Episode 236: New Sleep Study, The Presidential Fitness Test, New Social Media Consumption Strategy, and More

0:00:12.1 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.7 Jordan Syatt: What’s up Michael?

0:00:13.7 Mike Vacanti: You got your two things.

0:00:14.7 Jordan Syatt: I came with three. I came with three things. Started talking about one of the things that got clipped where we want to push that to the following week. So we got two things. Mike, pick one or three, you pick two before, then we took it from the top. So one or three?

0:00:32.1 Mike Vacanti: One. Number one,

0:00:33.3 Jordan Syatt: I got a juicer.

0:00:37.5 Mike Vacanti: Ooh, tell me more.

0:00:39.9 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I almost said this the other day on the phone because you were gonna get juice in the city. And I was like, I’ll save this for the pod.

0:00:46.0 Mike Vacanti: Smart

0:00:46.9 Jordan Syatt: Dude, so I love juice. I love juice. It is just fucking… And specifically my favorite kind is carrot juice with ginger, like fresh squeezed carrot juice with fresh, squeezed fresh ginger. It’s just like, it’s my favorite way to start the day. And I haven’t had it in years. I haven’t had it in years. Like every day when I was living in Israel, I would always, I would wake up. That’d be the first thing I’d get, just have my on a lot of corners in, in Tel Aviv and whatnot. Just fresh squeezed juice. And I was thinking, I was like, “Man, I would really like to start my day with some fresh squeezed carrot juice and ginger.” So I went on this whole researching, just going nuts trying to find the best juicer that I could find. That also like wasn’t a commercial sized juicer. Like I don’t want a massive one, but I also want one that’s easy to clean. And I also want one that like, it is like, it’s just a nice juicer, it’s easy to use, super effective. It lasts a long time. So I got a juicer and I’ve been making carrot juice with ginger in the mornings.

0:01:58.6 Mike Vacanti: Did you know that I had a carrot juice with ginger yesterday when I told you I got a juice?

0:02:03.1 Jordan Syatt: No, you didn’t tell me that. You just said you were gonna get juice. You didn’t tell me that you were getting carrot juice with ginger. That makes it even better.

0:02:08.4 Mike Vacanti: And beet and lemon and apple. That was the combo. 

0:02:11.7 Jordan Syatt: How good is that, dude?

0:02:12.7 Mike Vacanti: Amazing. 

0:02:13.7 Jordan Syatt: Doesn’t just make you feel good.

0:02:15.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I love it. And I would imagine it’s a big city thing they have in Tel Aviv. They have it in New York, obviously. Basically every deli has a, a juice counter. Two things, one, I thought you had digestive issues with juice, or was that just that specific brand of juice and two…

0:02:35.4 Jordan Syatt: No, dude, there was something wrong with that juice. There was a fucking like parasite in that juice. That I had parasite that one time. I don’t have a digestive issue with juice. There was some issue with that juice.

0:02:47.9 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Two, do you have any concern about, because the criticism of juice would be just eat the whole food so that you are getting the satiety, the pulp, the fiber, like the other benefits rather than just getting like a super dose of the micronutrients. What would you say to that?

0:03:14.9 Jordan Syatt: My response to that would be, have you ever tried carrot juice with ginger? Because it’s way more delicious than just eating a fucking carrot. Like it’s for me, yeah, you get the health benefit. There are objectively more health benefits to eating the whole carrot. Just you get more fiber, you get more fullness, all of that. I’m not doing it for that. I get plenty of fiber anyway. I get plenty of fullness anyway, I’m good. I’m doing it because it makes me feel really good and I love the taste.

0:03:50.8 Mike Vacanti: I like it. I like it. It’s also hard to eat the amount of carrot. Like I watched the guy make my juice yesterday. He put the two largest carrots I’ve ever seen, like actually the size of my forearm, two carrots the size of my forearm into this juicer. It would take me three days to eat the two carrots if I were eating them whole.

0:04:11.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, just I used like 12 carrots because I don’t have like the ones the size of your arm. I used like 12 carrots. I got like a huge, it was like probably 16 ounces of fucking juice.

0:04:21.9 Mike Vacanti: Nice.

0:04:22.4 Jordan Syatt: And it was also cool because my daughter does it with me. So she puts the carrots in as it’s going and she gets excited. It’s a family event. And yeah, dude, it’s not about trying to maximize health with every single thing that I do. If I did, I would have an overall very different diet in general. Like if every single thing I ate was purely about maximizing the physiological health benefits of it, then like I wouldn’t be having ice cream at night. I wouldn’t be like there’s so many things I wouldn’t be doing. So yeah, I just love how fresh squeezed carrot juice with ginger tastes.

0:05:02.2 Mike Vacanti: What juicer did you end up getting?

0:05:04.0 Jordan Syatt: This is not sponsored. My wife says I should reach out because when I told her I was getting a juicer, she got really upset because she pictured this massive commercial industrial sized juicer. And she’s like, “Where are we going to put it? You’re not going to clean it.” And I actually spent many hours trying to research which was the best one. A lot of YouTube videos watched. A lot of, I was going on Grok. I need you to like objectively analyze which is the best. My wife likes things that are like clean. So like it’s like a like has that white color to it. So I ended up going with the Nama J2. But, you know what? I didn’t get it off of Amazon. This is really important. I don’t get electronics off of Amazon. Because a lot of Amazon stuff, they’re dupes. And you could technically make sure that it’s coming from that store. That is the way to work around that, to make sure it’s coming from the store. But Amazon is notorious for having dupes. And like, a lot of the Amazon batteries get fucked up. A lot of the electronics are not fucked up. So I ordered it directly from the Nama store. And it’s actually ridiculously easy to clean. It’s very easy to clean. It’s not that big. It’s about the size of my laptop. Like, it’s not that big. And it’s super easy to use. It basically comes all put together. Yeah, it’s awesome.

0:06:34.3 Mike Vacanti: Great. I like it.

0:06:36.1 Jordan Syatt: All right. Number three. This is a big one. The presidential fitness test has been reinstated.

