Episode 204: How to Build Your Online Fitness Business in 2025, Intuitive Eating, Marijuana, Hummus, Sake, and More…

0:00:12.0 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

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

0:00:13.4 Mike Vacanti: Bro, how have your battles been going?

0:00:17.4 Jordan Syatt: Man, they’ve been very intense.

0:00:21.7 Mike Vacanti: Have you been winning?

0:00:22.7 Jordan Syatt: Every time.

0:00:23.6 Mike Vacanti: That’s what matters.

0:00:24.8 Jordan Syatt: That’s what matters.

0:00:25.5 Mike Vacanti: That’s what matters. A couple of nights ago, I was laying in bed, drifting off to sleep, just kind of mindlessly scrolling as my 3 milligrams of melatonin kicked in, and I see, Jordan, “You up?” And then something else. And you were going to battle in the DMs, you were upsetting some Taylor Swift fans.

0:00:46.1 Jordan Syatt: Bro, and I’m putting my phone on Do Not Disturb. I was upsetting, and it was completely… Number one, it was not deliberate, I didn’t expect this to happen.

0:01:00.0 Mike Vacanti: You don’t know about the Swifties.

0:01:00.4 Jordan Syatt: I didn’t know about the religion of Swiftie. Like I had no clue. But the thing is, I didn’t say anything bad about Taylor Swift.

0:01:09.5 Mike Vacanti: You said she’s overrated.

0:01:11.0 Jordan Syatt: No, listen, listen, first and foremost, let’s give the context. I hadn’t done overrated, underrated in a while and I was like, I wanna do overrated, underrated. It’s gonna give me good content ideas for good reels ’cause I found out that you can, like, if someone asked a question, you can respond to that in a real format. And then I was like, this is great. It’s gonna be fun, easy content. That’ll be helpful. And I got… I’ve never in my life gotten people asking me if I think Taylor Swift is overrated or underrated, never once. But in this one, it was the most commonly asked question. I got hundreds of people asking if Taylor Swift is over or underrated. And I didn’t know why. In hindsight, I’ve now figured out that it was because her almost two year tour ended the day before.

0:02:08.1 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:02:08.5 Jordan Syatt: So her two year, like one year, nine month, whatever it was, tour ended and that’s why people were asking. And when I get that many people ask me about a celebrity, my mind doesn’t even necessarily go to the celebrity individually as much as it goes just to celebrity worship and celebrity idealization overall. So when I decided to finally answer the question about Taylor Swift, I was like, okay, number one, I don’t know why everyone’s asking me about Taylor ’cause a lot of people are, but I’m gonna answer. And I said, overrated. And then I explicitly wrote, “it’s not about her, it’s not about her music, it’s not about anything other than celebrity worship as a whole.” Like, it’s massively overrated. And the immediate vitriolic hatred, it was on par with the Israel-Palestine stuff.

0:03:09.6 Mike Vacanti: Okay. All right. [chuckle]

0:03:11.1 Jordan Syatt: It was crazy, dude. I couldn’t believe it how angry these people were with me. And I was like, did you fucking read what I said? It was unbelievable. Yeah, so.

0:03:23.9 Mike Vacanti: Overrated, underrated. I think the funnier piece of this, and maybe funny is the wrong word, more interesting piece of this is your competitiveness and desire to win in all arenas, whether it be a DM debate or anything else.

0:03:43.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And I won.

[laughter]

0:03:49.5 Mike Vacanti: Like, yeah.

0:03:52.1 Jordan Syatt: What?

0:03:53.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s just, it’s funny.

0:03:54.0 Jordan Syatt: You’re the same way. You just don’t debate on DMs, but you’re competitive. Like, you like to win. If you don’t win, you get mad.

0:04:01.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m competitive in certain things, absolutely. That’s 100%. But it’s, I would imagine it’s unique for someone with as big an audience as you have to be so in the weeds interacting with everyone, be it positive or negative, be it helpful or, you know, going to battle and sending voice memos back and forth about Taylor Swift.

0:04:29.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah, they freak out. There’s one person who said something and then I replied and she was like, okay, like nice copy and paste or whatever that you said. And I was like, “I didn’t copy and paste.” I sent her a voice memo. I was like, “I didn’t copy and paste anything. Like, I’m speaking directly to you about this. Like, let’s have this conversation.” They’re like, “I didn’t expect you to be doing that.” I was like, yeah, ’cause…

0:04:49.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I am… When you reply to my story story, understand that it’s me replying back to you.

0:04:55.3 Jordan Syatt: If you come at me with vitriol, you better be ready to fucking, there’s a reckoning coming, all right? If you come at me with vitriol, then I’m gonna come back, you know what I mean?

0:05:08.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:05:10.3 Jordan Syatt: People are just sending shit into the ether without any consequence whatsoever. And they don’t realize it’s a real person on the other end. It’s like, okay, let’s make… Maybe you should think before you say something fucking horrible because someone doesn’t think that Taylor Swift is like the goddess of the world. Get outta here.

0:05:29.2 Mike Vacanti: Obviously I’m not seeing these DMs, you are. It’s only vitriol you’re replying to? I didn’t know if there were comments that were maybe a little bit under what we would call vitriol where you’re like, I’m still gonna win this battle right here.

0:05:42.1 Jordan Syatt: No, it was either super nice comments, ’cause there were people who were like, “Hey, just so you know, I’m a Swiftie and like I completely agree with you.” And like, there was really nice stuff and then it was vitriol. There was like no in-between. It was like, either you’re right completely, and by the way, I’m a Swiftie, or yeah, I just don’t, I complete with you. Or it was, you’re a horrible human and just like when I, it was sort of a joke, but also serious like this, it is the same level of anger to the Israel, Gaza stuff. Like, same level of anger. That’s why I called it a religion, ’cause like literally there was one woman who was like, “I’m a Swiftie,” I told you, I, she’s like, “I’m a Swiftie.” And in the same breath, she said, “I’m the most anti-religious person you’ll ever meet.” And I was like, “That’s a weird thing to say, but like your religion is being a Swiftie. Like, that’s your religion.”

0:06:32.8 Mike Vacanti: The psychological argument for God being the highest thing on your value hierarchy, whether that’s money or fame or actually God or Taylor Swift, whatever your number one thing is.

0:06:48.4 Jordan Syatt: Yep. So.

0:06:50.3 Mike Vacanti: But you won, you won the battles. And that’s what counts.

0:06:52.5 Jordan Syatt: I won every single battle.

[laughter]

0:06:57.6 Mike Vacanti: Amazing.

0:06:58.3 Jordan Syatt: Decisively. I took a lot of land.

0:07:01.5 Mike Vacanti: I feel like you defended your land.

0:07:04.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And took some extra.

0:07:07.4 Mike Vacanti: Did you take some too? I don’t know how that works.

[laughter]

0:07:11.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:07:12.2 Mike Vacanti: I haven’t been in a DM battle since…

0:07:14.2 Jordan Syatt: If a country invades, if one nation invades, and the…

0:07:18.5 Mike Vacanti: This is quite the analogy.

0:07:20.4 Jordan Syatt: And, this is just the truth. This is just historical fact. If a nation invades another nation and the nation defending wins, then that means that the other nation will have retreated. But it’s not like they retreat to their border and then the nation defending just stops. That doesn’t happen. They will continue to go back and go deeper into the other nation’s border to take land so that they can have better military strategic positions, so that they can make sure that doesn’t happen again. I didn’t just defend my borders, I extended my borders outward to have more strategic positions.

0:08:00.3 Mike Vacanti: I feel like we’re in a mix of joke and serious right here. What’s the percentage breakdown between joke and seriousness?

0:08:04.8 Jordan Syatt: 50/50.

0:08:06.1 Mike Vacanti: Okay, cool. That’s good split. [laughter] Jordan took a little land back last night, or over the last few days.

0:08:15.3 Jordan Syatt: Not even back. I just, I took it for the first time. And I’ve got that land.

0:08:19.2 Mike Vacanti: You conquered.

0:08:20.3 Jordan Syatt: It was a surprise attack. It was a surprise attack that the Swifties conducted on me.

0:08:26.3 Mike Vacanti: What happens if you just don’t engage?

0:08:30.5 Jordan Syatt: Frankly, it was a demolition.

0:08:34.3 Mike Vacanti: But what happens though? What happens if you don’t engage?

0:08:40.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s like an itch that I just, I can’t focus or concentrate. I’ve just, I’ve gotta…

0:08:45.9 Mike Vacanti: Go in that debate.

0:08:46.4 Jordan Syatt: I don’t go back with vitriol. I never go back with vitriol. I go back very calm and very kind, which gets them even more angry. But like, I come back very… ‘Cause dude, I never come back vitriolic, ever. It’s never ad hominem attacks. They’re the only ones doing that. It’s me just like, okay, well, let’s talk about this, da, da, da. And then they get even more angry. And then, you know, like Sun Tzu, man.

0:09:09.3 Mike Vacanti: I think there’s a part of you that likes to argue as well as…

0:09:12.3 Jordan Syatt: I hate arguing.

0:09:13.8 Mike Vacanti: I think, or debate might be the better word. Like the strategic aspect of debate.

0:09:18.4 Jordan Syatt: I like debating. I like debating.

0:09:19.3 Mike Vacanti: I think you like it. It’s not just winning, I think you like the process of debating too.

0:09:22.6 Jordan Syatt: I only like debating about things that I know about, right? And so…

0:09:30.8 Mike Vacanti: Taylor Swift.

0:09:31.8 Jordan Syatt: I’m not gonna, it’s not even, it wasn’t about Taylor Swift, it was about the idealization of celebrity, which is just, objectively is a bad thing.

0:09:42.2 Mike Vacanti: I’m with you.

0:09:42.9 Jordan Syatt: Objectively.

0:09:43.9 Mike Vacanti: I’m with you.

0:09:44.4 Jordan Syatt: And these people are coming in and they’re proving my point by hurling vitriol and anger and slurs and sexism, like everything you can imagine at me, it’s like you’re proving my point.

0:10:03.8 Mike Vacanti: Have you heard the Keanu Reeves quote where he says… Who, by the way, I think is an awesome celebrity.

0:10:09.9 Jordan Syatt: I love, yeah, Keanu Reeves.

