Episode 230: Low Fat vs Low Carb, Protein Strategies, Rest-Pause Training, Mike HATES Chicken Salad, Steroids Are Cheating, & More…

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

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

0:00:13.2 Mike Vacanti: Huge congratulations to everyone who got in the mentorship at the sale price, the lowest the price will ever be. The sale is officially closed. We are pumped to have you in the group. Actually usually we do our podcast, then mentorship Q&A. Today we did mentorship Q&A first. It was a banger, ton of really good questions, and now we’re recording the podcast. Just wanted to let you know. Sale’s over.

0:00:37.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s been really cool. Sale is over, by the way. No exceptions. Sale’s over. It’s been really cool. How long have you been doing it now at the mentorship? Six years.

0:00:46.2 Mike Vacanti: 2025. Yeah. Huh. It’s just gotten better and better, somehow.

0:00:51.2 Jordan Syatt: Dude. Oh, my gosh. The group is just peak group. Peak group, peak coaches, peak questions. It’s fucking awesome. I absolutely love it.

0:01:02.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. That’s exactly right. What’s up, man? I got a couple things here. You ready?

0:01:12.5 Jordan Syatt: Bro, you asked if I was ready before we hit recording. Yeah, dude, I’m ready.

0:01:17.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s my way of just making sure you’re dialed into what’s about to happen. I got a real take.

0:01:24.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I love your takes. Let’s do it.

0:01:26.9 Mike Vacanti: Chicken salad is such an offensive food choice. Chicken salad as a food. I want no business with chicken salad ever, ever.

0:01:43.1 Jordan Syatt: I’ll say. Chicken salad at the grocery store. Completely agree. My wife makes a chicken salad with Greek yogurt. Homemade chicken. You know what I mean?

0:01:54.3 Mike Vacanti: Look, I’m not coming out swinging at Nene. I didn’t know about Nene’s chicken salad. All right. I wasn’t aware. I’ve never… You know what I had actually…

0:02:02.0 Jordan Syatt: Chicken salad is fucking gross.

0:02:03.0 Mike Vacanti: I would like to try it. Well, here’s the thing. It is. I’m sure your wife’s is incredible, and I can’t wait to try it. And I know it’s gonna be dialed, but chicken salad from the grocery store is this… And the way that most people make it, is this combination. It tricks people because it leads the word chicken. And so you think you’re getting a protein source, but you’re not. You’re getting a fat source. Chicken salad is a fat. A dietary fat source. It’s a mayonnaise bomb. And when you’re gonna get this food that is majority dietary fat, thinking that you’re getting protein, you at least want it to be delicious. But it’s not.

0:02:44.1 Mike Vacanti: The sound that chicken salad makes when you scoop it out of the… Yeah, it’s offensive. It’s reprehensible. It’s bad, man. It’s bad for all fitness goal. Look, if it’s your favorite food and your grandma makes chicken salad, respect. I’m kidding here, but really, I just see people eat it as protein and it’s not protein. The rotisserie chicken plus massive amounts of mayo. You have more fat than protein in grams and fat is 2.25 times as calorically dense as protein. So really it’s 70% fat. It’s just not good. It’s not good. And I know there’s no good and bad foods, but chicken salad’s a bad food. Let the record show.

0:03:27.6 Jordan Syatt: I agree. Also, I hate mayonnaise.

0:03:30.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. What’s up with mayonnaise?

0:03:31.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh, dude, I don’t get it. And in the UK they’ll put on french fries and shit and like, dude, mayonnaise. Not a fan.

0:03:44.8 Mike Vacanti: Not a fan. If you’re going to add that level of decadence, it needs to come with that level of taste. And I actually think it has negative taste.

0:03:55.0 Jordan Syatt: Agree.

0:03:58.2 Mike Vacanti: If you’re looking to… Let’s say you got a turkey sandwich and it’s dry and you want to add a little something to it to give it a little moisture, a little more texture.

0:04:08.2 Jordan Syatt: Mustard, hot sauce.

0:04:09.3 Mike Vacanti: Mustard, even a local honey mustard which has a little bit of carbs, but it’s…

0:04:11.9 Jordan Syatt: A little Grey Poupon.

0:04:15.1 Mike Vacanti: Not my favorite, but way better than mayonnaise. Yeah.

0:04:15.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.

0:04:16.8 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely. I’ll take the worst mustard on earth over the best mayonnaise any day of the week.

0:04:22.4 Jordan Syatt: Dude. Imagine if someone gave you a gift, like here’s a gift, but then they shit on the gift. That’s like when someone gives you a turkey sandwich and then like, “Oh, by the way, there’s mayonnaise on it.” It’s like, “Well, you just took a perfectly good gift and then shit on my gift.” Yeah.

0:04:36.4 Mike Vacanti: And by the way, I can get behind turkey sandwich with a tiny bit of mayonnaise.

0:04:42.9 Jordan Syatt: I can’t.

0:04:43.9 Mike Vacanti: That doesn’t offend me because you get what you think you’re getting. You’re getting a protein dense food with maybe half a tablespoon of mayonnaise. Chicken salad is just bottles of mayonnaise with a little bit of chicken.

0:04:58.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I just don’t mayonnaise at all. Anything with Mayonnaise, even a little bit. If I have a hint of mayonnaise, I’m out. I’m done. But to my wife’s credit, she makes a chicken salad with Greek yogurt that is, bro. And she puts some walnuts in there and we’ll it’s super good. But the store bought mayonnaise laden mayonnaise salad with chicken is what it is. It’s mayonnaise soup. It’s mayonnaise soup with some chicken. It’s like. Yeah that’s what it is.

0:05:28.4 Mike Vacanti: With a couple pieces of chicken.

0:05:30.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. With the high… With like couple… Yeah. Mayonnaise soup with chicken. That’s what it is.

0:05:36.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you’re right. Soup, it’s soupy. All right, moving on. Did you hear the news? You’re going to love this. You’re going to be ecstatic.

0:05:45.8 Jordan Syatt: I have one thing that happened in the news within the last 24 hours that I can’t get out of my head because of how wild it is, but I don’t love it. I think it’s crazy. But what are you thinking?

0:05:56.9 Mike Vacanti: There’s new research that shows…

0:05:58.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, no. I was talking about something else.

0:06:02.5 Mike Vacanti: That glass water bottles.

0:06:02.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh! More plastic in glass.

0:06:04.6 Mike Vacanti: Not just more, somewhere between twice as much up to 30 to 50 times as much plastic in glass water bottles compared to plastic water bottles. Got my Kirkland plastic water bottle here.

0:06:20.6 Jordan Syatt: Wow. Dude. Yeah, man.

0:06:23.9 Mike Vacanti: So it’s just a reminder not to major in the minors. If your calories aren’t on point, if you’re not strength training, if you’re not getting steps, if you don’t have your sleep on some regimen, but you’re freaking out about never drinking out of a plastic water bottle and you only want glass water bottles, it’s not the play.

0:06:42.3 Jordan Syatt: Relax.

0:06:43.1 Mike Vacanti: Also just wild.

0:06:45.1 Jordan Syatt: It is pretty crazy, especially because the cap is just such a small portion of it. You would never expect that that would lead to so much more, but also highlights how little there must be in the plastic water bottles if that cap is having so much more, it’s just…

0:07:04.5 Mike Vacanti: True. And it’s like the cap and if the cap is painted then there’s even more, like… Very interesting though.

0:07:14.6 Jordan Syatt: I would hate to be one of those influencers who’s drinking out of a glass bottle, making one of those videos being like, “I only drink out of this because of the plastic content.” And now they’re like, “Ooh.”

0:07:29.7 Mike Vacanti: Well, and if someone is doing that, then I would hope and expect that there’s a pivot in anything. New research comes along. Cool. If it changes their opinion, if it doesn’t change the perspective and they just ignore the new research, then that’s a low integrity move right there. Anyway, I thought that was interesting.

