Episode 218: The Neurodivergent Era, Pornography, and Being a Father…

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

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

0:00:13.3 Mike Vacanti: Bro. We’ve got a real list today. We’ve got a real list of talking points. What are you sipping on? Turkish coffee?

0:00:20.6 Jordan Syatt: Turkish coffee, man. Turkish coffee. Caffeine. That was a good guess. That was a very good guess.

0:00:25.8 Mike Vacanti: It was a good guess because you already told me. Do you have any kind of spam filter on your emails? I get so much cold selling crap email these days. I know you have your assistant in your inbox but, does she just delete everything or do you guys have some kind of strategy?

0:00:49.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s a really good question that you’d literally have to ask her. Because I have no idea. I’m sure she’s very organized. When I was managing the inbox, it was like an atom bomb going off every single day when I opened it, which is why I had such bad anxiety. But when I see it now, she’s got tabs on tabs on tabs on tabs and she organizes it super well. I don’t know how she does it. But, she’s got systems in place and I don’t know how… Actually, I was on someone’s podcast and then they fucking put me on their email list just like you’ve been talking about recently. Which is really obnoxious.

0:01:24.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s a real strategy.

0:01:25.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s a horrible strategy is what it is. It’s a losing strategy, is what it is.

0:01:29.9 Mike Vacanti: Horrible. But a lot of people are doing it.

0:01:31.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I don’t know what that is. But, no, I have no clue. Do you have systems in place to deal with the spam?

0:01:38.0 Mike Vacanti: I’ve got no systems, but I get so many on all of my email addresses. So much cold selling and not even spam. Actual people reaching out who are probably emailing hundreds or thousands of people a day. And it used to be bad, but it’s just gotten worse.

0:01:56.7 Jordan Syatt: Which probably isn’t good for email marketing because people are just tired of getting so much spam. It’s just click, click, click. Delete, delete, delete. That’s why you’ve got to make your emails super good. It’s getting harder and harder and harder. I’m getting a lot of text spam. I get text spam every day.

0:02:10.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, same.

0:02:11.3 Jordan Syatt: Every day, I get text spam. Delete. Report as junk.

0:02:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Pay your outstanding toll by tomorrow or you’re going to jail.

0:02:18.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. A lot of spam. A lot of junk out there.

0:02:23.6 Mike Vacanti: Do you have any thoughts? Because I feel like the average content creator does a horrible job of this. And I think you do a good job. A well above average job, so I’m curious if you have any thoughts on the subject of not letting feedback from your audience corrupt or change your message over time.

0:02:55.2 Jordan Syatt: Anxiety medication helps a lot with that. I actually think that a lot of that was… I think someone asked me recently. I forget when I spoke about this. In 2020, I was doing therapy because I was so anxious. All right. Maybe we spoke about this on a podcast or something.

0:03:18.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we did.

0:03:19.5 Jordan Syatt: 2020 was super anxious around the George Floyd, BLM, getting inundated with people. Why are you saying this? Why aren’t you saying this? And no matter what I put out, I was just getting DMs, DMs, DMs. And so there was that. That was the peak worst. But then after October 7th, I was putting stuff out and got maybe even potentially worse than 2020. But it was something that was so near and dear to me. And my family’s there. And I have friends who are involved in it to the point where I was like, “I don’t care what happens what people say. My business isn’t even worth as much as me talking about this. I’m willing to go all in.” And I actually think that that was a certain level of exposure therapy that helped me a lot in terms of… I got met with the worst of the worst of the worst that you could possibly get met with. And I’m still here, I’m still standing. It’s not an issue. So I do think going through it was the most impactful thing where you have to walk through the fire and you have to take the blows take the hits.

0:04:33.6 Jordan Syatt: I think that you probably have to analyze what you’re doing it for. I think a lot of people’s main goal is, go viral, get views, get likes. That’s their goal. And when that’s your goal, it’s easy to change your stance. It’s easy to change your morals and your ethics and your practices because your goal is essentially to get as big as possible. Make as much money as possible. So whatever you have to do to get there is worth it. Whereas if your goal is, help people with the truth as much as possible, then all of a sudden that is your barrier that will prevent you mitigate the risk of making poor decisions, regardless of what people say, regardless of their response. Regardless of what other people are doing. So probably keeping your ethos at the forefront of your mind, and letting that be your guiding light is probably the best answer I can come up with.

0:05:33.3 Mike Vacanti: I like it. Good. Trial by fire.

0:05:36.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I think with everything. With everything you just got to do it. But I also take anxiety medications. I think that also helps.

0:05:48.9 Mike Vacanti: I also see it not just related to contentious issues but around positions on issues within the fitness space. You’ll see people say stuff that you know they don’t necessarily believe. Because it’s popular or because they know it’ll get a positive response. Or because the opposite of that is very unpopular and they don’t want negative backlash even if it’s a hard pill to swallow. Anyway, it’s interesting. It’s an interesting balance between saying what you believe to be true versus saying what you think will get a good response from your audience. Because it depends on who and what type of person has ended up following you over the years. Because one message can hit with a different audience. But if that’s not your audience… That’s what I mean by slowly you can see feedback from certain audiences change the message of a creator. Which is just an interesting phenomenon.