0:10:13.2 Mike Vacanti: Where he says…

0:10:15.0 Jordan Syatt: I love that guy.

[laughter]

0:10:19.2 Mike Vacanti: Where he says something to the effect of, “Cool, you think two plus two equals five? That’s awesome. Good for you. Have a nice day,” or something. He says, “I’m at the point in my life where if someone says two plus two equals five, I just say, ‘great. I think that’s right. Have a good day.'”

0:10:34.3 Jordan Syatt: That’s not, yeah, that’s not me. And that’s also not you, by the way.

0:10:37.7 Mike Vacanti: Do you think…

0:10:37.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s, you don’t do that either.

0:10:39.5 Mike Vacanti: I always did that on the internet because…

0:10:41.8 Jordan Syatt: No, dude, no. You got into some debates, dude.

0:10:47.4 Mike Vacanti: No, I actually didn’t. My strategy was, “Cool, have a nice day.” “Oh, you disagree? Cool, have a good day.” “Oh, you’re gonna be an asshole? Okay.”

0:10:54.8 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know.

0:10:56.1 Mike Vacanti: “Hope everything’s well with you.” It’s the most time efficient, you’re never converting that person to a paying client. I don’t care about winning against a stranger online. I don’t like spending excess time on my phone, hunched over, like arguing. Yeah, I think you’re doing the funny like third grade recess thing where you just flip it back on me because you like it, but I actually don’t.

0:11:16.7 Jordan Syatt: No, I don’t think you like it, but I think when you were in the weeds, like you’d go back and forth sometimes.

0:11:23.2 Mike Vacanti: Do you have any examples? Because I actually don’t think that I did.

0:11:27.4 Jordan Syatt: Well, I’ll give you an example of one where the guy on your Facebook page called you out for your price, remember? And then you were like, you came back and you were really nice. You’re like, “Yep, totally understand. Makes total sense. Not everyone’s gonna be able to afford it, da, da, da.” And like, that was it. That was the end, right? That’s how I approach these conversations. I’m not coming… Like I approach it exactly the same way, but then they’ll come back. So if that guy had come back and then started debating you, there probably would’ve been some more conversation around it.

0:12:00.3 Mike Vacanti: I think it’s okay to enjoy debating. We had debate team in high school, I wasn’t on it ’cause I didn’t like debating. You would’ve killed it. You would’ve been incredible. It’s okay to… You wrestled, I played hockey. It’s okay to have differences.

0:12:16.0 Jordan Syatt: I just… Listen, I think that you’re a debater too, depending.

0:12:21.5 Mike Vacanti: Okay. You can think that, you can think that if you want. [laughter] All right, we got a good one here. Whitney asked, “Question for you all, listening to your recent podcast about what you guys would do if you were entering the industry now in 2024.” Jordan first asked if the context included his current life with family and kids. And we basically were like, let’s pretend that we’re single, we can dedicate all our time to this. But the industry has changed, technology has changed, social media has changed since 12, 13 years ago. But she’s saying, “I’d love to hear if y’all think it’s feasible, if you’re someone who isn’t a young buck in your early 20s without additional responsibilities of parenthood and a mortgage.” So basically, if we were just starting our business right now and had family responsibilities, couldn’t just dedicate every waking hour to work, what would our approach be?

0:13:19.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And for whatever it’s worth, there are many people who do this very successfully. I mean, off the top of the head, Chris Gates is someone who has crushed this in the mentorship.

0:13:32.4 Mike Vacanti: Yep.

0:13:33.4 Jordan Syatt: Not only, I think he has three kids now and he also did this well, working full-time at another job. Rachel Schwartz is another example. A mother, had another job full time, built it up, and then was able to quit her other job. I mean, this is, it’s a very real… It’s very real. You can absolutely do it. I think it’s more challenging because you have more responsibilities. The more responsibilities you have, inherently the less time you’ll be able to spend working on this stuff. But you can absolutely do it. So, realistically it would follow the exact same path. It would just likely take longer is probably what it would be. So like for example, if I was the single 22-year-old, maybe that would be… Let’s just, if, I’m just gonna use Instagram as an example.

0:14:37.8 Jordan Syatt: Maybe I would be making like three to five pieces of ridiculously good content a day and like literally spending 18 hours a day just making insanely good content. Whereas a parent, it might be one or two pieces of content a day at most, that would be like at most one or two pieces of content a day. Maybe it’d be like four to seven pieces of content a week, depending on the week and what’s going on and if your kids are sick and parent teacher meetings and you have another job and whatever it is. So it would literally follow the exact same strategy just based on what time investment you have available to put in. So I would still have a website. I would still follow like the simple formula that we have for a website. It doesn’t have to be super fancy, but very basic, understanding of here’s what you offer, here’s some articles, here’s an email list, here’s me posting on social media.

0:15:34.6 Jordan Syatt: I’d have, I would pick like one or two platforms to go really hard on. I’d probably just start, I would probably do Instagram as like the main platform to go really hard on right now. There’s an argument to be made for TikTok as well, but I think TikTok is, the future is a little bit uncertain for that. So I think Instagram is just, you have a little bit more definitive certainty. Even if potential reach might be better on TikTok, I don’t really know though, I think Instagram, especially in the United States is more of a certainty. And then I would do, I would start building up your email list, but not sending actual specific content to them outside of just making sure they’re seeing your regular content. That would be what I do for three to five years.

0:16:21.8 Mike Vacanti: So the biggest change is a change in expectation about speed of building your business.

0:16:29.3 Jordan Syatt: Yep.

0:16:29.8 Mike Vacanti: Really, because you’re gonna be working fewer hours per week if you’re in a position where you have a spouse, children, responsibilities, other obligations, and you can’t just focus everything on your business. That’s the only real difference. Strategy is all the same, it’s just that you have fewer hours to dedicate to it. So you’re thinking about a longer time horizon until you’re at a point where you have a full coaching roster or whatever it is.

0:16:58.2 Jordan Syatt: And I will say, I think there are some distinct advantages to this. I don’t wanna make a big assumption, but a lot of these people in their early 20s, not all of them, but a lot of them, this is their only income. They don’t have any other income. They need this, like, they’re going super hard so that they can keep the lights on and feed themselves. Like, that’s the situation that I was in. And I think a lot of these young bucks are in that situation. Whereas generally if you’re a parent and maybe you have a spouse, there might be other income coming in already.

0:17:30.5 Jordan Syatt: And I know, for example, Chris Gates and Rachel Schwartz were in that position where they had other jobs, but they didn’t really like those other jobs per se. Chris did actually. Chris enjoyed his and he actually didn’t even wanna leave it initially. Rachel was tired of her job and she didn’t want to have that job anymore. And so she wanted to go into this. Now, that does give you an advantage from the perspective of if you’re, if you need that money right now, it really puts a fire under your ass in terms of you’re like, I’ve gotta make money now, which means that you might be launching when you shouldn’t be launching and pushing more than you should be pushing.

0:18:05.3 Jordan Syatt: Whereas if you have other money coming in, you can build up so much goodwill. You don’t have to be launching, you don’t have to be pushing, you don’t have to be trying to get people in your program ’cause you have another form of income that is keeping you afloat, which builds up more goodwill, which then actually in the long run will give you more staying power. So there’s an advantage to it even though you aren’t going as fast and putting out as much. Also, I think that leads to less burnout. You’re not pushing as hard, so there’s a little bit like more freshness to it. You’re not doing so many pieces of content, so you’re not burning through ideas. There are pros and cons to both, but it’s literally the exact same thing, it’s just a longer timeframe.

0:18:44.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I think on a strategy level, it’s somewhat similar to the question of how do I build my online business when I’m spending many hours per week coaching clients in person? Meaning, you know, you look for downtime within your day around your family, whether that’s after the kids go to bed, I have, you know, an hour or two of quiet focus time when I can make content, get up an hour before the kids do, nap time. You know, I don’t know the normal family routine/structure, but it’s finding pockets of time and utilizing those to be productive, times where you got a half hour here, maybe you used to scroll and just kind of chill and lounge. But no, that 30 minutes needs to be real work now because you’re not gonna have these six hour, you know, straight periods where you can get into a deep work. I mean, maybe they come and go depending on your schedule, but you can’t rely on those like you could when your only focus is on building a business and you don’t have any other responsibilities. So you need to become more efficient with your time and really utilize those small pockets of time.

0:20:00.7 Jordan Syatt: You’ve really gotta let go of this idea of perfection too. Like, go to my Instagram and look at my videos, especially like the overrated, underrated videos I just did, or, it’s me out in my backyard and in between like little clips, I’m picking up my dog’s poop, like my daughters are inside, it’s I’m out there 30 minutes, 40 minutes, like, these are not super highly edited videos at all. And that’s why I did overrated, underrated, because I was like, give me a topic and I’ll give you my opinion on it. And it makes quick content. It’s nowhere, it’s not highly edited, it’s all filmed on my phone. It’s done very quickly and it’s with my personality and my opinion. And I think when you’re younger and/or you’re in a position in which you could spend six to eight hours straight editing one piece of content, you can have a much higher expectation of how that content’s gonna look.

0:20:58.4 Jordan Syatt: But when you, you’ve gotta just get shit done, just get it done. And a B is better than, a B work is better than not done at all. And not to mention a lot of the highly produced, highly edited stuff is super unrelatable and people don’t necessarily enjoy it as much. Like people, I literally get people saying like, I love that you’re just relatable, that you’re out in your backyard, that you’ve, like, even on my podcast, you can hear my daughter screaming in the background. It’s like, I love that. I can hear that you’re a real person. It’s not like this perfect room and this perfect, everything is going on perfect, like, it’s a real, I’m a real dude. And so there’s something to be said for leaning into whatever it is your current life situation is, and just making it clear, ’cause that will help people relate to you more.

0:21:43.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Great advice. Jessica asked, “Thoughts on intuitive eating?” And I think we’ve talked about this a couple times, if you search podcast history, so we can, we don’t need to spend all day on this one, but can give some high level thoughts. And my biggest one is the people who are successful eating intuitively are people who have already spent time meticulously tracking their food, because without an understanding of food type, without an understanding of which foods are high protein, which foods are high fat, which foods are high carbohydrate, what’s a high volume or low volume food calorically, without paying attention to all of those factors and tracking for some amount of time, there’s no knowledge. Your intuition isn’t backed by any knowledge.