0:06:43.9 Mike Vacanti: I saw that.

0:06:44.9 Jordan Syatt: And there’s a big debate now about is it good? Is it not good? 

0:06:50.5 Mike Vacanti: What is there not a big debate about, by the way?

0:06:53.7 Jordan Syatt: Dude, there’s always a big debate. There’s always a big debate. Yeah, there’s always a big debate. People are really upset about it. 

0:07:02.5 Mike Vacanti: People are upset about it. 

0:07:04.4 Jordan Syatt: And I actually dove in. Yeah, people are upset about it. People are upset about it. And I dove in and was doing some research on it on both the presidential fitness test as well as the, because essentially it started as the presidential fitness test. I believe it was Eisenhower’s idea in the ’50s. It was initiated under Lyndon B. Johnson in the ’60s during the Cold War era when they were worried that American youth were just lagging behind European youth, which based on that presidential fitness test, I think like only 8% of American youth could pass it, whereas like I think like 20%, 30%, or 40%, I forget which percentage, but a huge percentage of European youth were able to when it was initially implemented. They were like, “Hey, we’re lagging behind. This is a national security issue. We got to fucking step it up.” So that’s when Lyndon B. Johnson implemented it. And then it wasn’t Obama per se, but it was under his administration in 2012 that they replaced the presidential fitness test with the Presidential Youth Fitness Program. Now I wanted to understand what the difference was, and so I’ve been doing a fair amount of research into it. The presidential fitness test, the main distinction, the main distinction is that the presidential fitness test is competitive in nature. The presidential fitness test essentially puts you in a percentile saying you are in either like the top X percentile based on these exercises.

0:08:39.4 Mike Vacanti: This is what we had growing up, right?

0:08:41.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s what we had growing up.

0:08:42.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:08:42.5 Jordan Syatt: Correct. We had that growing up. That’s what we did. We did like the sit and reach test. We did the how many sit-ups you could do, how many push-ups you could do.

0:08:48.8 Mike Vacanti: Pull-ups.

0:08:50.1 Jordan Syatt: How many pull-ups you could do, how fast you could run a mile is what we did growing up. Yes. And it was competitive in nature, whereas the Presidential Youth Fitness Program removed the competitive aspect of it, which there’s nuance here. I can see pros and cons with it. It removes the competitive aspect of it and essentially makes it 100% individualized. So it’s now based on, and it removes it from an athletic performance perspective, which I think there are pros and cons, and places it more in regard to overall health, lifelong health. So how, like for example, here’s your aerobic capacity.

0:09:32.2 Mike Vacanti: Can you explain what is it now?

0:09:35.2 Jordan Syatt: Well, that’s the issue. 

0:09:38.4 Mike Vacanti: Because you lost me for a second. What we grew up with was competitive because it gave you percentiles. Are you saying prior to that, there were no percentiles and it was more based on health?

0:09:50.2 Jordan Syatt: The Presidential is competitive. Well, they’re both presidential. The Presidential Fitness Test is competitive. That’s what you and I did growing up.

0:09:58.7 Mike Vacanti: Got it.

0:10:00.1 Jordan Syatt: The Youth Fitness Program is not competitive. They don’t do it based on percentile. They don’t tell you that, although it sort of does, but it’s more based on health as opposed to performance.

0:10:12.8 Mike Vacanti: And when was the Youth Program in play? 

0:10:18.0 Jordan Syatt: Implemented? It was implemented under the Obama administration in 2012.

0:10:21.3 Mike Vacanti: So from 2012 until now, that’s what’s been going on.

0:10:24.5 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Correct. Yes. 

0:10:26.7 Mike Vacanti: Got it.

0:10:27.2 Jordan Syatt: So basically, Trump switched it back to the Presidential Fitness Test, which is more of a competitive and athletic approach.

0:10:37.5 Mike Vacanti: What was the program?

0:10:39.5 Jordan Syatt: So, under the Obama era administration, so I’m looking at it right now. Basically, they test your aerobic capacity using the PACER test, progressive shuttle runs with beeps measuring VO2 max, or a one mile run/walk, you could choose which one or whichever one you were told to do. They have body composition, which is apparently it’s optional, but they either measure your BMI or skinfold measurements, which is quite frankly pretty wild to have kids doing that, in my opinion. That’s actually really wild now that I think about it. Muscular strength endurance, so push-ups, upper body sit-ups, or they call them curl-ups. They have a note, which is to avoid spinal strain, which I think is fucking obnoxious and just overdone. And they have a back extension as well. Then they have the flexibility sit and reach test. So it’s not all that…

0:11:38.0 Mike Vacanti: Very similar.

0:11:39.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I was going to say, it’s not all that different.

0:11:41.1 Mike Vacanti: But they don’t give a percentile because, and the theory would be because they don’t want to hurt a kid’s feelings for being in the number two percentile overall?

0:11:50.4 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Yep. So the key difference is the Presidential Youth Fitness Program replaced outdated exercises, for example, maximum sit-ups with “safer health-focused alternatives”. Curl-ups, which, what the fuck? That’s obnoxious. Anyway, it added body composition reflecting the obesity concerns, and it prioritized form over raw output. And in their scoring, the Presidential Fitness Test gave you national percentiles. You needed to hit the 85th percentile in order to receive the Presidential Award, which is a certificate or patch, whereas the Youth Fitness Program uses something called Healthy Fitness Zones, which are ranges based on health outcomes. Your aerobic capacity linked to cardiovascular risk. Students meeting the Healthy Fitness Zones in multiple areas earned the Presidential Youth Fitness Program recognition, which to be honest, it still sounds competitive. 

0:12:50.5 Mike Vacanti: Depending on how many, where the bar is set for that, right? If like 95% of kids are getting the patch and it’s basically a participation trophy and the bar set extremely low, I can see how people would argue it’s not.

0:13:05.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, but then I feel like that would make it even worse for the kids who don’t get it. You know what I mean? Like that would make it even like, wow, this is basically made for no one to fail and you still fail this. Like that’s, I feel like that would be even worse. So, what’s funny is I feel like it’s so ridiculously similar that the debate is really funny.