0:06:58.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Especially in those more extreme camps. Where it’s like, you could have someone who maybe started out as more moderate, but then they start saying something a little bit more extreme, a little bit more extreme. And they get some feedback. They get some good feedback, and all of a sudden they’re like, “Oh, I’m just going to go deeper into this. I’m going to get deeper into this.”

0:07:14.3 Mike Vacanti: “Water is poisonous. Water is poisonous.”

0:07:16.6 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And then when you get that good feedback, it’s easy to convince yourself that any bad feedback are just haters. Then you’re like, I’m only gonna make this content for the people who are giving me good feedback. Which is also dangerous. It’s also interesting in reverse because either you’re talking about… I’m jumbling my words… But you’re talking about. It’s what you say but there’s also an issue of what people don’t say. Maybe they’re changing what they believe, but maybe they’re just not saying what they believe at all.

0:07:57.2 Mike Vacanti: Wow.

0:07:58.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s almost like the lie of omission, where it’s like I’m just not going to tell you at all because I don’t want to ruffle feathers. I don’t want to say anything not because I don’t believe it, but because I’m worried about the negative feedback as a result of it. Which that also… Whether we’re talking about fitness stuff or political stuff or whatever. The staying silent. I don’t think it’s good for the individual, and it’s definitely not good for society as a whole. Because when you stay silent… And your views are often likely the majority. But when the majority stays silent, and that vocal minority gets even louder and louder and louder. And that’s how those crazy views can really start to permeate… The culture permeates people’s minds and they think that this is what the majority of people actually think.

0:08:45.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. It’s a good point. I do think lie of omission is the most common in this situation. Especially because most people are on the internet to run a business. And so technically any opinion that you have that you’re not putting out publicly is a lie of omission.

0:09:07.3 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:09:07.8 Mike Vacanti: And that’s a pretty crazy standard to hold a human being to.

0:09:12.3 Jordan Syatt: Correct. There’s a guy who asks me in every Q&A. Every single Q&A, a guy asks me, should the US apologize to Japan for dropping the atomic bombs. And I don’t answer it publicly. Every single time. I’m like, “Motherfucker, dude. That’s a loaded question, bro. That’s a really loaded question.” And we could go into the history and all of that but I’m like, “I don’t want to touch that fucking question right now.”

0:09:32.1 Mike Vacanti: It’s also… And this truly isn’t a cop-out. Respectfully to you, I’m not going to you for that answer. There’s a lot of people who I would go to before you…

0:09:45.4 Jordan Syatt: Like going to a fitness professional for that. Yeah.

0:09:48.9 Mike Vacanti: So the expectation… By the way, it’s kind of funny that the same guy asks that same question every single time.

0:09:54.4 Jordan Syatt: Every time. Every single Q&A. Literally every one. And I respect…

0:09:58.9 Mike Vacanti: Have you replied to him on the side in a DM and been like, bro…

0:10:01.9 Jordan Syatt: This morning. Literally this morning I found… That’s why it was top of mind because I’d just… Maybe 10 minutes ago. Because I put up a Q&A, and I said, “Hey, man. I see that you write this every single time. And I appreciate and respect that you’re watching my stories and doing this.” And I was like, “I don’t answer it publicly, because no matter what I say, I’m going to get insane backlash. And quite frankly, I just don’t want to deal with that right now.” But I did give him my response. A relatively brief response to what I think to what is a very difficult question. Just so he could stop fucking asking me. Because every time I open up the damn Q&A, he’s one of the first ones. Every single time.

0:10:46.1 Mike Vacanti: Does it stress you out?

0:10:48.4 Jordan Syatt: It does because I want to answer. I want to have the conversation. But even just writing out an answer. It’s not a yes or no. That’s not a yes or no. You’ve got to really go in nuance. You’ve got to look at what’s happening on both sides and look at what the potential of what was happening? What could have happened if it wasn’t dropped? There’s just so much to discuss. It’s not a simple yes or no. I just wanted him to stop asking me so I gave him my brief nuanced answer.

0:11:18.5 Mike Vacanti: Let’s fire up some questions.

0:11:22.5 Jordan Syatt: You know what? I want to get your opinion on something. A dude asked me the other day. Let me read you his question. Because I I got some people who are really happy about it, and some people who were not happy about it. A dude asked me, he said, what is the best fitness test for a 40-year-old dad of four? And so I said I’m going to make up some benchmarks to shoot four off the top of my head. For what would be good fitness tests? Good benchmarks for a 40-year-old dad of four. I did this for a dude and I did this for women as well. The first four were all health markers. I was like blood pressure, 120 over 80 or under. Resting heart rate, under 65 beats per minute. LDL cholesterol, under 100. HDL, over 60. Those are the first four. Not controversial really. One person goes like ApoB is more important than cholesterol. I was like, yeah. I agree. But we’re just going with this basic one. Anyway. Then I went. A mile run, under eight minutes.