0:22:46.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Intuitive eating is the most advanced form of eating, and people treat it like it’s the most basic form of eating. It’s like, it’s the most difficult, to get to the… You have to go through many different levels of eating before you get to that level, and you can do it effectively. It’s sort of like, you wouldn’t just take someone who’s a complete beginner in weightlifting and say, just go to the gym and do what feels good. Just go do it. Pick some exercises and pick some weights and do it, like just intuitively lift. Of course not, you wouldn’t say that. And people could be like…

0:23:18.8 Mike Vacanti: Sounds fun. Sounds unproductive, but it sounds fun.

0:23:21.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I can already hear people being like, well, yeah, but you’re supposed to eat, like we’re made to eat. It’s like, okay, cool. You know what we’re really made to do? We’re made to run. All right, so let’s do this. We’ll use a running example. We are literally like, we’re, if we look at how our bodies are made from an evolutionary perspective, like we’re actually made to be runners. That’s like what we’re made for. You wouldn’t just tell someone just, you know, just see how it feels. Just go do a, just go run. Like you’d follow, number one, you’d probably wanna get your running technique down. You’d probably wanna follow a progressive running program. You’d probably wanna figure out, okay, so when we’re gonna start off, we’re gonna be starting off with this distance and like making sure I’m keeping my heart rate in these zones.

0:24:00.9 Jordan Syatt: Like, and you over track, like you over index. You are really meticulous with understanding your running technique, with, you’re tracking the distances you’re running, how you’re feeling. Over time, you can become more intuitive with it. You can understand, okay, I know if I run this much in a certain week, if I run 20 miles in a week, I’m gonna feel this way. If I run 30 miles, I’ll feel this way. If I do one day of sprints, I’m gonna feel this way. But it takes actual practice and tracking the data to understand that. Same thing with weight training. It’s like if someone just said, yeah, just go in and lift, like even if you know what muscles you’re supposed to work, like I don’t know which exercises work that, and like, well, what if this exercise hurts my knee? What are some good variations for that?

0:24:41.4 Jordan Syatt: Like, what’s some good swap? You gotta figure it out through actual trial and practice and error. Whereas that’s what intuitive eating is. First you track your calories and you track your macros and you figure things out and you figure out which foods make you feel good, which foods don’t make you feel good, at what time of day, like, does eating late at night before bed make you feel bloated and give you heartburn or does actually help you sleep better? Which foods are gonna lead to better digestion? Which foods are gonna give you more energy? It changes. If you just tell a random person, especially someone who’s struggling with their weight and nutrition, just eat in a way that just makes you feel good, cool, I’m going to order Dominos, I’m ordering a Meat Lover’s Pizza. Like, that makes me feel good. Like that’s…

0:25:23.3 Mike Vacanti: Or ask your body, ask your body what it wants to eat right now.

0:25:25.2 Jordan Syatt: Yes, my body wants Cheetos.

0:25:27.0 Mike Vacanti: Krispy Kremes, Krispy Kremes.

0:25:29.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Seriously. That’s what my body wants right now motherfucker.

[laughter]

0:25:35.4 Mike Vacanti: There’s a, I agree with all of that. I remember, and this is funny because it slightly wraps in the Keanu Reeves thing. I remember someone six, seven, eight years ago asking me, or not even asking me, but telling me that tracking what you eat is disordered and just eating intuitively is better. And you know, I’m gonna lose fat just intuitively eating. Cool, do it. I’m not gonna convince you not to do it. I don’t have a dog in this fight. Go intuitively eat to lose the 50 pounds of fat that you want to lose. I hope it works.

0:26:13.3 Mike Vacanti: Like I hope it’s the best system in the world for you and you’re super successful and, no really, and get healthy and like feel really good. That would be amazing. But after it doesn’t work and you’re looking for something else and you wanna learn how to lose fat in a way that’s sustainable and actually works, I’m happy to help, but I’m not gonna try to convince you here, that’s like a business strategy. It might not be optimal for converting the maximum number of people, but wait until people are ready to hear your message and then I’m here to help.

0:26:46.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:26:48.3 Mike Vacanti: All right. This is an interesting one about setting up a website. “If you don’t have any clients yet, what should you emphasize on your website’s hook article when creating your website if you don’t yet have testimonials? The article/guide to weight loss that would hopefully allow me to receive and start an email list? I understand that it will take time, seeking your wisdom and expertise.” So basically putting together, Jordan’s doing the Robert De Niro face for some reason. I don’t know, he’s looking for laughs. Give some dopamine.

0:27:21.8 Jordan Syatt: I was holding that for like 30 seconds. The people on YouTube are gonna be like, what the, is he having a stroke?

[laughter]

0:27:29.0 Mike Vacanti: Starting a website, don’t have testimonials, what should the focus be? And then this “hook article” I think what Nadine’s referring to here is a lead magnet, which is some kind of free giveaway or guide that you have as an incentive to sign up for your email list. So you would have it posted on your website and if they sign up for your email list, in return they get this freebie.

0:27:56.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. What do you think?

0:28:00.0 Mike Vacanti: What do I think? I think that if you don’t have testimonials, no worries at all. No one does when they’re first starting. So having a website that has maybe three articles on it to start to launch the website and email list opt in. So you have your email service provider set up and you have your lead magnet created and you have all of that operational is sufficient for a website. I don’t think you need to go crazy and have 10 articles written before launching the website. With… Testimonials are helpful. And that is one of the reasons in the mentorship we talk about coaching people for free early on, is you’re gonna get better at building your systems, you’re gonna get better at online coaching, and you’re going to get testimonials from helping those people. So those will come in time. But having a few articles, having a place to sign up for your email list is sufficient for a website as like a bare bones to get started.

0:29:04.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. You know, it’s funny, I’m thinking about, like, I remember before I “launched” my first website, I was really like, I put so much pressure on myself. I was like, oh my gosh, I’ve gotta have… I remember I had to have five articles ready to go and then, and I had to like try and make it look a certain way and have everything really nice and I was updating my personal Facebook page with high school friends and like, just so you know, it’s coming soon, website’s coming soon, no one cares. And I “launched it” and nothing happened. And what I would say is really important, like if you were, if you already had a large audience, either an audience that you had built previously on something else, if you’re a celebrity, which I don’t think any celebrities are listening to this podcast, but like if you already have a large audience, it makes sense when you launch something, to have it look really good and ready to go because you know people are gonna go in and potentially buy stuff, like you know it.

0:30:08.5 Jordan Syatt: But if you’re starting off with like just your friends, a few of them who will be seeing it and maybe some family and like, it’s not a big launch. So like, you don’t need to put pressure on yourself to have oh, okay. Like, what… Just because, it’s sort of like in The Office, there’s a famous scene where Michael comes out of the… He’s gonna declare bankruptcy and he goes, “I declare bankruptcy.” And he screams it and Oscar’s like, “Just so you know, like declaring it, like just ’cause you yelled that doesn’t mean anything.” Like you, there’s, and he’s like, “I didn’t yell it. I declared it.”

0:30:44.3 Jordan Syatt: And it’s like, just people have this… I, when I launched my website, it’s like I’m launching it. It’s like, just because you say you launched it, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s what do we do now? So whether you have zero articles or three articles or 12 articles when you decide to launch it, just get it up. Just get it up and start contributing to it every week and make it really good and people will eventually go to it and that’s what matters. Like, that’s literally it. That’s all that matters. I think people put way too much pressure on launches before they have any reason to put pressure on launches. It’s just, just get it up and going. That’s it.

0:31:24.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. It’s back to what you were saying about creating content when you’re busy and have a family and have responsibilities, consistently making content that is “B level” rather than infrequently making A level content, you’re gonna do far better making consistently “slightly worse” content. And I put quotes around slightly worse because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? Like the market decides if it’s good content or not. And so what you think is 80% content, some people might absolutely love. And so consistently creating is far more important than it being perfect. The other thing I’ll add on the website is having an online coaching application page also makes sense of course, if you’re taking on new clients.

0:32:11.4 Jordan Syatt: Yes, yes.

0:32:13.0 Mike Vacanti: Like having that as a page on your site in addition to, I would have one article, right?

0:32:20.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. At least one article. Yeah.

0:32:21.9 Mike Vacanti: You want some kind of free… You don’t want someone to stumble across your website and there to be absolutely no value for them there other than, hey, you can apply for coaching or get on my email list, so have an article or two, but that was a big thing back in the day. I remember needing five articles as a minimum. I don’t know where we got that number, but…

0:32:41.9 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know either. But that was the thing, like everyone needed five articles, which like, I get it, it makes sense, but also it was like when I launched my website, no one went to my website. So it’s funny, like you say, like you don’t want someone stumbling across your website. It’s like, good luck, someone’s stumbling across your web. Like, I wish people just fucking stumbled across it early in my career, like, and especially now, like, it’s even harder. Like no one’s just gonna stumble on your fucking brand new website. Like, good luck. If that’s happening to you, I wanna take your course.

0:33:23.5 Mike Vacanti: Which is just a reason not to delay the launch, but instead to get it up, get it out there publicly, and then start creating consistently and building over time.

0:33:33.3 Jordan Syatt: Yes.

0:33:35.4 Mike Vacanti: We had a YouTube comment from @b.user.87.

0:33:40.9 Jordan Syatt: Let’s go.

0:33:41.3 Mike Vacanti: “A good pod as always. Thank you guys. I just wanted to ask about weighted vests. How come you haven’t mentioned its use in calisthenics? Would you recommend a vest for male clients to help them improve pull-ups, dips, et cetera?” I think we talked about weighted vests in the context of making cardio a little bit more intense, but other potential uses for weighted vests that we did not mention in that podcast?

0:34:10.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I mean, you could put it on and do dips with it and chin-ups and pushups with it for sure. Usually when I think about chin-ups and pull-ups and dips, I just think about a weight belt. I don’t really think as much about a weighted vest. Like a weighted vest is fine, it’s just loaded slightly differently. Sometimes they’re not as comfortable, like, especially for an upper body lift, like it’s getting in the way. Like you feel it on your traps, you feel like your arm is getting a little bit bumped. And there’s nothing wrong with it, you’re totally fine to do that. It’s a wonderful tool and I really like that. But I prefer the weight belt for those movements because, it’s just not in the way of my arms and it’s not like bothering me. I will say I do like the weighted vest for pushups more than a weight belt. The weighted vest for pushups is wonderful. I really like that a lot. But for dips and for pull-ups and chin-ups, it’s not my first choice, but it’s a wonderful choice still.

