday sale. Apply now. The website is fitnessbusinessmentorship.com. Apply on that home screen, link in show notes, episode 200… Wait, this might have been episode 200.

0:33:38.6 Jordan Syatt: Was this 200?

0:33:39.7 Mike Vacanti: It was either 200 or next week is 200. Either way…

0:33:45.8 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I think it’s 200. Episode 199 plus 200 in the corner. Wow.

0:33:45.9 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go. Shout out to the OGs and if you listened since episode one, we love you. And if you just jumped on the bandwagon last week, great to have you.

0:33:54.7 Jordan Syatt: Welcome to the party.

[laughter]

0:33:58.2 Jordan Syatt: See ya.