0:12:23.6 Jordan Syatt: So you run a mile under eight. Max deadlift, 2.5 times body weight. Max chin up, 10 plus. Max pushup, 40 plus. Max squat, 1.5x body weight. Then touch your toes with your legs straight. That’s what I put for men. We’ll go through that first. Let’s just ignore the health markers, and go to purely performance markers. Agree, disagree on 40-year-old dad of four. This is for a high level. This isn’t what everyone should be at, but this would be a very high level fitness for a 40-year-old dad of four. Do you think it’s a good benchmark to shoot for?

0:13:01.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I think it’s good.

0:13:04.7 Jordan Syatt: Agree, disagree. What do you think?

0:13:06.3 Mike Vacanti: I think it’s hard to make these generic rather than specific to an individual’s goals and interests. As far as generic goes, you have a nice combination of strength, flexibility, aerobic. The numbers seem solid.

0:13:33.4 Jordan Syatt: Okay, for a 40-year-old woman, same health stuff. But then I have mile run, under nine-and-a-half minutes. Max deadlift, 1.7 times five body weight. Max chin up three or more. Max push up, 15 or more. Max squat, 1.25 times body weight. Then also touch your toes with your legs straight. Again these are goals to shoot for, not what every mom at 40 years old needs to do. But this would be a very high level elite fitness for that person.

0:14:10.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I think you’re showing your…

0:14:14.1 Jordan Syatt: Powerlifting.

0:14:14.6 Mike Vacanti: Exactly. You’re showing a powerlifting background there. I think those are slightly harder targets relative to the other targets.

0:14:25.7 Jordan Syatt: Yep. I agree.

0:14:26.6 Mike Vacanti: Especially if someone doesn’t have a history of doing a ton of barbell training or just has never been interested in getting the heaviest big three they can. Yeah, I think it’s a solid list.

0:14:43.0 Jordan Syatt: Solid list. I agree.

0:14:44.2 Mike Vacanti: What was the feedback?

0:14:45.2 Jordan Syatt: Overall feedback was really good. I got maybe 94% of people, both men and women being like, “Screenshotting this. This is amazing. Da da da.” There was one person who was really upset. A woman who was really upset at the women’s one. Basically she said… She was like I’m well over 200 pounds, and there’s no way I could ever do these. And I was like, “Well, yeah. Being heavier makes literally all of these impossible.”

0:15:15.9 Mike Vacanti: You’re smart.

0:15:17.3 Jordan Syatt: What do you mean by that?

0:15:19.5 Mike Vacanti: I just realized you didn’t put… I guess it’s all performance. That’s why. But you didn’t put any kind of body comp metric in there.

0:15:31.3 Jordan Syatt: No.

0:15:31.3 Mike Vacanti: It’s just built in through relative strength.

0:15:31.5 Jordan Syatt: Exactly. Yeah. And I was like I bet if… Because she was relatively short. She had a very high body fat percentage. And she was like there’s no way I could hit these. I was like I know. And as your body fat and body comp improves, you would be able to hit these or get much closer to them at least. She got really upset that it was based on body weight. I was like that’s by design. She didn’t answer but I was like, how’s your cholesterol? How’s your blood pressure? And there was no answer. I’m like okay well those would probably also improve if you lost body fat as well. Yeah, that was one of the louder people who were upset. But the vast majority really liked it.

0:16:15.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I understand why she was upset even if she’s in the wrong.

0:16:22.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I fully understand. Yeah. Because I’m a bigot and discriminatory.

0:16:28.8 Mike Vacanti: No, no. I mean her feelings were hurt and she…

0:16:31.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. But also there’s still a huge movement of people saying, you could be whatever size and it doesn’t matter. So to then hear someone else… Maybe she sees those pieces of content saying it doesn’t matter what size you are blah blah. And then all of a sudden you see someone say, “Okay, we’re going to bring that into the equation.” It can be a little bit difficult. The interesting thing was as soon as… Because the guy said, “40-year-old father of four.” And then a woman said, “All right, do the same thing for a woman 40-year-old.” But then I got people being like okay, now do it for a 56-year-old mother of two. Do it for a 33-year-old, no kids. I was like, oh, my gosh. That’s not how specific we’re getting right now.

0:17:22.4 Mike Vacanti: Generic adult. Adjust for these based on age or busyness and lifestyle.

0:17:30.8 Jordan Syatt: Yes. You look. What would be the fitness test markers for a 43-year-old female? I said… Oh, 34… 34-year-old. Yeah. I was like it’s… People got very specific with it. Okay.

0:17:47.5 Mike Vacanti: You never do that.

0:17:48.6 Jordan Syatt: No, I don’t.

0:17:49.3 Mike Vacanti: I’ve never seen you go dyslexic.

0:17:51.7 Jordan Syatt: Well, it was backwards in the camera. It was backwards. That’s why I did that. Yeah.