0:35:05.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it works great to load the movement, but a weight belt is what? 20 bucks, 25 bucks on Amazon and…

0:35:12.0 Jordan Syatt: I think I got mine for $19.

0:35:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And I agree, superior, especially for upper body lifts, right? You got your arms over your head, it’s just a little awkward with the weighted vest, especially if you start to add real weight, it’s much easier to load on a weighted belt. But yeah, lower body work, you know, if you wanna do walking lunges and have a weighted vest on and then you don’t need to hold as heavy of dumbbells while you’re doing it.

0:35:40.5 Jordan Syatt: Inverted rows I like actually a lot, inverted rows are good. The issue is when you’re overhead because the straps are going up into your traps in your neck, whereas like inverted rows or pushups because it’s a horizontal push and pull make it a little bit more comfortable.

0:35:56.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s right. Good.

0:36:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Good.

0:36:00.4 Mike Vacanti: That is all the questions I have here. Should we dive into your…

0:36:04.8 Jordan Syatt: Should I go into the overrated, underrated one?

0:36:06.6 Mike Vacanti: Sure. That might be fun.

0:36:08.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, you know what I got a lot of people upset with me about? Is barbell hip thrusts and I spoke, we’ve spoken about that on here…

0:36:15.5 Mike Vacanti: Many times. Many times.

0:36:18.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. A lot of people were like, thank you, I appreciate it. It’s really annoying. You know what the ultimate though is? Like there are some people who were really mad who I said this, they were like, there… It was, the question was barbell hip thrusts. I was like barbell hip thrusts are overrated, not because they’re not effective, but because it just, it takes a long time to set up, it’s uncomfortable, da, da, da. And they were like, they’re not overrated. I love the hip thrust machine. I was like, I’m not talking about the fucking machine douchebag, the whole reason the machine was made…

0:36:49.5 Mike Vacanti: But Jordan, why…

0:36:50.6 Jordan Syatt: Hold on, hold on. The whole reason the machine is made is because the barbell hip thrust is fucking annoying. That’s why they made the machine, that’s why they made the machine, is because the barbell hip thrust is annoying. They don’t have a deadlift machine. They don’t have a machine for, are there barbell lifts? They have the machine for the hip thrust because it’s fucking annoying.

0:37:13.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m with you and you said barbell hip thrust, but is this person a douchebag or maybe they’re just confused a little bit.

0:37:21.3 Jordan Syatt: Douchebag. Douchebag isn’t like, you’re not always a douchebag. But in that moment they assumed the role of douchebag. They assumed the role of douche. When they’re doing, when they’re getting mad at me for that over… Even if I had said all hip thrusts, which I didn’t.

0:37:39.8 Mike Vacanti: Maybe they just have bad reading comprehension.

0:37:41.9 Jordan Syatt: Douche.

[laughter]

0:37:44.0 Mike Vacanti: Where are anger levels right now globally over the last week? Yeah. But give us a number.

0:37:48.4 Jordan Syatt: High. 94.

0:37:50.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Okay. 94 out of 100, that lines up.

0:37:54.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s why I’ve been putting out so many reels.

0:37:57.3 Mike Vacanti: Oh, nice.

0:37:58.4 Jordan Syatt: Anger goes high, more productive. Anger is good for productivity.

0:38:02.3 Mike Vacanti: I agree. I agree. So if maximizing productivity is the goal, then anger is jet fuel.

0:38:09.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah.

0:38:10.6 Mike Vacanti: All right. Overrated, underrated. I’m excited for this.

0:38:13.1 Jordan Syatt: Pumpkin seeds.

0:38:14.3 Mike Vacanti: Properly rated.

0:38:16.3 Jordan Syatt: Really?

0:38:16.9 Mike Vacanti: I mean, I don’t think they’re great and I haven’t heard anyone talk about them in three years, so I think they’re rated kind of low and I think they’re kind of bad. So I think that matches up.

0:38:25.2 Jordan Syatt: You think they’re bad?

0:38:26.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I think they’re… I think you gotta add a lot of salt and oil to make them respectable. Yeah, I’m not a fan. I much prefer almonds.

0:38:38.1 Jordan Syatt: Like completely unsalted, just raw almonds?

0:38:40.9 Mike Vacanti: No. No.

0:38:41.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay. So hold it to the same standard.

0:38:44.4 Mike Vacanti: Not oiled though. The pumpkin seeds I have are like fried.

0:38:49.9 Jordan Syatt: All right. Well, which pumpkin seeds are you getting…

0:38:52.8 Mike Vacanti: I need a lot of… What do you think? You think they’re underrated?

0:38:55.7 Jordan Syatt: Underrated. Massively. Like gargantuanly underrated. Super high fiber, lot of vitamins and minerals, I’m a big fan. You’re googling the fiber intake right now, I can tell. You’re gonna shit yourself when you see how much fiber they have.

0:39:11.5 Mike Vacanti: I hope I don’t do that.

0:39:12.7 Jordan Syatt: I hope you do. That would be hilarious if you legitimately shit right now.

0:39:18.2 Mike Vacanti: Five grams of fiber per 15 carbs, that seems high, but why are there 15 carbs in a pumpkin seed? And five and a half fat, is this right?

0:39:28.9 Jordan Syatt: Right? Big fan.

0:39:31.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that is right. They’re a higher carb. That’s interesting.

0:39:33.7 Jordan Syatt: So does that change your rating?

0:39:35.9 Mike Vacanti: No, I don’t think it does, ’cause you’re, it’s low fat. One of the benefits of nuts and seeds is getting those good fats.

0:39:41.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. But you still get good fats just without like as much of a caloric density.

0:39:47.0 Mike Vacanti: I’m bringing back not having to have an opinion on every single topic, right now in this moment I’m bringing it back. I don’t know enough about pumpkin seeds. I’m open to at some point in the near future saying that they are underrated.

0:40:00.5 Jordan Syatt: Wow. Okay. Well, that’s fair. I mean, I just like that the mid-conversation like, oh wow, they are like, even just… Oh, shit they’ve got higher fiber, like, yeah, like that. Let’s go.

0:40:12.5 Mike Vacanti: Bro, bring new information to the conversation and I’m absolutely open to changing my mind.

0:40:17.7 Jordan Syatt: Protein ice cream, specifically the Ninja Creami.

0:40:20.8 Mike Vacanti: Haven’t tried it.

0:40:22.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Me either. I’m gonna, even without trying it, I’m gonna say it’s overrated. Just, I’m gonna say it’s overrated and I know the Ninja Creami people are gonna be fucking pissed and, it’s the best thing ever. Like…

0:40:31.2 Mike Vacanti: Dude, you’ve never tried it. How can you give that answer?

0:40:32.7 Jordan Syatt: I know.

0:40:34.3 Mike Vacanti: This is like your marketing strategy at some, not like globally, but the contrarian position. [laughter] Watch, Jordan does this all the time. If hip thrust a year from now, no one likes barbell hip thrust, you’re gonna be like, this is a great exercise.

0:40:48.9 Jordan Syatt: They’re fucking awesome. I still said they’re great. I said they’re a great exercise. Like they still work your glutes, but I think there are much better, more convenient, less awkward and annoying ones.

0:40:58.5 Mike Vacanti: Keep ’em coming.

0:41:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Sunbathing.

0:41:00.9 Mike Vacanti: Underrated.

0:41:02.4 Jordan Syatt: I knew you were gonna say underrated.

0:41:05.3 Mike Vacanti: You know there’s whole swaths of people who avoid the sun for their whole lives?

0:41:08.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, dude.

0:41:10.0 Mike Vacanti: I know you think it’s underrated too. You’re not a cold weather guy. You love the sun.

0:41:13.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I love the sun. I love the sun.

0:41:17.8 Mike Vacanti: I shoveled my driveway and sidewalk last night, first snow of the year. It was -2 when I was shoveling at 6:00 PM, yeah, I was thinking of you.

0:41:26.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s terrible, dude. Urgh, Pho.

0:41:29.8 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know that I’ve ever had it.

0:41:31.7 Jordan Syatt: You’ve never had Pho?

0:41:32.8 Mike Vacanti: Maybe once.

0:41:34.0 Jordan Syatt: Bro, underrated. Super good.

0:41:36.9 Mike Vacanti: I believe it. I don’t have a strong opinion.

0:41:40.3 Jordan Syatt: Especially for right now. For you, you should get some in this cold weather. Oh my gosh, you would love that.

0:41:46.0 Mike Vacanti: I’m open to it.

0:41:47.0 Jordan Syatt: Lifting shoes. You’re gonna try and be contrarian to my contrarian, I can tell already. You’re already trying to say what’s he gonna say? I’m gonna be contrarian to what he’s gonna say. I can see it in your face.

0:42:00.3 Mike Vacanti: This is a perfect misunderstanding of our difference in personality types because I don’t think about how you’re going to react to what I’m going to say, that does not cross my mind. I think about, is it true? What is true?

[laughter]

0:42:16.6 Jordan Syatt: Lifting shoes, over or underrated?

0:42:18.0 Mike Vacanti: I think lifting shoes are overrated.

0:42:23.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Agreed.

0:42:24.1 Mike Vacanti: I think lifting shoes are overrated.

0:42:25.8 Jordan Syatt: What about lifting barefoot?

0:42:27.7 Mike Vacanti: Lifting barefoot.

0:42:29.4 Jordan Syatt: And not like socks count. Like socks are fine. But not like the fucking barefoot shoes. I mean, actually barefoot.

0:42:38.6 Mike Vacanti: I think a substantial percentage of people are afraid to do it out of fear of being a social outcast and perhaps hygiene and wanting to fit in with people at their gym, and so they don’t do it. And instead they’re doing relatively heavy lower body work with a three quarter inch soft running shoe sole. And so I would say lifting without shoes on is underrated.

0:43:04.4 Jordan Syatt: Agreed. Super agreed. You know what else is really underrated? Is doing things because it feels good for you and not based on not conforming to what other people, what you think other people think you should be doing.