0:07:54.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude, super interesting. I never see you drink out of a plastic water bottle either.

0:07:57.9 Mike Vacanti: Let the record show that if we run this podcast back, I have drank out of a plastic water bottle at least double, I would guess probably three to five times the number of times that you have on this podcast.

0:08:12.0 Jordan Syatt: Dude, probably 10 times.

0:08:13.4 Mike Vacanti: Oh, okay. Good. So you’re the glass bottle influencer that you were referencing before.

0:08:19.0 Jordan Syatt: No. I just know that you usually drink out of your black shaker bottle.

0:08:24.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. That’s a different plastic. But I mean, these actual… Remember because I asked you to guess how much these Kirkland water bottles were.

0:08:30.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah.

0:08:32.3 Mike Vacanti: And you tried to get it right, so you under guessed it, which is the worst.

0:08:37.8 Jordan Syatt: Just ruin it.

0:08:38.6 Mike Vacanti: You just ruin it.

0:08:43.5 Jordan Syatt: What else? What else is going on, dad?

0:08:46.7 Mike Vacanti: What’s up, dad? Everything’s good, man. Things are good. I don’t have a lot to report. Newborn is sleeping good, eating good, takes a lot of number twos, a lot of number ones as well, a lot of dirty diapers. Good kid. I was telling you before, she’s got a good head on her shoulders. Yeah. She’s got her priorities straight.

0:09:10.5 Jordan Syatt: Studying hard.

0:09:12.0 Mike Vacanti: Studying hard. That’s right. Studying her, I don’t even know what you call them, her cards that have like black and white.

0:09:20.7 Jordan Syatt: Do you sing to her?

0:09:23.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m not a… Yeah, I do, but I’m not great.

0:09:24.2 Jordan Syatt: Do you sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?

0:09:26.3 Mike Vacanti: I have sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

0:09:28.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh, nice.

0:09:30.0 Mike Vacanti: I’m more of a talker. I think she likes my talking voice more than my singing voice. But I mix it up.

0:09:35.6 Jordan Syatt: Nice.

0:09:36.4 Mike Vacanti: What about you dad?

0:09:37.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude. Dad life. Best life, man. I was playing outside yesterday with my oldest. It was a beautiful day. And out of nowhere, just a massive rainstorm comes out. My daughter’s like, “We got to go inside.” And I was like, “Okay.” But then I hold on to her and I stay out in the pouring rain. And she’s screaming. It was fun. It was super fun. Yeah, dad life is great, bro.

0:10:00.8 Mike Vacanti: I love that. Kids need to be exposed to the rain and the elements. That was well done by you. Modernity has sheltered us too much to this 68 to 72 degree inside lifestyle. Whereas a little bit of grounding in the rain never hurt anyone.

0:10:18.0 Jordan Syatt: You ever go outside and it’s barely… It’s misting. Barely misting. And you do the shrug your shoulders up. I’ll catch myself sometimes in the rain. I’m going to the grocery store. I’m going whatever. And I get out of the car and it’s barely coming down. But you start to shelter yourself up and shrug your shoulders up to try and hide. I’m trying to like, “Hey, you’re going to get wet no matter what. Get your shoulders down. Walk in and if you get wet, whatever.” It’s that instinctual let me cover myself up. I’m like, “No, let me just enjoy this rain for a minute.”

0:10:50.3 Mike Vacanti: Let me just get wet in the rain. Just be one with nature. I like that. I like you imparting that on the new generation. What are you sipping on there?

0:11:00.6 Jordan Syatt: My wife took my oldest to swim and on their way back they stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts and she got me an iced coffee and I put some Fairlife into it because Fairlife milk is the greatest milk. So I got a hazelnut iced coffee from Dunkin’, which is super underrated. And I just put some Fairlife in it.

0:11:21.8 Mike Vacanti: That’s the double filtered milk that has more protein than regular milk.

0:11:25.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s unbelievable.

0:11:27.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I knew deep down you were always a protein guy all these years, even when you went on your fiber journey. I knew that in your heart of hearts you were a protein guy.

0:11:36.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, dude, I’m protein guy just with the…

0:11:38.3 Mike Vacanti: Even even when you went on your hip thrusting journey at one point, I knew you were a protein guy.

0:11:42.9 Jordan Syatt: I’ve never been on a hip thrusting journey and you know that. You know, I’ve never… You don’t even the hip thrust. You’re not a hip thrust guy.

0:11:53.3 Mike Vacanti: I don’t hate it as outwardly as you do. But no one really wants to be setting up all that weight.

0:12:00.8 Jordan Syatt: No, they don’t.

0:12:02.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s a solid move. I program it a lot. I do it myself. Maybe…

0:12:06.4 Jordan Syatt: Barbell hip thrust?

0:12:08.1 Mike Vacanti: Well, I’m trying to think of how how many weeks out of the average calendar year do I have the barbell hip thrust.

0:12:14.8 Jordan Syatt: Less than four per year. Less than four per year do you barbell hip thrust. I would put money on that right now.

0:12:22.1 Mike Vacanti: I’d have to dig through some programs and it depends on what time frame we’re looking at. But that’s not a bad bet. It’s definitely somewhere between three and eight weeks per year.

0:12:34.2 Jordan Syatt: That is absolutely not true.

0:12:39.1 Mike Vacanti: Okay, what am I doing? I want to hear you try and guess what…

0:12:41.6 Jordan Syatt: I would bet in the last three years, in the last three years.

0:12:44.6 Mike Vacanti: Well, three years is not a good number because…

0:12:48.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s an amazing number.

0:12:49.1 Mike Vacanti: No, because 2024 I was really off my game in life.

0:12:51.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay, so that includes…

0:12:52.9 Mike Vacanti: I’m looking at a five to eight year window.

0:12:55.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay, in the last five to eight years, I bet you’ve spent less than 20 weeks doing barbell hip thrust.

0:13:02.7 Mike Vacanti: 20 weeks more than you, my man.

0:13:07.0 Jordan Syatt: All right nice one.

0:13:11.3 Mike Vacanti: Jordan, do you remember the time where I was getting ready for bed, got the baby down, which isn’t always easy. Kiss the wife good night. Pop the melatonin in, roll over. It’s 10:15 at night. I’m counting down the minutes until the 4:00 AM feed is coming up or like, all right, if I fall asleep now, I get five and a half hours of sleep. That’s not the worst. I nine, but if I can get five and a half, I’ll take five and a half tonight and put a little show on or a YouTube something longer form where I’m not scrolling. Got my phone dimmed all the way down. Eyelids are starting to shut and it’s just… I’m about to go into never never land. And then I get the little drop down text. Jordan Syatt. USA bombed Iran and my eyes shoot open. Oh, no. I feel the cortisol coursing through my veins. I’m wide awake. I’m like, “What do I do here?” I didn’t want to respond. And then you call and we get in this back and forth and I don’t want to… Like I don’t want to go that route.

0:14:18.5 Mike Vacanti: So I downloaded Twitter, which is also maybe the lesser of two evils, but neither was good. Thankfully, Twitter wasn’t reacting that strongly to it at the time. And so I was able to to shrug it off and get to sleep eventually. But it was a very… It took me from maximum chill to… It took me from three out of 100, whatever negative emotion to 94.

0:14:48.4 Jordan Syatt: Did it take you from three fear to 94 fear? Was it the highest your fear has been?

0:14:55.2 Mike Vacanti: If we’re being honest, there was probably 50% just annoyance because I was about to fall asleep and I could feel the cortisol coursing. But fear was high. Whether it was 70 or 90, there was a brief moment there where it was high.

0:15:09.1 Jordan Syatt: Are we going to war? Da da da. Yeah.

0:15:10.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I don’t spiral on that level. Yeah. It was funny.