0:13:24.0 Mike Vacanti: I would imagine the debate is driven by, I hate orange man, therefore I hate the things that orange man does versus I hate Obama. I hate the libs. So I hate whatever the libs Institute and it’s nonsense online drivel from people who spend all their time on the internet need to touch grass and like get a little sunlight and maybe go bench 225 a few times.

0:13:49.3 Jordan Syatt: How do you feel about having either calipers and/or BMI in there? That’s tough, right?

0:14:01.3 Mike Vacanti: I’m not going to have a strong take on this because I can see how it damages a kid’s relationship with fitness, yada, yada. But I can also see how, you know, if someone has a very high body fat percentage and isn’t getting a lot of help at home, then getting some help at school would be a good thing. Here’s what I’ll say for sure. It’s less important than all of the performance metrics to me. So like doing a body fat or telling the kid like, “Hey, your height to weight ratio puts you at this BMI, yada, yada,” is way less important than how fast you run a mile, how many pushups you can do, how many pull-ups you can do. Quick anecdote, I don’t think I’ve ever shared this publicly. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked, but I could never, I got zero pull-ups every single, I never got the Presidential Fitness Award.

0:14:53.4 Jordan Syatt: No way.

0:14:54.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, dude, I was skinny fat. I was skinny fat. I had very little upper body strength.

0:14:59.9 Jordan Syatt: I did not know that.

0:15:01.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I mean, I’m trying to remember like what year, because if the Presidential Fitness Award went to through senior year of high school, then I definitely could like sophomore, junior, senior year. But in middle school for sure, when a bunch of my friends and like all these other kids were busting out 8, 10, 12, 15 pull-ups, I couldn’t do a single pull-up. And was it embarrassing? Yeah, absolutely. Was that motivating for me to get in better shape? Yeah, absolutely. Was it a little like alarm to me that, hey, you are in the whatever percentile of this versus your peers, step it up? Yeah, I think it was a net positive in my life.

0:15:43.6 Jordan Syatt: Here’s what I think is interesting, not even about the whether or not it’s good or bad to have the BMI or body fat or the calipers. My thoughts on this are that it’s interesting that the people who are mad that Trump is implementing the presidential fitness test are also the same people who would say we should focus on performance over aesthetics. We should focus on your performance metrics rather than like your body fat. Meanwhile, that’s exactly what this does. This brings back, we’re going to have performance-based metrics and not going to be doing body fat calipers or BMI. So it is very interesting that probably the presidential fitness test is probably more in line with their beliefs in regard to fitness than the Youth Fitness Program. Now, I do think that both have benefits and both have negatives, they both have pros, they both have cons. I think it’s obviously nuanced here, but I do think that you’re right. They’re more just like, who’s in charge? And I either like this person or don’t like this person, and I’m going to make my opinion based on everything this administration does purely based on what I believe about the person in charge, not based on the actual nuance of the program.

0:16:57.8 Jordan Syatt: And so I do think that the focus on performance is incredibly helpful and beneficial. I think it’s actually better than, I do think it’s important to get kids focused on health, obviously, but also from a realistic perspective, I don’t think most kids are going to be like, “Well, what’s my heart health risk at 12, 13, 14 years old?” I think most kids are going to be more focused on performance. And I think that will probably be, I think that’s generally how it works. When you’re a kid, you’re generally not as focused on your heart health as much as you are focused on how am I performing. So I actually think from an age appropriate perspective, I think BMI not as important. I think body fat not as important. Let’s focus on improving your performance in these metrics is more important.

0:17:49.8 Mike Vacanti: Not to mention there is massive, if not direct overlap between performance and health on all of these things. The 15-minute mile versus the 7-minute mile, we can extrapolate heart health based on that.

0:18:03.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:18:04.2 Mike Vacanti: What I’m assuming, or I don’t want to assume, is one of the cons in your mind of the new system that there’s percentile rankings against your peers? Is that like something you don’t like about it?

0:18:17.4 Jordan Syatt: I’ve thought about that. And even just in that, I think there are pros and cons because for someone like yourself and someone like me, I think that works really well. Like it brings out the competitive nature in me and likely in you as well. It’s something to strive for. But I also know not everyone is like me. And I know that many kids would just be probably be demoralized by it. So I think there are cons with it, too. That’s what sucks is like there’s not a one size fits all answer. So, yeah, I think in some ways it’s a pro, in some ways, it’s a con.

0:18:52.0 Mike Vacanti: Would you do away with class rank? Or I guess, did you guys have class rank in your high school?

0:18:57.3 Jordan Syatt: I think we had class rank. Yeah. I was super low on it. I think, not in terms of the fitness stuff, but in terms of the academics, I was super low on it. But yeah, like listen, I think, here, if I’m gonna look off the top of my head, what I think would be a really good idea is I think it would be cool if the child could choose, “Do you want to see your rank or not? And if you want to see your rank percentage-wise, we’ll give you a piece of paper and like, you’re in this percentile,” if you don’t wanna see it, “Hey, this is what you completed, but we’re not telling you where you rank in terms of everybody else.” Maybe they have that option. Now this brings up other options. Are they just gonna blind themselves to it? Dah da da. Like listen, I don’t claim to have the perfect answer, but I do see how not everyone responds in the same way. And there might be a benefit to just, how about focusing on you versus you watching your progress over time, year over year, so you can see how you’ve improved year over year, rather than comparing yourself to other kids in your class or the national average, maybe giving the child the option would be a beneficial middle ground.

0:20:05.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. The most interesting takeaway to me from all of this is there’s great similarity between the two systems, but there’s people apparently fighting about it online, which is par for the course in 2025.

0:20:19.7 Jordan Syatt: I also think they need to update the exercises like sit ups, max sit ups in 60 seconds is fucking stupid.

0:20:26.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:20:27.3 Jordan Syatt: What would your presidential fitness test be?

0:20:29.7 Mike Vacanti: I’d have to think about it.