0:17:56.2 Mike Vacanti: I only say that because I do it all the time.

0:18:00.1 Jordan Syatt: I went dyslexic.

0:18:01.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m hyper-aware of it. I’m constantly doing it when I’m reading. And I’m wondering if I did it my whole life, and just didn’t notice or if I’ve just started doing it in the last five to eight years.

0:18:13.5 Jordan Syatt: Do you think you need glasses?

0:18:14.8 Mike Vacanti: No, it’s not… No, my vision’s good. I went to the eye doctor two years ago, maybe? My vision’s very good. I don’t even know what it is. It’s not a vision thing. It’s some other kind of issue.

0:18:30.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s a dyslexic thing.

0:18:32.0 Mike Vacanti: But I really do. When I’m reading, sometimes I’ll pull a word from the line below. The line that I’m reading into the sentence that I’m actually reading. It’s not good.

0:18:47.9 Jordan Syatt: I’ll do that if I’m multitasking. If I’m trying to read and having a conversation with someone, I’ll mix up words. But if I’m just reading and concentrating, that doesn’t happen. But if you’re reading and concentrating you’ll still do that?

0:19:01.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:19:01.5 Jordan Syatt: Dude, you’ve got some dyslexia.

0:19:03.3 Mike Vacanti: I’ve got something. I really think… I’m not going to continue to harp on this and we’ll move on to another question, but I think our digital environment is… I think it’s causing a lot of people to… I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole right now.

0:19:25.4 Jordan Syatt: Cool.

0:19:25.8 Mike Vacanti: It’s causing a lot of issues. If you weren’t aware, that’s my position on technology.

0:19:29.8 Jordan Syatt: Dude. You just did the Kanye. You just did the Kanye. “I’m not going to say who it is… He was Jewish.”

0:19:38.1 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no. That’s not what I was gonna…

0:19:39.9 Jordan Syatt: “I’m not going to go down this right now… It’s causing a lot of issues.”

0:19:42.9 Mike Vacanti: Causing a lot of issues was my way of summarizing the deep rabbit hole I was going to go down, talking about over-diagnosis of ADHD and people who think they have ADHD, but they just show similar sets of symptoms because of abuse of technology and other lifestyle factors. I was gonna go… Now I’m doing it. I was gonna go all the way down the rabbit hole. But when I said it’s causing a lot of issues, I was just summarizing.

0:20:10.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. There are so many ADHD accounts now. Everyone now says they have ADHD.

0:20:17.6 Mike Vacanti: Yep. I see a lot of it too.

0:20:20.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s a big thing. You don’t want to go down that rabbit hole right now.

0:20:25.2 Mike Vacanti: I’m just uneducated. But, yes, I think that we are over-diagnosed. I think the medical establishment is financially incentivized to over-diagnose all kinds of ailments that require lifetime prescriptions.

0:20:43.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Agreed.

0:20:44.9 Mike Vacanti: Yes, I think we’re over-diagnosing ADHD, which is not to say that many people have it on some spectrum but whatever. In 2021 there were 41 million prescriptions for Adderall in the United States. There was 300 million people, 41 million prescriptions. It’s crazy. It’s math.

0:21:12.8 Jordan Syatt: I’ve seen a lot of people who are like “Oh, I was finally diagnosed with this. It makes so much sense. I’ve always had trouble concentrating and I’ve always been X, Y, and Z.” I’m like that’s what it’s like to be an adult or to be a human. We have trouble concentrating on certain things. “Yeah, I’m neurodivergent.” I’m like or are you just a regular human being who’s struggling with regular human being things in today’s day and age? I don’t know. And I also think a lot of people are looking to be a part of a group and to relate with other people. And so when they can then say, yeah, I’m part of that group. It makes it easier for them to… Yeah, I struggle with this. I don’t know. I think it’s another aspect of, yes, 100%, the medical community or Pharma. Whatever you want to call it. Being incentivized to make money off of this to diagnose this. But then that also playing into people’s own psychology of being. I want to be a part of this group that struggles with this specific thing because then that justifies why I’ve been struggling with this. When in reality it’s just part of the human condition as well.

0:22:22.9 Jordan Syatt: And not to say that it doesn’t exist, but it is absolutely being way overdone. And the number of accounts that I see are like the ADHD this or the neurodivergent this. I’m like, it’s just feeding into people’s belief that they are disabled and unable to do X, Y, and Z, unless they have this literal meth. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a good thing.

0:22:45.4 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely. And it’s not limited to ADHD.

0:22:49.0 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:22:53.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m not gonna… Yes, it’s everything. It’s everything. But I’m not going to say it. I’m not going to say it.

0:23:04.5 Jordan Syatt: I was so waiting for you to say it. He was Jewish. It’s one of the greatest clips of all time.

0:23:12.0 Mike Vacanti: We see it anywhere where there is money to be made. We talked about food noise a couple of episodes ago. And we know many many people who are like, I have food noise. I have food noise. I have food noise.