0:43:20.9 Mike Vacanti: 100%. 100%. That might be the most underrated.

0:43:27.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yep.

0:43:27.9 Mike Vacanti: Intuitive life. You have to live life dialed before you can live life intuitively, but once you can, intuitive life is great.

0:43:36.4 Jordan Syatt: Term limits for all politicians, over or underrated?

0:43:40.4 Mike Vacanti: Underrated. Agreed. Yeah. Having fewer career politicians would be a good thing and would better align the incentives of government workers in Congress specifically to get more done.

0:43:56.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Agreed. Ranch dressing.

0:44:01.8 Mike Vacanti: Man, we used to dip pizza, Domino’s pizza in ranch dressing in high school.

0:44:06.4 Jordan Syatt: So good.

0:44:07.0 Mike Vacanti: And it was amazing. Just sensational. Ranch dressing’s overrated. It’s just garbage. Like we don’t need that extra fat for no reason.

0:44:19.5 Jordan Syatt: Man, used to dip pizza and french fries into ranch dressing and I just wish, I don’t wish, I am jealous of that level of just not caring about what you’re putting in your body at that frequency. Like every day, more pizza and ranch? Let’s do it. More french fries, like every day. Just not caring. Just this is, we’re kids, we’re just gonna do it. That’s just the ultimate.

0:44:57.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Oh, and go get a 50 cent monster cookie after with chocolate chips and M&M’s.

0:45:02.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh my gosh.

0:45:03.2 Mike Vacanti: And maybe a 75 cent jag freeze. This combination of vanilla ice cream and strawberry slushy. Like, yeah.

0:45:11.8 Jordan Syatt: We had these cookies that were the size of our face that must have had a stick of butter in them each and they had like those massive M&M’s in ’em.

0:45:19.9 Mike Vacanti: Sounds delicious.

0:45:21.4 Jordan Syatt: Dude. So good.

0:45:22.4 Mike Vacanti: Probably fueled some great afterschool lifts.

0:45:26.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Oh, did you ever take Superpump 250? We ever talk about that?

0:45:30.9 Mike Vacanti: Not ringing a bell. Is it a pre-workout?

0:45:34.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it was a pre-workout back in the day from Gaspari Nutrition.

0:45:38.0 Mike Vacanti: No, I didn’t.

0:45:39.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh, that was like the first pre-workout I ever took. And I would, I was so careful with the timing. Like the school ended at 3:15 and so I would, at 2:45, I would be taking my baggie out with blue raspberry or blue ice, whatever it was, put it into my drink, shake it and like, it was called Superpump 250. And the name on the streets of GNC was Superdump 250 ’cause like literally like almost immediately after you had to go, man, man, I don’t know if it was actually the supplements. It was probably just like, you know, being a kid and thinking back on it, the nostalgia, those… Things were different back then. Things were just, things were different.

0:46:23.9 Mike Vacanti: They were, I think it’s the nostalgia because food science has come so far that it’s definitely better now. I remember the first protein powder I ever had, Nitro-Tech, like tasted awful.

0:46:37.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. Did you ever have Designer Whey?

0:46:40.8 Mike Vacanti: I knew of it.

0:46:42.4 Jordan Syatt: That was the worst.

0:46:43.8 Mike Vacanti: Was it bad?

0:46:44.5 Jordan Syatt: It was so bad. It was so bad, dude. Yeah.

0:46:48.4 Mike Vacanti: I remember when Muscle Milk came out with their protein powder in 2004.

0:46:53.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh my gosh, that was amazing.

0:46:55.9 Mike Vacanti: It had like nine fat, 14 carb, 14 protein per scoop. So you’d take two scoops, put it in 2% milk. It was incredible.

0:47:10.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh my, it was better than chocolate milk.

0:47:13.1 Mike Vacanti: Way better. Yeah.

0:47:13.8 Jordan Syatt: I used to eat the powder.

0:47:15.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah.

0:47:16.5 Jordan Syatt: I used to just eat the powder. It was so good. Calisthenics.

0:47:22.4 Mike Vacanti: Overrated.

0:47:22.8 Jordan Syatt: Wow.

0:47:24.3 Mike Vacanti: They’re unbelievably popular.

0:47:26.4 Jordan Syatt: Are they?

0:47:27.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:47:28.2 Jordan Syatt: I’m gonna say underrated.

0:47:30.0 Mike Vacanti: I see so many dudes wanting to build great physiques and build a lot of muscle on body weight only exercises.

0:47:40.9 Jordan Syatt: It’s so funny. This is why it’s important to get that nuance to understand where your brain goes when you think about it. You think about it, like your brain went to, I see dudes trying to get bigger and more muscular from doing calisthenics. Completely agree, calisthenics were overrated from that perspective. My brain went to, for life it would be, it is being able to master your body weight in both the strength and mobility style movements would be so beneficial to, like, it’s… I would say being able to get a chin up is more important than I would say hitting a max bench press and being able to do like 10 good pushups and being able to work towards the mobility and strength of doing a pistol squat. Or even just like, not a pistol squat, but like a feet together, ass to grass body weight squat, these, like, having the strength and mobility that higher level calisthenics provides, I would say is underrated from a life perspective, but from a building muscle perspective, completely agree, it’s overrated.

0:48:51.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. Having proper control over your body, sufficient relative strength at your body weight and sufficient mobility are all really good things. So I’m for all of that. A handful of scenarios pop in my mind of people who have very little training experience and were not consistent with their training and see some dude doing 20 muscle ups or doing like “cool” calisthenic stuff and wanna jump straight into that. And it’s like, no, we gotta get your body weight squat. So, yeah, overrated or underrated depending on how you’re framing it.

0:49:38.1 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Someone said overrated, underrated, they wrote, her name is Amy. She wrote, “The devil’s lettuce.” And I didn’t know what that was slang for. I was trying to figure out…

0:49:49.6 Mike Vacanti: Weed.

0:49:49.7 Jordan Syatt: So I was Googling what is the… Yeah, yeah. I just figured that out.

0:49:53.2 Mike Vacanti: Super overrated.

0:49:54.4 Jordan Syatt: Agreed. Did you ever smoke weed?

0:49:56.0 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:49:57.2 Jordan Syatt: You never smoked weed?

0:49:57.8 Mike Vacanti: Oh, have I ever? Yeah.

0:50:00.1 Jordan Syatt: You have?

0:50:00.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, freshman year of college, very drunk, hanging out with these like older guys and like this thing got passed around. Yeah, did not like it. I have…

0:50:16.5 Jordan Syatt: Was that the only time you did it?

0:50:18.3 Mike Vacanti: No, there were… It was only in college, but less than, like three or under for sure. And…

0:50:26.4 Jordan Syatt: Really?

0:50:27.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. My lungs don’t ingest things.

0:50:30.1 Jordan Syatt: Good.

0:50:31.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. They’re just, they’re too pure. They can’t handle it.

0:50:34.4 Jordan Syatt: What about edibles?

0:50:35.9 Mike Vacanti: Didn’t like that either at all.

0:50:37.3 Jordan Syatt: You did the edibles?

0:50:38.4 Mike Vacanti: I tried an edible. Yeah.

0:50:40.3 Jordan Syatt: What’d you have? Was like a gummy or a brownie or a cookie?

0:50:44.1 Mike Vacanti: No. Yeah, a brownie. I did that twice, maybe. I don’t like it.

0:50:49.7 Jordan Syatt: You don’t like it?

0:50:50.3 Mike Vacanti: But I’m not saying weed is… That’s not why I’m saying that weed is overrated. I’m saying weed is overrated… The group of people who over the last 15 years have been super pro marijuana, made a lot of really good points because the criminalization of marijuana users was a really, was and is, to the degree it still exists, a really bad thing.

0:51:20.8 Jordan Syatt: Yes.

0:51:22.1 Mike Vacanti: You know, putting people away for extended amounts of time for smoking grass, like that’s bad. But the pendulum swung to the other side in people saying things to the effect of, weed is good for you, weed is not addictive, weed is so much better for you than alcohol, weed doesn’t have any negative effects on the brain. And maybe the type of marijuana that people were smoking in the ’60s, that could have been more true, I don’t know. But everything I’ve read about the stuff that people are smoking now, it’s absolutely, people get addicted to cannabis all the time. It definitely causes mental health issues in a substantial percentage of regular weed users. It’s, yeah, it’s overrated.

0:52:16.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. There’s recent research came out that like consistent weed users are more likely to develop schizophrenia. Like there’s a lot of potential psychological issues that can come from it. So, I mean, it’s definitely not as safe as many people make you believe. And it’s, many people say it’s harmless. Nope, that’s not true. That’s not true. It’s not harmless. There can be real issues with it.

0:52:45.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:52:47.0 Jordan Syatt: But also no one should be in jail for smoking weed.

0:52:50.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. You had a weed phase?

0:52:53.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh my gosh, dude, I had a huge weed phase.

0:53:00.1 Mike Vacanti: You were probably, anger levels were probably low during that phase.

0:53:02.3 Jordan Syatt: No, anger levels were really high.

0:53:04.2 Mike Vacanti: Really?

0:53:05.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That was when, it was right around the time, like before my parents… It was before, during and after my parents got divorced. So like, things were like crazy stressful in our house and it just, like, it wasn’t a good situation. And then I was like in my wrestling years and so like anger, I was like going super, super hard wrestling and then smoking weed and fucking off in school and like just being a degenerate. And like, it was an interesting time, like very angry at like, my mom brought me to a therapist and I remember I had like, I remember sitting in class and just out of nowhere, getting these waves of like, I could, nothing sparked it, nothing. I would just be sitting in class, nothing happened and rage would just randomly fill my body. And I would just like, and like I wouldn’t do anything, but I would feel it.

0:54:12.0 Jordan Syatt: It was the craziest experience, one of the craziest experiences thus far in my life, of just no stimulus, no nothing, and just a fucking explosion in my chest of anger. And I remember I went, my mom was like, “I wanna take you to a therapist.” So she brought me to this therapist and he was just, I don’t know, I didn’t like him. I would love to meet him now, like to get a different perspective on the guy. Like, I didn’t like him at the time, it didn’t seem like he was that interested. And so I only went a few times. I was like, this is just not worth it. But I was very angry at that point in my life. But weed was like the one thing that, I don’t even know what it was. There was something about it when I was just like, this is something, this can calm me down, I guess, this can relax me. But as soon as it was gone, then it was just anger. And it was good that I had wrestling as that outlet to like let that anger out too.