0:20:31.0 Jordan Syatt: Are you on me to go first? What do you think or no?

0:20:33.0 Mike Vacanti: I’d have to think longer than this. Yeah, you can share.

0:20:35.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay, let me think about this. Let me think. I’m going to make it up off the top of my head. All right. Presidential Fitness Test. And I’m trying to make it not just optimal for the fitness test, but also easy to do in a school setting with a bunch of stupid kids doing it together. And because that’s what we would do. You do it with another kid sort of watching you. So the teacher didn’t have to watch you and make sure you’re safe. And you can’t just be letting a bunch of kids max deadlift, so that’s that’s just not going to work. So keeping it as optimal as possible from the programming perspective, as well as and like from the performance perspective, while also understanding you’ve got stupid kids watching each other and doing this together and you don’t want them to injure themselves. So I think max push ups in 60 seconds. I really like that one. I think I think that’s a really good one. So max push ups in 60 seconds, I would say I love the one mile, mile run. I think it’s a great one as well. That’s probably the best one, realistically. I would do max push ups, max chin ups or pull ups, whatever you want. I don’t care. I would do max chin ups, period, not in 60 seconds. I would just say like.

0:22:00.6 Mike Vacanti: I think that’s what it was.

0:22:01.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, got it. Okay. And then mile run. 

0:22:07.4 Mike Vacanti: We had shuttle run as well. 

0:22:08.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, we had a shuttle run too. Yep.

0:22:09.8 Mike Vacanti: So speed and agility versus more aerobic.

0:22:14.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I like that one too. You know I’m a mobility guy. I don’t know how I feel about the sit and reach test. That’s just not something that I’m like super, this needs to be a part of it.

0:22:30.1 Mike Vacanti: Not to mention that just for technique on sit and reach was like you’re doing an explosive toe touch and trying to get momentum and like fling the thing as far forward as you can.

0:22:43.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’m just I’m super not interested in the in the sit and reach or the toe touch that and I’m trying to think of like a flexibility standard that I would be interested in, and quite frankly, I’m just, I’m not. So there’s nothing really mobility-wise, at least that I can think of off the top of my head that I would be super interested in. One thing you might do is no, this is I don’t like that one. Never mind. I was gonna say like a butterfly pose, see like how far like your your knees could get to like to the ground, but it’s hard to measure. And it’s also I would, I’m more interested in hamstring and lower back anyway, so whatever, we’re going to remove the flexibility component.

0:23:27.0 Mike Vacanti: Do you not like the sit and reach because…

0:23:31.2 Jordan Syatt: I’ve got a great flexibility one, active straight leg raise.

0:23:34.5 Mike Vacanti: Describe that.

0:23:35.3 Jordan Syatt: So you’re lying on your back, and you’ve got both legs out straight in front of you on the ground. So you’re completely flat, whole body’s flat on the ground with you leave one foot on the ground, one leg stays on the ground, the other leg raises up completely straight. So you try and bring your your foot as high up as possible and back towards your face. So you’d ideally want at least about 90 degrees, because what’s nice about this is it’s not just passive flexibility. It’s also active. You’re using your hip flexor strength to see how much range you can access. So it’s strength and flexibility. It’s mobility. So the active straight leg raise and looking at your angle is I think that’s a great strength and flexibility metric that’s easy to take. I would have active straight leg raise.

0:24:25.0 Mike Vacanti: Cool.

0:24:25.6 Jordan Syatt: That removes the lower back component, right? Whereas the the sit and reach, it was advertised as a hamstring flexibility, but you’re really cranking that lower back trying to see how far you can go.

0:24:38.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Right. The Syatt Fitness Presidential Fitness Award.

0:24:43.0 Jordan Syatt: Yes. And then I’m trying to think if there’s anything else we got push-ups, we got chin-ups, we got mile run, shuttle run. And then the active straight leg raise. Is there anything else? I am thinking of a lower body strength and I was thinking like some type of like a tier system so like if you can do a pistol squat, that’s elite. Like if you could do a body weight pistol squat, that’s elite, if you could do an assisted, I don’t know, but body weight pistol squat or just like oh, you know what you could see if you could do a I’m thinking either a pistol squat or progressions to pistol squats and where you fall on that line and have like a tiered system where like the the lowest tier would be body weight squat, regular squat, but the highest tier would be pistol squat without any assistance and seeing where you fall on that tier system.

0:25:41.2 Mike Vacanti: As a kid, did you enjoy this part of gym class because.

0:25:46.6 Jordan Syatt: I loved it. 

0:25:48.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s interesting. I’m like, “Get me to the floor hockey unit. Get me to big base. I want to play team handball, when are we doing the like softball tournament?” Like there are so many fun games that we played in middle school, dodgeball, like middle school and high school gym class.

0:26:06.0 Jordan Syatt: Dodgeball was the best.

0:26:07.6 Mike Vacanti: Dude, did you ever play big base? That might have been a Thomas Jefferson high school special.

0:26:12.6 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know what that is.

0:26:13.9 Mike Vacanti: Kickball in the full gym with giant mats as the bases?

0:26:20.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yes. 

0:26:21.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. That was amazing. 

0:26:23.2 Jordan Syatt: That was fun. 

0:26:24.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.  

0:26:24.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you really tried to kick it so hard it hit the back wall. Yeah. And then you’d get them out by throwing the ball at them.

0:26:30.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you got to hit them, yeah.

0:26:31.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. Dude, that was amazing. I love that. But I looked forward to the testing day. That was like one of my favorite days of the year.

0:26:41.0 Mike Vacanti: 1-8, Jordan. 

0:26:42.2 Jordan Syatt: 8. 

0:26:43.6 Mike Vacanti: Speed round. The nerds need more B tier movements. These nerds out there who are doing all this crazy setup, cable this, wrist cuff that, like barely moving any weight, frustrated they’re not seeing any progress, need more B tier movements.

0:27:01.8 Jordan Syatt: What’s like a B tier movement?