0:23:27.6 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:23:28.5 Mike Vacanti: People were anxious running from Tiger… I know we talked about that in this episode. I think everything is over-diagnosed and I also think everyone should be… Try it out and see what works for you.

0:23:40.8 Jordan Syatt: Well, meth is going to make you more productive.

0:23:43.5 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely. Yeah. That’s the best part of that is when it’s like, “Oh, this is how normal people feel all the time?”

0:23:50.1 Jordan Syatt: No. That’s not how normal people feel all the time. At all.

0:23:55.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s how people feel the first time they take a substance that increases dopamine production by 1000%.

0:24:02.3 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:24:05.2 Mike Vacanti: Literally 1000%

0:24:06.7 Jordan Syatt: Not hyperbole. Yeah.

0:24:06.8 Mike Vacanti: Cold plunge 250%. Which is incredible by the way. Cocaine’s 500%. Nicotine is in the 300% range. 1000.

0:24:19.5 Jordan Syatt: 1000. Yeah. This is what it’s like to be normal and to not have to worry about staying focused. No. No, it’s not.

0:24:29.7 Mike Vacanti: But SSRIs too. Not as addictive. Not as dangerous. But also over-prescribed. The research now shows that for depression, exercise is as effective if not more effective than SSRIs.

0:24:43.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And not to say that people don’t need it. And not to say that…

0:24:47.9 Mike Vacanti: Of course.

0:24:48.9 Jordan Syatt: Of course. Yeah. Just to do that old…

0:24:49.6 Mike Vacanti: Just to play defense against the one who defends it.

0:24:50.6 Jordan Syatt: Hedging again.

0:24:52.4 Mike Vacanti: Listen to their first episode.

0:24:53.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. But there’s a difference between saying no one needs it and saying that it’s over-prescribed. And way too quickly prescribed without discussing other options.

0:25:01.3 Mike Vacanti: And by the way, I can’t even comprehend the number of lives that have been saved by SSRIs. People who have severe depression. People who are suicidal. There are many many many benefits. Absolutely. But 45 million prescriptions in 2022 is a lot for a population of 320 million or whatever it is.

0:25:26.6 Jordan Syatt: Do you see that?

0:25:29.9 Mike Vacanti: “Fitness test for a 42-year-old mum of three, please?”

0:25:35.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. What do you think about hypnosis for weight loss?

0:25:41.3 Mike Vacanti: I don’t have an opinion.

0:25:42.7 Jordan Syatt: I think that if it worked, people wouldn’t be injecting themselves with GLP-1s. They would just go get hypnotized. How about probably not the best idea realistically.

0:25:56.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I don’t know much about hypnosis. My understanding is that some people… A percentage of the population are much more likely to or able to be hypnotized and many people just aren’t. And so for people who have a natural predisposition to being hypnotized? If that works for you? Amazing.

0:26:17.4 Jordan Syatt: I’ve never heard of that in my life. Not to say it’s not real, but how the fuck do we know how many people can be hypnotized? How do you get hypnotized?

0:26:27.6 Mike Vacanti: We had a hypnotist come for senior day in our high school in the auditorium.

0:26:31.5 Jordan Syatt: Shut up. Did someone actually get hypnotized?

0:26:33.9 Mike Vacanti: Well they tried on several people, and one person it really worked on.

0:26:38.1 Jordan Syatt: No it didn’t, dude. That was a person faking it in the crowd.

0:26:42.7 Mike Vacanti: I promise it wasn’t.

0:26:44.0 Jordan Syatt: Was it a boy or a girl that got hypnotized?

0:26:47.7 Mike Vacanti: Are some people more able to be hypnotized than others?

0:26:50.8 Jordan Syatt: Where are you searching this?

0:26:53.6 Mike Vacanti: Google. The OG. Because then I can see the source…

0:26:57.2 Jordan Syatt: You’re gonna find… Yeah, you need to get hit.

0:27:02.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s Stanford medicine brother. All right?

0:27:04.2 Jordan Syatt: Go to Grok. Go to Grok.

0:27:06.4 Mike Vacanti: You know what? I’m super down on X.

0:27:16.4 Jordan Syatt: In a bad way?

0:27:16.7 Mike Vacanti: After seeing just all the junk. Politics and nudity or…

0:27:23.1 Jordan Syatt: No. Yeah. Yeah, it’s bad.

0:27:26.1 Mike Vacanti: But not even nudity. It’s a tweet that says something about post them below or something. And you just know it’s going to be replies of crap and you block it. But then I’m pretty sure when you block it, X is like, okay this person had a visceral reaction to this. We’re gonna give them more of this.

0:27:41.0 Jordan Syatt: Interesting.

0:27:42.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I don’t know.

0:27:43.5 Jordan Syatt: I don’t look on X. I just go to Grok. Just straight up go to Grok immediately. I’m a big fan of it, thanks to you.

0:27:50.1 Mike Vacanti: Well, compared to ChatGPT. Some people are naturally more susceptible to hypnosis than others. I understand the position of being desperate having tried everything, and not being able to make progress at something. So if you want to give hypnosis a shot. Cool. I hope it works.