0:15:18.9 Jordan Syatt: Did you get to bed at all? You get any sleep?

0:15:20.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I was within within 20 to 25 minutes.

0:15:24.5 Jordan Syatt: Got it. So you got five hours.

0:15:26.0 Mike Vacanti: Oh, yeah. There was no real damage done. It was more just the the fact that I re-downloaded Twitter and then re-deleted it off my phone before bed.

0:15:37.2 Jordan Syatt: To be fair, you also said I can text you any time, you said that.

0:15:42.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I love waking up to a good…

0:15:44.0 Jordan Syatt: I don’t call you any time because you might be sleeping, but texting…

0:15:49.7 Mike Vacanti: You did nothing wrong. It was just a funny moment for me.

0:15:54.4 Jordan Syatt: An alarmist text.

0:15:55.6 Mike Vacanti: Because I can just see you seeing that news and I can see your mind going, “We’re going to war.” And then I can see you passing that emotion on to others, me being others in that moment. And that makes me laugh.

0:16:12.5 Jordan Syatt: No, I didn’t think we were going to war, because what happened was I… As you know, I take Friday night to Saturday night off social media. So I’m not on Instagram, Shabbat just with the family. I’m not on not on Instagram. So after Shabbat ends at night, I get on Instagram for the first time and I’m always inundated. I just immediately with whatever’s been going on that day. And so then I see immediately like, “USA bombs Iran.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh.” Then I started digging into it. So I had to text you that. But I wanted to share it with someone.

0:16:43.3 Mike Vacanti: Thank you.

0:16:45.7 Jordan Syatt: But I didn’t get a reply.

0:16:47.5 Mike Vacanti: I replied in the morning.

0:16:53.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, man, but there’s no war. No, World War III so far.

0:16:57.3 Mike Vacanti: So far, so good, which is…

0:17:02.3 Jordan Syatt: Iran had a little like ceremonious counterattack, which they gave… I don’t know if you saw anything about that.

0:17:06.9 Mike Vacanti: They gave a heads up about it?

0:17:09.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and caused no damage. It was more so they could tell their people that like, “Hey, we struck back.”

0:17:13.7 Mike Vacanti: We retaliated. Yeah. Which makes sense. Yeah. Look, we don’t need to… This isn’t the geopolitics podcast, that’s for certain, but…

0:17:27.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s not geopolitics, it’s just the Middle Eastern politics podcast.

0:17:35.6 Mike Vacanti: What’s that?

0:17:37.8 Jordan Syatt: We don’t cover everything.

0:17:39.3 Mike Vacanti: The two personal trainers…

0:17:40.4 Jordan Syatt: We don’t cover Entebbe and stuff. We just cover… I’m joking. Anyway, yeah.

0:17:44.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I didn’t even know what that was, but didn’t we… We talked about Russia-Ukraine back when that was happening, didn’t we?

0:17:49.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, dude. Yeah, we talk about whatever we want. This is the geopolitics podcast, and if you want to be a personal trainer, there’s stuff in here too.

0:17:58.0 Mike Vacanti: How to become a personal trainer with the two personal trainers who are way… Well, at least I’m way over my skis on anything related to that. But yes, it does seem like struck the nuclear sites and not leading to a forever war a la George Bush era, which many were rightfully concerned about, but incorrect as of right now, which is a good thing. Yeah, absolutely. I’ll continue to go down my list, although I don’t have a ton. How’s your list for this week?

0:18:33.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, dude, it’s good.

0:18:35.0 Mike Vacanti: Oh, nice. Give me something.

0:18:36.3 Jordan Syatt: No, let’s finish yours first.

0:18:37.6 Mike Vacanti: Okay. The only other thing I have is having a baby with you in public changes the way that people interact with you in a pretty crazy way.

0:18:53.8 Jordan Syatt: In what like how they look at you or?

0:18:55.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I think more… You know what I think I never realized. And this is actually an interesting point for a lot of dudes to think about is until maybe the last three or four years, and I don’t know what made it hit me, but I never realized that my presence might come off as threatening to people. And that in general, I never realized that a lot… If not, I can just generalize and say women in general can feel very vulnerable, like out in the world a lot of the times. And I was never considering that I was a potential threat in the eyes of a stranger, which could be a man or a woman, but generally speaking, women. And a baby is just like… Okay, this person’s safe. This guy who’s power walking around isn’t about to try and club me over the head, but he’s a safe person.

0:20:12.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s immediately like, I’m good. I’m safe. You don’t have to worry about me doing anything. Whereas otherwise you see a big, strong, muscular jack dude walking around. Because no one looks at me as a threat. I don’t deal with what you deal with.

0:20:25.9 Mike Vacanti: Yes, they do.

0:20:26.8 Jordan Syatt: No.

0:20:26.9 Mike Vacanti: Jordan has 17… All right. I’m going to out you right now. Jordan’s when he says he’s doing the splits, what he’s really doing is high volume bicep work. Last week we were on a mentorship Q&A and he was demonstrating this wrist extension move and his biceps looked enormous on there. And so we all came to the conclusion that Jordan’s been secretly training for aesthetics in addition to performance.

0:20:51.1 Jordan Syatt: We all came to that conclusion as in you came to that conclusion.

0:20:55.3 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:20:58.2 Jordan Syatt: No. I mean, it’s having a baby… Also not only does it likely mean not always, but does it likely mean that you’re not a threat, but also it’s like babies are just super cute. That’s like…

0:21:12.0 Mike Vacanti: Oh man. That’s the obvious, they want to look and they want to ask questions and people want to engage more, which makes total sense. But that was my like…

0:21:22.2 Jordan Syatt: Have you had anyone come up to you while you’ve had your daughter out and just be like, “Oh, hi.” Did anyone do that?

0:21:28.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. So it’s just walking around the neighborhood because we’re not taking her into public places yet at this age, like grocery shopping or something like that at this point. But it’s moving in that direction. And if not, then just the nonverbal, the smiles, the like… Yeah.

0:21:49.2 Jordan Syatt: How livid would you be if someone came over to your house and they were sick and they didn’t tell you?

0:21:57.1 Mike Vacanti: I’d just kick them out, I’m a… You got to go. You got to take that coughing, sneezing out of here.

0:22:05.0 Jordan Syatt: That was the first time I’ve seen my wife actually get angry is especially with both of our daughters actually, but especially with our first because you get so protective. You have this protective instinct that comes out of nowhere and your infant is so delicate and so fragile and so susceptible to everything. And then people would come over and they’d be like, “Oh, by the way, I have a really bad cough.” And it’s like, “Are you out of your mind?” I remember I got mad. I forgot about this until just this moment. I remember within a week or two after having my first daughter, I was in the gym downstairs in our building and there was a dude hacking up a lung in the gym. And it took every ounce of self-control to not be like, “Can you not be working out in a public gym when you’re this unbelievably sick?” Like coughing on all the dumbbells, all the… And not covering his mouth. But even if you were, it was a deep horse cough. Work out, but do it in your own space. You don’t know who someone has at home that could get this. It’s a problem, man. Yeah, I would get so mad. I would get so mad.

0:23:19.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And that’s even a step down from that person coming to visit you and your daughter.

0:23:26.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Correct.

0:23:27.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. It’s an interesting… I agree with you. There is a level of consideration that people need to take with being aware of if they’re sick or not and not going to public spaces and getting other people sick. Yeah. And I think my thoughts on that issue have changed, not just in the last several weeks, but over the last several years of, yeah, be a little more considerate with trying not to… If you know you’re sick, don’t go do things, as much. Well, there’s still like… The other half of it is don’t be soft. Oh, I sneezed twice. I’m going to skip my workout today. It’s like, no, I’m not going to encourage that. But if you’re genuinely sick and contagious, then don’t go get other people sick. But don’t be soft. Don’t use it as an excuse.