0:27:04.8 Mike Vacanti: Whatever is currently suboptimal by the line of pull optimal bros, the gurus. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, just like get in this perfect position around the kid. No, just go lift some weight. Just go move some heavy weight. Work on getting stronger. Maybe alternate. Have like an old school compound movement strength day and then have a nerdy like line of pull. Everything’s optimal day. But I’m seeing more and more trying to optimize everything and as a result frustrated with progress. And I think for those people especially going back to the basics and working on getting strong at four, five, six like normal old school barbell movements would be a really good idea.

0:27:54.0 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I completely agree. Strength curve, suboptimal. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just fucking lift. Lift the iron. Stop obsessing over the perfect line of pull, over the perfect recruitment pattern. Just lift, yeah. I completely agree.

0:28:11.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. All right.

0:28:13.0 Jordan Syatt: I completely agree. It takes the fun out of lifting, man.

0:28:16.1 Mike Vacanti: You are preaching, Jordan. Four. Oikos, Greek yogurt flavor triple berry is unbelievable. And eating it makes me realize how good we have it at 15 protein, seven carbs, zero fat. Like the technology. Sure, they’ve made Oreos more “addictive”, et cetera. Food industry, investing billions, trying to beat GLP-1s, make people eat through their GLP-1s by having food so delicious. On the other side, there are so many delicious high protein, low calorie options these days compared to 20 or 30 years ago that we have nothing to complain about as a society.

0:29:00.9 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I’m so glad you said that. I remember growing up like wanting to get a protein yogurt and it was either just straight plain Greek yogurt, which I was fine with. I was super happy with. It was just like amazing. I would mix like my shitty protein powder in it and I would just be super excited. Or I would have like designer whey protein, which would make me gag. And I would literally like hold my nose as I chugged my designer whey protein. And now that specific yogurt you just mentioned, all the Oikos, and they also have like even a higher protein one that’s 20 grams of protein. The peach flavor is amazing. The triple berry is my personal favorite.

0:29:46.5 Mike Vacanti: Me too.

0:29:47.7 Jordan Syatt: Vanilla is great. They’re all amazing. Super high protein, ridiculously low calorie. And you can get them at 7-Eleven. You can get them like at the airport, the gas station. They’re everywhere. It’s insane. And I’m not the biggest fan of like how protein has become such a huge, like you can get high protein everything. I’m just not the biggest fan of it usually. However, my wife brought home these protein pretzels the other day. And I’m a sucker for pretzels. And do you know those pretzels? I forget the name of them.

0:30:23.5 Mike Vacanti: Are they Lenny and Larry?

0:30:24.9 Jordan Syatt: Yes. 

0:30:26.3 Mike Vacanti: I’ve tried them. Yeah.

0:30:27.0 Jordan Syatt: But do you know the ones that they’re mimicking? There are these like bougie like mustard pretzels that are like high fat, high carb. It’s like these like it’s like a bougie mustard flavor pretzel. 

0:30:43.2 Mike Vacanti: Dottie’s? 

0:30:44.2 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know. But it’s in a brown bag and they’re ridiculously good. And I remember I would eat them when I was younger like a kid and I would just eat a whole bag. And then when I started tracking calories and macros, I was livid because I was like, what the fuck? Like these are so high fat. And it’s just it was ridiculous. Well, now this high protein pretzel, it’s called like bougie mustard, I think is what it’s called. It doesn’t taste exactly like it. It’s not as good, but it’s good enough. And the entire bag is like 320 calories and like a significant amount of protein. And it tastes fucking great. I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, dude, we have it so unbelievably good.”

0:31:25.0 Mike Vacanti: We have it so good. We have it so easy. That’s absolutely right.

0:31:28.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:31:29.8 Mike Vacanti: Remember just eating chicken breast and overcooking it and putting hot sauce on it because you didn’t want the extra calories from the barbecue sauce. Tiring the jaw out, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 grams of protein, just straight chicken breast in one sitting.

0:31:43.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It was like a jaw exercise. My jaw would be burning from eating this like dry chicken, which was a strategy back in the day to stay lean so that like you just tire your jaw out. And this was like popularized by Martin Berkhan and then parroted by a lot of people where it’s just, “Hey, you want to stay lean? Eat dry chicken. It’s really hard to eat a lot of dry chicken and you’ll get your protein in.” 

0:32:11.5 Mike Vacanti: It works. And when you’re that lean and that hungry, it tastes good. So you’re just like, any food you’re pumped about.

0:32:22.2 Jordan Syatt: You could just put some salt on it and it tastes amazing.

0:32:24.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. We have it so good with the foods that are available to us.  Next number. Six. Nature is amazing. The correlation between foods that are both satiating and also micronutrient dense being aligned is so cool. Because it’s not like you’re eating It’s not like the foods that give you lots of micronutrients are generally also extremely calorically dense and leading you to gain fat more easily, very high calorie. There’s this correlation between micronutrients and foods that fill you up for fewer calories that leads to a win-win in terms of health on both the macro and micronutrient side of things, both in terms of health and body comp, which also further drives health. This is either the most obvious thing that’s ever been said, but just the way that I had God written, but you can call it God, you can call it nature, the way our actual food is is incredible and a real gift. Not the scientific processing that we talked about on the last point with the man-made yogurts that are also unbelievable, but just what exists for us is so cool.

0:33:49.4 Jordan Syatt: What’s essentially naturally readily available. The natural form of the food is just remarkable. I completely agree. I think it’s actually the combination of them is incredible. What’s really cool to me is that obviously literally everything we need is here. Everything we need is here on this earth. Then if we can even make things even better with everything that is already here on this earth, we can make it… There’s arguments around whether it’s better, I was going to say more convenient, and there’s an argument whether convenient is better, but everything that we make is because it was here, which again, it might seem ridiculously obvious and stupid, but this is getting outside this conversation, but the fact that we are the exact right distance from the sun to have the exact right amount of heat to keep us alive. If the sun was a little bit further away or just slightly different temperatures, it wouldn’t be able to exist. The fact that water falls from the sky, comes into the ground, gets sucked back up into the sky, evaporated, and then falls back down, and this is how we have our water, all of it is absolutely insane to me. And the fact that we can even use all these tools and all this, everything that we have to continue to make it better and more enjoyable, it’s just, yeah, it’s incredible.