0:55:07.8 Mike Vacanti: Weed was the solution to the problem of anger. And so…

0:55:12.2 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Yeah.

0:55:13.2 Mike Vacanti: And so that makes sense, when I say you probably weren’t very angry then while you were using, you got reprieved from the anger.

0:55:21.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah.

0:55:22.4 Mike Vacanti: But probably the stimulus for wanting to use was…

0:55:26.1 Jordan Syatt: Was anger, yeah.

0:55:28.3 Mike Vacanti: And everything that was going on in your life at the time.

0:55:30.4 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Correct. Yeah, exactly.

0:55:32.1 Mike Vacanti: That makes sense.

0:55:34.4 Jordan Syatt: Air fryers.

0:55:35.2 Mike Vacanti: Underrated.

0:55:35.8 Jordan Syatt: Let’s go.

0:55:35.9 Mike Vacanti: They’re so convenient.

0:55:37.5 Jordan Syatt: Dude, they’re amazing.

0:55:39.1 Mike Vacanti: You can do so many things in there. Pop a chicken breast in, click a button and it’s ready and perfectly cooked in 15 minutes or whatever.

0:55:48.3 Jordan Syatt: Bro, the best salmon of my life is cooked in my wife’s air fryer. And I’ve like been all over the world, been to very nice restaurants, the best salmon of my life is the salmon my wife cooks several nights a week in the air fryer.

0:56:07.8 Mike Vacanti: Amazing.

0:56:08.4 Jordan Syatt: Also, just the marketing of calling it an air fryer, it’s really smart. Like, it’s just an oven, basically, but like calling it an air fryer, then all of a sudden you put potatoes in it and then you can say they’re french fries, but they’re healthy. It’s like, no, it’s just, you just cook potatoes.

0:56:25.8 Mike Vacanti: It seems faster than an oven.

0:56:27.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it is. It is. It is much faster. I mean, the much smaller space.

0:56:30.4 Mike Vacanti: Gets to its normal heat faster. Yeah.

0:56:32.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Fajitas.

0:56:35.5 Mike Vacanti: Underrated for health, overrated for taste.

0:56:39.8 Jordan Syatt: It’s like a really good option at a Mexican restaurant from a health perspective.

0:56:44.3 Mike Vacanti: It’s the option at a Mexican restaurant if you are, have a fitness goal at the time.

0:56:49.8 Jordan Syatt: Yep. Yep. That’s what you always get. Whenever we go to Mexican restaurants, you always get the fajitas.

0:56:55.3 Mike Vacanti: I must have been dialed in every time we were at a Mexican restaurant together.

0:57:00.3 Jordan Syatt: What do you get when you’re not dialed?

0:57:00.3 Mike Vacanti: I love a good quesadilla.

0:57:02.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, do you?

0:57:02.5 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm. What are those called? Enchiladas? Like a good…

0:57:09.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah.

0:57:10.8 Mike Vacanti: Like good enchiladas, delicious.

0:57:12.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s definitely not a dialed meal.

0:57:14.5 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:57:15.8 Jordan Syatt: Hummus.

0:57:17.2 Mike Vacanti: Overrated.

0:57:17.9 Jordan Syatt: Explain.

0:57:18.9 Mike Vacanti: Not that tasty and not great macros. And so what are we doing here? What are we…

0:57:28.2 Jordan Syatt: All right. So I’m gonna say, so we sort, just like we just did for the Mexican food, I’ve gotta give some context to it. So the way that I’ve found people in the west, number one, eat their hummus, and by the way, like, it’s hummus, but I’m gonna say hummus just because we’re here.

0:57:51.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. This is America.

0:57:52.1 Jordan Syatt: And Mike hates it when I do that. Yeah.

0:57:53.4 Mike Vacanti: This is America, Jordan.

0:57:56.5 Jordan Syatt: The way, like the Sabra hummus…

0:57:57.3 Mike Vacanti: That’s a joke.

0:57:58.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s like…

0:57:58.7 Mike Vacanti: You can say hummus however you wanna say hummus.

0:58:00.6 Jordan Syatt: You’re like, oh shit.

[laughter]

0:58:04.1 Mike Vacanti: Well, I said it as a joke. Like, oh, sorry, this is America.

0:58:10.4 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Okay, sir. I’ll just, I’ll say hummus exactly the way you want me to. No, like the hummus that you get in grocery stores here, and especially, number one, like that hummus doesn’t taste good. And if you think it tastes good, you haven’t had authentic hummus yet. What are you googling?

0:58:31.1 Mike Vacanti: I’m listening to you.

0:58:32.1 Jordan Syatt: But you’re also googling something. You’re googling the macros or something on it.

0:58:35.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s right.

0:58:37.4 Jordan Syatt: So the, a lot of people, I’ve especially found that many women have been led to believe that hummus is high protein. Hummus is not high protein. Hummus is high protein in a similar way that people think peanut butter is high protein. It is not high protein at all. It’s a okay source of, protein source at best. But it’s not a high source of protein at all.

0:59:06.3 Mike Vacanti: It kind of tastes like it should be high protein. Like, it tastes like it should be healthy, right? Like, you get, it’s like, oh, this is all right. I got, this has to be primarily protein. I gotta be doing something good, the fact that I’m eating this, the hummus in the west that I’m accustomed to, I haven’t traveled the world and eaten hummus, I’ve just…

0:59:25.0 Jordan Syatt: Well, so there’s this amazing Middle Eastern restaurant, and I think it’s Turkish, near us that we go to every week. And we get their hummus and baba ganoush, and we have it every week. And it’s higher fat, higher carb, lower protein. It’s something that we enjoy. It’s, dude, it’s, my oldest daughter, it’s her favorite thing. Like, she fucking loves this. Like, she gets so excited, she eats two orders of it to herself, it’s amazing. And it’s unlike any of the hummus that you, if you want, like go to a Middle Eastern restaurant near you. And to be fair, I’ve been to many Middle Eastern restaurants in the United States. This is by far the best I’ve ever had in the United States, the most authentic.

1:00:09.2 Jordan Syatt: There’s also a really good one in New York City, it’s called Nerai. It’s a very fancy middle Eastern restaurant. They have phenomenal hummus and amazing pita. Either way, in Plano, Texas, there’s a restaurant called Lezzet Cafe. It’s a Turkish restaurant that we go to. It’s incredible if you wanna give that a shot. Anyway, it’s underrated for taste when it’s really good, when it’s like authentic hummus. When it’s like the regular American sabra hummus or whatever, it’s overrated for taste and very overrated for macros, very overrated. Like astronomically overrated. I see everyone, oh yeah, it’s a high protein. No, it’s not. No, it’s not.

1:00:53.5 Mike Vacanti: I respect your opinion on the issue. And I can believe that really good hummus tastes better than the packaged hummus in my local grocery store.

1:01:02.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

1:01:04.1 Mike Vacanti: It’s, even the way you described really good hummus and pita, in my mind, if I started eating that, I could really do some damage on that, right? Like some nice soft pita and some delicious hummus.

1:01:15.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah. Yeah.

1:01:16.6 Mike Vacanti: I could pound. And where would that get me?

1:01:20.6 Jordan Syatt: A nap.

1:01:21.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Lot of carbs and quite a bit of fat and not as good as a different carb/fat source, such as ice cream and, but I have a sweet whatever, preference compared to savory. So that might be at play here too.

1:01:36.3 Jordan Syatt: They’re, in the Middle East they have these restaurants, they’re called hummusiya, it’s literally a restaurant that’s just for hummus. That’s all it is. It’s all they serve. That’s what they specialize in. And they make one batch a day, and then once it’s gone, that’s it, the restaurant closes. And the best ones, there’s this one in Tel Aviv called Abu Hassan, this amazing Arabic restaurant. It’s all hummus. And the jokes are always like, once you go, the rest of your day is ruined. Like you’re just, you sleep.

1:02:05.2 Mike Vacanti: You gotta nap. Yeah.

1:02:06.0 Jordan Syatt: You nap, you’re gone the whole day. You get hummus and then you go goodnight. It’s, that’s it.

1:02:13.4 Mike Vacanti: All right. Explain to me the way that you’re saying, educate me and the audience on the way you said hummus.

1:02:19.2 Jordan Syatt: Well, there’s differences whether you’re, you have an Arabic pronunciation or you have a Hebrew pronunciation. And even within those pronunciations you’ll get different, like from a more like Hebrew perspective, it’s like hummus. It’s like, aah, it’s that like, hummus. Whereas in, for Arabic, and I’m gonna do it wrong, it’s like hummus, hummus. It’s like, it comes from like really far back in the throat.

1:02:46.4 Mike Vacanti: Okay. And this is a dumb question, but you’re saying the word in English.

1:02:52.1 Jordan Syatt: Well, it’s not an English word. It’s a different word that has been adopted into English. So it’s, hummus isn’t an English word, it’s a word in various Middle Eastern cultures that now we have brought over. So it’s actually not an English word. It’s, there’s pronouncing it as though it’s in English. Does that make sense?

1:03:11.9 Mike Vacanti: No, because like the isn’t like the, like the in other languages is a different word.

1:03:20.3 Jordan Syatt: I’m trying to think of a good example.

1:03:22.1 Mike Vacanti: So when you say hummus the way you said it, you were saying it in Hebrew?

1:03:26.7 Jordan Syatt: That’s like the actual pronunciation of the word. That’s like the actual pronunciation in, I’m trying to think of a good example. So for example, like, have you ever heard someone who’s from another country and they speak perfect English, but when they pronounce where they’re from, all of a sudden they use the accent. So it’s like they’ll use the accent to just say the word from where they’re from in English. Does that make sense, have you heard that before?

1:03:53.9 Mike Vacanti: No.

1:03:55.0 Jordan Syatt: You’ve never heard somebody like, yeah, like I’m… Like someone from a a Hispanic country. I’m trying to think of a good example that I’m, yeah, yeah, what’s going on, I’m from Mexico. Like those, they speak perfect English, but when they say the name of where they’re from, it comes out in that accent. That’s because they’re saying it the way that it’s supposed to be said.