0:24:30.4 Jordan Syatt: Work out at home or go on a walk or something.

0:24:33.7 Mike Vacanti: Honestly, I’m one of the biggest proponents of if you’re actually genuinely sick, you shouldn’t be training at full intensity anyway depending on… There’s above the neck, below the neck, depends how sick you are. If you have a little bit of a head cold, you don’t need to skip a week of training, but be smart. All right. What’s on your list? I’m excited for this list.

0:25:00.6 Jordan Syatt: Man, my list is intense.

0:25:00.7 Mike Vacanti: I’ve never been more excited. Oh, let’s go.

0:25:05.2 Jordan Syatt: You want me to pull up questions?

0:25:06.6 Mike Vacanti: No, I want to hear what’s on your list.

0:25:07.9 Jordan Syatt: Bro, I don’t think we could go over my list today. My list is…

0:25:11.4 Mike Vacanti: What was the thing when I said that there was a piece of news and I was referring to the plastic water bottle situation and you thought it was something else? What was that something else?

0:25:22.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, my gosh. It’s actually ridiculous.

0:25:28.9 Mike Vacanti: Good.

0:25:30.5 Jordan Syatt: So this was just most recently on my social media feed. It was a ridiculous thing to see. Trump has been speaking at NATO. You see this? Trump is speaking to all the NATO allies. And one of them, one of the head people, potentially the head NATO person, apparently called Trump… He called Trump daddy.

0:26:01.8 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Who was it?

0:26:03.8 Jordan Syatt: I forget who it was. And then a reporter asked Trump about it and they were like, “Do you view your NATO allies as your children?” And then whoever’s in charge of Trump’s social media made a video of like, of… I forget which song it was, but it was like… The song that’s like, “Daddy’s home.” And it’s just them leaning into the people in NATO calling… It was just ridiculous. And the comments under the post, because it was on Trump’s Instagram. There were some people who were like, “Give your social media manager a raise. This is hilarious.” And then other people being like, “You need to fire your social media manager. This is horrible.”

0:26:53.5 Mike Vacanti: Just leaning into the joke.

0:26:55.1 Jordan Syatt: Just ridiculous. Yeah.

0:26:57.8 Mike Vacanti: That feels recency bias that when I said that I saw something new on social media, that that’s what you thought I was going to talk about.

0:27:06.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It was a huge thing on social media today. And that’s where it was the first thing that came to my mind.

0:27:13.0 Mike Vacanti: Interesting. So this was another world leader, a president or prime minister of a European country or something?

0:27:21.3 Jordan Syatt: Or just someone who’s a head within the NATO program. Not necessarily a world leader.

0:27:26.8 Mike Vacanti: And was it a man or woman?

0:27:29.0 Jordan Syatt: It was a joke.

0:27:30.0 Mike Vacanti: Okay. He said it was a joke. Got it. And he likes Trump?

0:27:33.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, he likes Trump.

0:27:34.4 Mike Vacanti: Okay, cool.

0:27:35.1 Jordan Syatt: He likes Trump and he was just like, you’re the boss type thing. And I think it was based on since Trump has come in and he has historically done this with NATO, where he makes NATO… One of the issues that he’s had with NATO is that America pays generally significantly more than other countries and contributes more to it. And a lot of times people have said, “Well, that’s just how it’s going to be.” And Trump was like, “Well, other countries should pay their fair share.” And many people have been like, “Well, you’re not going to be able to make them do it.” And then historically Trump has gotten what he wants and they’d start paying their fair share. And so that’s what this guy was referencing. He was like, “Oh, daddy’s back.” Yeah. They’re paying their fair share again. And the reporter was like, “Now that they have increased how much they’re contributing, da, da, da, da, da, this guy referred to you as daddy. Do you view your NATO allies as your children?”

0:28:30.5 Mike Vacanti: And wait, and what did he say to that?

0:28:32.6 Jordan Syatt: I’m trying to remember. I don’t want to misquote it. But he’s like, “No, they’re not my children.” I forget what he said. I just remember watching Marco Rubio in the background lose it laughing. He is in the middle of this press conference and Marco Rubio just starts… He starts dying laughing at the question.

0:28:54.0 Mike Vacanti: You have been doing your podcast now with the high production quality and the guests in person and the having your videographer there and doing it for YouTube, doing it on a bigger level for a few months now. How’s it going in your eyes?

0:29:15.0 Jordan Syatt: I love it. Yes. It’s my favorite.

0:29:15.9 Mike Vacanti: What are one to two things that you really like about it? And what are one to two things that either you don’t like or just that you find really challenging about it?

0:29:25.3 Jordan Syatt: I’ll start with the challenge. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work in terms of I’m not going into any of these podcasts unprepared. For every single guest, I’m doing many hours of preparation work, researching them.

0:29:39.7 Mike Vacanti: Does that mean consuming their content, listening to them on other podcasts? What is that?

0:29:44.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So consuming their content. Tomorrow, for example, I have this woman. She’s a former CIA spy and she actually worked in the Middle East and she’s not allowed to say where specifically she worked in the Middle East, but she is one of the people who led the interrogation on one of the key players within 9/11. So I’m reading her book right now.

0:30:14.0 Mike Vacanti: Listening to it?

0:30:16.1 Jordan Syatt: Listening to it. Yeah. Listening to it while I’ve been working out.

0:30:18.1 Mike Vacanti: That was just me being competitive because the thought of you reading a whole book when my attention span can’t at this point would have pushed me to start reading again. Just so you know.

0:30:28.3 Jordan Syatt: No, just listening to the audiobook, which has been frustrating because there’s been… A lot of it’s been redacted for CIA review. So as they’re reading the book, you’ll hear all of a sudden like, “And we went to, redacted CIA review. And we went to… And then we spoke to redacted CIA review.” it’s a lot of it. But anyway, so I’m having her on. But I’ve had a Holocaust survivor on, just published that one. I do a lot of prep work, which is difficult but also makes it more enjoyable because I think the conversations have been amazing and I get to know them much better. Yeah, my favorite part is that I get to sit down and have really meaningful conversations that I think are super helpful to people and the response has been wonderful. And I’ve been so tired of the short form social media world and not just consuming it but contributing to it and trying to make content that fits it. I was looking at my analytics. The median average consumption… Or the median consumption time.

0:31:36.4 Mike Vacanti: Let me guess. Is there a minimum that they need to watch for it to log on the threshold?

0:31:42.5 Jordan Syatt: 60 seconds.

0:31:43.5 Mike Vacanti: No. Oh, on YouTube or Instagram?

0:31:45.8 Jordan Syatt: No, on the podcast.

0:31:48.5 Mike Vacanti: Oh, I thought you were going to say for your short form social media. Okay, for podcasts?

0:31:52.1 Jordan Syatt: No, for podcasts. Median consumption time after a week is over an hour. And I posted this and people were like, “Well, sometimes it takes me more than a week to listen to your episode just so you know.” But median consumption time was an hour and 11 minutes.

0:32:05.3 Mike Vacanti: Do you know median consumption time on Instagram?

0:32:07.8 Jordan Syatt: I would say it’s… I can look at posts and most people are gone by 10, 15 seconds.

0:32:13.0 Mike Vacanti: That doesn’t surprise me. That seems high.

0:32:15.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Most people are gone by that point.

0:32:17.3 Mike Vacanti: Especially if you think about the number of people who don’t follow you if you show up in their feed, and it’s like, “Am I watching this?”

0:32:23.0 Jordan Syatt: Exactly. Yeah. The vast majority are gone by 10, 15 seconds.

0:32:26.6 Mike Vacanti: How are the reels from the podcast doing?