0:35:23.3 Mike Vacanti: I’m just glad that random cell billions of years ago exploded and somehow created perfect order, because usually without a maker, things tend towards chaos and entropy, but the fact that that cell exploded into an ever-expanding universe that also has perfect order and intelligent design, like…

0:35:44.8 Jordan Syatt: Thank God. 

0:35:47.9 Mike Vacanti: Thank God. Next number. Two. I’ve got a new social media consumption strategy that is awesome.

0:36:02.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay, what is it?

0:36:05.3 Mike Vacanti: All right, I’m going to preface this by saying I’m out here, I’m coaching Gary for three days, four workouts, three days. We got a PM workout Sunday, three nights, I should say. I’m just watching him, you know, you spent three years coaching him. I had two before that and many since, but in my two before that, I was with him 24/7, 365 for two years. And watching him work and operate on his phone, he never spends more than like 20 seconds on social media before he’s making something, before he’s texting with someone, before he’s doing something. He’s basically never doom scrolling. I asked him, I was like, “How long do you think is the longest you’ve ever doom scrolled? Like actually just been in your feed, in the algorithm scrolling.” And he was shocked. He’s like, “You mean not… What if I go to check a text? What if I check an email? What if I reply to an email?” I was like, “No, no, no, just straight doom scrolling.” And we came to the conclusion that he’s probably never scrolled in his entire life for longer than like seven minutes, which might even be on the high end.

0:37:14.8 Mike Vacanti: So there are clearly people who don’t struggle with this. But if you listen to this podcast and you’ve heard any episodes, you’ve probably heard me talk about my doom scrolling over the years. New social media consumption strategy for Mike. I don’t even touch the algorithms. Right now I got three things I’m consuming and they all have a narrative. They’re all cohesive. So one is I’m watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I was telling you about. I’ve never seen it somehow and really enjoying that.

0:37:48.8 Jordan Syatt: What are you on right now?

0:37:50.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m still on the first one. I got maybe 50 minutes left in the first one. Gandalf died. Can’t believe it. I wasn’t expecting that in episode one, unless he’s coming back. I’m trying to pick up some micro expressions on you, but I think he’s gone.

0:38:07.3 Jordan Syatt: I’m not giving you anything. I was just thinking about it was like a real Ned Stark moment.

0:38:13.5 Mike Vacanti: That was a real Ned Stark, I’m actually noticing a lot of… I don’t know if it’s George R.R. Martin or if it’s HBO and D&D, the directors of the show Game of Thrones, about how much they kind of borrowed from Lord of the Rings in terms of the whites, not the White Walkers, but the little skull guys compared to these guys in Lord of the Rings. Anyway, that’s one of the pieces of content I’m watching. And then two other ones. One is I’m watching one person’s YouTube videos from his very first video all the way on in order. 

0:38:57.0 Jordan Syatt: Interesting. Do you want to say who or no?

0:38:58.0 Mike Vacanti: No, I’m gatekeeping these hard. And then the second one is I’m consuming one person’s Twitter from most recent tweet all the way going back. So if I want to consume, I’m consuming something that’s cohesive. I’m like, I have specific reasons for watching these two individuals and then having a movie, but I’m not getting random fragments of information that I’m trying to piece together. By the way, one of the biggest things in the mentorship or one problem that a lot of coaches we have worked with over the years struggle with is, when they’re over consuming information in the fitness industry, they get paralysis analysis. They get insecure, self-conscious. They don’t know right from wrong. They hear this person say this. They hear this person say the opposite. They both have big volumes. They don’t know who to believe. And they end up doubting what they’ve learned through reading and through research. They end up what they’ve learned through working with clients in person. They end up doubting what they’ve learned through their own personal experiences because everyone has an opinion and it’s coming from too much noise. So anyway, new social media consumption strategy, one series of YouTube videos all the way through one person’s tweets and one movie series. I’ll keep you updated.

0:40:17.5 Jordan Syatt: I like that. I’m excited to hear how you continue with the Lord of the Rings. Just a really, really great set of movies.

0:40:25.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. A real hero’s journey. One. You don’t run away from the bad thing. You run towards the good / you need to fill your time with good things rather than just try not to do the bad. Basically, if someone was trying to avoid scrolling, it would make more sense to fill your life with so many good things that you’re not even thinking about scrolling. If someone is struggling with a substance, if someone’s struggling with food, if someone is struggling with A, B, C, D, E, F, G vices, by the way, good versus bad dopamine lists coming soon. It’s much easier to inundate yourself with good problems to solve and make yourself busy with meaningful things. I think you actually do a very good job of this compared to sitting there white knuckling, staring at the bad thing and trying not to indulge in it.

0:41:22.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that makes total, total sense. It makes me think, and I don’t think we discussed it on the podcast, but I’ve told you about it. I’m going to be a security guard.

0:41:32.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you are. A real, and not like a mall cop, like a real trained security guard.

0:41:39.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. Because I was so worried about safety at my daughter’s school that my wife and I were considering pulling her out. And finally, through a lot of conversations with my wife and also with people at the school, security team at the school, finally came up with a solution where I’m going to literally go train with a group that trains with Dallas SWAT and go through this multi-month certification process where then I’ll be able to spend my mornings literally guarding my daughter’s school.

0:42:22.2 Mike Vacanti: Hey, do what you got to do, you know?

0:42:25.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, man.

0:42:26.3 Mike Vacanti: Your intuition and experience has led you to, I mean, plus fatherly instinct and desire and need to protect. It’s like if you don’t have full confidence in the current system, then making yourself a part of it and making it better is amazing.

0:42:46.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and I literally told them, I was like, “If you don’t let me do this, I’m just going to walk around outside the perimeter of the school in the public area, and I’m just going to be there anyway. So whether you want me to or not.”

0:43:02.8 Mike Vacanti: You probably said that jokingly.