0:28:11.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Okay. Is ab work overrated or underrated? No, actually the way that they phrased it was, is ab work overrated or beneficial? Which is one of the issues with people hearing overrated and underrated? They think overrated means non-beneficial. But let’s just assume they worded this correctly. Is ab-work overrated or underrated?

0:28:32.6 Mike Vacanti: Properly rated.

0:28:32.7 Jordan Syatt: Interesting. I thought you were going to say underrated.

0:28:33.2 Mike Vacanti: It was definitely underrated in 2012 when…

0:28:37.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s true.

0:28:39.0 Mike Vacanti: Every single fitness professional said…

0:28:40.5 Jordan Syatt: You don’t need to do it.

0:28:40.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. All you need to do is squat and deadlift and you get your ab-work from your heavy compounds. I feel like ab-work is more popular now.

0:28:48.7 Jordan Syatt: It is. It is for sure.

0:28:49.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I think it’s properly rated.

0:28:51.4 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Do you have a favorite ab exercise? And I think I might be able to guess it?

0:28:55.3 Mike Vacanti: Go ahead. I think you can guess it too.

0:28:57.1 Jordan Syatt: Kneeling cable crunch?

0:29:00.3 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:29:00.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s not your favorite ab exercise?

0:29:01.7 Mike Vacanti: Mm-mm.

0:29:05.2 Jordan Syatt: No? Shit. Is it a dynamic or a static one?

0:29:05.3 Mike Vacanti: Dynamic.

0:29:06.0 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:29:06.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s still flexion. It’s just flexion that’s targeting a different part of your abs.

0:29:13.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, hanging leg raise?

0:29:14.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:29:14.6 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Yeah. You love hanging leg raises with those elbow straps.

0:29:20.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. What’s your favorite ab exercise?

0:29:24.3 Jordan Syatt: Man, I have a couple. Can I give a couple?

0:29:28.2 Mike Vacanti: No, just one.

0:29:29.0 Jordan Syatt: Just one. Okay.

0:29:29.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you can give a couple.

0:29:31.5 Jordan Syatt: I really like lateral bends right now. I’m hanging laterally off a 45-degree extension and I do lateral bend. I love those. Not necessarily because of the core strength but because of the QL stretch that comes with it. And obviously, you get the oblique strength as well. But that QL stretch. Oh, my gosh. It feels amazing. And then I would say…

0:30:00.9 Mike Vacanti: I like that you’re doing it on a 45-degree bend. Because the standing side bend holding a weight when you’re just standing vertically makes so much less sense than…

0:30:10.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. You need to be really tight for that one to make sense. You’ve got to have very little mobility through there to make that make sense.

0:30:18.3 Mike Vacanti: On that 45-degree though. Start body weight. Start low volume. Don’t dive into low back strengthening stuff.

0:30:30.5 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Correct.

0:30:32.2 Mike Vacanti: Like a bull in a china shop.

0:30:33.8 Jordan Syatt: Like I did.

0:30:36.3 Mike Vacanti: Like I did too. Dude, but… Oh, I’m coming up on my one-year anniversary of throwing my back out.

0:30:42.6 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy. It’s almost been one year.

0:30:45.0 Mike Vacanti: Yours was… Well, that was… Yeah, I think yours was in the summer.

0:30:50.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it was right before my daughter was born. I had a little tweak. And then right after she was born it got really bad after I slept in the hospital. And then I tried to do…

0:31:04.6 Mike Vacanti: The power hooks.

0:31:06.5 Jordan Syatt: No, the power hooks is what happened before she was born. Then I took some time off.

0:31:08.2 Mike Vacanti: No, the 45-degree thing.

0:31:12.1 Jordan Syatt: No. That was well over a year ago. That was well over a year ago. Yeah. I was holding it for 60 seconds and I got up I was like oh! I couldn’t walk for a few minutes. But then I was doing boxing… Hurt my back doing boxing in June or July. Then I took time off. Started to feel much better. Slept horribly when my daughter was born in the hospital. Just the most uncomfortable horrible position ever.

0:31:40.7 Mike Vacanti: You’ve got any tips for that?

0:31:41.9 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I wish I had tips. I literally saw a comedy reel about it the other day. I have no tips. Actually one of the funny things about the comedy reel is there was a guy who literally brought a blow-up mattress.

0:31:56.4 Mike Vacanti: I’ve seen that.

0:31:57.3 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know how that works practically because the doctors are all over the place. They’re coming in every fucking couple of minutes. You heard Andrew Schultz talk about what they do the whole time. They’re coming in. It’s super invasive. I wish I had known that. What Andrew Schultz spoke about in his recent comedy special. But there’s just no way.

0:32:19.6 Mike Vacanti: Specifically about the giant Viking man.