0:32:29.8 Jordan Syatt: In terms of engagement, sometimes they go bananas and do super well. I really enjoy them because I can get a few very high-quality clips that are super educational and meaningful and then also drive people there. What I found, the engagement overall has not been incredible. They don’t do as well as a talking head video of myself or something like that. But what I have found is even though the engagement isn’t as good, my podcast numbers have increased dramatically, which what I’m finding is…

0:33:05.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s driving people to the podcast.

0:33:06.8 Jordan Syatt: Exactly. Is getting people to go and listen to the podcast. Which is exactly the goal. Yeah, exactly.

0:33:14.0 Mike Vacanti: Sweet. Let’s go. And obviously, you’re doing the work for the podcast and those clips get generated, but the benefit compared to a talking head is you don’t have to sit there and think, what am I going to talk about and then make a reel, edit a reel, and upload it. It’s you get sent… I’m sure there’s collaboration with you and your editors, but you’re basically… It’s being made for you based on the work you’ve already done, which is a big time saver.

0:33:39.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s awesome. I really enjoy it. I really, really enjoy it. I think it plays to my strengths, which is conversation.

0:33:45.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, conversation and p ness, which is a term that I busted out the other day that you… Jordan thought of the anatomical male genitalia when I was spelling it P-N-E-S-S, meaning on Myers-Briggs, the last letter P versus J and being perceptive versus judging, which is you’re very… Even if you didn’t prep for these pods, they wouldn’t go as well, I’m sure, but you could really hold your own. Here’s what I’ll say. If you took every, “fit”… Every personal trainer who’s making content and you had them have a podcast with guests that they’re at least reasonably interested in, but no one prepped, your skill set and personality would put you in a position where you would rank very highly in how that goes compared to your peers. It is a strength.

0:34:42.3 Jordan Syatt: I agree. One of the best things in terms of the prep is it’s actually given me more confidence in my ability to push back on something I disagree with, which is something that I think is really important. If you plan on having honest conversations with people, I need to get more comfortable pushing back when they say stuff that I don’t agree with.

0:35:05.3 Mike Vacanti: Which is probably very hard, one, for someone who… You’re inviting them on your podcast. It’s not a hostile CNN interview, it’s more… And probably depends on the guest too. Some people are probably more okay with that and some people are more aggressive or might shut down.

0:35:29.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, but by preparing ahead of time, I can start to see… I can almost lead my way into a disagreement in a much more non-confrontational way, less combative way and give them an opportunity to clarify beforehand or if not and I actually did this with Sammy, the Holocaust survivor. He said something I just vehemently disagreed with and it was one of the most uncomfortable moments in my life where I literally just… I just had to say like “I completely disagree with you.” And I had to say it but it feels really bad because you’re talking to a Holocaust survivor so you don’t want to be like, “By the way, I completely disagree with you.” But there was… There were some things where I was, “I can’t.” I need to let everybody listening know I don’t agree with that.

0:36:15.8 Mike Vacanti: But then when you… The big thing that he said that you disagreed with, wasn’t he like, “That’s okay.” And then he made a really good counterpoint to your disagreement and you were like, yeah.

0:36:28.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and he said he was happy that I disagreed. He’s like, “Good. We need to be able to disagree. It’s important to have these conversations.” Which I think was super helpful and he did make a great counterpoint.

0:36:37.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Well, good bro. I’m glad that’s going well. What else is on your list? You know what? Shout out Coach G in the mentorship Georgie. We gave Georgie some homework in the mentorship and she got a good chunk of it done which is good and then she was hanging out with her grandchild. So the rest of her homework is going to be for next week which is amazing. I’m going to give you some homework right now.

0:37:05.8 Jordan Syatt: Do you want me to make a list?

0:37:07.0 Mike Vacanti: You have been prepping so well for your podcast and I didn’t realize. I knew you were a prepper with survival instincts. There was a period in there where that was an interest of yours.

0:37:20.6 Jordan Syatt: That’s still an interest.

0:37:22.3 Mike Vacanti: But now you’re a podcast prepper as well and I didn’t realize that until this moment and it’s great insight. So Jordan is going to start coming with a list to this podcast.

0:37:33.1 Jordan Syatt: No bro, you knew. Even when you came here for our podcast, remember you were like, “Oh, this is nice. Remember? Because I led that podcast and you were like, “Oh.”

0:37:40.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that was. Okay. But now I really know. Now it’s sunk in. I thought maybe you were… Now I know, know on a different level. So your homework will be to come with three ideas to every personal trainer podcast to talk about.

0:37:58.9 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Just remind me the day before.

0:38:00.9 Mike Vacanti: Nope. This is your reminder. Did Sammy the Holocaust survivor remind you to do your homework? Do it for our audience, Jordan. And they’re going to keep tuning in. They’re going to keep listening. Dig deep. Three things.

0:38:12.4 Jordan Syatt: All right. Just shoot me a DM. Hey, pick your three things for your podcast. We record usually on Tuesdays or Thursdays. So if anyone wants to be kind and remind me, that would be amazing.

0:38:24.7 Mike Vacanti: Honestly, audience, it’s not your responsibility. Jordan will come with three things. You can remind him if you have the time and wherewithal, but if you don’t, he’ll still have three things because he has the capacity right now. He’s going to come with three things per episode.

0:38:39.8 Jordan Syatt: But if anyone wants to remind me, that’d be great.

0:38:40.7 Mike Vacanti: That’d be great. Unnecessary, but great, but unnecessary. So he’s going to have three great things to talk about each week. And this pod, what is this? Episode 230? It’s about to really take off. We’re both going to have things to discuss. It’s going to be really good. So we’re all very excited. I’m going to make a note, Jordan has three things so that I don’t forget to hold him to the fire.

0:39:00.8 Jordan Syatt: Can it be anything?

0:39:02.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, they can be anything. Make them…

0:39:03.5 Jordan Syatt: Literally anything.

0:39:04.7 Mike Vacanti: Literally anything. Make them slanted towards stuff that our listeners want to hear about, but also just anything. Three things list Jordan. Good. Do you feel your Q&A is in a good place right now that’ll make good conversation for us?

0:39:21.3 Jordan Syatt: No, my Q&As have been terrible. The worst questions.

0:39:25.3 Mike Vacanti: How come? That’s a great… You know what? That’s actually a wild data point because the Q&As and the mentorship have been so high quality. I wonder what the difference is.

0:39:37.7 Jordan Syatt: People in the mentorship have done a lot of research and they go out of their way to learn and that they have questions. I’ll say this. I think the people in the mentorship, if they have a question, the first place they go isn’t to Instagram. The first place they go is to look for a high quality source elsewhere. Whereas a lot of the people… A huge portion of my questions that I get in my Q&A are questions that I’ve answered in depth already. So the most common question I get right now, swear to God, what are my thoughts on vibration plates? That’s the most common question I get. And I deliberately made a YouTube video answering this question because I get it so much.

0:40:25.3 Mike Vacanti: Are those trending hard right now?

0:40:26.9 Jordan Syatt: Huge. Vibration plates are everywhere.

0:40:31.2 Mike Vacanti: It is a positive data point that people aren’t asking about how to lose body fat. It’s almost they learned that one.

0:40:36.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, they still ask me that, brother.

0:40:39.1 Mike Vacanti: But it’s not the most popular.

0:40:41.3 Jordan Syatt: They’re asking about the vibration plates because they think that it’s going to help them lose fat.

0:40:46.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. There are moments in life where I’m grateful that I’m not making short form content. And right there was one of them. That was… Yeah.

0:40:58.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. You want me to open up? I can look it, I can see if there’s something.

0:41:03.2 Mike Vacanti: Probably not. If it’s a lot of vibration plates, probably not.

0:41:06.0 Jordan Syatt: Low fat diets versus low carb diets.

0:41:08.0 Mike Vacanti: We could talk about that.

0:41:09.0 Jordan Syatt: I thought you’d like that one.

0:41:10.1 Mike Vacanti: Good job, Jordan. What do you think?

0:41:12.8 Jordan Syatt: What do I think or what do I think you think?