0:43:04.4 Jordan Syatt: I said it 100% seriously. 

0:43:06.3 Mike Vacanti: Really?

0:43:06.9 Jordan Syatt: And I said, I was like, “Just so you know, I want this to work, but even if you say, ‘hey, this isn’t going to happen,’ I’m going to be walking around the public area anyway until my daughter’s done with school.” And they were like, “No, no, no, we can make this happen.” I was like, “Great.”

0:43:26.9 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no. It’s okay, dad. You’re on board. You’re in. 

0:43:32.1 Jordan Syatt: A part of the team, buddy.

0:43:32.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s a volunteer position too. 

0:43:35.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s 100% volunteer. There’s no pay involved. I’m spending my free time to do it, which I’m honestly really happy and excited about. And I know, listen, I get to drive my daughter to school every day, pick her up from school every day, and at least for the time being… 

0:43:50.5 Mike Vacanti: And guard the school. 

0:43:51.7 Jordan Syatt: She’ll be very excited to see me around the school until a certain point, a certain age, where she’ll be like, “Don’t look at me, don’t talk to me, don’t recognize me.” 

0:44:00.6 Mike Vacanti: This is embarrassing. 

0:44:01.9 Jordan Syatt: But for right now, I think she’ll be really excited to see me walking around school. But yeah. 

0:44:05.1 Mike Vacanti: That’s really cool.

0:44:06.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, man.

0:44:07.2 Mike Vacanti: And it’s eight weeks of training before you get to officially start? 

0:44:10.3 Jordan Syatt: That’s what I was told, yeah. But I’ve got to pass the certification and go through this whole training process, but yeah. And they have levels, so it’s like different levels. I had no idea, but different levels of certification based on essentially if you’re openly carrying a weapon versus maybe you’re dressed as a civilian, but you are secretly concealed carrying a weapon, which is a higher level than if you’re openly carrying, which I thought was interesting. But essentially an undercover covert would be a higher level. So I’m not saying what level I’m going to get to, but yeah, this is a whole operation going on right now.

0:44:53.1 Mike Vacanti: Jordan’s going for gold, and he’s going for the highest level. That’s a fact. Next number. Three. There was a new study discussing or analyzing the importance of consistent sleep and wake times compared to just total amount of time slept. And this, I want to say there were like over 10,000 participants, so it wasn’t just self-reported data, they wore sleep trackers. And what they essentially found was, yes, how much you sleep every night is very important and probably the most important component in terms of the correlation between all-cause mortality and sleep. But what they also found was the people who had the most consistent sleep and wake times had far lower mortality rates than people who had inconsistent sleep and wake times. And they defined that as like going to bed within the same hour range each night and waking up within the same hour range each morning compared to going to bed within like a three-hour window versus waking up within a three-hour window. I found this personally interesting, even if there’s just a little bit of data to support it, to placebo myself into, okay, I can get by on less sleep as long as I’m more consistent with my bedtime and wake-up time.

0:46:26.2 Jordan Syatt: But if you’re more… Oh, you mean, so even if you’re consistent, but you’re consistently getting less sleep, that’s what you’re saying?

0:46:31.8 Mike Vacanti: It’s better to get more sleep, but even, but if you’re getting the same amount of sleep, having consistent sleep and wake times leads to better health outcomes than having inconsistent sleep, bedtime and wake times.

0:46:48.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s very interesting to me, because I do wonder what would be causing that. I’m thinking, okay, let’s look at who are the people who are having very inconsistent sleep times or wake times. And I’m just imagining they’re generally typically not the healthiest people. Like if you don’t have a regimen, you don’t have a routine in place, like you’re just like… I’m that person, by the way, like I’m one of the people who do live, I think, an overall healthy life, but my sleep schedule is all over the place. Sometimes I’ll go to bed at 10:00, sometimes I’ll go to bed at 2:00. I’m just all over the place. My wake time is basically the same no matter what. Wake time is somewhere between 7:00 and 8:00, no matter what.

0:47:30.5 Mike Vacanti: That’s good.

0:47:32.1 Jordan Syatt: I do wonder if typically as a generalization, the people who have sporadic or erratic times, what the fuck are they doing that’s causing them to not have a regular time? And I would imagine maybe it’s drinking, partying, you know what I mean?

0:47:54.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m sure that’s a factor. It might even be the main contributing factor. This isn’t double-blind placebo, this is just…

0:48:06.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I’m assuming they just weren’t controlling for exercise routine.

0:48:11.7 Mike Vacanti: They weren’t controlling for anything.

0:48:13.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, okay. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, it is interesting.

0:48:18.5 Mike Vacanti: N equals one, because I don’t drink, and my lifestyle doesn’t change that much based on my sleep patterns. When I have had consistent sleep and wake times, and there have been several pockets of time in my life when I have, I’ve felt better and performed better on less sleep. So I can’t prove this, but… 

0:48:44.2 Jordan Syatt: You drink like one to three times a year? 

0:48:46.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, probably less over the last couple of years. Probably like 1.2 times. 

0:48:51.9 Jordan Syatt: You drink on your annual golf trip? 

0:48:54.7 Mike Vacanti: I’m not drinking on it this year. Two years ago, did I talk about this on the podcast? Two years ago, I had the worst hangover of my life, and not doing it. Last year, I think I had one drink on my annual golf trip. I’m having zero this year. 

0:49:07.6 Jordan Syatt: Zero this whole time? 

0:49:10.8 Mike Vacanti: This year’s trip is actually in two days, and yeah, I do not plan on drinking a sip of booze. I’m just not interested at all. You know, dad life, when you’re away from home, capitalizing on a good night’s sleep feels good to me, rather than like boozing up and like waking up and getting bad sleep and then waking up not feeling good. Alcohol’s not my vice. Not interested.

0:49:36.0 Jordan Syatt: Did you drink at the wedding you went to recently?

0:49:37.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I did. I wasn’t planning on it, and then I just let loose.

0:49:45.7 Jordan Syatt: Was it a lot? Did you get drunk?