1:04:16.2 Mike Vacanti: But like countries don’t change based on the language that you’re saying the name in, same with like a proper noun. Like…

1:04:25.6 Jordan Syatt: No, they do. Like Estados Unidos is how you say United States in Spanish.

1:04:33.5 Mike Vacanti: Okay. All right. All right. You’re right.

1:04:34.1 Jordan Syatt: You don’t say the United States.

1:04:35.5 Mike Vacanti: You’re right. Okay. So, but yeah. So you said it like a different word. I’m just trying to understand if the hummus is a different way of saying the word in English, or if you’re saying it in a different language when you say it that way.

1:04:54.2 Jordan Syatt: No, it’s, the word is hummus or hummus. If you’re, depending on where you come from.

1:05:04.3 Mike Vacanti: What language is that?

1:05:06.3 Jordan Syatt: That’s the pronunciation from a Hebrew perspective or an Arabic perspective. But then they pronounce it differently in English. Just be, but it’s not native to English speakers, I would say probably. So that’s like, they just, there’s no qa or qha in English. So they, like Hanukkah. It’s Hanukkah, but in English you say Hanukkah because the qha doesn’t exist here. Does that make sense?

1:05:33.8 Mike Vacanti: No, ’cause I still don’t know what language you’re saying it in when you say it with the different noise. Is it…

1:05:43.9 Jordan Syatt: It’s still the same, like you could use it a different…

1:05:46.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s English.

1:05:48.1 Jordan Syatt: No, I’m saying the English pronunciation of, I don’t know what the actual origin of hummus, what is the…

1:05:54.4 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no. But when you say it like that, you’re saying it in English, but just with…

1:06:00.4 Jordan Syatt: I’m using the English accent.

1:06:03.0 Mike Vacanti: No, you’re using the Arab…

1:06:03.8 Jordan Syatt: The word hummus comes from the Arabic word ḥummuṣ. So, I think it’s a, I think it’s actually originally from Arabic. I think it actually comes from Arabic, is what I’m seeing. So it’s actually an Arabic word that has spread and we just call it, and you pronounce it based on where you’re from or based on how they use it.

1:06:24.1 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

1:06:24.3 Jordan Syatt: I think hummus is actually an Arabic word.

1:06:27.6 Mike Vacanti: Okay. I think I understand. You get what I’m saying though, like United States, Estados Unidos, like you’re saying it in a different language. Usually words in a different language aren’t that similar, right? They’re like, red is rojo in Spanish. It’s not like red.

1:06:51.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, I think that word because…

1:06:57.3 Mike Vacanti: Is just very similar in different languages.

1:06:58.8 Jordan Syatt: They just adopted it. They’ve literally just, they, it’s like, for, you know what, here’s another one. Tahini or tabouli. Tabouli is a really good one. Tabouli is that like, you know that, you know what I’m, you know what tabouli is?

1:07:14.3 Mike Vacanti: No.

1:07:15.7 Jordan Syatt: Tabouli is like a salad type of dish, tabouli. And so in a Middle Eastern, you’d say like, taboule is how they pronounce it. But in English you say tabouli, it’s like, but whatever country you go to, if you go to a restaurant or a grocery store, you say, I want tabouli, they’ll know what you want. They’ll know what you’re saying because they just say it in the same, that’s just like what everyone calls it. Or for example, saki. Saki, the drink, saki, like the Japanese drink, saki, everywhere you go in the world, saki, saki. There’s no different name for the word saki, but I’m pretty sure it’s a Japanese name.

1:07:53.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Interesting, like hello in Arabic…

1:07:56.3 Jordan Syatt: But like if you go to Japan…

1:07:58.3 Mike Vacanti: Hello in Arabic is mrhban, like it’s a, do you get what I’m saying? It’s a totally different word.

1:08:05.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. But I think foods are different.

1:08:07.9 Mike Vacanti: And that’s interesting. I didn’t know that.

1:08:09.3 Jordan Syatt: So in Japan, they would say sake, but we say saki because that’s just how we’ve adapted it to the English pronunciation, the English, like the, how we like, our mouth works and where our tongue hits and all of that. But wherever you go in the world, if you say saki, or, people are gonna know what you’re having, even though it’s a Japanese word.

1:08:30.9 Mike Vacanti: Okay. So there are some words that are very similarly pronounced regardless of the language and there are other words that are completely differently pronounced based on the language that you’re speaking?

1:08:40.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I would imagine for foods it’s probably…

1:08:45.4 Mike Vacanti: Like orange is anaranjado in Spanish, it’s a different word. It’s not like orange with a different, you know?

1:08:56.6 Jordan Syatt: Yes, that’s correct.

1:08:57.4 Mike Vacanti: Blanco, white. Like they’re not close, but they mean the same thing ’cause it’s a different language.

1:09:02.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. They do have different vocabulary, but for some reason, I think, there are some words that are…

1:09:06.3 Mike Vacanti: But there’s some words that are close. Just hold true across language.

1:09:11.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, hold true across… Yeah, exactly.

1:09:13.3 Mike Vacanti: This is…

1:09:14.3 Jordan Syatt: Exactly.

1:09:14.5 Mike Vacanti: If you listened this far, you are, hit that like button. Give us a five star review.

1:09:19.9 Jordan Syatt: You’re a true fan to listen through that fucking conversation.

1:09:21.9 Mike Vacanti: We love you. All right, let’s…

1:09:25.8 Jordan Syatt: We really front loaded this episode though, like we front loaded it with some good stuff.

1:09:29.2 Mike Vacanti: This was a great episode, and we’re gonna back load it too. Let’s finish rapid fire with a few good ones.

1:09:34.4 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Donuts.

1:09:35.5 Mike Vacanti: Underrated.

1:09:35.9 Jordan Syatt: What’s your favorite donut?

1:09:37.7 Mike Vacanti: There’s too many good ones. We’ve talked about this before. Right now I think I’m in a glazed donut phase.

1:09:42.9 Jordan Syatt: Believing in a higher power.

1:09:45.0 Mike Vacanti: Extremely underrated.

1:09:46.4 Jordan Syatt: I actually had a great conversation, this was with, from Kevin from the mentorship, Kevin Driscoll.

1:09:53.8 Mike Vacanti: Oh, nice.

1:09:54.1 Jordan Syatt: And he said that he’s been going to church more and it’s been really nice for him, which was really wonderful.

1:10:00.5 Mike Vacanti: That’s awesome. Good for Kevin.

1:10:02.3 Jordan Syatt: Jump rope.

1:10:03.4 Mike Vacanti: Jump ropes… By the way, you didn’t answer the last two.

1:10:05.7 Jordan Syatt: What was the first one?

1:10:06.7 Mike Vacanti: Donuts.

1:10:07.5 Jordan Syatt: Donuts I would say, I’m gonna say donuts are overrated, to be honest. You know why? I’ll say why, donuts, they taste great, but they’re gone way too fast.

1:10:21.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s true. That’s true.

1:10:23.4 Jordan Syatt: Where, and so I would say instead of a donut, I’d probably go for either a bagel or a muffin.

1:10:29.9 Mike Vacanti: Really? A bagel?

1:10:32.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Depending on the bagel. But like, I love an egg bagel with cream cheese. Like, it’s just so good. It’s so good. And, you know, also I’m more of a savory as opposed to sweet.

1:10:47.0 Mike Vacanti: True.

1:10:47.6 Jordan Syatt: So, but donuts, like, they just, there’s no fillingness to them whatsoever and like, I could easily have six. Whereas I have a bagel, I’m good. So I’m gonna say I would rather have a bagel and I think donuts are overrated. And then I would say, you know, believing in a higher power, I would also massively, massively, massively, massively underrated. Jump rope.

1:11:14.0 Mike Vacanti: Slightly underrated.

1:11:14.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I agree. I think it’s a really good goal for people to have because it’s, jumping and plyometric ability is really important as you get older and in general for athletics, it’s a really good scale for people to have. I would say it’s underrated.

1:11:28.7 Mike Vacanti: Coordination, fun, ability to get your heart rate up. Yeah.

1:11:34.7 Jordan Syatt: Doing the splits.

1:11:36.4 Mike Vacanti: Pass.

1:11:37.4 Jordan Syatt: No, say the truth. It’s overrated.

1:11:39.4 Mike Vacanti: Overrated.

1:11:40.1 Jordan Syatt: Overrated, 100%. It’s overrated. Doing the splits is overrated.

1:11:44.3 Mike Vacanti: I think it’s properly rated or maybe slightly underrated from a coolness perspective.

1:11:49.2 Jordan Syatt: From a coolness, yes, for sure. It’s over, like if I’m holding it to the same standard as I’ve held everything else thus far, which is like for life, it’s overrated, for sure. It’s not like I’m gonna be… The risk of injury and the benefits you get from being able to do the splits, the risk of injury you get from actually trying to get to that point and then the benefits you get from doing it are like, it’s not worth it from a life perspective. From a coolness perspective, it is super underrated.

1:12:22.3 Mike Vacanti: And if you’re excited about it, having, like chasing down goals you’re excited about is really good for life.

1:12:28.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. But the actual, getting into the splits is overrated from a life perspective.

1:12:33.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. That level of mobility isn’t…

1:12:35.4 Jordan Syatt: Necessary at all. Yeah. Handstands.

1:12:39.6 Mike Vacanti: Trying to think of what people think of handstands.

1:12:41.9 Jordan Syatt: Might be on par with splits.

1:12:43.3 Mike Vacanti: You think so?

1:12:44.5 Jordan Syatt: In terms of, it’s very, very cool. From a coolness, it’s super underrated. It’s an outrageous display of strength and mobility and balance and coordination and perceptual awareness, all of that. But the time it takes, and by the way, that’s one of my next goals, is to do a really good handstand. From a life perspective, the time and effort and dedication and risk that goes along with it is not worth from a life perspective. From a coolness perspective and a athletic perspective, yeah, like, awesome. Super cool, underrated, but from a life perspective, no. There are other things you could do that would be better.

1:13:21.9 Mike Vacanti: I think that’s a good answer. Would you say that handstands are more beneficial from a physical health perspective? And let’s actually separate this from injury risk. But is the ability to do a really good handstand or walk around on your hands, does that say more about physical health than ability to do the splits?