0:41:15.1 Mike Vacanti: Both.

0:41:17.8 Jordan Syatt: I think that… Well, if I say, I want to play like Oz Pearlman right now. I sort of want to read your mind, but here’s what’s going to happen.

0:41:23.6 Mike Vacanti: I don’t want to do dark magic here on the podcast. That can be a different podcast.

0:41:26.9 Jordan Syatt: If I tell you what I think you think, then you’re going to be like, you’re going to go the other way. If I say what I think you think and I get it right, then you’re going to be like, “Well actually… “

0:41:34.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m going to meta you. I know what you think I think. You think that I think that high carb diets are better than low carb diets.

0:41:53.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And I do.

0:42:00.5 Mike Vacanti: No, my actual true thoughts are that personal preference is what matters most and that either can be very effective, both short and long term for many goals, provided neither are too extreme. Provided you’re not taking carbs way too low or fats way too low, which make both diets difficult to adhere to. In practice, having worked with hundreds, if not thousands of clients going over many, many, many years, people who try to eat very low carb diets over a long period of time do not adhere well or see as good of long term results as people who eat either, A, moderate carb, moderate fat or, B, slightly higher carb, slightly lower fat diets, has been my experience. I’m pretty sure the research says that either can work great.

0:43:01.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. The major thing is as long as calories are equated, they can both work great. I think we run into major issues when you’re in a caloric surplus, intentionally or not. No matter what, that’s going to be an issue over a long period of time, but especially higher fat. Higher fat in a caloric surplus will lead to more health problems more quickly than higher carb, lower fat in a surplus. So if calories are equated, I still think, let’s say you’re in caloric maintenance. I still think the vast majority of people are going to do better health-wise, higher carb, lower fat, especially lower saturated fat.

0:43:56.4 Mike Vacanti: And that’s where in practice, a lot of the people, especially these days, who want to go higher fat, lower carb are people who want to eat a ribeye every single day. They’re not people who are like, “Give me the extra olive oil and the extra serving of salmon and the extra handful of macadamia nuts.” That’s not how they’re getting their higher fat, which would be better, but it’s way higher levels of saturated fat, which you like said, in a calorie surplus is not good for long-term health outcomes.

0:44:23.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and even in caloric maintenance, it’s still significantly worse. I will say that for someone who’s morbidly obese and has a lot, a lot of body fat to lose, a very easy way for them to begin is by reducing their carbohydrate intake or even by their perceived carbohydrate intake. And when I say perceived, they’re also gonna be reducing their fat intake as well. I’m gonna reduce my chips, the muffin, exactly. It’s like, they think that’s a carb source. It’s like, yeah, but there’s a lot of fucking fat in there too. So it’s essentially just reducing your calories. But from a overall health and performance perspective, higher carb, lower fat, and specifically lower saturated fat is gonna yield better results.

0:45:16.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Bingo.

0:45:18.0 Jordan Syatt: All right, here’s an interesting one. Hitting protein goals on vacation in Europe. Breakfast and lunch are the main concern. So Michael, let’s say you go to Europe, you’ve been to Europe. You wanna make sure you get your protein in while you’re traveling. What do you do?

0:45:36.8 Mike Vacanti: I haven’t spent very much time in Europe. I had the summer of 2017 coaching the Staples Boys, where I was in Croatia. We were in Austria for a bit.

0:45:45.3 Jordan Syatt: You were in Italy for a while though, a couple years ago?

0:45:46.9 Mike Vacanti: I was in Italy. Did a week in Italy with Gary. Let’s make this a short one. If you’re spending massive amounts… We got to break this in… Well, because I don’t have extensive knowledge of the protein sources of various countries in Europe, one. Two, is this breaks out into two camps. One, is the person who’s a little neurotic, a little obsessive, and they’re going on one European vacation every three years, and they’re trying to hit their protein targets for those seven days. It’s like, don’t worry about it. Just eat a little less protein. In the other 51 weeks out of the year, you’ll get after it. It’ll be okay. For the people who… I actually have a client right now who’s doing a lot of traveling to Europe for work, like borderline spending half of his summer in Europe for work.

0:46:41.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s awesome.

0:46:43.3 Mike Vacanti: Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s coaching Gary. That’s awesome. You get to go to Korea and Ireland and London. It’s like, “Yeah, I get to work on my computer in hotel rooms in Korea and Ireland.” If you’re someone who has to spend an extensive amount of time there, yeah, it’s difficult, and it depends what country you’re in. If you’re in America and you can just go get a 42-gram core power from the corner store, you can do that in certain cities and certain countries in Europe and in certain parts of Europe, you can’t do that. I don’t have great practical advice. You’d be better off talking to someone who lives over there and spends an extensive amount of time over there if we really wanted to strategize and get into the dirt on how to get more protein in XYZ country. I can tell you how to get more protein in America right now, right here, right now on this podcast.

0:47:44.0 Jordan Syatt: I know the easiest way. By the way, I completely agree with you. I’m not talking about the person who needs to chill for the fucking week. I’m not even going to say you can reduce your protein and it’s still fine, whatever. I just want to answer the question as is. I want to hit my protein. How do I get it? Super easy, cottage cheese. It’s available. Cottage cheese globally is basically all over the place.

0:48:12.3 Mike Vacanti: Okay. I didn’t know this.

0:48:14.6 Jordan Syatt: I can’t say for Japan or anything, but in Japan, I’d be sushi. You’re good. I’m not getting cottage cheese in Japan. I’m going for the sushi. In Europe, dude, everywhere I’ve ever been, number one, every hotel breakfast buffet has got cottage cheese.

0:48:35.1 Mike Vacanti: Really?

0:48:36.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah. Every time I’ve been, and I’m sure we’re going to have listeners be like, that’s not true. Every time I’ve been, I see cottage cheese all over the place. In all the convenience stores, I see it all over the place. If you’re really focused on it, bro, cottage cheese and eggs, easy.

0:48:57.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s your answer. Cottage cheese and eggs.

0:49:00.1 Jordan Syatt: If you’re really concerned about it.

0:49:02.7 Mike Vacanti: And packing protein. I’ll never forget opening my bag when I landed in Croatia and got it off of baggage claim at midnight. I was with Ben and opened it up to make sure it was mine because I just always do that. And I had a five gallon tub of protein powder that exploded in the flight.

0:49:26.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh no.

0:49:26.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, so there was just like protein powder on all my clothes. I was like, “Ugh, devastating.”

0:49:31.7 Jordan Syatt: Was that in a vlog?

0:49:33.8 Mike Vacanti: That’s a good question. Probably. It’s probably in a vlog from June of 2017.

0:49:39.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh my gosh, that’s brutal.

0:49:43.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but worth it. Just kind of shuffle it back in there and hit your protein.

0:49:50.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. But also, if I was going to Europe…

0:49:52.1 Mike Vacanti: Cottage cheese.

0:49:54.7 Jordan Syatt: Well, no. That’s just to answer the question. If I was going to Europe, I wouldn’t be going to a convenience store to get fucking cottage cheese. I would be enjoying the European breakfast. However, I’m not a fan of the breakfast. I’ll say like a British breakfast.

0:50:11.9 Mike Vacanti: Beans.

0:50:11.9 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I hate it. And they always get really mad when I say it. But it’s like the baked beans on toast. Are you kidding me?

0:50:20.4 Mike Vacanti: With a sausage or like hot dog type of, right?

0:50:25.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s not…

0:50:26.0 Mike Vacanti: To each their own.

0:50:30.1 Jordan Syatt: No. You started this podcast talking about fucking mayonnaise soup with chicken. Baked beans with sausage. Not good.

0:50:37.6 Mike Vacanti: Look, it certainly isn’t a high protein, like good calorie protein per calorie. Like tasty way to start your day. I like baked beans. I’m a big baked beans guy.