0:32:22.5 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Yep. I haven’t been in a room that’s big enough to support a blow-up mattress even after the child is born. And then they put you in a different room. At least that’s what happened to us. It’s not big enough. It’s horrible. Then I slept on that horrible horrible horrible… It’s not even a mattress. I don’t know what to call it, but it was terrible. And on my next workout, my back blew out. And that was probably one of the worst back injuries I’ve ever had.

0:32:57.1 Mike Vacanti: Man. Not fun.

0:32:57.8 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know what to tell you bro, but I would be more worried about that than about anything related to being a father. Because that’s gonna really fuck you up.

0:33:08.8 Mike Vacanti: I was telling you before that I haven’t been sleeping well for weeks. You said, are you stressed about the baby and…

0:33:17.8 Jordan Syatt: You’re nervous.

0:33:18.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. But I guess I’m getting prepared for that cot.

0:33:24.2 Jordan Syatt: Are you gonna bring anything?

0:33:25.1 Mike Vacanti: I’m not bringing an air mattress to a hospital, man.

0:33:27.1 Jordan Syatt: No, no. Not an air mattress. Because that would be wild. But are you gonna bring pillows or something? You’re bringing a foam roller, I bet?

0:33:36.1 Mike Vacanti: I haven’t thought that far ahead. I probably should.

0:33:39.0 Jordan Syatt: Knowing you you should bring a foam roller. Because you love foam rollers. And doing that thoracic extension, I would highly recommend. You specifically. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to other people, but just literally you landed from the airplane and you texted me, do you have a foam roller? You love foam rollers.

0:33:57.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, there’s certain things. Getting some extension through those lower thoracic vertebrae. I like something to hang on to, get a little spinal decompression. These things keep the body moving and grooving. All right, I’ll bring a foam roller. On the subject of all of that, I downloaded TikTok recently. My entire feed. And on the subject of being nervous. My entire feed… Compare this level of specificity to politic, outrage. Crazy far left and far right positions on Twitter. The nudity. All of that. I downloaded TikTok. Did a little scrolling. I landed on this trend of girls writing poetry about how their dad screwed them up.

0:35:03.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh, no.

0:35:11.4 Mike Vacanti: No. It was amazing. I mean it wasn’t… I’m sorry. It wasn’t amazing. It was beneficial for me reading it from an educational perspective.

0:35:23.1 Jordan Syatt: Did you learn anything?

0:35:25.8 Mike Vacanti: Be around and pay attention. And love the kid.

0:35:29.3 Jordan Syatt: Is that what they all said? My dad wasn’t around?

0:35:31.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. It was a lot of, you were always working or you left us. It was lack of love and attention from Dad.

0:35:43.1 Jordan Syatt: You know what I saw once. This is probably two years ago now. You and I were talking the other day about, you could be great and your kid could just go the complete opposite direction. My mom would always say. She’d always say I don’t take credit for anything good that you do. And I’d always be like why? And she’s like because if you do anything bad I am not taking credit for that. I saw a video of a… I don’t know. She was probably in high school or maybe college. I think she was in high school though. And she made a video complaining. She was like oh, my parents. And it was not a parody. She was talking about how her parents… If she’s in a play, a theater play, her parents will go to all of the shows, because they want to see her in every show. And she’s like it’s just so overbearing. They say they just want to support me but it’s like I want to do it on my own. And all the comments were like, are you out of your…

0:36:37.6 Jordan Syatt: God forbid. You have supportive parents who actually want to go see everything that you do. But… To the point of, it’s probably better to be around and you’re probably gonna have better results with that. But there is a chance that no matter what you do, they might resent you either way.

0:36:53.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. There is a chance. But I think, look. This is gonna offend some people, but we’ve already done plenty of that this episode. Look at the average relationship between a woman who does porn and her dad.

0:37:10.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t really talk to any porn stars but, that would be an interesting data point to get.

0:37:19.0 Mike Vacanti: I don’t even think we need the data. Some things are self-evident, Jordan.

0:37:23.2 Jordan Syatt: Yep.

0:37:26.8 Mike Vacanti: Look. Yes, you’re right. A kid can come from a really rough situation and be incredible and another kid can have amazing parents and screw it all up, but…

0:37:36.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s better to be around and be present.

0:37:38.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s not just better. It’s…

0:37:42.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, of course.

0:37:42.7 Mike Vacanti: The opposite of determinism.

0:37:43.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. No, of course. I completely agree. I completely agree. That was just my first thought.

0:37:49.5 Mike Vacanti: I wanted to get some feedback on your thoughts on the relationship between women who do porn and their relationship with their father. But you really…

0:37:58.6 Jordan Syatt: You want me to give you my feedback on women who do porn and if I would imagine that their fathers are not in their life? Or if their fathers were abusive or something?