1:13:45.8 Jordan Syatt: It’s a really good question. This is a really good and interesting and unique question. I would say the main thing, it depends on, are your splits controlled or purely based on flexibility? Like, if you can hold that position of the split and display your strength there, I would say it’s equal. If you are just so flexible that you can get into the splits, but you can’t show your ability to stabilize and control that movement, handstand is a way better display of strength and I would say performance and control of your body. Because you can’t do a handstand if you’re weak. You just can’t. There are people who can do the splits who are weak. So I think realistically a really good handstand, there’s no one who can do a handstand that’s weak. There are people who can do the splits who are weak. So, yeah.

1:15:00.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s our answer.

1:15:01.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh, the leg press.

1:15:03.0 Mike Vacanti: Underrated.

1:15:04.3 Jordan Syatt: Really?

1:15:04.8 Mike Vacanti: Leg press got a lot of hate. Leg press was overrated for many years in there.

1:15:08.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh wow.

1:15:09.1 Mike Vacanti: Leg press is underrated.

1:15:12.5 Jordan Syatt: Well, wait, I’m gonna go overrated still.

1:15:14.9 Mike Vacanti: No.

1:15:15.8 Jordan Syatt: Do you leg press?

1:15:17.2 Mike Vacanti: No.

1:15:20.3 Jordan Syatt: Why not?

1:15:24.2 Mike Vacanti: Because I don’t care that much about adding muscle… Let me rephrase. I don’t want to add that much more muscle to my lower body right now, but if I did, I would definitely leg press.

1:15:36.4 Jordan Syatt: Why don’t you leg press? Just purely muscle?

1:15:38.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I don’t see a lot of benefit to it, outside of trying to add size to your legs.

1:15:43.0 Jordan Syatt: What do you do instead of leg press?

1:15:45.0 Mike Vacanti: Nothing, ’cause I don’t have an exercise that is like, there’s no…

1:15:49.5 Jordan Syatt: What are your leg exercises?

1:15:51.3 Mike Vacanti: There’s no balance involved, there’s no like…

1:15:53.6 Jordan Syatt: Got it, got it, got it.

1:15:53.7 Mike Vacanti: Real stability involved and it’s, I mean, I guess you could say the combination of… I mean the closest thing that I do is maybe a leg extension, but one is single joint and one is multi and I just like the leg extension. Where the leg press would go in my workout if I was trying to maximize lower body size would probably be like the third movement of the day on a lower body lift. And I’m doing something that’s more movement based, like a lateral lunge in that spot, then, okay, I’m just gonna slap on another three to four by eight to 12 to try to add size.

1:16:38.8 Jordan Syatt: Remember when we did… Did we do German Volume Training with that…?

1:16:40.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. We did 10 by 10 on that leg press for no reason. We did 10 by 10 on there, we did 5 by 15 on the cable pull through at, that was at LA in, LA Fitness in…

1:16:54.5 Jordan Syatt: In Naples.

1:16:55.3 Mike Vacanti: Florida. Yeah. Coaching Gary.

1:16:57.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that was brutal. That was…

1:16:58.9 Mike Vacanti: You had us on a timer. What were we doing? Why were we doing that?

[laughter]

1:17:05.5 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know. I feel like that was still early on in getting to know each other.

1:17:09.8 Mike Vacanti: It Was.

1:17:10.6 Jordan Syatt: And I think I was like, all right, I gotta impress this guy.

1:17:14.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s amazing. That was rough, dude.

1:17:19.2 Jordan Syatt: And I remember like, I had him weighted…

1:17:20.3 Mike Vacanti: We were doing it on the minute, what were we doing?

1:17:22.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, on the minute, and then I would start going at like 45 seconds. You’re like, wait dude, wait, what are you doing? Wait until the minute’s up.

1:17:30.2 Mike Vacanti: Yes, yes. You were trying to rush it. I was like, these are low enough rest as is. That was fun.

1:17:39.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you were mad at me.

1:17:41.5 Mike Vacanti: For going early?

1:17:42.2 Jordan Syatt: I was like, yeah, I love those gyms though. Yeah, for going early. You’re like, wait, hold on, wait until your minute is up.

1:17:48.4 Mike Vacanti: I would do the same thing today.

1:17:50.1 Jordan Syatt: I believe it.

1:17:51.1 Mike Vacanti: All right. Rapid fire. Last couple. Rapid fire.

1:17:54.1 Jordan Syatt: Getting married and having kids.

1:17:56.2 Mike Vacanti: Underrated.

1:17:57.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Very underrated.

1:18:00.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we’re in the rapid fire round. I’m not gonna go into this, but there was conscious thought on my end about like, you know, kind of in my late 20s bachelor years about how I wanted to live and came to the conclusion, and I guess I can only speak for me on this issue, that having a family is the proper way to live for me.

1:18:28.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Die Hard as the best Christmas movie.

1:18:32.4 Mike Vacanti: You’re just skipping questions?

1:18:33.8 Jordan Syatt: I said it was super underrated. Super. I mean, anyone who follows me knows that like my greatest joy is family. Like, it’s, yeah. Like, ah, it’s pretty overrated. No, it’s, with every ounce of my heart and soul, there has been nothing that has brought more joy and meaning and purpose to my life than getting married and having children. Nothing. Like, it doesn’t even come close. And going back to then believing in a higher power, nothing has led me to believe more strongly in my faith and in God than getting married and having children. Like, it’s led me further and further and further down. It’s just been a wonderful experience. It’s been incredible. And I think…

1:19:26.4 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go.

1:19:27.9 Jordan Syatt: For the idea of like finding purpose and why are we here, I get to see in the faces of my wife and two daughters every day why I’m here. It’s like there’s never a question and it’s just, it’s the greatest.

1:19:44.5 Mike Vacanti: Well said. Die Hard is the best Christmas movie?

1:19:47.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah. That was the question.

1:19:49.2 Mike Vacanti: I’ve never seen Die Hard.

1:19:50.0 Jordan Syatt: Really?

1:19:51.4 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm. I know there’s debate as to whether or not it’s a Christmas movie.

1:19:55.3 Jordan Syatt: You know what’s funny, so I watched that movie, I don’t know, I wasn’t the biggest fan of it. And I can’t say whether or not…

1:20:04.9 Mike Vacanti: Bruce Willis?

1:20:06.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s Bruce Willis. I know some people like get really obsessed with that. Just like people get obsessed with Taylor Swift. I’m sure I’m gonna get some heat for it, but I can’t say anything from a Christmas perspective because historically my Christmas is ordering Chinese and watching a movie. But like, so I can’t say anything from a Christmas perspective, but like from a movie perspective, I don’t… I feel like it’s a little bit overrated, to be honest.

1:20:33.9 Mike Vacanti: I haven’t seen it, but I’m gonna say it’s overrated just because It’s a Wonderful Life is so good that Die Hard can’t be the best Christmas movie.

1:20:42.7 Jordan Syatt: Adjusting training to women’s period. And for whatever’s worth, this is from a woman named Tori and she did the eye roll to suggest that she also believes that it is overrated.

1:20:55.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I think that… I think there’s something to be said for all people to pay attention to how they’re feeling on any given day, any given training session, any given week. And especially if, you know, you’re not trying to be a pro at this fitness thing or you’re not a pro athlete, like, you know, downregulating, being smart, not getting yourself hurt is a really good idea. What I have seen online with these training programs with volume and intensity and workouts essentially tailored to where a woman is in her cycle that month is definitely overkill and is an unnecessary level of, basically an unnecessary level of not doing anything during the week when they don’t feel good.

1:21:57.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would say, there are two ways we can look at this. We can look at this from the very scientific research based perspective, which I’ve seen a lot of people doing recently. And then we can also look at this from like just a very individual perspective. And from the science based perspective, the research is pretty clear that it doesn’t really make much of a difference and doesn’t make sense to try and structure your training like around the period and like, definitively your period, you need to train differently. From the individual perspective, I’ve worked with enough women to realize, like some women are just really, really, really fucking affected by it from a physical, and which means we’re gonna adjust your training. It doesn’t mean that we, like the training is optimized. It’s not like everything is done around your period.

1:22:52.8 Jordan Syatt: All it means is during that period, during that time when you aren’t feeling good, we’re going to adjust your training. And like, we’ll, if that means lowering the volume, lowering the intensity, great, but it’s not like everything is built around that. It’s just more like we’re just adjusting for how you feel. And if one month you happen to feel great, then we don’t change anything. Then like you go hard and you train hard and whatever. If you don’t feel good at a different time of the month, then we’ll adjust the training the same. It’s not as much about the period as it is based on how you feel, which is I think the most important aspect of that.

1:23:29.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And there’s a pattern to more women feeling not great during whatever, the back half of their luteal phase. And so for that week, if you can’t go hard, that’s okay, you can’t go hard. Similarly to, you know, you only got three hours of sleep for three nights in a row? All right, you can’t go hard today, but you’re gonna get something in. You’re gonna do what you can based on how you feel that day.

1:23:55.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

1:23:56.4 Mike Vacanti: Rapid fire. Last two.

1:23:58.3 Jordan Syatt: I gotta pee so bad.

1:24:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Just rapid fire. Just read two.

1:24:00.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude, you just, we read two. We just read two.

1:24:03.2 Mike Vacanti: I know, but I need a good finisher.

1:24:05.7 Jordan Syatt: Chick-fil-A.

1:24:06.6 Mike Vacanti: Underrated.

1:24:08.2 Jordan Syatt: Okay, that’s a good one to finish on, Chick-fil-A.

1:24:10.2 Mike Vacanti: What do you think?

1:24:11.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s underrated. Especially like the grilled nuggets.

1:24:12.8 Mike Vacanti: Amazing. And the speed of service. These drive-throughs, you just fly through them. You can order ahead.

1:24:18.9 Jordan Syatt: Thank you everyone for listening. Please leave a five star review on the podcast, it would mean the world to us. Thank you to everyone who’s already joined the mentorship. We love everyone in the mentorship. It’s wonderful that we get to talk with you every week doing the Q&As. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all the listeners. We love you, we appreciate you. Have an amazing week.

1:24:37.3 Mike Vacanti: Bye everyone.