0:50:49.1 Jordan Syatt: I’ve never seen you eat baked beans. I didn’t know that. Even when Gary came in with his like, “I had a lot of beans last night.”

0:50:55.7 Mike Vacanti: Well, he ate a chewy.

0:50:56.5 Jordan Syatt: He had five pounds of beans.

0:51:00.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s in our book.

0:51:00.5 Jordan Syatt: He had five pounds of beans?

0:51:03.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Legend.

0:51:04.4 Jordan Syatt: When was the last time you had baked beans?

0:51:06.8 Mike Vacanti: Within the last month. If we grill at my parents’ house, there’ll often be a side. Watermelon, baked beans, kebabs, chicken steak.

0:51:16.6 Jordan Syatt: From a can?

0:51:19.4 Mike Vacanti: Honestly, brother, I don’t know. I just know that they’re there. Probably.

0:51:27.1 Jordan Syatt: I like canned foods. Canned food’s fine. I just didn’t know if they’re homemade.

0:51:30.8 Mike Vacanti: I truly don’t know.

0:51:32.7 Jordan Syatt: Your mom makes them?

0:51:33.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:51:35.4 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Nice. Rest pauses during lifting, cheating or no?

0:51:37.9 Mike Vacanti: No, not cheating. A great strategy if you’re pressed for time and you still want to get sufficient intensity in. In fact, I used rest-pause training this morning for the first time in probably six months. I told you when I was leaving the gym, I wanted to get all of my normal volume in for the workout for an upper body lifting day, but I was limited on time. I had 50% to 60% of the amount of time that I normally had. So I did an expedited warmup. I kept rest times down. And by the time I was getting late in the workout, I was going to have to cut lateral raises. I was like, “This is unacceptable.” So I did one giant power set that involved some rest-pause training after a top set essentially to failure, within one to two reps of failure. So very effective way to save time and still get sufficient intensity in.

0:52:32.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, get a good training effect. I also think it’s just funny when people say something is cheating.

0:52:38.1 Mike Vacanti: Well rest-pause is certainly not. I can understand it more in other contexts. Steroids are cheating.

0:52:47.3 Jordan Syatt: They’re not cheating.

0:52:49.3 Mike Vacanti: I’m not going to say…

0:52:50.7 Jordan Syatt: Unless you’re competing.

0:52:52.9 Mike Vacanti: I’m not going to say…

0:52:53.6 Jordan Syatt: That Kanye West quote is like, not going to say… I’m not going to say the people who did it or the doctor where he comes from or what people’s hospital it was at, he was Jewish.

0:53:05.8 Mike Vacanti: It was a Jewish doctor. They are though, they are. We all know that they are. They are. We got every fitness influencer…

0:53:17.7 Jordan Syatt: Dude, that opens up such a rabbit hole. It’s cheating if you are lying about it and especially if you’re competing in a place in which it’s banned. If it’s not banned, it’s immoral to lie about it. That’s for sure.

0:53:33.5 Mike Vacanti: Yes. Because all humans aren’t operating on the same ethical framework and we can like… Because we’re talking about life, we’re not talking about competing in a pro sports league. Cheating is going to be interpreted differently. But yes, the fitness influencer who takes a bunch of testosterone, whether they call it TRT because they’re injecting 300 mg and it’s not really TRT, they’re 28 years old, they don’t need TRT, their total test is 1,800, they’re jacked out of their minds, they have super physiological levels, they’re well beyond any physique they’ve ever achieved before or could achieve naturally, they don’t disclose it, they post shirtless, and they’re selling on the back end of their physique, they’re cheating. Fine, use a different word. It’s unethical, but yes, for all intents and purposes, it’s cheating. Now, is the 60-year-old dude who’s on 120 mg a week because his doctor, not a TRT clinic, dude with a 24-inch neck doctor, but a real doctor, not some guy who’s an entrepreneur who happens to be an MD who’s making seven figures selling people on hormones, which those are rampant right now. We can talk about that if you want to.

0:54:41.1 Mike Vacanti: Rampant, not just with hormones, but with peptides, with everything. If that guy tells you, “Oh, here you go. Billy, here’s your 500 milligrams, let’s see if this goes well, we’ll get you on some trend.” No, that’s not TRT. The 48-year-old mom of three who’s been working her butt off for many, many years and has tried to get down to a healthy body fat percentage for many, many years has been unable to, needs to lose 75 pounds for her health, her doctor puts her on a GLP-1. No, of course she’s not cheating. 22-year-old gets a bunch of surgeries, gets butt implants and lies about it, says it’s her glute kickback band program, bands only, do it at home, $199 a month, cheating. She’s cheating. This is obvious stuff. We would have consensus among all reasonable people on these points that I’m making.

0:55:40.6 Jordan Syatt: Clip all of those. Those are all amazing individual clips.

0:55:43.8 Mike Vacanti: Do you agree or disagree?

0:55:45.0 Jordan Syatt: I agree with that nuance. I agree with that nuance.

0:55:48.9 Mike Vacanti: But my initial take of just being funny and saying it’s all cheating, obviously not.

0:55:51.9 Jordan Syatt: When you made the distinction in the types of people and when someone’s profiting off of it, off of the lie, any logical, reasonable person agrees with that. When it’s just the individual who’s doing it properly and with medical supervision for their health, that is… Yeah, the nuance I completely agree with.

0:56:12.8 Mike Vacanti: Then there’s also a gray area where steroids are not cheating, but the person probably still shouldn’t be doing it. The recreational lifter who just wants to add more muscle for vanity because he thinks that it’s going to lead to X, Y, Z results that it probably won’t lead to, no, that’s not cheating. He’s not lying about it. He’s not profiting from it. He’s not running a business around it. But it’s probably not good for him.

0:56:42.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, correct. It’s not an intelligent decision. Yeah, completely agree.

0:56:47.0 Mike Vacanti: There are safer and less safe ways to do it. Obviously, doing it with medical supervision is way better than doing it on your own and buying juice in the locker room of Gold’s Gym. There are levels.

0:57:00.8 Jordan Syatt: There are levels to this. Sleep supplements.

0:57:06.0 Mike Vacanti: Do you have any sleep supplements you take?

0:57:08.3 Jordan Syatt: I don’t take it right now. Melatonin is generally a good one. I don’t take it right now just because I don’t need it. When it’s time for me to go to sleep, I’m out. I’m out very, very quickly. But I’m also not getting that much. And if I wanted to take it properly, I would take it several hours probably before I go to bed. And then I’d start to get a little bit sleepy. And then I wouldn’t be being creative and doing what I’m doing. So I’m deliberately not taking it right now. And I’m also working out late at night. So it doesn’t go with my current schedule. But if I was really trying to optimize my sleep, then I would be taking melatonin.

0:57:44.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. In general, we’ve pendulumed too far towards taking more supplements rather than fewer supplements. And I know that’s a pretty unpopular take. I know a lot of very smart people who I respect who think that five years down the road, we’re all going to be taking 100 pills and a million injections a day because that’s where the medicine and technology is going. So I could be wrong on this. But no sleep supplement is necessary. Managing your caffeine, managing your light exposure are two of the big things that are going to help.

0:58:24.3 Jordan Syatt: You take melatonin though?

0:58:25.5 Mike Vacanti: I’m getting there. But a good hard workout during the day, getting your steps in, those things are all going to be beneficial. I love melatonin. So I take melatonin. I should probably take less. I take three milligrams. I believe the effective dosage of melatonin is half a milligram. So if you’ve never taken it before and you’re going to start, you want to be taking way less than over-the-counter bottles sell. But it helps me fall asleep immediately, which is beneficial when I’m on a tight schedule. If I got a 4:00 AM feeding, I got to wake up for whatever the case may be. Yeah, I take two and a half or three mgs per night. And then if you’re changing time zones or you want to reset your sleep schedule, it can be really beneficial too.