0:49:47.9 Mike Vacanti: I got tipsy. No, I didn’t get drunk.

0:49:50.2 Jordan Syatt: One to two times a year you drink? 

0:49:51.9 Mike Vacanti: It’s between 0.8 and 1.3 times a year. And I’d like to take it down because I just am not a fan. For myself. And by the way, what’s interesting is as a personal trainer and someone who works in the fitness space, people assume it’s like, “Oh, you’re not drinking like because you’re in shape.” It’s like, “Or you’re worried about the negative impacts.” No, I just literally am not interested in alcohol. In college, I drank three times per week and I was absolutely shredded to the bone the majority of the time. I was eating chicken breast and going super high protein, low carbon fat. And then I was having alcohol that was low in calories. I was getting tons of steps in. Like I was highly aesthetic and drinking constantly. So that if you want that life, you can absolutely live that life. I just don’t like the taste of booze. I don’t like the feeling. And I especially have become very… I might just be allergic. I’m especially susceptible to hangovers. And so no, thanks.

0:50:54.1 Jordan Syatt: What was your least favorite alcohol that you’ve ever drank?

0:50:59.3 Mike Vacanti: Well, I don’t like whiskey. 

0:51:00.9 Jordan Syatt: But is there like a specific time where you’re like, oh, there was like one moment in time that you like had a specific…

0:51:07.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, every 99 Bananas, Bacardi, Bacardi Limon. Like I gave myself an aversion to probably most liquors. It’s just not the right way to live for me, I mean I’m not.

0:51:25.7 Jordan Syatt: No, I think objectively that’s that’s true.

0:51:29.3 Mike Vacanti: I think there’s a time and a place though. I think there’s a time and a place. What about you? What do you have alcohol that you hate?

0:51:37.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, there’s one in particular that it’s the grossest alcohol that actually ever exists ever. There’s no this is the worst alcohol in the world. There’s no question. When I was living in Israel when I was 18, I was drinking a lot and because it’s legal. You’re 18 you can drink and they I don’t know if they still do. I’m assuming they do. They sold alcohol in all these just like little corner stores that they have all over the place. And one of the alcohols they sold when I was buying it, it was it was three shots put into what is essentially a pudding cup. So, you know, like your face if you’re not watching on YouTube, the face Mike just made it’s like, you know, like what a pudding cup is and they have like the the aluminum that you rip off. So it’s that you buy them individually and it was called Alaska and it was three shots in one and if I’m remembering correctly, it costs 25. Oh, no, it costs. What was it? I think one shooter cost the equivalent of $1 or $5.

0:53:00.8 Mike Vacanti: Good deal. Either way.

0:53:02.0 Jordan Syatt: And that was when, there’s a difference between drinking to get drunk and drinking to enjoy the drink and like your company and stuff. That was the time of your life where you’re just drinking to get drunk as quickly as possible. And that was yeah, that is without question the single worst alcohol I’ve ever had in my whole life and the effects of it were unlike any alcohol I’ve ever had. The drunk was completely different. The hangovers were completely different, it was it was a drug. It was a legit drug. And yeah, not good.

0:53:39.5 Mike Vacanti: The thought of it is just, ugh. All right, I’m going to fly through the rest of this list because we have a mentorship Q&A our weekly Q&A which we have a bunch of good questions for this week. I don’t have much more. We got through most of it. I just want to give a shout out to everyone who comments on our Instagram at personal trainer podcast. We appreciate the engagement. We love seeing your comments. We love the interaction and we appreciate the support. So big shout out to you, know what you know what we’re going to do? We need some real shout outs here. We got a we got a couple minutes. We’re going to do a speed run to get to the Q&A after this. We’re just going to dive right in. Andreas, thank you for the comment.

0:54:20.5 Jordan Syatt: Thank you, brother.

0:54:21.4 Mike Vacanti: @markonedown. Appreciate you, brother.

0:54:23.7 Jordan Syatt: Thank you, @markonedown.

0:54:24.8 Mike Vacanti: We got a bunch of… My man, Aaron. Let’s go, Aaron. Shout out, Aaron. Aaron’s a G. Mary. We got Mary with the comment. Thank you very much, Mary.

0:54:34.6 Jordan Syatt: Aaron and Mary, thank you.

0:54:36.0 Mike Vacanti: Coach Kevan here.

0:54:37.3 Jordan Syatt: Coach Kev, let’s go.

0:54:39.1 Mike Vacanti: Sus Bluebelt, Susan, The Bluebelt. 

0:54:42.8 Jordan Syatt: Bluebelt. 

0:54:44.1 Mike Vacanti: We got Brooks Hurbis, the OG in the comments here. Brooks said, “When I’m with my dog, people are way more likely to say hello to me than when it’s just me.” Yeah, animals too. Animals will get a real response in the neighborhood. @b1acktuesday, shout out @b1acktuesday. Thank you for your comment. We got Annalise. Annalise crushing it. Donuts. Oh, that was the French Cruller. People really like the French Cruller content.

0:55:08.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah.

0:55:09.7 Mike Vacanti: Oh, we got Edwin. What’s up, Edwin?

0:55:11.4 Jordan Syatt: Let’s go.

0:55:12.0 Mike Vacanti: Beth Feraco. Shout out, Beth. Thank you for the comment.

0:55:15.7 Jordan Syatt: Beth is killing it.

0:55:16.7 Mike Vacanti: I got a couple more, but we’ll save those for next week. Thank you very much for listening. Please subscribe. If you’re still listening, we would appreciate a YouTube sub. We know many of you who watch aren’t subscribed. Have a great, great week. Let’s get it. If you’ve been nerd lifting lately and doing a lot of nerd stuff and you feel like, “You know, I might not be making the kind of progress I want to make,” let’s get some real, real compound strength training in your regimen starting today.

0:55:45.2 Jordan Syatt: Right now.

0:55:45.7 Mike Vacanti: Right now. The time is now.

0:55:47.5 Jordan Syatt: Thank you. Have a wonderful week. We’ll talk to you soon.

0:55:50.5 Mike Vacanti: Goodbye.