0:38:07.6 Mike Vacanti: I wasn’t taking it there, but…

0:38:09.0 Jordan Syatt: Listen, I will start with this. Porn isn’t good. For anyone involved. For the people who are starring in it, if we could call it starring in it. For people who are participating in it. For the people who are consuming it. It’s not good. Period. It’s not good as a society. You know what’s actually really interesting. The people who are the biggest supporters of porn… The people who support it as like hey, we should be allowing this or it’s not a bad thing. They’re also often very anti-capitalism. They’re very like, “The capitalist culture is really bad.” It’s like okay, but you’re supporting this only because it’s capitalist in nature because it’s a way for them to make money. That’s contradictory in and of itself. But I have a very hard time thinking that anyone logically can look at porn and say this is good for us. This is good for the individual. It’s good for the person who’s doing it. It’s good for the person who’s watching it. It’s good for their relationships. I don’t think anyone logically can be like this is a really good thing. That’s number one.

0:39:13.1 Jordan Syatt: And by good I really mean healthy in a variety of ways. From there then it’s okay we can look at the people who are participating in it. Why did they get involved in this? Was it purely a money thing? But then if it’s money, why is that the route they went and not trying to go down maybe a route that would require more education or less essentially using their body as a means of making money? And then the other discussion around it is if there was no market for it, it wouldn’t exist. If people would stop watching it and predominantly dudes. If dudes would stop watching it then the capitalist component wouldn’t be there. The blame. Is it the parents of the people who are doing it? Is it the people who are actually watching it? Is it the people who are starring in it? I don’t even know if blame is the right game to play here, but I do think that it would be probably a very disappointing, discouraging, sad field of study to speak with all the people who make porn their career and hear what happened to them growing up. What their relationships with their parents were like. What their relationships with family members were like. If they were abused. If they had absent parents, whatever it is.

0:40:34.9 Jordan Syatt: Because I would imagine you’d probably find a much higher rate of absentee parents, absentee fathers, absentee mothers. Abusive siblings, abusive parents, abusive aunts and uncles, whatever it is. You’d probably find higher rates of that. I would imagine. It would be probably a very sad place to be spending your time.

0:40:51.6 Mike Vacanti: That was extremely articulate and quite comprehensive and I really wasn’t expecting that. Well done. I actually…

0:41:00.1 Jordan Syatt: It’s that Turkish coffee, bro.

0:41:00.7 Mike Vacanti: I especially like your point about blaming dudes or blaming the consumer which is primarily men, because without them the market wouldn’t exist. I think that’s an underlooked and under-discussed aspect of the entire conversation. There’s also the amount of coercion. The amount of trafficking. The amount of underage girls that get uploaded to these sites. A lot of people are doing really good work and research on that side of things who can speak on it better than we can, but it’s really not a good… There’s a lot of crime and a lot of people being severely mistreated. Women being severely mistreated behind the scenes that we are supporting if we are watching it.

0:42:00.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That’s exactly right.

0:42:01.6 Mike Vacanti: But dude can we just…

0:42:02.9 Jordan Syatt: But how did we get on that, though? What were we talking about?

0:42:04.9 Mike Vacanti: Can we give the TikTok algorithm a little bit of credit for…

0:42:08.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh. We were talking about that. Being a father of daughters.

0:42:10.9 Mike Vacanti: I haven’t had TikTok since before it got banned. I downloaded it. I just wanted to see what was going on there. Within a matter of swipes. How well does my algorithm know me that it’s feeding me poetry from girls who had bad relationships with their dad? And I’m just… That’s crazy on the algorithm.

0:42:32.5 Jordan Syatt: It is. Yeah. The algorithm knows you or knows your life circumstances very very well. Earlier we were talking about the nerves before having a child and you were like yeah I’m just nervous about parenting. And from my very limited experience, I was like the good news is you don’t do much parenting early on because it’s just a little nugget and you’re just there and making sure that she’s okay. It’s not like you’re parenting. I was thinking about this while we were having that discussion. I actually think it’s more difficult to be thrown into being a personal trainer than it is to being… Not than being a mom. I think a mom is the most difficult especially because your child relies physically on the mom. But if I’m speaking about specifically from a parenting perspective, not what it takes to care for the child and keep them alive and the stress and all that. But specifically the parenting versus the coaching. When you’re a coach, you’re just thrown in on day one. You’re a coach you’re writing the program you’re telling them what to do.

0:43:38.6 Jordan Syatt: You’re dealing with their psychology and the games that they can play and their accountability and their consistency. It’s really difficult when you go into coaching on day one because you’re dealing with all sorts of different people and all sorts of different life circumstances and how to speak to them and how to structure your sentences. It’s not just about coaching and queuing which can also be difficult in and of itself. But it’s the person-to-person conversation. Whereas parenting an infant, especially when you’re not the one that’s physiologically required to keep them alive. It’s much easier. It’s much easier than coaching from that perspective. It’s a much more progressive… You’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna be great. But yeah your algorithm knows you very well.

0:44:24.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s good… It’s good reassurance. Thank you, brother.

0:44:28.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah man. For sure.

0:44:30.3 Mike Vacanti: We’ve got to wrap it. We’ve got a mentorship Q&A here in seven minutes. Thank you very much for listening. We’ll be back next week. Every Tuesday. Except the one between Christmas and New Year’s.

0:44:42.7 Jordan Syatt: Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful week. Talk to you soon.