0:59:15.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh my gosh. I forgot to tell you this. This is so funny. We had a big storm here. I think it was last week. And our power went out. And we have a generator, which is probably one of the better investments I would give someone if they’re going to build a house and you, God forbid, need it. A generator is a nice thing to have.

0:59:41.7 Mike Vacanti: Do you know how much it was?

0:59:44.9 Jordan Syatt: How much the generator cost?

0:59:47.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:59:48.4 Jordan Syatt: I don’t because it’s…

0:59:49.5 Mike Vacanti: You bought it with the house?

0:59:50.6 Jordan Syatt: It runs off propane… Well, no. Well, yeah, we bought everything with the house. But I remember there was a cost for the generator, but there’s also a cost for the propane. The generator is different and the propane tank was a lot. But worth it in terms of you lose power, you lose everything.

1:00:12.3 Mike Vacanti: How long was your power out for?

1:00:13.6 Jordan Syatt: Well, so I’m getting there. All right.

1:00:17.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m sitting on pins and needles.

1:00:19.9 Jordan Syatt: So power goes out. And usually as soon as the power goes out, boom, generator comes on. Power went out. Generator didn’t come on. Well, actually, that’s wrong. The generator did come on, but the power didn’t come on. So I heard the generator. I was looking at the generator. I went outside at 4:00 in the fucking morning because I see that the generator is on, but we don’t have power. And I’m like, “What the fuck? Paid all this fucking money for this generator. And now it’s not even working.” And it’s 4:00 in the morning. And the generator company is supposed to be 24/7, but they’re not picking up. So I searched a generator service company out in Dallas. And I called the company and it’s a woman. And she was like, “Hey, how can I help?” I was like, “Hey, I’m having a generator issue.” And she was like, “I’ll connect you with one of our servicemen.” I get connected and this dude picks up and he sounds so unbelievably groggy. I definitely just woke him up without question. He’s like, “Huh?” And I was like, “Hey, I was just connected to you. My generator is not on.”

1:01:32.8 Jordan Syatt: And he was like, “Okay.” And basically he’s like, “Do you want me to try and walk you through it or you want me to come there?” And I’m like, “Bro, I’m sorry, man. Can you just come here?” He’s like, “Yeah, I got you.” He gets here and it took him several hours to figure out the issue. Ironically, it was a very easy fix that he just looked over. But I wouldn’t have been able to figure it out even if we were on the phone. There’s no way that… There’s a lot going on. But he gets there and he’s like, “Man, I took an Advil PM couple hours.” This dude was dead asleep, man. This guy was rocked unconscious because those will fucking put you out.

1:02:18.7 Mike Vacanti: One, do not take them in general, especially taking them over the long term is really bad for your brain and there’s substantial dementia and Alzheimer’s risk to long term Advil PM usage. Two, definitely don’t take them if you are on call for something and you might have to work in the next three hours. That’s a bad idea.

1:02:43.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I felt bad because he got out of his car and he looked like he was delirious. I was like, I can’t believe he just drove here.

1:02:53.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s dangerous.

1:02:55.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, super dangerous. It might even be illegal to drive after taking an Advil PM. If not, it should be because that dude was wrecked and apparently he was pissed afterwards because he was like, “I can’t believe I didn’t check that.” It was two hours and finally he called his, not his mentor, his manager or something. And he’s like, “I can’t figure this out.” The manager is like, “Did you do this?” And you could just see on his face. He was like, “Fuck.” He’s like, “I forgot to do that.”

1:03:25.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m glad you got power back.

1:03:27.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

1:03:28.6 Mike Vacanti: How long until the actual power came back on?

1:03:31.4 Jordan Syatt: An hour. Not too bad.

1:03:32.9 Mike Vacanti: Oh, in another hour?

1:03:34.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it was like… Because the guy was there for two hours and then…

1:03:38.6 Mike Vacanti: How long was power out in your neighborhood?

1:03:39.8 Jordan Syatt: About an hour.

1:03:40.6 Mike Vacanti: Then why did he even come?

1:03:41.9 Jordan Syatt: Well, number one, because when it goes out…

1:03:44.1 Mike Vacanti: So he’s working on the generator and your power came back on while he’s working on the generator?

1:03:48.2 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

1:03:48.9 Mike Vacanti: Oh, okay. But you’re like, “Let’s get this fixed if this happens again in the future.”

1:03:52.5 Jordan Syatt: Exactly. I want this to work. So then we had to turn my whole power off and test the generator to make sure that it was working and there was an issue.

1:04:00.0 Mike Vacanti: I get it now. I gotcha. That’s nice that it came back on within an hour though.

1:04:04.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Because the girls were sleeping. Yeah.

1:04:06.9 Mike Vacanti: There’s a correlation between how densely populated an area you live in and how quick they’re going to get the power back on versus how remote you are in terms of whether or not a generator makes sense. I’m undereducated here, but that’s my point of view there.

1:04:22.8 Jordan Syatt: I’m pretty remote.

1:04:24.9 Mike Vacanti: You’re decently remote. There’s also how doomsday-ish World War III cyber attack power grid goes down. How much do you think that’s going to happen in our lifetime and to the extent of going without power for days and needing to have your own generator, which is probably a smart thing to do.

1:04:45.3 Jordan Syatt: My wife’s grandfather is super prepper and he’s the reason why we got a generator. He was like, “You need to get this.” He was like, “Promise me you’re going to get this.” I was like, “Well, we’ll absolutely get it.” But also, I have the CIA former spy coming on tomorrow and I’ll be asking about that. Because she’s been talking on her social media about if things progress, how it would go and she thinks it would be cyber. There’d be cyber attacks and they’ve historically attacked banks and da, da, da, but power grid would be a major way to see it go.

1:05:16.6 Mike Vacanti: On the subject of Advil PM, in the 2021 annual golf tournament that I do with my buddies, there’s two teams of eight players per team. Brian Conley woke up for the Saturday morning round. We play 18 holes Friday, 36 Saturday. He woke up for his singles match against Brett Lundberg at 7:00 AM on Saturday, coming off of a night of probably a bunch of white claws and not a ton of sleep. Went into the bathroom, dug into someone’s dop kit, take a couple Advil, take the edge off, put his headache down so he can go stick it to Lundy. It’s dark in there. He pops the two. He looks at the bottle, took two Advil PMs at 7:00 AM. And yeah, that was not his best round.

1:06:00.6 Jordan Syatt: He must have been fucking exhausted the whole day.

1:06:03.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I don’t know what he was feeling. Not good.

1:06:06.2 Jordan Syatt: He made it through? He didn’t take a nap or something?

1:06:08.5 Mike Vacanti: No, man, it was the cup. He was competing out there.

1:06:11.6 Jordan Syatt: I feel some people get high doing that. I feel some people get high, you have to wait past the point of…

1:06:17.0 Mike Vacanti: In fairness to Lundy, Lundy is a good golfer and was playing really well, so he might have had that match in the bag anyway. I don’t know for sure, but I know two Advil PMs.

1:06:26.5 Jordan Syatt: Doesn’t help at all.

1:06:27.8 Mike Vacanti: Doesn’t help anyone, yeah.

1:06:28.6 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy. Oh, man. Was he drinking too on top of that?

1:06:32.8 Mike Vacanti: Honestly, who knows? I wasn’t in his group. Could have been.

1:06:36.8 Jordan Syatt: Wow.

1:06:37.4 Mike Vacanti: Could have been. But on that note, thank you very much for listening. Please leave a five-star review, Spotify, Apple, wherever you are listening, quick little written review, 30 seconds. We would greatly appreciate it. Helps us grow the podcast so we can keep doing these episodes.

1:06:54.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s it.

1:06:54.5 Mike Vacanti: That’s it.

1:06:55.3 Jordan Syatt: Have a wonderful week.